It never occurred to her to wonder how long the war would last, or whether she would ever return to the Avenue, where she had spent so many happy years between the two wars. That was something that dear Harold would see to when the time came. In the meantime, there were the shops, and Baba’s spinach to buy, and East Lynne to re-read, and the boats to look at.
Day followed day, with scarcely any variation, except a little chat with the laundryman (such a nice, cheerful, flattering laundryman) or perhaps a ride to Totnes and back, with that sweet old R.A.F. officer. She was in no hurry to go back to the Avenue (though she would go, of course, the moment Harold sent for her) for down here the war and the bombs, seemed very remote, and the air was so good for Baba, who would now say ‘fisherman’, and ‘anchor’, clearly enough for even passers-by to understand.
One sunny morning in March, about the time that Archie and Elaine were exploring the wartime delights of Blackpool, Eunice decided to avail herself of the Wing Commander’s car once more and convey herself, Baba and Baba’s large pram, down to the shops. She had all sorts of things to buy, and it was nice to be able to dump all the heavier purchases in the pram-well, under Barbara’s feet, leaving the carrier basket free for any personal purchases that she might have to make.
The Wing Commander put her down near the Pavilion, and she set out intending to push the pram along the harbour edge to the Clock Tower, where there was a shop that changed its window every day.
The harbour seemed particularly busy that morning. All the usual fishing boats were there, but so was a row of squat-looking launches that she had never seen before. Somebody told her they were Air-Sea Rescue launches, used for saving airmen from the sea, and because Esme was in the Air Force, and might, at some time, be called upon to sit in just such a boat, Eunice thought it right that Barbara should be properly introduced to them. She lifted the baby out of her pram, and held her up, so that she could look over the wall, and ‘see the big boats that Daddy used’.
Eunice was holding her like this, and steadying herself against a buttress, when she was conscious of a vague stir in the immediate area. She saw a group of men run up the steps in a body and heard people shout from the other side of the road.
At the same moment an insistent blaring smote her ears, as though a hundred car hooters were being pressed from only a few feet away. Then, above the immediate racket, she heard the roar and splutter of aero-engines, and glancing up she saw three aircraft, at hardly more than rooftop level, skimming in from the sea, zooming right above her head, and making the most unearthly din in flight.
She did not recognise these aircraft as German hit-and-run-raiders. If she saw the markings on them she did not identify them with the frantic scurrying of the people beside her. It all happened so very quickly; one second she was holding Baba against the wall, and the next she was instinctively thrusting her back into the pram, bending over her and adjusting the little wool blanket, the one with yellow chickens embroidered on the corner.
Then somebody hurrying by punched her in the back, and she wondered how people could be so rude and so careless towards a woman attending to a baby. At the moment of impact little Barbara, terrified by the noise no doubt, set up a long thin wail, and after that the seawall seemed to disintegrate and the waves rushed in and Eunice thought how horrid and noisy and disappointing everybody was being, on what had promised to be such a nice, sunny morning at the shops.
She felt no pain and hardly any physical shock, just a small and final spurt of irritation.
In less than a minute the aircraft had racketted away beyond the Tor and people came running, telling one another in high-pitched voices how amazing it was that the Luftwaffe had at last noticed Torquay and how lucky everybody had been to escape, and what terrible gunners Goering’s airmen must be! Then somebody noticed Eunice, slumped over the pram and heard the baby’s voice raised in a protesting wail, and the man nearest the pram said: “Hullo? Somebody’s copped it!”, and they all looked to see blood staining the pretty cot blanket.
Gently they lifted Eunice clear of the pram and laid her down on a mackintosh, spread under the wall. Other people succeeded in quietening the baby, lifting her out while someone ran for a policeman. The policeman arrived almost at once and began sorting through Eunice’s capacious handbag and copying her address into his notebook.
Then the ambulance drew up and people with wildly beating hearts crowded round, to see the poor woman driven away to the mortuary and the woman who was cooing over the baby being asked by the policeman to accompany him to the station, for he was a bachelor, and did not feel confident of handling the situation alone.
