The Dreaming Suburb

by R. F Delderfield

  “But you are writing ... I mean ... surely it's something to be writing for the BBC.”

  “It's a start, but I've found out so many things about writing since I was a kid, Elaine. It isn't just putting the stuff on paper, it's selling it, and for that you need contacts, a good agent, and a real knowledge of the market. You really shouldn't ever write anything until you've sold it first.”

  “But how on earth could you do that?”

  “You get a commission and an advance. I've done a bit of that for newspapers, and it pays better than script-writing, but you have to have a new idea, and I'm not much good at ideas. I think I might be, if I travelled abroad. Everyone who's a success has done that”

  “But surely ...” she did not altogether approve of this overseas trend, reflecting that it might whisk him out of her reach ... “surely, there must be heaps to write about in England ... all the people you've met, places like this restaurant, and so on? Why, some Of the places I've been ...”

  “Tell me about that, Elaine, tell me everything.”

  She told him, but by no means everything. She told him of her uneventful life as a hotel receptionist, and of the coming of the Great Eugene, and her ridiculous notion that life would be exciting on the stage. She told him a little of the variety circuits and how, when she despaired of getting anywhere, she had accepted the proposal of Benny Boy, and was silly enough to accompany him to the Continent on a promise of marriage.

  “It may seem awful to you, Esme,” she said, “but I was at the end of my tether after Eugene left me, and he seemed kind, and in a real position to help me. Then he went broke, and flew off home, and I had just enough money to get back. That was when I joined up with the circus!”

  She made it sound as if she had suffered a great deal, but with dignity. She did not lie, but simply withheld portions of the truth, and was rather vague about dates, and the alternatives open to her during a succession of crises.

  “Oh, I was a little fool all right!” she admitted readily, “but it isn't easy for a girl to keep going on her own, Esme. I suppose I believed everything Benny said simply because I wanted to, and because it was a way out. I didn't love him, of course, he was old enough to be my father, but he seemed more genuine than the people I toured with, and he did promise that we'd be married, as soon as he got his divorce. It wasn't until much later that I found out he'd been free all the time, and was divorced years before I met him.”

  He heard her in wonder and pity, grinding his teeth at the thought of the seedy Eugene, and the lascivious Benny Boy, who sounded like a cross between the wicked Levison, in his mother's well-thumbed East Lynne, and some scoundrel out of a Sunday newspaper feature.

  “What happened to you in the circus?” he wanted to know.

  “I don't want to talk about it,” said Elaine, with truth. “I'll tell you sometime, but right now I've made up my mind to put it all behind me, and start afresh. That was why I wrote to you about the office job. I didn't know anyone else, and the employment agencies are hopeless.”

  He reflected for a moment, looking very serious indeed.

  “Elaine dear,” he said finally, “maybe this will shock you a bit but ... I've got to know something, I've got to know it right away.”

  “Yes, Esme?”

  She could hardly believe that she was progressing at such a prodigious rate. It was still less than two hours since she had entered the gallery.

  “I've got to know whether that was the only reason ... why you wrote, I mean. It may seem silly to you, but it happens to be terribly important to me.”

  She looked hard at the table-cloth. “I think you know the answer to that question, Esme,” she said softly.

  Her reply made his heart leap. “But I don't, Elaine ... it just isn't possible that you have felt the same way about me as I did about you all this time. This is something you've got to be absolutely honest about, not only honest with me, but with yourself! If you'd really cared you would have written at least once ... you'd have wanted to see me.”

  She raised her eyes, and he noticed how blue they were, as blue as the periwinkles that grew in Manor Wood. Her hair shone in the soft glow of the table lamp, and there was so much of it, even though it had been shorn since the night he had seen her glide from the back door of Number Seventeen, and pause for a moment in the path of moonlight, as he watched from the greenhouse at the end of her garden.

  “Can't you understand that I was ashamed, Esme?”

