Late, Late in the Evening

'Hullo. Is that your dog?' he asked.

'My uncle's,' I explained.

'It's going to rain.'

This non sequitur nonplussed me.

'How do you know?' I demanded. Instead of replying, he asked,

'Has your aunt-I suppose you've got an aunt if you've got an uncle-has she a good big tin bath? A really big one, I mean.'

'There is one, yes,' said Kenneth. 'She does the washing in it.' He did not add that we were bathed in it, too.

'Oh, good,' said the boy. 'I should think a lot of water comes down this hill when it rains.' He wriggled a big toe into the soft surface of the road. 'Nothing but sand,' he said. 'Tell you what. I'll wait for you while you take the dog out, then you borrow this tin bath of your aunt's and a spade or a trowel, see? Then we sink the bath in the middle of the road and the rainwater fills it up and we paddle. All right?'

'Suppose somebody wants to bring a cart along, or the doctor comes by on his horse?' said Kenneth.

'In the rain? Oh, they won't. Off you go with your dog and don't be long. As soon as the dog has done what it has to do, back you come, do you see? And hurry it up a bit.'

'Who do you think you're talking to?' said Kenneth. 'Besides, we wouldn't be given the bath to play with, or be allowed to paddle in the road in the rain. You must be daft!'

'What can we do, then?' asked the boy, deflated quite obviously by this spirited comment.

'If you'd like to come with us, you can,' I replied, 'then when we come back you could see our pigs and have a go on our swing in the cartshed.'

'I'd rather paddle.'

'Well, look,' said Kenneth. 'I dare say Aunt Kirstie would let us paddle in the bath if we had it in the scullery. There's a big enamel jug in there to fill it. It would be quicker than waiting for the rain. Or there's the brook. That's better still for paddling.'

'What brook?'

'Come with us, and we'll show you.'

'All right. What's your name?'

'Kenneth Clifton. This is my sister Margaret.'

'How do you do? I am Lionel Kempson-Conyers. We only began the summer vac. yesterday and already I'm bored. The house'-he jerked his head towards the top of the hill-'is going to be full up with people and nobody's got any time for me. My parents have gone back to France. They live there mostly. They'll bring back my sister, who's at finishing-school over there. There isn't even a pony to ride here. It's just too plain boring for words. Do you play cricket?'

'Not really,' replied Kenneth. 'Can you box?'

'No, worse luck. We don't take boxing at school until we're eleven and I'm only nine.'

This surprised us because of his height, but all Kenneth said was, 'I'm eight and my sister's ten.'

'Can she box?'

'Of course. Our Uncle Arthur teaches both of us.'

'How decent for you.' By this time we were strolling along, with Vicky on her bit of string, towards the end of the village. By the time Aunt Kirstie had tea ready we were back from our walk and were taking turns on the swing. At Lionel Kempson-Conyers' suggestion, we were having a competition to see who could be the first to kick a bit off the cartshed roof, which was made of sheets of corrugated iron.

* * *

Lionel stayed to tea that day. After that, more often than not, he came down the hill into the village to play with us. Our Sarah was contemptuous of our new acquaintance.

'Hoy, you young Oi say,' she remarked bitterly one morning before Lionel came along, 'who be that there young Oi say as you be goen weth nowadays?'

'He's a friend of ours,' said Kenneth, 'but, truly, Our Sarah, we'd rather be with you.'

'So you says. A lettle bet of a lah-di-dah, ennee? Seems loike I heered hem talken to you t'other day loike the gentry talks, and that's talk as Oi don't 'old weth, nor moi dad neether.'

'I think he's a nobleman's son. His name is Lionel Kempson-Conyers. Wouldn't you call that a nobleman's name? And I think he goes to boarding-school. He calls it a prep. school and they get the cane there ever so often,' said Kenneth. 'I'd hate to go there.'

'You ever had the cane, you young Oi say?'

'No,' said Kenneth, 'I shouldn't allow it.'

'What 'ud ee do, then?'

'Hit the teacher in the stomach, which is pretty effective, though it's against the Queensberry rules. That's if it was a man. I should take the cane away and break it, if it was a woman,' said Kenneth. Sarah eyed him.

'Fierce as a maggot, beant ee?' she said sardonically. 'Well, Oi tells ee thes: you ded oughter watch out, 'cos ef thes 'ere young Oi say be one o' them Kempson lot, moi dad do say as they ain't no better 'an they should be.'

'What does that mean?'

'Never you moind what et means at your age. You'll know all about et when you be older.'

'Our Sarah,' said Kenneth earnestly, 'Lionel hates all his relations up at the big house. Will you let him join the band? He isn't really lah-di-dah, I promise you. Can't he come to the sheepwash with us?'

No embargo was ever placed on our playing in and beside the brook, but the sheepwash at the foot of Lye Hill was supposed to be out of bounds to us. It was a part of the brook which had been artificially deepened and its sides had been shored up, but in our time it was never used for its original purpose, for there were no longer any sheep on The Marsh or on the hill. Whereas the brook itself was nowhere more than a few inches deep, the sheepwash which it fed had a depth of about a foot at its shallowest and almost four feet of water in the deepest part. We often went there in spite of prohibitions, for it made a splendid pool, and there was a game of seeing how far you could wade in without actually wetting your clothes. Kenneth slipped over once and got himself soaked. Our Sarah squeezed him as dry as she could and then ran him all the way home and delivered him to Aunt Kirstie with the remark, ''Ere be your young Oi say, missus. Fell over en the brook and wet hesself. 'Tweren't hes fault, Oi don't reckon. Our Ern gev hem a lettle bet of a shove, loike. Oi'll sort Our Ern when Oi cotches up weth hem.'

I remember that we debated earnestly that night when we got to bed-for at that time we still shared a room-whether or not we ought to confess that it was in the sheepwash, and not in the brook proper, that Kenneth had had his ducking. However, we agreed, with smug sanctimoniousness, that it would be hard lines on Our Sarah if we let her down after she had told such gallant fibs on our behalf. 'Besides,' added Kenneth, Aunt Kirstie might make us promise on our honour not to go near the sheepwash again, and that would be very awkward.'

'And, after all, the sheepwash is the brook,' I said, 'when you come right down to it.' (Even at the time I was slightly ashamed of this piece of sophistry.)

'It was good of Our Sarah to blame it on Ern, because he wasn't even there,' said Kenneth. 'We can't make her out to be a-to tell stories, can we?' (The word liar was on the forbidden list in our vocabulary; so was hell. As for damn and bloody, these were not words we ever heard except from the lips of drunken men, and even then they filled us with pity and terror, as being expressions which even God, powerful though we knew Him to be, could neither excuse nor forgive.)

It is no wonder that in some ways we were a couple of sanctimonious little prigs. Our nightly prayers, for example, were always said downstairs quite often in front of a circle of admiring relatives of whom Aunt Lally, although not the most loving, was the most sentimental. She would exclaim, when the recitation of our little piece was over: 'Don't they say them words pretty!' Then she would present each of us with a biscuit out of a special tin and we would go up to bed feeling satisfied with our performance, although a little scornful of our aunt, who had not realised what an artistic bit of eye-wash it had been.