The Dreaming Suburb (36 page)

In the end she took Jim's advice, put Becky in the porch-room, and made up a bed for herself in the parlour, a section of which she curtained off. They hardly ever went in the parlour these days. It was warmer and cosier in the kitchen, and Teddy—poor dear—had little leisure for soirees round the cottage piano. She still took in music pupils, though it had been difficult to fit them in whilst working at the cinema, but there had been a slump in this sphere as well, for more and more families in the Avenue were installing wireless-sets, and fathers and brothers were not often disposed to forgo the Savoy Orpheans to order to listen to little Milly's experimental jabs at
The Merry Peasant Returning from Work,
or
Down on the Farm.

Edith's new lodger was a nineteen-year-old Scots girl, called Jean Mclnroy. She came in response to an advertisement in the
Croydon Advertiser,
and moved in, one summer evening, in 1930, bringing with her, in addition to a large cardboard suitcase, a shapeless bundle of impedimenta, that looked like the sort of equipment Edith had sometimes seen scattered around absorbed landscape artists, at work on Shirley Hills.

Edith welcomed her at the gate, and was at once struck by the pleasing contrast of her elfin prettiness and sturdy figure. Jean had thick, very fair hair, cut short, and bundled under a coloured scarf. Her clear blue eyes and fresh complexion gave Edith the impression that she was but lately come to town. She had a small and ripe mouth, with very red lips, and big dimples. Edith's first thought was that poor Teddy must fall head over heels in love with her at first-sight—she was certain that
she
would, if she was a young man—but the girl's strange reluctance to speak, and her painfully hesitant
manner defeated her for a moment, for she felt this could not wholly be accounted for by shyness, the sort of shyness Teddy had shown when he arrived on the doorstep of Number Four long ago.

Edith greeted her, and asked her upstairs to inspect the room. The girl seemed satisfied, but in response to Edith's chatter she said nothing at all, and Edith could make no sense of her little gasps and murmurs. It was only when she asked her flatly if the room would do that the girl coloured, and blurted out her approval in three or four words that were only just intelligible.

Then Edith realised at once that the poor thing had a terrible impediment—so bad indeed that most of the words she tried to utter emerged from her pretty mouth mangled beyond recognition.

Edith knew it was very wrong of her but she instantly felt relieved. Perhaps her relief was the expression of her deep maternal instinct, fostered by Becky's helplessness, and Teddy's need to be mothered all these years, or perhaps it was simply relief that Teddy would not, after all, be likely to fall in love with the new lodger and marry her, and go away to live somewhere else, for this was something she always feared now that he was so much better off, and getting so well known in the suburb.

The girl Jean seemed to sense the rush of sympathy that succeeded Edith's relief. She smiled, and took off her headscarf, folding it neatly, and putting it on the chair beside the bed. Edith thought she had never seen a sweeter smile. It made her want to reach out and pat the girl, who now began to unpack her equipment. Edith looked curiously at the easel, and the rectangular slabs of cardboard that were laced to it with clean, white tape.

“Are you a painter, dear?”

She spoke in such a way as to imply that there Was no need for a spoken reply.

Jean pulled the bow of the tape and the slabs fell apart. Between them were large sheets of drawing paper, covered with neat charcoal drawings, and scores of smaller pencil sketches. The sketches were beautifully drawn but they did not look like any of the landscapes Edith had seen the artists
paint on Shirley Hills. Every one of them reminded her of an advertisement of something—something one used about the house, like a broom, or a carpet sweeper, or a gas-cooker,

“Well, fancy!” Edith was delighted. “You do sketches for advertisements? Well I never!” She pressed her hands together and beamed.

Now, under one roof, she had a musician and an artist. Becky would be terribly excited.

The girl spread the drawings on the bed. Edith looked through them, smiling, and watched Jean set up her easel at right angles to the window. All the time the girl did not speak, and Edith felt it was almost like conducting an interview with a foreigner, or a dumb person, although by the girl's signs, and air of bustle, Edith quickly realised that she was trying to stave off the necessity of speaking. Pity glowed in her like a brazier, and their relationship began to build from this pantomime, Edith articulating the girl's meaning, and slipping into the habit of answering her own questions.

