Mrs. Bindle: Some Incidents from the Domestic Life of the Bindles by Jenkins (best ebook reader for chromebook TXT) 📗

man shook his head lugubriously.

"What about a pub?"

"Mile away," gloomed the man.

"Gawd Almighty!" Bindle's exclamation was not concerned with the man's remark, but with something he extracted from the bath. "Well, I'm blowed," he muttered.

"'Ere, Lizzie," he called out.

Mrs. Bindle appeared at the entrance of the tent. Bindle held up an elastic-sided boot from which marmalade fell solemnly and reluctantly.[Pg 175]

Then the flood-gates of Mrs. Bindle's wrath burst apart, and she poured down upon Bindle's head a deluge of reproach. He and he alone was responsible for all the disasters that had befallen them. He had done it on purpose because she wanted a holiday. He wasn't a husband, he was a blasphemer, an atheist, a cumberer of the earth, and all that was evil.

She was interrupted in her tirade by the approach of a little man with a round, bald, shiny head and a worried expression of countenance.

"D'yer know 'ow to milk a cow, mate?" he enquired of Bindle, apparently quite unconscious that he had precipitated himself into the midst of a domestic scene.

"Do I know 'ow to wot?" demanded Bindle, eyeing the man as if he had asked a most unusual question.

"There's a bloomin' cow over there and nobody can't milk 'er, an' the bishop's gone, and we wants our tea."

Bindle scratched his head through his cap, then, turning towards the tent into which Mrs. Bindle had once more disappeared, he called out:

"Hi, Lizzie, jer know 'ow to milk a cow?"

"Don't be beastly," came the reply from the tent.

"It ain't one of them cows," he called back, "it's a milk cow, an' 'ere's a cove wot wants 'is tea."

Mrs. Bindle appeared at the entrance of the tent, and surveyed the group of three men.[Pg 176]

"How did you manage yesterday?" she demanded practically.

"A girl come over from the farm, missis," said the little man, "and she didn't 'arf make it milk."

"Hold your tongue," snapped Mrs. Bindle.

The man gazed at her in surprise.

"Why don't you get the same girl?" asked Mrs. Bindle.

"She says she's too busy. I 'ad a try myself," said the man, "only it was a washout."

"I'll 'ave a look at 'er," Bindle announced, and the three men moved off across the meadow, picking their way among the tents with their piles of bedding, blankets, and other impedimenta outside. All were getting ready for the night.

When Bindle reached Daisy, he found the problem had been solved by one of Mr. Timkins' farm-hands, who was busily at work, watched by an interested group of campers.

During the next half-hour, Bindle strolled about among the tents learning many things, foremost among which was that "the whole ruddy camp was a washout." The commissariat had failed badly, and the nearest drink was a mile away at The Trowel and Turtle. A great many things were said about the bishop and the organisers of the camp.

When he returned to the tent, he found Mrs. Bindle engaged in boiling water in a petrol-tin over a scout-fire. With the providence of a good housewife she had brought with her emergency supplies, and Bindle[Pg 177] was soon enjoying a meal comprised of kipper, tea and bread and margarine. When he had finished, he announced himself ready to face the terrors of the night.

"I can't say as I likes it," he remarked, as he stood at the entrance to the tent, struggling to undo his collar. "Seems to me sort o' draughty."

"That's right, go on," cried Mrs. Bindle, as she pushed past him. "What did you expect?"

"Well, since you asks me, I'm like those coves in religion wot expects nothink; but gets an 'ell of a lot."

"Don't blaspheme. It's Sunday to-morrow," was the rejoinder; but Bindle had strolled away to commune with the man with a stubbly chin and pessimistic soul.

"Do yer sleep well, mate?" he enquired, conversationally.

"Crikey! sleep is it? There ain't no blinkin' sleep in this 'ere ruddy camp."

"Wot's up?" enquired Bindle.

"Up!" was the lugubrious response. "Awake all last night, I was."

"Wot was you doin'?" queried Bindle with interest.

"Scratchin'!" was the savage retort.

"Scratchin'! Who was you scratchin'?"

"Who was I scratchin'? Who the 'ell should I be scratchin' but myself?" he demanded, his apathy momentarily falling from him. "I'd like to know where they got that blinkin' straw from wot they give[Pg 178] us to lie on. I done a bit o' scratchin' in the trenches; but last night I 'adn't enough fingers, damn 'em."

