The Dreaming Suburb (44 page)

“Why should I tell you? We've never been allowed to do anything, but it's different now, and you've got to see that it's different. This girl I'm going with”—swiftly he tried to gauge the measure of his ascendancy in her bewildered face—“I'm going to bring her home, on Sunday!”

For days he had been nerving himself to say, “I should like
to bring her home,” but he changed his mind at the last moment.

Esther compressed her lips. She too had some gauging to do, and for a moment there was a silent struggle between them, each realising that this was the crisis, that whoever emerged winner of this contest would henceforth rule Number Seventeen.

It was Sydney who won.

Esther had lost the power of making snap decisions, and betrayed as much by her inability to meet his eye.

“Very well, Sydney,” she said meekly, “bring her on Sunday, and you needn't fear that I won't be nice to her. It's better like that—I'd sooner you brought her home, and that I got to know her.”

She retreated into the kitchen to mask her defeat, and he heard her filling the kettle.

Smiling, he lowered himself into her chair (Edgar had always occupied a hard chair, furthest from the fire) and defied a fifteen-year-old edict by placing his feet on the polished fender. Then he set the final seal on his triumph. Groping into his pocket, he brought out pipe and tobacco pouch. He had been smoking, in secrecy, since before he left school, but never before had he dared to display the pipe in the house.

He filled the bowl, applied a match, and deliberately blew a thick cloud of smoke towards the open door.

3

Esther was correct in her guess that Edgar and Frances were already living together as man and wife, and thanks to Frances they had not had to wait long for their dream shop. It was not situated in a West-country Cathedral town, but in a narrow street off the sea-front of the Welsh holiday resort of Llandudno, and to get it, and stock it, Frances had sold her cottage and furniture, and mortgaged all that remained of her father's small legacy.

She had, in effect, staked everything on Edgar, and her impulsive generosity had paid off more quickly than most gambles, for Edgar, released at last into a sphere where he
could employ his natural abilities, and determined above all to prove to Frances that he possessed such abilities, began to develop a new personality within a week of his abdication from Number Seventeen.

The change was astonishing, even to Frances, who had seen how near he had come to foundering during the transition period. He lost his timidity and reserve, and with it the slight stutter that he had exhibited when dealing with the tougher type of customer. He gained, with this confidence, an excess of physical energy, that swept him into sale-rooms, and house-auctions, to stand hour after hour, while the auctioneers barked their way through the lots. When his moments arrived, when the lots that he had ticked off on his catalogue came under the hammer, he sang out his bids in a loud, clear voice, and went on bidding, right up to his limit, his steadiness giving other dealers the impression that he was a man not to be trifled with, one quite prepared to pay “over the odds” for anything he had set his heart upon. He even started local fashions among amateur collectors, popularising paperweights, Toby jugs, and china cottages, so that, within a year of their settling in Llandudno, there were no paper-weights, or Toby jugs, or china cottages to be found for miles around.

People, often professional people, began to canvass his opinions about pictures and china at the sales and views. “Would you go for that, Mr. Frith?” “Is it really Doctor Wall, or is it much later, Mr. Frith?”, and under this modest flattery he began to expand, like a wispy little plant in strong sunshine. And Frances, noting as much, was proud and glad.

Frances he treated like a young wife in the first flush of married courtship. He brought her flowers—freesia, cream roses, and huge, golden iris. He held back little pieces of antique jewellery that he came across at the sales, brooches, cameos, and earrings, and presented them to her not as anniversary gifts, but small, unexpected tokens of his love, offering them with reverence, like a pagan worshipper expressing gratitude for a rich harvest, or a male firstborn.

When his ardour showed no signs of cooling, when she was sure that his devotion had little to do with physical gratification, but was simply the outward manifestation of a great humility, she was able to see him as she had never previously
seen him, a small man, with an infinite capacity to create happiness in people around him, a little man with vast reserves of patience, and a rare, male gentleness, that made him seem so much bigger than most of the men she had known. When she saw him like this she sometimes wondered about Esther, his wife, and, because she was herself both generous and gentle, the realisation of all that Esther had missed, and all that Edgar must have suffered during the sterile years of his marriage, made her a little sad.

