The Dreaming Suburb (29 page)

“What
him? Esme?
Don't be daft, Judy-girl, he never even notices 'em! He's always sucking-up to old Monkhouse, the English master. He passed out with honours in two subjects in matric' this summer, didn't he? He was all right, once, wasn't he, Berni? We had some good fun with Esme when he first went there, didn't we, Berni? But not
now,
not since old Longjohn split us up, and stuck him in with the swots! Girls! Esme?”, Boxer grinned his wide-toothed grin; “he wouldn't know what to do with one, not if she fell slap in his lap!”

The twins did not realise how immensely relieved Judith was by Boxer's scornful summary of Esme's qualifications as a philanderer. They themselves, working as a team, of course, had by this time learned what to do with girls—more or less —who fell into their laps. Few had, at this stage, but they had their moments, at Church Institute hops, and on Saturday nights in the Granada.

Longjohn's prophecy regarding the twins' future was proving a shrewd and accurate one. After losing Esme, they had slipped, contentedly enough, to the bottom of every “C” form left to them, and finally they drifted away, without even sitting for School Certificate, to get themselves jobs in a scrap-metal yard at Clockhouse. Somehow, on a pooled salary of four pounds a week, they had acquired an Indian motor-cycle, and now added their quota to the nocturnal undertones of the Avenue. They were in court once or twice for speeding, before they changed their jobs and became mechanics at the Crystal Palace Speedway Track. Here they found a joint niche, standing each night in filthy overalls beside the pits, while the rival teams roared round the cinder-track, sending great spurts of grime over the barrier, and they impatiently awaited the day when they would graduate from pit to track, and earn their own reputation as dirt-track aces.

They appear later on, but briefly. Their big adventure was still more than ten years away, and came at a time when young men in the Avenue could find plenty of full-time employment, with or without school-leaving Certificates.

3

Elaine set out for the Stafford-Fyffe rally in a dance-frock of deep crimson velvet, knee-length, and cut closely to her mature figure. She had never worn such a dress before, and she would not have worn it for very long if the dance had not anticipated Esther's discharge from hospital by two clear days.

Edgar, having accepted the invitation on his daughter's behalf, had given her four pounds to equip herself. He was persuaded that she owned nothing remotely suitable for a party such as this, and Frances had made him curiously reaware of women, and women's problems touching clothes. The gift had, in fact, been prompted by Frances, in whom he had confided, and Elaine went off to a Croydon gown-shop, and chose herself a dress against the carefully-worded advice of the assistant, who deemed her to be at least two years
older than she was, likely to become a regular customer, and therefore in dire need of protection against herself.

The reason the assistant tried to persuade Elaine not to buy the dress was that the model she chose was out of fashion, and should never have been seen by a customer. It was much too full in the bust to be currently popular, and the assistant would have preferred to sell the young lady a fringed, low-waisted silk, in tangerine. Elaine, however, was fascinated by the colour of the outmoded frock, and when it was tried on, the assistant had to admit that there was, after all, a good deal still to be said for figure-revealing dance-frocks, sadly dated as they were, and almost as archaic as the crinoline.

Standing before the mirror of the fitting-room, Elaine went through a shortened form of her bedtime ritual, ignoring the hovering fitter, pleased and satisfied with what she saw in the reflection, but not excited and pernickety, like most of the flapper customers.

She then changed, paid the bill, and went out to buy a bag, shoes, and a “choker” necklet Unknown to Edgar, she had six pounds ten of her own, laid by for just such an occasion.

The Imperial League rally was a huge success. The ballroom of “Hillcrest” could accommodate over a hundred guests, and there was an overflow in the drawing-room, where the sliding doors had been opened to allow games and dancing for the late arrivals.

Two local bands had been engaged, one of them “Al Swinger's Rhythmateers”, and by 9 p.m. the Charleston was in full swing, and Ted Hartnell was sweating it out on the dais, leaping from drum to drum, flinging himself at the cymbals, beating out a merciless rhythm with his unemployed left foot, and generally enjoying himself as much as, or more, than anyone on the floor below.

