The Dreaming Suburb (50 page)

The nurse came up after supper and felt his pulse. She stood looking at her watch for a moment, and then slipped her hand inside his pyjama jacket, noting, with detached interest, a faded tattoo sketch of a simpering woman, with an exaggerated hour-glass waist, that covered half his broad chest. Finally she laid both his hands on Maria's beautifully starched sheets, and went to the top of the stairs, calling:

“Mrs. Carver! Are you there, Mrs. Carver? Please come at once!”

There were hurrying feet on the stairs as she turned back to the bed. Toni opened his eyes again but he did not see them crowd into the room, or hear Maria's sobs, and Archie's questions. Instead he heard the voices of boys singing a ditty of long ago, half a jeer and half a greeting, as he pushed his painted cart up the Newcastle terraces, and the urchins sang, in their thick, Geordie brogue:

Oh, oh Antonio,
You left me on my own-y-o !

The moon over the Lane elms sailed out behind the cloud-banks, and in silent wonder he watched it ride. Then the grey hairs of his moustache stirred once again and were still.

MANY
of the Avenue folk trailed up to the West End in May 1935 and spent an amusing, uncomfortable night on the pavements, awaiting the Jubilee procession.

On the whole they were mildly impressed by the spectacle, and more so by the warm domesticity of the occasion, but the older ones among them went home a little disappointed, declaring that, as a spectacle, it was not to be compared with Victoria's Diamond Jubilee.

Neither was it, thought Jim, reflecting that in June, 1897, when the Avenue was not even built, the Cockneys who lined the streets to see the little old lady pass had never heard of Depressions and Strikes, or Mons and the Somme. They had thought of the German Emperor as a huge joke, much funnier (yet somehow built on a much grander scale) than his successor, even now screaming away at the Berlin Chancellery, and looking more like Charlie Chaplin than someone out of a Wagnerian opera, and wearing a clipped moustache, instead of that ridiculous, eagle-crested helmet the Kaiser had worn.

Everything, indeed, had been on a greatly reduced scale: the street decorations, good as they were, the uniforms of the troops, and even the monarch himself. Yet the Avenue would not have had him any different, for they felt that a personal relationship existed between this King and themselves. Victoria had always seemed to them an exalted, aloof Lady-of-the-Manor, whereas this kind and earnest man spoke to them all so naturally over the radio each Christmas Day, and went to
Bognor, just as they did, when he needed a convalescent holiday.

Most of the Avenue were there, and cheered lustily, particularly when the Prince of Wales came past their pitch, and no one gave him a louder cheer than Edith Clegg, who was responsible for the outing, having persuaded Jim Carver to organise a party from their end of the Avenue, and travel up the night before, in order to be sure of an uninterrupted view.

Edith had always loved young Edward, whom they had usually called ‘Bertie' in her younger days. In her affections he ran a close second to poor, dear Rudi, and, in some ways, of course, one must even put him in front of Rudi, for had he not travelled all over the world on their behalf, and given the generals, it was said, so much worry during the war, by insisting upon going within range of German shells, which was something kings and princes (not to say generals) never did these days?

So when the Prince rode by, soon after the little Princesses in their pretty pink bonnets had passed, and smiled at her from under his enormous bearskin (it must be teribly hot for him on a day like this, thought Edith), she stood on tiptoe, and asked Jim to steady her, so that she could continue to wave her Union Jack until he was cut off from her view by the Lancers and Hussars, who followed him.

Then the roar of the crowd, thought Edith, sounded like the winter breakers under the cliffs at Hartland so long ago, and Jim told her laughingly that she must reserve a little energy for the King and Queen, who had certainly earned a cheer after all these years of stress and strain.

The day after the Jubilee Edith and Becky set out on their first holiday in more than twenty years. Ted and Margy Hartnell made this possible by inviting them to ride in the back seats of their new Morris, for a short orchestral tour of the West.

Edith accepted gladly, not only because she would have gone anywhere with dear Teddy and his busy little wife, but because she was curious to discover what effect a visit to the West country would have upon her after so many years in the suburb.