Bindle whistled.

"Then," continued the man with gloomy gusto, "there's them ruddy chickens in the mornin', a-crowin' their guts out. Not a wink o' sleep after three for anybody," he added, with all the hatred of the cockney for farmyard sounds. "Oh! it's an 'oliday, all right," he added with scathing sarcasm, "only it ain't ours."

"Seems like it," said Bindle drily, as he turned on his heel and made for his own tent.

That night, he realised to the full the iniquities of the man who had supplied the straw for the mattresses. By the sounds that came from the other side of the tent-pole, he gathered that Mrs. Bindle was similarly troubled.

Towards dawn, Bindle began to doze, just as the cocks were announcing the coming of the sun. If the man with the stubbly chin were right in his diagnosis, the birds, like Prometheus, had, during the night, renewed their missing organisms.

"Well, I'm blowed!" muttered Bindle. "Ole six-foot-o'-melancholy wasn't swinging the lead neither. 'Oly ointment! I never 'eard such a row in all my puff. There ain't no doubt but wot Mrs. Bindle's gettin' a country 'oliday," and with that he rose and proceeded to draw on his trousers, deciding that it was folly to attempt further to seek sleep.[Pg 179]

Outside the tent, he came across Patrol-leader Smithers.

"Mornin' Foch," said Bindle.

"Smithers," said the lad. "Patrol-leader Smithers of the Bear Patrol."

"My mistake," said Bindle; "but you an' Foch is jest as like as two peas. You don't 'appen to 'ave seen a stray cock about, do you?"

"A cock," repeated the boy.

"Yes!" said Bindle, tilting his head on one side with the air of one listening intently, whilst from all sides came the brazen blare of ecstatic chanticleers. "I thought I 'eard one just now."

"They're Farmer Timkins' fowls," said Patrol-leader Smithers gravely.

"You don't say so," said Bindle. "Seem to be in good song this mornin'. Reg'lar bunch o' canaries."

To this flippancy, Patrol-leader Smithers made no response.

"Does there 'appen to be any place where I can get a rinse, 'Indenberg?" he enquired.

"There's a tap over there for men," said Patrol-leader Smithers, pointing to the extreme right of the field, "and for ladies over there," he pointed in the opposite direction.

"No mixed bathin', I see," murmured Bindle. "Now, as man to man, Ludendorff, which would you advise?"

The lad looked at him with grave eyes. "The men's tap is over there," and again he pointed.[Pg 180]

"Well, well," said Bindle, "p'raps you're right; but I ain't fond o' takin' a bath in the middle of a field," he muttered.

"The taps are screened off."

"Well, well, live an' learn," muttered Bindle, as he made for the men's tap.

When Bindle returned to the tent, he found Patrol-leader Smithers instructing Mrs. Bindle in how to coax a scout-fire into activity.

"You mustn't poke it, mum," said the lad. "It goes out if you do."

Mrs. Bindle drew in her lips, and folded the brown mackintosh she was wearing more closely about her. She was not accustomed to criticism, particularly in domestic matters, and her instinct was to disregard it; but the boy's earnestness seemed to discourage retort, and she had already seen the evil effect of attacking a scout-fire with a poker.

Suddenly her eye fell upon Bindle, standing in shirt and trousers, from the back of which his braces dangled despondently.

"Why don't you go in and dress?" she demanded. "Walking about in that state!"

"I been to get a rinse," he explained, as he walked across to the tent and disappeared through the aperture.

Mrs. Bindle snorted angrily. She had experienced a bad night, added to which the fire had resented her onslaught by incontinently going out, necessitating an appeal to a mere child.

Having assumed a collar, a coat and waistcoat,[Pg 181] Bindle strolled round the camp exchanging a word here and a word there with his fellow campers, who, in an atmosphere of intense profanity, were engaged in getting breakfast.

"Never 'eard such language," muttered Bindle with a grin. "This 'ere little camp'll send a rare lot o' people to a place where they won't meet the bishop."

At the end of half-an-hour he returned and found tea, eggs and bacon, and Mrs. Bindle waiting for him.

"So you've come at last," she snapped, as he seated himself on a wooden box.

