Not far away, in Cockspur Street, he watched a more original mafficker mount the empty plinth of George III’s statue, and proceed to sell the National Gallery by auction. In Haymarket he passed a procession of Servicemen and Servicewomen, marching sheepishly behind a man with a Union Jack fixed to a shutter pole.
Only in Piccadilly Circus was there any real sign of hysteria and here it had little to do with the victory.
The crowd in the Circus was dense and increasing all the time, fed by a steady flow of sightseers from Shaftsbury Avenue and Haymarket. Jim found himself half-carried to the base of the boarded-up statue of Eros, where everyone’s eyes were turned towards an unusual spectacle at the corner of Regent Street.
Here an entrance to the Underground was protected by a structure of planks, that formed a kind of hut, and on the platform made by the roof of this structure an exceptionally pretty girl was undressing.
The crowd was obviously delighted and roared encouragement. An obliging spotlight-manipulator, sited on the roof of a building across the circus, swung the light on the act.
The girl was not alone on the elevated platform. On her right was an American G.I., who seemed to be enjoying the role of impresario, and on her left was a diminutive civilian, an earnest young man wearing horn-rimmed spectacles, who appeared determined to prevent the strip-tease from reaching its logical climax.
The ministrations of these two men diverted the thousands of spectators as much as the act itself. When Jim arrived in front of Eros the little civilian seemed to be fighting a losing battle, for the girl’s shoes and dress had already been flung to the cheering ranks below, and in spite of his tortured protests she was now in the act of peeling off a white slip.
The G.I., who was solemnly drunk, continued to bow and wave a proprietary hand towards the girl. A moment later off came the slip and a roar of approval greeted the girl’s appearance in flimsy underwear.
Jim stared open mouthed at the spectacle. He had lived within a ’bus ride of Piccadilly Circus most of his life, and had seen a variety of spectacles on this very spot, but never anything quite like this. He was so surprised and shocked that he could not even find anything amusing in the curious contest that was being waged between the unhappy civilian and the expansive G.I.
These two had now fallen to pushing one another behind the girl. There was nothing very active about their quarrel and neither was in danger of falling off the platform. They simply stood shoulder to shoulder, as though daring one another to aim the first blow, and they reminded Jim of two characters in an old-fashioned comedy.
Meanwhile, the girl, who seemed to be ignoring them, stepped out of her knickers and turned her attention to her suspenders.
The G.I. stood aside for a moment, in order to throw the abandoned panties to the crowd. He then returned to continue his dispute with the despairing civilian, who now appeared to be weighed down by shame and dismay.
At this point in the proceedings a squad of grinning policemen managed to force their way through the crowd and reach the foot of the platform. The crowd began to boo, but good naturedly as the spotlight turned upon an officer in the act of scaling the platform, whereupon the G.I. again abandoned the civilian, this time to argue with the policeman. The civilian at once took this opportunity to check the striptease.
As the girl began to unzip her foundation garment he exerted himself to hold it in place. The girl wriggled, the crowd screamed with laughter, and the game little man held on, at length receiving some much needed assistance in the persons of two other constables.
Between them they managed to dislodge the girl and drag her to the edge of the platform, where more policemen awaited her with upraised arms.
A naval officer, standing close to Jim, exclaimed: “Now I’ve seen everything!”
“I’ve seen too much,” grunted Jim and turning, forced his way through the crowd and along Coventry Street, towards Charing Cross Road.
The crowd outside the station was so dense that he abandoned the idea of returning home by train and went on down Whitehall, toward Lambeth, to look for a ’bus.
He was tired now and felt deflated. He told himself that it was nonsense to be so depressed by the lack of spontaneity in the celebrations, or the unpleasant impression that remained in his mind after watching the Piccadilly strip-tease. For all that, he grew more and more depressed as he waited in a queue for the Croydon ’bus. He tried, during the long journey home, to analyse the true causes of his depression. Had it really much to do with the forlorn carnival air of the streets, of Harold’s facetious preoccupation with his hurts, or with the strange, despairing muddle in which the war had ended? On consideration he thought not and blamed, instead, the reaction that was surely inevitable after such a prolonged period of strain.
