The Dreaming Suburb (63 page)

Boxer grinned his clownish grin, and nudged Berni, who said:

“Nous avons no mère, Madame! Elle mort, a long time ago!”

And then, improving somewhat: “Après le Quartorze guerre!”

This news reduced Madame Drouet to a flood of tears and she reached out, enfolding Bernard in a bolster-like embrace, so that Boxer, with the object of rescuing his twin, added:

“We've got a sister, Madame, and shell jump at it!”

He disentangled the red-faced Bernard from Madame, and stuffed the lace into his haversack, and they climbed into their lorries, and drove off up the road towards the base.

Back in the Avenue, Jim showed more interest in them than he had ever done when they were small, sitting over the living-room fire long after Jack and Louise had gone up to bed, and asking them question after question about their life and conditions, and the general prospects of the B.E.F. He was comforted a little by their confident outlook, which did not seem to justify old Goreham's gloomy prophecies.

“You think then that we'll hold them if they do try and break through, son?” he asked earnestly, after Boxer, with loud guffaws, had described how unerringly their unit had shot down a French aircraft in error.

“I only hope they try,” Boxer chuckled and then, as ever, “Whatd'ysay, Berni, whad'ysay?”

Berni threw his cigarette butt into the fire.

“I reckon we'll see 'em off, Pop,” he said enigmatically.

1

HEROICS
were strictly rationed at two of the houses along the Avenue during that first, wartime winter.

At Number Forty-Five, headquarters of the “Hartnell Eight”, Margy and Ted had their first quarrel, and the cause of it was the discovery, deep in the cyncopating bosom of the bandleader, of a totally unexpected vein of patriotism. This seam had been laid bare by a refugee accordionist, who had joined the orchestra after a hairbreadth escape from Berlin, the previous Spring.

In the last few years Ted and Margy had progressed a long way towards realising the dream they shared. The “Hartnell Eight” had not only broadcast on a number of occasions, but was booked almost every night in the season, and had toured extensively throughout successive summers.

It had never multiplied itself into a Hartnell Dozen, or a
Hartnell Fourteen, remaining compact and self-contained, for it was Margy's theory that a well-paid eight played better than a moderately-paid twelve. In this way it attracted good musicians, and maintained its reputation for good taste and high-quality rhythm.

Of the original team only the tall, bespectacled violinist, who had inadvertently witnessed the final exit of Al Swinger, remained with them, and by now he was practically one of the family.

The outbreak of war did not result in the anticipated falling-off of business. On the contrary, the blackout increased the demands made upon them, for the theatres were closed that autumn, and there were a large number of local dances organised by clubs, on behalf of war charities.

Margy therefore decided to ignore the war. Ted was over military age anyway, and most of their musicians were unlikely military material. The years had slipped by smoothly and prosperously. They now had a comfortable bank balance and a cosy home, with a daily woman coming in to cook and clean, and could enjoy long, lazy mornings in bed, after late-night sessions.

They had plenty of friends, whom they provided with vast quantities of gin and vermouth (although they hardly touched liquor themselves), and they were in the habit of giving little parties on their rare free nights. On these occasions they filled the little house with Margy's sisters and brothers-in-law, and Edith Clegg, her sister Becky, and the artist lodger, Jean Mclnroy, were often asked over from Number Four to swell the uproar that these convivial gatherings inspired.

In short they were content, and just the tiniest big smug.

Then Nikki, the German accordionist, had to upset Ted with his terrible stories of the concentration camps in which his father and brothers had perished, and from which he had only just escaped through the courage and presence of mind of the music professor with whom he was staying, when the Storm Troopers had called for him in the middle of the night.

Now Ted was troubled, and seemed to have lost interest in what they were to play at the Chamber of Commerce dance.
He appeared to Margy to do little but mooch about the house, chain-smoking, or sitting hunched. over the radio, listening, not to a swing session if you please, but to boring news-bulletin about leaflets, and fuel wastage, and digging for victory!

