The Dreaming Suburb

by R. F Delderfield

  2

  With the settling of Jean Mclnroy into Number Four a new dream came to the Avenue. This time it was the dream of a perfect man. Notwithstanding her impediment, Jean Mclnroy was much more articulate than most of the Avenue dreamers and had been trying to put her dream on cartridge paper for two years now, the period she had been employed as an artist for Dyke and Dobson's, the advertising agency, in Long Acre, W.C.2.

  Dyke and Dobson's were an enterprising firm, employing a score of artist and copywriters on the premises, and twice as many free-lance artists, all engaged on a piece-work basis.

  Jean had begun to send them sketches and rhyming copy from Glasgow, when she was hardly sixteen, and her father, a ship's riveter, was still alive. She had earned a few odd pounds this way, and when her father died, and her mother married again, she left home, and came south, living for a time in a Y.W.C.A. Hostel.

  Her disability regulated her life, setting her apart from other young people. She could have come to terms with it, perhaps, had she been less personable. As it was, her freshness and charm attracted both men and women everywhere she went, but her friendships always failed to develop. The men slid away the moment they found out about her, and the women adopted an air of patronage that made her life in mixed company a torment not to be borne.

  She found consolation in her work, which was held in high esteem at Dyke and Dobson's, where Mr. Keith, the staff manager, was always hoping to coax her on to the permanent staff. He had a conviction that she could not but be grateful to him, and might be inclined to repay his patronage in a form of association that could be conducted with a minimum of conversation. Jean, however, did not respond, not only because she had left her Scots home in terrifying innocence of the Mr. Keiths she might encounter, but simply because he did not conform to her conception of the ideal man.

  This man was already beginning to be a feature of Jean's copy. He was seen, from time to time, in all the women's magazines, pipe in mouth, brown hand on blonde wife's shoulder, the two of them speculating on the possibility of redecorating the lounge, or buying a carpet, or pruning the roses. She even had a name for him—“Philip”, never shortened to “Phil”—and she knew, down to the last detail, how he looked when he smiled, or frowned, or came home with a surprise parcel tucked under his raincoat. She also knew what he looked like when he was shaving, or laying a stair-carpet, how strong and lithe he looked in a swim-suit, how handsome in plus-fours, emerging from a smart blue coupé. She had learned to love the strong lines of his jaw, and the way his hair grew thickly at the back, both with and without the application of “Sunset” brilliantine. She knew what he liked to eat, and how gaily and expertly he could romp with the children at Christmas, and on summer holidays. She got up with him every morning, and cooked his favourite breakfast—ham, eggs, and cereals. She lay down with him every night, on a “Luxuro” mattress, and snuggled into his strong, rapturous embrace, her hand sometimes reaching up to stroke the firm flesh of his throat, so smooth and cool, after countless applications of “Snow Cream” shaving soap.

  She drew Philip, sometimes half-a-dozen times a day, and when she received a magazine serial assignment from Dyke and Dobson's, she sometimes coaxed him out of the semidetached villa, where he spent most of his time, and dressed him in hunting-rig for a gallop with the Pytchley, or put him into tennis flannels with a knife-edged crease, and set him to woo under the chestnuts of a stately home.

  On these occasions sub-editors usually added a caption under her pictures, and gave her something more to think about when the proof was sent to her. She was then able to extend the dream, by identifying herself with the girl of the story, and she heard him say: “This thing is bigger than us, Jean, we must stop fighting it!” or “I knew you would come to me Jean, if only I waited long enough!”

  She preferred, however, the more impersonal, more enigmatic captions, such as—“Philip knew that her heart was his, but there was Sybil to think of! What could a man do in a dilemma like this?” or “Trevor could offer her everything; what had Philip to offer, beyond lifelong devotion?”

  She kept a sharp look-out for Philip in trains, and tubes, and 'bus queues, but she never found him. There were hundreds of men of about thirty, who smoked pipes, and had lean, brown faces, and Empire-building eyes, but when they caught her looking hard at them they usually looked back in a way that Philip would have considered ungentlemanly, or worse.

