The boy with big ears, whose father was dead, kissed his mother with a sliding away of the eyes, heaved up his two immense suitcases and loped up the gang-plank. At the top he dropped the cases briefly to give a quick sideways wave, keeping his face forward. He jerked the cases up again, grimaced, tramped on and his mother far below, weeping but laughing, said, ‘Oh, Pym! It’s the size of the cases. They’re nearly as big as he is. Oh, I can’t bear it.’
‘He is going for a sensible time,’ said her elderly woman friend. ‘Three months is a good long time. The cases must necessarily be heavy.’
‘I can’t bear it,’ wept the other, dabbing her streaming cheeks, laughing at her weakness.
‘Of course you can. You must. It’s not as if he’s never been away before.’
‘Since six. He’s been away since he was six. Oh, boarding-schools. Oh, children—why does one have them? Children—it’s all renunciation. Having them is just learning to give them up.’
‘It is the custom of the country,’ said the elderly friend—unmarried. She was a Miss Pym. ‘It is in the culture of the English middle class. We teach our children how to endure.’
‘He has endured. He has learned.’
‘Oh, he scarcely knew his father, Gwen. Don’t be silly. His father was hardly ever at home.’
‘‘He missed him. Not of course as I—’
‘You scarcely saw him either,’ said sane Miss Pym. She was a plain-spoken woman.
‘I loved him,’ said Gwen, impressive in her heavy hanging musquash coat and flat velvet bandeau (it was the nineteen-twenties). ‘And now I have lost Philip. Oh, can we find tea?’ She held her tightly-squeezed handkerchief in her fist, out in front of her like a blind woman, and her friend led her away through the crowds, among the crates and high-piled luggage and the other fluttering handkerchiefs. Arm in arm the two women disappeared, slowly, floppily in their expensive boat-shaped shoes, and Philip who had found a good position for the suitcases beside a long slatted seat, hung over the rail and waved to them in vain.
When the last flicker of them had gone he blew through his teeth a bit until a whistle came and swung his feet at the bottom rail along the deck, scuffing his shoes like a two-year-old, though he was nearly thirteen. As the ship got away towards France he hung further over the rail and called down at the seagulls who were wheeling and screeching round the open port-hole of the galley. A bucket of scraps was flung out. The seagulls screamed at it and caught most of it before it hit the foam. They plunged. ‘Hungry,’ thought Philip. ‘I’m hungry. I hope the food’s going to be good. Messy French stuff. They all say it’s going to be good, but it’ll be no better than school. It’s just disguised school.’
‘The seagulls eat like school.’ He watched enviously the birds tearing horrors from each other’s beaks, flying free. Were they French or English seagulls? Where did they nest? They spoke a universal language, seagulls. And all birds. All animals. Presumably. Didn’t need to learn French. ‘They’re ahead of people,’ thought Philip, covering his great red ears.
It was bitterly cold. Maybe it would be warmer in Paris.
He was to get to Paris on the boat-train by himself and would there be met by a Major Foster. They would know one another by a small paper Union Jack pinned to a lapel on each of them. Philip was keeping his Union Jack in his coat pocket at present, in a small brass tin. Every few minutes he felt the tin to make sure that it was still there.
He left the rail and sat on the long seat beside the suitcases. He could not remember actually having seen the flag in the tin, only hearing about it there. He had seen it when it was part of a small packet of Union Jacks, tied in a bundle. He had heard nothing else but Union Jacks it seemed for weeks: his mother’s search for just the right one, the dispatch of the Major’s identical one to Paris with the instructions to him about the lapel. The (rather long) wait for the letter of confirmation from the Major that the Union Jack had been safely received. Then a further letter about the positioning of the Union Jack on the right lapel, in the centre and with a gold safety-pin.
Philip however could not remember the act of placing the Union Jack inside the tin. After all, she might just have forgotten. Not that it was the sort of thing she ever did do—forget. But during the last few months—after the funeral which he hadn’t gone to, and which she hadn’t gone to, being too ill in bed and her friend Miss Pym paddling about nursing her and bossing her in a darkened room—after the funeral there had been some sort of break. Only a short break of course. His mother wasn’t one to break. She was terrific, his mother. Everyone knew she was terrific. She kept everything right. Never made a mistake. Ace organiser. He’d heard them saying in the kitchen that it was her being so perfect had killed his father, though goodness knows, thought Philip, what that meant.
Oh, his mother was a whizz. Organising, packing, making decisions. ‘These are your gifts. These are your life-blood,’ had said Miss Pym. ‘You are by nature an administrator—quite wasted now as a mere mother.’ His school matron always sighed over his trunk at the end of term. ‘However did your mother get so much in?’ she said. There was not a shoe not filled with socks, not a sock that did not hide a card of special darning-wool or extra buttons. Bundles of Cash’s name-tapes would be folded into a face flannel. Soap in a little soap-shaped celluloid box would rest inside a cocoa mug, and the cocoa mug would rest inside a cricket cap and the cricket cap would be slid into a Wellington boot.
