At last, however, there was no advantage in continuing to hoodwink himself and in a way he welcomed the crisis. Ever since he had joined up he had been aware that his wife was deceiving him, but each time he had returned to the Avenue he had been able to persuade himself that she indulged in nothing more serious than an occasional wartime flirtation, the kind of light-hearted association that any lonely woman might encourage—up to a certain point. He did not believe that she had been unfaithful to him, for he was more naïve than most men and found it hard to fuse her outwardly affectionate approach to him with adultery. Duplicity, of that kind, he reasoned, was alien to the people of the Avenue. It belonged in higher places, in mews flats and country houses. It had never flourished in rows of terraced houses, where nobody earned more than a few pounds a week.
This reasoning was not as naïve as it would appear to be. Esme was a child of the suburbs. He had grown up believing in the solid virtues of the poor and the undistinguished. He believed in the majesty of the law, an incorruptible police force, in trains that ran to time, and husbands who spent eight hours a day in offices, two hours a day in suburban trains, and mowed their lawns regularly on Saturday afternoons! He believed in correct change, prompt payment of rates, and good faith. A person like Archie, or Elaine, would have said that he still believed in Santa Klaus.
His unhappy months of doubt did not help him to absorb the shock of Elaine’s frank admission regarding her association with Archie Carver. Esme had always been aware of the man as big, florid and cocky, so unlike his sober father, Jim, his hard-working elder sister, Louise, or even his unpredictable brothers, Bernard and Boxer.
The identity of Elaine’s lover exacerbated his hurt. To him it was a betrayal among neighbours, an Avenue let-down, and it magnified his wife’s disloyalty. He asked himself how she could bring herself to go away with a man like that, when her husband was in uniform, and her child was being cared for by someone else, two hundred miles away? What did she think when she was being pawed by him, in some second-class hotel bedroom, or worse, in an Avenue house, which her cuckolded husband owned?
As he threw together his belongings the enormity of her powers of deception made him choke with humiliation. As an orderly room clerk he had become familiar, of late, with this kind of situation. He had sorted through the green confidential files made out in respect of various men of the unit who were having ‘domestic troubles’, and had actually filled in forms applying for legal aid on their behalf. He had read some of the letters they brought back with them as evidence, sordid little exchanges for the most part, full of sloppy endearments, and repetitious words like ‘ducks’ and ‘lovey’. There had been one in particular that had quite disgusted him—an aircraft factory hand’s detailed description of the steps he intended taking in order to console a serviceman’s wife, as soon as the husband was safely on board the troopship.
Now, he reflected, he would have a green, confidential file to himself and the facts concerning his own wife, and her liaison with a middle-aged grocer over the road, would be bandied about between Flight Lieutenant Dyson, the camp mouthpiece, and lawyers representing Elaine and Archie.
In the meantime, what was he to do with the baby? In the grip of a cold, helpless rage, he had bundled the child in a blanket and eiderdown, and carried her out of the house, but it was a gesture that had little sense, for his compassionate leave had already expired and he was due back at the camp at 0800 hours next day. It was after dark now, and the siren might sound at any moment.
The final thought sobered him and he paused at the end of the Avenue, outside Number One. Obviously the sane course would be to take Barbara over to Number Twenty, and there discuss the situation, if not with poor Harold, then at least with Jim Carver, the father of the man who had so generously supplied Number Forty-Three with extra rations.
Esme almost made up his mind to adopt this course, before he recalled the nature of the man who had lived next door to them for so many years. Esme had grown up regarding Jim Carver with a mixture of awe and faint distrust. True, he and Harold seemed to be boon companions these days, a fact that Esme still found difficult to understand, for he remembered Harold assessing his neighbour as ‘a Bolshie’. Jim Carver had, it was rumoured, actually taken part in the burning of a ’bus, during the General Strike and the memory of this fifteen-year-old story was sufficient to make Esme think twice of acquainting this man with his eldest son’s part in wrecking a serviceman’s marriage. Jim was the kind of man, he felt, who would roar with rage the moment he heard the facts and then stride off down the Avenue to Number Two, to have it out with his son and thus feed the episode to the Avenue gossips. Such action could hardly mend matters— they were past mending anyway—and Esme was far too sensitive to want his shame advertised in the Avenue windows.
