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

started as errand boy at Coolridge's, the multiple grocer's in the Lower Road. There were, as he quickly learned, certain advantages in belonging to the provisioning trade at that particular time, and perhaps it was this circumstance, more than his own natural shrewdness, that encouraged him to begin thinking as a man while he was still little more than a child.
    His thoughts, as he pushed his heavy carrier cycle up the steep drives of the larger houses on his extensive round, were not by any means original, but they were certainly precocious in a pink-cheeked lad of fourteen. They were concerned, in the main, with the odd relationship between commerce and patriotism, with the preoccupation of the few with profits, and of the many with the fate of “the boys out there.”
    In his trapesings about the suburb he became aware of many social contrasts, and the conclusions he drew from them were docketed, and filed away in his memory for future use. Archie was that sort of boy. He wasted nothing, least of all experience.
    He noted, for instance, that some people were getting rich very quickly, and after pondering this in general for a month or two he began to study it in relation to the people he worked among, notably Mr. Cole, the senior hand.
    Mr. Cole, his immediate superior at the shop, and the man responsible for making up the cardboard boxes containing theweek's shopping list for the Lucknow Road district, underwent a mysterious change of heart about January, 1915. Almost overnight he stopped nagging Archie and went out of his way to be helpful to the boy, even going so far as to offer to relieve him of all those heavy boxes, still awaiting delivery after closing time.
    The first time this happened Archie gladly skipped off within five minutes of completing shutter-drill. The second time, being curious, he concealed himself in the smoking-nest, made up of crates in the yard, and from here, through a convenient embrasure made for the observation of seniors, he watched Mr. Cole add various packages to certain of the boxes. He knew where the boxes were going and it was a simple matter to slip out of the yard, and settle himself in a new ambush, this time a rhododendron screen, abutting the tradesman's door of Number Five A, Outram Crescent.
    His observations from this second vantage-point satisfied his curiosity regarding Mr. Cole's sudden kindliness, and within forty-eight hours the astonished Mr. Cole found his thoughtfulness repaid by the prompt offer of an alliance. He was not in need of an ally but succumbed, quite readily, to Archie's persuasive offers of co-operation. It was not right, Archie pointed out, that Mr. Cole, asthmatic and nearing sixty, should add to a tiring day's work by lugging all those heavy boxes up steep, gravelled drives in winter weather. From now on, he insisted, Mr. Cole should stay in the warm, and make up the lists, while he, Archie, should come back after shutter-drill, and do all the deliveries. There was, of course, an alternative to this happy arrangement. Failing Mr. Cole's immediate acceptance of the plan he would, in Mr. Cole's own interests, have to tell the manager about the chief storeman's excessive zeal. Mr. Cole accepted.
    The system worked quite well until poor Mr. Cole was taken seriously ill, in the autumn of 1917, and died quite suddenly. Archie went to the funeral, and patted Mrs. Cole sympathetically on the shoulder, saying nothing about the patriotic over-time endeavours he had shared with the deceased, but contributing generously to the large cross of chrysanthemums sent by the staff of Coolridge's.
    As the war dragged into its final year all the counter handsand storemen at Coolridge's who had managed, on one pretext or another, to avoid conscription, left the shop and went into munitions. Some of them looked in from time to time, wearing new suits, and looking very prosperous. They chaffed Archie for his failure to seize the opportunity of making good money, four or five