The Fancy Read online

  Monica Dickens

  *

  THE FANCY

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  A Note on the Author

  Chapter 1

  *

  His name was Edward Ledward and he was going home to his tea. He was spare and sandy, with the bony, burning look that makes people rap their chests and say : “T.B., poor chap,” but it was nothing like that. He simply happened to have deeply sunk eyes and jutting cheekbones, and he had never had enough fresh air.

  He walked briskly, but not because tomorrow night.”pu dressing-gownhe was looking forward to getting home—or to his tea. Today was Thursday and Connie’s family would be there playing cards. Connie’s mother, Mrs. Munroe, never fancied food until after the Nine O’Clock News and you couldn’t expect Connie to interrupt the game before that to get Edward’s tea. Equally, a man who had been working since half-past seven could not be expected to wait until nine o’clock, so Edward foraged for himself on Thursdays, and ate either in the narrow, untidy kitchen or with his legs cramped under the little bamboo table in the living-room window.

  He always walked home from the factory, conscientiously breathing through his nose and expanding his narrow chest to make up for having been indoors all day. All through the winter, while other people queued for steamy buses, Edward walked, in a heavy, waistless Burberry with his old football club scarf wound twice round his neck and crossed into his waistcoat.

  It was mild tonight though, a late September evening, with gold on the flat spreading clouds and the air only just cool enough to feel. The road than ran through the Factory Estate was a stream of hurrying people, mostly Edward’s crowd, but diluted every fifty yards or so by tributaries from the factories on either side. Canning Kyle’s which serviced aero engines was the only big factory on the Estate; the others were hardly more than glorified sheds that made ignition parts and unobtrusive bakelite fittings.

  Edward with his brisk step weaved his way among groups and dawdlers, glancing at headlines on the paper of anyone who hadn’t turned it over to see the greyhound results.

  The concrete Estate road emerged between high wire fencing on to the main road, which used to go to Oxford and Bath and Bristol, and now went, even more romantically, just “To the WEST.” There were queues already at the trolley-bus stops. Most people turned right to the station, but Edward went straight on, crossing at his own particular spot where there was a foot-shaped dent in the kerb. He wondered idly about the people in cars. How did they get the petrol, he’d like to know? They couldn’t all be doctors or Key Personnel. Not that he grudged it them, because he hadn’t got a car anyway, but he was interested in how other people managed their lives and what it felt like to be astute.

  “’Night, Wilf!” he called, as a creaking bicycle passed him halfway up the opposite side road. Old Wilf was always one of the last out because he took such a time putting away his things, haunted by the fear that the Night Shift would pinch his magnifying glass. Old Wilf’s legs, spindling in bicycle clips, pedalled earnestly into the sunset, his mulberry beret butting him up the slight hill.

  Edward had about twenty minutes’ walk before he turned into his own road. Church Avenue, where the Lipmanns’ grocery stood slantwise across the corner. The blackout was up but the door was still open. David Lipmann’s bicycle was lying on the edge of the pavement with its wheels spinning. Edward picked up the bicycle, propped it against the kerb and went into the shop. He was canny now about Thursdays, having foraged unsuccessfully too often in Connie’s larder.

  For no particular reason, there had always been a Jewish colony in the little streets that ran in and out of the legs of the railway viaduct, and since the War there were stranger accents and even wilder children. Next to the Synagogue, the Lipmanns’ shop was the focal point, a refugees’ haven in this land of plain food and drab colours. There were usually one or two chatting on the bench under the spiced sausages, or leaning lovingly on a crate of Matzos, arguing with Ruth and Mrs. Lipmann to kiss her goodnight, W b over the heads of customers. On Mr. Lipmann’s baking day, when he and David worked miracles underground with war-time supplies, there was always a crowd sublimating their nostalgia in the smells that came up the hatch from the bakehouse. And when the fragrant trays appeared—Apfelstrudel and Linzetorte and plaited loaves sprinkled with poppy seeds—there would be smacking lips and sentimental gasps. Mrs. Greening’s eyes would fill with tears, because poppy seeds reminded her of when she was a girl. She was there tonight, sitting on a sack of split peas, dry-eyed, because there was nothing left of Monday’s abundance but a tray of broken Honigkücher. Edward wondered what would happen if anyone wanted split peas, because she looked as though only a crane could move her.

