‘Poor father, I suppose he’s good at his job, but he’s not very intelligent, is he? He’s so busy being the handsomest man in England.’
‘I don’t think it’s very nice of you to speak of your father like that.’
‘Have I told you anything you don’t know?’ he asked coolly.
Julia wanted to smile, but would not allow the look of somewhat pained dignity to leave her face.
‘It’s our weakness, not our strength, that endears us to those who love us,’ she replied.
‘In what play did you say that?’
She repressed a gesture of annoyance. The words had come naturally to her lips, but as she said them she remembered that they were out of a play. Little brute! But they came in very appositely.
‘You’re hard,’ she said plaintively. She was beginning to feel more and more like Hamlet’s mother. ‘Don’t you love me?’
‘I might if I could find you. But where are you? If one stripped you of your exhibitionism, if one took your technique away from you, if one peeled you as one peels an onion of skin after skin of pretence and insincerity, of tags of old parts and shreds of faked emotions, would one come upon a soul at last?’ He looked at her with his grave sad eyes and then he smiled a little, ‘I like you all right.’
‘Do you believe I love you?’
‘In your way.’
Julia’s face was suddenly discomposed.
‘If you only knew the agony I suffered when you were ill! I don’t know what I should have done if you’d died!’
‘You would have given a beautiful performance of a bereaved mother at the bier of her only child.’
‘Not nearly such a good performance as if I’d had the opportunity of rehearsing it a few times,’ Julia answered tartly. ‘You see, what you don’t understand is that acting isn’t nature; it’s art, and art is something you create. Real grief is ugly; the business of the actor is to represent it not only with truth but with beauty. If I were really dying as I’ve died in half a dozen plays, d’you think I’d care whether my gestures were graceful and my faltering words distinct enough to carry to the last row of the gallery? If it’s a sham it’s no more a sham than a sonata of Beethoven’s, and I’m no more of a sham than the pianist who plays it. It’s cruel to say that I’m not fond of you. I’m devoted to you. You’ve been the only thing in my life.’
‘No. You were fond of me when I was a kid and you could have me photographed with you. It made a lovely picture and it was fine publicity. But since then you haven’t bothered much about me. I’ve bored you rather than otherwise. You were always glad to see me, but you were thankful that I went my own way and didn’t want to take up your time. I don’t blame you; you hadn’t got time in your life for anyone but yourself.’
Julia was beginning to grow a trifle impatient. He was getting too near the truth for her comfort.
‘You forget that young things are rather boring.’
‘Crashing, I should think,’ he smiled. ‘But then why do you pretend that you can’t bear to let me out of your sight? That’s just acting too.’
‘You make me very unhappy. You make me feel as if I hadn’t done my duty to you.’
‘But you have. You’ve been a very good mother. You’ve done something for which I shall always be grateful to you, you’ve left me alone.’
‘I don’t understand what you want.’
‘I told you. Reality.’
‘But where are you going to find it?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps it doesn’t exist. I’m young still; I’m ignorant. I thought perhaps that at Cambridge, meeting people and reading books, I might discover where to look for it. If they say it only exists in God, I’m done.’
Julia was disturbed. What he said had not really penetrated to her understanding, his words were lines and the important thing was not what they meant, but whether they ‘got over’, but she was sensitive to the emotion she felt in him. Of course he was only eighteen, and it would be silly to take him too seriously, she couldn’t help thinking he’d got all that from somebody else, and that there was a good deal of pose in it. Did anyone have ideas of his own and did anyone not pose just a wee, wee bit? But of course it might be that at the moment he felt everything he said, and it wouldn’t be very nice of her to make light of it.
‘Of course I see what you mean,’ she said. ‘My greatest wish in the world is that you should be happy. I’ll manage your father, and you can do as you like. You must seek your own salvation, I see that. But I think you ought to make sure that all these ideas of yours aren’t just morbid. Perhaps you were too much alone in Vienna and I dare say you read too much. Of course your father and I belong to a different generation and I don’t suppose we can help you. Why don’t you talk it over with someone more of your own age? Tom, for instance.’
‘Tom? A poor little snob. His only ambition in life is to be a gentleman, and he hasn’t the sense to see that the more he tries the more hopeless it is.’
‘I thought you liked him so much. Why, at Taplow last summer you just lived in his pocket.’
‘I didn’t dislike him. I made use of him. He could tell me a lot of things that I wanted to know. But I thought him an insignificant, silly little thing.’
Julia remembered how insanely jealous she had been of their friendship. It made her angry to think of all the agony she had wasted.
‘You’ve dropped him, haven’t you?’ he asked suddenly.
She was startled.
‘I suppose I have more or less.’
‘I think it’s very wise of you. He wasn’t up to your mark.’
He looked at her with his calm, reflective eyes, and on a sudden Julia had a sickening fear that he knew that Tom had been her lover. It was impossible, she told herself, it was only her guilty conscience that made her think so; at Taplow there had been nothing; it was incredible that any of the horrid gossip had reached his ears; and yet there was something in his expression that made her certain that he knew. She was ashamed.
‘I only asked him to come down to Taplow because I thought it would be nice for you to have a boy of that age to play around with.’
‘It was.’
There was in his eyes a faint twinkle of amusement. She felt desperate. She would have liked to ask him what he was grinning at, but dared not; for she knew; he was not angry with her, she could have borne that, he was merely diverted. She was bitterly hurt. She would have cried, but that he would only laugh. And what could she say to him? He believed nothing she said. Acting! For once she was at a loss how to cope with a situation. She was up against something that she did not know, something mysterious and rather frightening. Could that be reality? At that moment they heard a car drive up.
‘There’s your father,’ she exclaimed.
What a relief! The scene was intolerable, and she was thankful that his arrival must end it. In a moment Michael, very hearty, with his chin thrust out and his belly pulled in, looking for all his fifty odd years incredibly handsome, burst into the room and, in his manly way, thrust out his hand to greet, after a six months’ absence, his only begotten son.
28
THREE days later Roger went up to Scotland. By the exercise of some ingenuity Julia had managed that they should not again spend any length of time alone together. When they happened to be by themselves for a few minutes they talked of indifferent things. Julia was not really sorry to see him go. She could not dismiss from her mind the curious conversation she had had with him. There was one point in particular that unaccountably worried her; this was his suggestion that if she went into an empty room and someone suddenly opened the door there would be nobody there. It made her feel very uncomfortable.