In addition, away at the back of his mind, a number of small irritations had been building up during the last few weeks and now he had leisure to examine them one by one.
He did not like the behaviour of some of the liberated peoples, particularly the French, who were said to be parading shaven women round their market-squares, as a reprisal for their alleged association with Germans during the occupation. This was not the kind of war-aim that he had envisaged throughout the heat of the day; it was far too close to the very thing they had been fighting all these years. Neither had he liked the ghoulish murder of Mussolini and his mistress, Clara Petacci, for this he felt, outraged public decency. He was worried by the growing friction between the British and Americans on one side, and the Russians and Americans on the other, and also by some of the recent public statements from Washington about the avowed intentions of Joe Stalin. To Jim, these utterances seemed to aim mortal wounds at a peace yet to be established. On the other hand, he had been equally disturbed by the Red Army’s callous abandonment of the Warsaw patriots the previous summer, for this indicated that there might, after all, be some truth in the Right wing’s warnings of Russian hegemony of Eastern Europe after the war!
These and other facets of the war disturbed him. Jim was a simple straightforward man and so far the peace held no promise of working out in a simple, straightforward way! Already reaction was setting in among certain groups of the Left, groups to which Jim had once wholeheartedly subscribed. Socialists were beginning to call Churchill the champion of Big Business and the war-profiteers. There would be an election soon and then, he supposed, the old game of mud-slinging would begin all over again, the Right seeking to entrench themselves against the Unions, the Left, demanding big-scale nationalisation and vast multiplication of tiresome Government controls!
Was left-wing reform really any solution to the problems of a tired and a frustrated electorate? Could nationalisation and social security on the scale of the Beveridge Plan, really be provided out of an empty exchequer?
The war, they said, had cost the country thirteen millions a day, and it had gone on for nearly six years! There was still Japan to be accounted for, and Britain’s overseas credits had been mortgaged in the desperate days of 1940! Where then would the money come from for increased pensions, and a huge reconstruction programme? From America, in the form of loans? Surely that would mean that the British were shackled to American capital for good, and thus tied to Washington’s coat-tails in matters of foreign policy? Where might that lead? To another thumping great war, he’d be bound!
He got off the ’bus at Cawnpore Road and walked slowly back to the Rec’ end of the Avenue, pondering these things.
He had to admit that there remained, in his heart and head, scarcely one good, honest, pre-war conviction! He had been, successively, an ardent trade unionist, a militant striker, a Socialist of the Centre, a fire-eating pacifist, a fanatical anti-Fascist, a jingo, a pro-Churchill vanguardist, a pro-Russian extremist, and was now inclining towards left-wing Liberalism! He was still, thank God, actively anti-Fascist, and as such could still regard the war as justly waged and justly won, but what would emerge from all this rubble and blather? How had his ancient dream of the B
rotherhood of Man and the final renunciation of war been furthered by the overthrow of Hitler and all that overthrow had cost the suburb in blood and treasure?
He turned despondently into the big-number end of the crescent, and as he did so it suddenly occurred to him that there was something odd about the Avenue. For a moment he did not realise what it was and then, catching his breath, he noticed that at least half the houses in the terrace were brazenly defying the blackout regulations, regulations that were still in force!
Lights blazed from at least twenty windows and as he passed Number One Hundred and Twelve, where the big lilac still inclined towards the front-garden of Number One Hundred and Ten, the sounds of a party issued from front-room windows and he heard young voices raised in song.
