Woolston let himself be jostled into the hall and Edgar heard them whispering out there. He did not know what to make of all this, and again wished himself safely out of it. Why should she have to do so much pretending in front of this weedy little man? Surely the fellow must realise that her father’s permission counted for nothing? Elaine had gone her own way since she was sixteen, and it was too late to stage a dutiful-daughter act now that she was over thirty.
He heard the door close and she came back to him, her expression severe.
“You didn’t handle that very well, Daddy. I shall have to put it down to your nervousness!”
“Well are you going to get married or aren’t you?” demanded Edgar. “If so, what have I got to do with it? You never asked my permission when you married Esme.”
“Ah, Esme was quite a different kettle of fish,” said Elaine, mixing herself a drink, “this specimen is a Yank, and the Yanks go a bundle on slop, particularly family slop.”
“Are you really going to marry him?”
“Well, of course I am, he’s rolling in it!”
“Do you love him?”
Elaine regarded him with what might have passed for respectful wonder.
“Are you kidding? Woolston? I should say not! When it comes to loving give me a man, not half a pansy turned forty!”
“Well, I don’t know,” mumbled Edgar, embarrassed, “you really are a queer case and no mistake! Doesn’t he know that you don’t love him?”
“Not him,” said Elaine, sipping her drink, “he’s not come to, yet!”
“But it…it can’t last, a marriage like that, Elaine?”
“Can’t it? What about yours and mother’s? That lasted long enough, and neither of you were the least bit in love, were you?”
She had scored there and he had to admit it. Who was he to prattle about love and duty, when he had shared the same house with Esther for nearly twenty years but had not shared a bed with her during three parts of that period? Who was he, in fact, to preach about marriage at all, when he had abandoned his family and gone off with Frances to find happiness before it was too late?
“I wouldn’t like you to suffer what I suffered, Elaine,” he told her, seriously, but she laughed.
“Don’t you lose any sleep over that, Dad, I won’t! Even if it doesn’t work out, divorce is as easy as falling off a wall in the States, and there’s always the alimony! It’s a woman’s country over there!”
He gave it up, as he had always given it up with Elaine. Her grasp of life, or the kind of life that she seemed determined to live, was much surer than his had ever been, but before he began to talk about generalities he was curious to learn why she had set out to become this kind of person in the first place.
“Tell me, Elaine, and without hard feelings either side…is it me and what I did that encouraged you to look at life the way you do?”
“No,” she said, “not you, Daddy. Mother perhaps, but certainly not you!”
He was relieved but remained curious.
“Then tell me, Elaine, for I’ve often wondered, really I have, and sometimes I haven’t felt at all happy about it, tell me what makes you so terribly cynical about everything?”
She swung her legs on to the sofa and leaned back, lighting a cigarette and blowing out a long, thin stream of smoke.
“Do you ever think about the time we had together at Number Seventeen? Do you ever remember how dismal and flat it was, never mixing with anyone, never going anywhere, never even talking to one another if we could help it?”
“Yes,” he said, quietly, “I remember all that very well, and I’m prepared to admit that you had a rotten time as a kid, about as rotten as any kid ever had.”
“That’s only part of it,” she said, “the thing is, it took me years to realise that everybody didn’t live like that, that all parents weren’t gaolers put there to prevent children from having fun. I suppose I dreamed about escaping for years, not escaping to anything but simply escaping from the house, from mother, and from that cane that she used to keep behind the sloppy picture, ‘The Tempting Bait’, remember?”
He nodded, and she went on.
“I couldn’t just run out. First I had to make some kind of plan, and it wasn’t until I found the book in the attic that I discovered any sort of plan was ready to hand!”
“What book was that?” he asked, wondering.
She flung an arm over the back of the sofa, lifted a thin, paper-backed book from the end of the top shelf, and tossed it across to him.
He caught it and turned it over in his hands. It was entitled The Art of Marriage, and he suddenly remembered the circumstances in which he had bought it, the morning after the miserable failure of his wedding night with Esther. He did not remember having seen it since then, and that must be more than thirty years ago. Esther, he recalled, had done no more than glance at it and its advice had not had the slightest effect in assisting their mutual adjustment.