Mrs. Stafford-Fyffe herself led the first Charleston, partnered by a glossy-haired young man, rumoured to be from the Foreign Office, and the two of them were afterwards employed whipping-in the little knots of stragglers that persisted in clustering round the respective cloak-room entrances.

There were few laggards at one of Mrs. Stafford-Fyffe's parties. Every guest was herded briskly on to the floor, including Esme, who, until the moment he was spotted, had been hovering on the outskirts of the throng, looking in vain for some person, male or female, whom he recognised, and wishing with all his heart that his mother had not let him in for what looked like being a dismal and embarrassing evening. He was not a very sociable boy, and had tried very hard to dodge the column.

“It's so silly, dear,” Eunice had said, when he protested that he was not likely to know anyone at the ball. “That's the whole
point
of a party, to
get
to know somebody, and to dance, just as I paid for you to learn to dance, at poor Miss Ackroyd's!”

“Poor Miss Ackroyd”, late of Number Sixty-Three, had taught several of the Avenue children to dance, just as Edith Clegg had taught others to tinkle the cottage piano. She became poor Miss Ackroyd after she was killed by a skidding 'bus, in the Lower Road.

“I don't think people dance like that nowadays,” Esme told his mother; “it's all new stuff—“Black Bottom” and whatnot! I can't get the hang of it at all! It's daft!”

“Whatever it is, it's a lot better than stewing in your study all evening, as you've done all the Christmas holidays so far, now isn't it, Harold, dear?”

“Yes, darling,” said Harold dear, from the depths of his leather armchair. Harold replied “Yes, darling” to almost everything Eunice said these days. He hadn't quite realised what a talker she was in the days when they first met, and prattled away in London tea-shops. In those days he was still looking at her long eyelashes, and not really listening to anything she said. He still thought her the prettiest woman in the world, but he was beginning, after four years of marriage, to form an indifferent opinion of her mind. He had once flattered himself that he would set about forming it, as Mr. Murdstone had promised to form Mrs. Copperfield's, but he gave up the attempt within weeks of the Torquay honeymoon, and regarding Eunice's mind there was now a half-humorous understanding between step-father and step-son. Both liked peace, and Eunice—who never lost her temper—
was yet capable of shattering the tranquillity of Number Twenty-Two for days on end, for she never willingly relinquished a topic of conversation, possibly because a search for a new one required a certain amount of preliminary thought.

Standing just outside the door marked “Gentlemen”, Esme reflected gloomily that his suspicions had been well-founded. Apparently people did not dance like Miss Ackroyd in the late 'twenties. So far there was no sign at all of a Lancers, or Boston Two-step, or even a good honest polka, there were just walk-around foxtrots, and quick-steps, and Charlestons, and a peculiar hugging-and-bobbing dance, played to the tune of
All By Yourself In The Moonlight,
that was known, he was told, as
The Heebie-Jeebies.
Esme had never learned to Charleston, and it looked a very complicated dance indeed. The Heebie-Jeebies looked a lot easier, but to go out on the floor and practise it would be to fling personal dignity to the winds and despite Mrs. Stafford-Fyffe's chiwyings, he had not the slightest intention of being bullied into trying.

It was in the Paul Jones, close on supper-time, that he first noticed Elaine Frith.

She was circling in the opposite direction, and even before he recognised her as the strange, silent girl of Number Seventeen, he was struck by her grave, unsmiling expression, so unlike the forced smiles of the girls on either side of her.

Then he noticed her dress. It was different somehow, and very striking, not only in colour, but in length. All the other girls' dresses finished well above the knee, but hers ended an inch or so below. She looked so grown-up too, at least eighteen, and for a moment he wondered whether it was indeed the girl he had passed so often in the Avenue, the one who always kept her eyes on the pavement, and appeared oblivious of everything outside her own solemn thoughts.

Then she came round again, and the music stopped, with Esme and Elaine almost but not quite opposite to one another. The girl immediately facing Esme smiled nervously, and stepped forward. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that Elaine had no partner, that the men on each side of him had swung off with other girls. The band began to play
Charmaine,
a tune he had always liked, and he moved towards her at a sharp angle.

“May I, Miss Frith?”

He was a well-mannered boy, with a good deal of his mother's charm.

