The Dreaming Suburb

by R. F Delderfield

  “Go on,” urged Mr. Billings, digging away with his splayed tooth-pick. “What you leading up to, Miss Clegg?”

  Edith drew a very deep breath. She had been awaiting this opportunity for some considerable time.

  “Well,” she said finally, “you ought to have an orcehstra for good pictures like this, Mr. Billings ... no, no ...” as a haunted look showed in his eyes, “not a real orchestra, I know the Granada can't afford that, but a one-man orchestra ... someone who could ... well, make the bangs with cymbals and drums, and do lots of other things, like blow coach-horns in highwaymen pictures, and tinkle things like sleigh-bells. If only we could have tinkled properly, when dear Rudi was driving his sleigh away from those terrible wolves! It would have made such a difference, now, wouldn't it?”

  Mr. Billings considered. The idea was not exactly new, but somehow he had never given it constructive thought.

  “'Ow much would a bloke like that cost?” he demanded.

  “Oh, I expect he'd be happy to do it for two pounds ten,” said Edith, pressing her stomach, as though the palm could regulate her internal rumblings. “I've got a lodger called Mr. Hartnell, and he can play almost anything by ear. He'd be wonderful, and we could rehearse together at home, if you let me borrow the advance publicity booklets they send you.”

  Mr. Billings needed little enough persuading. Within twenty-four hours of this conversation Ted Hartnell was installed in the pit, isolated from his delighted sponsor by a secondhand bass drum, a side-drum, a kettle-drum, a pair of cymbals, and a strange-looking instrument of his own invention that came to be known as “The-All-In”.

  “The-All-In” began life as Edith's clothes-horse. Its struts were covered with green baize, and hung around with tubes of varying length, bottles partly filled with water; and a few coconut shells. Ted could produce almost any combination of sounds with the drums, cymbals, and the “All-In”. During that week's showing of Ben Hur, he and his instruments were almost as sensational as the film itself. All manner of authentic-sounding noises emerged from the pit, to the huge delight of Mr. Billings, who sat through seven performances in the first half of the week. When the chariots were racing round the arena, Ted beat a most realistic tattoo on the coconut shells; when the Roman heralds raised their clarions to their lips, he leaped to his feet, and blew a series of blasts on his trumpet; when Ben and his fellow galley-slaves toiled at the huge oars, he beat out a drum rhythm with his foot, and repeatedly dropped a long length of harness-chain into an empty bucket.

  His real triumph, however, came later, when, within a few weeks of Ben Hur, Mr. Billings secured a feature showing of a French Revolution picture called The Tragic Queen. There were plenty of routine noises-off in this film, galloping horses, salvoes of cannon, and the clash of arms on the staircase of Versailles; but the scene in which Ted excelled himself was the final act of the tragedy, when Marie Antoinette's tumbril drove through the massed ranks of the terrorists, and the victim attempted to make a scaffold speech above the monotonous roll of drums. Urged on by Edith, who, with shining eyes, was thundering out the Marseillaise, Ted flung himself into the business of producing an increasingly rapid tattoo on kettle and side-drums, the rhythm culminating in the final shattering “kerlunk” on the bass drum. This signified the fall of the knife, and produced gasp of horror from electrified audiences. Mr. Billings was so excited that he almost tumbled from the front row of the balcony into the one-and-nines.

  On the final night of The Tragic Queen, Ted had an unexpected visitor.

  When the auditorium had cleared, a slim, willowy young man lounged down the centre aisle to the pit, where Ted was packing up for the week-end. Mr. Billings had left early with the takings, and Edith was responsible for locking up.

  The young man leaned heavily on the brass rail, introducing himself by a grubby visiting card that read: “Al Swinger and his Rhythmateers”, and underneath, in small italics: “Musical Engagements—Dancing—Occasions—Parties”. And beneath that again, in even smaller italic: “Hot and Classy”.

  Al had a waxen complexion, a pigeon chest, a large curved nose, and small, over-bright eyes. Hunched over the rail he looked like an ailing and uncomfortably perched eagle. He used a shiny dress-suit, and a laboriously-acquired Manhattan accent.

  “You sure c'n use dem drums, brother,” was his opening remark.

