The Avenue Goes to War

by R. F Delderfield

  ‘Hark! the Herald Angels sing-hing

  Beecham’s pills are just the thing…!’

  The parody shocked Whitey, who was a great believer in Christmas. He called:

  “Pack it in, Boxer! You aren’t singing it right!”

  “Oh, I forgot the ruddy thing!” said Boxer. “Sing something else, sing ‘Nancy Brown’! I go for ‘Nancy Brown’!”

  “Okay!” called Whitey, mollified by the request, and as the boy in the guard-room finished his carol Whitey’s hoarse voice began to echo through the block.

  ‘Down in West Virginny

  Lived a girl named Nancy Brown.

  She was sweeter than the sweetest

  Of any girl in town….’

  Boxer’s grin settled on his face as he lay listening to Nancy’s successive rejections of a long string of suitors, until…

  ‘Came along the City Slicker

  With his hundred dollar bills!

  He put Nancy in his Packard

  And he drove her to the hills

  She stayed up in the mountain

  She stayed up in that mountain

  She stayed up in that mountain all that night!

  She came down next morning early

  More a woman than a girlie

  And her Pappy drove that hussy out of sight!’

  Boxer hugged himself with glee. He had heard Whitey sing ‘Nancy Brown’ a hundred times but he never tired of it; he never tired of any old and tried diversion, or of familiar songs like ‘Coal Black Mammy’, or games like the string-and-parcel and knocking-down-ginger. He was a genial, simple soul, and found his pleasures in genial, simple things.

  Four hundred miles to the west of Boxer’s cell Esme was not finding life so simple; that morning he was tired, hungry, and exasperated.

  He had promised Smithy, his driver, that they would be in Paris for Christmas, in time to pick up their accumulated mail at the American Express Office, and maybe coax a good Christmas dinner out of S.H.A.E.F., but their van had broken down for the tenth time during their journey up from Toulouse, and now that an obliging village mechanic had at last got it going again they were still hundreds of kilometres short of Paris.

  Esme had been feeling very homesick indeed during the last few weeks, far more so in fact than he had felt during his previous wanderings on the Continent, for then he had been on the run, and there had been so much to occupy his mind, whereas now France was practically cleared of Germans, and free movement from department to department was limited only by broken bridges and the extreme scarcity of petrol.

  He had covered thousands of miles since the Allied breakout, in August, and now the war seemed to have left him far behind.

  Officially he was supposed to be photographing bomb-damage; unofficially he was ‘showing the flag’ and collecting scraps of information about the resistance groups. It was tiring, unrewarding work, entailing long journeys by road and air, and it did not seem to be serving a useful purpose now that the Germans were fighting on their own frontiers.

  Throughout the autumn, when he had driven south-west from Brussels across the plain of France, and into the remote provinces of Anjou and Poitou, his interest in the people of the liberated towns had kept boredom at bay. Now the resistance groups were beginning to squabble among themselves and his interest flagged. He realised also how tired he was, and how worried a man could be, with a wife having her first baby hundreds of miles away.

  Exhaustion and worry made him moody, and sometimes the efforts to support himself and his driver, in a country that had been milked dry by four years’ enemy occupation, almost overwhelmed him.

  Air Ministry had said: ‘Live on the country’ and the order had seemed almost romantic when issued in a warm office, in King Charles Street, Whitehall. It was far from being romantic down here, where whole communities were existing without heat, light, medical supplies, or transport and sometimes without the barest necessities of life.

  The strain of war had converted Esme into a heavy smoker but all his cigarettes had been dissipated as currency in the south. In addition, he was constantly immobilised by lack of petrol, and for food he could only vary the eternity of American ‘K’ rations with small quantities of goats’ milk cheese and wine, cadged from the desperate locals.

  Such money he had carried with him had already been spent on food and black market petrol, he had been forced to sell his flying boots in Bordeaux, and his watch in Limoges. At last he gave up the struggle, sent off a signal from Toulouse, and headed back to base on his own responsibility.

  Christmas morning found him probing through yellow fog towards Orleans, where he overtook a long and dripping column of German prisoners, and learned from their guards that there was a U.S. Transit camp a kilometre further on.

