The Dreaming Suburb (26 page)

“It's like this, old man,” he elaborated, for he enjoyed teasing and sometimes shocking the solemn Edgar; “the person who comes in for Queen Anne doesn't want it dished up by someone who looks as though he ought to be flogging a hire-purchase suite! The trouble with our trade is that ninety-per-cent of The Boys (Chaffery invariably referred to his colleagues in the antique trade as “The Boys”) overdo the
gen-u-ine
touch, and make a customer suspicious the minute he comes inside. No wonder, either! To hear some of 'em you'd think they were flogging the crown jewels in a scrap-metal yard. Now take Miss Hopkins—she couldn't pull a fast one on a customer if her virginity depended on it! Her family's had money sometime—look at her hands and feet—and she grew up with the stuff all round her. What's more, she loves it, not like you and I do, because our beer money depends on it, but because of its line, and feel. She'll do okay there. All she needs is someone like you to put her wise to The Boys. Look in Thursday to Saturday, no matter where I am, or what I'm up to. Catch on?”

Edgar entered into the new arrangements with misgivings. After all, Esther had been “genteel” and, on this very account appeared to have despised him from the day they were married. Edgar had never had much confidence in himself, but what little he had originally possessed had dissolved under Esther's acid. Accordingly, he approached Miss Hopkins very gingerly, expecting rebuffs, and saying as little as possible. Scarcely a week had elapsed, however, before he began to enjoy her company, finding in it a balm to his self-esteem that was very pleasant; before long, the prospect of spending a few hours with her came to be something to anticipate with mild excitement throughout the first half of the week.

Miss Hopkins' desire to please had, at the outset, very little to do with Edgar. She had, at long last, found a job that interested her, and she looked upon her immediate superior as a man from whom she could learn the trade in the process
of earning a living wage. His gentlemanly bearing towards her came as a mild surprise. She would not have been surprised if, in due course, she had not been faced with the choice of being petted in the room behind the shop, or seeking a job elsewhere.

Nothing like this happened. On the contrary, Mr. Frith, her employer's chief assistant, appeared to derive considerable pleasure from teaching her the trade, a duty he took very seriously indeed, and after a time, particularly when, on slack afternoons, they sat before the gas-fire sipping the tea she had made for them, a mellowness stole into their relationship. Once their mutual shyness had been overcome he reminisced by the hour on china, silver, and the ways of distinguishing the “genuine untouched” from the made-up, or the fake.

Frances Hopkins was a good listener, and on his own subjects—china, English glass, foreign stamps, and indoor plants—Edgar Frith was an interesting talker. As the weeks went by Edgar's personality began to flower under her attentive smile, so that even when they were apart Edgar found himself humming little tunes on his way to and from Purley, and later still indulging in ridiculous little daydreams, in which he rescued Miss Hopkins from the clutches of an amorous dealer, young Mr. Isaacs perhaps, who always looked at young women as though he were mentally undressing them, and he probably was, if Chaffery's stories about Isaacs were only half-true.

For a long time their friendship remained placid, right up to the time when Esther had to go into hospital, in order to have her appendix removed, and Elaine began staying out at night, and Sydney left school, and found himself that job in the City. Then the whole frostiness of Edgar's life began to melt under the sun of Miss Hopkins' shy smile and Edgar discovered that, notwithstanding his middle-age, he did hunger for something more than a central-heating plant for the greenhouse. He was obliged to admit to himself that he was starved of warmth, and friendship, and sympathy, that he needed somebody who thought of him as something more than a silent machine, grinding out money year after year, for rates, housekeeping, and children's education. He wanted
the inexpressible joy of
being
wanted, needed, petted and even considered once in a while.

2

The ice cracked half-way through the silent supper at Number Seventeen one October evening.

The four of them were sitting round the table, picking at cold tongue and pickles, when Esther half rose up, pressed her hand to her side, and gave a little scream.

Edgar was so taken aback that he sat stock still, while Sydney ran round to her, and caught her by the shoulders, half-carrying her away from the table, and settling her on the leather couch beside the tiny banked-up fire.