“For
magazines!
Why that's
splendid!
I think they're lovely! One doesn't realise that all those things in papers have to be actually
drawn
by somebody. Becky, my sister downstairs —she used to draw, but I don't, I
play.
And we've got a young man here, who plays in a dance band, and doesn't come in until very late. He'll be
most
interested. Now you get unpacked, dear, and I'll get you some supper, shall I? No, dear,
not
in here, downstairs ... but you ... you needn't worry, dear, we'll understand.”

She gently backed from the room, and hurried downstairs to describe Jean to Becky, who was cutting up fish for Lickapaw, the cat having just returned from a two-day jaunt in the Nursery.

“You'll have to be most tactful with her, Becky dear,” said Edith. “You see ... she ... she can't talk very well—no, dear, she's not a foreigner, more like Mr. Butterworth, the grave-digger—you remember? I think she must have something very wrong with her, like this ...” and Edith made an unsuccessful attempt to say “ninety-nine” without moving her tongue. “Poor girl,” she sighed. “We oughtn't to grumble, did we? And so pretty too, as pretty as a picture. Now take
Lickapaw off the table, dear; I'm sure Miss Mclnroy would think that was most unhygienic!”

2

With the settling of Jean Mclnroy into Number Four a new dream came to the Avenue. This time it was the dream of a perfect man. Notwithstanding her impediment, Jean Mclnroy was much more articulate than most of the Avenue dreamers and had been trying to put her dream on cartridge paper for two years now, the period she had been employed as an artist for Dyke and Dobson's, the advertising agency, in Long Acre, W.C.2.

Dyke and Dobson's were an enterprising firm, employing a score of artist and copywriters on the premises, and twice as many free-lance artists, all engaged on a piece-work basis.

Jean had begun to send them sketches and rhyming copy from Glasgow, when she was hardly sixteen, and her father, a ship's riveter, was still alive. She had earned a few odd pounds this way, and when her father died, and her mother married again, she left home, and came south, living for a time in a Y.W.C.A. Hostel.

Her disability regulated her life, setting her apart from other young people. She could have come to terms with it, perhaps, had she been less personable. As it was, her freshness and charm attracted both men and women everywhere she went, but her friendships always failed to develop. The men slid away the moment they found out about her, and the women adopted an air of patronage that made her life in mixed company a torment not to be borne.

She found consolation in her work, which was held in high esteem at Dyke and Dobson's, where Mr. Keith, the staff manager, was always hoping to coax her on to the permanent staff. He had a conviction that she could not but be grateful to him, and might be inclined to repay his patronage in a form of association that could be conducted with a minimum of conversation. Jean, however, did not respond, not only because she had left her Scots home in terrifying innocence of the Mr. Keiths she might encounter, but simply because he did not conform to her conception of the ideal man.

This man was already beginning to be a feature of Jean's copy. He was seen, from time to time, in all the women's magazines, pipe in mouth, brown hand on blonde wife's shoulder, the two of them speculating on the possibility of redecorating the lounge, or buying a carpet, or pruning the roses. She even had a name for him—“Philip”, never shortened to “Phil”—and she knew, down to the last detail, how he looked when he smiled, or frowned, or came home with a surprise parcel tucked under his raincoat. She also knew what he looked like when he was shaving, or laying a stair-carpet, how strong and lithe he looked in a swim-suit, how handsome in plus-fours, emerging from a smart blue coupé. She had learned to love the strong lines of his jaw, and the way his hair grew thickly at the back, both with and without the application of “Sunset” brilliantine. She knew what he liked to eat, and how gaily and expertly he could romp with the children at Christmas, and on summer holidays. She got up with him every morning, and cooked his favourite breakfast—ham, eggs, and cereals. She lay down with him every night, on a “Luxuro” mattress, and snuggled into his strong, rapturous embrace, her hand sometimes reaching up to stroke the firm flesh of his throat, so smooth and cool, after countless applications of “Snow Cream” shaving soap.