He paused for a moment to listen. Half a dozen people were bawling a number that he had never much liked, “There’ll Always Be An England”. Popular as it had been during the earlier stages of the war, he had always felt slightly embarrassed when he had heard it sung, for it was the kind of song that he associated with Kipling’s verse and the smug, music-hall patriotism of the nineteen-hundreds. It was a silly song just as silly as that other popular tune, the one about hanging washing on the Siegfried Line.
Tonight, however, it was not so much the song that impressed him as the realisation that the party at Number One Hundred and Twelve was the first real sign he had seen of the Avenue’s return to normal.
Lights were blazing and people were singing, with all their windows open and uncurtained! He could see, through the sprigs of unkempt privet, the bobbing heads of men and girls in uniform, and he could hear, above the words of the song, the heartening sound of laughter and gay, young voices.
He did not know who was living in Number One Hundred and Twelve these days but that did not seem important. Somebody lived there, and obviously somebody who liked to see young people enjoy themselves. Surely the important thing was that young people were still able to enjoy themselves, no matter what things were said or done in the chancellories of the world! That human right had been won back for them at El Alamein, Cassino and Avranches and a pledge of it had been written in vapour trails over half Europe. These people, the people now singing “There’ll Always Be An England” were obviously not worried about the drawing of new frontiers, or the balancing of budgets, and after all why the hell should they be? They had been groping about in a blackout and humping their packs all over the world for years on end and many of them, poor devils, had never had a chance to enjoy youth as it should be enjoyed before being slowed down by the doubts and difficulties of middle-age!
To blazes with the bloody politicians, thought Jim! Let them eat their brains out for a change, and let places like the Avenue work out their own salvation! After all, people had prophesied (and he among them) that Britain was too stale and lazy to fight Hitler, but these prophets had been sadly wrong, and he himself had been just as wrong! When the Avenue had been put to the test in 1940 and subsequently, how superbly it had risen to the challenge! And so it would again and again, in spite of every sign to the contrary!
The people of all the avenues round here had had their lights switched off and after grousing a little, and fumbling about for a spell, they had stretched themselves, got up, and promptly turned them on again, administering as they did so a hefty kick in the pants to the strutting bullies who had challenged their liberty in the first place! That was all that had really happened, and that was all that ever would happen when foreigners tried to push them around in the future!
In a far more cheerful frame of mind Jim walked the remaining distance to Number Forty-Three and put his key in the lock. He had no time however to turn it, for at once the door flew open, and Edith greeted him, her face flushed, her whole manner as eager as a girl’s.
“Jim, oh Jim! You’ll never guess, you….”
But Jim did not have to guess, for even as he put his hands on her shoulders, and kissed her cheek, a once-familiar laugh was heard in the kitchen, a kind of whooping neigh that had once accompanied the rat-tat of countless games of knocking-down-ginger along the terrace.
Jim rushed across the hall as Boxer lumbered from out of the kitchen.
“Wotcher, Pop? How you doin’, Pop?”
Pop was now doing very well indeed, although he would have found great difficulty in saying so! He threw his arms around his son and, as he did so, his glance travelled over Boxer’s shoulder and through the open kitchen door to the table, beside the gas-stove. It was heaped with tins and cartons, scores of tins and cartons, so many that some had fallen off on to the tiled floor and lay on top of a concertinaed kitbag.
It was as though Boxer had realised that the sands of wartime licence were running out, that soon, inevitably, ‘scrounging’ would be called ‘stealing’ again, and that he had best make the most of his opportunities.
“I stopped off at a Yank depot during the flight to Brussels,” he explained, modestly. “The lads at the airfield told me you people was still rationed, so I just scouted around a bit! Mum says she can use ’em, but I got fags for you, Pop!”
“‘Mum’,” said Edith, ecstatically. “He said ‘Mum’! Did you hear him, Jim?”
“Yes,” said Jim, gently releasing Boxer’s right hand, “I heard him, Edith! God bless you, boy, you haven’t changed a bit, not a bit! I’ll ring Bernard. Bernard’ll want to know! Bernard’ll want to hear straight away!”