“When did you first read this?” he asked her.
“Oh, when I was about fifteen, I suppose. I found it in your trunk in the loft. It’s pretty corny of course, and the man who wrote it obviously hasn’t a clue, but for all that it taught me something I never forgot, and something that I’ll always be grateful for.”
“What was that?”
“Why, the thing that makes men tick,” she said, “at least, from a woman’s viewpoint, providing of course she’s got common-sense, and the minimum sex-appeal. In the first place I think it taught me why people get married, why men voluntarily take on the endless responsibilities of marriage and even rush gaily into it, with their tongues hanging out, simply falling over themselves to shoulder the burden of wife, family, rates, taxes, gas-bills and God knows what else! It’s all for that, all for having a woman whenever they want one, and I remember it absolutely astonished me at the time. In a way it still does, but it’s just the way they’re made, I guess, and most of them couldn’t do anything about it even if they wanted to!”
He was silent for a minute, more astonished than shocked. Finally he said:
“I suppose there’s a good deal in what you say, Elaine but it’s still only half the answer. I soon found that out with Frances, but I don’t suppose I should have ever found the true meaning of marriage if it hadn’t been for all those years I spent with your mother! There’s a good deal more to marriage than what you say, and I’m surprised that you haven’t found that out by this time. The comradeship of marriage is just as important as the physical side, not more important, as some people would argue, but just as important! It’s about fifty-fifty, I’d say, and the odd thing is that one part seems to be quite useless without the other!”
“I daresay you’re right,” she said, suddenly bored with the conversation, “but how often do you have the luck to find both in a single person?”
“Not very often,” he admitted, “not at all often! I suppose that’s why Frances and I were so lucky, and so good for each other!”
He got up, stiffly. “Do you really want me to give this chap my official blessing?”
“That’s the general idea,” she said.
“Then I’ll come back about seven-thirty,” he told her, “I’m expecting an important ’phone call at eight, and I gave them your number. Meantime, I’d like to pop over and see that chap, Godbeer, and Pippa too, while I’m here. Has anyone heard anything more about Esme?”
“No,” she said, “but you’ll hear all about him if you go to Number Twenty. That poor Carver kid was all set to move in and marry him when he pranged!”
“Yes, I know,” said Edgar, sorrowfully, “I met her in Wales, and I liked her a lot. Is she still in the W.A.A.F.?”
“I imagine so,” said Elaine, “but she certainly has a hoodoo on her! That’s the second White Knight she’s lost in the war!”
Suddenly he found her toughness very irritating and quickly excused himself, letting himself out, and crossing the road to walk along the Avenue to knock at Number Twenty.
Louise let him in and at once invited him to take tea and await Pippa’s return at five-thirty.
He accepted gratefully, and was there when Jim Carver flung open the kitchen door, shouting and waving a letter in front of Louise. Jim could hardly speak for excitement:
“It’s the boys…they’re all right! …I had this by the afternoon post! Hullo, Mr. Frith! What are you doing here? Where’s Jack? Where’s Pippa? She’ll want to know, she was the one who always said they were safe! It’s wonderful isn’t it, Frith, old man? Like someone coming back from the dead…just a prisoner of war letter from young Bernard…he’s in hospital, and Boxer’s safe too. Boxer wasn’t even wounded! By George, I feel I could go out and get drunk! I can’t wait to ring old Harold! Excuse me, Mr. Frith. I’ve just got to put through a call to Harold, from the call-box at the end of the road! Here’s the letter! Read it yourself!”
And he was gone, throwing the letter on the table and as he unfolded it Edgar heard Louise give a long sniff, and then the kitchen door opened again to reveal Pippa, tall, pale Pippa, with her huge, tranquil eyes, so kind and still, yet as reassuring as her mother’s.
