The Dreaming Suburb (68 page)

“No, Boxer, let's leave it for the Frogs. The poor baskets can do with it, I reckon!”

And so they rambled their way along the coast, heading due west into Brittany, where their astonishing luck held, and they were able to jump a coal-barge on the point of putting out for Falmouth.

Jim gasped when he came in and saw them wolfing food in the kitchen that night Then, with a great bound, he jumped to embrace them, thumping their backs, and pummelling them as he had never done when they were children. After he had coaxed some of the details of their escape from them, he refused their invitation to go down to the local and celebrate, but went instead, across the meadow, and into Manor Wood, taking the winding path to the lake in front of the old house.

Strike, the retriever, pottered along in his wake, too old now, and too blind, to chase sticks and imaginary rabbits.

It was dusk when man and dog returned, and as he crossed the Avenue, Jim saw a pipe glowing at the gate of Number Twenty-Two, and paused to exchange a word with Harold Godbeer, who was standing there in his shirtsleeves, looking down into the crescent.

The two men had never been intimate, in spite of living next-door to one another for more than twenty years.

In the past Jim had always thought of Harold as a “typical bourgeois”, but that was in his agitating days, before he really understood the word. Now he thought of him as a little dull and stuffy, and would have written him down in committee-meeting jargon as “typically white-collar”.

For his part Harold had always thought of Jim as a rather dangerous fellow. Ten years ago he too would have had his labels ready, and would have classified him “Red”, or “Bolshie”. But ready-made labels were not as reliable as they had once been, and now he would have preferred to describe his neighbour merely as “a steady chap, but Left Wing”.

“I just wanted to say how delighted I was about your boys,” he told Jim. “My word, but they must have had some terrible experiences over there!”

Yes, said Jim, they had, and were probably a great deal luckier than they realised. It was an obvious, and a civil reply, but as he said it Jim found himself drawn towards this peaky-faced little man, who had been such an inoffensive neighbour for so long, and because he was feeling uplifted by the miraculous return of the twins his natural reserve lost its topmost crust, and he felt closer to Harold than he had ever felt over the years.

Leaning on his front gate he showed a disposition to chat.

“What do you make of it all, Godbeer?” he began. “Pretty frightening, isn't it?”

Harold said nothing for a moment, but sucked his pipe, while he endeavoured to adjust himself to Jim's unexpected cordiality.

“Well, I'm not as worried as I
was,
old man,” he said at length. “No, I'm not
nearly
as worried as I was!”

Jim was mildly surprised. He would have imagined Harold Godbeer to be the type of man who had helped to keep the muddlers in power for so long between the wars, and who was therefore quite incapable of facing up to the liquidation of the British Empire, and the collapse of civilisation as they both knew it. He would have wagered a pound note that, throughout the past winter, his neighbour had slept serenely on the ramparts of the Maginot Line, and was now flouder-ing hopelessly in a welter of terrifying possibilities. Nevertheless he recognised, from Harold's tone, that this was not so.

“Do you think they'll have a shot at invasion?” he asked.

“No, old chap,” replied Harold very levelly, “I certainly don't! I think they'll try hard to make us believe that they're
going to, but their nerve will fail 'em at the last minute. As a matter of fact, I think that chap Hitler is in for one hell of a shock!”

Jim was impressed by the man's quiet, forceful confidence. It wasn't the brand of confidence he had encountered in pubs and committee rooms recently, rehashes of hastily written leader-articles, or echoes of the bombast of bewildered politicians. It was a confidence that had obviously grown up inside the man while he was living
here,
in this Avenue, among millions of people almost exactly like him, it was a distillation of centuries of security and national triumph, with its roots deep down in Trafalgar and Waterloo, and the assault on the Hindenburg Line. It drew its strength from the dry bones of men like Palmerston, and Gladstone, and Sir Edward Grey, and its inspiration from the Chartist movement, and the Education Act, and Lloyd George's campaign against the House of Lords. It was born and belonged here, among the small, neatly-kept front gardens of the terrace, with their rough-cast fronts, little gatepost pillars, and looped chains, that seemed at this moment of history to make each little block of brick and slate a fortified castle, manned by a garrison who would count it a privilege to die where they stood, with or without some reserve ammunition in the back bedroom.