She nodded gravely, and they moved off, leaving the girl who had been facing Esme to find her own blushing way to a chair.

A waltz was the only dance in which Esme could feel certain of not making a fool of himself, and he found his partner very easy to steer, responding to the slightest pressure of his arm and shoulder. He wondered, as they circled, where she could possibly have learned to dance. He knew enough of the Friths to recall that they were “very chapel”, and never let their children out in the evening. Yet no partner at Christmas parties, or at Miss Ackroyd's, had given him so much confidence on the floor. For the first time in his limited experience he was floating, rather than shuffling and suddenly he was glad, very glad indeed, that he had allowed himself to be persuaded to come.

On the completion of their second circuit, he said:

“You're the only person I know here. You live opposite me, don't you?”

“Yes,” she said, and he was struck by the low pitch of her voice. It seemed a part of her grownupness, far removed from the high-pitched chatter of the girls all about him, or the voices that came squealing over the wired-in dividing wall, at school.

The music stopped, and couples disengaged to re-form the ring. They stood together a moment, holding hands. She seemed reluctant to leave him.

“You're the only person
I
know,” she said, as the marching tune began again; “will you ... will you ask me to dance after this?”

He was elated by the proposal. It restored his confidence, which had been ebbing fast since he had arrived.

“I ... I'd like to, very much,” he said, “the next,” and was whirled in the grasp of the young man on his right, and could only smile at her when she came round again, finishing up a dozen paces beyond him.

There was no dance immediately following. Mrs. Stafford-Fyffe climbed on to the dais, and invited all guests to take
their partners in to supper. Esme spotted the crimson dress, on the far side of the room, and half ran across the polished floor, arriving a little breathlessly at her side.

“Will you ... may I ... take you to supper?”

She smiled and stood up at once. Promptly he offered an arm, for this was one thing poor Miss Ackroyd had insisted upon, and they moved through a laurelled arch into the big hall, where sandwiches, jelly, trifle, and cider-cup were being served from long trestle tables.

He found her a little table, just inside the conservatory, and then went back to queue for sandwiches and drinks.

“I didn't know whether you wanted trifle, or what, Miss Frith,” he said, on rejoining her; “there was rather a run on everything decent.”

“No,” she told him, “I don't want to eat, but please don't keep calling me ‘Miss Frith'; it sounds dreadfully stuffy. My name's Elaine, and I know yours, too. It's Esme, isn't it?”

“Yes,” he said, marvelling. “How did you find out?”

“I heard the Carver girl ... the younger one, call out to you, oh, years ago. You and she ‘go' together, don't you?”

“No,” said Esme, slightly taken aback, “not ... not ... in that way. We're just friends, like ... like ... you always are, with people next door.”

Abruptly, he moved to safer ground. “I didn't know your name, but I like it. It's—well, it's kind of historical.”

He wanted to add that it suited her cool, dark looks, that she reminded him of a picture of Lancelot's Elaine, in his
Myths and Legends of the Middle Ages
on his study shelf, but he was not finding this initial conversation very easy. She was so cool, and composed, while he had always found girls, Judy Carver excepted, difficult to know.

She nibbled a sandwich, and he noticed her long, slender fingers. Everything about her, he decided, was shapely, graceful, and quiet. She differed so sharply from all the other girls, now giggling and screaming over the cider-cup that the young men were ladling into them, but as he glanced sideways at less inhibited couples it struck him that the youths were so much more at ease with their partners than he was, that the thought made him flush. He decided that he must say something that would impress her.

“I ... I think your frock is a lovely colour,” he blurted out, finally. He recalled hearing somewhere that if you couldn't think of anything to say it was always safe to compliment a girl on her appearance. It certainly seemed to work.

“Thank you very much, Esme,” she said demurely, and lost a shade of her composure.

It was the first dress compliment she had even been paid, but nobody would have known it, for she knew how to accept a compliment. That was one more thing she had learned from Elinor Glyn.

“I'm not much good at this sort of dancing,” he went on, with more confidence, “I went to dancing classes at old Miss Ackroyd's, at Number Sixty-Three, but we didn't learn this sort of dancing, just things like the Lancers, and the Mazurka.”