The Dreaming Suburb (66 page)

So Eunice took herself off to the hotel in Torquay, where they had spent their honeymoon, and from here she was able to rent a cottage on the Totnes Road, and send for the baby and Elaine, as soon as she had found a woman to clean the place.

She liked it down here, for Torquay was only a fourpenny 'bus ride away, and there were still well-stocked shop windows in the town. In the evenings, when the baby was in bed, she sat in the window-seat looking out on a network of forsythia and clematis, and re-read all her old favourites,
East
Lynne, The Channings, Under Two Flags
, and
The Way of an Eagle
, while the Luftwaffe squadrons began to weave vapour trails over the half-empty Avenue, and Harold trudged home to boil himself an egg, and climb into the big double bed, missing her very much, and wishing he hadn't been so irritable with her when she had taken such an interminable time undressing, and brushing her long, golden hair.

Elaine remained at the cottage no longer than was necessary to settle in Eunice and the baby. Elaine's dream had wavered somewhat under the stress of events, but in essentials it was still much the same. The terrace, and the hammock, and the courtiers were still there, but they had acquired a more ambitious setting, and several new props, a Casino for instance, and a private aeroplane, and a sleek white yacht that dropped anchor in places like Majorca and Monte Carlo.

She was secretly delighted with the way things had turned out. The baby was off her hands, perhaps for the duration, and Esme, whose excessive devotion was beginning to cloy a little, had done something sensible at last, and joined the R.A.F., so that she now had the house to herself. Her appointments with Archie, and the handsome broad-shouldered Pole that neither Archie nor Esme had heard about, were therefore much less complicated than they might have been.

For Elaine, in these hectic days, had worked out a simple compromise between love, duty, and pure advancement, and it appeared to be working out very well so far. Stefan, the big Pole whom she called “Stevie”, could speak no English as yet, but whenever they met they had no occasion to talk, for Stefan's time was very limited. As soon as he had completed his course at Biggin Hill he was to be posted to a Polish Fighter Squadron in Scotland, and did not expect to live very long. It was fortunate, from his point of view, that there was a wide, unkempt meadow immediately behind the house in which the Polish-looking English woman lived, and that the grass in that meadow was so tall and so dry that summer.

Over at the corner shop Archie's dream had also undergone certain modifications. Just as a ship of war alters its
appearance when it ends a courtesy visit to a seaside town and steams out to engage an enemy fleet, so Archie's dream had been cleared and trimmed to meet the new emergencies. He no longer thought only in terms of cash, for his enterprises were not merely stripped for action, but geared for rapid expansion. He no longer confined himself to traffic in food, but was already feeling his way into new, unexplored territories—house-property, building sites, second-hand cars, and even nylons.

Archie had always looked further ahead than anyone else in the Avenue, and now his horizons were not, as were most people's, obscured by tank-traps and wire barricades, from reaching out into the mid 'forties, and the early 'fifties, by which time, he supposed, the Boys-on-Top would have had enough of all this nonsense, and called “finish”. Then all the people who were now living in Nissen huts would come streaming home, demanding houses, and sites, and pre-war cars with only a few thousand on the clock, all of which could now be bought, by certain far-seeing gentlemen, for a mere handful of notes, extracted from oil-drums.

In the meantime there was Elaine to play with, for a man must have some fun sometimes, Elaine, whose ripeness and realism fascinated him. It was strange, he reflected, that such fruit had been hanging over his garden wall all these years without his noticing it. They had to meet far afield, of course, and at irregular intervals, but it ought to be easier now that young Fraser had joined up (and not before time, thought Archie! Dammit, somebody had to man the guns, didn't they?). The great attraction about Elaine was her complete lack of humbug, the kind of humbug that had hitherto cluttered all his extra-professional relationships with women. She sold her time to him just as he sold packets of Rinso, and pounds of self-raising flour over the counter, and he liked it that way; there were no arguments, no complications, and no danger of domestic boomerangs.