It was a very sentimental journey for Edith and Becky. The “Hartnell Eight” established their headquarters at Exeter, playing at a string of seaside resorts close by each night, but on most afternoons Edith and Becky took charabanc trips to all the places they remembered as children. They even visited their father's little parish, now not so little, and rather spoiled, Edith thought, by rows and rows of red-roofed bungalows, a huddle of caravans, and hordes of tall, sunburned girls, with long, bare legs, who walked shamelessly up and down the village street, and powdered their noses at the lych gate of the old, grey church.

They laid some flowers on their parents grave, and Becky dabbed her eyes a little while they were doing it, but Edith was content to click her tongue, and say “There, there, Daddy!” It was all so long ago, and so much had happened since, and she was quite sure that dear Daddy was far happier where he was now that half-naked girls were powdering their noses on the threshold of his church.

They were back in the Avenue again long before the King began to ail, and they heard the radio announcer say that his life was drawing peacefully to a close, as they sat over the little portable set that Margy had given them for Christmas that year.

Edith would have liked to have gone to Westminster, to see the King lying-in-state, but the weather was so bad, and Jim persuaded her not to go, and perhaps it was just as well, for poor, paralysed Miss Baker, of Number One opposite, caught influenza that winter, and nearly died after the day-nurse had left, so that Edith was at hand to look after her throughout January. By Springtime Miss Baker was about again, and could be seen from her downstairs window, looking out through lace curtains on the Shirley end of the Avenue, and thereby restoring a sense of permanence to this end of the crescent.

There was no real permanence, however, for soon that awful business of the Abdication ravaged the odd and even numbers, setting one house against another with a venom that Edith found distressing, for she herself was rabidly pro-Edward, and was always becoming involved with people
who seemed to forget everything the poor boy had done for the Empire, ever since he was a child.

The “Domestic Crisis”, as the papers called it, might have passed off in a few indeterminate tiffs and growls, had it not been for Mrs. Rolfe, a cross-grained woman, who had recently moved into Number Eight. She now set herself up as a kind of censor of royal morals, thereby causing Edith, who had always thought twice about swatting a fly in the kitchen, to commit the single physical assault of a blameless lifetime.

It happened in the twopenny library, at the corner of Cawnpore Road, on the morning after Edward VIII had made his farewell speech over the wireless.

Edith, feeling unusually depressed, had gone to the Lower Road, hoping to find a novel that would take her mind off the dismal news, and here she heard Mrs. Rolfe holding forth on the Abdication, to an unwilling audience of Mr. Carter, the proprietor, and his two girl assistants.

“All I can say,” said Mrs. Rolfe, “is Good Riddance! It's the best thing he could have done, and it'll make everyone happy!”

Edith heard herself addressing Mrs. Rolfe in a cold, edgy voice.

“It doesn't make
me
happy,” she protested, “not one little bit, and
I'd
go so far as to say it shouldn't make
anyone
happy, losing a fine man like that, and making all this stupid, wicked fuss over the poor woman he wanted to marry !”

Mr. Carter, sensing a strained atmosphere between two regular customers, chipped in with a “Now, now, ladies ...”, and the girl assistants began to giggle, but Mrs. Rolfe was the kind of woman who very much enjoyed a friendly argument, particularly with such a poor opponent as the little spinster from Number Four, and she swung round on Edith with:

“So you agree with it, eh? You agree with it? Well, I must say that's a fine thing, coming from someone
I
always thought of as
respectable,
not to say a bit behind the times, if you don't mind me being so frank, Miss Clegg !”

Edith began to tremble, as she invariably did when she was drawn into a quarrel, however mild, but she was by no means
ready to back down and abandon her championship in front of three uncommitted witnesses.

“All I say is that everyone's been
most
ungrateful,” she said, her voice shooting up a key under the stress of emotion. “Last week nobody would hear a word against him, and this week everybody's running him down! That's not fair ... it's ... it's ...” she struggled for the right word, and found it, “it's downright
sanctimoniousl
That's what it is, sanctimonious! And you're not the one to talk either, Mrs. Rolfe, seeing as you've been divorced yourself, so there!”