He started up, holding out the letter, but she only smiled, and said:
“It’s all right, Edgar, I met Mr. Carver in the alley. He nearly knocked me over and then he told me! I’m so glad for everyone but it isn’t really a surprise to me, you know.”
She kissed him and turned to help Louise at the stove. Watching them Edgar thought what a pleasant, friendly house Number Twenty had always been, and what a fool he had been not to come over and get friendly when he had lived across the road all those years. There followed for Edgar one of the liveliest evenings of his life, and one that he was to look back upon with pleasure for years to come.
Jim Carver was back soon after Pippa had arrived, and must have trumpeted his news all the way to and from the kiosk, for soon everyone in the Avenue who had known the twins began to drift along to Number Twenty, and share the Carvers’ joy.
Edgar himself took little part in the jollifications. He was content to observe them from a seat beside the stove, but it seemed to him that all the exciting rough and tumble of family life, and all that he had once expected of community life in a suburb, could be found in the tide of gaiety and neighbourliness that foamed into the front and back doors of the Carvers’ home that evening. It intrigued him, revealing as it did the spectacular rewards of raising a large family, and it pleased him that Pippa, who had had such a lonely upbringing, was there to share it.
Edith Clegg, and her sister, Becky, from Number Four, were the first two to arrive, and Edith wept when they showed her Bernard’s letter and she read that his left arm had been amputated but that his injured leg had been saved. She expressed herself very relieved that the Germans were treating him well and that he had already received his first Red Cross parcel.
Jim said that in view of Bernard’s wounds it was possible that he might be repatriated in due course, and at this prophecy Edgar saw Pippa’s eyes sparkle. He tried to remember what kind of young man this Bernard was, but could only recall him as a tow-headed urchin, leaping along a chalked-out hopscotch pitch, opposite Number Seventeen, and shouting over his shoulder at his lumbering twin brother.
Philip and Jean Hargreaves looked in after tea, and both wrung Jim’s hand. Edgar remembered then that Mrs. Hargreaves, once Miss McInroy, had lodged with Miss Clegg at Number Four, that she had a grave impediment in her speech, and that there had been something about her in the papers not long ago—what was it?—something about her saving the life of the man she afterwards married! Suddenly recalling the story he looked at her with renewed interest, noting that she was pretty, pregnant, and obviously, proud of it. The baby, he heard Hargreaves tell Louise, was expected in the New Year and he was quite certain that it was going to be a boy, so they had already fixed upon the name of ‘Winston’.
Edgar smiled at this, and remembered how nearly all the male babies in his own youth had been named after the successful Boer War Generals. Mrs. Hargreaves said very little, speaking only to Edith in the corner of the crowded room, but he noticed that even when she conversed she hardly took her eyes from her big, handsome husband, and when he was speaking she listened carefully to each word he uttered. It was like a fairy-tale romance in reverse, he thought the princess who rescued and married the prince!
Harold Godbeer, having been notified by ’phone, came hotfoot from Woodside Station, arriving about six o’clock, and when he had finished congratulating Jim, Louise, and Pippa, Edgar coaxed him into his corner, and whispered a word or two in his ear about the Sullen Cupid.
He was flattered by Harold’s obvious interest and promised to come across to Number Twenty as soon as he received the expert’s verdict from Chaffery. Edgar had always liked Harold, ever since that night that Harold had shown him so much kindness after he had made up his mind to leave Esther, and run away with Frances. He remembered how discreetly and cleverly, Godbeer’s firm had handled the distasteful business, and he now found an opportunity of telling Harold how grieved he had been to hear of Eunice’s tragic death in the hit-and-run raid on Torquay.
Harold looked glum for a moment, but finally smiled and said that it was pleasant to discover that some war stories, like this one, had happier endings, and then everyone in the kitchen was silenced by the boisterous Mr. Baskerville, from Number Eighty-Four and Mr. Baskerville took advantage of the lull to declare that the treatment of British prisoners of war was becoming progressively more humane now that the majority of Germans had become reconciled to the certainty of defeat!