He still had his worries, of course. Maria and the two younger children whined from the distance, and Maria, who did not seem to like Somerset, had developed a distressing habit of popping up when he least expected her, and of ferreting about the corner premises, as though she was looking
for something, he knew not what. Tony, his elder boy, was due to leave school next year, and talked a lot of hot air about going into the Tank Corps, which was something he would have to deal with when the time came, and he could snatch a day or two from his crowded life to run down to the school and discuss the matter with Tony's headmaster.

So we leave Archie, the ex-errand boy of the multiple store, who had learned his way around so much more expertly than his neighbours in the Avenue. He was rich now, rich in money, and rich in the promise of power. The only real problem confronting him was which he was to choose in the immediate future? More money, or more power? Possibly a judicious combination of both?

Along at Number Forty-Five, Margy Hartnell was facing a personal problem that obscured much of what was happening all around. Her smokescreen had dispersed, and her dream had gone into a deeper freeze than most, for the Hartnell eight was no longer an eight. It wasn't even a six or a five. Four of its musicians had been swept away by the Enemy Aliens Act, and were now playing patience in the Isle of Man, with the prospect of a trip across the Atlantic in the offing. As if this wasn't enough, Ted, the Eight's Kingpin, was almost out of her reach, baby notwithstanding, for the hurly-burly of Dunkirk had coaxed his conscience out of its winter sleep, and persuaded him to sign on with the Royal Ordnance Corps for the duration of the present emergency. He was now hanging about the house, blowing odd, inconsequent notes on an old saxophone, or strumming stray choruses of hoary old numbers like
Always, Souvenirs,
and even
Red Red, Robin,
whilst awaiting his papers. Margy could do little or nothing with him, and because they seemed to have lost touch with each other the prospect of the baby, due at any moment, did not seem nearly so important as it had seemed a few short months ago.

He still loved her, of course, but not in the personal sense any more, at least, so it seemed to her at the moment. She wondered rather dismally what would become of them all, now that the number that had been so popular last autumn,
the one about hanging washing on the Siegfried line, was so hideously dated.

Then, at times like these, her natural cheerfulness of disposition would fly to her rescue, and she would say to herself: “It isn't for ever, Margy. The last war lasted four years, and we've already had nearly a year of this one. People will always want rhythm. People will always want to dance. And the Ordnance Corps is a sort of packing department, isn't it, where the men aren't expected to fix bayonets and charge anyone?” Then she would force herself to smile, and call from the bedroom where she was resting:

“Ted,
Ted
! Play something more up to date for the love of God, and then make us some tea!”

Thank God there was always tea; tea, Ted, and rhythm.

Over at Number Four Becky was having her spells again.

Edith thought it must be the worry, and the noise, and the tiresomeness of it all. She had been for many years now without a real spell, so long indeed that Edith had almost forgotten how to cope with them. Then, one day in May, when everyone was talking and talking about something that was happening at a place called Dunkirk (was it the same, Edith wondered, as the town she remembered from history books that was spelled with a “q”?), Becky came home, and set about mixing things in a bowl on the kitchen table. When Edith asked her what she was doing she had said, quite quietly: “I saw Saul today, and he'll be in directly! I must start his supper. Saul will have everything fried!”

Poor Edith had wept when she realised that it might be beginning all over again, and she had gone straight upstairs to jubilant Jean Mclnroy, the lodger, who was still drawing the ideal British male, now in an A.R.P. outfit, like the Chief of the Auxiliary Fire Service at the Upper Road depot, where she was working part-time.

For Jean had at last located her Ideal British Male, or his nearest approximate, and she scuttled off to fire-drill three nights a week like a 'teenager going to her first dance. Once arrived at the station, in her neat navy-blue uniform and tin-hat, she would sit watching First-Officer Hargreaves
demonstrate the use of a stirrup pump, and memorise, not his instructions, but the long, sweeping lines of his jaw, so that she could transform him, on her return to Number Twenty, into an Infantry officer in the magazine story she was illustrating. The agency had sent along the story and captions for the drawings and today's read: “
Anthony had no faith in seeing Madeline again, but he wanted to remember her as she looked then, adorable, enchanting, and with the promise of everlasting love in her eyes.
”

