The Dreaming Suburb (38 page)

Esme, hating this conversation, and dreading where it might lead, tried to steer her back to the main facts.

“You mean your father's left home altogether?” he demanded.

“Yes, of course—they've gone off somewhere, Daddy and his woman, Frances she's called. She's about thirty.”

“But where?” asked Esme, very much out of his depth. “Where could they have gone?”

“Oh, to Wales, I think,” she told him airily. “He said he'd write me at the office. It's no good him writing home. Mother would never let me have the letters. She says he's an adulterer now, and that Sydney and I are to have nothing more to do with him.”

“And will you?”

She laughed again. “Why, of course! I think he's marvellous! I never dreamed he had it in him!”

Her calmness astounded him. He tried to think how it would feel if a blow like this had descended on Number Twenty-Two; if Harold, for instance, had suddenly taken it into his head to walk out, and set up with a mistress “about thirty”, in Wales—but his imagination boggled at the idea, and it occurred to him again, this time with a little tremor of fear, that if she could talk like this about the betrayal of her mother by her father, she must be incapable of feeling anything.

“But ... but what
happened,
Elaine?” he stuttered, “how did it all come about?”

“You
ought to know,” she said, “considering it was your step-father who fixed it all.”

“My step-father! Old Harold?”

“Of course, he was Daddy's solicitor, and he ‘acted for him'—”

He remembered then that Edgar Frith had had meetings with Harold, and that Edgar had come to the house on two occasions. But Harold would never commit such a breach of etiquette as to discuss his clients' affairs round the dinner-table, and Esme told her this.

She was not impressed.

“Oh, there must be lots and lots of juicy sides to a solicitor's life,” she said, “but I heard most of it myself, lying on the floor upstairs, with my ear to loose boards in front of the fireplace. I've found out lots of things that way, but it's a
pity I can always hear Daddy so much better than Mother. I did this time. He was talking and talking about ‘connubial rights’. Do you know anything about connubial rights, Esme?”

“Not much,” he told her gruffly, and seeing that she was predisposed to tell him, added: “Let's walk as far as the allotments, and round home that way.”

“No!” she said firmly, “I don't want to walk. I want you to hear about what happened. Don't you
want
to hear?”

“No—” he said, “not really,” and then: “It's all so ... so awful for you. I can't bear to think of you going on living in a house like that, with your mother, and that little squirt Sydney. I want to take you away from it, for always!”

She squeezed his hand encouragingly. “Don't be silly, Esme, how could you? Besides, I'm not even sure I want to be married, not yet, anyway. But I've told you that before, haven't I?”

“Yes,” he said, his eyes on the concrete base of the seat, “but now I think I know why—it's because you think marriage is being like your father and mother, and it isn't, Elaine. Ours wouldn't be. Your father and mother could never have been in love, not from the start.”

She considered this a moment. “I don't know about that,” she said at length; “they got me, didn't they? And later on they got Sydney. It was only after that they stopped sleeping together.”

“That isn't love,” he said contemptuously, “not the sort of love I feel for you.”

She gave a little chirrup of laughter, and hugged his arm.

“Isn't it? Oh, isn't it, Mr. Launcelot? Then why do you like kissing me?”

He shook his arm free, and stood up.

She smiled at him without moving, for she had no fear that he would sulk himself out of her company, and she enjoyed teasing him.

“Sometimes,” she said deliberately,
“sometimes,
Esme, you're most terribly stuffy!”

He flung himself round on her, his face drawn and tense.

“I'm
not
stuffy,” he shouted, “I'm just ... just ...
different
about that sort of thing, and you ought to be, too, Elaine. All
the fellows at school used to talk that way. They were always telling each other stories ... about honeymoon couples and ... and sex. I could never see anything funny in them, and some of the chaps used to think I was a sissy, because of it. They all found out if I was, sooner or later! Kissing's different, and you know it's different! You're just trying to make me mad!”

She had never provoked him this far and she recognised the danger-signal. The laughter went out of her eyes, and her mood changed abruptly.

