“You poor child … let’s say no more about to-day. I often think about all your difficulties, Julia.”
“I know you do … I’m a pig … I—I’m sorry …”
The exquisite emotional luxury of saying “I’m sorry” to Miss Tracey! And yet such was Julia’s honesty with herself, however much she might have to lie to others, that she felt guilty and unhappy at having sacrificed Bobby, even though it was only in words, which couldn’t hurt him, and though she knew she would find him lively as ever on her return home. She could not have put it into words, but she did have an uneasy feeling that she had betrayed him emotionally, that in some queer way he would suffer hurt, though she knew that to be nonsense.
Homewards
The tram shrieked and swayed on its way back to the Goldhawk Road. Julia, this time seated snugly on the long plush seat within, remained rapt away from her surroundings. The strong thrill of that day was over, no longer was she leaping towards it with the keen anticipation of morning; rather she felt the acridly-sweet relaxation of fulfilment. The faces of the people in the tram promised no interest to her first quick glance, and she was free to go on with her own secret life.
She had money, she didn’t have to work for her living. She was staying with Miss Tracey, who was her companion, at a hotel in Monte Carlo, where they had Table d’Hôte. Miss Tracey was, of course, Julia’s chief object in life, and that although she, Julia, had much to do in which Miss Tracey could not share. Expeditions in the surrounding countryside, that was too full of brigands for Miss Tracey’s sweet blond timorousness, took Julia most of the day. Then she would come home to the Table d’Hôte and Miss Tracey, to sink into the sweetness of perfect companionship. In her own family circle and all its ramifications, Julia knew only of raucous voices and querulous bickerings, and she dreamed always of a life where no one spoke harshly. With Miss Tracey there could be nothing ugly, only thrilling disagreements and “making-up.” They would read every new novel and discuss it, they would be happy just because they were together and could exclude other people. Julia never envisaged a personal relationship that didn’t exclude other people—that is to say, they would all love her, but she would love only one—it wouldn’t be love if it weren’t like that. Until she met Miss Tracey it had always been the image of some wonderful man who had given her the key to this enclosed garden; now, occasionally, she forgot Miss Tracey and drifted off once again to that vision of the perfect hero, but for the most part she was too absorbed in the actual passion of the moment for an imaginary male to obtrude. Julia was not lying to herself, she was caught up, in her last months of innocence, by the purest and sweetest emotion she had yet known.
Now that she was in Monte Carlo she knew how right she had been to risk all on going abroad with Miss Tracey. It was funny, that although she was obviously interested in nobody but Miss Tracey, people, especially gentlemen, would notice her. One—an Italian prince, called Sarasinesca—actually made her acquaintance. He was at first puzzled by her … there she was, so young, so beautiful, with such lovely clothes, yet only caring to sit in the sun and read the classics with Miss Tracey. … Could it be that he thought Miss Tracey, for all the wonderfulness that Julia knew she possessed, a little dull? Did people like Prince Sarasinesca perhaps marvel at Julia’s kindness and self-abnegation? No, no, cried Julia’s heart, suddenly speaking genuinely against the egoism of her imagination. But imagination, in the form of Sarasinesca, came back. Yes, he did marvel, though he seemed to respect and admire Julia the more for her oddness. It was Miss Tracey who was jealous of the Italian, who made quite a scene about him. Julia merely replied with simple dignity: “If you can’t trust me …” Miss Tracey broke down and cried, but not till Julia herself had wept bitterly. And as the dream went on, somehow Miss Tracey was no longer there, never had been there.
Julia, in fact, far from being rich, was the typical Cinderella. She was companion to a rich tyrannical old lady, and she didn’t have too good a time, because snobbish people treated her as though she were a servant. Then, one night, when the old lady was giving a dinner-party, one of the guests, a countess, fell ill and couldn’t come. Julia was ordered to put in an appearance. She dressed with great trepidation in her only evening frock, a simple black lace. A hush fell on the room as she appeared. The Table d’Hôte was suspended. The Prince, who had not expected to see her, grew pale beneath his tan. All round the room men put up their monocles to gaze at the new beauty.