  Travelling at a walking pace he eventually located the camp and drove into the wired enclosure. A prim little lieutenant approached him as he jumped from the van.

  “You got authority to drive in here, man?”

  Sullenly, Esme produced his pass. He was accustomed by now to the strange contradictions of the U.S.A. Military machine, in which earnest young officers insisted that every ‘i’ was dotted, and every ‘t’ crossed, but real problems were referred to the nearest ‘top sergeant’.

  “I guess anyone could have this kind of credential,” said the man, removing his pince-nez spectacles.

  Esme lost patience.

  “Oh, for crying out loud! The bloody thing’s got Eisenhower’s signature on it! I’m out of grub and out of gas and I’ve got to get to Paris! Who’s in charge around here?”

  The officer was a stickler for the book.

  “You got an identity card?”

  Esme wearily produced his identity card and Smithy, the A.C.2 driver, winked at him from the lorry.

  The officer made a great show of examining the blue card.

  “What day were you born on, soldier?” he asked, unexpectedly.

  Esme opened his mouth to protest but at that moment a tall sergeant loomed out of the fog and at once took charge of the situation.

  “This guy’s okay,” he told the officer and then, addressing Esme directly: “I guess you don’t remember me, Bud, but I was a guest at yore weddin’!”

  Esme blinked. “My wedding…?”

  “Sure thing! Our outfit was located in that ruin, ’cross the way. Here, take a looksee Bud, maybe this rings a bell somewheres?”

  He extracted a wallet from his overall pocket and presented Esme with a postcard-size photograph. In the yellow glow of the headlamps Esme at once recognised Judy’s twin-sisters, Fetch and Carry, photographed on what was obviously the steps of the old pavilion in the Rec’. Enthusiastically he clasped the sergeant’s hand.

  “By God, but this is a bit of luck! You must be Carry’s Yank, Orrie?”

  The sergeant grinned. “No, sir! ‘Fetch’ is my dame, and I’m Mitch! When do we celebrate?”

  The lieutenant looked harassed.

  “You say you can vouch for this man, sergeant?”

  “Sure, sure,” said Mitch, so airily that Esme, inwardly chuckling, would not have been the slightest bit surprised if he had added: “Run away an’ play someplace else, Bud!”

  They went into the canteen, where Mitch ordered beans, bacon, and steaming cans of coffee, too hot to hold. He did not eat himself but sat on a box, beaming at Esme.

  Presently Orrie drifted in but on learning that Esme and his driver were without stocks of food, petrol and cigarettes he went away again, returning later with two cartons of Chesterfields, and a promise that all Esme’s other needs were being attended to.

  Esme could not help comparing their generosity and easy friendliness with their officer’s frigidity, and reminded himself, for the twentieth time during his dealings with Americans, that it was highly dangerous to generalise about them.

  They exchanged bits of news and Esme was able to startle the two Americans by informing them that the twins were now employed at an American Service club,
in Oxford, whither they had gone in early autumn after the general Avenue exodus following the bomb.

  Esme gathered that the twins were not over-conscientious correspondents, for neither Mitch nor Orrie had heard from them in more than two months.

  “Are you two really serious about those kids?” he asked, adopting the role of brother-in-law.

  “Sure are,” Mitch told him, “and we got it all fixed. We’re aimin’ to set up as a foursome, in Cleveland, Ohio. Brother o’ mine’s got a used-car business up there and me and Orrie, we figger on taking over soon as this outing’s over! Say, I remember Fetch tellin’ me your outfit was ‘Top Secret’! You ought to be wised up on this Goddam war. How long d’you figger it’ll last, Bud?”

  “That’s anyone’s guess,” said Esme, smiling, “but when we’re through over here don’t forget we’ve still got the Far East to tidy up!”

  “Aw, the U.S. Marines’ll rub out the Nips, brother,” said Orrie. “Don’t you worry none about the East!”

