Julia's first thought was that she had come to the wrong house, because this young woman could not be the one in the photograph. While she stood there forcing herself to admit that she was indeed looking at Frances, Jolyon Meredith Wilhelm's wife, the young woman said, 'Do sit down.' She sounded as if having to say this, even to contemplate Julia's being there, was the last straw. She frowned as she eased her breast out of a discomfort, the baby's mouth popped off the nipple, and milky liquid ran down over the breast to a sagging waist. Frances eased the nipple back, the infant let out a choking cry and then fastened itself again on the nipple with a little shaking movement of its head Julia had observed in puppies ranged along the teats of a nursing bitch, her little pet dachshund, from long ago. Frances put a piece of cloth Julia could swear was a nappy over the resting breast.
The women stared at each other, with dislike.
Julia did not sit. There was a chair, but the seat was suspiciously stained. She could sit on the bed, which was unmade, but did not care to. She said, 'Johnny wrote to ask me to find out how you are. '
The cool, light, almost drawling voice, modulated according to some measure or scale known only to Julia, caused the young woman to stare again, and then she laughed.
‘I am as you see, Julia,’ said Frances.
Julia was filling with panic. She thought this place horrible, a lower depth of squalor. The house she and Philip had found Johnny in at the time of the Spanish Civil War misadventure had been a poor one, thin-walled, temporary in feel, but it had been clean, and Mary the landlady was a decent sort of woman. In this place Julia felt trapped in a nightmare. That shameless young woman half-naked there, with her great oozing breasts, the baby's noisy sucking, a faint smell of sick, or of nappies... Julia felt that Frances was forcing her, most brutally, to look directly at an unclean unseemly fount of life that she had never had to acknowledge. Her own baby had been presented to her as a well-washed bundle after he had been fed by the nurse. Julia had refused to breastfeed; too near the animal, she felt, but did not dare say. Doctors and nurses had tactfully agreed that she was not able to nurse... her health... Julia had often played with the little boy who arrived in the drawing-room with toys, and she actually sat on the floor with him, and enjoyed a play hour, measured by the nanny to the minute. She remembered the smell of soap, and baby powder. She remembered sniffing at Jolyon's little head with such pleasure...
Frances was thinking, It's unbelievable. She is unbelievable, and derision was in danger of making her burst out in raucous laughter.
Julia stood there in the middle of the room, in her neat wool crêpe grey suit, that had not a wrinkle, not a bulge. It was buttoned up to her throat where a silk scarf provided a hint of mauve. Her hands were in dove-grey kid gloves, and even though thoroughly protected from the unwashed surfaces around her, were making anxious little movements of rejection, and fussy disapproval. Her shoes were like shiny blackbirds, with brass buckles that seemed to Frances to be locks, as if making sure those feet couldn't fly off, or even to begin to try out a few prim dance steps. Her grey hat was fenced with a little net veil that did not conceal her horrified eyes, and it, too, was caught with a metal buckle. She was a woman in a cage, and to Frances, under such pressures of loneliness, poverty, anxiety, her appearance in that room, which she loathed, and wished only to escape from, was like a deliberate taunting, an insult.
'What am I to tell Jolyon?'
'Who? – oh, yes. But...’And now Frances energetically sat herself up, one hand cupping the baby's head, the other holding the cloth over her exposed breast. 'Don't tell me Johnny asked you to come here?' 'Well, yes, he did.'
Now the two women shared a moment: it was incredulity, and their eyes actually did engage, in a query. When Julia had read the letter which commanded her to visit his wife, she said to Philip, ‘But I thought he hated us? If we weren't good enough to see him married, then why is he ordering me to visit Frances?'
Philip replied, dry enough, but remote too, because as always he was absorbed in his duties with the war, ‘I see that you are expecting consistency. Usually a mistake, in my view. '
As for Frances, she had never heard Johnny refer to his parents as anything other than fascists, exploiters, at the best reactionaries. Then how could he be...
' Frances, I would like very much to help you with some money. ' An envelope appeared from her handbag.
‘Oh, no, I am sure Johnny wouldn't like that. He' d never take money from...’
'I think you'll find that he can and he will.'
‘Oh, no, no, Julia, please not. '
' Very well then, goodbye. '
Julia did not set eyes on Frances again until after Johnny had returned from the war, and Philip, who was by then ill and would shortly die, said he was worried about Frances and the children. Her memories of that visit caused Julia to protest that she was sure Frances did not want to see her, but Philip said, ' Please, Julia. To set my mind at rest. '
Julia went to the flat in Notting Hill, which she was convinced had been chosen because of the area's seediness and ugliness. There were two children now. The one she had seen before, Andrew, was a noisy and energetic toddler, and there was a baby, Colin. Again, Frances was breastfeeding. She was large, shapeless, slatternly, and the flat, Julia was convinced, was a health hazard. On the wall was a food safe, and in it could be glimpsed a bottle of milk and some cheese. The wire net of the safe had been painted, the paint had clogged: air therefore could not circulate properly. Babies' clothes were strung on fragile wooden contraptions that seemed about to collapse. No, Frances said, in a voice cold with hostility and criticism. No, she didn't want any money, no, thank you.
Julia stood there unconsciously all appeal, hands a-flutter, eyes full of tears.
'But, Frances, think of the children.'
It was as if Julia had deliberately touched an already sore place with acid. Oh, yes, Frances thought often enough of how her own parents, let alone Johnny's, must see her and how she lived, with the children. She said in a voice stiff with anger, ' It seems to me that I never think of anything else but the children. ' Her tone said, How dare you!
'Please let me help you, please – Johnny's always so wrong-headed, he always has been, and it's not fair on the children. '
The trouble was, by now Frances agreed unreservedly about Johnny's wrong-headedness. Any shreds of illusion had dissolved away, leaving a residue of unresolvable exasperation about him, the comrades, the Revolution, Stalin, Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all. But what was in question here was not Johnny, it was herself, a small, threatened sense of identity and of independence. That was why Julia's Think of the children went home like a poisoned bullet. What right did she, Frances, have to fight for her independence, her own self at the cost of... but they were not suffering, they were not. She knew they were not.
Julia went away, reported back to Philip, and tried not to think of those rooms in Notting Hill.
Later, when Julia heard that Frances had gone to work in a theatre, Julia thought, A theatre! Of course, it would be! Then Frances was acting and Julia thought, Is she acting servants' parts then?
She went to the theatre, sat well back where she could not be seen, she hoped, and watched Frances in a small part in a quite nice little comedy. Frances was thinner, though still solid, and her fair hair was in frilly waves. She was a hotel owner, in Brighton. Julia could not see anything of that pre-war giggler in her tight uniform, but still, she was doing the part well enough, and Julia felt encouraged. Frances knew that Julia had been to watch her, because it was a small theatre, and Julia was wearing one of her inimitable hats, with a veil, and her gloved hands were on her lap. Not another woman in the audience wore a hat. Those gloves, oh those gloves, what a laugh.