Ambulance and police car sped away in different directions, but because the people who were there knew nothing of Eunice, or her suburb, nobody thought it strange that a woman who had never had a sour thought about anyone, should be the first person in the Avenue to die under the bullets of German machine-guns.
They got through on the ’phone to Harold about 2 p.m., when he had just finished eating his sandwich lunch, and was looking up a precedent for a party wall dispute, in Stone’s Justices Manual.
The line was bad, and they had some difficulty in making him understand. He kept saying: “I beg your pardon…please speak up…I can’t hear…my wife…what about my wife…?”
Eventually they did make him understand and he cried out, dropping the receiver on the desk, where it continued to squawk and crackle, until Miss Redvers, his secretary, gently replaced it and summoned help from the outer office.
Miss Redvers was well trained and resourceful. She managed to get the name of Esme’s camp from the gibbering Harold, and after a tiresome delay getting the confidential number from Whitehall, put through a call to the Commanding Officer. The C.O. was very sympathetic, and promised to interview Esme immediately. He also promised to fix him up with a week’s compassionate leave, but he warned them that it was unlikely the man would be able to get home until very late that night, or early the next morning.
In the meantime, Blane, the articled junior, had brewed Harold some black coffee, and forced him to swallow it, and Miss Redvers had dissolved three Aspros into the cup without Harold noticing. By dusk he was sufficiently recovered to be escorted to the station and put on his train, but Miss Redvers insisted on accompanying him to his home in the Avenue, where she was relieved to find Jim Carver, eating his high tea in the kitchen, preparatory to going on duty at the Post.
Jim took charge of Harold at once and she was able to make her way home. She had acted throughout from motives of disinterested kindness, but as she paced about Woodside Station, awaiting her train back to Streatham, she could not help wondering if Harold would want to marry again, once the poor dear recovered from the terrible shock. It was an interesting possibility and occupied her mind throughout most of the journey to Streatham.
Esme, pale and haggard, arrived soon after midnight, and went into Number Twenty before calling at his home, just across the road.
Jim let him in and told him that he had been able to switch duties with a colleague at the Post and had remained to look after Harold, now sound asleep and ‘doped to the eyebrows’.
“Are they quite sure Barbara’s okay?” Esme asked him, fearfully.
Jim told him they were sure, for he himself had spoken to the Superintendent of Police on the ’phone an hour or so earlier. The baby was now being cared for by the resident nurse at an Evacuee Centre and could be fetched home any time that he or Harold found convenient. The Superintendent had also asked if they wanted him to take any steps about the funeral.
It was the mention of the word ‘funeral’ that brought the fact of his mother’s death home to Esme. All the way south, in the stuffy, crawling train, his mind had resisted the information passed to him by the C.O., at the camp. It seemed incredible that poor Eunice had been machine-gunned to death, on the Torquay sea-front, when all the people here in the Avenue were still alive after months of bombardment. His senses shied away from the m
onstrous idiocy of the facts, of a harmless, fluffy, chirrupy little thing like Eunice Go-beer, becoming a target for young Teutons, who came zooming over the Channel from Le Mans, or Chartres. What could anybody hope to gain by such indiscriminate killing? How could the snuffing-out of a million Eunices affect the course of the war one way or the other?
Jim Carver tried to make some sort of sense of it.
“I suppose they’ve got a screwy idea that if they kill off a sufficient number of civilians we’ll all start screaming for peace,” he said, quietly. “By God, but they must want their heads examined over there! Even the Hohenzollerns weren’t that dim…there was some sort of crazy logic in sinking the Lusitania and shooting Nurse Cavell!”
“I’d better go across to Elaine,” said Esme, after refusing cocoa and sandwiches. The thought of food revolted him. He had been unable to take more than a bite out of a pork pie they had given him when he left the camp.
Jim looked uncomfortable. “I…er. I’m afraid she’s not there,” he said, “Harold went over about seven, and I tried again just before you got in.”
Esme looked puzzled. “If she was going away she must have told Harold,” he argued.
“There was this,” said Jim, and gave Esme a used envelope, with a drawing pin stuck through the flap. “I found it fastened to the back door,” he explained.
Esme glanced at the envelope. On it, in Elaine’s large, legible scrawl, was the message: ‘No milk until Tuesday’.
