The Dreaming Suburb by R.F. Delderfield Read Free Book Online Page B

painter.
    This was indeed a physical approximation of Ted Hartnell in the autumn of 1919. He was short, narrow-shouldered, pink-cheeked and brown-eyed, with lavishly brilliantined hair, and well-cared for off-the-peg clothes. Edith's first impression of him was that he was rather like a young rook. His dapper jauntiness sat upon him rather nervously, as though, at any moment, he would spread his neatly-folded wings, and soar across to the next elm, where he would sit, head thrown back, chest puffed out, swaying slightly in a high wind.
    He was hatless, and carried a large canvas hold-all in one hand, and a short black music-case in the other. At first glance Edith mistook him for a new and adult pupil, who was under the mistaken impression that she gave violin lessons as well as pianoforte lessons. His hands, she noticed, were the only part of his person that looked uncared for, being rough and seamed, like the hands of a bricklayer, or pick-wielder.
    “It's about that room, Miss,” he began; “they said you got one.”
    Now that it had actually come to the point of inviting a young man into the house, not to drink tea, like the plumber's appentice, but to live with them, a spasm of nervousness shook poor Edith. She hesitated and, noticing as much, a clouded, almost hunted look showed in his brown eyes.
    “There's the card ...” he began, and stopped when she smiled.
    “Of course; come in, do ,” replied Edith, consciously pulling herself together. She spread her hands and added incongruously, “I was making jam. We had lots of loganberries this year.”
    She slipped across the hall, and shut the kitchen door on Becky. He walked upstairs behind her, still gripping his holdall and instrument case, still not too sure of his welcome, and neither of them said anything more until she had displayed the back bedroom, overlooking the old nursery.
    He was obviously impressed with its spotlessness, and its unexpectedly open view. Edith had laid out nine pounds to get the room ready, and she had purchased wisely. There was a mahogany chest of drawers, wanting three drawer handles, an oak washstand, carefully draped cretonne curtains, a narrow but solid-looking bed, a bamboo night-table, new linoleum, and a strip of patterned carpet beside the bed.
    Everything in the room was second-hand, but Edith, in her new role as business-woman, had not been fobbed off with rubbish. Over the bed Edith hung her own contribution—a framed sampler she had worked when she was ten. Its message was simple and direct. “God,” it said in royal blue, “is Love” in faded crimson.
    “How much all in?” he wanted to know, as soon as a decent interval had elapsed. She bit her lip. Her stomach wasmaking low but very distinct rumbling noises, and making them so persistently that she was sure he could hear them. He came to her rescue immediately, and she decided there and then that he must be a kind and very sensitive young man.
    “I take sandwiches mid-day. I'm a stonemason at Kidd's, in Shirley,” he volunteered.
    “A stonemason? That must account for the hands. He didn't look like a stonemason. A clerk or a shop assistant, but certainly not a stonemason.
    “I ... we ... decided a pound, bed and breakfast ... we didn't expect to cater,” she said, suddenly quite nervous of frightening him away. “I ... I suppose I could do an evening meal. We have ours about seven, not dinner, you know ... just ... just something warmed up or ... or ... an egg.”
    She saw in his surprised expression the grim necessity of making a clean breast of her utter inexperience.
    “We've never had anyone before: perhaps you could tell me what is usual?”
    He was genuinely touched by her naiveté. In the three years since he had left school, and been out to work, he had encountered a dozen or more landladies. Some had been unpleasantly off-hand, showing him round with a studied take-it-or-leave-it air; others, the majority, had looked him over very thoroughly, and