As he picked up the ’phone and dialled trunks Jim reflected that VE Day had not been such a damp squib after all.
CHAPTER XL
The Bulldozers
IN THE FIRST week of March 1947, the long hard frost broke at last, and the snowbanks that had lain for so long under the Avenue’s dwarf walls crinkled into yellow slush and were soon swept into the gutters by gleeful householders.
It had been the longest and coldest winter that most of them could remember, the kind of winter depicted on Christmas cards that showed oxen being roasted whole on the frozen Thames, and mail coaches floundering in snowdrifts.
Ever since the first week of the New Year the rounded hill marking the spot where Numbers Thirteen, Fifteen and Seventeen had stood, and the long, untidy barrow opposite, that was all that remained of the short-number terrace on the even side, had been mantled in snow. The road between the pavements had been treacherous under inches of hard-packed ice, and the few vehicles that used it, Corporation refuse lorries, and tradesmen’s vans, wore chains that clanked dolorously as they moved along towards the deserted Rec’.
People had remained indoors as much as possible and housewives like Edith, who were getting on in years, and not sure of themselves on the glacial pavements, had given their Lower Road shopping commissions to the men.
The meadow behind the Avenue still lay under a sheet of untrodden snow, and the Manor Wood, blue and silent under heavy skies, looked sad and sombre, as though each tree had read its death sentence in the marks scored on its trunk by the surveying team, who had spent so much time in the wood during the preceding autumn.
The bulldozers and grabs moved in on the first Monday in March.
Jim Carver, who had been down to the Lower Road for Edith’s shopping, saw them breast the slope of Shirley Rise and grind into the eastern end of the Avenue, grouping about the flatter section of rubble, where his own and Harold’s house had stood.
He realised then that the day had arrived, and that soon the whole of this end of the Avenue would be demolished as a new road was driven across the meadow, and through the wood to join the Holly Wood Estate in the south-east. And even this would be but a beginning. Soon a network of smaller roads, terraces, and closes, would branch off the new highway, and within a year, or maybe less, the wood would be gone to make room for a development known as Manor Wood Estate.
No longer would the Avenue be a salient, marking the furthest advance of south-eastern London. Any day now the long, curving line would break, and all that bombs had left of the crescent would become just another road, li
ke Cawnpore Road, or Lucknow Road, hemmed in back and front with houses, shops, ’bus shelters and perhaps even a cinema or two.
The Clerk of Works set up his headquarters in a large hut sited in the Old Nursery, just behind the house that Edith and Becky had inhabited from the year of King George V’s coronation until August, 1944.
From this hut a stream of orders went out to the shock brigades in their row of canvas huts dotted about the meadow, and within forty-eight hours of the arrival of the first bulldozer an order for a general advance was given. An hour later mechanical grabs had begun to bite into the mound opposite Number Twenty and Twenty-Two, flattening it in conformity with the meadow, and driving a broad furrow down the old cart-track that crossed the meadow to the wood.
At the same time other grabs began to gnaw their way along the Avenue on the even side, stopping short at Number Thirty-Six, the first of the undamaged houses on that side. Then a bulldozer attacked the recently vacated houses that stretched due west from Number One, the house from which the indestructible Miss Baker had at last been dislodged, afterwards pushing on towards that point on the odd side, where the wounds inflicted by the 1941 bombs made its work look effortless.
The sun shone brightly all that week and after so many dull days indoors most of the people comprising the Avenue rump came out to watch the men and machines at their work.
It was a sadly reduced group, however, who watched the opening up of the cart-track on that crisp March morning, for most of the families who had lived at the Shirley Rise end of the Avenue between the wars were now scattered and broken up.
Jim was there with Edith, for Number Forty-Three was not involved in the operation, and beside them stood Philip and Jean Hargreaves, and their four-year old son, Winston, who regarded the grab with a mixture of delight, fascination and awe.
The Avenue Goes to War Page 66