He said this casually and conversationally, shooting out his long legs and leaning back against the wall, his hands clasped behind his head. He did not notice that she looked away from him quickly, and stared out over the burnished surface of the water between the quay and the tip of Anglesey.
She said, at length: “I’d never have got through it all if you hadn’t been in the Avenue, Mr. Carver!”
He looked at her curiously. She did not seem to be relaxed as he was but rather tense and her pudgy little hands were occupied in twisting and twisting the handle of her handbag.
“That’s nonsense,” he told her, shortly, “for you pulled yourself together much quicker than I did! It was a case of me relying on you when Lou and Jack were killed, and even before that if you come to think of it! What about the time the twins were missing, and the other time, when we had all that upset about Archie?”
“Oh, I didn’t do much,” said Edith, “it was just that I was there to talk to. I know you always had Mr. Godbeer to confide in, but sometimes a woman’s better, and besides, I’ve always been able to go to you about Becky and our money troubles, haven’t I?”
He thought back over their relationship. He had known her now twenty-four years, and during all that time she did not seem to have changed much. He remembered how she had looked that winter afternoon, when he took her up to the Abbey to see the Unknown Warrior’s tomb. Even then she had had iron-grey hair, and had walked as though her shoes were too small for her. She was one of those women who always looked to be in their early fifties, who must have aged very quickly up to that point and then come to terms with life, and refused to grow any older. It was not how she looked, however, that interested him. What he liked about Edith was her unswerving loyalty to everyone she knew, and to the Avenue-dwellers as a community. In all the time he had known her, her placidity had never deserted her, and when it came to a crisis there was nobody quite like her, as she had demonstrated so remarkably during the court proceedings against Archie and when almost everyone had had everything in their lives shattered by the flying-bomb.
He wondered where she found such tranquillity. Was it in her religious upbringing in a remote Devon vicarage, or had it been acquired, slowly and painfully, during her lifetime as nurse to an invalid sister? How would such staunchness be rewarded? Would she (as she herself doubtless believed) enter into ultimate peace and glory upon death, or would she struggle on until she was too feeble to trot to and from the cinema, or to look after lodgers, and finally end up in some kind of institution for the aged? The latter alternative seemed to him, who lacked faith in an Afterlife, the more probable, and it filled him with a sense of compassion so strong that he reached out and took hold of the hand that was plucking so nervously at the handbag strap.
“What are we going to do with ourselves now, Edith? The war’s almost over but when it is, when everything starts up again, what are we going to do?”
“Mr. Baskerville told me the Government would rebuild our houses,” said Edith. “There’s some sort of resettlement grant for people like us, isn’t there?”
“Do you really want to go back there?” asked Jim. “It can never be the same, you know, and almost everyone around will be a stranger.”
“Where else could I go?” she asked him.
“We could find another house, or even go and live in the country, near Judy,” Jim heard himself saying.
“We? You mean…together?”
She was looking at him now and her face was blank with surprise, so blank indeed that he could not help smiling into it. When he did, the surprise faded and there came into her prominent grey eyes a light that he had never seen there before.
“Why not? We’ve always got on so well, and although I haven’t much to offer I can still work! I’m still as fit as I ever was, and we wouldn’t be so lonely, either of us! There is one thing, however, you’d have to stop calling me ‘Mr. Carver’. I think you’d find it difficult after all these years, but you’d have to try! Perhaps you could begin by calling me ‘James’ and work up to ‘Jim’ in time for the Silver Wedding!”
At the word ‘wedding’ she started, and suddenly withdrew her hand and looked away. He saw that there were tears in her eyes and his protective instinct was aroused. He said:
“Now, now Edith, don’t upset yourself about it! We’re old friends, and you don’t have to agree for fear of offending me. Why don’t you think about it? There’s no hurry after all these years, surely!”
“I…I’m sorry I’m making such a goose of myself,” said Edith, gulping, “but…well…I just can’t imagine anyone wanting to…to marry me at my age, especially someone like you, somebody I’ve always so admired!”