“Where the hell could she have gone?” he demanded. “Could it be up to her father’s, in Llandudno?”
“That seems the most likely bet,” said Jim. “Are they on the ’phone up there?”
“Yes, I’ll slip over to my place and get through at once. Will you be staying with Harold for a bit?”
“I live here,” Jim told him, “Harold invited me, some time ago.”
“Oh yes, I was forgetting,” said Esme, vaguely, and left.
Number Forty-Three was cold and silent when he let himself in. He went into the downstairs bedroom and looked first at the dressing-table. If Elaine was spending a night away from home she would never have left without the array of pots and bottles that stood in a long row against the mirror. The space was empty and he double-checked by searching the cupboard for her soft, leather grip, and then glancing behind the bathroom door, to see if her dressing gown was there. Bag and dressing gown were missing, and so he went into the front room, lit the gas-fire, and put through a call to Edgar Frith, her father.
He was a long time getting through and during the delay his indignation mounted. What sort of woman was she, to go off like this, without even leaving a message with Harold, just across the road, or with Margy Hartnell, next door? Why wasn’t she with the baby anyway, instead of gadding about on her own, and letting his mother take all the chances? Then he had a chastening thought. Perhaps she had taken it into her head to slip down to Torquay and spend a few days with the child? Perhaps, at this very moment, she was knocking at the door of the cottage, on the Totnes Road, and getting no answer, or being told the news by a policeman?
The thought made him jiggle the hook, and shout: “Hullo, hullo!” into the receiver. Eventually Edgar’s tired voice was heard at the other end, and Esme, after apologising for waking him at 2 a.m., at once asked if Elaine was there. Edgar seemed surprised at being asked such a question.
“Elaine? Why, no, my boy…no, no, of course she isn’t! Why should she be?”
Esme briefly explained what had happened in Torquay, and he heard Edgar expel his breath.
“I say…I’m terribly sorry, old chap, …I’ll come down…I’ll come right away…”
No, no, Esme told him, he and Harold were leaving for Torquay in the morning, and Elaine would turn up sooner or later. She had probably got fed up with the bombing, and had gone into the country for a few days. She was like that Esme explained, as if Edgar, her father, didn’t know, she was always doing things on impulse, and was always surprised if people expected her to behave differently.
He said goodnight to Edgar, took a final look round the bedroom, where Elaine’s perfume still hovered, and then re-crossed the road to Number Twenty.
“She’s not there,” he told Jim, shortly, “I can’t imagine where she is.”
Jim could imagine, but he said nothing. After all, Elaine’s wartime reputation was only an Avenue rumour, originating, as far as he could discover, from that fatuous ass Grubb, the A.R.P. warden, who had succeeded the punctilious Grandpa Barnmeade.
“You get some sleep,” said Jim, “try, anyway! You’ve got a rotten time ahead of you. Would you care to stay here?” Esme declined, returning thoughtfully to Number Forty-Three.
He and Harold travelled down to Torquay and collected Barbara the following afternoon. The child beamed with pleasure on seeing Esme, who fondled her thick, dark curls, so like her mother’s in softness and texture, and hugged her close, under the weepy glances of the volunteer nurse.
“I’m so terribly sorry about your wife,” she murmured.
“She wasn’t my wife, she was my mother,” he explained, with a tired smile, and reflected how Eunice would have trilled with delighted laughter at the woman’s mistake.
“Oh I…I’m terribly sorry,” stuttered the nurse, and then, more soberly, “the Warden told me to ask if you wanted to see…your mother.”
“No,” said Esme quickly, and then, despite the wretched triteness of the remark, “I’d sooner remember her alive.”
Harold preferred otherwise. Despite Esme’s protests he insisted on going over to the mortuary. He came out tottering rather than walking, and Esme, encumbered as he was with Barbara, had difficulty in getting him up to the cottage and was glad of assistance from an unexpected quarter, the R.A.F. Equipment Depot at the top of the town. The C.O., it seemed, had known Eunice, and pulled up alongside them, as they waited at the ’bus stop.
