The Dreaming Suburb (46 page)

She bit her lip, reflecting that it was irritating to be as transparent as all that, but she answered honestly enough:

“No, I'm not getting anywhere, Eugene, but I'd reconciled myself to that before I met you!”

His hesitancy left him. He got up from the chair, re-seated himself on the edge of the bed, and took one of her hands in both of his, regarding her earnestly, but affectionately.

“My dear, you're such a waste, stuck in that little glass box downstairs. You should have adventure while you're young! The world's waiting to play in! Have you ever thought of that?”

She had expected him to be much more original. This speech, she thought, might have been lifted from one of the first batch of paper-backed reprints that she had once hidden under the floor of her bedroom, at Number Seventeen. He did not even look like a lover, pleading his cause, but more like a family doctor, prescribing a convalescent holiday.

She left her hand limply in his. “Where could I go, and what could I do?” she wanted to know.

“You could come with me. You could join me next week, before I move on to Shrewsbury. I need somebody like you in the act; the fact is, I'd get much better bookings with a girl like you.”

She was surprised to hear him say this. She had imagined, until that moment, that he used his act as a bait for mistresses,
that an invitation to join him in show business was merely his shop window, of a kind employed by all men of the theatre with designs upon women much younger than themselves. It was so in the books, and all she had to go upon as yet were the books.

“But what would I have to
do
?” she demanded with a directness that he, in turn, found irritating.

“The same as you did at the matinée, but we should improve on it of course. With you I could work up new business”—he used the word “business” in the entertainer's, not the tradesman's sense—“and an act like mine is always enhanced by the presence of a pretty woman, whether she takes an active part, or simply stands around, handing me the things I need.”

As he spoke he saw her in the kind of costume he would provide for her out of an agent's advance, an ice-rink costume, perhaps, of tight satin, trimmed with fur, or better still an extravagent, feminine parody of an early nineteenth-century military costume, with rakishly-tilted shako, and skintight breeches, and half-length Russian boots. Benny Boy, his agent, would like that, he might even pay for a set of photographs to display in the foyer. He would tell her just how to stand and just how to turn upstage with a slight flounce. Her next question cut harshly into his speculations.

“How much would I get?”

He shrugged. “What do they pay you here?”

She told him, thirty-five shillings and full board. It was the truth. Usually she only lied to her mother.

“I could do better than that, even on Number Two circuits,” he told her.

“But it wouldn't be steady, not like this job.”

“No, that's true, but at least you'd be free to go where you liked, and do what you liked on seven mornings and five afternoons a week,” he reminded her.

There certainly was that about it. She had already timed his act—twenty minutes, twice nightly, and an extra forty minutes for matinées. In all only three-and-a-half hours a week!

He watched her working out the sum, and suddenly decided that he had sadly underestimated her intelligence. He was
sure now that she would accept his offer as an assistant on stage, but beyond that he was sure of nothing. How long might he have to support her in separate hotel rooms? How likely was she to make a fool of him by forming a romantic association with another and younger artiste, so that he would be faced with the prospect of paying for somebody else's fun? He began to panic a little. Perhaps he had been too hasty, perhaps she would be wildly indignant when she discovered that he was already supporting a wife and child, neither of whom he had seen for years, and was, in addition, contributing irregular sums towards the maintenance of another child, not many years younger than herself? After all, she had no theatrical background, and probably did not understand these things. Her accent told him that she had been brought up in a London suburb; even suppose he did, after a tedious spell of wooing, manage to get her to bed, wasn't she the type who would expect him to marry her on that account? He had neither time nor money to waste on wooing. He was getting on, and good bookings weren't too easy to find.

He made up his mind to put everything to the touch. It might end in a scene, but he was accustomed to scenes, and an expert in escaping from them. It was better than this uncertainty, and far safer than the terrifying risk of saddling himself with a dud, who might easily develop into a dismal obligation.

He got up, and took her other hand, raising them slowly to his lips, and looking down on her.