Looking at Harold's pale, narrow face, in the soft glow of the pipe-bowl, Jim's doubts and fears of the last few weeks fell away from him. He felt immensely braced and refreshed by the contact, and intensely curious to hear more.

“Go on, Godbeer,” he said earnestly, “tell me
why
you think that, please—it's important to me ... I don't mind admitting, I've been in a fog up to now!”

Harold smiled into the gathering dusk, vaguely flattered by his neighbour's invitation.

“Well now, I don't pretend to be a strategist, old man,” he went on, “but I've always thought of myself as a man of average intelligence, and I like to think about what I read, and what I see. Now here are those two boys of yours, I watched them grow up, and it always fascinated me to note how they always did everything together. Well, you see how it paid off in the end? Someone turned them loose over there, weaponless, as far as I can see, and with every card stacked
against them. Just turned 'em loose, with the entire countryside in chaos, and what did they do? They just set out for home, using their heads, I imagine, and absolutely refusing to panic. But what struck me about it all when I talked to them earlier this evening was that they did it
together,
the same as they've always done everything together, and it seems to me—this is a bit far-fetched, no doubt—that this is what we've all got to do from now on. We've got to stop nagging at one another, and face up to things as
a people
again, the way we did last time, and I don't doubt every time before that! Once we do that no one can beat us. We'll get hurt all right, and it wouldn't surprise me if a lot of us didn't live to see the end of it, but plenty will, enough to put paid to that mob of scoundrels. The point is, if we once
do
this, if we once show the rest of the world that we're not going to stand for the sort of thing that's been going on long enough over there, then we'll be a sort of front-line of our own, and everyone else in the world who thinks like us will come bustling up to lend a hand. When that happens it can't last very long, can it, old chap? Nobody's going to convince me that there aren't a damned sight more decent people about than there are bullies and perverts, who get a kick out of stamping on other people's corns. Does that seem sense to you, Carver?”

Jim took a deep breath, inhaling the scent of baking grass, that blew in from the meadow on the light breeze. He felt better, and more at peace with himself, than at any time since Munich.

“It makes a dam' sight more sense than anything I've read in the papers since the last Armistice, Godbeer,” he said emphatically, “and if my guess is right, and all the people round here think even roughly as you do, then I'd say you're on a good wicket, old chap, and that that little bastard is in for the biggest surprise of his life! I'd better go in now, the twins'll be back from the pub. Goodnight, old man!”

“Goodnight,” said Harold, methodically knocking out his pipe on the pillar of Number Twenty-Two.

They went in, closing their doors after them.

The moon rose slowly over the beeches of Manor Wood, and its white light crept over the blacked-out facade of the even numbers. Presently, far away to the south-east, beyond
the wood and the open ploughland of the Kent border, came the faint, intermittent throb of heavy aero-engines, and a moment later, from the direction of Shirley Rise, the long, banshee note of the siren.

People began to move inside the silent houses, making their preparations.

In the store at the corner Archie Carver came out of the back door, and carried a fire-extinguisher inside, placing it immediately above the trap that covered his oil-drum vault.

At Number Four, Jean Mclnroy buttoned her navy battle-dress blouse, and groped for her tin-helmet, reflecting, with a glow of pleasure, that it was her night on, and that she would soon be sharing a mug of tea with Chief Officer Hargreaves, the Ideal British Male, lean-jawed, silent, and superbly cool in a crisis.

At Number Seventeen, Esther Frith climbed stiffly out of bed, and fell upon her knees. Whenever the siren sounded she made a point of asking Jehovah to deflect all high-explosive and phosphorous from Pilot-Officer Frith, S. (Accounts Branch), wherever he might be. Her greying hair fell forward over her clasped hands, and her pale lips moved soundlessly. “Oh Lord, keep Sydney safe, keep Sydney away from the bombs.”

It was not exactly a prayer. It was more like a politely expressed command.

At Number Four, Edith lit a candle, and gently woke Becky. “Come along, Becky dear, the
si-reen's
going! I've put the thermos under the stairs. We'll make ourselves comfy, and have a nice cup of tea. Come along now, there's a dear.”

