“What was the message?” growled Jim, for he still disliked and distrusted Elaine.
“Oh, just that she wishes him the best, you know,” said Edgar, more cheerfully. “She’s an odd girl…always has been…but I think she really means this, in fact, I’m quite sure she does!”
“Well, I suppose there’s no harm in passing that kind of message,” said Jim, doubtfully. “What do you think, Mrs. Frith?”
He addressed Frances, whom he had met for the first time that day. He liked her, recognising at once the enormous influence she exercised over this pleasant but rather dithery little chap, and comparing her very favourably to her predecessor, Esther, whose body he had helped to dig out of Number Seventeen more than two years ago.
“I’m afraid Edgar hasn’t told you everything,” said Frances, with a smile. “The fact is, Elaine is here now, and she’d rather like to wish both Esme and Judy good luck!”
“I don’t see her,” said Jim, looking round and frowning. He had never forgiven Elaine for associating with Archie, a civilian, while her husband was serving in the Forces, and he now found himself irritated by her brashness in gate-crashing the wedding breakfast of her former husband.
“Well, not here, exactly, but over there, at the bend in the alley,” said Frances. “Would you like me to ask Esme?”
“Yes, I would,” said Jim, gratefully, and watched her cross the lawn and whisper something into Esme’s ear. He saw Esme’s look of surprise and saw him turn to Judy, who smiled and nodded. ‘She would, of course’, thought Jim, watching very closely. ‘There’s not a spark of malice in Judy!’ He remembered now his favourite daughter’s apathetic face and manner during the period that followed her sudden switch from a job at Boots’, in the Lower Road, to the new and, to him, improbable job at a riding stable, near Keston. That must have been about the time that Esme had jilted her for Elaine, and had almost broken the kid’s heart, but he had been years discovering this and had not even heard about it until shortly after Esme had been reported missing, and Judy had told him everything about her childhood love for the boy.
It was strange, he thought, how long it took a man to find out important things about people, even when they were one’s own flesh and blood.
He saw both Esme and Judy detach themselves from the knot of people round the lawn and follow Frances down to the back gate and out of sight along the narrow alley that ran between the blocks of houses.
Then Carry’s G.I., Orrie, switched the music off, and Harold called upon everyone to fill their glasses and asked if someone would propose a toast to the happy couples before they set out on their honeymoon.
“Lord bless us, are they going on their honeymoon as a foursome?” shouted Mr. Westerman, unable to resist such an opportunity.
There was a burst of laughter, and renewed laughter when Harold replied, quite seriously, “No, no! Of course not! They’re going off in different directions!”
Then, to his relief, Jim saw Esme and Judy return, and at once stepped down on to the lawn and told Harold that he would propose the joint toast if that was what Harold wanted.
It was just what Harold did want, for he knew himself to be a hopeless public speaker, so Jim plodded back to the verandah of Twenty-Two, climbed on a chair, clapped his hands, and shouted for silence in his best open-air-rally voice.
Ten years ago, Jim Carver would have improved the occasion by airing his views on the state of the world. Two years ago he might have introduced into the toast a few comments on the activities of Government contract profiteers, and the danger of bad faith with our ally, Soviet Russia, but since the day that he had mourned his twins, and had seen one of them miraculously restored to him, he had gone a long way towards acquiring a political tolerance that his committee would have labelled ‘typically bourgeois’ in pre-war campaigning days.
It was enough for him, for the moment at all events, to rejoice that Bernard had found a girl who would love and care for him, in spite of his grave disablement, that Judy had also found and claimed the man she loved, and that poor old Boxer was out of the war, and safe behind German wire, where he would have to stay whether he liked it or not until the Third Reich was hammered to pieces and he could return home again.
In view of all this he contented himself with a conventional little speech, wishing the two couples great happiness, and a safe passage to victory. Just before he stepped down, however, he caught the eye of Mrs. Hooper of Number Six, and on the spur of the moment he added, “There’s just one other thing I would like to say, ladies and gentlemen! In proposing a toast to my son, Bernard, my daughter, Judith, and to their respective bride and groom, I think it only right to couple with it the name of Bernard’s brother, known to most of you as ‘Boxer’ and with the people of this Avenue who have already given their lives in the struggle to sit upon that unmitigated little scoundrel! I won’t mention all their names, for this isn’t a day for sadness, but I would like all the people here who have lost anyone to know that we do sometimes think of them, and remember them with gratitude!”
There was a moment’s silence when he stepped off the chair and Mrs. Hooper’s eyes met those of Mrs. Dodge. Harold, listening intently from the far end of the garden, began to think of Eunice, and how she would have revelled in all this sociability on her doorstep, but he recollected himself in time and raised his glass, calling loudly on brides and grooms, and looking encouragingly at Esme for a response. Esme realised that something was expected of him as Judy squeezed his hand, so he cleared his throat and said:
“Thank you, Jim, thank you on behalf of my wife, myself and Bernard and Pippa here. When I was in France not long ago I met a lot of people who reminded me very much of the kind of people here today. One of them actually knew this Avenue, he’d lodged just round the corner, in Cawnpore Road. He was killed, helping to get me back, and I mention him only because it seems to me that he was typical of all the people over there who haven’t given up, any more than we gave up at the time of Dunkirk. In saying ‘thank you’ for all the good wishes we’ve had showered on us today, I’d like to propose a toast to the people I’ve learned to believe in since all this uproar and muddle started. I’d like you to drink to ordinary people in roads like this all over the world!”
