'You mustn't say that, you mustn't think that,' he answered gently. 'You've been perfect always. I wouldn't have had you otherwise. Oh, my dear, life is so short and love is so transitory. The tragedy of life is that sometimes we get what we want. Now that I look back on our long past together I know that you were wiser than I. "What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape?" Don't you remember how it goes? "Never, never canst thou kiss, though winning near the goal – yet, do not grieve; she cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss. For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!" '
('Idiotic.') 'Such lovely lines,' she sighed. 'Perhaps you're right. Heigh-ho.'
He went on quoting. That was a trick of his that Julia had always found somewhat tiresome.
' "Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
For ever piping songs for ever new! ..." '
It gave Julia an opportunity to think. She stared in the unlit fire, her gaze intent, as though she were entranced by the exquisite beauty of those words. It was quite obvious that he just hadn't understood. It could hardly be wondered at. She had been deaf to his passionate entreaties for twenty years, and it was very natural if he had given up his quest as hopeless. It was like Mount Everest; if those hardy mountaineers who had tried for so long in vain to reach the summit finally found an easy flight of steps that led to it, they simply would not believe their eyes: they would think there was a catch in it. Julia felt that she must make herself a little plainer; she must, as it were, reach out a helping hand to the weary pilgrim.
'It's getting dreadfully late,' she said softly. 'Show me your new drawing and then I must go home.'
He rose and she gave him both her hands so that he should help her up from the sofa. They went upstairs. His pyjamas and dressing-gown were neatly arranged on a chair.
'How well you single men do yourselves. Such a cosy, friendly bedroom.'
He took the framed drawing off the wall and brought it over for her to look at under the light. It was a portrait in pencil of a stoutish woman in a bonnet and a low-necked dress with puffed sleeves. Julia thought her plain and the dress ridiculous.
'Isn't it ravishing?' she cried.
'I knew you'd like it. A good drawing, isn't it?'
'Amazing.'
He put the little picture back on its nail. When he turned round again she was standing near the bed with her hands behind her back a little like a Circassian slave introduced by the chief eunuch to the inspection of the Grand Vizier; there was a hint of modest withdrawal in her bearing, a delicious timidity, and at the same time the virgin's anticipation that she was about to enter into her kingdom. Julia gave a sigh that was ever so slightly voluptuous.
'My dear, it's been such a wonderful evening. I've never felt so close to you before.'
She slowly raised her hands from behind her back and with the exquisite timing that came so naturally to her moved them forwards, stretching out her arms, and held them palms upward as though there rested on them, invisibly, a lordly dish, and on the dish lay her proffered heart. Her beautiful eyes were tender and yielding and on her lips played a smile of shy surrender.
She saw Charles's smile freeze on his face. He had understood all right.
('Christ, he doesn't want me. It was all a bluff.') The revelation for a moment staggered her. ('God, how am I going to get out of it? What a bloody fool I must look.')
She very nearly lost her poise. She had to think like lightning. He was standing there, looking at her with an embarrassment that he tried hard to conceal. Julia was panic-stricken. She could not think what to do with those hands that held the lordly dish; God knows, they were small, but at the moment they felt like legs of mutton hanging there. Nor did she know what to say. Every second made her posture and the situation more intolerable.
('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 my 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 or 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 to-morrow.'
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 b'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.'
'That's what she told you.' Evie's sniff was sceptical. She gave Julia a puzzled look. 'What's the idea?'
'Oh, nothing. I was only wondering why in point of fact I never have been accosted by a man. It's not as if I had no sex appeal.'
But had she? She made up her mind to put the matter to the test.
That afternoon, when she had had her sleep, she got up, made up a little more than usual, and without calling Evie put on a dress that was neither plain nor obviously expensive and a red straw hat with a wide brim.
'I don't want to look like a tart,' she said as she looked at herself in the glass. 'On the other hand I don't want to look too respectable.'
She tiptoed down the stairs so that no one should hear her and closed the door softly behind her. She was a trifle nervous, but pleasantly excited; she felt that she was doing something rather shocking. She walked through Connaught Square into the Edgware Road. It was about five o'clock. There was a dense line of buses, taxis and lorries; bicyclists dangerously threaded their way through the traffic. The pavements were thronged. She sauntered slowly north. At first she walked with her eyes straight in front of her, looking neither to the right nor to the left, but soon realized that this was useless. She must look at people if she wanted them to look at her. Two or three times when she saw half a dozen persons gazing at a shop window she paused and gazed too, but none of them took any notice of her. She strolled on. People passed her in one direction and another. They seemed in a hurry. No one paid any attention to her. When she saw a man alone coming towards her she gave him a bold stare, but he passed on with a blank face. It occurred to her that her expression was too severe, and she let a slight smile hover on her lips. Two or three men thought she was smiling at them and quickly averted their gaze. She looked back as one of them passed her and he looked back too, but catching her eye he hurried on. She felt a trifle snubbed and decided not to look round again. She walked on and on. She had always heard that the London crowd was the best behaved in the world, but really its behaviour on this occasion was unconscionable.