The compliment embarrassed him a little, so that he sounded slightly gruff.
“Don’t harp on about age, Edith! Great Scott, I could give you a year or two I know! Well, what do you think? Shall we go home and tell everybody, or shall we keep it a secret and suddenly spring it on them?”
She dabbed her eyes, swallowed twice, and smiled. She had never smiled at him in that way before. Her round face seemed to reflect the radiance of the winter sunshine and she looked, for a moment or two, almost young.
“Certainly not, Jim,” she said. “I’m so…so proud that I want everybody to know about it! Everybody, d’you understand?”
On Christmas afternoon Judy went up to the paddock and saddled ‘Gramp’, the aged pony, for Barbara’s after-dinner constitutional.
Strictly speaking Barbara was still on the leading-rein but today she would have to go as far as the viaduct unaccompanied, for Judy was far too big to climb on a horse, even a pony as stolid and docile as old ‘Gramp’.
Her size, which seemed to have increased very suddenly, was a great joke with herself, Maud Somerton, and even little Barbara.
“Had a case like you at Firhill once, long before your time,” joked Maud, in her harsh, keep-those-elbows-in, voice. “Mare they sent me was supposed to be in foal but wasn’t showing at all! Thought it might be a rabbit, if anything! Then, almost overnight, she blew herself out like a turkey-cock and finally presented us with ‘Gilpin.’ You remember ‘Gilpin’, don’t you? Stood sixteen hands and made a cracking good hunter once he’d learned his manners!”
“I remember ‘Gilpin’ very well,” laughed Judy, “and he had a nasty habit of lashing out when you least expected it just like mine does!”
“Good sign, good sign,” said Maud, as though she had been instrumental in bringing a thousand babies into the world, and had watched their mothers through all stages of pregnancy.
Barbara trotted off down the lane and Judy remained leaning on the paddock gate, thinking how much like Elaine Barbara was, with her coal-black curls bobbing on her neat shoulders, and her plump little calves coaxing the reluctant Gramp into a trot.
It was very still out here, with the trees bare against the wan afternoon sun, so still indeed that she could hear the water swirling over the pebbles in the wide curve of the river. The leaves on the two big chestnuts across the lane seemed reluctant to fall, and their colour was exciting, bronze, wine-red, and the palest green, spotted with rust. Behind her the smoke rose up straight from the oldest of the chimneys, a part of the original building that they had been able to save.
She surveyed the paddock and house with quiet pride, for she had a sense of having created it. They would always stay here now, she told herself, she, Esme, the child, Barbara, and perhaps other children. When she was over forty they would be shouting to one another in the old orchard, catching their ponies and stealing one another’s bridles and saddle girths for gymkhanas, quarrelling perhaps, but not seriously, for surely nobody could really quarrel in the midst of all this peace and loveliness. Later, when she and Esme had entered their fifties, the children would be grown up themselves, and probably bringing their fiancées home for inspection.
Perhaps Esme’s stepfather, Harold, would come to live with them when he was better. Harold would like it here, pot
tering about the sheds, and fishing in the pool and the children would like him too, for he was a gentle little man who had suffered much. Esme, she felt sure, would be happy here, and would find himself at last in the excitement of raising pigs, and stepping up on the output of the hens in the deep-litter sheds. Later on they might experiment with a few Guernseys, and Judy could almost see Esme driving them in from the sloping meadow at milking-time and calling, softly, as the farmers round here always called their cows: “Hoo-ooo!Hoo-ooooo!”
Louise and old Jack, particularly Jack, would have liked it here at holiday times. A shadow crossed her face as she thought of Lou and Jack, and of all the people at the small-number end of the Avenue. How lucky had she been to have Esme away in France when it happened, and how lucky too to have been down here herself, where nobody bothered to drop bombs any more.
