A Pin to See the Peepshow

by F. Tennyson Jesse

  Julia had always kept the habit of going home, when possible, on the top of the bus, when she could slip on a pair of spectacles under the brim of her little felt hat, and the world would leap into sharp reality for her—a reality of edges and contours such as she seldom knew. Then she could study the faces of the people in lighted windows, the faces of the other people on the top of the bus, and always she would think of them in relation to herself, wondering what she would have been like, married to such and such a man; pondering on the differences there evidently were between her and some strange woman.

  In winter-time, if it were wet weather and she had to go inside the bus, she would notice, with the glow that beauty always gave her, how the reflection of the bus would run alongside through the wet and lighted streets. Like a ghost bus, she thought, with ghost people sitting inside it. Fragments of ghost bus, and fragments of ghost people, cut into strangely by sharp lines and shadows, by passing traffic, by corners of houses, but always there, always keeping up alongside.

  Herbert had no interest in his fellow-humans, and winter and summer he came home by the Underground, behind an evening paper.

  One day in spring, a wet day, but with gleams in the sky, and a fine thin promise of misty green upon the twigs and branches of the trees, Julia arrived home rather exhilarated by the soft rain upon her face, and the uncertain gusty weather, than tired by it. She had had a successful day at the shop, too; had coaxed a difficult customer into buying a couple of frocks, and had succeeded in selling a hat to a “woman off the street,” as the shop parlance had it, when describing new customers who, struck by something in the window, came for the first time into l’Etrangère.

  Success was vital to Julia’s well-being. She glowed with it. It always enabled her to triumph over fatigue. She put her key into the latch and found Herbert had arrived home before her, and had had his tea; but as she patted him gaily on the shoulder—an unwonted attention for her—and even fetched his slippers and his pipe, he looked at her with the ever-ready sullen suspicion at work in his little steel-coloured eyes.

  “You seem very pleased with yourself,” he observed shortly.

  “I am pleased with myself,” said Julia. “I’ve been very clever to-day. If you like, I’ll make you some toasted cheese for supper.”

  “You know perfectly well my stomach won’t stand that sort of thing any more,” complained Herbert. “Besides, there are going to be people here.”

  “People, what people?” Julia turned to stare at him, as she was leaving the room.

  “Oh, only those relations of yours, as usual. But Elsa has got hold of a young man—first time and last, I should think. Anyway, they want to amuse him playing cards, so they are bringing him along.”

  “Oh, well,” said Julia pacifically. “You like cards, too, don’t you? I expect it’ll cheer you up.”

  She ran upstairs, and as she changed into a clever little black frock that she knew would make Elsa look extremely undistinguished, she herself felt quite a little glow of interest at the thought of meeting anybody new. Life had been the same for such a long time now.

  Elsa arrived with her father and mother and Mrs. Almond. That night Julia had to admit, with a little shock, that the kid wasn’t bad-looking, after all. Her hair, which she still refused to cut, was arranged in a new way; the long, colourless plaits were bound in whorls, like snails’ shells, over each ear, and Elsa had a little colour in her cheeks. That’s probably because of the young man, thought Julia wickedly.

  Elsa introduced him, with some giggling, with the remark: “You’ll never remember when you must have seen him last, will she, Leonard?”

  Julia screwed up her short-sighted eyes and gazed at him in an effort to remember. No, she couldn’t have met him on any of her business trips. There was something swaggering and carefree in his walk. Could he have been a sailor perhaps, of course an officer, she added hastily to herself, on one of the cross-Channel steamers? But then she had never talked to any.

  She looked back at the war years, her years of experimenting, so unsatisfactorily, save with Alfie, and realised with a sudden shock that this man was too young to have been in the war, that he was younger than she was.

  “You won’t remember me,” said the young man, “and I suppose I can’t rightly say I remember you. But we were at school together—must have been, so Elsa says, when we get on to dates.”

  “Of course, he’d be much younger than you, Julia,” said Elsa, “but I know you said there were little boys at school when you were there.”

  “I left when I wasn’t sixteen myself,” said Julia, “and, of course, as Elsa says, you’d be in a different class.”

  “My name’s Leonard Carr. And I do seem to remember hearing about a Julia when I was there. You must have made a splash in that school!”

