He said: ‘What a coincidence.’
She whirled round on him, stopping full in her swift walk, fixed him with eyes that, for one startling second, seemed to be darting flashes, and snapped loudly: ‘What?’
‘What?’ He stared, but before he could speak she said again, louder:
‘What j’oo say? About coincidence?’
Frank was irritated; he was used to softness, teasing, mystery, and remote sweetness in the female friend.
‘I meant that it was an extraordinary coincidence that there should be that one hospital in England with that machine, and she should go there, and that you should be coming home through just that park and you should meet . . . And here you are. The whole thing due to a series of coincidences. That’s all I meant.’
Juliet’s nose was raspberry pink, and what he could see of her legs were spattered with mud, and the sun had gone in, so that her hair looked dull. She stood, staring at him.
‘Don’t be cross, Juliet,’ he said gently. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you.’
‘Who’s upset?’ She began to walk on. ‘Yes, it is a – coincidence. Funny. I . . . I been thinking how funny it is, these four years.’ Her voice died away, and there was a long pause.
‘And then – who wrote first?’ he pursued at last.
‘Auntie. She took a fancy to me, like, and asked for me address and we used to meet every day, after that, and she asked me would I send her a line how I was getting on. Goin’ in for me O levels, I was.’
‘And you’ll be here for a year? Whose idea was that?’
‘You naturally nosy or just nosy with me?’
It was the first hint of girlish sauciness that he had had from her, and he was oddly relieved. He laughed.
‘Both, I think. Go on, tell me.’
‘She wanted to adop’ me. Course, Mum wants me to get a job and help the others get on, so she wasn’t having that. A year, Mum says, I could come for.’
‘And then?’
She shrugged. They had paused at the door in the wall surrounding Hightower.
‘There’s the others to think about.’
‘Are they bright, too? How old are they?’
‘Fifteen, John is – Sandra’s twelve – I dunno, can’t remember exactly, seems like there’s ten of ’em sometimes, the row they make. I don’t think about them, most of the time. They’ll get on.’ She pressed the bell savagely.
The door opened after the usual delay, and there, all apron and eyelashes, was Rosario.
‘Good morning,’ smiled Frank. ‘Are you Antonio?’
‘No, sir. Rosario. Madame tells us you are coming. Welcome, Mister Frank. Hullo, Juliet.’
‘She says you’re to say “Miss”. She hears you, you’ll get a strip torn off of you,’ Juliet said over her shoulder.
‘Why should I say “Mees” to you? Antonio say you come from the oppressed masses.’
5
It occurred to Juliet, as she sat, weeks later at the large table she had persuaded Miss Pennecuick to instal in her room, that Dad drove what she thought of as ‘his train’ every other day through St Alberics station.
But he doesn’t know I’m only a couple of miles away, she thought with satisfaction, and drifted off into the meditation from which the far-off sound of a passing diesel had aroused her.
She had not feared that her father would inform the police about his missing daughter. How could you call anyone missing when they phoned their mum once a week? Also, such an action would have meant the interruption of his habits – those habits which he preferred over wife, daughter and home.
These habits consisted of his work: the alternation of days spent driving the train between St Pancras and Standish far up in the Midlands, with stops at every commuter station on the way; his silent fellowship with mates known for twenty years; the homeward journey, after his arrival at the London terminus, by the 214 bus to his own neighbourhood; a pause to pick up the late-night Evening News at Mawser’s on the corner; the hour spent in the Duke of Gloucester over a couple of pints; then the short trudge through the dimly lit streets; his key in the door – boots off – the greasy, ample tea, and the paper and television until bedtime.
When he was on the night shift the routine was even more compelling, because there was in it an element with which years of experience had not made quite familiar: darkness; faces less known than those seen by day; fewer people about; long periods, in fact, of complete solitude, especially on the walk back to his home. Pallid light flowed along the damp pavements. There lay the humped shape of his wife in the double bed; he growled a greeting as he got in beside her, and then there were hours of heavy sleep, through daylight and noises in the street outside.
