The Dreaming Suburb (40 page)

Finally there were the girl twins, “Fetch” and “Carrie” as everybody called them, and they had made less impression upon Jim than any of his children.

As babies they had lain silently in their cots, while Louise fed and changed them. As toddlers, they had sat side by side on the tiny veranda, facing the nursery fence, munching slice after slice of bread and dripping spread thickly with “jelly”, that Louise stored for them in a pudding-basin. As children they had gone to and from school without incident or accident, and the only 'teenage characteristic Jim could recall about them was their persistent humming of an endless succession of jazz tunes. They were not like Bernard and Boxer, who, although operating as a team, always displayed widely differing personalities. Fetch and Carry had no diverse characteristics at all. They sat together, slept together, ate their meals side by side, and even spoke in unison, or very nearly so, for each would begin to echo her twin's remark before the other had finished speaking, so that they usually finished every sentence with the late starter a short head behind. To listen to them engaged in a discussion with a third party was like listening to an echo. They were, withal, so much alike that Louise was the only person in the Avenue who could tell one from the other.

Jim was reminded of his responsibilities as a father one
morning when he was invited by a police-constable neighbour to attend a local Police Court the following morning, when Bernard and Boxer were due to appear on charges connected with a motoring offence.

It turned out to be nothing very serious. They had ridden their motor-cycles at full speed through a pool in the road, caused by a broken water-main, and the direct result of this act of derring-do was a miniature tidal wave of flood-water, that swept into shops on each side of the highway, causing considerable annoyance to customers and staff. They were charged, on this account, with driving without due care and attention, and because they were speedway riders the case attracted a certain amount of local attention.

Jim asked his employer, Jacob Sokolski, for the morning off, in order that he might attend Court, and it irritated him to have to do this and explain his reasons. Nevertheless, he felt it his duty to attend.

He was even more irritated when he arrived at the Court, and discovered that the prosecution was regarded as a huge joke by the fans of the local Speedway Track, many of whom were in Court, and earned a sharp rebuke from the Chairman of the Bench during the proceedings for laughing uproariously at the evidence given by Boxer on his own behalf.

Boxer was not impressed by the majesty of the Court. He stood in the box, wrapped in a huge leather jerkin, and nothing could wipe the clownish grin from his face. When asked by the police superintendent to estimate the speed of his machine he looked at Bernard for the usual inspiration.

“Whatdysay, Berni?” he asked amiably.

“I'm asking
you!”
snapped the Inspector.

“Okay,” rejoined Boxer equably, “then about ten miles an hour, sir!”

This frivolous understatement delighted his supporters in the body of the Court.

“Lumme, 'ear that, gov'nor?” chuckled a small, hard-bitten man, swathed in a violet choker, who was bobbing about beside Jim. “That “Urricane Carver' that is, an' if you ast me 'e never did less'n a steady thirty in 'is bleedin' push-cart, did 'e, 'Orace?”

'Orace, a fat, jovial man on Jim's left, gave a long, rasping chuckle.

“Not 'im, not 'im, Charlie!” he corroborated, “he's got the lap record, ain't he?” And seeing the man in the choker shake his head, added: “He
'as,
you know, I sore him get it, against Harringay lars Toosday week!”

“It ain't 'im, it's 'is bruvver,” muttered the little man authoritatively; “it's the little 'un, ain't it, Bert?” and he turned to a third fan, whose supplementary information was cut short by a Court usher's bellow for silence.

Thereafter the specators confined themselves to indistinct mutterings, and Jim settled down to form his own judgment of the case.

The hearing did not improve his temper. From what he could learn, when the witnesses' answers were not lost in the subdued buzz arising from the fans, the shopkeepers had been perfectly justified in their complaint, and the boys' act seemed to Jim oafish and inconsiderate, quite apart from the element of danger involved. He was therefore relieved to hear the magistrate find them guilty, and fine them five pounds apiece, plus Court costs, but he was somewhat taken aback when both pulled wads of notes from their hip-pockets, and paid over the money on the spot. Seeking more information on the matter, he turned to the man beside him.

“What sort of money do these Speedway chaps make?” he asked.

