The Dreaming Suburb (35 page)

The room they entered was an old farm kitchen, partially converted into a living-room. It had a spartan look. All the furniture was black oak, and the stone floor was covered, here and there, with worn strips of coconut matting. There were no pictures, and no curtains, but a huge root smouldered in the vast fire-place. The place had a warm, cosy smell, suggesting baking bread and chicken mash.

The woman took a purse from behind the mantelshelf clock.

“What shall we say—five shillings?”

“I don't want paying,” said Judy, surprised. “I—I liked leading her, it was fun.”

The woman looked at her for a long moment.

“You'd better have tea, at any rate,” she barked. “Dam' decent of you, to tramp all out here. Kettle's boiling. Wont be a minute.”

Judy watched her make tea from a huge, black kettle, suspended over the smoke on an iron bar. Cups and scones were fetched from a cupboard beside the fireplace, and the woman flung them about carelessly, her spurs ringing on the slabs as she stamped to and fro.

“You say you've
never
ridden?” she asked presently.

“Never,” said Judy, still faintly intimidated by her brusque manner and staccato sentences.

“Lord,” grunted Miss Somerton, half to herself, “you might as well be dead! What do you do?”

“I work in a chemist's,” Judy told here, “at least, I
did.
I shall probably be sacked when I go back there.”

“Why?”

“I walked out—sort of.”

“Huh!” snapped Miss Somerton, stabbing a spoon into the
tea, and stirring it with such vigour that tea spurted on to her lapel.

“I—I suppose I was upset,” added Judy.

“Upset?” snapped Miss Somerton. “What about, money?”

Then an unaccountable impulse stirred in Judy. For years she had nursed her feelings about Esme to herself. Not once had she risen to the tiresome teasing of the family, or the exploratory questions of girls at school, and at work, as to whether or not she had ever been out with a boy. Now, without a moment's hesitation, she found herself pouring out the entire story to this big, horsey, buck-toothed woman, who was a complete stranger, and had never set eyes on Esme.

She told her how they had first met in Manor Woods, of her long apprenticeship as Esme's “squire”, of the interminable wait for Esme to pronounce upon her future, and finally of his sudden infatuation for a girl opposite who, to Judy's certain knowledge, he had never spoken to, a week before.

She told it all rather breathlessly, and it was not until she had finished that the enormity of her confession brought the blood rushing to her cheeks. She got up and snatched at her coat.

Miss Somerton made a gesture with her big hand, the sort of gesture she might have made to a restive horse, and it had the same effect.

“Sit down, gel! Have another cup of tea! Eat a scone! Only thing lean make! Here—” and she pushed the plate across the table.

“That place you work ... this chemist's ... what do you sell, besides powder-compacts?”

It seemed a very irrelevant question, but Judy told her.

“Well ... soap, and hot-water bottles, and ... aspirins, and things.”

“Hot-water bottles!”
Miss Somerton made it sound as if a hot-water bottle was lethal. “What sort of life is
that
for a gel?
Hot-water bottles!
And you can't even ride! Never so much as sat a horse!”

She leaned across the table, and held Judy with black, boot-button eyes.

“Know your trouble? You're one-track! I can spot it! I'm
one-track, too. Only thing to do when you're one-track, and you find out it's a cul-de-sac, is turn back, and try the next turning! Change your life! Start now! Make the break! Mooning won't help! Stand up! Walk about!”

Judy stood up. Her acute embarrassment, that had succeeded confession, gave way to bewildered uncertainty. She was beginning to wonder if this odd woman was quite sane. Obediently, but without taking her eyes off Miss Somerton, she walked a few steps towards the fireplace, and then back.

“There! Knew it! You've got the figure! You've got hands, too! I'm never wrong about these things! Would you like to learn to ride, gel?”

“To ride?” Judy regarded her with astonishment. “You mean
pay
to learn ... on Wednesday afternoons off?”

“No, no,
no!
Who ever learned to ride a horse walk—trot—canter routine on a leading rein?
That
isn't riding, it's being carried about the countryside! I mean
work
here, with me—and there wouldn't be so much riding yet awhile, either! It'll be mucking out, cleaning tack, answering the phone, making out bills—I can never get around to making out bills, and some of 'em run on for years. You see for yourself what comes of that!”

