The Dreaming Suburb (19 page)

Esme and Judith never missed a fair. They seldom patronised the stalls and amusements, but were content to wander from booth to booth, absorbing the colour and incident of the occasion. Esme enjoyed the brassy tawdriness of it all, it was such a contrast to his neat, ordered home, and Judith liked the strident music, that blared unceasingly from the mechanical organ. Bernard and Boxer could usually be seen, riding the swings, or seated together in one of the tents, in open defiance of the prominently displayed notice:
“Children Under Sixteen Not Admitted”.
Bernard and Boxer regarded such notices as a direct challenge to their manhood, and somehow, by guile, by bluff, or by simply crawling under tent valances, they managed to circumvent the hoarse-voiced men at the entrance-flaps. They had seen everything successive fairs had to offer, having gazed stolidly at so many tattooed ladies, fasting men, and midget honeymoon couples, that they were now recognised playground authorities on these bizarre subjects.

At the Easter Monday fair that year, Esme and Judith had a distressing experience. They started out with threepence to spend but happened to meet Judith's brother Archie at the corner of the Avenue. Archie, learning their destination, jovially presented Judith with half-a-crown.

At the entrance to the fair-ground the children passed a confetti stall, presided over by an aged crone, made up to look like a gypsy. Judith, lagging behind, suddenly made up her mind to buy some confetti. It wasn't to throw at anyone, least of all Esme, who would have resented such an indignity, and it wasn't to throw at anyone else, for no one else within range had the slightest appeal for Judith. Perhaps she wanted it for her Esme-Box, which, in some ways, was her bottom drawer, or perhaps the mere possession of a bag of confetti, shared with Esme, helped her to establish him more materially as her groom of the future. Whatever it was that prompted the purchase, she called out to him to wait, and handed the woman at the stall her half-crown, demanding one bag of confetti.

The old woman took the coin, glanced at it, and slipped it into her leather satchel.

“Thank you, dearie,” she said, “help yourself,” and at once readdressed herself to the folded newspaper she had been studying.

Esme, impatient, had stopped a few yards away.

Judith held out her hand.

“My change—” she faltered, a horrid suspicion already invading her mind.

The crone looked up, a trifle sharply.

“Change, dearie? That was a penny!”

Judith's stomach cart-wheeled, and Esme, sensing that something was wrong, came back to the stall.

“It was a half-crown.” whispered Judith; “you
know
it was a half-crown; you
looked
at it!”

She turned desperately to Esme, beseeching instant corroboration. “I had a half-crown, Archie's half-crown, and she says it was a penny!”

Shame and fear clutched at Esme. Like his mother, he hated a scene, any sort of scene, but his reputation was at stake. There was no evading Judith's appeal.

“She
had
half-a-crown and a threepenny-bit; she didn't have a penny,” he said hoarsely.

Judith, immensely relieved, turned back to the woman. “You see, I had two-and-nine altogether. Here's my threepenny-bit,” and she began fumbling with the tiny knot in her handkerchief.

The old woman looked at them bleakly, then she turned her head towards a bell tent, pitched immediately behind her stall.

“Fred,” she called, “come on out, and get rid o' these bloody little shysters, will yer?”

Fred emerged, ponderously, from the tent. He was a huge, bloated man, about forty years of age, with large red hands, and a curiously mottled complexion, as though he had been peppered with small shot. He tilted his dusty bowler, and then blew his nose with finger and thumb. Even in the stress of the moment Esme thrilled with disgust at the action.

“Whassat?” Fred wanted to know.

The crone explained, without wasting a word.

“Pissorf!” said Fred, fiercely, and turned to re-enter the tent.

Esme began to tremble. From where he stood, at the corner of the stall, Fred looked like a fairy-tale giant, whose enormous hands seemed capable of taking both him and Judith in two spreads, and crushing them to powder, with no more effort than was required to lean across the confetti table and gather them up. Esme began to stutter. He knew that Judith was looking at him, and he knew that to fail her on this occasion was to reduce to pitiable ruins the heroic fabric, he had created for her, piece by piece, since the day they first met, but he could think of no way out of this dreadful trial of strength and his secondary reaction, following closely upon that of sheer terror, was a cold anger that she should have involved him in such an unequal contest.