Then if not Harold, or Jim Carver, who else? There was no other person in the Avenue with whom Esme was on intimate terms. After all, one needed to know a person reasonably well, to turn up on the doorstep at nine o’clock at night, and enlist his help as custodian for a seventeen-month-old baby, recently snatched from a faithless wife. There seemed no alternative to taking the baby back to camp and dropping the whole problem into the lap of the R.A.F. They would have to grant him additional leave, in order to find accommodation for the child, at least until Harold recovered, and then, perhaps, he would be able to make more permanent arrangements, possibly with Elaine’s father or mother.
Well, and why not? Esme asked himself, standing indecisively at the junction of Shirley Rise, and the Avenue. He had put his own life aside, in order to serve in the R.A.F., and now the Service could start doing something for him. He had, in fact, little doubt but that it would try, for he had witnessed, at close quarters, the genuine concern of the authorities for men enmeshed in ‘domestic problems’, and he had been struck by the size and scope of the machinery set up to deal with this by-product of war. His own Commanding Officer, a Squadron Leader, was a bluff, middle-aged, ex-seaman, who, after years in aircraft carriers, had strayed into the R.A.F. as a regular, in time to catch the floodtide of wartime promotion. Esme had watched him deal with a variety of delicate, personal problems and had been greatly impressed by his common sense and gruff kindness. He was typical, Esme learned, of all regular officers, a type that he had been prepared to dislike and distrust, for he had once shared the civilian’s prevailing contempt for enlisted men, and thought of them as misfits who signed on because nobody could be found to employ them.
After only a few weeks in uniform Esme realised that this was nonsense. He found that the regulars were, for the most part, decent, kindly, and by no means unintelligent, far more likeable indeed, and far better officers, than some of the bumptious youngsters of the Reserve, week-end fliers, without real experience of handling men or machines. The pick of these volunteers, he discovered, swiftly graduated to the operational units, leaving the least admirable, men like Sydney Frith, Elaine’s odious brother, to officer the rapidly-expanding Training Command, in which Esme had the misfortune to serve.
At the memory of ‘Collie’, his C.O. at Queen’s Norton, Esme made up his mind. Fortunately the night air was mild, with a soft, south wind blowing in from Manor Woods and a sky bright with stars. Barbara did not seem to have been disturbed by her outing and was still asleep in the folds of the blanket, but Esme realised that it would be folly to attempt the hundred-mile journey back to the camp by rail, when it could be accomplished, in much shorter time, and in considerably more comfort, by hire-car. So he went down Shirley Rise to the Lower Road, and looked in at Skelton’s, the all-night garage, where he had once hired a car after overstaying his leave.
The prohibitive cost of the journey did not worry him. His salary was made up by the Scottish newspaper that he had represented before joining the Service, and, in addition, he drew a regular five pounds a week from his own investments. He was one of the few rankers at Queen’s Norton who seldom thought about the fortnightly pay parade until it came round.
> He secured car and driver almost at once and was dropped off outside the guardroom, just before midnight. The baby had continued to sleep soundly throughout the journey, only waking when Esme had to shift her position, in order to extract his wallet and pay the fare.
Then Barbara began to wriggle and whimper and the corporal of the guard, who had lounged out from his hut on hearing a car drive up, came through the wicket gate and regarded him curiously. He was a big Westcountry man, with the camp reputation of a humourist, and he at once recognised Esme as the L.A.C. who had obliged him by getting his leave pass signed a fortnight ago. Because of this his approach was cordial.
“Eh, eh, eh…What you been up to, Fraser? Are you ’aving us on?”
Esme, tired, depressed and much harassed, was in no mood for jokes.
“I’m just back off leave, and I’ve got to see the C.O. or the Adj. right away! Are either of them about?”
When the corporal had first approached Esme he had been convinced that his leg was about to be pulled, but by this time Barbara was wide awake, and not at all sure of herself in the glare of the corporal’s torch. She set up a loud and protesting bellow and the corporal jumped back as though he had been stung.