  Ted flushed. He was a very modest young man.

  “I got no room here,” he apologised; “you need plenty of space to really beat it up!”

  Edith smiled at the visitor. She liked Teddy to be praised.

  “I'll have to lock up the front,” she told the visitor, “but you can stay, then we can all go out the back way.”

  After Edith had gone Al slowly extracted a bar of chewing-gum from a packet, and flicked it into his mouth.

  “Chew?” he asked Ted, proffering the packet.

  Ted shook his head, and began to slip the canvas cover on the big drum. He performed the office lovingly, like a young mother tucking her baby into its cot.

  Al Swinger chewed stolidly for a moment. Finally, he said: “How long you been working in this flea-pit?”

  “Just a few weeks,” Teddy told him.

  “Like to play in a real band?”

  Ted stopped in the act of loosening the tension of the kettle-drum. He looked hard at the visitor, then at the card on the piano lid. He swallowed once or twice, giving himself time to master his excitement.

  “This your band?” he asked.

  “Ur-huh,” said Al. “Nice li'l band. Got a broadcast lined up. Go places. Better all the time. Drummer's left us. Been run in, silly sod. How about a fiver a week? Make more some weeks. Split commission.”

  Ted Hartnell was unable to speak for a moment. His hands trembled on the drum-braces. Edith came plodding back, the foyer keys jangling in her hand. Al turned to her.

  “You the boss?”

  Edith said no, the boss had left after first house. Al shook off his lethargy, jumped the rail, and flung open the piano.

  “Okay! Let's have Valencia, and give it all you got, brother!”

  His fingers slipped over the worn keys. It was not the Valencia Ted and Edith sometimes played, during their front-room concerts. It was full of what Edith would have called “twiddly-bits”, so full indeed that the melody was sometimes difficult to follow, although the rhythm was there, heavy and insistent. Teddy forgot Edith, and forgot where he was; he ripped the cover from the bass drum, and flung himself into an accompaniment. Between him they made the cinema rock with sound:

  Valenciaaaa !...

  Land-of-orange-grove-n-sweet-content

  you-call-me-from-afarrrr … di-bom-di-di

  bom-di-bomiddy… bom-di-bomiddy…

  Ted did give it all he had, hurling himself at the drums like a frenzied savage each time Al lifted his fingers from the keys at the end of a phrase. It was a number in which a good drummer could make his presence felt. It left Red, Red Robin, and similar numbers a long way behind.

  When they had finished and Al slammed down the piano lid, Edith applauded.

  “Why, that's splendid, splendid, Teddy!”

  “We'd do a lot better on a real Joanna,” said Al, and Edith notice that the pallor of his cheeks was now relieved by two bright red spots, each the size of sixpence. “You'll pass, brother! We rehearse in the Assembly Rooms off Black Horse Lane. Look in, ten tomorrow. I'll have a contract out.”

  He climbed out of the pit, and lounged off towards the fire-exit.

  Edith moved forward to guide him, but he stopped her with a languid wave. He seemed to be moving in familiar surroundings.

  2

  Al Swinger was shrewd and business-like. His terse manner of speech, his lounging movements, the impression he gave of trying to be someone or something he had only read about in magazines, or seen in places like the Granada, failed to conceal the fact that he was a dedicated man, dedicated to jazz music in a way that Ted Hartnell would never be. Al carried his obsession a
stage further than Ted, into the realm where it ceased to be a pastime, and became a commercial ambition, where it linked up with contracts, white ties, silver-plated saxophones, and dining out in expensive night-clubs. He liked and trusted Ted from the start because he saw in him a devotion to jazz that was objective and unlikely to involve him in competition with the band-leader. Competition for leadership had already caused the dissolution of two of his dance bands, and he had recently turned away some promising material on this account What he was searching for were bandsmen who loved their work, but lacked personal ambition; in Ted Hartnell he found the ideal drummer.

  Al believed in re-investing most of his earning in the orchestra. That was why he paid Ted a starting-wage of five pounds a week, at a time when few of his engagements earned a ten-pound gross. His margin was narrow, but he kept his team at a high pitch of enthusiasm, and the “Rhyth-mateers” were beginning to be known as far afield as Lew-isham and Catford. They had their own transport, a converted lorry, and an excellent array of instruments. They were still small-time, but Al had made up his mind that, providing they kept their heads, they would move into the bigger time in a year or so. Other, less disciplined bands were already there, broadcasting, and touring the seaside resorts in summer and one day, he assured Ted, the name Al Swinger would mean something in the dance-band world.