“Ah, they do all right, gov-nor, take it from me, they do all right, don't they, 'Orace?”

'Orace said they did very well indeed.

“It ain't the pay so much,” he added sagely, “it's the perks they git from garridges, and manyfacturers!”

Awaiting his sons outside the Court Jim reflected, a little ruefully, that his family seemed to be far more successful at money-making than he had ever been.

The twins greeted him cheerfully, hardly bothering to refer to the case. Boxer, especially, seemed delighted to see his father in Court.

“Not bad, was it? I figured on a tenner. Even brought the money with me,” he said. And then, slapping Bernard on the
shoulder, “What do you say to some grub, before taking Pop over to see the track? Whad'ysay, Berni?”

Berni gave his approval, and they at once adjourned to a large and cheerful public-house, where Jim was left in no doubt as to the local popularity of the boys. The moment it was known that he was their father everyone in the bar wanted to stand him a pint, and they were still drinking, and wolfing slabs of bread and cheese, when the barman called time, at 2 p.m.

Jim had remained behind after Court with the earnest intention of lecturing the boys on their social responsibility, or lack of it, but somehow, what with the rivers of beer, and the noisy company, and all those people congratulating him on possessing two such stalwarts for sons, he had no opportunity to begin a serious conversation. It was, he reflected, through a haze of beer fumes and tobacco smoke, a sad comment on the age that an incident like this should increase, rather than diminish, the popularity of the culprits. Any ill-feeling that did show itself in the pub conversation was directed against the unsportsmanlike attitude of the shopkeepers, for daring to resent the intrusion of a wall of flood-water into their premises, when it had been directed thence by two such daring track-riders.

Soon, however, the initial cause of the get-together was forgotten in a babel of speculation on next Saturday's inter-track contest, and Jim found himself jostled down to the Speedway to inspect the new machines the boys were to ride on the occasion. He had never visited a Speedway track before, and was mildly intrigued by all he saw and heard.

“Isn't it a bit dangerous?” he asked Bernard, as the boy pointed out the most hazardous corner of the circuit.

“Not half as dangerous as it looks, Pop,” Bernard told him. “Boxer and me, we tackle it together, see, and I usually block the opposition, and let Boxer through. It works okay, Pop!”

And that's about it, thought Jim, as they walked him cheerfully to the 'bus stop, Bernard as the buffer, and Boxer the one who gathers the laurels.

So he never delivered his lecture on social behaviour after all. When they had put him on the 'bus for Addiscombe, and
were standing by the kerb waiting for it to start, Boxer looked up at him with a wide grin, and said:

“Well, so long, Pop! Decent of you to look us up! Keep clear of the cops, won't you, now!”

It was ironic and exasperating that this was precisely what Jim failed to do, for in less than a month it was his turn to stand in a dock, on a somewhat more serious charge than that of swooshing flood-water into shop doorways.

2

If most of the Avenue folk were able to watch the General Strike from the kerbside, a number of them found themselves taking a far less detached view of the Depression of five years later.

Nobody bothered to make a statistical review of the Avenue's unemployed during the autumn and winter of 1931-2, but had they done so they might have found more residents on the dole than at any period since the crescent had been built.

The previous slumps had hit the artisans, and labourers, men like Carver, who, for the most part, earned their bread with their hands, but the latest depression was something quite new in slumps. Small firms, with limited reserves, began to close all over the city, and the tide of unemployment soon lapped into the outer suburbs, where the clerks, insurance agents, and the small non-salaried commercial travellers lived and dreamed.

The collapse of the Socialist Government, in the early autumn of 1931, put an end to a number of Avenue dreams. Some Avenue dwellers stopped dreaming for fourteen years, and did not begin again until the whole world had been turned upside-down, and there were things to dream about that did not exist in 1931.

Jim Carver was not unduly cast down by the Labour landslide in October that year, and the virtual collapse of the party that was to have ushered in the Millennium. He was a dedicated Socialist, but very far from being a pedant, and he had to admit that, minority notwithstanding, the Second Labour Government had made a pretty poor showing, and
misused its golden opportunities. Unlike many of his colleagues, who were inclined to think that Labour was finished for all time, Jim remained optimistic. There were sound reasons for his optimism. From far off he could hear rumblings, and he reasoned that if an earthquake was to follow the landslide, then it was far better that Tories should be sitting in Westminster, where eruptions were usually centralised.

