The Dreaming Suburb (58 page)

“Hullo, Esme!”

He spun round and saw her, standing less than a yard away, and at his first sight of her all the old enchantment invaded his senses, driving out uncertainty, and doubt, and fear, and lighting up his face with joy.

She had given a great deal of thought to her appearance when she dressed that morning. Despite her existing stock, half her small capital had been invested in yet more clothes, and she had purchased wisely, reminding herself that she was out to coax, rather than dazzle. She remembered that, despite Esme's habitual carelessness with his own appearance, he had always been quick to notice what she was wearing. Wasn't it that demure, slightly-outmoded dance-frock that had caught his eye in the first place, all those years ago at the Stafford-Fyffe's ball?

She remembered too that he liked women to look dainty and ultra-feminine, irrespective of fashion. They had even had talks about it, and she recalled how he had once deplored the passing of the crinoline. It was a pity, she thought, that crinolines were no longer in vogue, for this, if ever, was surely a crinoline occasion. So she chose the next best thing, a white linen blouse, and a simple blue pinafore frock, that matched her eyes. Over it she wore a brief, scalloped cape, of very light wool, and a little black straw hat, that sat back on her dark hair like a biretta, its small cluster of marguerites above the right eye.

Her concessions to the West End were her smartest Italian shoes (bought by Tom Tappertitt in Bournemouth, shortly before the debacle) and her crocodile handbag, the one substantial legacy of Benny Boy. Just before she left her
room she had changed her mind about gloves, peeling off her long suede pair, and replacing them with short cotton ones, transparent, and frilled at the wrist.

Her instincts and her memories were reliable. The moment he saw her he made no attempt to conceal the wonder she stirred in him. She smiled to see it, not her old catlike smile, that had always seemed to him to murmur “Stroke me if you like, but I shall claw you if I like”, but a warm, almost sisterly smile, that took no advantage of the fact that it was she who had surprised him, for once she realised that he had some difficulty in greeting her she dropped her eyes and said:

“You weren't by the picture, but I knew you'd be somewhere about ... I tried to remember the pictures you liked, but the man said they changed them around.”

He began to apologise, abjectly. “I'm terribly sorry, Elaine. I got here early, and forgot the time....”

She came to his rescue again. “No, no, Esme, it was my fault. It isn't one o'clock yet.” She glanced at Tom Tapper-titt's watch. “I think I'm a bit fast.”

He calmed a little, but his heart continued to thump.

“You ... you look quite wonderful, Elaine ... it's been so long now, I'd almost forgotten.”

“You too, Esme ... you're so grown up and ...” she smiled again, “so much taller, and even a little tidier.”

He was able to smile at that. Eunice was always nagging him about his personal appearance. He was forever putting off having his hair cut, and he never once used the oak trouser-press that his mother and Harold had given him on his eighteenth birthday, but continued to fling his clothes on a chair beside the bed.

“I was never much of a one for dressing up, was I?” And then: “Could you eat a really good lunch ... something a bit different?”

She looked surprised. “Lunch? I thought just a coffee.... What about your work, don't you have to be back at two?”

She
had
grown up, he decided. In the old days she would never have thought about a thing like that.

“I'll take the day off ... I'll say I felt rotten, and went home again.”

He felt reckless and carefree as he made the announcement. “Let's go to Soho; we've got so much to talk about!”

Soho? Was he so sophisticated? It used to be Lyons. And weren't Soho meals expensive? Perhaps Sydney had been right about the legacy.

He led the way to the main exit, and as they left the long gallery she put her gloved hand on his arm. He stole a cautious glance at her as they descended the steps, noting that her face was not quite as full as it had once been, but that her lashes were just as long, and her complexion still had the freshness and bloom of rose-petals.

In Parliament Square she had another slight shock. He hailed a taxi, and gave the name of a good restaurant in Old Compton Street. He handed her in, and when he sat down beside her she let her hand remain for a moment on his wrist, and then gently withdrew it. She was a far better tactician than Tom Tappertitt.

She was amazed by his apparent familiarity with the Soho menu. He seemed to speak French quite fluently, and, moreover, the head waiter recognised him, and came across, bowing.

