The woman smiled again, and turned to watch the rapidly darkening landscape going by.
There was no more conversation. They had entered a motorway; their pace had increased, and there began to be a dream-like quality about their flight beside other dark shapes, following scores of ruby will-o’-the-wisps. In the orange glare of the lamps the general ugliness was not veiled, but emphasized.
Juliet noticed nothing; she was thinking.
They turned aside at length, down a narrowing road where a softer light shone on a sign and its arrow: ST ALBERICS. STAVENHAM.
Another half hour, and the car stopped in the brightly lit high street of a country town whose shops were small imitations of those in Oxford Street. Here and there, the three-hundred-year-old face of a cottage showed its forlorn and gentle beauty to the chemical glow of the lamps.
The driver turned, smiling, and said, ‘All right for you? Where does your aunt live?’
‘Oh, not far, ’bout five minutes’ walk.’ Juliet was gathering up case and carrier.
‘Because, if it’s not far, we could—’
‘Yes, do be careful, my dear,’ from the woman.
‘I’ll be all right; there’s plenty of people about.’ Juliet was out and on the pavement. Indeed at that moment, a bus-load, scattering in different directions, alighted at a coach station where other passengers were waiting. The scene was neither lonely nor desolate.
‘Cheerio.’
The pair smiled and waved; the car moved off, grew smaller, turned a corner, and was gone.
Juliet had already left behind the shop windows, where fashion models postured, and was walking quickly onwards.
She turned aside at the far end of the high street, down a narrow road without shops and with only occasional dim lamps on old-fashioned iron standards. It was lined on either side by ancient cottages. One had a turquoise-blue door; some others had additions to make them acceptably contemporary, but Ragnall Street was unmistakably in a small country town: narrow, ill-lit, silent, and filled with air scented by leaves and grass in hidden fields.
Juliet’s pace quickened. A man on a bicycle passed, calling ‘Goodnight!’ A woman hurried by with a heavy shopping bag and entered a cottage that had a light glowing behind its flowery curtains; children’s voices greeted her as she opened the front door. The sky, lucid blue and as yet starless, was gradually becoming the most noticeable part of the scene. The sky, and the silence.
The last cottage was left behind, its garden glimmering with white dahlias. Fields stretched away, behind low hedges of thorn, into the twilight; the great elms typical of Hertfordshire were just distinguishable as darker masses against the darkening blue.
Juliet was crossing a stone bridge, humped and ancient, with hidden water running quietly beneath, when a car came past, too quickly, headlights glaring; she pressed herself against the stone parapet just in time. Then the sky and the silence, as the brutal noise died away, resumed their power, and she turned down a lane, with a signpost that said, she knew, TO LEETE. And suddenly a high brick wall was beside her, some fifteen feet tall, ending in iron gates intricately wrought in a design of grapes and vine leaves and, in the centre, a group of initials.
She stopped and pressed a bell set at the side door inserted in the brickwork.
Then she put down her luggage, seated herself on the grass verge, and prepared to wait.
3
It was dark, but a grain moon was rising, huge and warm-tinted above the elms. Through a thin place in the thorn hedge she could see swathes of mist covering the meadows. There were far-off sounds, and the sudden sweeps of distant headlights in the darkness, but all around her was stillness and silence. She glanced impatiently at the door.
Now there were voices, approaching and raised in argument, though she could not make out what they were saying.
The door jerked open suddenly, and she stood up. A light came on above the gates, revealing a figure known to her, in the familiar black dress which was too short and showed stout legs in pale stockings. A cross old face, a pompadour of white curls.
Behind this person hovered the brown, smiling face of a man above a white jacket.
‘So it’s you, is it. Trust you to get here when dinner’s over—’
‘Hullo, Sarah.’ Juliet began to pick up her baggage. But the man darted forward.
‘I take for you.’ And she let him have them, even giving him a brief smile.
‘Mrs Bason, to you,’ said Sarah, in a voice meant to be dignified but betrayed by age at the conclusion of her sentence into a squeak.
‘Mrs Bason – sorry.’
