This discovery came as a very considerable shock to Edith. It was as though, all her life, she had lived in what she imagined to be a devotedly Christian community and then, one day, it was revealed to her that everyone, from archdeacon to gardener’s boy, subscribed to a faith that had but the outward trappings of her own and nothing at all of its spiritual essence.
One moment she was surrounded by people who raised their voices in ecstatic support of Christ’s ministrations to the oppressed; the next she was standing alone, watching these same people shoulder Christ out of the way and hurl stone after stone at the crouching adulteress. In fact, it was a good deal worse than this, for poor, confused Becky was not even an adulteress, just a lovesick, young girl who had been maltreated by a young scoundrel and persuaded to run away on a promise of marriage!
When she had brought Becky home and the entire parish, headed by her father, had crossed to the other side just like the passers-by in the parable, Edith’s conception of Christianity underwent an immediate transformation. All the outward manifestations of her faith fell away, like so many discarded garments, but, at the same time, her inner core of loving-kindness greatly enlarged itself, broadening her understanding and deepening her convictions, so that soon her entire being glowed with a desire to serve those who stood in need of service.
The nearest of these, both at that time and subsequently, was poor, witless Becky, but after they had left the parish and settled in the Avenue, there was always enough of the glow left over to warm somebody else. That was how she came to mother Ted Hartnell, the jazz drummer, and after Ted, Jean McInroy, the commercial artist, but even her lodgers did not monopolise Edith’s radiations, for some of them crossed the road to Number One, where little Miss Baker, the indestructible sufferer from rheumatoid arthritis, could benefit from them and did, for a period of over twenty years.
Edith had one more characteristic seldom found in those reared in the fear of the Lord; an abiding humility. She never once thought of herself as a ministering angel but rather as a clumsy old spinster, anxious (though by no means equipped) to tread the by-paths of righteousness.
That was why she had conceived such a deep-rooted respect for Jim Carver, and invariably followed the advice he gave her on domestic matters. Jim was big, solemn, decisive and reliable; he was, moreover, the father of a large family, and was therefore qualified to give advice on almost anything.
From the day he had conducted her to Westminster to pay homage at the tomb of the Unknown Warrior, Edith had worshipped Jim’s spare, solid strength, and the sense of permanence he conveyed to her. She delighted to see him go striding past her window in his A.R.P. outfit or, later on, in his Home Guard uniform. For her he typified the superior wisdom of the male and his quiet, persuasive voice was her favourite music, his rare, but singularly boyish smile a shaft of winter sunshine.
She had rushed to him, of course, the moment she had heard about the fate of the dear twins, Bernard and Boxer, but she was conscious of the inadequacy of any comfort she could bring to him in this field. He was already strong and resolute, and himself a soldier, who understood these things so much better than she did. When he told her that it was folly to hope that they might still be alive and prisoners in German hands, she believed him. If he didn’t know, then who did? He had fought battles long ago, and was still fighting them today!
It was a very different matter, however, when he stood in need of solace a week or two later, after they had told her that his eldest son, Archie, the big grocer whom everyone seemed to think was a bad lot, but who had always been kind and courteous to her personally, was now in serious trouble with the police. Dear Louise, Mr. Carver’s eldest girl, had actually asked her to go along and talk her father out of his dumps, for he was said to be taking his fresh trouble very much to heart.
She had been intending to go in any case, but with Louise’s blessing she went blithely. Here, she felt, was a situation that demanded something more than a military approach, a situation, indeed, that she felt well qualified to handle. She tripped along the Avenue to Number Twenty-Two and slipped down the alley to the back door, tapping gently on the glass panel and twittering a little at the low growl that greeted her from within.
She found him standing over the gas-stove stirring porridge, and scowling down into a porringer.
On the table, beside him, was a typewritten letter, with a heavily embossed letter-heading, and she recognised it at once as the letter from the solicitors that Louise had spoken about, the one asking him to go down and see his eldest boy at the town where Archie was in such dreadful trouble.
“Let me do that for you, Mr. Carver,” she began, putting out her hand to relieve him of the spoon.
“Let me alone!” he growled, in a tone that he had never employed to her in the twenty-off years she had known him. “This is none of your business and none of anyone’s business!”
Once bent upon comforting somebody Edith was not easily repulsed. She hovered a moment and then suddenly snatched the big spoon from his hand and began to stir the porridge.
“If you’re miserable it is my business!” she said. “I’ve brought my troubles to you times enough and I wouldn’t like to bring any more if you won’t let me help, when you need a friend! Now sit down, eat your porridge, and tell me all about it, and it’s not the slightest use trying to keep it to yourself because I won’t go away until you have told me, so there!”
He looked at her in astonishment. He had only heard her talk like this on one other occasion, that day in December, 1936, when she had assaulted Mrs. Rolfe, of Number Eight, after Mrs. Rolfe had gloated over Edward VIII’s abdication. That had been quite a business and he had been called in as peacemaker. Edith had been terrified at the prospect of being hauled up on a charge of common assault but, notwithstanding her fears, she had been unrepentant about striking a blow for the King, to whom she ever afterwards referred as “Poor David”.