  She settled into Number Four with relief. It had been difficult to work properly at the hostel, and here, at last, she had a room of her own, where she could set up her easel, lay out her pens and brushes, and make a sort of shrine to Philip. The old maids downstairs seemed to be quiet, gentle people, and the sane one went out of her way to mother her, yet without seeking to engage her in conversations. She did not set eyes on their Mr. Hartnell, the jazz-band drummer, until she had been living in the house for some weeks. He came in so late, and was always in bed when she was moving about the house.

  For the rest, she made her own bed, took nearly all her meals in her room, and went for long walks in Manor Woods during the afternoons. She was happier than most people in the Avenue, for not only could she put her dreams on paper, but was paid for dreaming them.

  3

  Ted Hartnell did not fall in love with Jean Mclnroy, as Edith had feared when she first set eyes on her new lodger. There was, indeed, something about Ted that Edith did not know, and about which he had, as yet, breathed no word, although he had long regarded her as a comfortable cross between a mother and a favourite aunt.

  The fact of the matter was, Ted was already in love, and his love was reciprocated wholeheartedly. Everything had happened with the neatness of a well-turned dance-lyric. From the opening bar of the introduction “moon” had rhymed with “June”, “love” with “above”, “miss” with “kiss”, and “eyes”, with “skies”.

  He had first seen her at the record counter of Woolworth's, in the Old Orchard Road, having gone there to buy a cheap recording of a current hit, written in honour of Amy Johnson, the famous flier.

  He saw, and heard her, over the heads of a hundred dawdling shoppers, standing on her little dais, beside the gramophone and plugging Tiptoe Through the Tulips.

  She was small, dark, and vivacious, with brown eyes that roved expertly here and there among women buying toilet-rolls, and cheap note-paper, as though seeking someone—preferably a man, at whom she could aim the lyric. She saw Ted, moving down past the tool counter, and their eyes met, steadily on her part, bashfully, but gratefully, on his.

  ... knee-deep, in flowers we'll stray

  And chase the shadows away...

  she sang, and Ted was accounted for, just like that, proving for all time the potency of cheap music that Mr. Coward was making such a point about just then, in his Private Lives.

  He waited until she stepped down, and then crossed over and promptly bought the record, together with Wonderful Amy, and several others that he had not intended to buy.

  Because he was a customer, she was at liberty to dally with him, and for the next fifteen minutes they talked dance-tunes, before he led off by asking the name of her favourite.

  “It's Margy,” she told him. “You see, I'm called Margy.”

  “Sing it, will you?”

  She smiled, climbed back on to the dais, and sang it through for him, in a husky little voice that was tuned in to dance hits. “It's nice, isn't it?” she said, stepping down again.

  “Wonderful,” he told her, “the way you sing it.”

  He did not add that it was last year's, and already a back number. Instead, he told her his name, and how he earned his living.

  She was excited and made no pretence of concealing her pleasure.

  “Drummer! For Al Swinger! Then you must have broadcast!”

  He told her, modestly, that he had broadcast on several occasions, and added that in his opinion Al was “going places”.

  “You were at the football club dance on Wednesday, were
n't you? But this is marvellous ... do you mind if I fetch Mr. Cooper? He's our manager, and I know he'd like to hear you've been buying,” and, as he hesitated, not wanting to terminate their tête-à-tête, “... it'll do me no end of good ... 'specially if you ... you ... told him I put them over well!”

  At this he could not refuse, and Mr. Cooper was fetched, introduced, and duly impressed. He patted his saleswoman with a proprietary air. “And what do you think o' my little plugger, Mr. Harper?” he wanted to know.

  “I think she puts them over marvellously,” said Ted, watching the colour rush to Margy's cheeks. “She doesn't overdo it, like so many of them.... She lets the number unwind itself!”

  Mr. Cooper thumped him enthusiastically between the shoulders, and launched himself into a disjointed conversation.