She waved her hand, indicating the peeling walls and comfortless furniture, then returned abruptly to the business on hand: “Well? Wouldn't that be better than selling hot-water bottles?”

Judy felt she could answer the question quite safely. “Yes, Miss Somerton,” she whispered, “I rather think it would!”

That night she borrowed Miss Somerton's aged bicycle and cycled home, returning the following morning on Boxer's bike, piloting Miss Somerton's cycle with her left hand.

When Jim heard that a riding-mistress was offering Judy thirty shillings, for a seven-day week, he protested, but finally gave his approval. He was always prejudiced in favour of open-air jobs, and there was not a great deal to choose from these days.

Thus it was that Judy never returned to Boots, in the main road; she sold (much to Miss Somerton's relief) no more hot-water bottles. Moreover, Miss Somerton's prophecy was
speedily fulfilled, for Judy emerged from her cul-de-sac, found her alternative track, and enjoyed the process of exploring it. It was not only working in the open, and getting to know the horses that appealed to her, but Miss Somerton herself, whose gruffness concealed an intelligent kindness, and whose patience with pupils who were not frightened of occasional tumbles was infinite.

Many happy hours were spent at “Firhill” that Spring, hours of polishing and furbishing, in the musty old tack-room, where Miss Somerton sat alongside her, soaping saddles, and talking of “cracking days”, and gymkhanas long ago; of her early triumphs as a professional show-jumper, and her hard-riding father, the mere mention of whom brought a wistful look into her boot-button eyes.

Then there were strenuous hours on the cinder-track, in the field behind the farm; mounting, dismounting, walking, trotting, jumping a pole on the ground, jumping a hurdle six inches high, walking over a low brushwood fence and, at long last, clearing the regulation hurdle at the gallop.

It was all new and exhilarating, and Judy loved every moment of it, even the long, rather harassing rides with the six-year-olds, who prattled and prattled as she urged them to grip with their fat little knees, and “keep-the-pony's-head-up-head-up-and-don't-let-him-nibble!”

It was not that she forgot Esme. She thought of him often and, for a long time, not without pain, but there was always so much else to think about now, and so much to do during the day; and when she had cycled four miles home, she was far too tired to do more than eat and sleep, in readiness for the 6 a.m. ride to the stables the next morning.

As for Miss Somerton, she kept her at it the whole of that first year, until the memory of Esme began to recede, and take its place in among other childhood memories. Then, at last, Judy began to see Esme as he really was, a rather self-conscious young man, with freshly slicked hair, and a dreamy expression, who pottered about the Avenue, waiting and waiting, in the hope of catching a momentary glimpse of Elaine coming or going about Number Seventeen, and looking, Judy thought, faintly ridiculous into the bargain.

Sometimes, when she watched him objectively from her bedroom window, she was even a little sorry for him. The important thing was, that she was no longer sorry for herself.

1

SOME
of the colours had faded for Edith Clegg, of Number Four.

She no longer worked as pianist, at the Granada in the Lower Road. The spell was broken at last, for with the coming of the talkies, Edith not only lost her job, but was made redundant. The new decade found her left behind in the march of events, cut off from her Temple, and forbidden to worship, for the new cult obliged her to regard all her gods and goddesses as quaint and dated, like the nursery scraps she had once pasted on the screen in Becky's bedroom.

Mr. Billings had partly replaced her by an ex-sergeant-major commissionaire, whose principal duty was the handling of queues that now thronged the pavement outside the foyer. Harsh, metallic songs had replaced Edith's
Hearts and Flowers
and
Water Music
and heroines now wept to the accompaniment of orchestral recordings of
Blue Danube
and
Minuet.
There were no bangs and thumps needed from one end of the piano, and no trills and grace-notes from the other end. The piano itself had been moved out, and sold for a song, for pianos were at a discount everywhere, and this one had taken a terrible beating since Edith had first used it to play the
Song of the Bells,
for Lon Chaney's
Hunchback,
and
Yes, We Have No Bananas,
for the antics of Ben Turpin and Charlie Chaplin.