When the business was fully established, and when Elaine (whose catlike smile frightened Frances somewhat) had left their little flat over the shop, and gone her way as a living-in receptionist at The Falconer, over at Colwyn Bay, Frances sent down into Kent for Pippa, her twelve-year-old daughter. Pippa arrived, wide-eyed and wondering, with just enough coltish curiosity to ask embarrassingly direct questions about “Uncle Edgar”. This questioning phase did not last very long, for Pippa loved the Middle Ages and learning this Edgar took time off from his sales to conduct her on personal tours of the local castles. He need not have bothered to revisit Conway and Beaumaris, for he won Pippa's confidence and affection on the first of these expeditions to Caernarvon, introducing her, as it were, to an Edward the First who obligingly stepped out of the history text-books in order to explain to her just why he came to Wales and why he built the castles.

After that there were no more questions and no more lifted eyebrows on her part when Edgar jumped up to anticipate the slightest wish of her mother, or display old-world courtesy in piloting Frances to a chair near the fire, lifting her feet to place them on the humpty.

Pippa was a good-tempered child, grateful for the smaller mercies of life. She had not been very happy in her aunt's spotless bungalow, at Sevenoaks, and had been very bored there during the week-ends, when Aunt Phoebe spent so much of her time at church. Aunt Phoebe, she reflected, seemed to know very little history, only a few facts about the Protestant Martyrs, while “Uncle Edgar”, who made such a fuss of mother, seemed to know almost everything, and never
answered a question with “Because it
is
so!”, not even when it was close to bedtime.

Whenever he was explaining anything to her, Pippa noticed that her mother listened and smiled, her feet on the humpty, her book lowered to her lap, and the child came to the conclusion that she smiled because Edgar's patience with questions was one more proof that he was hopelessly in love with her. She did not fully understand how this state of affairs could exist. Aunt Phoebe had told her that the man mummy had “gone into partnership with” was married, and lived in London, and these facts were difficult to reconcile with the knowledge that he obviously lived there, with her mother, and had nothing whatever to do with a wife in London or anywhere else.

The mystery, however, intrigued her more than it worried her, and after a time she came to take Uncle Edgar for granted, supposing that certain business partnerships demanded a closer collaboration than others, and that some partners even had to share a bedroom in order that business projects might be discussed far into the night.

Perhaps life with Aunt Phoebe, who was a spinster, and Chairman of the St. Andrews' Church Guild, had left Pippa more naïve than most twelve-year-olds. Perhaps both Edgar and Frances encouraged her in her views on the partnership, or perhaps they were all three too happy to bother, one way or the other.

4

Elaine Frith stayed on as receptionist at The Falconer for nearly two years after she had left the flat over the antique shop at Llandudno, in order to make way for Pippa.

She was a good receptionist, popular with guests and management, and she might have stayed at the hotel much longer than two years, had it not been for the arrival, in the Spring of 1934, of the Great Eugene, illusionist and spellbinder, who stayed at the best hotels whenever he was playing, whether he could afford it or not.

The Great Eugene swept into the foyer of The Falconer with a swish of his crimson-lined cloak, and an imperious
tapping of his gold-headed cane upon Elaine's glass-topped reception desk. He tapped because Elaine, at that moment, was working the telephone switchboard, and had kept him waiting a moment or two. When she looked up and saw him she abandoned the switchboard, and turned upon him that demure, yet oddly provocative look that had once caused the middle-aged males of the Avenue to glance over their shoulders at her slowly receding figure as she passed to and from Number Seventeen.

The Great Eugene was not specially privileged in this respect. Every unaccompanied male who shewed up at Elaine's reception desk was the target, for a few fleeting seconds, of this curiously disturbing look, a glance that hovered somewhere between extreme feminine modesty, sweet feminine submissiveness, and the merest hint of something a little more up-to-date.