The clack-clack of Gramp’s hooves, returning up the lane, disturbed a cock pheasant and it flew, panic-stricken, from a clump of golden bracken in the hedge. The harsh ‘Kar-Kark’ reminded her of the first pheasants she had ever seen, in the plough-land beyond Manor Wood, and this made her think of Esme again and yearn for him.
She smiled to herself. They said that one didn’t think of one’s husband in that way during pregnancy but, as usual, they didn’t know what they were talking about. She needed Esme most desperately, needed to feel his arms round her and his cheek against hers, needed his presence about the house, and his whistle on the stairs. The smile faded.
“Oh, God,” she prayed aloud, “make the damned thing end quickly, quickly!”
“What?” called Barbara, as she trotted up.
“Nothing, darling,” smiled Judy, “I only said, ‘What a lovely pheasant’!”
“Gramp is so lazy,” complained Barbara. “Shall we give him a big feed of oats for a Christmas present?”
“No, darling, he’s too old for oats,” said Judy, “Give him a marigold, and listen to the lovely, greedy way he crunches it!”
She turned her back on the lane and walked behind the pony up to the path to the tack-room. Behind her the short, winter afternoon died, as the red sun dipped behind the ridge.
Elaine came out of the downstairs bedroom of Number Forty-Three about eight o’clock on Christmas morning and padded into the kitchen to make tea.
While she waited for the kettle to boil she opened the back door and stood for a moment looking out over the brick-strewn meadow towards the silent woods.
She glanced left, towards the mound that had been her home throughout childhood and adolescence, but she did not remember it as such, for she was not a woman who derived any pleasure from reminiscence. She was much more at home in present and future.
She had never regretted her decision to turn her back on dreams, and take pot-luck with Archie but as she stood looking out over the meadow she thought that she had had more than enough of the Avenue, and that it was high time they got themselves a flat, instead of scheming and working day and night to provide flats for other people. That was their means of livelihood it was true, but after all, they were doing very well now, and had already made a clear three thousand out of conversion and key-money.
They would do even better, she reflected, when the real rush began, when the young men and girls came surging out of the Forces, clamouring for homes of their own, even if those homes had to consist of an eighth part of the living-space in a two-storey Victorian villa, divided up by sheets of hardboard.
There was no getting away from it, when it came to making something out of nothing Archie was a dabster, an absolute dabster! Who but he could have made four tolerable flats out of that dreadful semi-detached ruin in Outram Crescent? Who but Archie could have squeezed three hundred a year from a coach-house, converted into a bungalow, and furnished with a few strips of Wilton carpet and some café chairs, bought for five shillings apiece at an auction?
The whistling kettle interrupted her reflections. She made the tea and carried the tray into the bedroom. Archie was still fast asleep and she prodded him with her foot.
“Come on! Get weaving! You’ve got to see that rascal, Corbett this morning, haven’t you? He’ll sell to someone else if you don’t clinch the deal over a bottle of Christmas cheer!”
He sat up, rubbed his eyes and yawned.
“Damn Corbett,” he said, but his mind instantly grappled the problem. “He wants too much for that place and I’d doubt if I’d ever get sanction to convert. The main fabric’s unsafe!”
She sat on the bed, sipping her tea. “Offer him a hundred less and see how he reacts!”
“Might be worth a try,” agreed Archie, “but hell, it’s Christmas Day, don’t we ever get a break?”
“Not while the going’s so good,” said Elaine. “Help yourself, it’s sugared!”
He did not reach for the cup, however, but leaned over and groped in the pocket of his jacket that was hanging beside the bed. She heard the faint, pleasing rustle of tissue paper.
“What have you got there?”
“A little gee-gaw for a bad girl,” he said.
Her hand shot out and she snatched a little box from him. She slammed down her half-empty cup and stood up, whipping off the lid and plucking the bracelet from its soft bed.
It was an expensive piece of jewellery, far more expensive than she could have hoped for in their present circumstances.
“Archie!” she exclaimed, breathlessly, “this must have set you back far too much!”