"Got it this time," he replied genially, sniffing the air appreciatively. "'Ope you got somethink nice for yer little love-bird."

"Don't you love-bird me," cried Mrs. Bindle, who had been looking for some one on whom to vent her displeasure. "I suppose you're going to leave me to do all the work while you go gallivanting about playing the gentleman."

"I don't needs to play it, Mrs. B., I'm IT. Vere de Vere with blood as blue as 'Earty's stories."

"If you think I'm going to moil and toil and cook for you down here as I do at home, you're mistaken. I came for a rest. I've hardly had a wink of sleep all night," she sniffed ominously.

"I thought I 'eard you on the 'unt," said Bindle sympathetically.

"Bindle!" There was warning in her tone.[Pg 182]

"But wasn't you?" He looked across at her in surprise, his mouth full of eggs and bacon.

"I—I had a disturbed night," she drew in her lips primly.

"So did I," said Bindle gloomily. "I'd 'ave disturbed 'em if I could 'ave caught 'em. My God! There must 'ave been millions of 'em," he added reminiscently.

"If you're going to talk like that, I shall go away," she announced.

"I'd like to meet the cove wot filled them mattresses," was Bindle's sinister comment.

"It—it wasn't that," said Mrs. Bindle. "It was the——" She paused for a moment.

"Them cocks," he suggested.

"Don't be disgusting, Bindle."

"Disgusting? I never see such a chap as me for bein' lood an' disgustin' an' blasphemious. Wot jer call 'em if they ain't cocks?"

"They're roosters—the male birds."

"But they wasn't roostin', blow 'em. They was crowin', like giddy-o."

Mrs. Bindle made no comment; but continued to eat her breakfast.

"Personally, myself, I'm goin' to 'ave a little word with the bishop about that little game I 'ad with wot 'appened before wot you call them male birds started givin' tongue." He paused to take breath. "I don't like to mention wot it was; but I shall itch for a month. 'Ullo Weary!" he called out to the long man with the stubbly chin.[Pg 183]

The man approached. He was wearing the same lugubrious look and the same waistcoat, unbuttoned in just the same manner that it had been unbuttoned the day before.

"You was right about them mattresses and the male birds," said Bindle, with a glance at Mrs. Bindle.

"The wot?" demanded the man, gazing vacantly at Bindle.

"The male birds."

"'Oo the 'ell—sorry, mum," to Mrs. Bindle. Then turning once more to Bindle he added, "Them cocks, you mean?"

"'Ush!" said Bindle. "They ain't cocks 'ere, they're male birds, an' roosters on Sunday. You see, my missis——" but Mrs. Bindle had risen and, with angry eyes, had disappeared into the tent.

"Got one of 'em?" queried Bindle, jerking his thumb in the direction of the aperture of the tent.

The man with the stubbly chin nodded dolefully.

"Thought so," said Bindle. "You looks it."

Whilst Bindle was strolling round the camp with the man with the stubbly chin, Mrs. Bindle was becoming better acquainted with the peculiar temperament of a bell-tent. She had already realised its disadvantages as a dressing-room. It was dark, it was small, it was stuffy. The two mattresses occupied practically the whole floor-space and there was nowhere to sit. It was impossible to move about freely,[Pg 184] owing to the restrictions of space in the upper area.

Having washed the breakfast-things, peeled the potatoes, supplied by Mr. Timkins through Patrol-leader Smithers, and prepared for the oven a small joint of beef she had brought with her, Mrs. Bindle once more withdrew into the tent.

When she eventually re-appeared in brown alpaca with a bonnet to match, upon which rested two purple pansies, Bindle had just returned from what he called "a nose round," during which he had made friends with most of the campers, men, women and children, who were not already his friends.

At the sight of Mrs. Bindle he whistled softly.

"You can show me where the bakers is," she said icily, as she proceeded to draw on a pair of brown kid gloves. The inconveniences arising from dressing in a bell-tent had sorely ruffled her temper.

"The bakers!" he repeated stupidly.

"Yes, the bakers," she repeated. "I suppose you don't want to eat your dinner raw."

Then Bindle strove to explain the composite tragedy of the missing field-kitchen and marquee, to say nothing of the bishop.

In small communities news travels quickly, and the Bindles soon found themselves the centre of a group of men and women (with children holding a watching brief), all anxious to volunteer information, mainly