The widowed Mr. Baskerville, of Number Ninety-Seven, was there, enjoying a retirement that gave him the leisure he craved to grow huge, yellow chrysanthemums in a homemade greenhouse built on the site of his bomb-proof shelter.
The widowed Mr. Westerman was there, from Number Ninety-Eight, not yet retired, but expecting to be within a few months, and already anticipating his old age by taking a day off on account of a touch of lumbago, that should have kept him indoors notwithstanding the sunshine.
Mr. Westerman was moved to make one of the feeblest of his jokes. Watching a bulldozer lunge at the exposed wall of Number Eleven, he said: “The Luftwaffe couldn’t shift us but the Socialist Minister of Housing has!”
Nobody laughed and the joke fell flatter than most of Mr. Westerman’s jokes. Jim was too unsure of himself politically to defend the Socialists, as Mr. Westerman had rather hoped he would, and the others, having regard to the Avenue’s losses, regarded jokes about the Luftwaffe as being in doubtful taste.
Mrs. Dodge, of Number Ninety-One was there, remembering that her son, Albert had operated a mechanical grab, before he threw up his job in 1940, and became a paratrooper. Mrs. Jarvis, and one or two others were there, but hardly any of the younger folk, for most of these had gone away to make homes for themselves, some as far as Canada and Australia, others only five minutes’ walk south and east of the Avenue.
Esme and Judy Fraser were nearly two hundred miles west of their old homes when the first of the tree-felling teams went to work on their wood with cross-cuts and tackle, but nevertheless the day was something of an occasion for them, for the sun that had converted the snow-crust into slush in the Avenue had thawed West Country lanes almost a week before, and on the first really sunny day Judy proposed they should harness old Gramp to the trap and take a picnic to the Castle, above the estuary.
Esme, who had passed a difficult seven weeks during the frost, grumbled that he could ill-afford the time but Judy talked him into taking a day’s holiday and they all drove up the rutted lanes to the plateau.
Here they turned Gramp loose to browse among the gorse and spread ground sheets in the lee of the larch coppice. On all sides of them the undulating countryside was rapidly shedding its quilt of snow, and the lower slopes of the valleys were already showing wide, unbroken stretches of green and gold. To the west the river was like a shining blade, thrusting towards the sea, but the Haldon Hills, on the far bank, still wore their crowns of snow.
Judy lifted Arthur from the trap and Barbara, gumbooted and mufflered, at once took charge of him, and led him away to feed the birds among the trees on the ancient earthwork. From where she sat, unpacking the lunch, Judy could hear their voices carry across the brake. For her too, the winter had been a hard one. For almost a fortnight The Shillets had been cut off from the village, so that they had been truly self-supporting, with plenty of eggs, bacon, milk and vegetables, but no meat, and, for the last five days of the frost, no sugar or flour.
Esme returned with an armful of wood and began to build a fire.
“A hot drink will do the children good,” he said. “Make a wind-shield Judy, while I light up!”
She knelt beside him, holding her duffle coat by the hem and when he glanced up he looked into her eyes and noted their sparkle and the pink flush of her cheeks. He thought of her then as she had looked to him on that frosty day on the Manor island and the memory encouraged him to forget the fire for a moment, to take her face in his hands and kiss her lips.
The unexpected kiss heightened the colour of her cheeks, but she said, lightly: “Now then, now then! You were supposed to be lighting a fire!”
“I don’t need one when you look like you do this morning,” he told her.
She put her head to one side, smiling.
“It’s nice to hear you say something like that again,” she said. “I was beginning to wonder if it was the work, the cold spell, or me!”
“It was all three,” he said, sitting back on his heels as the twigs began to crackle, “but now that spring’s here we’ll see what we can do about it!”
He rose to his feet and called: “Hi, Babs! Arthur! The fire’s going! Get some sticks!”
At that moment, had they known it, a tall beech came crashing down on the very spot where they had first met and because they were sentimentalists they would have been interested. They did not know, however, for they did not think of the Avenue much these days. There is always so much to do on a farm.