“Sit down, Esme dear,” she said softly. “I'm sorry I teased you, and I know you love me. I'm proud of it—much prouder than you'll ever know, so there! Now sit down, and don't let's waste time quarrelling. I've only got another quarter of an hour.”

He sat down, and his temper went out like a snuffed candle.

“All right. I hate quarrelling with you, but I've got to know what difference this is going to make to our seeing one another, Elaine? You won't move from here, will you?”

“No, we won't move. Daddy's given Mother the house, and he'll have to go on sending her money.”

“How much?”

“As much as he can afford. He doesn't have to pay for us now, because we're both over sixteen, but he's got to go on keeping Mother, whether she divorces him or not.”

“But don't you feel upset by it at all, Elaine? I mean, honestly, without joking about it?”

She considered. “No. No, I don't. I think he's done the right thing. I've always hated Mother, and the funny thing is I don't think he ever has, in spite of everything. I suppose he's a bit like you, really, or perhaps most men are—you know—always putting women on pedestals, and refusing to take them off, no matter what. I think he would have gone on just the same all his life if he hadn't met this woman, Frances, at the shop. He had to do something then, because he fell in love with her. I suppose she was kind to him, and he felt he hadn't much time left. I've seen her, you know, and I think she looks rather nice.”

“Where did you see her?”

“Directly I heard about it I followed him to work. They both run a furniture shop in Purley, and I saw him go to her, and start telling her what had happened at home. I could see them quite well through the shop window. They talked for a minute, and then Daddy started crying. It was funny seeing him cry like that, I've never seen him cry before.”

“Well?”

“Well, then they went into the back room, and shut the door, and I couldn't see any more. But I'm glad I saw her. The funny thing is, Esme, she isn't bad looking, and I can't imagine what she could possibly see in a man like Daddy. I mean, he's old, and going bald, and he's such a little man. I wouldn't ever let a little man touch me, or an old man, either, but perhaps some women are different, perhaps you're right, Esme, and love isn't the same for everyone, though it always seems to add up to the same in books, and plays, and everything, no matter how much they dress it up. It always comes down to sex in the end, doesn't it? I mean, if you didn't find me nice to look at, and to kiss, and touch, you wouldn't want to marry me, would you? You wouldn't want me just to talk to, and to look after the house?”

“No, I wouldn't,” admitted Esme, “and of course I think you're terribly pretty, and exciting to be with, but the way people go on they'd have you believe that getting married was all sex and nothing else. I think I thought so, too, before I met you—but it's different now. I ... I ... don't only think of making love to you, I don't think of that at all when I'm away from you.”

“What do you think of?” she wanted to know.

“I don't know ... just of writing things for you, and ... and ... doing things for you, and going places with you—of you just
being
there, and sometimes not even talking, but just ... well, just sharing everything, the way people do when they're married. It's awfully hard to put into words, Elaine, but I think I could write it, in a letter to you.” His face lit up with the prospect. “Would you like that? Would you like me to write you a letter?”

She was not much impressed by the offer.

“Yes, Esme, I'd love it, but we'll have to go now. You'd
better kiss me before somebody comes. Then we can go home round the allotments, and I'll try and slip out for a little while tonight, about eight.”

They kissed, but lightly, for there were people down on the cricket pitch, and then they went home, hand in hand, via the allotments in Brooklyn Road.

They parted before turning into the Avenue.

2

He did not see her that night. He did not see her again until more than a week later. He wrote to her office, and when he received no answer, he called there, and learned that she had given notice that very day, and was understood to be taking another job.

Frantically he hung about the unmade road, that flanked her side gate, and waited for her to appear at her bedroom window, but for days Number Seventeen might have been unoccupied. Its curtains were drawn, upstairs and down.

At last, on the Saturday following their meeting in the “Rec”, there was a scribbled note for him, pushed—he knew not how, or when—under the back door of Number Twenty-Two. It told him to be in the greenhouse of Number Seventeen, at midnight, on Sunday. The hour she proposed for the tryst did not surprise him overmuch. On three or four occasions she had been able to slip out to the greenhouse for a few moments, when everyone at Number Seventeen was asleep, and it was a simple matter for him to leave Number Twenty-Two by the back door, without disturbing Harold or his mother, because he occupied the back bedroom and had no occasion to cross the landing and pass their door.