Very strong in George Slater were self-will, grudgingness and obstinacy; but stronger than anything else was his feeling for this pattern that he relished with a hardly conscious enjoyment. He would put up with anything rather than ‘put himself out’. His daughter knew this.
As for Mum, if she had a cup of tea and Mrs Next Door to yak-yak with, she was not going to create, neither. The telephone calls had already settled into routine questions about Julie’s health, and warning repetitions about Dad not wanting to see her unless she got a job like everyone else.
For a year, she was safe.
She stared across into the yellowing elms at the end of the lawn, and the faintest glint of pleasure came into her eyes. Then her gaze passed over the solid oak surface of the table; there was more than enough room for books and yet more books, geometric instruments, pencils, everything. She liked this table better than any object in Hightower; its squareness and firmness and proportion satisfied some quality in her nature. Every morning after breakfast, she ran up to her room and seated herself at it.
Miss Pennecuick was always at her most frail in the mornings, and ate her slight repast in bed, while Frank had usually been out on his own affairs for an hour when Juliet came into the dining-room. Sarah was usually hovering about; if Juliet had listened, she would have heard mutterings about Mr Frank killing himself eating that rubbishy hay stuff, enough to murder anyone. But she did not listen. She was not interested.
Once seated at her table, she forgot everything but the shapes and theories haunting her brain.
She leant back easily in a comfortable chair, sometimes with a book in her lap, sometimes with one open on the table. But always she remained motionless, her narrow breast hardly seeming to lift and fall, and her eyes fixed upon the pages she was studying.
The hours between breakfast and twelve passed like a quarter. They would have been tantalisingly short had she not already been at her table since five each morning, her face splashed with cold water to awaken her thoroughly from light sleep, her hair drawn up into a knot to keep it out of her eyes.
Those were mornings of a hazy light, silence and mist that, to another kind of imagination, would have seemed sad or lonely. Juliet did not notice the stillness until the first birds broke it with their thin greeting. Then she would lift her head, and listen, and a faint look of pleasure would come into eyes reddened by lack of sleep.
Frank was not often in to lunch, but when he was, he observed Juliet closely.
She gobbled. But he did not put this down to what he thought of as working-class habits, nor yet to appreciation of better food than she was accustomed to, nor to simple greed.
Juliet gobbled partly because she was not interested in eating, and partly because, like himself, she was eager to get out of the dark overheated house into the leafy way that led to Leete, and thence to even narrower footpaths and silent meadows.
He had spent his morning inspecting, measuring, talking, calculating, bargaining. How had she spent hers, in her room looking out over the great elms?
And what did she think about, while she ‘fleeted’ (like swift Camilla ) over frosty ruts, her hair bundled under a badly knitted woollen cap (Frank was a severe critic of handicrafts; all his own skills of that kind were admirable) and her hands in the p
ockets of a tough, elegant cape chosen and bought for her by Great-Aunt Addy? Its sandy hue, Juliet’s own choice, was unfortunate with her colouring (Ah, the misty aquamarine and lilac tints favoured by Ottolie – and, for that matter, by Deirdre and Fiona . . .)
What did she think about? Nothing, he was dismally certain, that a mermaid or a fairy might.
No: of Juliet the song for the Edwardian musical comedy Our Miss Gibbs was true – ‘Mary is a girl and not a fairy ’ – and he was beginning to feel that she was not even a girl.
He could not cease, in spite of the many activities crowding his days, from studying her.
‘Dearie, must you eat so fast? Auntie doesn’t like to see her girlie gobbling away like a little piggy-wiggy. It isn’t pretty.’
*
Rosario threatened to become a nuisance.
Juliet had known Antonio, eldest of the five servants, since her first visit there some four years ago, and had seen the gradual infiltration into the household of his younger siblings: Maria, Pilar, Rosa and, finally, Rosario.