He looked at Judy and smiled as Jim, delighted by the unexpected context of Esme’s speech, shouted: ‘Hear, hear!’ at the top of his voice, and came striding across the lawn to shake his son-in-law’s hand.
He did so joyfully, as though, for the first time, he was welcoming a fellow-crusader into the family, someone whom the war had managed to convert from a moody, dreamy, youth into a man with whom he had affinity. He did not arrive at this conclusion at once, for he was a slow, deliberate thinker, who needed time to digest impressions, but as he slapped Esme on the shoulder, and smiled into Judy’s radiant face, it did cross his mind that his daughter must have been far more discerning than he to have recognised Esme for the kind of person he was all those years ago, when they had played together as children.
The thought was like a dash of sugar on a flame, the flame of faith that was already burning so brightly today and the flame shot up, warming him through and through.
“By God!” he said to himself, as they began to sort themselves out for the usual Avenue send-off, “By God, but things are beginning to work out after all! In spite of all that drag between the wars, in spite of Chamberlain and his umbrella, and all the sickening inertia these people showed up to the moment of Dunkirk, things are really beginning to work out and give a chap something to hope for in the future!”
Esme had not really cared for the idea of a reception and Avenue garden party but on leaving hospital, with his wound healed, he had realised that a get-together was important to Jim and Harold and had therefore raised no objections when Judy sounded him on the matter.
Nothing mattered now that the weight of fear had been lifted from him, and he had the additional satisfaction of knowing that he had, almost against his will, at las
t achieved something useful. Whatever happened now he would always be able to recall the terse congratulations of the grey-haired Air Commodore in M.I., who had interviewed him in Whitehall on the day he was discharged from hospital.
“I’ve been asked to tell you from a somewhat higher level that those drawings, and the information about them that you dictated in hospital, were worth the risks you took to get them out, Sergeant,” the old boy had said. “We knew a good deal of what was going on over there, of course, but this is the first real confirmation we’ve had, and you seem to have put up a good show—in my opinion, a damned good show! I daresay you’ll hear more of it, but in the meantime we’d like to regrade you, and have you join us here after your leave. Would you care for that?”
On learning that he was being asked to join a Branch of Military Intelligence for special duties, and work from London in liaison with the Free French forces, Esme said that he would like it very much indeed. For one thing it would mean the end of operational flying, and for another it was certain to prove interesting. He filled out a number of forms, passed through a couple of interviews, and went out to ’phone the news to Judy, who had by that time returned to Cornwall.
She had come up to London on a forty-eight-hour pass the moment that she learned he was home and when he saw her walk shyly into the ward his heart had nearly burst with tenderness.
She had bent over the bed and kissed him, not in the way that she had kissed him when they had rediscovered one another on Manor Island, or later during their unsatisfactory courtship when they were stationed hundreds of miles apart but gently and firmly, as though she was sure that this time there was to be no more delays and separations, and no more frantic rendezvous arranged by ’phone or wire, but the permanence for which she had yearned all her life and a certainty of at last being able to prove herself capable of translating her dream into warm, substantial reality.
Esme had never thought of Judy as being a pretty girl, ‘elfish’ was the word he had sometimes used to sum up her small, regular features, light brown hair, and mild, brown eyes, but she looked very pretty now, with high colour under the tan of her cheeks, and eyes alight with joy.
He took stock of her anew. Ever since the day, now eighteen months behind them, when they had made their mutual discovery opposite the old Manor he had valued her warm companionship and the sense of repose that she brought him, but not until this moment had he felt drawn to her physically as compellingly as he had once been drawn to Elaine. She was, he decided, not only sweet, loyal and utterly reliable, but exciting in a way that she had never seemed exciting in the past. All his adult life he had been searching for the lady in the tower, a woman whose image he had conjured from the pages of Idylls of a King, in his grandmother’s library at Kensington. Elaine’s dark good looks, her white skin, and possibly her elusiveness throughout his adolescence, must have blinded him to the presence of the real princess whose tower was next door.
Judy had always played a part in his dreams, but it had been a walking-on part, the role of shield-bearer. Now, without trumpets or drums, she had moved into the centre of the stage, and had suddenly become the woman he would continue to weave his dreams around, a woman, who, so unlike Elaine, would regard such inclusion as the highest compliment he could pay her.
Lying back on his pillows after she had left, and studying the butter-coloured distemper of the ward ceiling he felt happier, and more confident than he had ever felt in his life. The little probationer, who had returned from showing Judy out, came over and collected his tea-tray and looked down on him with a sly smile.
“Well?” she said, “when’s the happy day, Sergeant?”
“As soon as I can get to hell out of here,” he told her with a grin.