“Christ!” he stuttered, “you really ’ave got a tacker there! What’s the idea? Where’d you find it?”
“I didn’t find it, you clot,” snapped Esme, “it’s my kid and you’ll have to run us down to H.Q. in the guard wagon.”
The corporal pulled himself together.
“Streuth!” he gasped. “You been bombed out, chum?”
“Yes,” said Esme, anxious to cut the interview short.
The corporal was instantly sympathetic.
“Hard luck, mate—here—half a sec’…hi you”—to the helmeted sentry, who was gaping at them from his box—“tell one of the others to take over and run this L.A.C. and his kid down to H.Q. Jump to it, or someone’ll be mistaking it for the ruddy siren!”
The sentry doubled into the guard hut and the corporal turned his torch downward, drawing aside the folds of the blanket and beaming down at Barbara’s puckered face.
“Arrr, but she’s a right pretty li’l maid! How old?”
“Seventeen months,” said Esme, and suddenly experienced a wave of relief that he was back among friends. “I had to bring her, there was nowhere I could take her, not at this time of night.”
He rocked the baby gently and the wails slowly subsided, culminating at last in a series of small hiccoughs. He smiled, for the first time since they had told him of Eunice.
“All right, Babs, take it easy, we’re going to make a W.A.A.F. out of you!”
The corporal chuckled. “Sure thing!” he said, and then: “Bloody sure thing! Here, hop in mate, and I’ll hand her up to you.”
Esme felt a powerful kinship with the man, so powerful indeed, that he instantly regretted his lie about the bombing. “I’ll tell you what really happened at N.A.A.F.I. break, tomorrow,” he promised, “and thanks for the lift, I’ve been in a terrible flap all evening!”
“It’ll be okeydoke,” said the corporal, “the Old Man was here less than half an hour ago, and he won’t have finished his rounds yet. You’ll probably catch him at H.Q., now.”
The station-wagon drove into the camp, passing between the long lines of blacked-out huts. The sentry drove slowly and carefully, as though transporting a cargo of explosive, and he kept glancing sideways at Esme, as though he badly wanted to say something but was unsure how to begin.
When they got to Station Headquarters he jumped out and ran round, reaching up to help the encumbered Esme to the ground.
“Careful—mind the step—it’s okay, the C.O.’s here, I can see a chink in his blackout!”
Esme carried Barbara down the narrow passage and straight into the orderly room. The duty clerk was sitting at the registry desk, sorting posting notices, and he looked up with a wide yawn.
“Hullo, Fraser? What’s cooking?”
“I’m going in to see the Old Man,” Esme told him. “Is anyone else in there?”
“No,” said the clerk, “he’s signing the stuff I’ve been working on. I say—what the hell have you got there?”
“My kid,” said Esme, and then, seeing the man’s jaw drop, “I’ve been bombed out!”
He tapped at the communicating door before the man could exclaim, and a deep voice at once boomed: “Come in.”
‘Collie’ was sitting at his desk, scrawling signatures across a fanned-out sheaf of documents. He looked up with the impatient expression that Esme had once thought of as a sign of permanent irritability, but had now ceased to fear. The C.O. was a thickset, grizzled man, in his mid-fifties. He wore the observer’s badge, the ‘O’, sprouting a single wing, that everybody in camp called a ‘Flying Orifice’. His broad face was seamed and tanned, and there was a sadness in his eyes that Esme knew had been put there by the death of his younger son, shot down over Lille, during the Battle of France.
“Have you got a baby there, L.A.C.?” he grunted, but without, Esme thought, a note of surprise.
“Yes, sir, my daughter, sir,” said Esme, half coming to attention, but relaxing as the Squadron Leader waved his hand.
“H’m! What happened? Blitzed?”
“No, sir,” said Esme, “not exactly.”
The Squadron Leader leaned back and jerked his head towards the only other chair in the room.
“Well? What’s the score, L.A.C.?”
Esme sat down and told him, simply, and in briefest outline. “I don’t know why I took the kid, sir…” he concluded, “it was pretty silly I suppose, but anyway I did! If we could park somewhere for the night, I daresay I could ’phone someone, and make other arrangements.”