  “Hullo, my dear!” called Ruth, over the head of the customer she was serving : a flushed woman with a cavernous shopping bag and stout shoes. “Shan’t keep you a moment.” There were two or three customers waiting, members of the colony, who were peering at the labels on pickle jars and sounding the depths of the sauerkraut barrel.

  “David!” yelled Ruth over her shoulder.

  “Oh I can’t!” came back a bellow from the parlour beyond the shop. No Lipmann ever spoke lower than the top of its voice.

  “David! Come out and serve!” Through the half-open door Edward could see David sprawling at the table, supple and insolent in a white shirt and blue belted trousers, a lock of dark hair over his face. The rest of the family spent their energy in cheerfulness ; his ran to the precocious passions of Mediterranean adolescence, although he was born and raised in Collis Park, W.20. He was a throw-back to Mrs. Lipmann’s grandmother, who had kept a fruit stall at Palermo.

  “I’m working!” he shouted, and Ruth roared with laughter, flashing her big white teeth. “He—he working!” she called to Mrs. Greening on the split-pea sack, and Mrs. Greening’s eyes disappeared as she laughed, too, shaking like a badly-set blancmange.

  “Momma and Pop are at the market,” laughed Ruth to the shop in general, and the woman she was serving nodded her sensible hat and said : “You young things—don’t tell me. I’ve got three kids of my own. Two girls and a boy, all at home, a gastric husband and the W.V.S. Wednesday and Fridays. I always say only our generation know what work really is.” She glanced round the shop for approval, passing over Edward as being too young to know what work was, but too old to be classed with her kids, but the two women came up out of the sauerkraut barrel to nod and smile socrally and Mrs. Greening became gelatinous again.

  “Two pounds of prunes, was it, dear?” said Ruth unperturbed.

  “One pound. I’m not made of points,” said the red-faced woman.

  “They don’t go far, do they?” said Ruth gaily.

  “Far!” She raised her eyes to heaven. “You ought to have my family. Talk about terrors for figs!” She settled in to tell them how she Managed. Edward leaned over the barrier of biscuit tins and cereal packets that made the backcloth of the window display and picked himself out a long crusty loaf. “May I?” He waved it in the air.

  “Threepence halfpenny,” called Ruth. “No—not your prunes, dear, they’re eightpence. H definitely blyhave you got a bag?”

  “I’m sorry,” said the flushed woman, not looking it.

  “Well, I’ll let you have one this once, but please bring it back next time you’re this way. We’re wickedly short.”

  “But of course,” said the
other, although as the prunes were no bigger at the price than in her own district, she did not expect to be this way again. She combed a wide range of food shops ; that was why her shoes were so stout.

  With the bread, Edward bought a short length of garlic sausage and some pickled cucumber. “I’ve got something for you,” whispered Ruth, leaning close to him over the counter, so that he could see the marks where she had plucked her strong eyebrows. She smelt very feminine.

  “It’s ever so kind of you,” said Edward as she smuggled a sack from behind the oatmeal barrel. “Look,” she opened it a little under cover of the counter, “not only outside leaves—there’s some hearts in there. And-ssh! a bit of bran at the bottom. How are the darling rabbits?”

  “Fine thanks. Queenie, er—she should be any day now.”

  “Ah, bless her,” said Ruth. “I hope they’re all champions.”

  “They will be. Thanks awfully.” Edward tucked the sack under his arm and went out. The flushed woman was outside, reading the advertisements in the glass case. You never knew what you might not pick up these days. She shot a glance at Edward’s sack. Black Market of course. All these Jew shops were in it.

  The houses in Church Avenue were of brown gravel stucco, with slate roofs and a bow window to left or right of the peaked porch. They all had a little square of front garden and the same low wall, mostly topped by privet. A stretch of wall, two gaps together where gates had been and another stretch of wall, all down the road.