‘How do you look when you’re glad? Come on, hurry up, she’s been all on edge ever since your letter come.’
The old woman turned, grumbling under her breath, the man shut the door behind them, and they went along a wide, curving path leading up to a large house with lit windows.
‘When did it come?’ Juliet asked, knowing that Sarah was less irritable if a flow of unnecessary detailed talk was kept going.
‘This morning. Posted day before yesterday, wasn’t it? These posts, they get worse and worse. If I’d thought when I was your age I’d live to see the day when it took forty-eight hours for a letter to get from London to Leete, and seven pence to pay at that, and herrings at ten shillings the pound—’
‘Yes, awful,’ Juliet muttered.
As they approached the house, whose door stood open revealing a dimly lit hall, a group of faces could be seen peering out into the dusk, and gabbling in Spanish became audible. There was waving of hands, to which Juliet responded slackly, and the group, consisting of a young man and three girls, moved forward to meet her.
But Sarah, assuming an authoritative manner, said sharply, ‘That’ll do now, off you go,’ and they disappeared, without haste and smiling over their shoulders, in the direction of a door covered in green baize at the end of the hall.
The older man shut the front door.
Sarah turned to Juliet.
‘She’s in the drawing-room. Best go in. She’s bound to ask if you want something – I’ll see about it. Always on the go, I am. On a blessed tray, I s’pose.’
‘That’ll do nicely,’ Juliet quoted, showing teeth white and small between her pallid lips: it was not a smile of sweetness.
Juliet crossed towards a door on the left. It was of dark wood, like the panelled walls. The hall had a pseudo-antique appearance; its many old portraits lacked distinction, and the long oriental carpets had the hard colours of modern work rather than the silky dimness of the real thing.
Sarah had disappeared.
Juliet gently opened the door, there was a pause, then a soft old voice exclaimed: ‘Why, it’s my girl! Darling! I was getting so worried!’ and Juliet went forward into the room.
A long face, irresistibly suggesting that of a sheep, below silver hair, smiled at her from a wheelchair drawn up to an electric fire. The room was stiflingly hot, in spite of the summer heat outside; the occupant of the chair’s skeletal arms were bared to the elbow by a long dress of blue silk.
Juliet went up to her, sank to her knees beside the chair and, putting her arms round the thin old body, lifted her face passively to receive kiss after lingering kiss, while she shut her senses against the odour of verbena toilet water and eighty-year-old flesh.
‘You’re really here! I can’t believe it, let me look at you – that lovely, lovely hair – how long is it since you were here, my darling?’
‘Easter, Auntie.’
‘I couldn’t believe it when I got your letter – how can your mother bear to part with you?’
Juliet sat back on her heels.
‘Five of us, Auntie, and no dad. ’T’isn’t easy for her.’
‘Yes. Yes. Oh that was a day blessed by God, when I saw the sun shining on your hair . . .’ She leant forward, with difficulty, to lift a tress in her knotted fingers. ‘My girl! Here at last. My lovely, lovely . . . daughter.’
The last word came out
reverently, as if she spoke of something sacred.
‘What have I done,’ she went on, quaveringly, ‘that God should be so good to me?’
She paused to wipe her eyes, while Juliet, moving no closer, made vague sounds that might have been intended for comfort.
‘Ah, here’s Sarah – and Rosa with your supper, dear – we can’t call it dinner, it’s only something light, but you must be hungry. I told Sarah to save some chicken, the nicest part. Now you eat it up, my darling, while I watch you.’
Sarah, looking more than sour, prowled in silence finding small unnecessary things to do while the plump, pretty Rosa set down a tray on a low table, smiling shyly at Juliet. With the air of one being at home, Juliet got up and fetched a tuffet covered in rose-red brocade, and arranged it beside the wheelchair.
Chicken and salad, with fruit and a glass of orange juice, were set out appetizingly, and, settling herself on the tuffet, Juliet began to eat, while the sheep-face watched with an expression of the purest, foolish delight.
‘Time for your bed, Miss Addy,’ Sarah said. ‘Close on nine.’
‘I know that, Sarah, thank you,’ the old lady said sharply. ‘I’m staying up.’
