Soon afterwards they took the path home. On the way, once the mansion was safely beyond the trees, she asked him who could have lived there.
“Why, the Squire,” he said; “Squires always lived in manors. They had hundreds of scullions, and heaps of horses. They had big dogs that bit poachers, and when they grew old, they put great, thick bandages on their feet, and cursed people who banged against them.”
“Do you mean they cut their feet purposely?” she asked, immensely impressed by his vast store of knowledge, and assuming that the bandaged feet were part of a strange, manorial ritual.
For the first time since their meeting he confessed to half-ignorance.
“I don't know what the bandages were for,” he admitted, “but they always had them. It was a sign of being a squire. Perhaps it was chilblains.”
And then, as they emerged from the wood, and into the meadow, “I'm going to be a Squire when I grow up, and perhaps I'll live there.”
She said nothing, but it occurred to her how wonderful it would have been it he had said “We'll live there”, instead of “I'll live there”. On reflection, however, this struck her as ungrateful to God, for giving her such a wonderful morning, and the courage not to run screaming when she had found herself alone in the gazebo. Perhaps, in time, he would invite her to join him on an estate. In the meantime, she must say nothing to anybody, not even Louise, and strive only to please him.
They reached the Avenue and crossed it.
“This is my house.” he told her, pausing outside Number Twenty-Two.
“I know,” she said, and with singing heart turned into Number Twenty.
CHAPTER IV
Miss Clegg Takes A Lodger
1
THE Misses Clegg, Edith, and Becky, qualified as the Avenue's oldest inhabitants. This was not on account of their age, for in 1919 Edith was forty-six and Becky forty-three, and the doyen of the Avenue was Grandpa Barnmeade, of Number One Hundred and Two, who had served at Omdurman, but because the Misses Clegg had moved into the Avenue as long ago as 1911, when the “Rec” end of the Crescent was still unbuilt.
The Cleggs came from a tiny parish in North Devon, where their father, the Rev. Hugh Clegg, D.D., had been vicar for over forty years. When he died, they had good reasons for moving far away from the area in which they had been born and brought up, and Edith chose the Avenue because it was the most rurally situated terrace house offered her by the London house-agents.
At first she had been very homesick for the open skies of Exmoor, and the thin, misty rain that fell so persistently throughout eight months of the year, but as time went on she found herself preferring the casual neighbourliness of the suburb, and the undoubted convenience of the shops, to the stifling intimacy of the Devon village, and the wretched isolation of the grim old parsonage in which they had lived so long.
Moreover, the Avenue seemed to suit Becky, whose “spells” had become far less frequent in the last few years, and were now limited to less than one a month, not counting those brought on by the spring air-raids of 1917.
All along the Avenue Becky was known as “the dippy sister.” This was chiefly on account of her occasional appearances, in the garden of Number Four, in a flannel nightdress, with her thick chestnut hair hanging down her back, but Becky's immodesty in this respect had nothing to do with her “spells”; they were occasioned by genuine anxiety for her cat, Lickapaw.
Lickapaw was a huge, sullen-faced Tom, who repaid his mistress's frantic devotion by disappearing for long periods, in search of fresh wives. He sometimes stayed away a week, but he always came home in the end, to nurse his damaged whiskers and renew his spent vitality, on heaped-up platefuls of fresh fish and saucer after saucer of milk, spooned from the top of the can.
Under Becky's ministrations Lickapaw quickly recovered from the effects of his sporadic debauchery, putting on flesh again, and sleeping, for days at a stretch, in the best armchair. Sometimes he slept for more than a week, occupying the chair all day, and the foot of Becky's bed at night, and on these nights she sometimes stayed awake until the small hours, delighting in his weight on her feet, and hardly daring to move for fear of disturbing his recuperative slumbers.
Ultimately, however, he always went off into the nursery garden again, and then, night after night, Becky would “fish” for him, standing on a box placed against the fence that divided the Avenue gardens from the nursery, and dangling a piece of hake, or a kipper, from the end of a long string.