“This is a very big decision to make, my dear. Perhaps you should sleep on it. I am not sure how much you understand of these things?”

She understood far more than he had imagined, as her next action proved beyond doubt. Firmly she withdrew her hands and swung her legs round to the floor. For a moment he thought that she was going to walk out on him, and his mind, trained in such reflexes, grappled with the physical problems of getting clear before she could call the manager. He even began to rehearse high-toned rebuttals of the hysterical accusations she might make, should he fail to escape.

But it was her turn to surprise him. She crossed the little room, turned the key in the door, and came straight back to him. He looked so astonished that she laughed, outright.

“I'm
not
a child, Eugene,” she said, “and even when I was I always understood ‘these things', as you put it!”

She picked up his hat and cloak, and tossed them on the armchair. Methodically, and without the slightest sign of haste or embarrassment, she began to unbutton her highnecked blouse.

ABOUT
the time that Elaine was being fitted for her hussar costume, and Sydney was introducing his typist girl-friend to his mother, a beribbonéd taxi drew up outside Number Four, and the Misses Clegg, both dressed in green costumes, smelling strongly of camphor and lavender, issued sedately from the gate and rode off in chirrupy high spirits to attend dear Teddy's wedding, at the Outram Crescent Primitive Methodist Chapel.

There were, indeed, active stirrings in several of the houses at that end of the Avenue, as the big lilac at Number One Hundred and Fourteen began to bloom, and tiny, white flowers appeared on the privets behind the looped chains that linked the gateposts of the crescent.

It was the Spring during which Esme Fraser set out on his three-year Odyssey and the month that Jim Carver took to ruminating in Manor Woods, which he had seldom had time to visit throughout these committee-studded years; it was the season that his younger daughter, Judith, moved away from the Avenue, and went down into Devonshire, with that hatchet-faced employer of hers, in order to start a new riding-school on the edge of the moors, overlooking the Channel. It was also the season that Louise decided she could
regulate her cooking time-table by inviting her silent fiance to take up permanent residence in Number Twenty, instead of having him come in from the Nursery at mid-day, and cause her to begin cooking all over again at six p.m. when Jim returned for his evening meal.

These events might appear to be unrelated to one another. They were, after all, the outcome of unrelated dreams, on the part of the individuals who ordered them, but in another sense they were related. It was the bustle of Teddy's wedding, to which she and her father had been invited, that had stirred the placid Louise into considering her own prospects of marriage, and it was Louise's decision that decided Judy to accept Maud Somerton's invitation to accompany her to Devonshire.

Similarly, it was Edgar Frith's letter to Sydney, telling him that Elaine had thrown up her hotel job and gone on the stage, that finally decided Esme to accept his former Headmaster's advice, and set out on his writer's apprenticeship journey around Britain. Sydney knew all about Esme's hopeless infatuation for his sister, and was unable to resist passing on the astonishing news of her second flight, if only for the pleasure of watching Esme's expression when he realised that Elaine had now passed out of his life for ever. Sydney often went out of his way to pass bad news on to acquaintances. He had never quite found a substitute for the little spurts of pleasure he had once derived from reporting delinquents to the Headmaster, when he was head boy of the private school in the Lower Road.

So Esme and Judith disappeared from the Avenue for a period, and Jim Carver took time off from his party rallies and open-air meetings in order to marshal his thoughts regarding the state of the world as he walked the cool aisles of the Old Manor beeches. But Ted Hartnell, to Edith's unspeakable delight, did not disappear from the Avenue. He took Harold Godbeer's advice, and made a down-payment on Number Forty-Five, not two minutes' walk down the Avenue; here he brought Margy, his bride, when they returned from their honeymoon in Blackpool, to set up a dance orchestra with a style, and a
sound
of its own, more ambitious,
and more original than Al Swingers’ “Rhythmateers”. For so Margy had decided, and Margy was now sole custodian of Ted's future.