  “That's exactly it!” he endorsed. “I couldn't have put it better myself ... just-a-minute-Miss-Gregson-I'm-busy-can't-you-see.... Now look here, Mr. Hartwell, you could do me an' Miss Shearing here a real turn if you put that in writing! You know—uns'licited testimonial—keep-your-eye-on-that-one-with-the-red-shopping-bag-Miss-Gregson-I-don't-like-the-look-of-her—coming from you, in the business. It'd be something for the area-manager to chew over. Between you'n me, I had a big job getting establishment for a plugger in this branch, and this about clinches it. What do you say, Mr. Harper?”

  “I'll do it with pleasure,” said Ted, and was instantly rewarded by Margy's dazzling smile.

  He wrote the letter and it gave him the freedom of the shop.

  He began getting up earlier, and going down to the Old Orchard Road at 11 a.m. every morning. Sometimes he took up his position under the dais, but more often he stood well back, over against the confectionery counter, and heard Margy sing her way to the lunch-break.

  He bought, on an average, two records a day, but he was a shy young man, with very little experience in courting, and it was difficult to know how he would have progressed had not Margy herself made the next move.

  One morning, between plugs, she said: “I'd just love to do a cabaret number with your band, Ted.”

  Her brown eyes made him reckless.

  “Why not?” he argued. “I'll fix it with Al, he'd jump at it!”

  “Would he? Oh, would he?”

  “Sure! Why not, Margy?”

  But it wasn't as easy as all that. Al Swinger was moving up in the world, and when Ted had finished singing Margy's praises to him, he remained doubtful.

  “Woolworth's, you say? I dunno.... If we do have a vocalist she ought to have class. What's she doing, song-plugging at Woolworth's?”

  “She's great, Al, great... she's ... she's got something... it's the way she puts them over!”

  “Okay,” said Al, finally, “but as a favour to you, Ted, and if she doesn't come classy, she's out—understand?”

  “She's classy,” said Ted, breathlessly, “she's the classiest plugger I ever heard. Dammit, Al, even the best of 'em have got to start somewhere!”

  “Yeah,” said Al, cryptically, “but it doesn't have to be Woolworth's.”

  Margy, however, while she did not produce the same devastating effect upon Al as she had on Ted, satisfied the band-leader that she possessed—or might come to possess, sufficient “class” to appear as solo vocalist at one or two of Al's minor engagements.

  Her first engagement was a Rotary Club Dance, in the Lewisham area. She had the sort of voice that is ideal for dance lyrics, throaty and eager, with a trick of hanging on to the words at the end of each couplet, and, as Al put it, “making them drip!”

  She was too slightly built to make a very impressive figure at the microphone, but she looked trim, and appealingly wistful, in a yellow silk frock, with her dark hair freshly waved, and her hard-working eyes roving among the couples as she crooned Moonlight on the River Colorado and If I Had a Talking Picture of You.

  If Ted Hartnell had needed a pushover he would have received it that first night, watching her from behind the drums, and tapping out the rhythm with his unemployed left foot. Her two numbers earned generous applause, and from then on she became a feature of the band, working part-time through the summer, and giving up her daytime job when the season got under way in October.

  Al paid her generously, more than twice as much as she had received song-plugging, but she never forgot that she owed her opportunity to Ted Hartnell, and because of this they seemed to drift together, without any of the customary preliminaries.

  She liked his modesty and his sunny temperament, but not his lack of ambition, and his willingness to let Al make all the decisions, or his tendency to underrate himself as a professional.

  In the Spring of 1931 Ted was introduced to her family. They lived in one of the terraced streets, off the Millwood Lower Road, and the house seemed to be full of brothers and sisters, all tumbling round the four-valve wireless set, and humming snatches of popular hits. It was the sort of house in which Ted could not fail to feel at home, and it wasn't long before they became engaged, Al Swinger himself making an interval announcement of the news at the Licensed Victuallers' Ball, in Croydon.