These moonlit matinées were a source of great delight to the Carver boys, and to other children living lower down the Avenue. They would stay out late, risking good hidings on their return, solely for the pleasure of seeing Miss Clegg, looking a little like Lady Macbeth, jerk her kipper over the six-foot fence and call: “Lickapaw! Lickapaw! Come away from those nasty strays!”
Edith, Becky's sister, jeopardised the popularity her natural warmth and generosity had earned among the children, by seeking to cut these entertainments short, and by tugging gently at Becky's nightdress, until she reluctantly stepped down from the box, and went disconsolately to bed.
Poor Edith spent most of her life tugging her sister's garments, in one way or another, but she would not have had it otherwise, for her loving care of Becky, besides being a sisterly obligation, was part of a lifelong penance, imposed by the conviction that it was she, in large measure, who was responsible for Becky's periodical lapses.
On nights like these, and those during Becky's “spells”, Edith's memory reconstructed every detail of that soft June night nearly twenty years ago, when Becky, a radiant young girl madly in love, had been compelled to confide in her sister because she needed money to elope with Saul Cooper, the painter who had bewitched her.
Parson Clegg's wife had died when Becky was born, and the tubby little man had resisted all the efforts of his parishioners to get him married again. Instead, he had sunk into a morose half-life, content to perform the barest minimum of his parochial duties, and devoting the greater part of his time to building model ships.
His study, where he should have been writing sermons, became his workshop, and dozens of calf-bound theological works were pulled from the shelves to make room for the exquisitely-made galleons, and carracks, and clippers, he fashioned. He seldom addressed more than a word or two to his daughters, and throughout her adolescence Edith had been obsessed by the fear that the Church Authorities would dismiss him for neglect of duty, and throw them all into the street.
They never did, however, and she came to believe that he must have had some influence with them, of which she was unaware.
One winter morning, on his way back from a funeral, he staggered and fell as he passed through the lych gate, dying an hour or so later of coronary thrombosis.
That was in 1909, years after the Saul Cooper scandal, and Edith had had the two of them on her hands ever since she found Becky abandoned in London, and had successfully fought her father, and parish busybodies, on the issue of bringing Becky home again, and not sending her to an institution.
Edith was never able to discover anything of importance about the man who had shattered Becky's health, and had reduced her, in the space of a few months, to a semi-imbecile. Nor, for that matter, was she ever able to learn much of what happened after the night Becky stole into her room, kissed her, took the wash-leather bag containing fifteen gold sovereigns, and said: “I'm going now, Edie darling!”
In the morning there was the terrible scene with her father, the meeting with the vicar's warden and, later, with the Bishop; the futile visits of Parson Clegg to the police in Barnstaple, and ultimately, the ill-spelled letter from a stranger, who kept a boarding-house in Lambeth.
Even now Edith shuddered when she recalled her arrival outside that boarding-house. It was a shabby stucco villa, in a sunless street off the Embankment. Inside the narrow entrance passage there was a strong smell of cabbage, and rancid cooking fat. The stairs were so dark that Edith had to grope her way up, despite the se
rvices of the elderly slut who admitted her, and on the uncarpeted landing, where the pervading stench suggested something more unpleasant than cabbage water, the landlady had wheezed her version of events.
“She's in there now. Can't get nothing out of her. Been bashed about, she has. He's gone, owing three weeks. Never saw much of 'im when he was here. Heard 'em ‘avin' a fight or two, but never took much note. Get used to it in my line o' business. Learn not to stick your nose in too far!”
“How did you find my address?” Edith had asked, fighting her nausea, and trying hard to control her trembling limbs. “Did my sister tell you about me?”
“Not her,” said the slut, with a mirthless chuckle. “She ain't in no state to tell nothing. See for yourself!” And she flung open the door of a back bedroom and, marching in, flipped up the blind and let daylight into the hideous little room.