Neither the bride nor the groom were Primitive Methodists. Margy had never been inside a church since she was christened, and Ted spent his Sundays rehearsing, or playing gramophone records. Margy's “comfortable” aunt, however, was an active Primitive Methodist. As it was she who provided the wedding breakfast, and gave them a walnut bedroom suite for a wedding present, they felt they owed it to her to be married in the church for which she had also provided hassocks and hymn-books, and where the Reverend Owen B. Hughes, resident minister, regarded her as more essential than all his worshippers lumped together.

It is to be wondered, perhaps, what the Reverend Owen B. Hughes thought of the arch of band instruments under which the happy couple walked when they emerged from the Chapel, with his nuptial advice ringing in their ears. Jazz bands were not encouraged among the congregation of the Outram Crescent Chapel. True, jazzy orchestras of sackbuts, dulcimers, and timbrels cropped up in the Old Testament from time to time, but these were almost invariably played upon by unbelievers, or at times during the active persecution of the elect, as on the occasion when Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were thrust into a fiery furnace. However, the bride's aunt was a very generous friend of the Chapel, and even had she not been, Al Swinger and his boys had served no formal notice on Mr. Hughes that they intended to regard the wedding of their drummer as an occasion to make merry and advertise the band.

Accordingly, the minister was obliged to stand aside with a tolerant smile while flash-bulbs sparked off on his church steps, and Ted and Majgy paused for photographs under an arch of saxophones and drumsticks. Then they went rushing into the taxi, and shot off down Outram Crescent with a “Just Married” notice on the luggage grid, and the remains of an old kettledrum trailing on ten yards of string.

Edith Clegg wept during the ceremony. She had, by now, both met and approved Teddy's wife, a pleasant, animated little thing, she thought, nothing like as pretty as her new
lodger, Jean Mclntyre, but just the kind of wife dear Teddy needed—someone to
plan
for him, and to make sure that he
got
somewhere, someone to offset his willingness to be
used,
as that horrid, pasty-faced Al Swinger had used him so shamelessly all these years.

Edith made up her mind about Margy the first day that Teddy brought her into Number Four for supper. From that day forth she never ceased to encourage Teddy to marry, and settle down. Margy, having no mother-in-law to cope with, did not underestimate Edith's influence on him, and had taken swift advantage of Teddy's brief absence after supper. With the wide-eyed Becky looking on she had said:

“He won't push for himself, Miss Clegg, he just lets people use him, and bully him, and he's great, Miss Clegg, he's got something hardly any of us have got ... a sort of ...
reverence
for rhythm, that's so different from the attitude of the run-of-the-mill drummers. He's got an ear too, a wonderful ear ... he can play any instrument he tries, the trumpet, the sax, the piano even.... I've heard him, when we've been rehearsing, and he's got a
beat,
the sort of beat that can take him right to the top, if only he's carefully handled!”

She looked full into Edith's radiant face. “I'm going to
see
that he gets there, Miss Clegg, you just watch! He doesn't know it yet, but I'm going to
see
that he gets there!”

He soon did know it, for she told him on the final day of their honeymoon, when they had settled themselves in the main-line train at Crewe, on the last lap of their journey back to London.

They had had a wonderful time, thirteen recklessly extravagant days of eating, and dancing, and Big Dipper riding, and thirteen wonderful nights, such as are given to few honey-mooners. Although very much in love, they were an unexacting couple, and made love almost absentmindedly, their thoughts continuing to range on other subjects, even as they lay silently together in the impressively appointed hotel suite, listening to the scamper of hurrying feet on the pavements outside, and the goodnight lullabies of the Tower Ballroom Orchestra, playing
Roll Along Kentucky Moon,
and
Stormy Weather.

Sometimes they would even discuss these numbers as Margy nestled lower on his shoulder.

“They're going back a bit with that one, aren't they, Ted ... ? They don't seem to use the latest ones much up here. Never hear
A Night in Napoli
or
A Street in Old Seville.”

And he would reply: “Aw—that vocalist they've got this week isn't all she's cracked up to be, Margy! She doesn't
give
the way you do, she's too stiff somehow. That interval number tonight, what was it, again?”