I was practised in listening silently to Aunt Milly. Sometimes she discouraged me, but for most purposes I had toughened my skin. My skin was not, however, tough enough for an incident which took place in my first term at the new school.
Several of the boys there knew that my father had ‘failed in business’. They came from the same part of the town, they had heard it gossiped about; my father might have passed unnoticed, but my mother was a conspicuous figure in the parish. One of them twitted me with it, saying each time he saw me, ‘Why did your dad go bust?’ in the nagging, indefatigable, imbecile, repetitious fashion of very small boys. I flushed at first, but soon got used to him, and it did not hurt me much.
Curiously enough, until the incident of the subscription list, I was more embarrassed by the notoriety of no less a person than Aunt Milly. Her vigour in the cause of temperance was well known all over the town. During the summer she had organized a vast teetotal procession through the streets: it consisted of carts in which each of the Rechabite tents staged its own tableau, usually of an historical nature and in fancy dress, followed by the Templar lodges on foot and carrying banners. My aunt, and the other high officers, made up the end of the procession; wearing their ‘regalia’ of red, blue, or green, according to the order, with various signs of rank, something like horses’ halters round their necks, they sat on small chairs on a very large cart.
Like all Aunt Milly’s activities, the procession had been organized with extraordinary thoroughness and clockwork precision. But some of my form-mates who had seen it — perhaps some had even taken part — discovered that she was my aunt and decided that to have such an aunt was preposterously funny. I then found out that shame is an unpredictable thing. For I should have said that I could take any conceivable joke against Aunt Milly without a pang: in fact, I was painfully ashamed.
The incident of the subscription list took place in November, a couple of months after I first attended the school. Each boy in each form had been asked to make a donation to the school munitions fund. The headmaster had explained how, if we could only give sixpence, we should be doing our bit; all the money would go straight to buy shells for what the headmaster called ‘the 1918 offensive — the next big push’.
I reported it all to my mother. I asked her what we could afford to give.
‘We can’t afford much really, dear,’ said my mother, looking upset, preoccupied, wounded. ‘We haven’t got much to spare at the end of the week. I know that you’ve got to give something.’
It added to her worries. As she had said before, she was not going ‘to have me suffer by the side of the other boys’.
‘How much do you think they’ll give, Lewis?’ she inquired. ‘I mean, the boys from nice homes.’
I made some discreet investigations, and told her that most of my form would be giving half a crown or five shillings.
She pursed her lips.
‘You needn’t bother yourself, dear,’ she said. ‘I’m not going to have you feel out of it. We can do as well as other people.’
She was not content with doing ‘as well as other people’. Her imagination had been fired. She wanted me to give more than anyone in the form. She told herself that it would establish a position for me, it would give me a good start. She liked to feel that we could ‘still show we were someone’. And she was patriotic and warlike, and had a strong sense of wartime duty; though most of all she wanted me to win favour and notice, she also got satisfaction from ‘buying shells’, from taking part in the war at second hand.
She skimped my father’s food and her own, particularly hers, for several weeks. After a day or two my father noticed, and mildly grumbled. He asked if the rations were reduced so low as this. No, said my mother, she was saving up for the subscription list at school.
‘I hope you don’t have many subscriptions,’ said my father to me. ‘Or I expect she’ll starve me to death.’
He clowned away, pretending that his trousers had inches to spare round his middle.
‘Don’t be such a donkey, Bertie,’ said my mother irritably.
She kept to her intention. They went without the small luxuries that she had managed to preserve, through war, through the slow grind of growing poverty — the glass of stout on Saturday night, the supper of fish and chips (fetched, for propriety’s sake, by Aunt Milly’s maid), the jam at breakfast. On the morning when we had to deliver our subscriptions, my mother handed me a new ten-shilling note. I exclaimed with delight and pressed the crisp paper against the tablecloth. I had never had one in my possession before.
‘Not many of them will do better than that,’ said my mother contentedly. ‘Remember that before the war I should have given you a sovereign. I want you to show them that we’ve still got our heads above water.’
Under the gaslight, in the early morning, the shadow of my cup was blue on the white cloth. I admired the ten-shilling note, I admired the blue shadows, I watched the shadows of my own hands. I was thanking my mother: I was flooded with happiness and triumph.
‘I shall want to hear everything they say,’ said my mother. ‘They’ll be a bit flabbergasted, won’t they? They won’t expect anyone to give what you’re giving. Please to remember everything they say.’
I was lit up with anticipation as the tramcar clanged and swayed into the town. Mist hung over the county ground, softened the red brick of the little houses by the jaiclass="underline" in the mist — not fog, but the clean autumnal mist — the red brick, though softened, seemed at moments to leap freshly on the eye. It was a morning nostalgic, tangy, and full of well-being.
In the playground, when we went out for the eleven-o’clock break, the sun was shining. Our subscriptions were to be collected immediately afterwards: as the bell jangled, my companions and I made our way chattering through the press of boys to the room where we spent most of our lessons.
Mr Peck came in. He taught us algebra and geometry; he was a man about fifty-five who had spent his whole life at the school; he was bald, fresh-skinned, small-featured, constantly smiling. He lived in the next suburb beyond ours, and occasionally he was sitting in the tramcar when I got on.
Some boy had written a facetious word on the blackboard. Peck smiled deprecatingly, a little threateningly, and rubbed out the chalk marks. He turned to us, still smiling.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘the first item on the programme is to see how much this form is going to contribute to make the world safe for democracy.’ There was a titter; he had won his place long ago as a humorist.
‘If any lad gives enough,’ he said, ‘I dare say we shall be prepared to let him off all penalties for the rest of the term. That is known as saving your bacon.’
Another titter.
‘Well,’ he went on, ‘I don’t suppose for a moment that you want to turn what you are pleased to call your minds to the problems of elementary geometry. However, it is my unfortunate duty to make you do so without unnecessary delay. So we will dispose of this financial tribute as soon as we decently can. I will call out your names from the register. Each lad will stand up to answer his name, announce his widow’s mite, and bring the cash up here for me to receive. Then the last on the list can add up the total and sign it, so as to certify that I haven’t run away with the money.’
Peck smiled more broadly, and we all grinned in return. He began to read out the names. The new boys were divided into forms by alphabetical order, and ours ran from A to H.