Finally Margy decided that something drastic must be done about it, and being a very practical woman she hit on something calculated to take her husband's mind right off the inmates of concentration camps and Storm Troopers who called in the night.

She tried reasoning first: “What can you
do
about it anyway? You're over forty, and they won't take you in the army, you silly great gawk!”

“There's the ‘Pioneers’,” he mumbled, “they'd have me in the ‘Pioneers’, wouldn't they?”

“What?”
Mary was outraged. “Spend your time digging latrines, in some awful camp miles and miles from anywhere? Not if I know it, Ted Hartnell! You've got me to think of, as well as the band.”

He looked at her obstinately. “Aw, you'd be okay, Margy. We've got money saved up, and you could run the band on your own, you know you could, and what's more, so do the boys!”

“I could, but I wouldn't want to,” she said flatly, and then, in despair, “Oh, Ted, Ted, skip it, and let things take their course, can't you?”

But reasoning was no use. For years he had always listened to her, but now she did not seem to be able to get through to him at all. He continued to mooch, and mutter about the terrible things Nikki had told him, things that went on in places called Dachau and Sachenhausen. “They gas people,” he told her, “and then make maps out of their skins! How do you like that? Maps out of people's skins! Then they take out their teeth, just to get at the gold fillings for more tanks and 'planes! You wouldn't think people could carry on like that, not nowadays!”

“I don't believe it,” snapped Margy; “it's just a lot of propaganda to get more recruits!”

“Well, I
do
believe it,” he growled, very ill-humouredly for
him. “You talk to Nikki. He isn't the kind of chap to make things up like that, and he's lent me books about it.”

“But what can you
do
about it?” wailed Margy wretchedly, “can you fly over there and wring Hitler's neck?”

“No,” said Ted seriously, “I don't reckon I could do that, but I could do
something
to stop 'em, and I damn well will, the minute I figure out what, and nothing you can say is going to stop me, Margy! Nothing, you understand!”

But Margy did say something to stop him, at all events for an interval.

“Ted,” she said one morning, a week or so after their last argument on the subject, “you're going to be a father.”

He dropped the Spanish guitar he was tuning, and it crashed to the floor with a clang.

“What you say?” he muttered.
“What you say,
Margy?”

“I said I'm going to have a baby,” said Margy, “and it's going to be born in June, or maybe a week or two before.”

He instantly forgot Nikki and Dachau, and threw his arms around her, just like a husband in a Hollywood film, and then he released her and went leaping about the room uttering squeaks of delight, and she watched him tolerantly, as a mother might watch a small son showing off.

“It's about time,” she said at length, when he had calmed a little, “another year or so and it might have been too late. Now call up our Oscar, Teddy, and tell him the rehearsal is at twelve sharp, and don't forget to stop into Murchison's before they close and order those extra parts of
There'll Always he an England
like I said. I tell you what, Teddy,” she went on, as her mind switched from certainties to possibilities, “we might even have another later on. I don't like the idea of an only child. There were nine of us at home, and we always had a peck of fun together.”

He picked up the guitar and twanged it, triumphantly.

“Margy,” he said, “Margy, you're wonderful!”

Margy Hartnell was not all that wonderful, for her idea was not original. After all, she lived next door to the newly-weds, Esme and Elaine, and in the last summer of peace there had been unmistakable evidence that something had gone sadly awry with Elaine's autumnal resolutions.

Every time Margy went out of her back door she was
confronted with a row of nappies on the line of Number Forty-Three, and every time she left by the front door she passed the new pram, a gift, from Number Twenty-Two. The pram was braked against the dwarf pillars of Esme's front-gate.

Sometimes, when the sun had climbed over the woods, and was beating on the front windows of the odd numbers, there was a baby in the pram, and Margy stopped for a moment to gurgle at it. In short, a month or so before Margy hit upon the means of deflecting Ted's mind from Dachau, Eunice Godbeer, of Number Twenty-Two opposite, was an ecstatic grandmother.