  Leonard Carr? … Julia seemed to remember something also. She “thought back” with a violent effort to those days that seemed not so much far away, as in a different life. And suddenly a memory swam up in her mind, the memory of that day at school when she had taken the “little ones.” Yes, this boy must be several years younger than she was, and yet he didn’t seem it, somehow.

  Though she could look plain enough on her bad days, she could still look radiant as a bride. This young man was strong, self-assertive, with a high-held head and thick curly hair, and bright brown eyes. She remembered the peep-show, with its fairy effect, and she remembered a sturdy assertive boy. The peep-show had been in a cardboard box. She told him about it, and he laughed pleasantly.

  “I don’t remember that. Done too much since, I expect! I went to that other school—the Academy for Young Gentlemen—or whatever they called it, but then dad’s business didn’t do so well, and, anyway, I don’t think I was cut out for an Academy for Young Gentlemen, so I ran away to sea.”

  “You ran away to sea!” echoed Julia delightedly, all the romance of the world ringing for her in that one phrase, losing her faint feeling of disappointment that he should have forgotten the peep-show.

  “Yes, I’d a pretty bad time in what’s called a Geordie, a collier in the coastwise trade. But it was aeroplanes that I was always keen on, and I got into Halton.”

  “Halton?” said Julia.

  “Yes, an aircraft apprentice, you know. I’m a leading aircraftsman now, an L.A.C. I’m a fitter-mechanic, but I’m back at sea because I was posted on an aircraft-carrier.”

  Julia felt hopelessly ignorant. What on earth was an aircraft-carrier? He saw her vague look, and laughed.

  “H.M.S. Thunderous, that’s my ship; she belongs to the Atlantic Fleet. It’s a great life. We go to the Mediterranean, and round Scotland, and all over the place.” He put both his hands on his hips, and stared down at her with his bright, shallow eyes. “Have you ever been up?” he asked.

  “No, I’d love to. I thought I’d fly to Paris next time I went over.”

  “Oh, that!” He dismissed it with scorn. “You might as well go in a motor-bus. That’s not flying.”

  “It’s quite flying enough for her, and too much to my mind,” said Herbert.

  She knew in another moment Herbert would say that if we had been meant to fly we should have been given wings, and she felt that was more than she could bear.

  “I do envy you,” she said. “I’m sure it’s a much better life for a man than going into business.”

  “You bet it is,” said young Carr. “Why, I’m only twenty now, and look at all the places I’ve seen—Gib., and France, and Italy and Malta.”

  “How lovely,” said Julia. But to herself she was thinking: Only twenty—and she was twenty-six and a bit, almost seven years older than this man who had been about the world, and who knew about things of which she had never heard.

  Twenty! Julia thought it out rapidly. She knew a lot of things, that he didn’t know either, but it all seemed to her very useless. What would a man like this
think of her triumphs in getting lingerie, or bead-bags more cheaply than anyone else in Paris, and getting hold of a so-called “exclusive” model? Why, he’d laugh at the whole thing; and who could blame him? He was a man; not like Herbert, who was just in the gents’ tailoring.

  “We’ve made great friends,” said Elsa, in her sharp little voice. “His dad’s still living here, you see, and, of course, he knew daddy … and your mother,” she threw in as an afterthought, “so we’ve been going to the pictures together.”

  “That must be very nice for you,” said Julia mechanically. “Beer or whisky and soda?”

  “Beer for me,” said the new-comer robustly, “anyway, to begin with. Fellows who don’t go a bit slow at first when they’re on shore are asking for trouble. Mind you, I don’t say I’ll say ‘no’ to a whisky and soda later.”

  Julia laughed. “You’re hedging, like all men,” she accused him. “Herbert?”

  Herbert was already unscrewing bottles, his face more cheerful. Obviously, this rather forthcoming young man was attached to Elsa. Besides, he must be years younger than Julia, poor old girl, though he must admit that she could still put up as good a show as anybody else. And without all that muck on her face that the customers at the shop used.

  They played whist, and as usual Uncle George conducted a post-mortem, and Mrs. Almond cried a little, very gently. Herbert argued that every card he had played was perfectly right, and Leonard Carr laughed and said it was only a game, anyway, so what did it matter?