‘Upset yourself – you know what Dr Masters said.’
‘It won’t hurt for once. I’m so happy, and this is a special occasion.’
‘Please yourself.’
Sarah was going out of the room when her employer said, in a different voice: ‘Sarah!’
‘Yes, Miss Addy?’ turning sulkily.
‘Ask Antonio to bring up a magnum of champagne – and eight glasses. We’re going to celebrate.’
‘Champagne! There’s none chilled, and it’ll kill you, this time of night.’
‘In half an hour, Sarah, please. And tell the other servants they are to be my guests.’
Sarah stalked out. Her hands were at her sides, but her expression raised them in the position of those of the old steward in Hogarth’s painting.
Juliet had not watched any of this tiny drama, nor noticed the deliberate use of the expression ‘other servants’; she was eating.
In a moment the old lady said: ‘And so you passed all your examinations, darling?’
Juliet, with her mouth full, nodded.
‘A levels, they call them now, don’t they? I’m sure my clever girl did well, didn’t she? And was she nervous?’
‘Course not.’ Juliet gulped orange juice.
‘Were you – top, would it be – in any of the subjects? What were they?’
The faded eyes, behind the spectacles of the strongest power available, fixed themselves greedily on the young face, as if passionate to draw from it information about a world, ideas, habits, of which their owner was ignorant. Behind the glare of curiosity there was a hint, too, of piteousness: I am so old, said the look. And helpless. And helpless, for all my five servants and my faithful Sarah. Helpless.
‘Oh’ – Juliet used her tongue to dislodge a fragment of lettuce – ‘mathematics, physics, chemistry – that kind of subject. I got five As.’
‘And did you expect to – is that exceptional, dear? Five As? You must forgive your old auntie, she isn’t “brainy”, like you. You know, at my school, the North London Collegiate, only the cleverest girls studied science. That was more than sixty years ago . . .’
Juliet pushed the tray aside and drew her knees up to her chin and circled them with her arms, in her first gesture that evening suggesting youthfulness. She wanted a cigarette, but decided against asking; there would be a fuss, probably a lecture.
‘Five As is good,’ she said. ‘Very good, they said at the school.’
‘But didn’t you find those scientific subjects very dry, dear? And such hard work, all those figures . . . I never was any good at arithmetic. I used to cry over my sums. Wasn’t I a silly-billy?’
‘Course they aren’t dry – they’re ever so interesting. Easy, too. Only . . .’
Juliet paused, and her gaze moved away from the eager old face into some other world. Her own face became expressionless.
‘Are you thinking about – him, darling?’ the old lady said softly, in a moment.
‘Who?’ The thoughts, whatever they had been, vanished beneath Juliet’s eyes, like some unknown species of fish darting down into fathoms of icy water. ‘Who do you mean – him?’
‘Silly Auntie thought perhaps there might be some young man – some boy, don’t they say nowadays? – that her girlie was . . . very fond of.’
‘Chr—! Course not, Auntie. I don’t like boys, they’re always making a row. Me and Mum, we have a joke about that, see, ’cos she says I take as much notice of boys as if they was elephants, and I say, if they was elephants, I’d take a bit more notice.’
She smiled. Her little teeth flashed: the too-white teeth of the child fed on the wrong food.
The old lady was looking bewildered. ‘Do you like elephants so much, then, dear?’
‘Not all that. But better than what I do boys.’
‘“Better than I do boys,” Juliet. Not “what I do”.’ Her voice was gentle as ever, but authoritative.
‘Better than I do boys.’
‘You see, my darling’ – lifting a tress of silver-gold hair – ‘you’re such a lovely girl . . . and I want my girlie to talk as prettily as she looks. You don’t mind my telling you about these little faults?’
‘Course not, Auntie.’ Juliet was staring down at her shabby jogging shoes. They were dirty, and the side of one of them was split.
A procession entered, with Sarah, looking disapproving, at its head. She was followed by the white-coated servant, carrying a silver bucket from which peered the head of the magnum. A young man was negligently flourishing a grubby white cloth to wipe up spilt drops; he had found a red plastic carnation somewhere and stuck it in his buttonhole. Three pretty young women were carrying glasses.
