The grocer folded his hands over his broad stomach.
“You don't hava to do that,” he said with authority. “I gotta the lawyer, and he's a-good, he's smart. He fix it. You leava this to me, you leava Maria to me, you leava everything to Toni!”
Archie felt himself lifted on a tide of relief. His heart warmed towards Toni. He did not even want to question him as to how he would fix things, how he would cope with the Gittens, how he would begin to explain the situation to Maria. He was convinced that, in all these things, the little Italian was completely sure of himself, that this was no haphazard shot in the dark on his part, but the final, triumphant unfolding of a long, carefully-planned campaign to secure a son-in-law, a lively young partner, and an heir at one stroke. And in this supposition he was quite correct, for Toni Piretta had had an eye cocked in Archie's direction for more than a year, and this encounter in the “Rec” was simply the direct result of a chance remark he had overheard the previous afternoon, whilst serving Mrs. Baines, of Number Eighty-Seven, with half a pound of streaky.
He realised then that he would have to act quickly, and he already knew exactly what instructions he would give to Messrs. Hibson and Corke, the slightly shady solicitors he had employed in the purchase of his shops. He had one supreme advantage, that of knowing Mrs. Gittens, her daughters, and tram-conductor, Gittens. He knew that they too, in their casual, indolent way, were realists, and would assess the value of a lump sum far above that of an affiliation order, or two affiliation orders. He knew all about maintenance and affiliation orders, and how difficult they were to execute on a footloose young fellow like Archie, who could stand up in court and lie or could, in face of the dual claim, find a glib solicitor to plead a family conspiracy on the part of the sisters, or, if pressed too hard, would simply vanish, or emigrate.
Like Archie he made up his mind on the spot. One hundred pounds he would offer. Not a penny more, not a penny less.
And so Archie was never saddled with the fatherhood of the Gittens' babies, and the whole episode came to nothing, at least, in so far as he was concerned.
In the event Toni paid twice as much as he need have done, for Hilda's child was still-born, and Edna soon afterwards married a Danish hairdresser, at her place of employment. The same year the whole family moved to another district, on the far side of the Lower Road, and were seen no more in the Avenue.
2
For Archie, however, the alarm had much more practical results. He went to work for Piretta that very week, and the Italian had no reason to begrudge the dispensation of his hundred pounds, for Archie soon proved his worth, both as a counter-hand and a bringer of colour to the pale cheeks of little Maria, whom he wooed, somewhat off handedly, in the living-room above the shop, and married at the Church of the Sacred Heart at Lewisham that same September.
Maria herself played a very minor role in these occurrences. All her life she had done exactly as her father told her, removing the verdigris from the tea-urns, slicing pounds of potatoes in the crusher, submitting dutifully to having her bottom pinched by regular customers' greasy fingers, parcelling up groceries, and now marrying this broad-chested, florid young man that her father had suddenly introduced into the business, a young man who seemed to be so worried about Mrs. Armstrong's week-end order, even when they were slumped together on the horse-hair sofa, and he was absent-mindedly fondling her breasts.
She said nothing, and did nothing to encourage or discourage him. She accompanied her father to a dentist in Lucknow Road, and had her worst tooth extracted and another, less independent denture, screwed firmly in its place.
Then, as it were, she stood quietly aside, to watch herself being fitted for a wedding gown, to ride to the Church of the Sacred Heart beside her beaming father, sweating in his unaccustomed collar and tie, to listen to toasts proposed by Italian cousins, all the way from Gateshead, to move Toni and Toni's things into the chalet at the botom of the garden, and at length, to climb into bed with a man who despite all this preliminary bustle, was still practically a stranger to her.
In this detached, contemplative mood she watched Archie pour himself a large double whisky before he hung up his new doublebreasted jacket, and folded his trousers carefully over the back of the bedside chair. She knew, of course, that he was not in love with her, in the way she always imagined people who got married were in love, but her previous experience with lovers was negligible, and she soon grew accustomed to his long silences, and put them down to his almost fanatical preoccupation with the business.