“Sir ... madame ... will you have something to drink now?”

She watched him, smiling with pleasure, while he ordered sherry and the meal. As he discussed various dishes with the waiter he kept looking across at her, and each time she met his eye she tried to convey her admiration.

It was not a difficult thing to do. She was already beginning to suspect that she had made insufficient allowance for the passing years.

Yet, in his approach to her he remained shy, and she had to feel her way carefully. The one sure path was flattery.

“I can't get over it, Esme ... you're so different... so sort of relaxed and experienced. I think I'm the tiniest bit frightened of you! Do you come to places like this very often?”

“Most of the work in my line of business is done in places like this, over meals,” he told her.

“But what exactly
is
your line of business? Sydney didn't seem to know.”

“I work for a newspaper, a Scottish newspaper, but I don't
exactly write for it; it's more of an office job, seeing people about advertisements and things.”

“But Sydney said you wrote for the radio.”

“Yes, I do, but that's nothing to do with my job. I write half-hour features for the Empire programmes, most historical stuff ... you remember, like some of the stories I was always boring you with?”

“You didn't bore me!” She sounded almost indignant “Why, some of them were very naughty stories!”

He laughed for the first time since they had met.

“I'll wager you can't remember any!”

“But I can.... I always liked that one about the widowed Queen who secretly married the Welsh soldier because he could dance, and who had all those children that everyone was so angry about!”

He was unreasonably delighted. “I say, but that's marvellous! Queen Katharine and Owen Tudor! I did that one a month ago, and picked up eighteen guineas for it. I shall get another nine if they repeat it!.”

Twenty-seven guineas for a little play! Well, here was a promising source of pin-money!

She decided to risk further enquiries.

“But that's wonderful! Esme, you must be terribly clever! Sydney also said you only worked because you wanted to ...”

“Sydney was talking out of the back of his head. My father left me a bit, but it's in trust, and I couldn't blue it if I wanted to! Still, it might come in handy one day, if things work out.”

“What things, Esme?”

“Oh, I don't know.... I still want to write more than anything, and I've got some idea of living abroad when I do it.”

“But you
are
writing ... I mean ... surely it's something to be writing for the BBC.”

“It's a start, but I've found out so many things about writing since I was a kid, Elaine. It isn't just putting the stuff on paper, it's selling it, and for that you need contacts, a good agent, and a real knowledge of the market. You really shouldn't ever write anything until you've sold it first.”

“But how on earth could you do that?”

“You get a commission and an advance. I've done a bit of that for newspapers, and it pays better than script-writing, but you have to have a new idea, and I'm not much good at ideas. I think I might be, if I travelled abroad. Everyone who's a success has done that”

“But surely ...” she did not altogether approve of this overseas trend, reflecting that it might whisk him out of her reach ... “surely, there must be heaps to write about in England ... all the people you've met, places like this restaurant, and so on? Why, some Of the places I've been ...”

“Tell me about that, Elaine, tell me everything.”

She told him, but by no means everything. She told him of her uneventful life as a hotel receptionist, and of the coming of the Great Eugene, and her ridiculous notion that life would be exciting on the stage. She told him a little of the variety circuits and how, when she despaired of getting anywhere, she had accepted the proposal of Benny Boy, and was silly enough to accompany him to the Continent on a promise of marriage.

“It may seem awful to you, Esme,” she said, “but I was at the end of my tether after Eugene left me, and he seemed kind, and in a real position to help me. Then he went broke, and flew off home, and I had just enough money to get back. That was when I joined up with the circus!”

She made it sound as if she had suffered a great deal, but with dignity. She did not lie, but simply withheld portions of the truth, and was rather vague about dates, and the alternatives open to her during a succession of crises.

“Oh, I was a little fool all right!” she admitted readily, “but it isn't easy for a girl to keep going on her own, Esme. I suppose I believed everything Benny said simply because I wanted to, and because it was a way out. I didn't love him, of course, he was old enough to be my father, but he seemed more genuine than the people I toured with, and he did promise that we'd be married, as soon as he got his divorce. It wasn't until much later that I found out he'd been free all the time, and was divorced years before I met him.”