“Not nearly as much as you’d think,” he said, casually.” It’s not new of course, I’m damned if I’m paying purchase-tax on that kind of bauble! I got it below cost from Freeman. Remember Freeman? He was that chap we let into Number Thirty-Five, Cawnpore Road. He was so grateful that he really did hold the price down. I know that because I went straight and had the damn thing valued by Izzy Marks!”
She shouted with laughter. How like Archie it was to get a substantial reduction on a bracelet in exchange for a flat, and then run round the corner to another dealer in order to make quite sure that he was getting good value! She didn’t know which to admire the most, Archie or the Christmas gift. She slipped it on and regarded it at arm’s length.
“Archie, it’s a honey,” she told him, “and it really is a surprise, one hell of a surprise!”
“You like it?” he said, enjoying her delight.
“Do I like it! Move over and let me show you how much I like it!”
“No, no!” he protested, laughing. “Damn it woman, I want my tea, and besides, you’re quite right about Corbett, we ought to clinch before he calls in anyone else.”
“Are you spurning me?” demanded Elaine.
“Not exactly,” said Archie, chuckling, “but there’s a time and place for everythin…. No honestly…honestly, I really do want my tea, I….”
She kissed him hard on the mouth and he let his tea grow cold. It was usually this way with Elaine, there was always fun and horseplay in their association, and he could find no words to express his gratitude to her. He never thought about any other woman nowadays, hardly so much as looked at one. There was money-making, and there was Elaine and this was more than enough for a man in his forty-fourth year.
The sons and daughters of the Avenue were scattered far and wide that Christmas, further and wider indeed than they had ever been in preceding Christmases of the war.
Ted Hartnell bathed that Christmas Day in New Caledonia. The eldest of the Baskerville boys sweated it out on the beach at Port Darwin. Joe Crispin, of Number Fifteen, got helplessly drunk on vino, in Bari. Boxer Carver spent a quiet Christmas day in the cooler, where he was half-way through a twenty-one day sentence for giving a comic and much-appreciated imitation of Reichmarshal Goering. Boxer was glad of the rest, however, for he had been tunnelling very energetically of late, and the emergency exit was now complete and sealed, an insurance against Jerry’s mad-dog reprisals, when the curtain came down on the Reich that was to have lasted a thousand years.
Twenty-one days in the coole
r was not the ordeal it once had been. The camp guards were very docile these days, and rare indeed were the frenzied Teuton flaps, that Boxer had so loved to witness. It was difficult to induce a flap among guards, so elderly and so dispirited, had they become, and even some of the officers were half-tamed.
Boxer, in fact, was getting rather bored with prison camp life, and had almost made up his mind to persuade Whitey to join him in a hike to the nearest frontier when they were returned to the compound. Whitey (who had impersonated Doctor Goebbels in the impromptu pantomime) was now in the adjoining cell, and occasionally they shouted messages to one another. This was against regulations of course, but old Sag-Guts, the corporal of the guard, was a tired, tolerant man. At this moment he was snug in the guardroom, listening to a sixteen-year-old-boy playing ‘Heilige Nacht’ on a harmonica. Strains of the familiar melody reached Boxer in his cell and made him think of Avenue Christmases of twenty years ago.
“I say, Whitey! You there, Whitey?” he bawled.
“’Course I’m here! Where the hell else would I be?” Whitey called back.
“Can you hear that Jerry playing a mouth-organ?”
“Sure! Sounds proper seasonable, don’t it?”
“You ever go carol singing as a kid, Whitey?”
“Sure I did, every year! Did you?”
“You bet, me an’ my brother Berni! We used to make enough for Christmas presents. ‘Wence-lass’ we always sang tho’, but I could never remember more’n the first verse!”
“‘Hark! the Herald Angels’ was my favourite,” shouted Whitey. “You know that one?”
“‘Course I do! Let’s sing it now! Ready?”
They began to bawl ‘Hark! the Herald Angels Sing’ in competition with the mouth-organ, and Boxer’s split-melon grin widened and widened as he bellowed:
The Avenue Goes to War Page 59