No. She’d never have forgotten the Union Jack.
‘I think it’s rather a lot to expect of a Frenchman,’ had said Miss Pym. ‘To wear the English flag.’
‘The Fosters are French-Canadian,’ had said his mother. ‘They’re very English. Very patriotic, although they live in the Avenue Longchamps.’
‘I hope their French is not patriotic. If so there’s very little point in Philip going.’
‘They are patriotic to France as well.’
‘How odd,’ said Pym. ‘That is unusual.’
Philip took the tin out of his pocket and shook it and there seemed to be no rattle from inside. But then when he opened the lid, there lay the little paper flag quite safe beside its pin and the wind at once scooped it up and blew it away among the seagulls.
Philip ran to the rail and watched it plucked outwards and upwards, up and up, then round and down. Down it went, a little bright speck until it became invisible in the churning sea.
‘Calais,’ said the fat French lady along the seat beside him. ‘You see? Here is France.’ Philip immediately got up and walked away. He looked at the scummy waves slopping at the green jetty, the tall leaning houses. There was a different smell. This was abroad. Foreign soil. In a moment he was going to set foot upon it.
And he was lost and would never be found.
‘Le petit,’ said the French lady coming up alongside him at the rail and stroking his hair. He wagged his head furiously and moved further away. ‘Tout seul,’ and she burst into a spate of French at her husband. Philip knew that the French meant that the barbaric English had abandoned this child. Not able to consider this concept he shouldered the suitcases and made for the quay, and there was approached by a ruffian who tried to take them both from him. He hung on to them tight, even when the man began to scream and shout. He aimed a kick at the man and tramped away, the cases grazing the ground. Not one person on the crowded quay paid attention to the attempted theft.
Philip showed his passport and was swirled into the crowd. ‘Paris,’ cried the fat lady, swinging into view, ‘Paris—ah, le petit!’ and she held her rounded arm out boldly but shelteringly in his direction, leaning towards him. Her husband who had a sharp nose and black beret and teeth began to talk fast and furiously into the nearest of Philip’s vulnerable ears.
But Philip behaved as though he were quite alone. He climbed into the train, found his seat, took off his gaberdine raincoat, folded it onto a little rack and looked at the huge suitcases and the higher luggage-rack with nonchalance. The rest of the carriage regarded them with amazement and several people passionately urged that the racks were unequal to the challenge ahead of them. Another ruffian came in and seemed to want to remove the cases altogether but Philip with a vehemence that astonished him and the ruffian and the whole carriage and a stretch of the corridor, flung himself in the man’s path and across his property. He turned bright red and his ears redder and cried out, ‘No, no, no.’
This caused more discussion and the ruffian, lifting his gaze to the ceiling and his hands near it, went shouting away. The suitcases were then successfully stowed on the racks, two of the Frenchmen shook hands with Philip and an old woman wearing a long black dress and a lace headdress like some sort of queen, offered him a sweet which he refused. Huddled in his corner seat he looked out of the window and wondered what to do.
Rattling tracks, bleak cement, scruffy houses all tipping about and needing a coat of paint. Shutters. Railway lines insolently slung across streets, all in among fruit-stalls, all muddly. Rain. No Union Jack.
Rain. Fields. Grey. Everything measured out by rulers. Small towns, now villages. Gardens. Allotments. No Union Jack.
Men in blue overalls. More berets. Black suits. Stout women with fierce brows. Men standing looking at their allotments, very still and concentrated like saying their prayers. Vegetables in very straight rows. Men carefully bending down and plucking out minute, invisible weeds. Mix-up of muddle and order. Like Mother. No Union Jack.
What should he do? Major Foster would be wearing his Union Jack and Philip would go up to him and say— But in all the hundreds of people getting off the train at Paris there might be a dozen boys of twelve. Perhaps a hundred. The Major would go sweeping by. ‘Oh no. I’m sorry. They were very particular. The boy I am to meet will be wearing—’
And he’d be speaking in French of course. Probably French-Canadians spoke no English. It hadn’t been clear. Miss Pym had written all the letters to the Foster family because she could write French, and the replies had been in French. Miss Pym had taken them away to translate with the dictionary under her arm. No Union Jack.
How stupid. How stupid of his mother. Why hadn’t she sewed the Union Jack on his raincoat in the first place? She loved sewing. She was always mending and sewing, not even listening to his father and Miss Pym scrapping away about politics, just looking across at them now and then, or looking over, smiling, at him. His socks were more darns than socks because she so loved darning. Loved making things perfect. Loved making everything seem all right.
So then she sends him away with a rotten little Woolworth’s Union Jack out of a cheap packet of them, loose in a tin. And not waving either when she’d said goodbye. Not crying at all. He knew about that crying-and-laughing-together she did. He’d never thought anything of it. He wondered if it had been the laughing-and-crying and all the darning and soupy Miss Pym and her French that had killed his father.