He and her father seemed to get along very well and that, after all, was the important thing. In any case, religion taught her that the main purpose of marriage was the procreation of children and, within weeks, she was expecting a child, the first, she supposed, of a number she would produce as the years went by.
Maria Piretta had been born in the shadow of great poverty, and had grown up in a very hard school. One of the lessons she had learnt in that school was that only three things in life really mattered: health, food, and shelter, in that order. Given health one could usually procure food and shelter and from now on she looked like having all three in abundance. To expect anything more was to tempt the Virgin to withhold from her all three.
CHAPTER XI
Harold As Giant-Killer
1
THERE was another wedding in the Avenue that autumn. Harold Godbeer, self-appointed champion of the widowed and the fatherless, finally won his fair lady, and won her, be it said, by a deed of daring, as spectacular, in its modest way, as a chivalric deed in the lists.
Harold, a slight, short-sighted man, concealed within his pigeon-chest the tenacity of many weak and physically insignificant people. He was, without knowing it (for he was modest to a degree), of the breed of clerks and shopkeepers who had recently defied the Prussians in the water-logged fields of Flanders for years on end, and he had never abandoned hope of persuading pretty Eunice Fraser to legalise his role as provider and protector at Number Twenty-Two. He held on because, throughout these years, he had never ceased to tremble when she laid a shapely, white hand on his sleeve, and murmured:
“You're so clever, Harold.... You're so sweet to me.”
But in all this time the romance remained suspended, never having progressed beyond the sleeve-stroking stage. Never had Eunice gone on to say, as he always hoped she would: “If only you were here all the time, Harold; if only you were a real father to Esme!”, or something along these lines that would afford him, a professional in the matter of recognising an opening when he saw one, the chance to spit on his hands, look to his priming, and storm on to victory.
He was aware, of course, of what held her back, and it had been some small consolation to him that her reluctance to marry him had nothing to do with his qualities as a lover. Left to herself she would have capitulated long ago. Eunice was over thirty now, and far too delicately bred to let her mind dwell on his qualifications, or lack of them, as a mate.
What she required, what she had gladly accepted from him since the day she had drifted into his office in St. Paul's Churchyard a year or so after she was widowed, was someone to organise her life, study her rate demands, watch over her modest investments, launch Esme on the first stages of a career, bring her a cup of tea in thin china at 8 a.m., teach her how to live within her income, and when day was done, read Mrs. Henry Wood to her, beside a rustling, winter fire.
Harold was willing, nay, he was extremely eager to do all this and more, but Eunice, although by no means an intelligent woman, was a sensitive one. She had little commonsense, but there was nothing wrong with her instincts, and she was aware, as Harold knew only too well, that marriage with Harold would sever her already tenuous link with her difficult thirteen-year-old son.
Ever since Esme had grown from childhood to boyhood she had been aware of the inadequacy of their relationship. It was not, she felt, the sort of relationship that should exist between widowed mother and fatherless boy. Either Esme should adopt a
protective attitude towards her, like Harold's, or he should submit more readily to her cosseting. As it was, he regarded her as he might have regarded an older but admittedly stupid sister, retreating further and further into his dignified dreams, and showing her even less affection than he showed that adoring and adorable little girl, who was for ever following him about.
Watching them, as they crossed the Avenue and took the path across the meadow to the Manor Woods on Saturdays, Eunice wished a little forlornly that Esme had been a girl, who could have come ‘up West' with her, and shared her serene scrutinies of shop-windows. If Esme had been a girl, she reasoned, the child would have been quick to appreciate the solid worth of Harold, and the little man's comforting knack of being in the right place when he was wanted, and of withdrawing the moment he was not Even her first husband, from what little she remembered of him, had lacked Harold's discernment in this last respect, and had been inclined to hang about, making conversation, when she would have preferred to day-dream.