He heard her in wonder and pity, grinding his teeth at the thought of the seedy Eugene, and the lascivious Benny Boy,
who sounded like a cross between the wicked Levison, in his mother's well-thumbed
East Lynne,
and some scoundrel out of a Sunday newspaper feature.

“What happened to you in the circus?” he wanted to know.

“I don't want to talk about it,” said Elaine, with truth. “I'll tell you sometime, but right now I've made up my mind to put it all behind me, and start afresh. That was why I wrote to you about the office job. I didn't know anyone else, and the employment agencies are hopeless.”

He reflected for a moment, looking very serious indeed.

“Elaine dear,” he said finally, “maybe this will shock you a bit but ... I've got to know something, I've got to know it right away.”

“Yes, Esme?”

She could hardly believe that she was progressing at such a prodigious rate. It was still less than two hours since she had entered the gallery.

“I've got to know whether that was the only reason ... why you wrote, I mean. It may seem silly to you, but it happens to be terribly important to me.”

She looked hard at the table-cloth. “I think you know the answer to that question, Esme,” she said softly.

Her reply made his heart leap. “But I don't, Elaine ... it just isn't possible that you have felt the same way about me as I did about you all this time. This is something you've got to be absolutely honest about, not only honest with me, but with yourself! If you'd really cared you would have written at least once ... you'd have wanted to see me.”

She raised her eyes, and he noticed how blue they were, as blue as the periwinkles that grew in Manor Wood. Her hair shone in the soft glow of the table lamp, and there was so much of it, even though it had been shorn since the night he had seen her glide from the back door of Number Seventeen, and pause for a moment in the path of moonlight, as he watched from the greenhouse at the end of her garden.

“Can't you understand that I was ashamed, Esme?”

Relief, and a great surge of possessive joy swept through him. He had thought, for a moment, that she was going to lie, if only to spare his feelings, that she would tell some
unconvincing story about “not having appreciated his devotion until it was too late”—a speech straight from one of the true-story magazines she used to buy, something designed to explain away her ridiculous, novelettish entanglements with men like Eugene, and this old roue of an agent. Instead, here was the truth, freely and frankly admitted. She was ashamed, as any decently brought-up girl had a right to be ashamed of impulsive errors, and at long last she was accepting the role he had allotted her from the very beginning, that of a lady in a tower, awaiting rescue from dragons.

The wheel, incredibly, had swung full circle.

Instantly he began to extenuate for her.

“You made one initial mistake, and then got mixed up with a rotten crowd. That happens all the time, doesn't it? But at least you had the courage to make a break in the first place, and that's more than I did. I only pretended to, and kept coming back, wanting the safety and security of the Avenue, and a humdrum job to go with it! Suppose you had had some money behind you, even the little bit I had, you would have got somewhere, Elaine, but I'm glad you didn't, and I don't care how selfish that sounds, because I'm in love with you, and I've always been in love with you!”

He paused, trying to decide whether their present relationship could survive the final hurdle. Then he plunged on, determined to be done with all this hovering, done with it one way or the other.

“I don't just want to be standing around trying to get you a job, Elaine darling, I want you as much and more than I did in the old days. I want to look after you, and come home to you, and be with you all the time. I want us to go places together, and have fun together. I've never wanted anything else since the minute I set eyes on you, and the only mistake I ever made about you was to give up so easily, and leave all the deciding to you!”

Many, many times over the years Esme had rehearsed his proposal. He had begun phrasing it two or three days after the Stafford-Fyffe's dance, as long ago as 1930. Now it was 1938, and the world was slowly going mad, and people had already started digging air-raid shelters in their gardens, and old Mr. Forbes, his boss, was saying that this was a
Twilight of the Gods, and that everything would soon disappear in one vast cloud of cordite and brick-dust. But Esme did not care about these things any more, and the declaration tumbled from his lips without even a memory of the measured and stately sentiments of his oft-rehearsed proposal. He simply said what was in his heart, and what had been there, waiting to be said, for so long now that the very freshness of his utterance surprised him.