After all, she hadn’t really seemed to mind his father dying. Gone off to bed for the funeral. Perhaps she’d really wanted him to die. Wanted to be free of him so that she could have long, cosy chats with Miss Pym. Horrible Miss Pym speaking her mind all the time. Not liking his father and showing it. Not liking boys. Not liking him. Goopy-goo about his mother. Organising these Fosters. Very glad he was going away. Making no secret of that.
Perhaps his mother also was glad that he was going away.
Philip when this thought arrived concentrated upon the colourless, hedgeless, straight-edged French fields. Rattle-crash the train went over the level-crossings that sliced the roads in half. Long poles hung with metal aprons. Funny people. Lots of them on bicycles, clustered round, waiting to cross. Very dangerous. Very daring. People full of—what? Different from home. Full of energy. No, not energy—what? Fireworks. Explosives. Confidence. That was it. Not as if they needed to keep private their secret thoughts.
If they suddenly discovered for instance that their mothers did not love them they would not sit dumb and numb in a corner.
People in the carriage were now getting out packets of food. One of the hand-shaking men offered Philip a slanted slice of bread, orange and white. Somebody else offered him wine. He shook his head at all of it and looked out of the window. When the talk in the carriage began to get lively he got up and took down the raincoat and took from the pocket the packet of lunch his mother had made up for him herself, with her own fair hands, ha-ha. He sat with it on his knee. He was too sad, too shy to open it.
Also he didn’t really want it. His mother had packed it up so carefully. Like a work of art. Greaseproof corners turned into triangles, like a beautifully-made bed. The package was fastened with two elastic bands, criss-cross, making four neat squares. And even his name on it in clear black pencil, PHILIP. How silly could you get? Who else would it be for? Madly careful, that’s what she was. And then she goes and leaves the Union Jack loose in the box.
And she knew how flimsy it was. She must have expected it to blow away. She expected everything. She’d expected a wind. She’d gone on at breakfast-time about him getting seasick. And she knew he’d be more than likely to open the box.
Oh, she’d known what would happen all right. She’d gone off without even waving, her yellow fur arm on the yellow fur arm of Pym. She did not love him, want him, know him and she never had. It was all just darning and being perfect.
She wanted him lost.
All that about flags was just a blind. She wanted him to miss the Major. Wanted rid of the bother of him. Wanted him to disappear. She was a wicked woman who had killed her husband. All that laughing as she cried.
One night when he was young Philip had come downstairs after being put to bed, to get a book from the morning room and through the dining room door had heard his father singing at table:
Oh me and oh my
Oh dear and oh dear
I ain’t gonna drink
No more damned beer
and Miss Pym had come sailing out of the room with her lips pressed together. ‘Coarse,’ he had heard her say. ‘Coarse,’ and then, seeing him standing in his pyjamas at the foot of the stairs in the summer evening light, ‘Go to bed, Philip. Don’t look so stricken. There is a point when every child sees through his parents.’
But his father’s singing hadn’t made Philip think any less of him. He’d always rather liked his father, or what he saw of him. He’d not been able to talk to children, just looked awkward and done card-tricks. Once in the town, seeing his son walking on the other side of the road, his father had raised his hat to him. What did she mean ‘see through’?
But now he was seeing through his mother. He was seeing through her all right. He knew her now. The stupid woman. All that fuss trailing about for flags in Canterbury and then she gets one that blows away. Accidentally-on-purpose-ha-ha. She’d be free now. Free for life. Free to be with Stinkerpym. They’d got rid of him together, making sure the flag was really flimsy. Brilliantly they had evaded the law and there would be no evidence of their plot. Philip the only son would simply disappear.
Well, he wouldn’t. At least he would, because he’d never go back. Not to Canterbury, never. Thirteen was all right. He’d manage. Look at Kidnapped. Look at Treasure Island. You can get on without your mother. When he’d got to Paris he’d— He had some money. He’d just put up in a hotel for a few nights. Get work. He could probably get work somewhere as a kitchen boy or—well, somewhere where there was food.
He was very hungry now. Probably Major Foster and his sisters would have got a good dinner ready for him. This dinner he would never eat, never see, as he would never see the beautiful house they all said would be like a little palace near the Bois de Boulogne. Too bad. He’d go to the Paris stews. At least they sounded as if you didn’t go hungry.
And since he was so hungry at the moment he would eat his mother’s sandwiches. She could hardly have poisoned them.
Could she?
As he opened the greaseproof paper he considered the enigma of his mother, how she flitted in and out of his life, always waving him away on trains. Sending him to boarding school at six.
‘And even now I could fox her,’ he thought. ‘Even now I could tear a bit off this greaseproof and draw a union-jack on it and pin it on the lapel with the pin in the box. I could write my name on it too. I could borrow a pencil.’
He looked round the carriage wondering which of them he might ask. It would be an easy sentence to say. He’d even done it at school. And he had begun to like the look of the French faces.
But no. He’d go to the stews.
He opened the sandwiches and there was an envelope on top and inside it a piece of paper and his mother’s huge handwriting saying ‘Oh Philip, my darling, don’t hate me for fussing, but I do so love you.’
Pinned to the paper was a spare Union Jack.