The tyrannical old lady was suddenly very proud of her, but a lot of the younger women were jealous. Next day she walked out among the white marble palaces of which Monte Carlo is composed, bands were playing, flowers blooming, ruined gamblers, to whom the beauty of their surroundings was as nothing, were creeping away to commit suicide. One of these latter caught sight of her, and throwing away his revolver, he came up to her and took her hand and said: “I can’t die while there is someone like you in the world.” She saved the gambler, body and soul. Sarasinesca, who up till then had been jealous, said to her that never again could he doubt such an angel of goodness. He fought a duel in her honour, and afterwards went down on his knees to her in the beautiful garden and asked her to be his wife. He spoke English perfectly, but it didn’t matter, because Julia spoke every language. She replied in Italian: “But you know I am only a poor companion?” And he answered: “You are the only woman in the world.”
Seven Stars … Seven Stars … hurry off the tram, please. Seven Stars. … Julia started to her feet. How maddening, she had gone ever so much too far, and would have to walk back. Her books were scattered over the ridged flooring of the tram. People stared at her as she groped for them, not as the people in Monte Carlo had stared, but derisively. A man in a bowler hat leaned forward and helped her. He was kind, but his face was crimson with embarrassment behind his strawy moustache, at drawing so much attention to himself. At last Julia swung herself into the roadway, her books under the wing-sleeve that made the holding of a parcel a little difficult. She went scurrying back down the road towards Heronscourt Place, which she had to pass through to get into the quiet little cul-de-sac where the villa stood. She walked without thinking, the joy gone out of her. Her day was over.
Not till she found herself in bed at night—when she would probably be too sleepy to imagine anything—could she live either of her real lives again—that which was a projection of her life with Miss Tracey, or that other which was woven purely of reminiscences of novels and her own desires. Now, going down into the Goldhawk Road, she was merely returning to the existence she ignored as much as possible, and daily allowed to slip over the surface of her consciousness like water, remaining unobservant of its tides and currents.
Book One
i
Home
Home wasn’t so bad, though Julia lived only in escape from the dull and somewhat sordid facts of life as it had to be lived within its confines. The house itself was horrible, a thin wedge like a slice of red-rinded cheese. Built of brick, it was semi-detached, and had a basement. There were only two rooms and a tiny slip that was hardly more than a partitioning-off of the end of a passage on each of its three floors. “Difficult to work,” with all these stairs, as Mrs. Almond always complained. In the basement there were the dining-room, kitchen and scullery; on the next floor Mr. Almond’s so-called “workroom,” where he busied himself with a fret-saw and bits of wood after office hours; the bedroom he and his wife shared, and the sitting-room and hall. On the top, or attic floor, were Julia’s own room, which was in front over the sitting-room, the box-room and bathroom. The Almonds did not keep a maid who slept in, nor did they so arrange life as to have visitors. Mrs. Almond’s brother, George Beale, and his wife and child came to spend the day every other Sunday, but never to spend the night. No one, after the daily woman had “done” Julia’s room in the morning, ever went up there, save Julia herself. It was her own, and she loved it fiercely. It stood for something very special in her lif
e, for decency and freedom, above all for possession.
The house itself was certainly ugly, even to its trimmings, of stone acanthus leaves—which Julia rather liked—but its surroundings were delicious, though she was too used to them to be aware of their charm.
London is a town of odd corners, but Beresford Villas stood in one of the oddest. To get to them one passed down the side of Heronscourt Place, that quiet spot, giving upon the park, and there stood the two tall, thin red-brick villas, with only their own gardens and the tarred fence, and a field with two cows in it. At the far side of the field a row of plumy elms reared their fountain shapes against the western sky. It was difficult to believe that beyond them again was a row of houses and the roaring trams of the Goldhawk Road where it curved down to Young’s Corner. For Beresford Villas were in a quiet green backwater, enclosed on the northern and western sides by the Goldhawk Road, whilst the Hammersmith Road, straight as a ruler, made the southern boundary. To the east was only Heronscourt Park, with its richness of trees. The short strip of road where Beresford Villas stood, ended in a black fence, in which an opening led to a narrow lane known locally as Love Lane, also bordered with tarred fencing and shaded by sycamore trees, that Julia loved above all trees because of the delicate wing-shaped seeds that someone told her, when she was a small child, were the wings sloughed by fairies when they grew a new pair. Love Lane led to one of the old-fashioned roads of small houses with painted iron verandas and French windows that ran between Goldhawk Road and the Park. The very presence of Victoria, of an age when folk were content to be quiet and keep themselves to themselves, to stay in that class of life in which they had been born, seemed to hang over the few acres of small roads and meek houses, and also of rich houses standing in their own gardens, which bordered Heronscourt Park. Not a motor was ever seen, save an occasional taxi with luggage. Till one reached the main roads with their trams, the age of George V never impinged upon the mind.