  It seemed to Ted then, as he took her by the hand, and announced her solo number above the clatter of glasses and ice-cream saucers, that he had everything a man could possibly desire, a well-paid job with a dance-band, a comfortable lodge, and Margy—Margy, who kissed him gently when the taxi dropped them off at her gate round about 2 a.m. that morning, and said:

  “I love you, Ted, and you've always been sweet to me. Now I'm going to start being sweet to you. I'm going to see that you get somewhere. Like you deserve.”

  He was mildly surprised that the prospect of marriage should set her thinking along these lines.

  “Aw, I'm happy enough with Al, Margy,” he told her.

  She pressed her cheek against his. “Oh, Al's all right for a start, Ted, but some day, soon, you're going to have a band of your own, you'll see.”

  A band of his own! He had never yet let his imagination carry him that far, and he put it down to her exuberance of the moment.

  He held her for a moment and then, laughing for sheer joy, lifted her and swung her over the low railing of her front garden.

  “I don't want a band of my own, Margy. I want things to go on as they are, for ever and ever. That's all I want, Margy.”

  She said nothing to this, but leaned over the railing, kissed him once more, and quietly let herself in.

  He went off towards the Avenue, hands in pockets, shoulders hunched against the wind.

  Lying awake, Edith heard him turn in from Shirley Rise, whistling Happy Days are Here Again.

  Dear Teddy, she thought to herself; how long has he been here ... twelve years? Good heavens, he must be over thirty, and he still looks such a boy! I wonder if he'll ever get married, and go away? I hope not ... oh, I hope not!

  CHAPTER XIX

  Esme

  1

  ESME FRASER also heard Ted Hartnell come whistling home on the night of his engagement.

  He was sitting in the porch-room, where, sleepless, he had drifted to look out across the Avenue at Number Seventeen, the house where his beloved had lived for so long, but lived no longer. The crisis had come and gone at Number Seventeen, and Elaine had departed, in the wake of her father.

  Esme had been sleeping very badly during the last few weeks. He would try and tire himself, physically, by long solitary walks, and then go to bed well before midnight, but usually he was awake again by 2 o'clock, and at this hour, when there was nothing to distract him, his brain was helpless against the memories and regrets it had accumulated since Elaine had decided to anticipate his rescue, and effect her solitary escape from the tower.

  For this was how he had always seen her—a captive princess in a tower, waiting to be snatched from dragons below, and carried away on his saddle-bow as a bride, hard won, and suitably grateful. This was how he had regarded her since the early, idyllic days of their courtship; it was his private tragedy that she had always seen hi
m, and herself, in a somewhat more prosaic light.

  Lying awake, on a bed that had become lumpy, between sheets that had rucked and wrinkled, or ultimately getting up and mooching into the study, he slipped into the profitless habit of going back over every detail of their association, from the first moment he saw her in the “Paul Jones” at the Stafford-Fyffes' Dance, to the dismal night when she suddenly informed him of her decision to go north and join her father.

  He recalled, a little bitterly, just how she had told him, lightly and gaily, as if she was setting out on a high adventure, and he had been obliged to admit at last that they had been moving on different planes from the very beginning, that while he had seen her as a goddess, she had seen their association as a kind of experiment, an experiment in love.

  There could seldom have been a more complicated romance, or one more fraught with lies and deceits, with fictitious friends she was supposed to meet at fictitious rendezvous, with stolen moments, subterfuges, and alibis—but all this, according to her, had been imperative on account of her mother, whose discovery of the affair, she declared, would have put an end to it altogether.

  Deep down, and far from willingly, Esme had never altogether believed this. He sometimes had an uncomfortable suspicion that Elaine was using her mother as a bogey, in order to subject his devotion to a series of excruciating tests, and this, in fact, was a fairly accurate assessment of the position. He could hardly be blamed for failing to guess that her motives were even more complicated and that she had now come to regard every stolen moment with Esme as a secret blow at Esther, a penny, so to speak, off the account of all her years of seclusion and prohibition, of rule by cane and edict in a court of no appeal.