  Relief, and a great surge of possessive joy swept through him. He had thought, for a moment, that she was going to lie, if only to spare his feelings, that she would tell some unconvincing story about “not having appreciated his devotion until it was too late”—a speech straight from one of the true-story magazines she used to buy, something designed to explain away her ridiculous, novelettish entanglements with men like Eugene, and this old roue of an agent. Instead, here was the truth, freely and frankly admitted. She was ashamed, as any decently brought-up girl had a right to be ashamed of impulsive errors, and at long last she was accepting the role he had allotted her from the very beginning, that of a lady in a tower, awaiting rescue from dragons.

  The wheel, incredibly, had swung full circle.

  Instantly he began to extenuate for her.

  “You made one initial mistake, and then got mixed up with a rotten crowd. That happens all the time, doesn't it? But at least you had the courage to make a break in the first place, and that's more than I did. I only pretended to, and kept coming back, wanting the safety and security of the Avenue, and a humdrum job to go with it! Suppose you had had some money behind you, even the little bit I had, you would have got somewhere, Elaine, but I'm glad you didn't, and I don't care how selfish that sounds, because I'm in love with you, and I've always been in love with you!”

  He paused, trying to decide whether their present relationship could survive the final hurdle. Then he plunged on, determined to be done with all this hovering, done with it one way or the other.

  “I don't just want to be standing around trying to get you a job, Elaine darling, I want you as much and more than I did in the old days. I want to look after you, and come home to you, and be with you all the time. I want us to go places together, and have fun together. I've never wanted anything else since the minute I set eyes on you, and the only mistake I ever made about you was to give up so easily, and leave all the deciding to you!”

  Many, many times over the years Esme had rehearsed his proposal. He had begun phrasing it two or three days after the Stafford-Fyffe's dance, as long ago as 1930. Now it was 1938, and the world was slowly going mad, and people had already started digging air-raid shelters in their gardens, and old Mr. Forbes, his boss, was saying that this was a Twilight of the Gods, and that everything would soon disappear in one vast cloud of cordite and brick-dust. But Esme did not care about these things any more, and the declaration tumbled from his lips without even a memory of the measured and stately sentiments of his oft-rehearsed proposal. He simply said what was in his heart, and what had been there, waiting to be said, for so long now that the very freshness of his utterance surprised him.

  As for Elaine, for the second time that month she felt momentarily helpless, so much so that she all but lost her head. She had lived and moved among the Eugenes, the Benny Boys, and the Tappertitts, for so long now that it required an immense effort to adjust herself to a person like Esme, at once so astonishingly naive, and so utterly sincere. She had remembered these aspects of him, of course, but had assumed that he would have outgrown them, that nobody in these days could remain so young, yet still be old enough to be yearning to kiss her.

  Then a sense of reprieve shot out like a lifeline, and she clutched at it, frantically, and hauled herself back to reality, the changeless reality of three meals a day, money for good clothes, a soft bed at night, above all a base, and a breathing-space.

  She reached across the table and caught his hand.

  “Oh Esme, my dear, that's th
e most wonderful thing anyone's ever said to me, but you can't know, not like this, not so quickly....”

  For answer he stood up, and snapped his fingers at the waiter, who was hovering close to the street door, hoping against hope that the drivelling couple at No. 4 table would get up, and leave in time for him to get a bet on the three o'clock at Sandown. He hurried over, scribbling as he ran, and allowed his worried features to slip back into their habitual, rubbery smile.

  “Thank you, sir! Delighted to see you again, sir! There was no coat was there, sir?”

  “No,” said Esme, “no coat,” and to Elaine, “Let's go out to Hampton Court, and then come back here to celebrate with a show.”

  They moved out into the fruity smells and the sunshine, and this time it was Esme who took her arm. Neither said anything until they reached Windmill Street, and then Esme suddenly excused himself, and skipped into a florist's, emerging a few moments later with an armful of yellow roses and pink and white carnations.