  Edward turned up the black and white tiled path running alongside the Dowlinsons’, which was identical in pattern but broken and weed-grown. They had taken away the railing in between for salvage and Connie had made him put up some posts and wire netting. Old Mrs. Dowlinson had watched him round the curtain while he was doing it, which was very embarrassing. It seemed unnecessary anyway, because the old couple never went out, living apparently on bread and milk and the News of the World, because nothing else was ever delivered. Connie said it was a waste of their ration cards.

  The hall of Edward’s house was narrow and lit only by a dim blue light, as the curtain over the coloured glass of the front door was thin. There was a coat rack with a tin base and a rail for umbrellas and a mirror with a clothes brush hanging below and a hook where Bob’s lead had hung when they had a dog. All round the wall and up the stairs ran a green embossed dado which you could dent with your thumbnail.

  Connie and her family were in the living-room. The sound of their voices made Edward feel suddenly tired. He wondered what it would be like to have enough vitality to breeze in and greet them heartily instead of having to screw himself up to go in and be polite at all. He went up to the bathroom first and while he was washing, tried to settle the question he had been debating all day. Should he or should he not tell them about his new job? He might throw it out casually : “Oh, by the way, I’m being switched from the Fitting Shop to the Inspection Shop tomorrow ; charge hand on one of the girls’ benches. Make a change anyway.” Or he might start straight inI’ll tell you what an along with : “Got a rise in the world. Thirty bob a week more in the Inspection Shop”, or he might say something funny, like : “Hullo, Mrs. Charge Hand!” to Connie, or “Charge Hand to you!” when Don greeted him: “Hiya, Ted?”

  In any case, they would talk about it all evening and question him, although he knew hardly anything about the job himself yet. He could hear them already : “What a cheek—taking you out of the Fitting Shop just when Mr. Arnold was going and you might have got his job!” “Female labour, eh? You’re in for some trouble there, my boy.” “You in charge of ten girls? Boy, what a break!” “Don’t be silly, Don. He daren’t speak to one girl, let alone ten.”

  Perhaps he should wait to tell Connie until they were alone. But then she would say : “Why ever didn’t you say so when Mum and the rest of them were here? Aren’t you funny? Now I’ll have to go round to the Buildings tomorrow and tell them. They’ll wonder why you didn’t say. You are queer!”

  He dried his hands carefully, pushing down the cuticles of his nails. After all, it was a rise, and it would be gratifying to be able to surprise them with something interesting for once ; to be able to answer Mr. Munroe’s : “How’s the factory, boy? “with something more than: “Oh, mustn’t grumble.” Yes, he would tell them. They’d got to know sometime anyway.

  He left his sack in the kitchen before he opened the living-room door. There they all were, with the green baize cloth on the table. Connie, her father in his thick pepper-and-salt suit, Mrs. Munroe with her salt cellars conspicuous in the V neck of the jigsaw patterned dress she had had for Dorothy’s wedding, Dorothy herself, in the same condition as Queenie, but frog-like and coarsened where Queenie was soft and limpid-eyed, and Dorothy’s husband, Don Derris, who used to be in Wireless, but was now in charge of a barrage balloon, conveniently near home.

  “Hullo all,” said Edward casually.

  Mr. Munroe raised his empty, pear-shaped face. “Ah,” he began in his quoting voice, “the return of the wanderer. Well, my son, and how’s——”

  “You’re late, Ted,” said Connie, playing a card briskly. Her mother clapped another on top of it. “Nice to see you, Ted,” she said with her eyes on the game.

  “Hiya,” said Don. “Ace of hearts, me dear old souls. Looks like little Don’s going to clean up again.” The wireless was playing unheeded in the corner and Edward crossed the room to switch it off before he made the announcement that would make them all look up with their mouths open. He had formed the sentence in his mind.

  “I say, everybody. I’ve got a bit of news for you. I’ve got a better——” Connie looked up, the lines from her nose to the corners of her mouth deepening. “Ted, those clothes simply stink of machine oil. It’s horrible in a room where people have got to eat.”

  “Well, my son,” boomed her father, “how’s the factory?”

  Edward snapped on the wireless again. “Oh,” he said, “mustn’t grumble.”

  He ate his tea in the kitchen. There were some potatoes in the Lipmanns’ sack and he put them on to boil while he ate. “Ted,” called Connie, as if she knew he were just pouring milk into his cup, wondered whether p along“don’t use too much milk. Mother wasn’t able to bring any today.”