“I don’t blame you for taking her, L.A.C.,” said Collie, slowly, and began rubbing his chin in long, sweeping movements. For a moment there was silence, except for the dry rasp of the Squadron Leader’s horny palm on his stubble.
“Know anything about feeding kids?” he asked, suddenly.
“Well yes, sir, a bit I suppose, but I didn’t bring any of the stuff with me. It didn’t occur to me.”
Two more rasping sweeps and then the C.O. picked up the ’phone. “Get me through to the Waffery,” he grunted to the switchboard operator.
Esme heard a series of metallic clicks, as the operator plugged in, and then Collie saying: “Who is that?” and a girl’s voice, answering. “Well listen,” Collie went on, “one of my clerks has just breezed in with a baby…that’s it…a baby! Well, it’ll have to stay the night in camp and maybe most of tomorrow! Have you got anyone over there who can cope, providing I fix the grub with the Catering Officer?”
The girl at the far end of the ’phone said something in reply, but Esme was only half listening; he suddenly realised how terribly exhausted he felt.
“Okay,” he heard Collie say, “I’ll bring ’em over right away!”
He replaced the receiver and turned back to Esme.
“The W.A.A.F. officer’s in bed, and there’s no point in getting her out. She wouldn’t have a clue anyway, but they’ve got a new sergeant over there, I saw her yesterday, and she’s buttoned up—a good type! I’ll run you over, then you’d better get some sleep and we’ll chew it all over in the morning, with Flight Lieutenant Dyson. He’ll know all the angles, it’s his job! Fair enough?”
“Fair enough, sir,” said Esme, gratefully, “but I’m…I’m not dead sure of the W.A.A.F. orderly room, I’ve only been over there once, sir.”
“I said I’d run you over, didn’t I?” grunted Collie, and got up, lifting hat and gloves from the ‘In’ tray. He paused in his stride for the door and peered over Esme’s arm at the baby. Barbara was sound asleep again and at each exhalation a stray curl stirred on her cheek.
“Say, she’s a honey!” said Collie, readjusting the blanket.
He hesitated a moment longer, blocking the door, and it seemed to Esme that he was making up his mind to say something else. Fin
ally he turned, his hand on the door-knob, his eyes regarding Esme paternally.
“Will you take a tip from me, L.A.C., before the legal boys get to scratching around in your affairs? Wipe it, son!—Just wipe it! I’ve seen a lot of this sort of thing. I’m fifty-five now, and I’ve served with married men all over the world. The only thing to do in a case like this is to make up your mind to scrub it, and start fresh! Don’t look back, and for Christ’s sake don’t drive yourself crazy sorting through the ‘ifs’, and ‘might-have-beens’! You’ve been caught out in the rain see? So you got wet, wet right through! Okay! Dry yourself, and then lay out a fresh kit! You don’t have to keep reminding yourself how wet you got! That’s what’s important! You don’t remember how wet you got, or how silly you looked, with the rain running down your neck!”
He gave Esme a gentle push and their eyes met, each of them smiling. Esme said nothing, he would have found speech difficult, but followed Collie into the orderly room, past the motionless clerk, down the passage and out into the main lane. There was a glow in his heart, and as they climbed into the C.O.’s car it seemed to spread down to his stomach and loins.
They drove silently across the dispersal area; towards the huddle of Nissen huts, where the W.A.A.F, flight was housed. As they climbed out Collie said:
“It’s through there, and it’s all fixed, I’ll join you in a few minutes, I’ve got to contact the duty cook and fix the rations.”
Esme mounted the steps, and went down the passage past Signals, towards the W.A.A.F. orderly room. A girl, hearing his steps, called: “Hullo there! Is that the baby?”, and then the door opened, flooding the narrow corridor with light.
The girl, a sergeant, had stripes tied to her rolled-up shirtsleeve. She stood on the threshold and Esme stopped too, a few feet away; for a long moment, they stared at one another, each too surprised, and delighted to exclaim. Then the sergeant gave a little gasp, and ran forward, exclaiming.
The Avenue Goes to War Page 12