A Pin to See the Peepshow

by F. Tennyson Jesse

  “That dog of yours … twice he’s come galumphing over the antirrhinums while I’ve bin working. Anyway, you’re late, and your mother wants you to go and get something extra for supper.”

  “He only means it in play. I stayed behind to talk to Miss Tracey. Why do we want anything extra for supper?” Thus Julia replied to all her father’s remarks at once, a habit she had acquired as being the best method of dealing with him. If you gave him his due meed of attention in words, you could do what you liked; she had found that out long ago.

  “I’ve a client coming,” said Mr. Almond importantly, “a business man in a very good position. Wants a flat or a house in this district for him and his wife.”

  “Why’s he coming to supper?”

  “I used to know him at Maldon, when you were a child. When your grandfather was alive and we had a very nice house. He was the son of a friend of mine who was a licensed victualler … Starling.”

  Julia vaguely remembered an old Mr. Starling who had had a public-house in the far-away days before Grandfather had died, before it had been discovered that Grandfather, a retired builder, had sunk all his money in an annuity. … Vaguely, too, she remembered a pimply youth who was the son of old Mr. Starling. He had seemed quite old to the little Julia. Her thoughts, which had leaped to a possible romance, at once fell to boredom.

  “Oh, well, I suppose I’d better see what Mum wants.” Julia went in to the basement dining-room, and flung her books on the table, took a mechanical glance in the mirror, which was framed in beaten copper, with repoussé work, apparently portraying onions at each corner. The room was papered in a dull red which made it dark on the brightest day. “Dignity and Impudence” hung upon one side of the fireplace and “The Stag at Bay” upon the other. Mr. Almond had picked them up cheap at a sale, bird’s-eye maple frames and all. The furniture was of fumed oak, with heart-shaped holes cut in it at the most unlikely spots. It was called Art Nouveau, and Julia was one of the few girls whose parents had an Art Nouveau set of furniture. Julia, being artistic, admired it immensely as well as being proud of it. She despised the Landseers and had herself bought, with pocket-money saved up for the purpose, the photogravure of a young woman with her hair down and her bust emerging from cloudy draperies, called “Epanouissement,” which hung on the opposite wall. Mrs. Almond had always objected to it, and for a long time could never decide whether to sit where she could not see it herself, thus leaving her husband the seat from which he could, or not. Now it had become to her as the rest of the dining-room trappings, and she would probably no more notice where she placed a strange man in relationship to it than she would where he sat in regard to the cruet.

  Julia loved it, she felt a stirring of her own womanhood, something profoundly important and mysterious, when she looked at it.

  She passed it now, however, without a glance, and, going into the little passage, called out to her mother. Mrs. Almond answered her from the kitchen, and Julia went into the dingy little room with its old-fashioned stone sink that always smelt slightly of stale vegetables, and its gas-oven that always seemed to smell a little also.

  Mrs. Almond was peeling potatoes by the table, her black cashmere gown shielded by a print overall, and her spectacles slipping perpetually down her shiny nose whenever she bent her head. She would push them up impatiently with the end of the knife-handle, and go on with her work. How well Julia knew the gesture … she had seen it all her life. Mrs. Almond repeated her husband’s account of the supper guest in complaining accents. How could Julia but be aware of her own intense youth and vitality between these two resigned but querulous failures? The only person who equalled her in strength of life was Bobby.

  “Something in a glass … or a tin. A tongue. Or do you think salmon?”

  “Oh, salmon,” said Julia enthusiastically.

  She whistled to the ecstatic Bobby, and started off on her errand. She went through the top of Heronscourt Park to a “little” grocer’s in Lammerswick Road. She liked going that way, because she had to pass the modern Gothic church of Saint Michael and All Angels, built in red brick where, occasionally, she went with Miss Tracey. The church was described by Julia’s relations as “High.” Devoted celibate parsons, who gave their whole lives to the dissemination of the truth as they saw it, made of the church a focus of beauty in a drab neighbourhood. Unfortunately, Miss Tracey knew the rules of the game—the rules that may often be absurd, but that at least have an effect on human conduct—Julia was only aware of the smell of the incense, of the fine thin curves of the First Pointed Architecture, of the lovely, if at times somewhat sugary, music. Gounod’s Sanctus … Holy, Holy, Ho-o-oly, Lord God Almighty … the boy’s lovely birdlike voice soaring up and up … “And now, oh Father, mindful of the love …” only a hymn, but how profoundly moving … these were the things that Julia took away with her from Saint Michael and All Angels. No measure by which to live … nothing that would make her give up any tempting experience that lay just beyond her nose.