It was a very reckless speech to make in public, and for a moment Mrs. Rolfe was too surprised, and too outraged, to reply. Edith took advantage of her momentary triumph, to try and effect a rapid exit, but Mrs. Rolfe, who was built on generous lines grabbed her by the arm as she made for the door, and screamed:

“How
dare
you! How
dare
you! What's my being divorced got to do with it? And me the innercent party! Don't you run off, Miss Clegg! I've got more to say to you! Don't you run off!”

Mr. Carter tried, half-heartedly, to intervene, but Mrs. Rolfe shouldered him aside, with a “You stay out o' this, it's nothing to do with you!”

“Kindly let go of my arm,” said Edith, still shaking a little, but with ice-cold rage rather than fear. “If you don't let go of my arm, Mrs. Rolfe, I shall hit you!”

Mrs. Rolfe guffawed. She was, in the opinion of the Avenue, a little too raucous for the neighbourhood, and she had no friends among her neighbours.

“Haw! You will, eh? You and who else? Mrs. Simpson maybe?”

The gibe finished what was left of Edith's self-control. Half-turning, she swung her shopping bag with her free hand, and brought it down with all her force on Mrs. Rolfe's head, sending the pro-Abdicationist staggering back against a. revolving display frame of picture-postcards and this, in turn, overthrew a balanced pyramid of books built upon Carter's counter. Frame, cards, books, arid Mrs, Rolfe crashed through the open counter-flap on to the floor.

Edith waited no longer. Appalled by what she had done
she fled into the Lower Road, but Mrs. Rolfe's cries pursued her—“I'll sue you! Mark me words, 111 sue you!”, and then something about “witnesses”.

Edith arrived home in a state of collapse, and Jean Mclnroy at once sent for Jim Carver, who happened to be home. Between sniffs of smelling-salts and sips of strong tea Edith recounted what had happened, and as a result of her recital Jim visited both Mr. Carter's and Mrs. Rolfe that same day.

What information he obtained from the library, or what emerged from his lengthy interview with Mrs. Rolfe, Edith never discovered, nor did it ever become known along the Avenue. But whatever he said, or threatened, he succeeded in preventing any retaliative action by the aggrieved party. Within weeks of the incident Mrs. Rolfe packed up and moved out, much to the relief of Mrs. Hooper, of Number Six, and of Mrs. Burridge, of Number Ten, although their relief was nothing to that of Edith, who had been picturing herself, despite Jim's constant reassurances, as an inmate of Holloway, without the glory that attached itself to those poor dears of more than twenty years ago, whose incarceration, she recalled, always seemed to begin by their having chained themselves to railings.

So, with this relatively small ripple, the two kings went their ways, and the Avenue soon got used to the new King reigning in their stead. He soon proved that he would follow in his father's footsteps, for he was pictured, in the newspapers, as enjoying a game of
Underneath the Spreading Chestnut Tree,
together with his family, and a group of Boy Scouts.

As the months passed Edith was able to forget poor Edward, even as she had almost fogotten poor dear Rudi, and after all, it
was
rather exciting to reflect that if she outlived this monarch, as she had already outlived his father, grandfather, and great-grandmother, she would be a privileged subject of Elizabeth the Second, and share, perhaps, in the glories of a new and splendid age.

1

THE
long, “heart-to-heart” talk that Esme had with Harold, his stepfather, after Elaine had told him that she was leaving the Avenue, cemented the warm relationship between them that had its origins as far back as Harold's adroit handling of the woman at the fair. From the moment the gypsy woman had been vanquished Esme had respected Harold, and Harold, for his part, had delighted in Esme's confidences. Now he listened to him gravely over a conspiratorial pot of tea in the snug, gaily-painted kitchen and Esme talked freely about Elaine.

Harold did not make the middle-aged error of dismissing the boy's obsession as an infatuation, that “he would soon forget in another girl, or a new interest”. He did not even use the words “calf-love”, for he had suffered enough, during his long courtship of Eunice, to recognise true misery in the boy's face. For all that, he was brisk and realistic in his approach to the matter.