Esme, alas, was not a girl, but a strange, proud, aloof little boy, who was growing all too rapidly, into an introspective young man, with his nose in a book (and such bloodthirsty books) whenever he was indoors, which was by no means as often as she could have wished. Contemplating the situation, balancing the risks that attended a decision one way or the other, Eunice did what she had done in the face of every crisis throughout her life, she passed, and left the decision to somebody else, in this case to Esme himself.
2
Harold Godbeer won his bride, appropriately enough, with a bag of confetti—or rather, with an entire trayful of confetti, advertised on a huckster's stall at one penny a bag.
Every Bank Holiday the children of the Avenue trudged up to the Shirley Hills to the fair, that was held each public holiday (Christmas and Boxing Day excepted) on the pebble slopes beyond the last houses.
It wasn't much of a fair, just the usual assortment of swings, roundabouts, side-shows, and freak-peeps, but it attracted, in addition to a few hundred local children and young couples, a swarm of hucksters, who paid small sums to the promoters for the privilege of setting up stalls, and selling balloons, mechanical toys, and confetti.
Esme and Judith never missed a fair. They seldom patronised the stalls and amusements, but were content to wander from booth to booth, absorbing the colour and incident of the occasion. Esme enjoyed the brassy tawdriness of it all, it was such a contrast to his neat, ordered home, and Judith liked the strident music, that blared unceasingly from the mechanical organ. Bernard and Boxer could usually be seen, riding the swings, or seated together in one of the tents, in open defiance of the prominently displayed notice: “Children Under Sixteen Not Admitted”. Bernard and Boxer regarded such notices as a direct challenge to their manhood, and somehow, by guile, by bluff, or by simply crawling under tent valances, they managed to circumvent the hoarse-voiced men at the entrance-flaps. They had seen everything successive fairs had to offer, having gazed stolidly at so many tattooed ladies, fasting men, and midget honeymoon couples, that they were now recognised playground authorities on these bizarre subjects.
At the Easter Monday fair that year, Esme and Judith had a distressing experience. They started out with threepence to spend but happened to meet Judith's brother Archie at the corner of the Avenue. Archie, learning their destination, jovially presented Judith with half-a-crown.
At the entrance to the fair-ground the children passed a confetti stall, presided over by an aged crone, made up to look like a gypsy. Judith, lagging behind, suddenly made up her mind to buy some confetti. It wasn't to throw at anyone, least of all Esme, who would have resented such an indignity, and it wasn't to throw at anyone else, for no one else within range had the slightest appeal for Judith. Perhaps she wanted it for her Esme-Box, which, in some ways, was her bottom drawer, or perhaps the mere possession of a bag of confetti, shared with Esme, helped her to establish him more materially as her groom of the future. Whatever it was that prompted the purchase, she called out to him to wait, and handed the woman at the stall her half-crown, demanding one bag of confetti.
The old woman took the coin, glanced at it, and slipped it into her leather satchel.
“Thank you, dearie,” she said, “help yourself,” and at once readdressed herself to the folded newspaper she had been studying.
Esme, impatient, had stopped a few yards away.
Judith held out her hand.
“My change—” she faltered, a horrid suspicion already invading her mind.
The crone looked up, a trifle sharply.
“Change, dearie? That was a penny!”
Judith's stomach cart-wheeled, and Esme, sensing that something was wrong, came back to the stall.
“It was a half-crown.” whispered Judith; “you know it was a half-crown; you looked at it!”
She turned desperately to Esme, beseeching instant corroboration. “I had a half-crown, Archie's half-crown, and she says it was a penny!”
Shame and fear clutched at Esme. Like his mother, he hated a scene, any sort of scene, but his reputation was at stake. There was no evading Judith's appeal.
“She had half-a-crown and a threepenny-bit; she didn't have a penny,” he said hoarsely.
Judith, immensely relieved, turned back to the woman. “You see, I had two-and-nine altogether. Here's my threepenny-bit,” and she began fumbling with the tiny knot in her handkerchief.