Becky was sitting on the bed, naked except for a short cotton chemise. Her beautiful chestnut hair was loose, obscuring the greater part of her face. Her brown eyes, eyes that had always been so full of laughter, were fixed on the distempered wall immediately opposite, in a stare so blank that Edith knew at once it would be hopeless to expect recognition.
She made a supreme physical effort, and turned back to the landlady.
“Has she had a doctor?”
The woman snorted, “Doctor? I told you, he went off owing three weeks!”
“What about food?”
“She 'asn't touched nothing, not fer days; I tried to feed her once, but she knocked the bowl out of me 'and. Look, you c'n see, if you don't believe me!”
The woman pointed to a large stain on the edge of the filthy blanket. Edith noted, too, that there were faint traces of what appeared to be porridge on Becky's chin. She opened her chain purse, and took out three half-sovereigns.
“Will this pay what she owes? It's all I can spare; I've got to leave enough to get home.”
The sight of the money eased the strain from the woman's face. Truculence gave way to coarse amiability as she reached for the money.
“That'll about cover it. I did right to tell you, didn't I? He must have served her crool. Still, that's men all over, ain't it? I'll get her things together, while you wash an' dress her. There's no trunk. He took that, I reckon.”
Saul had indeed “served her crool”, as Edith discovered the moment she began to wash her sister's limp body. There were long greenish bruises on both thighs, and more recent bruises over the whole area from left shoulder to elbow. One eye was slightly discoloured, and the back of her right hand was puffed and mottled, as though it had been struck with something flat and heavy, in warding off a blow aimed at the head.
Together they did what they could. Becky was dressed and led downstairs. A scrubby-haired youth, the son of the slut, went along the Embankment to fetch a cab, and as Edith was settling her sister inside, and preparing to enter herself, the landlady imparted one final piece of information.
“There was a kid, you know. Born dead, so I 'eard, a bit before time!”
That was all Edith was ever able to learn about Becky's brief absence from the vicarage. She never discovered whether Saul had actually married the girl, or whether the child had been still-born, or had died within days. When Becky made a partial recovery her mind resisted all attempts to probe into the immediate past. This could only be guessed at through her behaviour during her “spells”, the “getting-ready” spell, the “layette” spell, and, most upsetting of all, the “getting-supper-for-Saul” spell.
Apart from these flashbacks Becky's mind dwelt exclusively in the more distant past, in her childhood and girlhood days, up to shortly before the time she had met Saul during a tramp across the Doone Valley.
After a few half-hearted attempts to get at the facts Edith was content to let her sister remain there, chattering happily of half-forgotten croquet tournaments, and Sunday School picnics, and talking of long-dead parishioners as though, at any moment, they might call at the Vicarage to put up banns, or discuss a forthcoming bazaar. Even Lickapaw the cat did not really belong to the present, but was identified with a cat the sisters had owned, jointly, as children.
Edith had long since adjusted herself to moving in and out of this shadow world. She would converse with her sister gravely about an epidemic of scarlet fever in Devon, in 1890, as though it was a current topic and, a moment later, walk to the back door and deal with a tradesman, or hawker. Physically, her sister could do almost everything for herself, having relearned the habits of every-day life under her sister's patient tuition, during the long period they spent together in the rented bungalow at Simonsbath, soon after Becky's initial stay in hospital had ended.
Becky's mental age was now about seven, and it was only during a “spell” that Edith had to watch her closely. Sometimes a “spell” lasted all day, more often only an hour or so. They invariably followed the same pattern: a frenzied packing of clothes, an equally frenzied “spell” of knitting, and a tearful appeal to visit the shops in order to buy baby's clothes. A “getting supper spell” involved a general upheaval in the kitchen, where Becky would solemnly pour everything she could lay hands on into a large bowl and, after a long stir, tip the mixture into a frying-pan, “because Saul will have everything, fried”!
Edith coped very well with the “spells”, but not quite so efficiently with the family finances. In one of his rare communicative moods, shortly before his death, Parson Clegg had said to her: “There'll be enough, Edie—not much, mind you, but enough, providing you're careful.” And then, a few moments before his death, he said a strange thing. Catching Edith by the hand he spoke slowly and clearly, straight into her ear.
