The Fancy (28 page)

“‘Grand Inauguration Show’, d’you think, or ‘Gala Inauguration Show’,” asked Edward frowning.

“What does
he
say?” asked Dick. He was really getting very tiresome.

“I haven’t asked
him
,” said Edward with wasted sarcasm. “I’m doing the ads.”

“Oh,” said Dick and thought. He took a mixture control rod from the trolley behind him, looked at it without enthusiasm, put it back in the tray and took out another one. “Just read it through again, old chap,” he said.

“I’ve read it once,” said Edward. “
I
can’t stop up here much longer or the girls’ll be getting themselves into all sorts of messes.” He hadn’t really come up here for ideas from Dick, but only for corroboration of his own opinion that the advertisement was rather telling. “‘A Unique Opportunity’,” he began. “Or, I say, Dick, ought it to be ‘An Unique’?”

“Pin, Joe!”

Dick rumbled the words over, while Joseph manipulated the split pin. “A unique … an unique … a unique … “He shook his head. “That’s a nice point, Ted. I’d better look that up for you. I’ll call in at the Library on my way home.” He hitched up his overall, produced one of his red notebooks and wrote : “Memo : Query An, A unique. Pub. Lib. 6.15. April 18th.”

“Right you are, Chum!” Joe hopped back to his native level and Dick tried the tightness of the collar by laying on it strain far greater than it would ever know.

Edward finished reading the advertisement and put it back in his pocket. “You think it’s all right, then? I’ve got to get back now. I’ll pop up again if I think of anything else. Why don’t you come down to me sometimes? You never do.”

“Down to the Inspection Shop?” said Dick and shook his head. “Too many girls. Pin, Joe!”

There was something going on when Edward got back to his bench. Instead of being spread out at their places, the girls were all clustered up at the wheelcase end, chattering. Some problem for him to straighten out. He felt bad about holding them up by not being there. He really ought not to do it, but there was so much to arrange and so little time to do it out of working hours. Dinah’s head looked up out of the crowd of bending grey backs as he approached.

“Eddie!” she called, beckoning. “Where on earth have you been? Do come here.”

“What’s up?” He strolled up to the group, feeling indispensable. Paddy King was sitting in the middle of them blushing. He had never seen her blush before ; it clashed with her hair.

“Well look,” said Dinah, “it’s the most exciting thing——”

“What is?” asked Edward, “found another German bullet or something?”

“Don’t be a twerp, Ed,” said Dinah. “It’s nothing to do with work. It’s Paddy, she——”

“Yes, Paddy’s hundred yards an along had a letter, isn’t it marvellous?” cut in Kitty, gabbling, her hair all over her face and her nose shiny. She was beginning to look a very funny shape already, although Edward supposed he ought not to notice it. It made her look younger than ever, and she carried her figure as if she didn’t know what to do with it.

“What, what, what?” They were all talking at him at once and he couldn’t understand, and then suddenly they stopped and Paddy said quietly : “Oh, it’s nothing. It’s a silly fuss. It’s only that I’ve heard my husband’s coming home.”

“Only!” shrieked someone. “After two years! Coming back as a Captain to some frightfully important job——”

“Shut up, you mustn’t say that.”

“Well, he did, in the letter.”

“He didn’t. He only hinted it. But honestly, Ed, isn’t it marvellous for her? I’d be half mad if it was me, but no such luck, with my old man sticking around at home being a key worker—oh, we didn’t tell you—he’s going to get a medal, isn’t he, Paddy?”

“She’ll go the Palace.”

“Look at her, she doesn’t care.”

“Not much she doesn’t.” They hung around, teasing her, while
Paddy sat with her usual stoop, fiddling with a gear shaft and not saying much. Edward had never seen her shy before. It must be a bit embarrassing, to have this horde on top of you when all you wanted was to be alone and think and glow inside yourself. He was filled with affection for her. She had never seemed a happy person, and no wonder ; two years away! Some people had all the tough luck. It would be grand now to see her happy. She’d get leave of course. His mind raced ahead and saw her dressing up, meeting a train. He could see it all ; the young man in uniform stepping down—he ought to have his arm in a sling by rights.

Gradually, he managed to chivvy the girls back to their jobs. It was nearly knocking off time on Saturday afternoon, when nobody felt like work, anyway, but Bob Condor, though locked in solemn conclave with some of the A.I.D., kept looking sharply over towards them and obviously wishing that ethics did not forbid him to walk out on the conclave.

Edward came back to Paddy when the girls had dispersed. “I’m awfully pleased,” he said. “It’s wizard for you.”

“Thanks,” said Paddy, without looking up.