He sat down at the table, humouring her because he realised that she meant well, and because he had always felt rather protective about the dear old thing, tied to a halfwitted sister, and so grateful for his show of friendship. His tolerance, however, did not extend to permitting her to interfere in this matter. Archie was his problem, and nobody else’s. It was bad enough possessing a son like Archie, without having to share him with the neighbours. On the subject of Archie, in fact, Jim was very touchy indeed, as Harold Godbeer had discovered when he had prevented Jim from going along to the corner shop and giving Archie a belting for his share in breaking up Esme’s marriage.
Glowering at Edith’s broad rump, as she bobbed about over the gas stove, Jim asked himself again what he had done to deserve such a son. He could only tell himself, for perhaps the thousandth time during the past twenty-five years, that it all came of his being away at the war during Archie’s formative years; that being so, it was surely not his fault that the boy had grown into a shifty, seedy racketeer, entirely without principle and now, it seemed, headed directly for gaol.
Not one of the younger children had given him trouble on this scale. There had been times when the exuberance of the boy twins had made him slightly anxious about their future, and the girl twins, Fetch and Carry, were not much to write home about, but the anxieties Berni, Boxer, Fetch and Carry had caused him, he now accepted as the small charge of parenthood, whereas Archie had long represented all that Jim most hated in society as a whole, the small-time capitalist, whose energies were divided between accumulating money by any means presenting itself, and then using it to racket about with other men’s wives, harlots, and whisky-drinking cronies.
Damn it, Jim told himself, it would have been better to have a son who was a good, honest safe-cracker! A man would at least know where he stood with a chap like that, someone who came out in the open, and declared an unblushing war on society! As it was, Archie posed as a respectable tradesman, and his off-the-beat activities had not even been suspected in the Avenue until he had been charged with receiving stolen g
oods! Even then the young scoundrel had talked his way out of the mess as glibly, it would appear, as he had talked his way into the bed of another man’s wife! Now, if you please, it was not receiving, but manslaughter! Killing some poor devil who was unlucky enough to get in the way of his big, swanky car, when its driver was stupid with liquor! This was something no father could forgive, for it was an act of selfish brutality that amounted almost to murder. As he considered the contents of the lawyer’s letter that lay before him he shook with humiliation, and his brain clouded with a rage that could find no outlet but seethed behind his temples, a volcano of misery and shame.
Edith set down his porridge and put milk and brown sugar on the table.
“Well? Are you going to let me read that letter?” she asked.
Sullenly he pushed the letter towards her and at once began to spoon hot porridge into his mouth, forgetting, in his anger and wretchedness, to cool it with milk.
Edith ignored his splutter, placed her reading spectacles low on her rather pudgy nose, and read:
“Dear Sir,
The above firm is representing your son, Mr. Archibald Edward Carver, at the Quarter Sessions in Wintlebury, commencing Monday, the 29th inst. Our client, whom we understand to be your eldest son, is charged with the manslaughter of a pedestrian, to wit, Rachel Nixon, who was unfortunately killed in a collision at Bishop’s Cross, Long Hayborough, on August 1st, ult., and in which your son was involved as driver of the car.
The present proceedings follow a coroner’s verdict adverse to your son. Mr. Carver has since been charged but released on bail in his own recognisances, to appear before the Court on the date specified above.
You will pardon us for communicating with you but we do so in the hope that you will get in touch with us at once and, we hope, attend the case in court. Mr. Carver has given us the relevant facts relating to the accident, but seems reluctant to assist us in gathering material that might well prove helpful. He gave us the address of his wife and we did, of course, communicate with her, but have so far received no reply. We then suggested to him that he should communicate with you, as you might well wish to attend court, but he preferred not to do so and it was only with the utmost reluctance that we could persuade him we should get in touch with you.
If you would be good enough to write or communicate with us by telephone, we would be glad to point out how you could assist both us and your son. You will not, I imagine, have to testify in court, for what we are seeking is background material, to assist us in presenting the case to the best advantage. It is, I regret to say, a difficult case to defend, and at the moment there would appear to be very little that can be argued in our client’s favour. It is in the hope of improving this situation that we are communicating with you as his father.
I remain,
Yours faithfully,
Gilbert Sills
(On behalf of Messrs. Clark, Sills &
Son, Solicitors, Wintlebury, Wilts.).”
“Well,” said Edith, removing her spectacles, and folding the letter into its original creases, “you’ll have to go won’t you, Mr. Carver?”
“Look,” said Jim, pushing his porridge plate away, “I said this was none of your business, Miss Clegg and I meant it! He’s made his bed and he can damn well lie on it!”
“Nonsense,” said Edith, mildly, “we all make beds badly now and again!”
He rubbed his chin, hardly knowing whether to be angry or amused by her stubbornness. At length he appealed to her humanity.