They drove on into the sunset, nursing the noisy engine of the old Ford Eight that he had bought from the warrant officer in the next bed at hospital. They were heading, ultimately, for Maud Somerton’s place, in Devon, but as it was late afternoon when they left the Avenue after the reception they did not expect to get more than half-way that night.
They said little for there was not much need to talk. They had known one another for so long and they had no new confidences to exchange and certainly no necessity to release the pressure of excitement with small talk. They had done with small talk a long time ago, and they could say all they wanted to say, for the moment at least, by an exchange of glances, or a slight movement on the part of Judy on the worn, leather seat beside him.
Towards twilight they came to the fringe of the New Forest and turned off the main road, near Romsey. Presently they came to a small, half-timbered hotel, called The Hart and Esme got out and went into the lobby.
He came out a moment later and nodded and Judy took her bag and followed him inside. They were shown up to a large, low-ceilinged room, with a large bay window, looking over the forest.
“Just for one night?” asked the old man, who had followed them in.
“That’s right,” Esme told him and then, as a spot of confetti flung by Edith detached itself from Judy’s collar. “You might as well know! We’re on our honeymoon!”
“You don’t have to tell me that,” said the old man, solemnly. “I bin a Boots best part of me life, sir!”
They all laughed but without embarrassment, and Esme gave him half a crown.
“Thank you, sir, I’ll bring the rest of the stuff up right away,” he said, and left, gently closing the door.
Judy sat down to comb the confetti from her hair and for a moment he watched her from the bed. When she saw in the mirror’s reflection that he was watching, she suddenly stopped combing.
“Come and see if you can get it out,” she said.
He got up, crossed the room and stood closely behind her, letting his hands rest on her shoulders and then slip down and meet across her breasts.
He felt her tremble slightly as she said:
“We’ve been lucky, Esme darling, so terribly lucky, all the way through!”
“Does that make you anxious?” he asked, remembering her forebodings on the occasion that should have been their wedding night nearly a year ago.
“No…no, it doesn’t, Esme, not any more, not now we’re actually married! I feel as if we’ll always be lucky after this about children, jobs, each other—everything! I suppose that’s because today somehow rounds everything off and gives a kind of shape to my life, as far as you’re concerned in it anyway! Can you understand that, Esme darling? Can you?”
He nodded into the mirror and lowered his head so that his cheek touched her hair. They remained thus until the old man, returning with the baggage, came bumping along the corridor and paused outside the door, announcing his presence with an exaggerated cough.
Two hundred miles away to the north-west the other Avenue honeymooners were sitting side by side in the dining-car of the Holyhead train. On the same express, but several coaches away, were Edgar, Frances, and little Barbara, now fast asleep on Frances’ shoulder.
The steward had just served the second course, pale, grisly meat, swimming in thin gravy. Pippa, pulling a wry face, leaned over Bernard to cut it for him.
“I wouldn’t bother,” said Bernard, grinning, “it doesn’t look worth it! What did we come in here for? I’m not hungry, not after all that stuff Louise dished up at the reception.”
“That was hours ago,” said Pippa, and then, cheerfully, “I expect the dessert will be better.”
“I can cope with the dessert,” said Bernard. “From now on Pip concentrate on the spoon vittles! They stop me feeling so bloody helpless!”
She was sorry then that they had come into the diner. She hated him to be reminded of the difficulties of his everyday existence, of his inability to tie knots, to do up buttons, to cut up his food.
They had not been so fortunate as Esme and Judy in arriving at a readjustment, for the roots of their association were nearer the surface and their future was more uncertain.
He had needed very patient handling during
the first weeks of his return. She found that she could cope with his disability if she avoided making an issue of it. She encouraged him to take the army physiotherapists seriously during his biweekly visits to the hospital. She had even managed to escape from the camouflage-netting shed, in order to travel to and fro with him, but she had much more difficulty with a hurt inside him that had little to do with his empty sleeve, or the limp that had resulted from the severed muscles of his leg.
He spoke very little during those first days of his return and everybody at Number Twenty went out of their way to avoid mentioning Boxer, although it seemed strange to them to have Bernard about the house without hearing Boxer’s laugh, or the thump of his boots on the stairs.
Pippa took Bernard for one or two walks across Shirley Hills and sometimes they went to the cinema in the evening. They discovered, however, that they were slightly embarrassed when they were alone together and it was not until he had been back in the Avenue for nearly a month that Pippa made any progress with him.
She was lying awake in the porch room one night, when she heard him come out of his room and go downstairs.
She slipped a raincoat over her nightdress and went after him, with the idea of brewing some tea, but when she looked into the kitchen and dining-room he was not there. She thought at first that he must have gone for a walk, then she saw the glow of his cigarette at the bottom of the garden.
She called: “Shall I make some tea, Bernard?”
He came up to the verandah and flicked the cigarette-end over the fence into Number Eighteen.
“No, Pip, I’m okay! I just couldn’t sleep. Go back to bed, kid.”
She hesitated, standing just inside the trench windows but he turned his back on her and deliberately lit another cigarette. In the flare of the match she saw that his face was drawn and blank. She made up her mind, stepped out on to the verandah and stood close to him.
The Avenue Goes to War Page 49