Their employer clapped her hands feebly. Her face had suddenly gone pale from exhaustion, but seemed to be shining from inward joy.
The white-coated servant set down the bucket on the table, copying the demeanour of an English butler seen on television, and, beckoning imperiously to the girls, took two glasses (which needed polishing) and handed them ceremoniously, one to the old lady and one to Juliet. He gestured that a glass should be given to Sarah, who grimly waved it away.
The champagne was opened with a satisfactorily loud pop, and the cork flew off somewhere into one of the dim corners of the hall amid much ducking and many screeches. The wine, never lacking glamour for some ingenuous hearts, slid hissing into the shallow glasses. The servants, in response to beckoning from the old lady, drew near to her wheelchair and stood in a circle about it. She reached out and took Juliet’s hand in her own.
‘Goodness, childie!’ she exclaimed in a startled tone. ‘How cold you are! Do you feel quite well?’
‘Course, Auntie.’
‘Well – so long as you feel all right.’
She looked straight at Sarah, who was standing with folded arms outside the circle.
‘To Miss Juliet,’ she said, raising her glass together with her weak, ancient voice, ‘who’s going to be my dear adopted daughter for a – a – whole . . . wonderful . . . year . . . to Miss Juliet.’
‘To Miss Juliet!’ came the cheerful echo in five young voices, sending for a moment a ripple of human gaiety through the large old house standing in its great gardens under the wide country sky.
Their glasses glowed like topaz in the lamplight. The eyes of the young man, dark under the perfect bow of his brows and shaded by heavy lashes, wandered speculatively, as he sipped, over Juliet’s meagre body. She was nearly seventeen, wasn’t she? Well then, let her get what girls of seventeen must get. It would be difficult, of course. The more fun for that.
‘I’m so tired.’ The old lady suddenly set down her glass. ‘Sarah, take me up. Goodnight Antonio, Maria, Rosa, Pilar, Rosario. Goodnight, my girlie,’ patting Juliet’s arm. ‘You’ll come up and say nighty-night
to old Auntie when she’s in beddy-byes, won’t you? Goodnight, then. Goodnight to you all.’
‘There’s a good half of that magnum left,’ Sarah observed. ‘More’n half, I’d say.’
‘Oh never mind, Sarah – let them have it. I said it was a celebration.’
The senior servant – Antonio – who had been unobtrusively hastening the departure of his retinue in case this fact should be noted, turned at the door with a flashing smile as he heard the permission, then disappeared.
Only young Rosario had lingered, on pretext of looking for the champagne cork.
Juliet had seated herself on the tuffet which had been established as her own place since her first visit four years ago, and was lifting her almost untouched glass to her lips.
He circled about until he stood above her, looking down with his bold, usually successful, smile. ‘You come and sit with us in our room, Juliet?’ he said softly in the broken English that, in a man’s voice, is irresistible to some women. ‘When she in bed? We laugh and perhaps sing – you come?’
She did not look up at him, but uttered in a quiet but clear voice a phrase of the harshest vulgarity which told him to go away.
He stared down at the fair, lowered head with the eyes of a hurt dog. It was less the insult than the shock of hearing those words, which he had heard in the backstreets of Stevenham, from the lips of a creature who seemed to him, though not beautiful, of a stubborn virginity, and therefore the better worth conquering.
He turned away and followed his family out of the room.
Juliet, slowly sipping champagne, did not look towards the staircase, visible through the door which Rosario, in his wounded pride, had deliberately left open.
The wheelchair stood at the foot of the stairs, and a figure was crawling upwards, with one swollen hand grasping at the banister; the elegant, floating blue dress gave the final grotesqueness to the hardly human, bent shape. Sarah hovered above it; the sound of her grumbling, affectionate voice came to Juliet through the silence. She leant forward and turned out the fire.
She drank off the champagne and glanced at the ornate French clock, set with gilt symbolical figures of Peace and Plenty. Ten. She could count on four hours of reading before she felt the need for sleep.