“See here, Miss Clegg, he’s killed someone! Get that into your head—killed someone! He’s never been any good, and he’s never troubled two raps about any of us, so why should I go down there and acknowledge him now? Can you give me one good reason why I should?”
“Why of course I can. I can give you two! He’s in trouble and he’s your boy,” said Edith. “Shall I make you some fresh tea?”
Jim made a gesture of impatience. “No, no tea…and he’s not in as much trouble as the poor devil he killed, Miss Clegg!”
She said nothing for a moment but regarded the top of his head as he sat slumped over the table with his long chin cupped in his hands. Her heart bled for him. He looked so despondent and there was a tired hopelessness in his posture.
She moved round and sat down, facing him.
“I don’t want you to think me impertinent, Mr. Carver,” she began, “but I wouldn’t be a friend to you if I didn’t say exactly what is in my mind about this dreadful business. You won’t be angry with me if I do say it, will you?”
He looked at her then and was struck by the troubled earnestness in her prominent, blue eyes.
He saw her as he had never seen her before, not as a plump and rather plain woman of sixty, or thereabouts, who was desperately anxious to please, and nervous of giving offence, but as someone much more like himself, who had been battered and badgered by successive decades of worry, of making ends meet, of facing up to everything that life demanded without sacrificing dignity and without sitting down and letting the current of everyday problems defeat her.
She was, he thought, typical of all the women of her generation, women who had successively challenged the casualty lists of the Somme, unemployment, the slump, and now German Fascism, and all it was trying to do to them. Many had lost husbands, brothers, and sons, and others had seen their homes smashed to pieces under high-explosive. All of them were oppressed by the dozens of petty irritations that the war had swept into their homes, the blackout, the rationing, the constant strain of hunting the shops for something to bring a little sparkle to the table, the constant nag, nag, nag of restrictions that made even a springclean a major operation. Yet, for all this, they had retained both their dignity and courage, and often a sense of humour for good measure.
The reflection softened the sullen outlines of his face and he smiled, acknowledging her right to advise him.
“Go ahead, Miss Clegg,” he said wearily, “say anything you feel you must say!”
“Well,” she said, “what I did want to say was just this! You’re angry and disappointed with Archie, I know, and you’ve every right to be, but it isn’t what he’s done that makes you so set against seeing him, or wanting to do anything to help him, you’re really angry because he’s your son, and you feel responsible for what he’s done wrong! Now I’m a fine one to talk I know, because I’ve never had any children, but if I had, if I’d had seven like you, and six of them were a credit to me but one wasn’t, then I hope I should feel that it was right to go out of my way to help the odd one, if only because…well…because he’s the only one who really needs help, don’t you think?”
“Supposing I went down,” protested Jim, weakening, “supposing I trailed down there and listened to the case? What good would it do? I don’t know anything about him. I’ve hardly spoken to the boy in years.”
“I can’t tell you that,” said Edith, “but I’m sure that when you got there you’d think of something, and that just being there would help, somehow! Why don’t we both go? It wouldn’t seem so bad if you had someone to talk to all the way there and all the way back?”
He got up, leaned his hands on the table and regarded her affectionately.
“You mean you’d come…you’d actually come into court?”
“I’d like to, really I would, Mr. Carver. I’d feel I was…was doing something to pay back.”
“You don’t owe me anything, Miss Clegg. What can you possibly owe me? Just a few bits of advice, over the years…damn it, what’s that, between neighbours?”
“Oh, it’s not just advice,” said Edith, emphatically, “it’s much more than that! It’s you being here all the time, someone I could go to whenever I wanted, and your daughter, Louise, she’s always helped me with Becky, whenever I needed help. It’s more than that too! Where would people like Becky and I be if people like you hadn’t fought in the last war, and your boys hadn’t gone out to fight in this?”
The irony of it touched him. How many
speeches had he made about the folly of sacrificing young lives at the behest of the well-nourished, the profiteers, and the stockholders? How many times had he hectored apathetic audiences about the rich people that poor people were always being asked to die for whenever there was a war? It had never once occurred to him during his pacifist and disarmament campaigns of the ‘twenties’ and ‘thirties’, that the sacrifices of Flanders were made also for people like Edith Clegg, and that it was people like her, with so much less to lose, who were readiest to acknowledge the debt! It was queer that she should say a thing like that! It altered a man’s entire conception of the background against which wars were fought.
He opened the letter and glanced through it again.
“The Sessions begin on Monday,” he said, finally, “and it’s Friday today! If we’re going there, we’d better start right away. I don’t suppose those lawyer fellows work on Sunday!”
They travelled down to Wintlebury that same evening, and put up at ‘The Coach and Horses’, in the Market Square.
Jim found the private address of Mr. Sills in the telephone directory, and made an appointment to meet him at his office the following morning.
He asked the solicitor how he might locate Archie, but Mr. Sills was unable to help him. Archie, he said was not due to surrender to bail until Monday morning, and he had no idea where he was lodging, if indeed, he was still in the district. “Perhaps my clerk will know,” he said, lightly, “we’ll ferret it out in the morning.”
The Avenue Goes to War Page 36