Nearly three hundred miles north-west of Esme’s picnic that sparkling morning Pippa left the petrol pumps to cross the road and collect a parcel from the G.P.O. van that had stopped opposite the bungalow gate.
“It’s from Boxer!” she called to Bernard, who was lying on his back under a Bedford van in the garage.
He scrambled out, his fair hair streaked with oil from a leak that he had not yet located.
“Open it up, Pip,” he shouted and began to wash at the workshop tap.
Pippa cut the string and tugged at the wrappings. The postmark said “British Forces Overseas” and the object inside the parcel puzzled her for a moment. She shook away the shavings that cushioned it, and put it down on the bench.
She saw then that it was one of those traditional German jokes, a model of a privvy, with a heavily-moustached man sitting on the seat, a contented look on his face and a large pipe in his mouth. Printed on the door, which could be opened and shut, was a legend in Gothic script but she knew no German and neither did Bernard, who came over and examined the novelty with interest.
“That’s about typical of Boxer!” he said. “Wasn’t there a letter inside?”
They searched the wrappings and found a single sheet of notepaper, covered with Boxer’s huge, childish scrawl.
“Dear Berni and Pip” it ran, “I thought you might like this for the mantelpiece of the new bungalow. They are all the rage over here and I meant to tell you what it says on the door but I’ve forgotten. I can still only swear in German and shout ‘Raus-raus!’ at the civvies who crawl round us like no one’s business and say they never wanted to fight Briton. I haven’t come across one bloke who was a Nazi yet but I’m on the track of a bint I chummed up with on the way out. She’s a Russky and I’ve always wanted to catch up with her again. I’ve just heard she’s still in the Western Zone, and working as a skivvy so you mite have some news that will shake you soon so long now as ever Boxer.”
“Whatever does he mean by all that?” asked Pippa.
Bernard scratched his head. “I suppose he means he’s traced Olga,” he said. “Olga was the girl he told us about, the one he met when he was on the run.”
“Does ‘bint’ mean a woman?” asked Pippa.
“Yes, and the only woman I heard of him meeting over there was this Russian!”
He folded the note and placed it carefully in his overall pocket. “Can you beat that? Boxer, married?”
“He isn’t married yet, is he?” said Pippa, who was never able to understand Boxer’s letters.
“No, but if I know him he soon will be,” said Bernard. “He’s a case and no mistake! What makes him imagine the Welsh would stand for Jerry’s lavatory humour? On our mantelpiece! What do you know about that?”
Pippa laughed and began rewrapping the gift.
“It was nice of him to remember your birthday anyway, Berni.”
“He dam’ well ought to,” said Bernard, “it’s his too, isn’t it?”
A lorry pulled in beside the pumps and Pippa left him to attend to it. Bernard smiled to himself, contemplating the irony of his twin’s return to Germany as a regular, after spending nearly three years there as a prisoner of war.
His thoughts were interrupted by a loud wail from the perambulator, wedged against the pillars of the bungalow porch. He crossed the gravelled path between workshop and dwelling and bent to retrieve a woolly elephant that Jimmy, the younger of his two boys, had flung to the ground.
“Eddy!” he called, to a plump three-year-old playing
bricks on the floor of the front room. “Keep an eye on Jimmy, son! Mummy and I are busy this morning! Catch!” as he tossed the package through the open window, “It’s a present from Uncle Boxer!”
The child scrambled to his feet and ran towards the parcel. Bernard returned to the workshop, picked up his spanner and crawled under the Bedford again. Presently, to an accompaniment of regular taps and bangs, Pippa heard him whistling a melody that she always associated with him and Boxer. She supposed that his twin’s letter had put it into his head again, for presently the whistle ceased and he began to sing the words:
“Everybody’s doin’ it, doin’ it, doin’ it!”
She began to whistle it herself as she went in to prepare their midday meal.
As she stirred the stew a bulldozer lurched over the rubble that had been her husband’s home for twenty-five years, and her own for the greater part of the war, but neither she nor Bernard thought of the Avenue as home any longer. They had paid a ten per cent deposit on a home and were paying off the remainder gallon by gallon, as vehicles passed in and out of Caernarvon.