  “I hope so,” said Esme, wondering at their cheerfulness, and comparing it with his own despondency. Perhaps they were younger and that much fresher, or perhaps their slap-happy confidence stemmed from their country’s overwhelming superiority in technical equipment. It crossed his mind then that Anglo-Saxon leadership had slipped away from Britain during the last year or so, and had now passed into the hands of these big, gangling men, with their fussy little officers, and their undeniable know-how. He found that the prospect of hanging on to American shirt-tails after the war did not touch his national pride. All he wanted, all he would ask of life in the future, was to be left alone on his seventy-acre plot, and never asked to travel further afield than Exeter on market days.

  He stood up and shook hands with Mitch and Orrie.

  “So long then, and nice to have run into you! If I get home before you do I’ll call up the girls and tell them how we met here, on Christmas day!”

  “You do that!” said Orrie, eagerly, as Esme found his driver, climbed into the lorry, and drove out along the Orleans Road.

  It was strange, he thought, as he broke open the cigarette carton and pocketed a packet of Chesterfield, how he could never get away from the Avenue, no matter how wide and far he travelled. There had been his encounter with Judy on the night he walked out on Elaine, with Barbara in his arms. There had been poor old Claude, and his unrewarding courtship of the policeman’s daughter, in Shirley Rise. And the Avenue, or what little was left of it, had cropped up again in the persons of the two genial Americans, who were going to make G.I. brides of two Avenue girls, and take them home to Cleveland, Ohio, to help run a used car business!

  Esme saw the Avenue not as it had been the last time he was home on leave, the compassionate leave they had granted him in order to see poor old Harold in hospital, but the Avenue as it was in his boyhood, the long, sweeping crescent that had always seemed to seal off London’s advance into the countryside, and he was surprised to discover that he still thought of it with warmth and affection.

  Was there anyone still living in the small-number end now, he wondered, anyone who, despite bombs, doodlebugs and rockets, still garrisoned this advanced sector of London.

  There was someone still in residence at the short number end, but it was a mere token garrison.

  Little Miss Baker, of Number One, was celebrating Christmas alone in her dilapidated front-room, having resisted renewed attempts on the parts of relatives, friends and Council officials to dislodge her.

  There she sat, with her cat, Charlotte, and her budgerigar, Alfred, reading at random from her stained and tattered copy of Rupert Brooke’s poems, the book that someone had salvaged from the debris that littered the room after the ceiling had fallen on the Health Visitor, the previous August.

  Like their mistress both cat and budgerigar had survived the catastrophe. Charlotte had once been Mrs. Crispin’s cat, of Number Fifteen, and Alfred had been Mrs. Westerman’s bird, and had been presented to Miss Baker by Mr. Westerman after his wife’s death in the corner shop. Westerman was away all day at work, and felt that Alfred would die of grief if left in solitude.

  Rough and ready repairs had been made to the front room. A stout beam and some wide planks held up what remained of the ceiling, the windows had been fitted with heavy wooden shutters, now thrown back to reveal the crisscrossed pattern of adhesive tape stuck across the new glass, but apart from these repairs the room was much as it had been throughout the war, and the long period preceding the war. A steel engraving of ‘The Charge of the Scots Greys, at Waterloo’ still hung over the sideboard. A coloured print of Queen Victoria, as she had looked at the time of her first jubilee, was still in place over the radio table, and there was still the same Persian rug, badly discoloured by crushed plaster, in front of the fire.

  Despite the makeshift repairs it was very cosy in here. The fire burned brightly, throwing leaping shadows on the wall opposite, and the kettle sang on the hob as the respectful tones of the B.B.C. announcer warned listeners that His Majesty the King was about to deliver his Christmas message. Miss Baker softly closed her Rupert Brooke, took off her spectacles, folded her hands on her lap and addressed the sleeping Charlotte at her feet.

  “Lottie,” she said, looking round her with an air of satisfaction not far short of smugness, “Lottie my girl, whatever made them think that I wanted to share Christmas with anyone but you and Alfred? They’re all very kind, Lottie, and I suppose they mean well enough, but when it comes to asking us to give in to that little Jackanapes at the last moment they’re knocking at the wrong number, eh Alfred?”