It had all happened with dramatic suddenness, like the fall of an Empire, whose entire forces had been brought to battle
and annihilated in a single encounter. In the summer of 1928 Edith was still sitting in the little pit, her head at an acute angle as she followed the stalking of Alice Terry by the suave and sinister Lewis Stone, in a reissue of
Scaramouche.
Less than a year later the stalls were snuffling at Al Jolson's domestic troubles and on their way out through the foyer humming:

When dare are grey skies,
Ah doan mind de grey skies ...

Sonny Boy
had proved the swang-song of an era. Stars that had once seemed as permanent as St. Paul's Cathedral disappeared overnight, and it astonished Edith how soon the public forgot them, how eager they were to sweep them into the lumber-room. New faces, new voices took their place, like people moving up a 'bus queue, and suddenly, for Edith, all the magic ebbed from the silver screen.

To do him justice Mr. Billings did not welcome the changeover. For him it meant trouble and expense, besides losing Edith, whom he had come to admire and respect. He resisted the tide for as long as he could, with business dropping off at an alarming rate as soon as the big Croydon cinemas installed their machines. He even scoffed at talkies during the transition period.

“Stunt! That's all it is, Miss Clegg, nothin' but a stunt! You won't catch me investing no money in it!”

But as time went on he did invest money in it, more money than he had, or expected to earn in two years, and in the end, as much as he could possibly borrow, and although his new apparatus broke down twenty-seven times during the first showing of
The Singing Fool,
he survived to see
Sold Out
notices in the foyer for twelve weeks in succession. In the excitement of the boom he almost forgot Edith, who stayed on a few weeks as cashier, but ultimately gave in her notice and sadly abdicated.

She was not sacked. Mr. Billings was genuinely fond of her, and would have preferred her to have stayed on as house-manager, at a pianist's salary.

An executive post at a cinema, however, was not for Edith.
It meant sitting in the cash-desk after the first house had gone in, and later, when the second house had come out, taking the cash into the office, and coping with all the paper work.

The long columns of figures worried her, and the atmosphere of bustle and stress overwhelmed her. In these circumstances she could never watch a picture through; indeed, she hardly ever managed to see more than a scene or two of any one feature. Moreover, she disliked the type of patron that the talkies seemed to attract. They clamoured for music, and more music, at the price of romance and enchantment. They booed and whistled, and made many other rude noises when the action was interrupted by a temporary break in the projectionist's loft. They jeered openly at the tearjerkers, so that Edith made up her mind to leave before her happiest memories were debased. She stayed on just long enough to develop a mild affection for Charles Farrell and Janet Gaynor—but they, and all the other newcomers, could never compete in her heart with John Gilbert, Gloria Swanson, the Gishes, John Barrymore, and Mary Pickford. They were not
big
enough. They were too much like people in 'buses, and trams, and shops. They danced their steps, strummed their ukes, and sang little songs like
I'm in the Market for You-hoo,
from a ledge less than half-way up the slopes of Olympus. It wasn't their fault. It wasn't Mr. Billings' fault. It was just progress.

The night Edith left the Granada she called on Jim Carver, at Number Twenty. She had got into the habit of consulting Jim whenever a crisis interrupted the rhythm of her life, and she found him, as always, courteous, patient, and wonderfully understanding.

“I suppose you know best, Miss Clegg,” he told her, when she explained why she had been obliged to leave the cinema, “but it isn't going to be easy to get another job at your age. Things are getting worse all the time. There's a big slump just around the corner, and well have three million unemployed before we know where we are. When we do—when the figure reaches breaking-point, then look out for squalls! I think the best thing you can do is take another lodger. How
about your porch-room? Couldn't you let that, and board someone at twenty-five shillings a week?”

Miss Clegg thought not, it was too pokey, but she approved the idea in principle. If another boarder did come to Number Four, then she and Becky would have to re-deploy themselves, and let their own bedroom to the newcomer. In spite of her insistence on happy endings she behaved realistically outside the cinema, and she supposed it was either that or find alternative employment.