Day after day, during the rest of the summer term, Julia came back to Two Beresford (as it was always called in the Almond family) feeling that never was there such a place so quiet or a house so dreary. With books under her arm, hope in her mind, and Miss Tracey in her memory, she arrived at Two Beresford, and went up the arch of grey steps that curved over the basement to the front door. The Bridge of Sighs, she had always called it, since Miss Tracey had described to her a Lunn’s Tour in Northern Italy.
Julia hated her little Bridge of Sighs, for there had been one dreadful time, soon after going to Two Beresford, when Mr. Almond had been unable to afford a daily woman, and Julia had had to clean those steps. She had done it with indignation burning within her, early in the morning, so that the next-door neighbours could not see her at her degrading task. Mr. Almond had seen many reverses in fortune—hence the sketchiness of Julia’s education—but now he was well established, in his quiet, meek little way, as head clerk at the House and Estate Office near Shepherd’s Bush.
When Julia let herself into the narrow hall she was greeted by the stored-up smell of all the meals that had ever been cooked in the house, a smell rather like the well-loved one of school, but that gave her no pleasure. Sometimes her mother would hear her and call out to her from the kitchen, sometimes her father’s querulous voice would be raised from his “workroom,” or, on fine evenings, from the garden in which he took great pride. Julia always tried to come in as quietly as possible, because one or other of her parents, or both, invariably wanted her to do something—to go on an errand, to help with the supper, to weed or to water.
And invariably Julia wanted to go up to her room, just because it was hers, something that belonged exclusively to her—the only thing save Bobby the mongrel, that did. Bobby was rather a rival of the room in Julia’s mind. For it was almost impossible for her to slip into the house without his eager heart being aware of that loved entry, and he would come wildly rushing down the hall, leaping up at her and talking in the high tenor that seemed to issue from the top of his brown head. Julia loved him so much that she always forgave him for drawing attention to her arrival.
For the first few evenings after the great day of the Order Mark, Julia had felt a little guilty at meeting Bobby’s shining yellow eyes. She still had that odd little feeling that she had betrayed him, which of course was nonsense, as Bobby couldn’t know what she had said to Miss Tracey, and it couldn’t possibly have hurt him. Nevertheless, Julia now regretted the impulse that had led her to seize upon the only plank that had floated into view on that occasion when all seemed lost. For one thing, how could she now ask Miss Tracey to tea under the elder-tree in the back garden, the lovely heavy tree with discs of creamy blossom? Bobby, shut in the scullery, would yet make his presence known by loud wails, shattering any notion of his premature demise, even if Mr. and Mrs. Almond did not give the whole show away by some innocent but indiscreet remark. And there was another reason—Julia, in spite of the fantastic tales she spun for others, in spite of the day-dreams into which she retreated, had a curious honesty with herself. This honesty seemed tarnished by having made the helpless Bobby a victim of a fantasy.
For, of the whole, Bobby was dearer to her than anything but her room, dearer even than Miss Tracey. Somewhere deep in Julia’s mind lay a streak of hard sense, that told her Miss Tracey was of the things that pass, that new interests would come along. Miss Tracey was the vehicle for emotion, all that Julia had; she gave the glimpse of wider horizons save those to be found in novels, but she was not emotion’s self.