“I recognised the baby,” he told Harold quickly introducing himself. “I say, my deepest sympathies old chap, she really was a charming little woman, and quite wonderful with that youngster. I often gave them a lift into town; you know!” He turned to the blank-faced Esme. “You must be feeling pretty dicky, my boy. Would you and your father like to pop into my place for a snifter, on the way home?”
Harold thanked him, but declined. He had never been much of a drinker, and he felt sure that spirits were not going to help him much now.
They spent a wretched night at the cottage and Esme persuaded Harold to order a local funeral. What was the point, he argued, of taking poor Eunice all the way back to Shirley Churchyard? They had no family grave there, and she had been happy down here. Blast the bloody Germans, she had been happy everywhere, he reflected, savagely.
“We spent our honeymoon here,” Harold reminded him.
“I know,” said Esme, attempting the weakest of jokes, “I was there too, remember?”
They travelled home the morning after the funeral, and Esme, occupied with Barbara, did not notice how ill Harold looked, until he began coughing while they waited in the taxi queue at Paddington. Then he realised that his step-father was on the point of collapse and paid the driver two pounds to drive them the twelve miles to the Avenue, instead of taking them over to Charing Cross.
When they reached Number Twenty-Two, good old Jim Carver was there, with Edith Clegg, from Number Four, and Harold did collapse and Jim had to carry him up the narrow stairs and put him to bed, where he remained for more than a fortnight, nursed, alternately, by Jim and Edith. By that time, Esme had disappeared from the Avenue as abruptly as his wife, taking the baby with him, and, like her, leaving no message for any of them.
CHAPTER VIII
Gaslight In Reverse
BLACKPOOL DID NOT disappoint Elaine and the celebrated breezes soon swept Archie from the doldrums, once he had enjoyed a good night’s sleep following the tiring drive north.
The town seethed with airmen, billeted by the thousand in the terrace houses of the drab roads, l
eading off the Marine Parade.
Many of the pre-war centres of amusements that Archie remembered were open and thriving. There was even a small amusement park with its usual assortment of booths and freak shows.
Elaine, who had once worked in a fairground, during her travels in search of The Great Provider, felt very much at home in this atmosphere and amused Archie by winning two prizes at a shooting booth.
“I used to load rifles on one of these,” she told him. “The secret with tufted darts is to aim low, at least an inch below the bull. They fly up, don’t you see?”
She carried away a large celluloid doll and a hideous brown ashtray. Archie, who examined the prizes closely, made a rapid calculation of the promoter’s margin of profit, and decided that if the prizes were purchased by the gross the promoter could afford to present a prize to every third marksman and still make a profit.
He told Elaine this and she laughed, affectionately squeezing his arm.
“Oh, forget profit and loss for a bit, Archie! We’re here to enjoy ourselves, aren’t we?”
Enjoy themselves they certainly did! They ate oysters at a bar, drank a good deal of gin, idled in the cafés during the afternoons, watched the recruits drilling on the front in the mornings, danced every night in the Tower Ballroom, sat through several cinema shows and even visited the theatre, sitting in a box, and listening to a popular radio star croon, ‘Over the Rainbow’, and ‘The White Cliffs of Dover’.
They went to bed in the small hours and had their breakfast served on trays at 10 a.m. Archie complained a little at the quality of the food and made a mental note to bring his rations with him when they came here again, but he had no reason to complain of Elaine’s share in the entertainment, finding her relaxed, and as generous as ever. She even gave him the impression that he could, if so disposed, come to mean something more to her than a weekender, with plenty of money to burn.
In a strictly limited sense he was right. Elaine liked his breezy masculinity and the fact that he made no demands at all upon her emotions. Even the casual men, in her vaudeville days, had sometimes tried to pretend that they were in love with her as a person, and not simply as a congenial bedfellow. Eugene, the Illusionist, had grossly deceived himself in this respect, and Benny Boy, the agent, had been tiresomely jealous if she flirted with a man at the next table. As for poor Esme, he had made impossible demands on her during the first months of marriage, swearing eternal fidelity to her (as if that was possible, at his age!) and refusing to be satisfied with the purely physical manifestations of her affection.
The Avenue Goes to War Page 10