“He was out to make your flesh creep, and apparently he succeeded.”
She shook her head.
“Not quite. But it isn’t exactly pleasant to be told that someone-very near-is trying to poison you.”
“He said that?”
“Yes, he did-someone very near me. But he wouldn’t say whether it was a man or a woman. He said he didn’t know. Why, he even said it might be I myself!” Her laugh was not quite steady. “And I told him I was the last person in the world to take poison. I like my life a great deal too much to throw it away.”
“Yes-I think you do.”
She had taken out a cigarette, and leaned towards him now for a light. When the tip was glowing red and a little haze of smoke hung on the air between them, she said in a puzzled voice,
“He said such a very odd thing-he said there was more than one kind of poison.”
“How trite-how true!”
“It didn’t sound trite-not when he said it.”
Antony laughed.
“The man has glamour, or women wouldn’t be paying him tenners to turn it on.”
Those lightly sketched brows of hers drew together in distaste.
“He was quite old-there wasn’t anything like that. Let’s talk about something else.”
CHAPTER 3
Antony came out of the Luxe and got on to a bus. Change of air was indicated. He was going in search of it.
When he got off the bus he made his way to one of those blocks of flats which were being built just before the war to accommodate office workers. This one had ridden out the storm, and with the exception of window glass and paint it was as it had come from the builder’s hands in 1938. There was an automatic lift, and Antony went up in it-right up to the fifth floor, where he pressed an electric buzzer and had the door opened to him by Julia Vane.
Julia and her sister Ellie Street were the daughters of Jimmy Latter’s stepmother by a second marriage. Antony and Jimmy were first cousins on the Latter side. As the girls had grown up at Latter End and Antony had spent all his holidays there, they were on the sort of terms which admit of intimacy, affection, and a familiarity which may breed anything between contempt and love. In fact a very wide frame into which almost any picture could be fitted.
Antony may have had Julia in his mind when he contrasted Lois with the less fortunate women who got hot and untidy. Julia, opening the door to him, was hot and untidy. Her curly dark hair looked as if she had just run her hands through it, and there was ink on her nose. It would of course have been worse if the hair had been straight, but no girl looks her best when she is imitating a golliwogg. Julia knew this for herself, and it was having a devastating effect on her temper. To expect the baker’s boy, and to open the door all inky to Antony for whom she had broken her heart two years ago, was enough to set the mildest temper in a blaze, especially when he had been lunching with Lois. She had got over Antony of course-you do if you make up your mind to it. The whole thing was dead. She hadn’t seen him for two years. She dared the dead thing to stir in its shroud.
Antony looked at her glowering at him across the threshold. He couldn’t see that two years had changed her at all. One of her untidier moments, but the same Julia. Too much brow and too much chin, but the bones all good, and between brow and chin those dark, heavily lashed eyes which could be passionately glad or passionately unhappy. Julia never did anything by halves. Just now they were passionately cross.
He put a hand on her shoulder, laughing, turned her about, and came in with her, shutting the door behind them.
There was no lobby, and only the one room-a big room, partitioned all down one side to make bathroom, dressing-room, kitchenette. There was a divan which obviously became a bed at night. There were two really comfortable chairs. There was a plain strong table littered with manuscript, but otherwise the room was surprisingly tidy, and the colours were good-deep, rich, and restful. There were a couple of Persian runners on the floor. He liked Julia’s room, and was actually on the verge of telling her so, when he changed his mind.
“You’ve got ink on your nose, darling.”
She flamed at once. Quite the old Julia.
“If you will come when I’m working, you must take me as you find me! You’ve seen me with ink on my nose before!”
“I have. But, as I have invariably pointed out, you look better without it.”
“I don’t care how I look!”
“Darling, that’s only too painfully obvious. Comb the hair and wash the face, and then you can give me the low-down on the family.”
“I haven’t really got time,” said Julia. But the flame died down. Quite suddenly the one thing she wanted on earth was to get away from Antony ’s teasing eyes.
She disappeared into one of the cubicles. When she came back the nose was inkless and the hair in not unattractive curls.
“As a matter of fact I didn’t think you’d be here so soon. Lunch with Lois generally takes longer than that.”
“How do you know I was having lunch with Lois?”
“Didn’t you tell me? No, she did-she would of course!”
“Darling, that sounds like womanly spite.”
“It is.”
A laughing look just lit her eyes, and then burned out. What was the use of talking to Antony about Lois? He’d been crazy about her two years ago, and even if he wasn’t now, she would probably be one of those lingering memories. Men were more sentimental than women. And always, always, always they hated to hear a woman run another woman down.
She laughed, out loud this time. How furious Antony would be if anyone called him sentimental.
“What are you laughing at?”
Julia said, “Us.”
“Why?”
“You might have been away two minutes instead of two years.”
“Because I told you about the ink? A nice homely touch, I thought.”
She nodded. When she wasn’t in a rage with him, or breaking her heart, there was that quick give-and-take between them which uses words but hardly needs them. Just now she wasn’t angry and her heart was behaving itself. She felt young and happy, as if not two years but a dozen had been rolled away, and Antony home for the holidays, coming up to schoolroom tea. You washed your face and hands and combed your hair, and as long as Miss Smithers was there you were on your best behaviour, but as soon as tea was over and they could escape to the garden-
They sat side by side on the divan, Antony in a beautiful new suit which must have cost the earth, and Julia, who wasn’t a little girl any more but a struggling novelist, in an old red smock as inky as her nose had been.
Antony was saying, “Well now, what about everything- and everyone?”
“You haven’t seen Jimmy?”
“No. I rang him up. I shall be going down to Latter End in a day or two. I wondered if you would be there.”
Her black brows drew together.
“I may have to go down. I don’t want to. Look here, what has Lois been telling you?” She reached sideways, rummaged behind a cushion, and produced a packet of cigarettes. “Here-have one.”
“Thanks, I’ll smoke my own.”
“Not good enough for you?”
“You’ve taken the words out of my mouth. Control the temper, darling, and have one of mine.”
If she had been going to be angry, it passed. She laughed instead. It was his old game of fishing for a rise. Just at the moment she didn’t even want to.
He struck a match and lighted her cigarette. Their lips were very near. With sickening suddenness Julia’s heart turned over. “Oh, God, it’s all going to begin again! How damnable to be a woman!”
She drew back, her face gone hard, all the muscles tightened, the brow heavy, the bones of the chin defined. Before he could speak she had repeated her question.
“What did Lois tell you?”
He drew at his cigarette.
“I gathered from her, and from Jimmy, that I should find a regular family party at Latter End. Ellie and Minnie are there, aren’t they?”