She drew Philip, sometimes half-a-dozen times a day, and when she received a magazine serial assignment from Dyke and Dobson's, she sometimes coaxed him out of the semidetached villa, where he spent most of his time, and dressed him in hunting-rig for a gallop with the Pytchley, or put him into tennis flannels with a knife-edged crease, and set him to woo under the chestnuts of a stately home.

On these occasions sub-editors usually added a caption under her pictures, and gave her something more to think about when the proof was sent to her. She was then able to extend the dream, by identifying herself with the girl of the story, and she heard him say:
“This thing is bigger than us, Jean, we must stop fighting it!”
or
“I knew you would come to me Jean, if only I waited long enough!”

She preferred, however, the more impersonal, more enigmatic captions, such as—
“Philip knew that her heart was his, but there was Sybil to think of! What could a man do in a
dilemma like this?” or “Trevor could offer her everything; what had Philip to offer, beyond lifelong devotion?”

She kept a sharp look-out for Philip in trains, and tubes, and 'bus queues, but she never found him. There were hundreds of men of about thirty, who smoked pipes, and had lean, brown faces, and Empire-building eyes, but when they caught her looking hard at them they usually looked back in a way that Philip would have considered ungentlemanly, or worse.

She settled into Number Four with relief. It had been difficult to work properly at the hostel, and here, at last, she had a room of her own, where she could set up her easel, lay out her pens and brushes, and make a sort of shrine to Philip. The old maids downstairs seemed to be quiet, gentle people, and the sane one went out of her way to mother her, yet without seeking to engage her in conversations. She did not set eyes on their Mr. Hartnell, the jazz-band drummer, until she had been living in the house for some weeks. He came in so late, and was always in bed when she was moving about the house.

For the rest, she made her own bed, took nearly all her meals in her room, and went for long walks in Manor Woods during the afternoons. She was happier than most people in the Avenue, for not only could she put her dreams on paper, but was paid for dreaming them.

3

Ted Hartnell did not fall in love with Jean Mclnroy, as Edith had feared when she first set eyes on her new lodger. There was, indeed, something about Ted that Edith did not know, and about which he had, as yet, breathed no word, although he had long regarded her as a comfortable cross between a mother and a favourite aunt.

The fact of the matter was, Ted was already in love, and his love was reciprocated wholeheartedly. Everything had happened with the neatness of a well-turned dance-lyric. From the opening bar of the introduction “moon” had rhymed with “June”, “love” with “above”, “miss” with “kiss”, and “eyes”, with “skies”.

He had first seen her at the record counter of Woolworth's, in the Old Orchard Road, having gone there to buy a cheap recording of a current hit, written in honour of Amy Johnson, the famous flier.

He saw, and heard her, over the heads of a hundred dawdling shoppers, standing on her little dais, beside the gramophone and plugging
Tiptoe Through the Tulips.

She was small, dark, and vivacious, with brown eyes that roved expertly here and there among women buying toilet-rolls, and cheap note-paper, as though seeking someone—preferably a man, at whom she could aim the lyric. She saw Ted, moving down past the tool counter, and their eyes met, steadily on her part, bashfully, but gratefully, on his.

... knee-deep, in flowers we'll stray
And chase the shadows away...

she sang, and Ted was accounted for, just like that, proving for all time the potency of cheap music that Mr. Coward was making such a point about just then, in his
Private Lives.

He waited until she stepped down, and then crossed over and promptly bought the record, together with
Wonderful Amy,
and several others that he had not intended to buy.

Because he was a customer, she was at liberty to dally with him, and for the next fifteen minutes they talked dance-tunes, before he led off by asking the name of her favourite.

“It's
Margy,”
she told him. “You see, I'm
called
Margy.”

“Sing it, will you?”

She smiled, climbed back on to the dais, and sang it through for him, in a husky little voice that was tuned in to dance hits. “It's nice, isn't it?” she said, stepping down again.

“Wonderful,” he told her, “the way you sing it.”

He did not add that it was last year's, and already a back number. Instead, he told her his name, and how he earned his living.