He looked around helplessly, and his eye rested upon a policeman, who was moving slowly along on the outskirts of the incoming crowd between the stalls. He had the suburban child's implicit faith in the matchless power of the law.

“All right,” he said, finally; “I'll tell the policeman!”

He had imagined that this threat would be enough, that at the mere mention of the word “policeman”, the old girl would dip her hand into her satchel and produce two-and-fivepence.

Nothing of the kind happened. Fred simply guffawed, and the old woman said flatly: “Go ahead, and tell 'im, sonny!”

For a few seconds Esme stood stock still, his imagination recoiling from the prospect of implementing this terrible threat, pxcept for the purpose of asking the time, he had never yet spoken to a policeman: but here, surely, was an occasion when the support of the police could not be dispensed with.

Dismally, he turned his back on the stall and crossed the track, quickening his step until he came alongside the constable.

Watching him, Judith saw him tug firmly at the blue sleeve, saw the constable bend and say something, and then turn back towards them, with Esme at his side.

The crone made good use of the diversion. She reached into her bag, found the half-crown, and tossed it to Fred,
who slipped it casually in his trouser pocket He then blew his nose again and awaited the constable with an expression of benign tranquillity. He had had many and protracted dealings with young policemen, and had always found this expression rewarding. Fred had also learned the value of initiative.

“Don't it give yer the sick, orficer,” he remarked resignedly, as the constable and Esme presented themselves on the far side of the stall. “All these Sunday Schools 'n wot-not, all this public money spent on ejucashun, an' wot does it end up in? A ruddy little pick-pocket, 'oo talks posh, like 'e's got a bleedin' plum in 'is marth!”

The constable was young, inexperienced, and not too eager to engage. He had gathered from Esme's garbled story that somebody, presumably these hucksters, had cheated somebody else, presumably the children, but Fred's genial and confidential manner disarmed him, as Fred had intended it should.

“What's it all about?” he wanted to know.

“Says she give me 'arf-a-crahn fer a penny. Wants the perishin' confetti
and
two-and-five,” growled the old woman; “we'd make a forchune that way, wouldn't we?”

“I
did
give her half-a-crown,” protested Judith, and turning anew to Esme, “I
did,
didn't I?”

“Yes,” said Esme, wretchedly. He had executed his threat, he had summoned a policeman, but he still felt defeated.

The old woman emptied her satchel on the trestle-board in front of her. A small stream of coppers, and one or two sixpences and threepenny-bits rolled out.

“No arf-crahns there, is there, orficer?” she said.

The constable was not so young or inexperienced that he did not realise at once what had occurred, but he saw, with equal clarity, that he had not the smallest chance of proving it, and therefore took the line of least resistance.

“Run along, kids,” he said, not unkindly. “Run along, and don't get into any more trouble.”

From the point of view of settling the matter then and there, and returning to his contemplative beat, the constable could not have chosen more unfortunate words.

Esme, in some ways, was oddly adult, and had an uncomplicated appreciation of abstract justice. The blatant injustice
of this remark, however kindly it might have been meant, struck him like a whiplash, and supreme indignation lent him courage and oratory.

“Trouble!”
he squeaked, “
I'm
not in any trouble, it's
them
—they've just pinched our half-a-crown, and you've got to get it from them, or I'll ... I'll ...” he struggled for a moment, searching for the correct phrase. Then it came to him, from a school poem about the Cornishmen and Bishop Trelawney:

“... or I'll know the reason why!”—he concluded with a piping flourish.

Judith gazed with shining eyes at this demi-god, this serious-faced, narrow-shouldered stripling, straight from the pages of an Arthurian saga.

For years she had watched him strut, disposing of imaginary hordes at a blow, fulfilling the most impossible demands made upon him by shadowy commanders-in-chief, vaunting, swash-buckling and gasconading, but although she had genuinely admired his artistry, although her heart was warmed by his facility in changing suburban drabness to a riot of colour, she had never quite believed he was altogether real. Always, shamefully hidden in the back of her mind, ws the faint, nagging suspicion that one day this colourful balloon would burst and she would see him, as a man indeed, and a very desirable one, but an ordinary man nonetheless, and one who lived in one of the new semi-detached on the Wickham Estate, went to work on the 8.20, and pushed a lawnmower across the garden on Saturday afternoons.