“It's here,
here!”
Esther kept repeating, and when the doctor was fetched, much against her will, he at once diagnosed acute appendicitis, and arranged for Esther to go into hospital that very night.

Ordinarily Esther would have opposed this with every argument at her command, but by the time arrangements were made the pain prevented her from thinking clearly. She only mumbled a few protests when the ambulance arrived, and then closed her eyes, and allowed herself to be carried out on a stretcher, and down the short path to the waiting vehicle.

Edith Clegg and Louise Carver saw her go, and both ran across the road with offers of neighbourly assistance. Edgar received them politely, but told them that he and the children were perfectly capable of looking after themselves, and that once the operation was over, Mrs. Frith was unlikely to be detained more than a fortnight or so.

In the event Esther was in hospital for six weeks, and in that period the dry fabric of the Frith household fell to pieces. For a few days she hovered between life and death, but at length her tough physique pulled her through, and she sat propped up in the ward, saying very little, but effectually silencing the garrulous woman on her right, who was much disposed to go into details about her own complaint, and those of her deceased sisters and husband.

Edgar and Sydney went to see her on visiting days, but Elaine could not be persuaded to take an afternoon off from
her commercial course, in order to travel over to the hospital, neither would she take advantage of the week-end visiting periods, or send her mother any message.

Elaine's callousness regarding her mother shocked Sydney. He could not know that there was not, and never would be, the faintest trace of hypocrisy in Elaine's personality, and that she would never, throughout her life, lie to herself on the smallest issue. Neither did he realise that, to Elaine, her mother's removal was like the sudden and unexpected dismissal of an inexorable gaoler, and that having once tested freedom, she resolved to herself that never again, not if she had to fight with her nails and teeth, would she allow herself to be herded back to the cloister on her mother's return.

Esther's absence had a somewhat similar effect upon Edgar. He was not, like Sydney, shocked by Elaine's unashamed delight at her mother's absence. Dimly he understood Elaine's relief, for—in a sense—he shared it. As long as Esther was about the house he had found it disconcerting to indulge in day-dreams about Miss Hopkins. Such daydreams seemed to him a kind of infidelity, for despite Esther's treatment of him as a husband, he had never contemplated leaving her. He had nothing but an instinctive affection for his children, and none at all for his wife, but he was a very conscientious little man, ready to accept his responsibilities, however irksome they proved. So far he had never thought far enough ahead to envisage a time when Elaine and Sydney would cease to be his responsibility, and he supposed that Esther would always be there, waiting for the housekeeping money, and attending to his frugal needs in all respects but one. Now that she was no longer there his mind began to range on what he might do if—by some chance—Esther should die, and he was astonished to discover in himself an upsurge of guilty hope that at once related itself to Miss Hopkins.

Miss Hopkins—Frances, he now called her—was single. She had no admirer that he was aware of, and clearly did not regard him with disfavour. She was, moreover, quite alone in the world, her parents having died several years before,
leaving her a minute income, quite insufficient to maintain her on more than a subsistence scale.

Suppose Esther should die? Suppose he suddenly found himself free? Would he propose to Miss Hopkins? Would she accept him? And if she did, could they not leave Mr. Chaffery, and drift into Arcady hand-in-hand, somewhere in the country or by the sea, or in one of those little cathedral towns in the West, where there were said to be openings for little antique businesses?

Once launched on this flight his fancy soared upwards like a bird, and presently he found it difficult to fix his mind upon anything else. So abstracted did he become that he let young Isaacs have a Regency commode for less than cost, and incurred Mr. Chaffery's storm of abuse, shamefully administered in front of Miss Hopkins, who gallantly tried to share the blame.

When Chaffery had simmered down and departed, Miss Hopkins at once set about soothing his wounded pride.

“I knew you were worried, Mr. Frith; I knew you were thinking about your wife. He wasn't fair! He was cruel! Let me get you some tea, and some of those nice croissants. Sit down by the fire, and forget all about it! Take two, of my aspirins. I think he was horrid! ... horrid!”