The Great Eugene, a specialist in illusion of every kind was not fooled by it for an instant, but he nevertheless stopped tapping, stood back, and bowed from the waist, recognising at once that Elaine was not the kind of receptionist one tapped for.

He then reciprocated her look by turning upon her his full battery of charm, a charm that had coaxed shy young ladies out of their seats and into his stage sentry-box all the way from Fort William to Sheerness, simply in order that they might disappear and reappear at the staccato clap of his hands. This clap usually prefaced heartier clapping from the auditorium, for the Great Eugene, at his best, had been a very popular turn, and his guillotine trick had been said to conjure screams of horror from strong men and once, on the Northern Circuit, cause a retired Major-General to faint into the arms of a programme-seller.

All this, however, had happened some time ago, before the talkies and the radio had tapped his audiences. He was past his best now, still impressive, still unrivalled in the field of ironic patter, and still almost handsome in white tie, tails, and crimson-lined cloak, but perhaps a little too heavily veined about the nose and cheeks, and a little too obviously breathless if second-house patter was demanded too soon after the interval.

Elaine looked at him with lively interest. She had seen him billed about the town during the previous week, and there was no, mistaking his spare, impressive figure, his Mephisto-phelian eyebrows, and trim, French Imperial.

“Have you a booking, Mr. Eugene?”

She knew, none better, that he had no booking, but she wanted to show him that he was recognised. She had met a number of people in show business since coming to work at The Falconer, and soon learned that this was the best method of impressing them.

His hooded eyes held her in a warm smile.

“You know me? But this is flattering, this is balm, dear lady!”

He always addressed young women in this way. It was a kind of double bluff, a means of informing them that he was quite prepared to pretend that he was modest, but that they must never let themselves be persuaded that he actually was.

“But of course I know you, Mr. Eugene! You were at Llandudno last week, and Rhyl the week before.
Everybody
knows you!”

She did not tell him that she made a point of reading the show column in the local weekly, but let it be assumed, without exactly saying as much, that she followed his career breathlessly, week after week. Perhaps because he was getting old and tired, he began to glow, and took her plump hand in his, raising it to his lips with an air of restrained bravado.

“You are kind, most kind,” he said, “and there is not so much kindness abroad but that it should go unrewarded! Tell me, dear lady, what do you say to us making an exchange of bookings? You will book me, in your best single with bath, and I will book you, in the best stall unsold?”

“I think that's a lovely idea, Mr. Eugene.” She smiled into his eyes, and made a pretence of looking at the sheet in front of her, moving her forefinger up and down the columns before adding: “Number Twelve! That's our best single. It's on the side, but it has a wonderful view of the woods.”

She rang the bell for the page, and unhooked a key. While her back was turned he took a ticket from his pocket, and
scrawled
“Complimentary—Eugene”
across it, in handwriting that matched his cloak.

“This is for tonight,” he said, with another little bow. “Perhaps, if you are amused, you may wish to come a second time. Is tonight convenient?”

It was quite convenient Elaine had a choice of three nights a week off during the early part of the season, and seven-thirty found her settled in the front row of the stalls, waiting impatiently through a juggling act, the turn of a Lancashire comedian, and a tenor who. sang
Boots
and then
The Road to Mandalay
as an encore, until at last the Great Eugene swept on from the wings. He struck a conventional attitude while the stagehands wrestled with his gilded paraphernalia, and the orchestra obliged with excerpts moderately suggestive of snake-charmers, caravans, nautch-girls, bazaars, dromedaries, and the Battle of Tel-el-Kebir.

Elaine was surprised to find herself liking the act. There was, it was true, nothing very original about his performance as a whole. A young woman wearing tights and a glacial smile appeared and disappeared with bewildering rapidity, coloured handkerchiefs were produced by the dozen from transparent jars, strings of razor blades dripped steadily from Eugene's mouth, and a duck, protesting bitterly, was whisked from beneath the brown trilby hat of a volunteer, who might or might not have been a stand-in.

It was all very polished and effective, but Elaine had a feeling that either she had seen it all before, or, she had once heard someone describe it, movement by movement.