He anticipated a phrase that was to become fatuous a few years later, and told his dispirited colleagues, at a gloomy Labour Committee Meeting, that “time was on their side”, if only because no one party, least of all a Tory Party, could hope to solve the unemployment problem. A figure of three million unemployed, he argued, meant big trouble for someone, and they had already seen how damaging failure to tackle the problem could be for the Government in power!

In the event the explosion was heard a good deal sooner than he anticipated, and Jim found himself rather more closely involved in it than he could have wished. With him, even deeper in trouble, was his genial employer, Jacob Sokolski, who had never yet cast a vote for Socialism, or any other Ism, having a deep-rooted conviction, dating from earliest childhood, that “bloody bolitick iss a bloddy nuisance for efferyun”.

It all began when Jim turned up to work one morning in his best suit, a serviceable blue serge, and looked in on Mr. Sokolski to ask for another day off.

“Vot's der matter now? Iss your boys in drouble again?” Sokolski wanted to know.

Jim told him no, this was a private matter, concerning an unemployment rally.

The Russian grunted. “Ach! Der bloddy bolitick again,” he said.

“Bloody politics it is, Mr. Sokolski,” admitted Jim, with a grin. “I've promised to receive the hunger-marchers, when they get in for the big Rally. The last time I attended a rally up West I saved your furs, remember?”

“Hunger-marchers!” snorted the furrier; “you make me laugh, you Pritisch!
Hunger,
you say! God'lmighty, you doan know vot hunger iss, not none of you!”

“I don't know about that, sir,” said Jim cheerfully, for no
one could take Sokolski very seriously, “I reckon an empty belly feels the same in Manchester as it does in Moscow. These chaps come from Jarrow, on the Tyne, and from the Rhondda mines. They've been rotting out there for years. You must have read about it, Mr. Sokolski.”

“Sure I read about it,” said Sokolski, “but vot dam' good dey do coming here? Dere's no zense in marching on empty bellies, iss there? Dey do more good sitting still on their arses, right vere dey live! Vot you say to that, my Zocialist frien'?”

“I'll tell you what I say to that, Mr. Sokolski,” said Jim deliberately. “I'd say that these chaps are about desperate, and that they've got to do something that'll draw attention to what's happening to them! There were those chaps in the paper the other day, maybe you read about them, too. They'd been out of work for so long that they didn't care any more. They'd lost their grip, so what did they do, Mr. Sokolski? They clubbed together, four of them, and bought an old car with their last few pounds. Then they sat in it, and drove it slap over a cliff! Can you cap that, where you come from?”

Sokolski's thick eyebrows came sharply together, and he whistled, softly.

“So? They did that?” he said admiringly. “But that's pig! That's Russian!”

“But it didn't happen in Russia, Mr. Sokolski, it happened in Bristol, only the other day!”

The old man sat thinking for a moment, his hands clasped together over his huge, round belly. Suddenly he got up.

“It is enough,” he said, “I do more dan give you the time off, my friend, I come wid you! Let us go, hey?”

Jim was taken by surprise. “You'll come ... but you don't believe in us, you've always said ...”

“I begin to believe in der Zocialists ven dey spit so hard,” said Sokolski. “Besides, it vill be interesting to watch how you Pritisch make der Revolutions!”

Jim grinned. “You're going to be disappointed. We don't believe in revolutions, over here. Even those chaps in the car didn't, Mr. Sokolski,” He was touched, nevertheless, and added: “Are you
sure
you want to come?”

“I'm sure, my frien'. We go now.”

He pounded the desk bell, and the wizened little caretaker trotted in. Sokolski used him as a kind of valet, and the man helped him on with his long black overcoat, and handed him his wide-brimmed felt hat, his woollen mittens, and his bone-handled umbrella. They passed out into the street, and turned towards the park.

“A hundred years ago,” Jim told him, as they walked briskly down Oxford Street, “the chap who wrote
The French Revolution
came into the West End one Sunday to watch the Chartists revolt.”