(‘The skunk, the dirty skunk. Codding me all these years.’)
She did the only thing possible. She continued the gesture. Counting so that she should not go too fast, she drew her hands towards one another, till she could clasp them, and then throwing back her head, raised them, very slowly, to one side of her neck. The attitude she reached was as lovely as the other, and it was the attitude that suggested to her what she had to say. Her deep rich voice trembled a little with emotion.
‘I’m so glad when I look back to think that we have nothing to reproach ourselves with. The bitterness of life is not death, the bitterness of life is that love dies. (She’d heard something like that said in a play.) If we’d been lovers you’d have grown tired of me long ago, and what should we have now to look back on but regret for our own weakness? What was that line of Shelley’s that you said just now about fading?’
‘Keats,’ he corrected. ‘“She cannot fade though thou hast not thy bliss.”’
‘That’s it. Go on.’
She was playing for time.
‘“For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair.”’
She threw her arms wide in a great open gesture and tossed her curly head. She’d got it.
‘It’s true, isn’t it? “For ever wilt thou love and I be fair.” What fools we should have been if for a few moments’ madness we had thrown away the wonderful happiness our friendship has brought us. We have nothing to be ashamed of. We’re clean. We can walk with our heads held high and look the whole world in the face.’
She instinctively felt that this was an exit line, and suiting her movements to the words, with head held high, backed to the door and flung it open. Her power was such that she carried the feeling of the scene all the way down the stairs with her. Then she let it fall and with the utmost simplicity turned to Charles who had followed her.
‘My cloak.’
‘The car is there,’ he said as he wrapped it round her. ‘I’ll drive you home.’
‘No, let me go alone. I want to stamp this hour on my heart. Kiss me before I go.’
She held up her lips to him. He kissed them. But she broke away from him, with a stifled sob, and tearing open the door ran to the waiting car.
When she got home and stood in her own bedroom she gave a great whoof of relief.
‘The bloody fool. Fancy me being taken in like that. Thank God, I got out of it all right. He’s such an ass, I don’t suppose he began to see what I was getting at.’ But that frozen smile disconcerted her. ‘He may have suspected, he couldn’t have been certain, and afterwards he must have been pretty sure he’d made a mistake. My God, the rot I talked. It seemed to go down all right, I must say. Lucky I caught on when I did. In another minute I’d have had me dress off. That wouldn’t have been so damned easy to laugh away.’
Julia began to titter. The situation was mortifying of course, he had made a damned fool of her, but if you had any sense of humour you could hardly help seeing that there was a funny side to it. She was sorry that there was nobody to whom she could tell it; even if it was against herself it would make a good story. What she couldn’t get over was that she had fallen for the comedy of undying passion that he had played all those years; for of course it was just a pose; he liked to see himself as the constant adorer, and the last thing he wanted, apparently, was to have his constancy rewarded.
‘Bluffed me, he did, completely bluffed me.’
But an idea occurred to Julia and she ceased to smile. When a woman’s amorous advances are declined by a man she is apt to draw one of two conclusions; one is that he is homosexual and the other is that he is impotent. Julia reflectively lit a cigarette. She asked herself if Charles had used his devotion to her as a cover to distract attention from his real inclinations. But she shook her head. If he had been homosexual she would surely have had some hint of it; after all, in society since the war they talked of practically nothing else. Of course it was quite possible he was impotent. She reckoned out his age. Poor Charles. She smiled again. And if that were the case it was he, not she, who had been placed in an embarrassing and even ridiculous position. He must have been scared stiff, poor lamb. Obviously it wasn’t the sort of thing a man liked to tell a woman, especially if he were madly in love with her; the more she thought of it the more probable she considered the explanation. She began to feel very sorry for him, almost maternal in fact.
‘I know what I’ll do,’ she said, as she began to undress, ‘I’ll send him a huge bunch of white lilies tomorrow.’
25
JULIA lay awake next morning for some time before she rang her bell. She thought. When she reflected on her adventure of the previous night she could not but be pleased that she had shown so much presence of mind. It was hardly true to say that she had snatched victory from defeat, but looking upon it as a strategic retreat her conduct had been masterly. She was notwithstanding ill at ease. There might be yet another explanation for Charles’s singular behaviour. It was possible that he did not desire her because she was not desirable. The notion had crossed her mind in the night, and though she had at once dismissed it as highly improbable, there was no denying it, at that hour of the morning it had a nasty look. She rang. As a rule, since Michael often came in while Julia had breakfast, Evie when she had drawn the curtains handed her a mirror and a comb, her powder and lipstick. On this occasion, instead of running the comb rapidly through her hair and giving her face a perfunctory dab with the puff, Julia took some trouble. She painted her lips with care and put on some rouge; she arranged her hair.
‘Speaking without passion or prejudice,’ she said, still looking at herself in the glass, when Evie placed the breakfast tray on her bed, ‘would you say I was by way of being a good-looking woman, Evie?’
‘I must know what I’m letting myself in for before answering that question.’
‘You old bitch,’ said Julia.
‘You’re no beauty, you know.’
‘No great actress ever has been.’
‘When you’re all dolled up posh like you was last night, and got the light be’ind you, I’ve seen worse, you know.’
(‘Fat lot of good it did me last night.’) ‘What I want to say is, if I really set my mind on getting off with a man, d’you think I could?’
‘Knowing what men are, I wouldn’t be surprised. Who d’you want to get off with now?’
‘Nobody. I was only talking generally.’
Evie sniffed and drew her forefinger along her nostrils.
‘Don’t sniff like that. If your nose wants blowing, blow it.’
Julia ate her boiled egg slowly. She was busy with her thoughts. She looked at Evie. Funny-looking old thing of course, but one never knew.
‘Tell me, Evie, do men ever try to pick you up in the street?’
‘Me? I’d like to see ’em try.’
‘So would I, to tell you the truth. Women are always telling me how men follow them in the street and if they stop and look in at a shop window come up and try to catch their eye. Sometimes they have an awful bother getting rid of them.’
‘Disgusting, I call it.’
‘I don’t know about that. It’s rather flattering. You know, it’s a most extraordinary thing, no one ever follows me in the street. I don’t remember a man ever having tried to pick me up.’
‘Oh well, you walk along Edgware Road one evening. You’ll get picked up all right.’
‘I shouldn’t know what to do if I was.’
‘Call a policeman,’ said Evie grimly.
‘I know a girl who was looking in a shop window in Bond Street, a hat shop, and a man came up and asked her if she’d like a hat. I’d love one, she said, and they went in and she chose one and gave her name and address, he paid for it on the nail, and then she said, thank you so much, and walked out while he was waiting for the change.’