  Oh, she wasn’t. What had she brought? Ted took a look into the leather shopping bag on the dresser. Two tins of salmon—funny things some people spent their points on—a beetroot, cheese in a cold sweat, sugar, a swiss roll. Mrs. Munroe’s alkaline powder, and some of Pop’s tomatoes. Edward didn’t see why he shouldn’t have a couple.

  He felt quite continental as he broke up the crusty loaf, and holding the sausage in his left hand, sliced pieces onto the bread, which he put into his mouth with the hand that held the knife. That was the way the workmen used to eat in that place in Belgium, Wenduyne, where he and Connie had gone two Augusts running. He could smell now the dry electric smell of the trams that whined by the café where he used to have his Bock and Connie her gateaux. She had had a pink dress the first year they went and a big hat with a dip in front. That was when she still had ins and outs. She was not fat now, but somehow the curves and hollows had levelled themselves out.

  As he ate, his, eyes devoured the paper propped against the teapot. It had been in his pocket all day, folded very small, so that he could snatch a few square inches of it whenever he got the chance. In the canteen, he had taken his plate over to a far table where there were two men he didn’t know, but just as he was settling down to a good read, Mike had come along and spent the whole lunch-hour discussing the possibilities of supercharging his motor-cycle. Then again at tea-time, when he took his mug behind a cleaning tank, he had been hunted down for an argument about Mod. 317 by the foreman, who had already had his tea in peace in his office.

  There was a lot to be said for Thursdays. Even if it did bring his family-in-law, it also brought Backyard Breeding, The Weekly Journal for Fanciers. Whether your fancy were rabbits, cats, chickens, guinea pigs or chocolate-col
oured mice, Backyard Breeding was your bible, and probably your chief medium for buying and selling. The four middle pages were devoted to rabbits and a section of this to Edward’s own breed, the Flemish Giant. “Flemish Footnotes” was compiled by a genius called “Giganta”, better-known to the Fancy as Allan Colley, the well-known judge, who knew every known thing about Flemishes, and a few things that no one else knew. Edward thought that if he could ever meet Allan Colley his life would be fulfilled.

  He was so absorbed in “Let Selective Breeding be Your Motto”, that his mouth was often open for seconds at a time with the bread and sausage poised in front of it. Then he read the Show Reports and Club News ; he and Dick Bennett from the Final Assembly Shop thought of starting a Domestic Club in Collis Park. Finishing the pickled cucumber by itself, he had an idea. He would put a notice up about it in the Lipmanns’ glass case,

  The cucumber was very salty and he got up to fill the teapot with hot water. The potatoes would be done by the time he’d had his second cup. He had already looked at the Readers’ Letters : “The Fancy’s Forum”, in case they had put in his note about Snuffles. One day they might print something of his. He would write another letter next week about damp-proof hutches. That advertisement was still in, for the dark steel doe he wanted : “In kindle, square as a brick. Inspection a a pleasure to Flemishites, No obligation.” Shocking pries they wanted, but now that he had got this new job, perhaps he might.

  He lit a cigarette and put his tea things in the sink, then taking the Lipmanns’ sack tomorrow night.”wdr and the potatoes in a bowl, he went out into the cooling evening.

  Most people who lived in Church Avenue grew vegetables in the rectangle of back garden that ran down to “the Ponds”, the flooded gravel pits where children played in daily peril of drowning. But in the Ledwards’ back garden there was no room for vegetables. All round the fence stood an uneven collection of dwellings, hardly any of which had started life as hutches. Edward had made them out of packing cases and odd bits of wood and wire netting. Queenie rested tired but confident in one of the hencoops given to Edward by the Time Clerk at the factory when all his chickens had died of Coccidiosis and he had neither the heart nor the capital to start again. On the trodden earth in the middle of the garden, two families of adolescents crowded and bounced in low wire netting runs. Edward was going to sell the eldest family next week. He had had a very good offer through Backyard Breeding. Now that the rabbits were beginning to pay, Connie didn’t talk so much about the price of vegetables in the shops, nor about “that ignorant Dick Bennett” who had originally roused Edward’s enthusiasm and had given him his first doe.