2

When Elaine Fraser was informed that she was pregnant her astonishment was so great that she at once began to argue with her doctor.

She had paid a call on Doctor Cheadle, in the Lower Road, before announcing her suspicions to Esme, and as Doctor Cheadle was over sixty, and grossly overworked, he was inclined to be very testy with incredulous patients.

“It's not the slightest use protesting to
me
, young woman,” he snapped. “You came here for my opinion, and I've given it to you. Whether you like it, or whether you don't, you'll have a baby somewhere around the end of August. So go off home and tell your husband about it, and I hope he's better pleased with the idea than you seem to be!”

Elaine left him then, but she did not go straight home. Instead she cut up one of the shorter roads to the southerly entrance of the “Rec”, and sat down on the familiar seat near the tennis-courts to study the situation.

The seat had no special significance for her. It was just a seat, somewhere to rest while she collected her scattered wits.

August, he had said. Then that must mean she had started it within a month of the honeymoon. She still couldn't believe it, no matter what the old fool had told her.

A baby!
Her!
And almost right away! It was not only astounding, it was humiliating!

She sat there, for nearly an hour, trying to come to terms with the news, and endeavouring to formulate some sort of plan, any sort of plan, that might result in extricating her from such a ridiculous situation.

There were ways and means, people said, but she discovered that she wasn't at all sure what they were. All the information she had on the subject related to the prevention, not cure. You could have some sort of operation she had heard, but that was illegal, wasn't it, and the cost was said to be prohibitive on that account? Esme could probably afford whatever it was, but would he? She decided not, almost at once. He was far more likely to go off into transports of delight, cluck like a hen, plan her diet, and insist on carrying her upstairs every night. She dismissed Esme from her mind, and tried hard to remember all the talk she must have heard on the subject at one time or another.

Some of the girls on the variety circuit had spoken of drinking bottles and bottles of neat gin, a treatment supplemented by frequent immersions in cold water. But she loathed the smell of gin, and hated cold water, and besides, her memory was probably faulty, and there was almost certainly something else one had to do, in addition to guzzling gin and climbing in and out of cold baths.

As the afternoon waned she began to feel chilled, and got up from the seat, leaving by the north entrance, and walking slowly back towards the Avenue. Esme would be home by now, and was probably wondering where she was, but she shrank from the prospect of meeting him, and passed the house, going on over Shirley Rise, and then down towards the Lower Road.

It was almost dusk now, and a thin stream of traffic was beating up from Elmers End. She stood at the front of the Rise, uncertain which way to go, and feeling desperately miserable. Suddenly she made up her mind to go home and drop the whole problem in Esme's lap, insisting that he do something at once. He would argue, but she would strike down his arguments, and she would win in the end, as she won every time, simply because he was enslaved, and freely admitted it.

She felt better immediately, as she always did when she
had once made a decision, and she turned to cross over to the Avenue side, stepping off the pavement without glancing to the right.

There was a flash of headlights and a screech of high-powered brakes, as she leapt back, turning her ankle, and falling sideways in the gutter. Before she coud struggle to her knees a man was stooping over her, helping her to her feet. Badly scared as she was, she instantly recognised him as Archie Carver, owner of the long, cream sports car that had knocked her down.

Archie was profuse in his apologises, but even so was careful to establish at once that her own jay-walking was to blame.

“I say, I'm terribly sorry! Are you much hurt? Did the wing hit you? My God, but that was a close one! You stepped clean off into the road, without looking! I stood on everything, the moment I saw you. Are you sure you're all right? It's Mrs. Fraser, isn't it?”

Elaine concluded that she was all right—more or less. She was badly shaken, and her ankle throbbed. Her handbag lay on the kerb, its contents scattered in the gutter, and there was a hole in her silk stocking, where one knee had scraped along the tarmac.

“I'm all right—at least, I think I am. I'm a bit shaken ... my handbag... oh, God, everything's spilled out of it.”

A baby in August! And this had to happen ... now! If only it had happened a few months later...!