‘I know, you were wonderfully tactful about it. You almost persuaded me that I was doing you a service when you paid my debts. You made it easy for me to behave like a cad.’
‘I’m sorry you should feel like that about it.’
She spoke rather tartly. She was beginning to feel a trifle irritated.
‘There’s nothing for you to be sorry about. You wanted me and you bought me. If I was such a skunk as to let myself be bought that was no business of yours.’
‘How long have you been feeling like this?’
‘From the beginning.’
‘That isn’t true.’
She knew that what had awakened his conscience was the love that had seized him for a girl who he believed was pure. The poor fool! Didn’t he know that Avice Crichton would go to bed with an assistant stage manager if she thought it would get her a part?
‘If you’re in love with Avice Crichton why don’t you tell me so?’ He looked at her miserably, but did not answer. ‘Are you afraid it’ll crab her chances of getting a part in the new play? You ought to know me well enough by now to know that I would never let sentiment interfere with business.’
He could hardly believe his ears.
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘I think she’s rather a find. I’m going to tell Michael that I think she’ll do very well.’
‘Oh, Julia, you are a brick. I never knew what a wonderful woman you were.’
‘You should have asked me and I’d have told you.’
He gave a sigh of relief.
‘My dear, I’m so terribly fond of you.’
‘I know, and I’m terribly fond of you. You’re great fun to go about with and you’re always so well turned out, you’re a credit to any woman. I’ve liked going to bed with you and I’ve a sort of notion you’ve liked going to bed with me. But let’s face it, I’ve never been in love with you any more than you’ve been in love with me. I knew it couldn’t last. Sooner or later you were bound to fall in love and that would end it. And you have fallen in love, haven’t you?’
‘Yes.’
She was determined to make him say it, but when he did the pang it gave her was dreadful. Notwithstanding, she smiled good-humouredly.
‘We’ve had some very jolly times together, but don’t you think the moment has come to call it a day?’
She spoke so naturally, almost jestingly, that no one could have guessed that the pain at her heart seemed past bearing. She waited for his answer with sickening dread.
‘I’m awfully sorry, Julia; I must regain my self-respect.’ He looked at her with troubled eyes. ‘You aren’t angry with me?’
‘Because you’ve transferred your volatile affections from me to Avice Crichton?’ Her eyes danced with mischievous laughter. ‘My dear, of course not. After all they stay in the profession.’
‘I’m very grateful to you for all you’ve done for me. I don’t want you to think I’m not.’
‘Oh, my pet, don’t talk such nonsense. I’ve done nothing for you.’ She got up. ‘Now you really must go. You’ve got a heavy day at the office tomorrow and I’m dog-tired.’
It was a load off his mind. But he wasn’t quite happy for all that, he was puzzled by her tone, which was so friendly and yet at the same time faintly ironical; he felt a trifle let down. He went up to her to kiss her good night. She hesitated for the fraction of a second, then with a friendly smile gave him first one cheek and then the other.
‘You’ll find your way out, won’t you?’ She put her hand to her mouth to hide an elaborate yawn. ‘Oh, I’m so sleepy.’
The moment he had gone she turned out the lights and went to the window. She peered cautiously through the curtains. She heard him slam the front door and saw him come out. He looked right and left. She guessed at once that he was looking for a taxi. There was none in sight and he started to walk in the direction of the Park. She knew that he was going to join Avice Crichton at the supper party and tell her the glad news. Julia sank into a chair. She had acted, she had acted marvellously, and now she felt all in. Tears, tears that nobody could see, rolled down her cheeks. She was miserably unhappy. There was only one thing that enabled her to bear her wretchedness, and that was the icy contempt that she could not but feel for the silly boy who could prefer to her a small-part actress who didn’t even begin to know how to act. It was grotesque. She couldn’t use her hands; why, she didn’t even know how to walk across the stage.
‘If I had any sense of humour I’d just laugh my head off,’ she cried, ‘It’s the most priceless joke I’ve ever heard.’
She wondered what Tom would do now. The rent of the flat would be falling due on quarter-day. A lot of the things in it belonged to her. He wouldn’t much like going back to his bed-sitting room in Tavistock Square. She thought of the friends he had made through her. He’d been clever with them. They found him useful and he’d keep them. But it wouldn’t be so easy for him to take Avice about. She was a hard, mercenary little thing, Julia was sure of that, she wouldn’t be much inclined to bother about him when his money flowed less freely. The fool to be taken in by her pretence of virtue! Julia knew the type. It was quite obvious, she was only using Tom to get a part at the Siddons and the moment she got it she would give him the air. Julia started when this notion crossed her mind. She had promised Tom that Avice should have the part in Nowadays because it fell into the scene she was playing, but she had attached no importance to her promise. Michael was always there to put his foot down.
‘By God, she shall have the part,’ she said out loud. She chuckled maliciously. ‘Heaven knows, I’m a good-natured woman, but there are limits to everything.’
It would be a satisfaction to turn the tables on Tom and Avice Crichton. She sat on, in the darkness, grimly thinking how she would do it. But every now and then she started to cry again, for from the depths of her subconscious surged up recollections that were horribly painful. Recollections of Tom’s slim, youthful body against hers, his warm nakedness and the peculiar feel of his lips, his smile, at once shy and roguish, and the smell of his curly hair.
‘If I hadn’t been a fool I’d have said nothing. I ought to know him by now. It’s only an infatuation. He’d have got over it and then he’d have come hungrily back to me.’
Now she was nearly dead with fatigue. She got up and went to bed. She took a sleeping-draught.
22
BUT she woke early next morning, at six, and began to think of Tom. She repeated to herself all she had said to him and all he had said to her. She was harassed and unhappy. Her only consolation was that she had carried the rupture through with so careless a gaiety that he could not guess how miserable he had made her.
She spent a wretched day, unable to think of anything else, and angry with herself because she could not put Tom out of her mind. It would not have been so bad if she could have confided her grief to a friend. She wanted someone to console her, someone to tell her that Tom was not worth troubling about and to assure her that he had treated her shamefully. As a rule she took her troubles to Charles or to Dolly. Of course Charles would give her all the sympathy she needed, but it would be a terrible blow to him, after all he had loved her to distraction for twenty years, and it would be cruel to tell him that she had given to a very ordinary young man what he would gladly have sacrificed ten years of his life for. She was his ideal and it would be heartless on her part to shatter it. It certainly did her good at that moment to be assured that Charles Tamerley, so distinguished, so cultured, so elegant, loved her with an imperishable devotion. Of course Dolly would be delighted if she confided in her. They had not seen much of one another lately, but Julia knew that she had only to call up and Dolly would come running. Even though she more than suspected the truth already she’d be shocked and jealous when Julia made a clean breast of it, but she’d be so thankful that everything was over, she’d forgive. It would be a comfort to both of them to tear Tom limb from limb. Of course it wouldn’t be very nice to admit that Tom had chucked her, and Dolly was so shrewd, she would never get away with the lie that she had chucked him. She wanted to have a good cry with somebody, and there didn’t seem to be any reason for it if she had made the break herself. It would be a score for Dolly, and however sympathetic she was it was asking too much of human nature to expect that she would be altogether sorry that Julia had been taken down a peg or two. Dolly had always worshipped her. She wasn’t going to give her a peep at her feet of clay.