  Miss Tracey was not able to envisage such a state of ignorance as was Julia’s in matters religious. She saw only Julia’s swift response to beauty, and was thrilled by it. Here was a convert! But Julia had no background of dogma which, true or untrue, could at least give bones to her emotion—she was merely appreciative of the unaccustomed loveliness that she met at Saint Michael’s. What it all meant she had no idea. And that it did mean something definite to certain people Julia remained sublimely unaware.

  The cold, empty, early mornings when Miss Tracey, unquestioningly happy, the tip of her straight little nose red, and her heart quiet and warm with faith, trotted to the seven o’clock service, held no part in Julia’s knowledge of life. It was not given to Miss Tracey to realise how completely without what she would have called “groundwork” was Julia’s religious sense. Julia understood nothing except the exquisite pleasure given to her imagination.

  Julia was technically “Church of England,” and that was all she could have told anyone; it was better than being a Dissenter, but perhaps not quite so swagger as being a real Catholic. Beyond this she could have told nothing. On the rare occasions on which she went to church it was because Miss Tracey, instead of going to the little church she usually attended in Chiswick, came to Saint Michael’s, and also because, along with Miss Tracey, there were incense and singing and a feeling of something alive all about her. After all, during the sermon, Julia could always dream her own dreams. …

  And there remained at least the remembrance of these beautiful things whenever Julia passed the grave building, that somehow in its very fabric seemed to stand for something, even if she did not know for what. So she liked to cast a glance at it on her way to the grocer’s.

  Julia bought the tinned salmon, and succumbed to a bar of chocolate cream. Then she walked back more slowly, munching as she went. She loved going through the Park at this hour. The air seemed full of a tender greenish light, the grass was dappled with shadow, Bobby tore happily about playing with his kind, children ran hither and thither, young couples walked slowly arm-in-arm or sat close beside each other upon a bench. There was a feeling of life, of life that grew and burgeoned all about.

  Julia liked also the sight of the cream-hued house, that was so large and stately, where the rich owners of all the Park, then a private garden, before the District Railway had rattled overhead, had once lived. It was now the Public Library where Julia went to change her novels. What sort of life must it have been, to live in that house, drive out in a carriage and pair, have menservants, dress always in sumptuous silk? Julia only vaguely imagined it. In spite of dreams of Italian Princes and Monte Carlo, culled from books, her longings were more sentimental than ambitious. It crossed her mind that it must be lovely to have a huge place for one’s own, to watch the common people staring longingly through the railings, but it did not occur to her as really possible that such a life could ever be hers. At that moment she caught sight of a you
ng couple passing under the trees, arm-in-arm, and foolish absorbed face gazing into foolish absorbed face. Love … the thing one read about, that the Sunday papers had “bits” about, that was what mattered. And Julia began to think about love. It must be wonderful even if you only had a tiny house, as long as there was someone to do the rough work so that you didn’t have to spoil your hands. To have someone who was entirely her own, as Bobby was hers, who only lived for her … that would be wonderful. She arrived at Two Beresford, and, handing in the tin of salmon to her mother, made her escape upstairs too quickly to be asked to stay and help.

  Up in her room, Julia drew a deep breath of pleasure. Here she was alone at last, this place was hers. She locked the door, threw off her hat, her blouse and skirt, and sat down in front of the fumed-oak dressing-table. Beyond it she looked out at the field, and the row of fountain shapes that were the elms. The room was papered with a sky-blue paper patterned with sprays of apple-blossom, rather blotchy but distinctly recognisable. The casement-cloth curtains and bedspread were of the same blue, a blue without depth, that was hard and bright, and threw the eye back upon itself. Obliterating the apple-blossom on the wall at the foot of the bed, where she could lie and look at it, was a picture called “Vertige,” representing a lady in evening dress upon a sofa, and a gentleman with very well-brushed hair leaning over the back of it and pressing a long and passionate kiss on the lady’s upturned mouth. Julia had saved up a long time to buy that picture. On the mantelpiece were half a dozen picture post cards of what were known as “matinée idols,” and also one of the Bishop of London, given to her by Miss Tracey.