  Edith missed Teddy very much during those first hectic months. He slept late in the mornings, of course, and they were able to take lunch together, but she had the matinée at two o'clock, and he was usually gone by the time she came home to tea. She left coffee in a thermos flask on the kitchen table, and she usually heard him come in, between two and three a.m., but there were no more front-room soirées, no more long, gossipy meals in the kitchen, with Becky, and Lickapaw. It crossed her mind that, now he was on the road to fame and fortune, he might seek more expensive lodgings, but she never let herself seriously entertain the prospect of losing him, any more than she contemplated a future without Becky, or the cat. It was lonely for Becky now, with herself at the cinema from two till five, and from six to eleven, but there were minor consolations. First, the drain on their capital had been stopped and they were even saving a little, then, Lickapaw was getting older, and spent less time away from home on the slates of Delhi Road. Finally, there was her work, and after work, her press-cutting books, and her portrait gallery.

  The gallery was very extensive now. All the wall-space of her bedroom had been used up, and glossy pictures of Navar-ro, Lewis Stone, Adolphe Menjou, and dear Buster, with his large sad eyes, had crept like a tide into the bathroom and even the lavatory. Dotted about the house were nearly a dozen pictures of Rudi, two of them signed. His occult eyes contemplated her from beneath flowing burnous on the landing, and his nostrils flared at her from an unusual angle on the stairway ceiling. Number Four was a shrine to Hollywood, but the ark of its tabernacle was Valentino, Valentino the Sheik, the Son of the Sheik, the Cossack, the Torreador, the Gaucho.

  3

  Edith saw the poster when she was on her way to work, shortly before two o'clock one afternoon.

  It was standing outside the, newsagent's, at the corner of Lucknow Road, advertising an early edition of The Star. It was scrawled in charcoal capitals and it screamed: “Valentino Dead”

  Simply that, as if Rudi had been a mere Balkan monarch, or a British Prime Minister. Valentino dead! And nobody even knew that he had been suffering from indigestion, or migraine.

  Edith stopped, and gazed fixedly across the width of Shirley Rise. It was as though, after a single, terrifying thunder-flash, a yawning chasm had opened up beneath her feet, and the solid structures of the semi-detached houses on her immediate left had begun to bulge, crumble, and slide into rubble beside her.

  She stood there for nearly a minute. Unheeding traffic moved up from Lower Road, stirring little eddies of summer dust. An odd pedestrian or two meandered in and out of Piretta's grocery shop, buying Monkey Brand, and Sunlight Soap, and tinned salmon, just as if the sun was still in the sky, and the world was still spinning on its course.

  At last she was able to totter across to'the shop. She could not ask for a paper, but fumbled in her purse, and put a penny on the counter. Emerging into the bright sunlight again she knew that she could not go on to work. She turned back towards the Lane, found a fallen elm, and sat on it a long time, before she had sufficient resolution to look at the headlines.

  To her intense surprise there was nothing in them concerning Rudi. The main headline dealt with the relatively minor event of Germany entering the League of Nations; and lower, down, the excessively trivial one of Spain leaving it. This lack of confirmation afforded her a brief spasm of hope. Perhaps it was all a cruel hoax, or a false rumour?

  She began to hunt through the pages, scanning each column. Then she turned the paper over, and saw the stop-press, printed in red. There, at last, was the dreadful confirmation: “Star's death. Rudolph Valentino, the film star, died after an operation in California today.”

  Just that! Just the bald and terrible fact! Not a word about what kind of operation, or the shattering effect such a paragraph would have upon countless millions throughout the world.

  She sat on the elm bole a long, long time. She could not remember feeling like this before, not even when Becky ran away, or was found, reclaimed, and brought home to the Vicarage, speechless, bruised, and half an idiot. On that occasion she had been able to act, to argue with her father and the Bishop, to nurse her sister, to throw herself into the desperate search for Becky's lost wits. This was very different. There was nothing whatever she could do, not even send a wreath, not even attend the funeral.

