Читать книгу Time and the Hour - Howard Spring - Страница 31

Table of Contents

Unless you are used to it, an April morning is not the best time for plunging into cold flowing water. Anthony, sitting on the edge of his bed, with a hand absently fondling the ears of Cerberus, was wondering whether, in his answer to Mr. Pordage’s letter, he should point out that, though a morning bath was referred to as something customary, his habit was to bathe in warm water once a week, on Saturday nights. However, he didn’t want to start his life at Easter How with disobedience, so he pulled off his warm nightshirt, put on a mackintosh that made him shiver, and ran out to the head of the steps. He called to Cerberus, who opened one eye, gave him a knowing wink, and got his head down again between his paws.

The stone stairway was wet with dew, and cold. Anthony’s naked toes curled and he stepped gingerly. But the sun was shining upon the daffodils, and the blackbirds and thrushes were full-throated in the hawthorn hedge. It was half past seven. The bleat of lambs came from the surrounding fields, and, too high to be seen, larks were in the sky from which the sun had not yet burned the last mists of the night.

Anthony stood still, listening, and he could hear the clear voice of the water, a silvery constant thread on which all the other sounds of the day were hanging. Suddenly, he was hearing nothing in particular, but everything was one thing, himself a part of it: the strengthening sunlight, and the flowers, and the birdsong, and the deep troubled voices of the ewes answering the quavering lambs, and the ripple of the stream, and Valpy snorting in the barn: and he ran down the stairs and across the lawn and along the edge of the water, his toes rejoicing now in the clear diamond wetness of the grass and his eyes in the golden blobs of water-buttercups—cups indeed, full to the brim with dew. And here were the alders enclosing what Mr. Pordage called his Parson’s Pleasure, where the stream deepened to a pool, and hazels were among the alders, dropping from their boughs gold-dusted catkins, drying in the sunlight like the tails of new-dropped lambs.

He threw off his mackintosh and dived, and his fingers were at once among the pebbly nuggets that made the stream-bed an eldorado. He came up with a handful, gasping, for the water was as cold as though it were the sweat of a glacier, and he stood, dripping and shivering, while Cerberus, who had at last decided to follow, stood by, his red tongue protruding, laughing in derision, as if he realised, what only now occurred to Anthony, that he had come without a towel. Well, that was something to remember next time, the boy thought, wringing water from his hair, and this first time was something to remember, too. He put on his mackintosh, went back to his room, and towelled himself till he glowed. Never, he thought, have I till now started a day like this; and the memory came to him of the rush downstairs in Megson Street, and the rush through breakfast, with Uncle Horace coughing from some imagined catarrh, or writhing from some imagined lumbago; and then the rush to school, and the school-bell ringing, and the calling of the register. “Bromwich.” “Here, sir.” He felt as though he were in a dream: a dream, if one might so put it, full of absent things: blackboards, exercise books, chalk and little inkwells fitted into holes in desks.

He was awakened from the dream by the sound of a bugle: a sound appropriate to the morning, a sound that no boy on any morning could resist. He was dressed, and he ran downstairs, and he watched the soldiers tramping along the white road, packs on their backs, rifles in their hands, singing as they marched. As any other boy would do, he marched with them, crossed the stepping-stones with them as they broke ranks at the water-splash, and turned with them into a meadow where field-kitchens were smoking and whence it was that the bugle had sounded, telling the arriving troops that breakfast was ready.

The men got rid of their loads, and with billycans and tin mugs filed past the kitchens, receiving their rations of food and tea. They sat upon the grass in the sunlight which now had warmth, and Anthony was beginning to be reminded of his own need of breakfast when a hand fell on his shoulder and a voice asked: “Well, how’s that knee behaving?”

He swung round in surprise, and did not at once recognise the officer smiling down at him. Uniform made a difference: a shining Sam Browne belt, three stars on the shoulder, riding boots. Then he remembered Ackroyd Park. “Oh, Mr. Freilinghausen! It doesn’t trouble me at all now, thank you.”

Cerberus had arrived, looking as though, were his heads Hesiod’s fifty, he could do with food for all his mouths. And the troops seemed to think so, too. Bits of bacon were being forked up and handed to him all along the squatting ranks.

Captain Freilinghausen shouted: “Stop that! That food is provided for you, not for dogs. Call him away,” he commanded Anthony.

Easier said than done, but Anthony at last got the dog by the collar and hauled him out into the road. Captain Freilinghausen followed. “You see,” he said, “we are a Territorial battalion on exercise. Part of the exercise is a night march. Those men have been on their legs for hours. They need food, and it is their business to eat it. As a medical officer I must see that they do. Well, that explains me. How do we explain you? I thought you lived in Bradford.”

Anthony told of his changed life, and the captain said: “That is good. Take advantage of it. That is how a boy should be brought up.”

Anthony wondered whether he should inquire after Mrs. Freilinghausen, but the chance did not come. An orderly approached and saluted. “The colonel is asking for you, sir.” The captain abruptly left him.

By mid-morning the soldiers had marched away.