  Then Elaine remembered that Hampton Court was a long way off, and that it was time that she did something as positive. So she leaned over the flowers as he thrust them towards her, and kissed him softly on the mouth.

  An elderly prostitute, lazily swinging her bag, and enjoying the sunshine from a shuttered shop doorway, looked on with mild interest, and a street-vendor, in the act of rebuilding a pyramid of pears, paused to exclaim: “Say it wi' flahers, mate, say it wi' flahers,” and winked in the direction of the prostitute.

  Esme did not even see them, he was shouting at a passing taxi. It braked, and they climbed in, Elaine grasping the flowers.

  “I must take these to the hotel first, Esme—it's the Leicester Court, just off Sloane Square.”

  “I know it,” said the driver, and reached out to slam the door.

  Once the taxi was moving Elaine laid down the flowers, and turned to him, wordlessly, but he was swifter even than she, and had already buried his lips in her hair.

  2

  Esme and Elaine were married on the first day of October, in the same registrar's office as that used by Louise and Jack Strawbridge, but the Avenue was not as well represented as on the former occasion. There were only three witnesses, Harold, Eunice, and Elaine's father, who was eventually summoned by Esme after opposition from Elaine.

  He failed in his half-hearted attempt to persuade her to relent in respect of her mother and Sydney, but regarding Edgar, who had been kind and hospitable to him when he had called on him in Wales during his travels, Esme was insistent It seemed to him a shabby trick to let the little man hear of the wedding of his only daughter from outside sources.

  The preliminaries as a whole were not without their stresses. Eunice badly wanted a church wedding, however small, and Harold privately disapproved of what he described to Esme as “the rather indecent haste of it all, old man.”

  Esme's announcement, and his swift introduction of Elaine into Number Twenty-Two, was a shock to his mother and stepfather. Had he been a year or two younger, or less independent financially, they would probably have opposed the marriage tooth and nail, and this in spite of Elaine's extremely tactful handling of Harold.

  Harold had by no means forgotten his long, midnight talk with Esme, on the subject of the bride, but although conventional in most respects Harold always loosened up a little when asked to pronounce upon the subject of love. His experiences as a solicitor had taught him the fatuity of looking for a logical reason in a particular man's desire to share life and income with a particular woman. He himself had been cosy enough in bachelor lodgings, and had been quite satisfied with life until Eunice had turned her china-blue eyes on him, and whispered: “But you have got such a grasp of things, Mr. Godbeer.” After that he had had no peace until they were married. He had little enough peace now, for when Eunice wasn't chattering she was usually badgering him to do some little job about the house. For all that he would never have returned voluntarily to bachelor lodgings, and he had never ceased to be proud of Eunice, particularly when he took her “Up West”, and watched men far younger than himself turn their heads and note her prettiness.

  Like a good many mild-mannered, conventional men, who have entered upon their forties with wild oats unsown, Harold was still very susceptible to a pretty face and a good figure, and Elaine, recognising this at a glance, soon overcame his initial opposition to an immediate wedding.

  “After all,” he told Eunice, when she wept intermittently on the night that Esme had come home with his news, “the boy's twenty-six, and he's been in love with the girl ever since he was an adolescent.”

  “How can you possibly know that, Harold?” she wailed, brushing away at her soft hair, as she sat before the dressing-table mirror.

  “I know it,” Harold had replied, with pardonable smugness, “because Esme confided in me from the very first! I told you I'd be a father to the boy, and I have! He trusts me. He's always trusted me,”

  “But you never even whispered it to me,” complained Eunice, laying down her silver-backed brush, and turning to him where he lay, his peaked face just showing above the sheets.

  “There are occasions, my dear,” he replied, “when matters between father and son must be regarded as strictly confidential, even to the exclusion of mothers! Esme has been faithful in essence, for many years, and it is now quite obvious that having had what it usually termed a “fling”, this girl has brought herself to recognise the full merit of such fidelity.”