“Look after Edie,” he said; and came as near to winking as matters. He must have meant to say “Becky”, of course, and Edith was relieved to hear him say it, for it implied forgiveness on his part, but she had never understood the solemn wink. In all the years they had lived together, she never recalled seeing her father wink and, even allowing for the circumstances, and the fact that he had only just emerged from a coma, the wink upset Edith more than his sudden death, and remained vividly in mind long after the pattern of the final scene had become blurred.
About the time Jim Carver came home, and Esme bewitched Judith in the gazebo of the old Manor, Edith Clegg received her first letter from the Barnstaple solicitors, who were executors for Parson Clegg's modest fortune.
She had to put on her steel-rimmed spectacles, and read the letter at least three times before she perceived, behind a number of finely-turned legal phrases, that the communication was a piece of well-meant advice to take stock of her financial position.
Parson Clegg had left uninvested capital of about £2,500 (to her dying day Edith never discovered its source: it could never have been saved from his stipend), and each Friday, since the old man's death, Edith had drawn a cheque on the local bank for fifty shillings. Only on rare occasions was she left with more than a copper or two when the week ended, and in her simple, uncomplicated mind she put this down to careful housekeeping on her part. She made no allowances for the rising costs of living after 1914; indeed, it is doubtful if she was more than half aware of them, for she never bought a newspaper. All her war news came through the agency of Mr. Piretta, the rosy-faced, ever-smiling grocer, in the corner shop.
Occasionally, however, there were lump-sum expenditures—a tweed costume, a chair-cover, settlement of rates and, every quarter, the rent. To cover these contingencies Edith drew a monthly cheque of ten pounds, so that her expenditure ran into something under three hundred a year. Parson Clegg died in 1909, so that his capital had now dwindled to just over £1,000. It was pointed out to Edith that if she continued spending at the present rate, she would be penniless in less than five years.
The letter, once she had thoroughly understood it, brought her up with a severe jolt. She was not a fool, and realised immediately that she must invest the remaining money, and then set about earning some more. Never having earned a penn
y in her entire life, she sought advice from the nearest source, the local bank manager.
This gentleman, who had that sound common-sense proverbial among managers of small banks, promptly invested her £1,000 in gilt-edged and, after questioning her for over an hour on the limited possibilities, advised her to set up as a music-teacher, and let one of her bedrooms.
Once she got used to the idea the prospect of earning her living delighted her, and she went about the preliminaries with a promptness that took the bank manager (convinced until then that he was dealing with an impoverished aristocrat) by surprise. She advertised for pupils in the local paper, and for lodgers in the drawing-room window. The results were immediate and gratifying. In less than a month she had twelve music pupils at two guineas a quarter, and had let her back bedroom to Ted Hartnell.
Edith had chosen a propitious time to advertise for music pupils. All over the suburb mothers were dragging their children to the piano-stool. There was a boom in scales and short pieces. Tin-Pan Alley was cock-a-hoop. More sheet-music was being sold than at any time in history and, of all musical instruments, the piano far outstripped all others in suburban popularity. At any time between the hours of 4 and 7 p.m. a passer-by, pausing outside almost any of the detached, semi-detached, or terrace houses between the Lower Road and Shirley Rise, could hear a cacophony of blundered scales issuing from the open windows of the drawing-rooms (as parlours were now known) for every other house possessed a cottage piano, at which two or more of the family took turns to pick their way through the shorter and simpler excerpts of Schubert, or the inevitable Down on the Farm jingles. On a summer evening in 1919 one might have heard half a dozen renderings of A Merry Peasant Returning from Work, L'Orage, or Autumn Ride in the Avenue alone, and the leather music-case, in the hands of sullen-faced boys or their pig-tailed sisters, became as familiar in the street as the school satchel.
The Dreaming Suburb Page 4