  Julia was not a tidy person, and the dressing-table was a litter of powder (the use of which was forbidden at school and greeted with disapproval at home), combs, odds and ends of ribbon, little boxes, and sample bottles of scent which the chemist, who was a friend of Julia’s, used to give her.

  She took up a file and set to work on her nails. She was making the acquaintance of her own body this past six months during which she had begun to grow up, and she knew by now the look of her different nails so well that it seemed to her each had an individuality of its own. Her hands were large but well-shaped, and the nails were oval with clear half-moons which gave her pleasure. But the nail on her left thumb was far better than that on her right, the left being almond-shaped and smooth, while the right was much squarer and had a ribbed band up the middle. Nothing she could do would alter that band of ribbing; it grew steadily, always the same pattern, coming like a strip of silk from a loom, out of the mysterious hidden place in her flesh where the nail was perpetually making itself, and being filed away by Julia at the top. Sometimes a white spot would appear, and would be borne further and further up the nail till it could be filed off, but the ribbing was always the same, always would be. It annoyed her, though it was such a faint and intimate detail that no one but herself would ever notice it; yet at the same time it interested her because, though she could not so have phrased it to herself, its perpetual renewal meant an indestructible permanency that was of the essence of her being.

  Julia filed, creamed, soaked, polished, happily at rest in the fastnesses of her own body and her own room.

  When the nails were finished to her satisfaction, she went to the bathroom, and turning on the geyser, drew off enough hot water to fill the tin basin that stood upon a little spidery stand. She washed to her waist, the lesson of Mary Barnes not having been lost on her receptive mind. Then she combed her shining mane, re-tied it with her Sunday black ribbon, and opening the wardrobe door, looked doubtfully at its contents. The blue? Too stuffy for such a fine evening. It always smelt of cloth, somehow. Then there was only the flowered delaine with the black taffeta waistband and the frill of lace round the base of her throat that made her look like a pierrot. It was schoolgirlish, but, after all, that didn’t really matter; the man who had been young Starling was of no importance, he was married, besides being quite old. So the pink delaine with its innocent sprigs of flowers went on over head, and she changed to her beaded slippers, looked in the glass and carefully applied a thin film of powder. A spot of the sample scent on a clean handkerchief, and she was ready. But Julia did not go downstairs. She knew she ought to help her mother lay the table, but the idea bored her, and although always complaining of her daughter’s selfishness, Mrs. Almond had never taught her how to become anything different from what she was by nature.

  Julia stayed and read The Forest Lovers—entranced, if a little bewildered—in her wickerwork armchair, till she heard the creak and slam of the front gate. She was at the window in time to see a stoutish man come up the little path. Twelve years had made of the weedy youth a prematurely gross man. So much was evident, though his face she could not see for the brim of his bowler-hat. Julia waited till she heard the boom of voices from the sitting-room before she went downstairs; at the last moment she scrubbed her cheeks hard with her handkerchief to make them pink. She was the image of spring as she hesitated for a moment, as though in surprise, in the doorway, then went forward and held out her hand in simple dignity. Julia despised giggling misses.

  Mr. Starling was as dull as she had imagined he would be, though he was not bad-looking in a florid clean-shaven way. He joked with her about her extreme youth when last he had the pleasure of seeing her, he seemed to think it was funny to recall that she had had jam on her face. Mrs. Almond called up the stairs that supper was ready, and Mr. Almond said: “Lead on, Macduff. We wait on ourselves here, you know, Herbert. The maid goes after dinner. Help yourself … it’s Liberty Hall here.”