Harold was on his way back to the Avenue when the bulldozers began to demolish the odd side of the crescent.
He was returning from his first holiday since the summer of 1939, when he and Eunice had spent a quiet but enjoyable fortnight at Newquay.
The long frost had immobilised him, for although he was walking very well now he did not care to risk a heavy fall on the iced-over pavements and Mrs. Harvey, his landlady at Number Eighty-Eight, was a very active little woman and had undertaken to do all his errands during the cold spell.
Harold had not accepted Jim’s offer to take a flat at Number Forty-Three but in the end he had been unable to tear himself away from the Avenue and had rented the upper half of Mrs. Harvey’s house, lower down the crescent.
He did so because he was determined to establish his independence but this he failed to do, for Mrs. Harvey, and her unmarried sister, Norma, made much more fuss of “our gentleman upstairs” than Jim and Edith would have done.
His unexpected and out-of-season holiday had been the result of a flattering invitation on the part of Mr. Stillman, his former employer, who had asked him to spend a week at his Sussex home, in order to assist him in drawing up a will.
Harold had been delighted by the invitation and agreeably surprised by his welcome, for Mr. Stillman loomed very large in Harold’s estimation, and was said to be worth six figures.
Harold had been made an executor and treated like a distinguished guest during his stay, but now that everything was signed and sealed he was secretly glad to be returning to his own easy-chair, and to the society of people like Jim, Edith, and Mrs. Harvey, and even little Miss Baker, who now watched the Avenue parade from a more central window, at Number Sixty-Two.
Harold had found peace in the year that followed his discharge from hospital. He had still not quite recovered from his surprise at being alive and mobile, but he no longer missed the bustle and gossip at the office in St. Paul’s Churchyard, preferring to sit and re-read the classics, beginning with George Eliot, and ending with Robert Louis Stevenson; this was something he had always told himself he would do on his retirement.
He did a bit of gardening too, discovering a friend and ally in the person of Mr. Baskerville, the chrysanthemum-grower. Mr. Baskerville, Harold now admitted, was not nearly such a bore once he had a trowel in his hand, and was pottering about between his greenhouse and the rockery that he was rebuilding in the front garden. They became, in fact, firm friends during the first summer of peace, and conferred with one another about the imminent collapse of British economy, now that the Socialists dominated Parliament. He remained close friends with Jim, of course, but Jim had Edith, and Baskerville was a widower, like himself.
Jim saw Harold turn into the Avenue from Shirley Rise and hailed him as he stepped over the litter that strewed the broken pavements.
“Hi, Harold! You’re just in time! You’ve got a new address now! It’s to be plain ‘Manor Road’ from now on, and the road across to the woods is to be ‘Manor Park Drive’ if you’ve ever heard such nonsense!”
“By George!” exclaimed Harold, surveying the activity, “They are making a bit of a mess of the place, aren’t they?”
“Twelve hundred houses are going up so they tell me,” said Jim, shouting against the stuttering roar of a pneumatic drill, outside Number Nine. “I’m damned if I can see who’s going to live in all of ’em!”
“They’ll ruin us before they’ve finished,” screamed Harold, “you see if they don’t! You and that precious Attlee of yours!”
Ten years ago Jim would have swallowed this bait and at once opened a heated discussion in support of Socialist housing policy, but today he was content to laugh and slap Harold on the back.
“The politicians’ll ruin us, no matter who’s in,” he predicted, “It’s six of one and half a dozen of the other if you ask me! What we really need is a national revival of the Liberal party, and we’ll get it before long, you see if we don’t! Did you have a good time with the nobs, down in Sussex?”
“Yes,” shouted Harold, “I had a very good time indeed, but I’m glad to be back, Jim, very glad to be back! Will you and Edith come over after supper? I’ve so much to tell you.”
“We’d like to,” said Jim, “put the kettle on about eight!”