“Yes,” went on Edward, “it really is the most wonderful news——”

“Oh, for the Lord’s sake,” said Paddy suddenly, shrugging him off with her back. “Give the thing a rest. Anyone would think nobody’s husband had ever come home before.” Edward went understandingly away, refusing to be offended. It was her nerves, of course, after two years of worry, and then this shock and excitement…

Madeleine laid her hand gently on Paddy’s arm. “I didn’t say much when the girls were around,” she said. “But I just wanted to tell you, Paddy, dear, how very very happy I am for you.”

My God, thought Paddy, what is this? A conspiracy to make me feel bad? Don’t they know that Dicky and I have never got on so well as since we’ve been a thousand miles apart? Isn’t it enough that I’m dreading going back to that endless bickering, that I don’t even really know hundred yards an along whether I want him back or not, without having it rubbed in? I’ll count ten and then if she doesn’t take her hand off me, I’ll scream.

“So very, very glad,” urged Madeleine softly.

Paddy’s left arm was tense. Now she’s giving me the Look. I can’t look at her. Oh Lord, she’s going to cry, and I’m going to cry, too, and she’ll think it’s for the same reason and want to wallow. She bit her lip and then suddenly the angry muddled tears rushed away from her eyes and she heard with cold horror what Madeleine was saying :

“I wasn’t going to tell you, but I must tell someone. It only came this morning. Just ‘Missing,’ that’s all it said, so it could be worse —it—I’m glad it was me and not you. It’s worse for a wife than a mother, I always say, but Martin wasn’t—isn’t married. I’m so sorry, dear, I didn’t mean to tell you. I didn’t want to spoil your happiness.”

As E. Dexter Bell was paying for the advertisement, Edward had to show him the draft copy before he sent it to the local paper and
Backyard Breeding.

Mr. Bell barely glanced at it. “My dear old boy,” he said, “you needn’t worry your head about that. I’ve already had one set out by my Mr. Upshott at the office, who does all our ads. I’ve got it on me somewhere.” He slapped his pockets. “I brought it home for you so that you could send it off and get the posters printed.”

“Posters?” said Edward.

“Yes, of course, must have posters. Let’s see, about five hundred you’ll want. Get ’em up all round the district—shops, hoardings, walls, pubs—
you
know.”

“But how am I going to put them up? I’m at the factory all day and it’s dark soon after I come out.”

“Good heavens, don’t ask me ; that’s your job. I’ve done all the donkey work for you as it is. Get hold of some kids. They’ll do it for a tanner.” Edward could not see the youth of Collis Park taking kindly to this suggestion. They all seemed to be scufflers in the gutter, jeerers and ringers of bells, and the refugee children from the railway district were no more than bandits. He read glumly through the advertisement, which was geometrically set out with a mapping pen in red and black ink. He thought it compared unfavourably with his own. It was professional all right, and clever : “The Collis Park Rabbit Club will hold their Annual Show,” as if they had been going for years, but it had no magnetism. You believed no more than the show was an “Outstanding Event” than you believed that a gaunt, inconvenient house was the “Commodious Gentleman’s Residence” of Mr. Upshott’s usual advertisements.

Edward liked his own much better. It was modelled on some of the more attractive ones from
Backyard Breeding.

“Are You Getting Your Exhibits Ready,” it said, “For Our Unique Show at the Victory Hall?” etc., etc. “Our Unique” was the solution to the “a unique” or “an unique” difficulty. Dick Bennett had looked it up in his own Public Library, but then, travelling to the next borough for corroboration, had found that the dictionaries differed.

Edward returned the bit of paper to his pocket. If Mr. Bell’s ideas were so different, it was just as well he had not looked at it. He would probably think took a step nearer to her mother,W bit amateur.

“Right you are. Do that then,” said Mr. Bell with the confidence of a man used to having orders carried out. Edward noticed that Mr. Upshott, no doubt under instruction, had put : “Presidents : E. Dexter Bell, Esq., R. R. Bennett, Esq. ; Hon. Sec. : E. L. P. Ledward, Esq.” ; but he folded the paper and put it in his pocket without comment. Whenever he felt like kicking against the totalitarian Bell influence which seemed to be creeping into the Collis Park
Rabbit Club, so democratically planned, he reminded himself that it was through Mr. Bell that he was at last going to meet Allan Colley. There couldn’t be much wrong with a man who was on such intimate terms with Colley.

As a fancier, too, Edward had to admire him. Whenever he returned from Mr. Bell’s rabbitry, scientifically housed in the outbuildings and garden behind “Uanmee”, he viewed with dissatisfaction the hybrid hutches in his own crowded strip of garden.