He was in the greenhouse long before midnight. Edgar's carefully tended plants were dying for want of water. No one had touched them, it seemed, since Edgar had gone away, and Esme, feeling sorry for them, occupied the time watering the pots with a tin cup. There was no necessity to run the tap, for Edgar had installed an open tank, and it was full.

She came out about fifteen minutes after midnight, and he saw her step into the bright patch of moonlight, that lit up Edgar's little array of outhouses, adjoining the back door,
and pause there for a moment, listening and silhouetted against the kitchen window.

He thought he had never seen her look so beautiful, standing there motionless, like an alerted nymph on a classical frieze. Then he saw that her mass of hair was unbound, and swinging free to her waist, and as she turned towards the path, it glowed in the pale light, and his wild longing for her rose in his throat in a surge of pain.

He remained quite still, watching her move noiselessly down the path to the greenhouse door. It opened very quietly, for they had oiled the hinges. The greenhouse was built against the boundary wall, and the moonlight penetrated but one corner of it, the section nearest the road.

She called softly: “Are you there, Esme?”

“Yes, Elaine, yes!”

“Wait a minute, I'll shut the door again.”

She did so, and he moved out of the deep shadow. He saw that she was wearing a kind of housecoat, or kimono, tight-fitting, and reaching to her ankles. She was holding its folds in one hand. He noticed, too, that she was wearing bedroom slippers, with large feather pom-poms. He touched the fingers of her free hand, finding them cool and firm.

“Have you been to bed?” he whispered.

“I had to.
She
came in. I think she suspects something.”

“About me being here?” His heart was beating violently, and the scent of her hair engulfed him like a wave.

“No, no, Esme”—her voice, as always, was calm and steady—“but she saw me writing that note to you. Don't worry, she's sound asleep now, and so is Sydney. I listened at both their doors.”

“Why couldn't you get out this week?”

“There was a lot to do. I didn't have a chance. I've got something important to tell you, Esme.”

“What?”

“It can wait.”

For the first time he seemed to detect excitement in her voice. She came closer to him, moving out of the light.

“Darling Esme! How long have you been here?”

“About half an hour, but it doesn't matter. I watered the plants. They were all dying.”

She laughed. “Silly boy!”

He put his arms round her, and found her mouth.

“Oh, Elaine, darling,
darling!
I'm so terribly in love with you. You're beautiful.... I've never seen you with your hair loose before, and it's like I dreamed—like a girl in a wonderful painting.”

With his left hand he reached behind her and gathered a handful, pressing it to his lips. Quite suddenly she began to shiver.

“You're cold! You must be——”

“No, no ... kiss me, Esme ... it's too dark here ... over by the door ... I want to
see
you!”

She seized both his hands, and pulled him violently out of the shadow, throwing both arms round his neck, and pressing herself to him so strongly that he reeled against the slatted shelves. She began kissing him—not as she had returned his kisses before, but greedily, with her lips parted, and as she kissed she held his face tight between her palms, pressed against his cheeks.

For Esme the universe seemed to disintegrate. His heart seemed to burst with the intoxicating nearness of her, and his hands, freed by the intensity of her embrace, roved over her neck and shoulders, and plunged again and again into her hair.

For a long minute they stood thus; then she suddenly went limp, and her hands left his face, and forced themselves between their straining bodies. He interpreted her movement as a rebuke, and loosened his hold slightly. She broke away, and turned back towards the shadow.

“Wait, Esme! Wait a minute” she said breathlessly.

She began fumbling with the top buttons of her long housecoat. They were tiny buttons, about the size of peas, and her fingers bungled twice before she got two of them undone. Then she lost her patience and tore at the fastenings. Two or three buttons flew off and her coat came open as far as her waist. She turned full into the moonlight, twisting the coat so that it slipped from one shoulder, revealing a full, white breast.