The old woman looked at them bleakly, then she turned her head towards a bell tent, pitched immediately behind her stall.
“Fred,” she called, “come on out, and get rid o' these bloody little shysters, will yer?”
Fred emerged, ponderously, from the tent. He was a huge, bloated man, about forty years of age, with large red hands, and a curiously mottled complexion, as though he had been peppered with small shot. He tilted his dusty bowler, and then blew his nose with finger and thumb. Even in the stress of the moment Esme thrilled with disgust at the action.
“Whassat?” Fred wanted to know.
The crone explained, without wasting a word.
“Pissorf!” said Fred, fiercely, and turned to re-enter the tent.
Esme began to tremble. From where he stood, at the corner of the stall, Fred looked like a fairy-tale giant, whose enormous hands seemed capable of taking both him and Judith in two spreads, and crushing them to powder, with no more effort than was required to lean across the confetti table and gather them up. Esme began to stutter. He knew that Judith was looking at him, and he knew that to fail her on this occasion was to reduce to pitiable ruins the heroic fabric, he had created for her, piece by piece, since the day they first met, but he could think of no way out of this dreadful trial of strength and his secondary reaction, following closely upon that of sheer terror, was a cold anger that she should have involved him in such an unequal contest.
He looked around helplessly, and his eye rested upon a policeman, who was moving slowly along on the outskirts of the incoming crowd between the stalls. He had the suburban child's implicit faith in the matchless power of the law.
“All right,” he said, finally; “I'll tell the policeman!”
He had imagined that this threat would be enough, that at the mere mention of the word “policeman”, the old girl would dip her hand into her satchel and produce two-and-fivepence.
Nothing of the kind happened. Fred simply guffawed, and the old woman said flatly: “Go ahead, and tell 'im, sonny!”
For a few seconds Esme stood stock still, his imagination recoiling from the prospect of implementing this terrible threat, pxcept for the purpose of asking the time, he had never yet spoken to a policeman: but here, surely, was an occasion when the support of the police could not be dispensed with.
Dismally, he turned his back on the stall and crossed the track, quickening his step until he came alongside the constable.
Watching him, Judith saw him tug firmly at the blue sleeve, saw the constable bend and say something, and then turn back towards them, wit
h Esme at his side.
The crone made good use of the diversion. She reached into her bag, found the half-crown, and tossed it to Fred, who slipped it casually in his trouser pocket He then blew his nose again and awaited the constable with an expression of benign tranquillity. He had had many and protracted dealings with young policemen, and had always found this expression rewarding. Fred had also learned the value of initiative.
“Don't it give yer the sick, orficer,” he remarked resignedly, as the constable and Esme presented themselves on the far side of the stall. “All these Sunday Schools 'n wot-not, all this public money spent on ejucashun, an' wot does it end up in? A ruddy little pick-pocket, 'oo talks posh, like 'e's got a bleedin' plum in 'is marth!”
The constable was young, inexperienced, and not too eager to engage. He had gathered from Esme's garbled story that somebody, presumably these hucksters, had cheated somebody else, presumably the children, but Fred's genial and confidential manner disarmed him, as Fred had intended it should.
“What's it all about?” he wanted to know.
“Says she give me 'arf-a-crahn fer a penny. Wants the perishin' confetti and two-and-five,” growled the old woman; “we'd make a forchune that way, wouldn't we?”
“I did give her half-a-crown,” protested Judith, and turning anew to Esme, “I did, didn't I?”
“Yes,” said Esme, wretchedly. He had executed his threat, he had summoned a policeman, but he still felt defeated.
The old woman emptied her satchel on the trestle-board in front of her. A small stream of coppers, and one or two sixpences and threepenny-bits rolled out.
“No arf-crahns there, is there, orficer?” she said.
The constable was not so young or inexperienced that he did not realise at once what had occurred, but he saw, with equal clarity, that he had not the smallest chance of proving it, and therefore took the line of least resistance.
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