  “I simply don't understand you when you talk in that solicitor's way,” grumbled Eunice. “I never have, and I believe that's why you do it! Why can't you say what you want to say in ordinary English?”

  Harold sighed. Sometimes Eunice could be agonisingly stupid, and he was always more prone to notice it when he was sleepy, as now.

  “I simply mean, my dear, that he's very much in love with her, and I think she has now appreciated the fact. I don't know how I can simplify it further, but I do wish you would turn out the light and get into bed!”

  Within a matter of days, however, Eunice was reconciled to the loss of Esme, although by no means approving of the manner in which the wedding was to be carried out. She wanted a party, with everybody in smart, new clothes, and floppy hats, with plenty of champagne, and silly speeches, and a photographer to take group pictures in the garden. It is possible that, under other circumstances, Elaine might have accommodated her in this respect, but Esther lived just across the road, and, regarding her mother, Elaine was implacable. She therefore fell in readily with Esme's proposal for a register-office ceremony. Eunice made no attempt to conceal her disappointment.

  “It's so ... so shabby” she complained, “and it's only once in a lifetime. I think you owe it to yourselves to have something to remember. There's no need to make it a big wedding, and you can go to the church early in the morning, but for heaven's sake let's have something—not just a ... a ... ‘bus-ride into Croydon, and a lot of forms to fill in.”

  Harold again came to the young couple's rescue.

  “It isn't quite so simple as that, my dear,” he reasoned. “Elaine was very unhappy with her mother, Eunice,” and turning to Elaine, “so unhappy that you ran away, didn't you, my dear?”

  “Yes, I did, Uncle Harold,” said Elaine, contriving to look as though, prior to her escape, Esther had kept her locked in an attic, and had only disturbed her solitude at regular intervals, with rations of bread, water, and birch-rod.

  “There, you see,” went on Harold persuasively, “it wouldn't be very nice for Elaine to have to invite her mother, and of course she would have to invite her if the ceremony was public and we had any sort of reception here afterwards. I don't mind telling you, my dear, I've had some professional experience with Elaine's mother, and under such circumstances she might prove a difficult woman!”

  So all was arranged to the general satisfaction, and even the opposition from Eunice began to lessen under the stimulus of a gigantic shopping spree, carried out along the entire length of the Cr
oydon High Street.

  This expedition, or series of expeditions, began with the avowed object of buying Eunice's wedding costume and Esme's present, but it ended in Eunice buying an entire houseful of new furniture and household fittings, down to the shoe-scraper for the back door, a set of “humane” mousetraps, and the rustless, metal toilet-roll holder.

  Elaine accompanied her prospective mother-in-law on the first two of these expeditions, but subsequently excused herself, and went off to the pictures. When Eunice once entered a large shop there was no knowing when she would emerge, and it did not take Elaine very long to discover that she herself had no instinct for home-making, whereas she thought it best to conceal her boredom under a modest avowal that “Eunice would make Esme's money go so much further.”

  Indeed, when it came to the point, neither Esme nor Elaine had much to do with the setting up of their new home. This was not far distant—just across the road in fact, for Harold had persuaded Esme to buy Number Forty-Three, partly because it was going very cheap (Mr. Thorburne, the previous occupant, had just been declared a bankrupt), and partly as a concession to Eunice.

  Esme himself had no wish to move away from the Avenue. Since returning to the suburb, after his cheerless wanderings up and down the country, he had recaptured some of the enchantment it had held for him in childhood. It gave him pleasure now to think that his “study” window, at the back, looked out on an uninterrupted view of the meadow and his beloved Manor Wood.

  He had been very doubtful at first whether Elaine would agree to begin her married life so near to her mother and Sydney, and had expected considerable opposition to the proposal. In the event he encountered none. Elaine thought the house “very nice”, and confessed that she was only too happy to be within such close call of Uncle Harold and Eunice. She called her “Eunice” now, having remarked, during one of their later meetings, “I can't very well call you ‘Mum', or ‘Mother', can I? You look too much like my little sister!”