Quick-witted, content under the benevolent rule of their mistress, tactful with the privileged Sarah, and fully appreciating the shops, excursions, cinemas, discos and pick-ups to be had in nearby St Alberics, none of the family wanted to leave their English place. Antonio’s diplomatic skills were much admired, and they took his advice – as the eldest, the knowing one, who had whisked them out of a poor, dirty, hungry life in a small Spanish town, into all this.
All five had a childlike enjoyment in mere living: they groaned, they wept. An hour of sunlight produced a mental state of playing the guitar with a rose over one ear.
Their English equivalents would have been bored by the isolation, and contemptuous of St Alberics imitation of London pleasures, envious of Sarah, and spitefully inquisitive about Juliet. The Spaniards laughed over every small frustration, and Antonio added to the gaiety by encouraging the bringing into the house of bottles of wine by sheepish admirers of either sex, occasionally administering a rebuke should spirits be introduced.
Their widowed mother cheerfully and boastfully wasted the generous share of their wages sent to her every week back in Spain.
But Rosario . . . He is not quite broken in, that one, thought his elder brother, having seen him give a light pull, in passing, at Juliet’s hair. That is a very peculiar girl. Her voice is of the backstreets, it isn’t like the Senora’s. Her clothes are torn. She cares nothing for boys, only for books. It is not natural. Rosario must leave her alone, because the Senora dotes upon her. We do not want troubles.
He administered a short lecture to his brother. ‘We are very well placed here. Good money, no hard work, plenty of free time, a little town near with girls and wine shops. Why, we live like Onassis—’
‘I like to pull her hair. She hates me – me! You know how all the girls were crazy for me at home.’
‘So you say, and I know you’ve been very successful, little one. But this is different. She is not pretty—’
‘Holy Maria, no! No bosom at all. I have more, myself.’
‘Then leave her alone. The next time I catch you pulling her hair, I hit you really hard.’
Rosario looked sulky and said nothing.
But it was not Antonio who hit him really hard.
Juliet was sitting on her tuffet one day, just before the lunch hour, and Rosario, gliding around the table adding finishing touches, squatted down when he came up to her, stooped his dark curls so that they almost brushed her cheek, and whispered, ‘Silver hair. I pull it really hard – feel, Juliet!’
And he pulled.
She did not look up, but struck out so violently, with a shoving movement, that he lost his balance on the highly polished floor, and fell flat on his back, uttering a roar of rage.
At this moment the door was slowly opened by Sarah, and Miss Pennecuick crept in. Both paused, exclaiming and aghast.
‘Rosario! What’s the matter? Are you hurt, my poor boy?’ Much rubbing of the curls was going on. ‘Juliet, what happened?’
Juliet smiled, and said, ‘Morning, Auntie.’
‘Come on, now, get up, you aren’t dead,’ Sarah said roughly, as he continued to lie there and shout in Spanish.
‘Did he slip on the floor?’
‘What on earth’s going on?’ demanded Frank, coming in at that minute.
‘Rosario fell down—’
‘There’s nothing the matter with him—’
‘Here, let’s see if any bones are broken—’
But even as Frank advanced upon him, Rosario scrambled up, bowed fiercely to the elder ladies, and marched out, shutting the door with a slam that shook the room.
Frank raised his eyebrows.
Juliet got up to kiss Miss Pennecuick’s cheek; then sat down again.
‘Now you come out of that book, Miss, show a bit of sympathy for once – poor young fellow, that floor’s hard, as my knees know to their cost. You be in to lunch, Mr Frank?’
‘Yes please, Sarah.’
‘It’s a nice bit of roast lamb – but I expect you’ve brought your own grass and stuff?’
‘No, I could manage a nice bit of roast lamb, for once’ – cheerfully.
He sat in an armchair opposite to Juliet, noticing that red burned in her cheeks, though she was apparently interested only in her book.
‘Well, Aunt Addy, I’ve got some good news—’
‘Oh have you, dear boy? Well done – let’s hear it. Juliet,’ gently, ‘it isn’t nice to read when other people are talking – put your book away, dear.’