Now, in the most dramatic maner, his extravagant boasts were vindicated, and her nagging doubts had been dragged into the open, and seen to be shabby and utterly unworthy. At the recollection of them she had hard work to prevent herself falling at his feet and begging his forgiveness, imploring a second chance to serve him in the humblest capacity, as cook, as drudge, as third shield-bearer removed.

The constable was not so impressed. He looked slightly startled and then irritated, not having the least idea how to proceed from this point onwards. There had been nothing in his textbooks, or in his probationary period talks with the sergeant, to prepare him for this sort of encounter. He could
only bluff one party or the other, and the children had seemed the easier group to intimidate. Yet he was conscientious. He wanted to be fair and just. It was a great pity he did not in the least know how to begin.

Sensing his dilemma, Fred emerged from his mood of injured benevolence.

“You 'eard wot the orficer said,” he shouted at Esme; “'op it, before you gets run in, the pair of yer!”

“It's
you
that'll be run in, unless you come up with two-and-five!” said Esme, firmly.

He too had sensed the policeman's indecision, and was determined to make the most of it. He was surprised to note that his voice was down to its normal key again, and that his knees had stopped trembling.

This is ridiculous,” said the constable at length. “How do I know you gave him half-a-crown? I wasn't here, was I?”

“Quite right,” confirmed Fred, rather more affably.

In a way, Fred was beginning to enjoy himself. He felt quite safe, and it was always pleasant to embarrass a policeman.

At this juncture, however, Esme had an astonishing stroke of luck. There was really no satisfactory answer to the constable's claim. There was the bag, emptied, yet revealing no half-crown, and it is difficult to see how Esme would have been able to establish his claim then or later, and even more difficult to see how, with Judith looking on he could have abandoned his position with dignity.

But at that precise moment he saw Harold Godbeer, picking his way carefully through the main stream of people climbing the shingly hill, and the sight of Harold at this point in the dispute was like the glimpse of a bobbing lifeboat to a man floundering in a shark-infested sea. He drew himself up.

“Very well,” he said; “I'll fetch my lawyer!”

Fred exploded with laughter, and even the old crone's lips cracked in a sour smile.

“Lumme, he's a cool one, he is!” chortled Fred, smiting his distended stomach. “You oughter take 'im in charge, orficer, an' no mistake. ‘Fetch 'is lawyer!’ Lumme, I ain't 'eard nothin' like that ahtside o' the Ole Bailey!” And he clutched
the edge of the tentflap for support, as Esme sped away down the slope.

The constable turned shamefacedly to Judith.

“You'd better go home, kid,” he told her; “this is no place for a little girl. Here ...” he fumbled in his trouser pocket for conscience money. “I'll buy you a toffee apple!”

“I don't
want
a toffee apple, thank you,” said Judith, confidently. “I want to see Esme and Mr. Godbeer get my two-and-fivepence out of him!”

It was not until Judith actually mentioned Mr. Godbeer's name that any of them suspected, for one second, that Esme's lawyer had substance. Within seconds, however, they had irrefutable proof of the fact, for Esme emerged from the crowd piloting Harold towards the stall. As they approached, Esme introduced him, with a certain proprietorial air.

“This is Mr. Godbeer. He's a lawyer. That's the woman, Uncle Harold, and that's the man she must have given it to!”

3

Harold Godbeer's presence at the fair was an accident. Ordinarily, he never attended such functions, but today, Bank Holiday, he had a luncheon appointment with Eunice, and had been sent out with Eunice's dachshund “Scandal” in order to wile away the hour or two it took Eunice to dress for an outing. His steps had led him in the direction of the hills, and his thoughts had been far away when his coat was seized by Esme on the main path.

Esme, sensing triumph, had not made the same mistake as he made when approaching the constable. He told his tale simply and clearly, and Mr. Godbeer's legal mind absorbed the details like a sponge.

In so doing, he saw far beyond the legal aspect. The boy was obviously in trouble, and asking for help. What enormous advantages might accrue for him—Harold—if he emerged as the champion of law and order, as the recoverer of stolen goods, as the superior of a uniformed constable!