  Alfred, the budgerigar, cocked his small head on one side and whistled. He was not a talking budgerigar, but his whistle was low and melodious.

  “Shush, Alfred!” said Miss Baker, severely. “Didn’t you hear? It’s the King!”

  CHAPTER XXXVII

  The Coming Of Arthur

  IT IS NOT often that a man attends his own wedding in the morning and is also present at the birth of his own grandson before midnight the same day, but such a rare privilege was Jim Carver’s, on January 22nd, 1945.

  It was a crowded day for Jim, and one that he was likely to remember with pleasure for the rest of his life. He and Edith had not intended to rush matters in this fashion, although both were in favour of a quiet wedding early in the morning, with possibly the twins, Fetch and Carry, as witnesses, and Edgar Frith as dispenser of the bride.

  The Third Reich, however, once more took a hand in Jim’s affairs, planting a V.2 within fifty yards of the private hotel where Jim and Edith had gone, after losing their homes in the summer.

  The hotel was not destroyed but its structure was badly shaken and it was declared unsafe. All the guests had therefore to move out at short notice, and seek alternative accommodation. In January, 1945 this was more than a mere inconvenience. For people possessed of a small income it came near to being an impossibility.

  Jim found a temporary lodging with the Westermans and spent the second week of the new year combing the suburb for a furnished flat, but without success. He was offered one or two third-storey bed-sitting-rooms in the Woodside and Clockhouse areas, but the rental demanded was prohibitive, and the lodgings offered no kind of permanence.

  Neither he nor Edith were without means. Both had been working full-time throughout the greater part of the war, and they could also expect compensation for the destruction of their homes and goods by enemy action, but Jim reasoned that he was now well over sixty, and Edith was not much younger, so that neither could expect to continue in full work for very much longer. They would therefore have to exercise caution in matters of finance.

  Jim would have preferred to buy a house and be done with it, for it was clear that the price of property would rise very sharply the moment the war was over. The only houses that were for sale, however, were in a pitiable state of repair, and even had he settled on one it would have been impossible to find a builder to make it habitable.

  Tramping the su
burbs all that week he was reminded of his long search for work during the early nineteen-twenties. His faith in the British working-class received some unpleasant shocks during the quest, and he was disgusted by the rapacity of some of the owners of small and dingy property. The comradeship that had existed between people during the blitz, and subsequently, seemed to have disappeared in the dust of the V.1s and V.2s. For the most part people were tired, sour, greedy and disinclined to be helpful. They were sorry, they told him, for those of their neighbours who had lost homes, but their sympathy did not extend to letting rooms or selling furniture at reasonable rates. On the seventh day of his quest he came home greatly discouraged, stopping at the corner of Shirley Rise to ’phone Edith, who was temporarily accommodated in a Cawnpore Road bed-sitter. He was surprised by the chirpiness of her voice when he reported failure.

  “Never mind, never mind! I’ve had a visitor, Jim! Yes, you know him, of course you know him! He’s your boy, Archie!”

  “Archie? How on earth did Archie know where you were living?”

  “Oh, he found out, he’s good at finding things out! Listen, Jim, he’s still living at Number Forty-Three, and he’s most anxious to contact you! I think he’s heard about a house. No, dear, I didn’t have to tell him about us because he knew! I don’t know how he knew, Jim, but he did, and he was very sweet about it, very sweet indeed! Where are you speaking from, Jim? Well, why don’t you pop along and see him now? He was going straight home. Well, you never know do you? He might know of something to suit us!”

  Jim made his way up to the Avenue with mixed feelings. He had seen and spoken to Archie several times during the last year, and together they had attended the funeral of Lou and Jack, in August, but although their relationship was cordial enough on the surface, Jim still harboured a vague distrust for his son, and his misgivings had been increased when he learned that Archie was living openly with a woman who was not his wife and who possessed an unsavoury reputation in the suburb. He supposed that he was fair-minded enough to admit that this was not his business, particularly as Archie was now over forty, but when this fact was added to Archie’s own reputation it did not encourage him to be proud of the boy. He had wished more than once that Archie would either leave the Avenue or pull himself together and try to achieve some kind of respectability.