‘Sorry, Auntie.’ The book obediently dropped at the side of the tuffet; the red deepened, as Juliet fixed her gaze on Miss Pennecuick’s face.
‘Yes, I really think everything’s arranged at last. I’m going to get the necessary papers signed next Monday.’
‘Then you’ll be in by Christmas. How delightful. We must have a party – and talking of parties, Clemence and Dolly are coming for the weekend.’
At this point the luncheon gong sounded, and they went in.
‘I already see lots of Clem in Wanby,’ Frank said, as he drew his great-aunt’s chair for her, and she laughed and pinched his cheek.
Here Sarah, who was sourly handing vegetables, said loudly, ‘Dr Masters ought to see that boy, Miss Addy. He’s got a bump on the back of his head the size of an egg. Some people ought to be ashamed of themselves,’ fixing Juliet with a glare.
Juliet, gobbling, did not look up.
‘Well, Sarah, I did ask you to tell Pilar not to polish the floors so highly.’
‘You like the floors well polished, Miss Addy, and besides it wasn’t the floor. She pushed him.’
‘Pilar? His own sister?’
‘No, Miss Addy. Her,’ indicating Juliet with a jerk of the head.
‘Did you, Juliet dear? Surely not – what happened? Tell old Auntie – she promises not to be cross with her girlie.’
‘I expect he pulled her hair,’ Frank said. ‘I’ve seen him at it more than once.’
‘Did he, Juliet?’
A nod.
‘And did you push him?’
‘Yes. As hard as I could.’ She gulped some water.
‘Well . . .’ Miss Pennecuick said helplessly, while Sarah’s voice cut in: ‘Comes of wearing it all over the place, instead of done up decent. What does she expect?’
‘It served him damn well right,’ Frank said calmly, ‘and if he does it again, you do it again, Juliet. That will do, Sarah, thank you,’ with a smile.
Sarah crept out of the room.
‘I – I really don’t know what to say . . .’ Miss Pennecuick leant back feebly, pushing away her plate. ‘Sarah can be so tiresome – she’s faithfulness itself, of course, and she’s been with me so long, nearly fifty years, but it makes it so difficult sometimes, she gets jealous, I don’t know how it is, you can always manage things—’
‘I’m a man,’ and he laughed.
Juliet continued to eat.
&nb
sp; ‘I’m so pleased and relieved, dear boy, that you’re coming to live at Wanby. Now if only you would settle down with that sweet girl—’
‘What sweet girl, Aunt?’
‘Now you know perfectly well who I mean—’
‘I assure you I haven’t the faintest idea . . . are you ready for pud?’ and he rang the bell.
It was true; he had not the faintest idea. For he did not think of his great friend, Clemence Massey, as a sweet girl.
Once or twice during the consumption of the pud, Juliet looked at Frank with a long stare. He had stood up for her. Not as that old fool of an auntie would have, but sensibly. If someone at the Comp hit you or pulled your hair, you hit or pulled back. Only common sense, that was, only natural.
For the first time since their meeting in St Alberics high street, she thought about Frank Pennecuick. Bolting pudding, because she had forgotten Auntie’s gentle reproof, she let him invade her mind.
An unfamiliar feeling came upon her when she looked at his long brown face. She wondered if she could talk to him about that part of her mind which was suffering confusion. For what she was beginning to feel towards him, without knowing its nature, was trust.
At the Comp, the mathematics master had been permanently irritable and exhausted, and the one thing that he had always made starkly plain was the fact that no individual could have more than three minutes, preferably two, of his time.
Juliet wanted an hour, perhaps half a day; she did not know how long because she did not know exactly what she wanted to talk about. It was something to do with maths . . . and why certain things happened . . . and if there was an answer . . .
She had a vague, yet strong, idea that ‘coincidence’ was the word that expressed her fascination, interest, whatever it was.
But what, exactly, was coincidence?
She knew about reference books; she had been, one Saturday afternoon, to the public library and, having asked the girl assistant for a ‘dictionary’, and being asked what kind, had answered that she did not know.