He smiled at her gratefully, and allowed himself to be led to the fireside. As she bent over the hob he noticed, not for the first time, the tiny cluster of curls that strayed, almost playfully, across the nape of her neck. He leaned forward as she poured from the kettle, and suddenly, monstrously, his mind shied away from the turmoil of Esther, and Chaffery, and Isaac's sharp practice, and his hopeless infatuation. He sat quite still, staring and staring at the red-gold tendrils, caught in a shaft of pale sunlight that streamed through the fanlight over the shop door.

She had slipped forward on her knees, and was in the act of laying out the tin tray, when he acted. Hardly knowing what he was doing, but impelled by some force he was powerless to resist, he reached out his right hand, and began to stroke the tendrils with two fingers.

She stopped laying out the tray and remained quite still. Unbelievably she did not recoil from his touch, or exclaim, as
he had thought she would when, in his day-dreams, he had half-imagined such a beginning. She seemed, if anything, to draw a little closer to him, and he experienced wonder and incredulity, before a possessive delight surged over him like a giant wave, and he flung his arms round her thin shoulders, and pressed her close against him, showering breathless little kisses on her hair, and ears, and hands.

After the first few moments of ecstasy he released her, and she stood up, but even then she did not move away from the fire. He did not release her hand, and she made no effort to withdraw it. Slowly raising his eyes, he noticed that she was crying, gently and silently, and at the sight of her tears he scrambled to his feet, tenderness almost choking him. He caught her by the waist, pulling her away from the scorching heat of the fire.

“Frances, you mustn't.... It isn't like you think.... I love you ... I'll do anything for you ... anything ... I love you so much Frances....”

The words came effortlessly, just as they had in his daydreams, tumbling out half articulately, and no woman could have doubted their utter sincerity.

She said, very softly, “I know, Edgar, I've known a long time now. I love you, too. I'll always love you.”

He was speechless with amazement. It was impossible that somebody like her could love him with anything approaching the fervour he felt for her. Respect him, perhaps, enjoy his company even, but not love—not desire to the extent of wanting to be kissed, and held, and caressed.... ! He could make no reply. He could only just stand there, gazing at her as if she had been a goddess who had suddenly materialised from among the unsaleable ornaments and half tea-services.

She must have recognised incredulity in his face.

“It's not so difficult,” she said, with a wry smile. “Nobody ever treated me as you have; nobody, ever. Not even Philip.”

“Philip?” The name meant nothing to him, but even so, he felt a sharp stab of jealousy.

“He was killed in the war,” she said. “I thought I'd never get over it; but you do, Edgar, you can get over anything.”

She lifted the tea-tray on to the console table, and began to drop sugar into the cups. He marvelled at her steadiness.
How could she bother with a tray of tea at a moment like this? He had never been drunk, but he imagined that it must feel rather like this, uncertain of one's balance, yet filled with a wild desire to run out into the main road and shout the news at the strangers going by, poor luckless devils, with their shopping baskets and tea-time kippers. He wanted to buy armfuls of roses, to write sonnets, to dance, to do things he had never even thought about doing, not as a boy or a youth. This was so different from how he had felt when Esther had accepted his stammered proposal in the ice-cold library of her aunt's ugly mansion. Then, lost for words, and miserably embarrassed as he was, it had seemed no more momentous than the discussion of a sensible arrangement for the pair of them, a wife for him, a provider for her.

The memory of that other declaration helped to steady him. His mind raced among the possibilities that presented themselves, now that she had made the still barely credible admission that she returned his love. A divorce? A secret arrangement? An elopement, with or without sanction of Church and State? What did it matter? What did anything matter? But he had to learn her views. They had to begin making plans at once.

“I'll speak to Esther as soon as she comes out of hospital. I'll tell her she'll have to divorce me!” he babbled.

She smiled, sadly he thought, and handed him his cup.

“You couldn't do that, Edgar—not in the circumstances; you're far too gentle a person.”

The note of resignation in her voice alarmed him. The salient factors in their situation buffeted him like a chain of detonations; Esther's ruthlessness, the children, his own sense of duty, and now Frances's generosity, not only towards him, but towards the woman who had made his life so wretched, and for so long. For a moment he felt trapped. Then his yearnings surged over him, a small tide of optimism.