Harold left him and picked his way along the Avenue to Number Eighty-Eight, and as he turned in at the gate he looked back at the changing outline of the short-number end.
“Manor Road,” he said to himself. “It doesn’t sound so expensive as ‘Manor Park Avenue’, but I expect we’ll get used to it, like everything else that’s happened around here in the last twenty-five years!”
Only a mile or so from the Avenue Archie was turning into the short drive that led to ‘Pine Hollow’, the white, detached house that he had originally bought with the idea of converting into luxury flats, but had decided to occupy himself when Elaine had told him that he would be a father once again in February, ’46.
Elaine was by no means as astonished at the prospect of this child’s arrival as she had been by the prediction of Esme’s child, in the last winter of the peace. In fact it was a matter of surprise that she had not conceived long ago, and for a time she kept the information to herself, slightly apprehensive as to how Archie would accept it, for there was still little prospect of their being in a position to marry.
Archie’s wife, Maria, had never offered him a divorce, although they had recently learned through a lawyer that she was now considering living in Italy. If she did go abroad, then Elaine supposed that it might be possible to get the divorce, but she did not give the matter much thought. She felt far more married to Archie than she had been to Esme, and had no cause to regret her snap decision on the Bournemouth Road, back in 1943.
Archie had gone a long way in the last four years. The string of village pop-ins, of which he had been so proud before the war, seemed a trivial little enterprise in retrospect, for he had now a stake in twelve blocks of flats, besides owning half a dozen tall, Victorian houses, accommodating four to five tenants and bringing in some two thousand a year. He also owned ‘Pine Hollow’, worth at least another eight thousand at today’s market price, and all his investments outside the realm of bricks and mortar were sound and rewarding.
One way and another Elaine had lost very little by switching from Woolston to Archie, for Archie was not the kind of man who would stop at twenty thousand, but would go on making money all his life. Elaine was confident of this, and equally confident that the money he made would be shared with her.
His enthusiasm when she finally told him about the child was almost embarrassing.
“What you? Us? A kid?” he kept repeating, until she felt obliged to remind him that she was only thirty-six, and could hardly be expected to regard conception as a miracle.
After that he was never seen in an ill-humour, not even when things did not fall out as he
planned in business. He insisted that they resold the house they had intended occupying after handing over Number Forty-Three to Jim, and went to live in ‘Pine Hollow’, which had six bedrooms, and stood in four acres of cultivated garden.
‘Pine Hollow’ actually possessed a flagged terrace, with a shingled roof over it, and when Elaine referred jokingly to her old daydream of the hammock he startled her one morning by fixing a hammock to the main supports outside the lounge.
By that time, however, she was too advanced in pregnancy to be able to use it, and tried to persuade Archie to climb in but without success. Archie had never been the kind of man to while away his time in a hammock, and was not going to begin now, when property prices were soaring to astronomical figures, and families were holding out key-money for a dingy top-floor, furnished with odds and ends from the junk sheds!
The child, another girl, was born on Elaine’s birthday in February, and Archie insisted that they should name her Louise, in memory of his favourite sister. He found a nannie and Elaine retired, promptly and gratefully, from the cares of motherhood, spending many anxious hours in front of the mirror, in order to convince herself that her figure had not been impaired. She need not have worried. Even had her waist-line disappeared altogether it is doubtful whether Archie would have noticed it, for her power to attract him seemed to wax rather than wane with the passing years. He still possessed in generous measure the lustiness she had sought in him, but since his post-war successes another element had entered their partnership and she had proved a real asset to him in business, particularly when it entailed the adroit handling of middle-aged men.
Sometimes he would bring her a difficult client who needed, he said, the kind of pushover that she could provide, and almost always she succeeded where he had failed. It was never necessary to go to extreme lengths with these gentlemen. All they sought, it seemed, was a little flattery and chin-chuckling, to restore to them some of the confidence that their wives had neglected to nurse. Elaine was quite superb at this kind of thing, and after introducing her Archie would retire “to run his eye over a lease or two”, leaving the field open to Elaine.
The Avenue Goes to War Page 67