Mr. Baskerville then treated them all to an optimistic survey of the war as a whole. He must have received yet another personal bulletin from Uncle Joe, for he made it clear that the Germans were in very grave difficulties at Stalingrad, and that soon the Russian reserve armies would close their pincers round the dangerously isolated units of the Southern Spearhead in the Caucasus. Meanwhile, he assured them, the valiant garrison of Leningrad was already sallying out to liquidate the half-frozen invaders in the North.
The Arctic convoys, he said, were now pouring into Archangel at the rate of one per week, and the recent victory of Montgomery, at El Alamein, meant that the Desert Army could now sweep westward along the entire African seaboard, and roll up the Afrika Corps like a sheet of wallpaper!
One way and another it was a very stimulating evening, and there was so much talk, and so many cups of tea and cocoa passing around, that Edgar almost forgot the time and only remembered it when Edith Clegg exclaimed: “Goodness! It’s almost eight and I still haven’t popped across to Miss Baker and given her our wonderful news!”
Then Edgar withdrew, almost unnoticed, and crossed the road to his daughter’s house, arriving just as the ’phone began to ring and practically throwing himself across the threshold at the receiver.
“Hullo, hullo? Is that you, Mr. Chaffery?” he gasped, when Elaine had left him, closing the door behind her.
“This is me, and we’re on a good wicket, old man!” Chaffery told him. “The expert is here still and he’d like a word with you, so hold on and I’ll fetch him!”
Edgar waited, wiping the perspiration from his forehead, and trying to recover the breath he had lost in his mad scramble from Number Twenty.
“Is that you, Frith? Well, I’ve had a good look, and I’m sure you’ve got something good! The point is, what do you want to do with it, put it up at Christie’s, or take a good profit now? I’m willing to buy, of course, and I’d give you a fair price, allowing for Chaffery’s commission, but frankly, if I was in your position, I’d rather have a gamble at Christie’s, and that’s advising you against my own interests!”
Edgar began to tremble so violently that he could hardly retain his grip upon the receiver. At last he said:
“Is it really a Lombardi? Haven’t you any doubts at all about it?”
“None,” said Dixon, shortly, “it’s a Lombardi all right, and I’d stake my reputation on it!
”
“Then…I…I’d like to pay you a valuation fee and…and sell it at Christie’s,” babbled Edgar. “You see, it’s…it’s like this, I’ve never had a real success before, nothing like this that is, and I think it would do my business so much good if it gets publicity, don’t you agree?”
As he said this Edgar could sense the man’s disappointment but he answered, “I told you it’s against my own interests, Frith, but Chaffery here has more or less explained the set-up and I repeat, I’d honestly advise you to sell it, providing of course, that you hold out for a good reserve.”
“Would you…would you advise me as regards the amount of the reserve, Mr. Dixon?”
“Naturally, I’ll go into it tomorrow. You’d better pop over and see me before you go back to Wales. Good night then, and congratulations!”
“Good night…and thank you, thank you so much, Mr. Dixon.”
He put down the ’phone and clasped his hands together. All the tea and cocoa he had swallowed at Number Twenty began to gurgle inside him, and a sudden spasm of wind doubled him up, so that he fumbled desperately for his tablets and hurried into the kitchen to pour a glass of hot water from the kettle.
“How was it?” Elaine called from her bedroom. “Are you going to clean up on that statue?”
“It’s splendid, just splendid!” he told her, swallowing his crushed tablets, and getting almost instantaneous relief. “It won’t make a fortune of course but I ought to see something very substantial, very substantial indeed!”
“Well, bully for you!” said Elaine, and floated into the hall in panties and brassiere. It was odd, thought Edgar, how Elaine always seemed to prefer to walk about half-naked, no matter who was in the house or what time of the day it was.
“Woolston and I are going off to a hop arranged by the U.S. Catering Corps,” she told him. “You’ll make yourself comfortable here, won’t you? There’s ham, tomatoes and pickles in the larder, and the spare bed has been made up in the back room. Don’t wait up, we shan’t be back until around about two!”
The Avenue Goes to War Page 41