Poor Edith had no such dream to escape into. In the old days she had wished only for life to remain the same, with Becky and Ted to look after, and Lickapaw to see to when he came home from his wife-hunts in the Nursery. But life never did remain the same for long. Becky was still with her, but Ted was married, and would soon be off to the war, dear Lickapaw was dead, and all the little music pupils had gone into the country to escape the bombs everybody said would come if Britain didn't give in. Jean Mclnroy was well enough as a substitute lodger, but she was not going to be much good if Becky began having real spells again. All the nice people in the Avenue seemed to be splitting up, and moving out, and one could hardly expect the new ones to be as quiet and respectable, even if there were any new ones to move into the empty houses.

It was a relief indeed that dear, worried Mr. Carver was still about. She trotted along to Number Twenty almost every day now, to enquire whether he had had word of the twins, who had not come home with the other young men after that awful Dunkirk or Dunquerque business.

No, he told her each day, he had received no word beyond the official notification that they were missing, believed prisoners, but one day he had other news, very sad news. The tall, young man that his girl Judith had brought home the year before was dead, torpedoed, they thought, on his way to Egypt in a troopship. Edith wept to think of it, remembering now that Judith had told her only last summer that they planned to be married on New Year's Day, and were then going out to Kenya, where her fiancé—what was he called, Ted, or Tom, or Timothy?—intended buying a farm.

That Frith boy, from Number Seventeen, had gone too,
leaving his poor mother all alone. First her husband left, then her daughter, now her son. Edith had felt sorry for her too, and seeing Sydney depart, in his smart, new uniform, she had nerved herself to cross the road and knock timidly at the door. But Mrs. Frith did not come out to answer it, although Edith knew that she was inside, and after knocking twice Edith had gone home feeling hurt and disappointed, but telling herself that the poor woman was probably far too upset to receive anyone, however sympathetic they might be.

So it went on, with people leaving all the time, and more and more
For Sale,
and
To Let
notices going up along the sweep of the crescent. Would it end by Number Four being the only occupied house in the Avenue?

The prospect so distressed Edith that she had to leave Becky in the charge of Jean for an afternoon, and go down to the Lower Road among people, and traffic, and shops. Here, as the sun sometimes breaks through a cloud-bank when least expected, she was caught up in her old and comforting dream again, for she happened to pass the old Granada, now an Odeon, and pause for a moment to inspect the front-of-house publicity.

They were showing the much-advertised epic,
Gone With the Wind,
a book that Edith had always been meaning to read, but had somehow never found time to borrow from Carter's Twopenny Library, at the corner of Cawnpore Road. The stills in the gilded frame fascinated her, taking her back more than ten years, when the display frame, a mere plywood affair, had enclosed similar stills of Gloria Swanson, and Alice Terry, and poor, dear Rudi, whose occult eyes still gleamed out from her scrapbook.

She had not been inside the Granada, or any other cinema, since the boom of
Sonny Boy,
and she found herself wondering what films were like nowadays. A sleek young man, wearing a dinner-jacket, was standing at the top of the steps, and he smiled down at her.

“Wonderful picture,” he said; “takes over three hours. Starting now.”

Edith hovered a moment, heart in mouth, and then suddenly made up her mind, and climbed the once-familiar steps to the greatly enlarged foyer. She bought her ticket, and
went on through the double doors as far as a new brass rail, where a childlike usherette took charge of her, and piloted her down the centre aisle into what had once been the nine-pennies.

The music rolled as Edith looked about her in wonder. It was all so much bigger and more majestic than it used to be in her day, and the film, when it began, was actually in colour. As she watched she felt the old magic returning, though it was strange not to recognise any of the actors or actresses. Within minutes, however, Edith had stopped making comparisons, and allowed herself to be carried along breathlessly on the tide of the narrative. Soon she was groping for her handkerchief, and weeping silently, and ecstatically, for poor dear Melanie, poor dear Ashley, poor, headstrong Scarlett O'Hara, and the poor ravaged South.