  At last she got up, and began to walk unsteadily down Shirley Rise towards the cinema. She felt that she had to talk to someone about it, and who better, who handier, than Mr. Billings, who had such a stake in Rudi? She felt light-headed, and faintly bilious.

  At the junction of Delhi Road, Archie Carver came out of the shop carrying a tub of apples. He noticed her vacant look and called—as he called to all regular customers:

  “Lovely afternoon, Miss Clegg!”

  Edith neither heard nor saw him.

  4

  In a sense, Edith Clegg did attend Valentino's funeral. She bought every edition of every newspaper that came her way. She read every word describing the fantastic scenes at the morticians' parlour (what a funny way to describe an undertaker's shop !) and, unlike the mourners, described in millions of words that poured across the Atlantic, she did not need a slice of onion concealed in a handkerchief. She wept genuine tears all that week, and Becky, who helped her to hang the crepe over the signed photographs, wept in sympathy, although she had never seen a Valentino film, and regarded the author of all this grief as “a dear boy Edith had liked so much”.

  When all was over, when Press releases from Hollywood began to filter down to the inside pages, Edith steamed Rudi's pictures from her walls, and put them carefully away in the drawer of her large wardrobe. There were many empty spaces in the gallery and—for the time being—she preferred them empty. Fairbanks was well enough, and Navarro had a good deal of Rudi's charm, but neither of them could take the place of The Sheik.

  Nobody ever did.

  CHAPTER XIV

  Schooldays For Three

  THE schooldays of most boys are lit by a single personality. Other men emerge, masters are remembered for an odd trick of speech, an idiosyncrasy of manner, a fad that singles them out as fair game for the Junior School mimic, but these men are seldom more than background figures. There is always one figure that dwarfs them, that remains centre stage, year after year, until his personality is imprinted on a boy's mind for all time.

  Such a man, for Esme Eraser, was “Longjohn” Silverton, who reigned as headmaster of Godley Grammar School from the time he limped out of the hospital for plastic surgery cases, in the Spring of 1920, until many of his pupils were old enough to take part in the second round of Armageddon.

  In some wa
ys it was a tragedy for Esme that Mr. Silverton made no real impression on him until he had been a pupil at the Grammar School for more than two years. By that time Esme was rising fifteen, and his character was formed. The best that Silverton could do was to give Esme a push or two in a more promising direction, but by then it was nearly too late. The spell of the Carver twins had been laid upon Esme for several years.

  Longjohn was not the conventional type of “popular” headmaster. His was not the hearty man-to-man approach, the back-slapping, rib-nudging, honour-of-the-school technique. He conjured up no visions of Arnold, or even Mr. Chips. He was lean, ravaged, silent, and terrifyingly down-to-earth in his approach to boys. The staff found him enigmatical, abstracted, and moodily aloof, and to most parents he was blunt to the point of rudeness. Fathers and mothers—particularly mothers—did not take to Mr. Silverton, and many of them were afraid of him. Yet no boy was ever afraid of Silverton, and that was something that staff and parents found hard to understand.

  In appearance, Longjohn was spare, frosty, and hardbitten. The plastic surgeons, whilst repairing most of the exterior damage wrought by a flammenwerfer at Bois des Buttes, had done little to improve his looks. The contours of his cheeks were uneven, and when he was tired, or exasperated, the taut flesh began to twitch. His eyes had miraculously survived the blast of flame. They were deep brown, and extraordinarily mild, but the shrinking of the skin on his forehead, and above the bridge of his nose, had deepened the sockets, and puckered the lids, so that the eyes now appeared sunken and apathetic. He had other injuries, causing a curious, shuffling walk, and an odd posture when he stood on the dais in the main hall, but he made very light of these, so light indeed that he drew no war pension after 1924.

  Silverton had that curious sense of peace and balance that was a legacy of front-line survival. Emotionally he was difficult to disturb, but he could pretend to cold, devastating anger if he thought anger served a good purpose. He had a deep love of scholarship, and a strange abiding tolerance with every living creature under the age of eighteen. Beyond that notch, humanity could go hang, collectively and individually.