Not all Mr. Bell’s rabbits were quality, and some were undoubtedly inferior to Edward’s best stock, but they differed subtly as Hollywood film stars differ from English stars. They had glamour. Even the utility does who were used as foster-mothers had it. They knew they were Bell stock, therefore their coats were silkier, their eyes more bold and bright ; they basked in the nimbus of their owner’s pride. It may have been only that Edward usually saw them by electric light. All the outbuildings were wired, and when they were looking at the outdoor hutches, there was the searchlight torch to spotlight each occupant with a theatrical effect that Edward could never achieve in his garden with a bicycle lamp.

When he got home tonight from meeting Mr. Bell, he went straight through to the garden. Connie was neither in the living-room nor the kitchen, but he didn’t stop to call upstairs to her. He wanted to reassure himself by a sight of the latest litter sired by Masterman, his best yet. The doe was an enormous animal of the same strain, and these youngsters seemed to Edward to be outstandingly big for their age. He measured them every week with a tape measure, and had sent up statistics to Allan Colley’s “Enquire Within” column, and had received the answer that—yes, they were certainly very sizy, but Edward must not be over-confident as these early growers sometimes stopped before they reached maturity. With the Show in view, Edward had them on a forcing diet. The Lipmanns’ spring vegetables were coming along nicely and Ruth often had something under the counter for him. He always went in there ostensibly to buy something and pretended to be surprised when Ruth beckoned him behind the other customers’ backs.

“I don’t see why you keep bringing home all this potted meat,” Connie would grumble. “You hardly ever eat it, and what you do open goes mouldy before you finish it. Wicked waste I call it.”

He shone the bicycle lamp on the wire run against the far wall. There were three bucks and two does and he was going to exhibit them all except one at the show. Following his fancy of calling the rabbits after the girls at the factory, he had called the biggest Freda, because her whiskers were so fine. He was pinning all his hopes on her winning one of the Flemish classes. She would have romped home at a little show, but with all these big breeders exhibiting, you never knew what she might be up against. Would Colley like her? “If Colley doesn’t
like you, Freda,” he said, thrusting a cabbage leaf at her nose which she was trying to screw through the wire, “I’ll put you in a pie and go in for cavies.” He might, too, though he would never put Freda in a pie. But he had oft a bottle of blyhen toyed with the idea of extending his fancy to guinea-pigs, if only he had the space. There was money in them and they were useful to the government in wartime.

He went back into the house and called up the stairs for Connie. Both the bathroom and the bedroom doors were open, but she might be pretending not to hear because he was so late home. Perhaps she was doing something in the spare room. She sometimes raised dust madly there and shifted the furniture about and shook out rugs before leaving it to settle down again under its dust-sheets until the fever was on her once more. He went up and opened the door, but there was only the shrouded furniture and the stale smell and the neat pile of newspapers on the floor waiting to go for salvage.

“Connie!” He wanted his tea. He looked once more in the living-room, but the blackout was not even drawn in there. The table was not laid and her sewing was strewn on the armchair as if she had abandoned it in a hurry. Dorothy had probably come round and taken her off to a cinema. In that case, she might have left something hotting in the oven for Edward, or she might not.

She had not. Pity he had got home too late to go to the Lipmanns’ and get something tasty, because he was hungry. Mr. Bell had been talking about the leg of pork his sister was going to give him for dinner, and Edward had been looking forward to haddock, because it was Friday and they nearly always had haddock on Friday. Mr. Arles at the fish shop usually kept one for Connie.

There was the haddock, too, still wrapped in its newspaper on the dresser. Perhaps Connie meant to cook it when she got back from the cinema ; she might bring Dorothy in. She would be annoyed if he had already had something else for his tea and didn’t want to eat fish with them. That would be wasting food. But he couldn’t possibly wait until half-past nine or later ; he was starving. Perhaps he’d better just lay his appetite with a slice of bread and butter while he looked forward to the haddock a little longer. But supposing she had had tea before she left, or was going to have something out and leave the haddock for tomorrow? He would have waited and starved for nothing. If he was going to sit down to bread and cheese when she did get home, he might as well sit down to it now. He opened the cupboard door and lifted the cover of the cheese dish. Underneath, in contrast to the dish, which was shaped like a generous wedge of Cheshire, sat a small cracking lump with green dust on the edges. Of course, the new ration came tomorrow. The jam was also at the end of its tether. The pot would have to be scraped to make it do for breakfast. Edward sighed and considered the Lipmanns’ potted meat jars. Two were Austerity and were labelled reticently “Fish” and
“Meat”. The third was called Lobster and Tomato, but it had already been opened and was now covered with a bloom of fungus. He threw it into the dustbin, remembering afterwards that you were supposed to save glass jars.