'This couldn't happen to one in the streets of Paris, Rome or Berlin,' she reflected.
She decided to go as far as the Marylebone Road, and then turn back. It would be too humiliating to have to go home without being once accosted. She was walking so slowly that passers-by sometimes jostled her. This irritated her.
'I ought to have tried Oxford Street,' she said. 'That fool Evie. The Edgware Road's obviously a wash-out.'
Suddenly her heart gave an exultant leap. She had caught a young man's eye and she was sure that there was a gleam in it. He passed, and she had all she could do not to turn round. She started, for in a moment he passed her again, he had retraced his steps, and this time he gave her a stare. She shot him a glance and then modestly lowered her eyes. He fell back and she was conscious that he was following her. It was all right. She stopped to look into a shop window and he stopped too. She knew how to behave now. She pretended to be absorbed in the goods that were displayed, but just before she moved on gave him a quick flash of her faintly-smiling eyes. He was rather short, he looked like a clerk or a shop-walker, he wore a grey suit and a brown soft hat. He was not the man she would have chosen to be picked up by, but there it was, he was evidently trying to pick her up. She forgot that she was beginning to feel tired. She did not know what would happen next. Of course she wasn't going to let the thing go too far, but she was curious to see what his next step would be. She wondered what he would say to her. She was excited and pleased; it was a weight off her mind. She walked on slowly and she knew he was close behind her. She stopped at another shop window, and this time when he stopped he was close beside her. Her heart began to beat wildly. It was really beginning to look like an adventure.
'I wonder if he'll ask me to go to a hotel with him. I don't suppose he could afford that. A cinema. That's it. It would be rather fun.'
She looked him full in the face now and very nearly smiled. He took off his hat.
'Miss Lambert, isn't it?'
She almost jumped out of her skin. She was indeed so taken aback that she had not the presence of mind to deny it.
'I thought I recognized you the moment I saw you, that's why I turned back, to make sure, see, and I said to meself, if that's not Julia Lambert I'm Ramsay Macdon-ald. Then you stopped to look in that shop window and that give me the chance to 'ave a good look at you. What made me 'esitate was seeing you in the Edgware Road. It seems so funny, if you know what I mean.'<
br />
It was much funnier than he imagined. Anyhow it didn't matter if he knew who she was. She ought to have guessed that she couldn't go far in London without being recognized. He had a cockney accent and a pasty face, but she gave him a jolly, friendly smile. He mustn't think she was putting on airs.
'Excuse me talking to you, not 'aving been introduced and all that, but I couldn't miss the opportunity. Will you oblige me with your autograph?'
Julia caught her breath. It couldn't be that this was why he had followed her for ten minutes. He must have thought that up as an excuse for speaking to her. Well, she would play up.
'I shall be delighted. But I can't very well give it you in the street. People would stare so.'
'That's right. Look here, I was just going along to 'ave my tea. There's a Lyons at the next corner. Why don't you come in and 'ave a cup too?'
She was getting on. When they'd had tea he'd probably suggest going to the pictures.
'All right,' she said.
They walked along till they came to the shop and took their places at a small table.
'Two teas, please, miss,' he ordered. 'Anything to eat?' And when Julia declined: 'Scone and butter for one, miss.'
Julia was able now to have a good look at him. Though stocky and short he had good features, his black hair was plastered down on his head and he had fine eyes, but his teeth were poor and his pale skin gave him an unhealthy look. There was a sort of impudence in his manner that Julia did not much like, but then, as she sensibly reflected, you could hardly expect the modesty of the violet in a young man who picked you up in the Edgware Road.
'Before we go any further let's 'ave this autograph, eh? Do it now, that's my motto.'
He took a fountain pen from his pocket and from a bulging pocket-book a large card.
'One of our trade cards,' he said. 'That'll do O.K.'
Julia thought it silly to carry the subterfuge to this length, but she good-humouredly signed her name on the back of the card.
'Do you collect autographs?' she asked him with a subtle smile.
'Me? Noa. I think it's a lot of tommy rot. My young lady does. She's got Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks and I don't know what all. Show you 'er photo if you like.'