Already, when she had gone “up West”—a term always used by the Almonds and their kind, although, as a matter of fact, it meant going due east—Julia had been noticed by one or two young men, and by one or two not so young, as she went along the street. Her shining vitality lit up the places where she passed. And this contact of eyes, that swift flicker of knowledge between her and men with whom she did not exchange a word—she even veiled her glance with a sort of glassy impassivity—yet excited Julia. On a day when this fleeting but flame-like admiration of the streets had been hers, Miss Tracey ceased to count. But always she was anxious to meet Bobby—Bobby, with his brown wrinkled forehead, his white jowl tipped with a chocolate-coloured nose that twitched with delight, his white shirt-front and gloves and boots that were all so absurdly neat. Even his tail had a perfectly symmetrical white tip to it, as though it had been dipped in a pot of white paint. Nobody knew to what breed or breeds his parents had belonged, but Bobby was so essentially himself that it seemed unnecessary for him to be of any species, other than that of dog, just dog. And Julia loved him, not so much for himself as because he loved her.
He was a symbol of something that, like her bedroom, was hers entirely, just as Miss Tracey was the symbol of adventure. Bobby was even better than her bedroom, for she could make his ears droop by a slight note of disapproval in her voice, could bring back the resilience to his body and the light to his amber eyes by a lightening of that note. Bobby was an instrument on which she could play, she could always be sure of his reactions. Bobby could never accuse her of lack of honesty, to him she was simply God. His utter trust made something melt in Julia, made her feel warm and protective. That was why she felt guilty on meeting his shining eyes, and she still was nervous lest, to pay her out, whatever Power there was might not cause Bobby to be run over. … Julia’s idea of the Deity, in so far as she had one at all, was of someone who listened behind doors and tried to trip her up over her own words. She had lied about Bobby, she might be punished through Bobby.
Julia wanted passionately to be honest; she thought wistfully of a sphere in which such a luxury would be possible, where everything was so perfect and people admired her so that she didn’t have to lie or even to make-believe. Each day for the rest of the week after the Order Mark she met Bobby with a sense of relief that he was still there. After that, she began to forget, merely remembering in the back of her mind that she couldn’t ask Miss Tracey to tea. That was a pity, but she save
d up her pocket money and took Miss Tracey to tea one Saturday at Fuller’s in Kensington High Street instead. And Miss Tracey actually took her to lunch at her club, full of clever University women like Miss Tracey herself. This was one Saturday before going to a pit, and it was Julia’s sixteenth birthday, when she felt herself to be grown-up at last.
Thus Julia’s last term passed rapidly enough, and she thrust to the back of her mind the thought that end of term meant farewell to school and to Miss Tracey. Still more did she thrust to the back of her mind the thought that, after all, Miss Tracey couldn’t have gone on being the chief thing in her life for ever … not now that life was beginning to open out before her like a painted fan. She was sometimes seized with misery that this phase of life she knew and loved was coming to an end, but more often the thought played about the shining future.
One day towards the end of term, Julia let herself into the little hall, sure that her father would be working in the garden, so that, if Bobby did not hear her, and her mother were in the kitchen, she might be able to slip upstairs to her room and give herself a manicure, an art which she had begun to practise. She wanted to have pretty pink nails like Miss Tracey’s. Lady’s nails.
But Bobby hurled himself, shrieking, out of the sitting-room, and, taking her hand in his mouth, began to lead her, still talking in his high, excited whine, towards the back stairs; not because he particularly wanted to go that way, but because it was the easiest direction in which to move in that confined space. Two simultaneous calls of “Juli-er …” and “Joo-ool …” came from below. Julia sighed as she took her hand from Bobby’s mouth and fondled his satiny brown head. She went down the stairs with Bobby, and straight out into the garden by the side door.
Mr. Almond was working in the garden “pinching out” the snapdragons. He lifted an irritated face at her approach. He was a thin, weedy little man, with pale, prominent blue eyes, and a chewed moustache, stained with nicotine. His expression was querulous, but honest and kindly enough. His only legacy to Julia, a brown brightness of fine glossy hair, had all but disappeared, and a few greying wisps, usually trained like feathers across his bald head, now hung limp and damp over his eyes.
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