At Number One, little Miss Baker turned stiffly in her specially-constructed bed, flicked on her bedside light, opened her leather-bound volume of Rupert Brooke at the turned-down page, and began reading,
Blow Out You Bugles.
In the winter ahead this poem was to become a talisman against sirens, crumps, and the cough of aircraft-engines overhead.

At Number Twenty, Jim Carver made cocoa for Louise, Jack Strawbridge, and the faintly amused twins, as they all sat smoking in the kitchen. Boxer, grinning his medieval
clown's grin, pulled back the blackout curtain an inch or so, and said: “Let's go out and have a looksee! Whatd'ysay, Berni, whad'ysay?” Bernard peeped too, and then winked at his father, where he stood pouring cocoa.

“Nope, Box! You go if you like. Me? I've had a bellyfull of bombs for the time being.”

But Boxer, of course, did not go.

At Number Twenty-Two, next door, Harold finished screwing his striped trousers into Esme's abandoned trouser-press, and then went downstairs to mix himself a strong dose of bicarbonate.

His indigestion was very troublesome these days, and he was yearning for Eunice. When he heard the first far-away crump he kissed her photograph, and then gathered his flannel dressing-gown around him, turned off the light, and opened the kitchen door to look out into the clear sky. He was not afraid to die, but if he had to he would have much preferred to die with his pretty, silly wife close at hand.

Over at Number Forty-Three, Elaine Fraser was whispering to the Pole, “Stevie”, as they stood, with his push-cycle held between them, in the deep shadow where the back gate of Number Forty-Three opened on to the meadow. “Not
now,
Stevie, there are too many people about!
No,
Stevie darling, you mustn't come in, Stevie. Thursday then—Thursday, I promise!”

She leaned over the 'cycle, and kissed him as lightly as it is possible to kiss a Pole. He tried to grab her, but she escaped from him with a little giggle, and ran up the path and into the kitchen, locking the door after her. When she was sure he had gone she shook the grass from the plaid rug she was carrying, and poured herself a large gin, sipping it slowly, and looking at herself in the mirror over the sideboard. She felt a little breathless and battered, and wondered whether she should answer the 'phone when he rang on Thursday. Then she felt sorry for him as, in a sense, she felt sorry for all men, all over the world. It must be terribly lonesome, she thought, to be hounded and hounded by such insatiable appetites, appetites urgent enough to induce Stefan to break camp, and push-bike all the way over from Biggin Hill night after night, urgent enough to induce Esme to hitch-hike two hundred
miles last week, for a single night in her arms, and strong enough to persuade Archie Carver, who worshipped money, to part with it by the handful simply for the pleasure of an hour or so in her company. Tiresome for them, lucky for her.

She finished her gin and went slowly upstairs. She was not afraid of bombs and sirens, or of being alone in the house. She was afraid of nothing, except perhaps that awful water-dream, that still came back to her at irregular intervals.

Next door, at Number Forty-Five, Margy Hartnell sighed when she heard the long, wailing note, and felt the child kick inside her. What a hell of a time to have a baby! And Ted's papers had arrived that day, which meant that he would be leaving on Monday. He called up from below: “I've made the tea, Margy. Shall I bring it up, or will you come down?”

“I'll come down,” she called back, rolling out of bed, and prodding about for her quilted slippers.

At Number One Hundred-and Two, Grandpa Barnmeade emerged in his full regalia—tin-hat, armband, and mace-like torch.

He stood looking up into the clear sky for a moment, muttering to himself, and then he saw a pinpoint of light, over on the odd side, where the crescent's curve was sharpest. He began to run towards it, very nimbly considering his age. “Put that light out,” he roared, while still fifty yards away, “put that flaming light out, you bloody fool.”

There were a few people of the Avenue who were too far away to hear the siren that night, but they had read about the early raids in the papers, and their thoughts went back to the Avenue as soon as the moon rose.

Up in Llandudno, Edgar Frith lay staring at the ceiling. Frances and Pippa were already asleep, for they all went to bed much earlier these days, and he was wondering whether Esther's frigid, religious faith would help her through a bad air-raid. He hoped it would, but whether it did or did not he had made up his mind to write to Sydney in the morning, and instruct him to find his mother a place in the country. He should have done that before, long before. If he didn't drop
off soon he would slip out of bed and write the letter straight away.