  Mr. Starling talked a lot about himself at supper. It appeared that he had an invalid wife and wanted a flat so that she would not have stairs to go up and down all day. He was doing well in a business in which he was branch manager—a well-known firm of gentlemen’s outfitters—and though it wouldn’t hurt her to go up and down once a day when she went out, still she needn’t do even that unless she wanted to, for he kept a maid. It was only of importance that she shouldn’t be going up and down all day.

  Mr. Almond suggested Hamlet Gardens Mansions, but it appeared there was no vacancy there at the moment. Julia admired the mansions very much, they were so big and red and had such lovely elm-trees growing in front of them. Mr. Almond thought again and suggested Saint Clement’s Square on the other side of the Chiswick High Road, rather out of the region where his firm operated as a rule, but as a matter of fact, they had a notice-board or two out there. Big old houses that were being turned into “maisonettes.” Julia remembered vaguely that Anne Ackroyd lived there. She had once gone back there with her to tea, and Julia had always remembered the plaster lions that sat bolt upright on either side of each flight of white steps. They were really great darlings, those lions, and reminded her of Bobby.

  Mr. Starling thought highly of the suggestion of Saint Clement’s Square, and the two men made an appointment to meet there the following day. When supper was over, Mr. Almond got out the decanter of whisky, and while Mrs. Almond stayed below to wash up, he led the way to the sitting-room. Julia sat at the table drawing a design for an evening dress, while the two men drank to old times, to each other, to old Mr. Starling, the licensed victualler, who was no more, to the future in Saint Clement’s Square, and to each other again. Julia thought men very dull and disgusting. Not thus would her lover be, not thus would her home or her future appear. Poor, dull, middle-aged people—for of course, though Mr. Starling wasn’t as old as Dad, yet he must be over thirty—her eager youth felt a pang of pity mingled with her impatience.

  She rose and went out into the hall, put on a coat and came back to the sitting-room to call Bobby for his evening run. Mr. Starling looked as though he ought to get to his feet and accompany her. Julia tossed a polite, sketchy refusal over her shoulder.

  “It’s quite all right, Mr. Starling. I only take him down Love Lane.”

  The whisky had had its benevolent effect on Mr. Starling. He smiled g
allantly. “Love Lane, Miss Julia?” It was rather fun being called “Miss Julia.”

  “Yes, that’s what they call the little lane at the end of the road. I don’t know why, you never see anyone in it.”

  “Ah, some day you’ll know why, I expect, won’t she, Almond? Too young for anyone to come a-wooing yet, though.” And Mr. Starling laughed amiably.

  “Joolie’s not thinking of anything like that,” agreed Mr. Almond; “she’s going to learn the fashion-drawing next term. Quite a gift she’s got with her pencil, they tell me.”

  “I believe in young women being able to earn their own living,” approved Mr. Starling. “I’ve no kiddies myself—the wife, you know … but if I had they should all learn a trade, however well-off I was.”

  “That’s right,” said Mr. Almond. Julia tossed her head disdainfully and went down the Bridge of Sighs with Bobby. It was quiet and cool and fragrant in Love Lane after the smoky room. She smelt the fresh, faint odour of an elder-tree, and looked up at the tall sycamores. To walk here with a lover, some day. … Ah, but she wouldn’t be here! She would have escaped somehow before love came to her, she hated the half-tones of her dull home, she wanted to meet love in some other place, a place that was fresh and unspoiled.

  A young moon, thin and clear as mother-of-pearl, lay upon her back high in the heavens, but the clouds were massing about her. It looked as though the fine weather were over for the time being. Even as she waited for Bobby, pursuing his eager and interested way round the base of the solitary lamp-post, Julia felt the first big lazy drop of rain fall upon her up-lifted face. She called to Bobby, who pretended deafness; she sharpened her tone, and he came towards her with an air of surprise as if to say: “Did you call?” Julia took him straight up to her room, calling out a good night to the rest of the household. Long after she was a-bed, she heard that deep rumble of voices that in a small house means a male visitor. The front door banged as the last lovely page of The Forest Lovers was reached, and with a sigh, Julia turned out the gas and settled down to being Isoult la Desirous, roaming the glades of sleep with Prosper.