  This Herbert was not prepared to concede. Anything, according to Herbert, that was worth doing was worth doing well; and he stated emphatically this remarkably original aphorism.

  Julia, who did not play whist, and who would not read because it meant wearing glasses, sat by the fire with Bobby until it was time to hand round sandwiches and offer whiskies and sodas. Mrs. Almond had her usual glass of stout. Elsa girlishly remarked that she never could bear anything to drink, and might she have a little milk, perhaps a cup of tea?

  At last they all left, with many hand-shakings and remarks on the weather and hopes that they would meet again soon.

  Julia felt the added vitality that young Carr’s presence had given her, tingling through her as she tidied up the sitting-room and made ready for bed. Unfortunately, this touch of brilliance about her, rare in this last hard-working year or so, always awoke Herbert to the desire which she detested in him. On this evening, by the time she had quarrelled with him, refused him what he called his rights, not even giving in for the sake of peace, all glow had left her. She felt depressed, even saddened. What was the use of anything? If she was not attractive, nobody looked at her, and she couldn’t do her job at the shop. If she was, then there was this perpetual struggle with Herbert. To think of all the people who had been torpedoed in the war; and all the people that had bombs dropped on them, just as far behind the lines as Herbert—why could not a bomb have dropped on Herbert? Why, she knew women who had lost two or sometimes even three husbands, and all had died; none of that nasty divorce business. And here was Herbert looking as solid as Saint Paul’s.

  Julia gazed round the room for which she had given up so much, and for the freedom of which she still had to fight. How sick she was of it. The little glazed chintz which had so excited her when first she clad the room in its new trappings. … Everything now had the blurred and hazy look that fabrics cannot avoid after years in London air.

  What a fool she had been to marry Herbert. Why couldn’t she have trusted life a little longer? Why hadn’t she had the energy and the courage to break with her mother and the whole of the rest of the household at Two Beresford? But how would she have lived if she had? Girls earning as little as she had been earning simply had to live at home. Oh, well, it was no good going into that sort of thing now, but it was bitter to see Anne Ackroyd, see her content in her chosen profession, watch the play of her brilliant but accurate mind. It was bitter to see Marian’s progression from affair to affair with no one thinking any the worse of her. … It was bitter to see Ruby still talking respectability and virginity, and still always in love for the first time. It was bitter this evening to see Elsa suddenly grown attractive—in a commonplace little way enough—but still she had those lovely years of the early twenties in front of her, the years that Julia felt she herself had wasted.

  The shop? After all, if she died to-morrow, what would it matter to the shop? They would miss her at first, yes, for she was good at her job, she knew, but no one was indispensable; and it was for that last and most pathetic delusion of human egoism that Julia still hankered. To be all in all to somebody. Just like the people she read about when she was a young girl, in the books she had taken out of Heronscourt Park library. To be to somebody what Gipsy had been to her sailor husband, and what, if rumour were true, Gipsy was being now to an elderly married man, whose wife refused to divorce him, but who had lived apart from him for years. Oh yes, Gipsy, in whom she had so believed, thought Julia bitterly, had not been able to stay the course. Her son was in the navy, and she was always alone in her flat when he came home on leave; but everyone knew that Gipsy had given up the unequal struggle of trying to make a comfortable living honestly at last; and that why one always saw her on first nights was because she had someone to pay; someone who liked to be seen with her, who had given her a lovely car driven by a chauffeur.

  Not that Julia grudged Gipsy any of it. What she felt was the unfairness that she herself could not behave in the same way. Just because Gipsy belonged to the class of life where a liaison was taken as a matter of course, she was able to indulge in one. Nobody imagined that she loved her elderly banker much, but she was fond of him and he was devoted to her—finding peace in her presence after years of stormy matrimony.

  At least, the banker’s wife would never dream of turning up at the shop and insulting Gipsy; always when goaded too far Herbert held this threat over Julia’s head. She was his wife, wasn’t she? Well, one of these fine days he would teach her that a wife’s place was the home. He would come into that blooming bandbox of hers and give her a bit of his mind. That’s what he’d do. Oh, Julia knew with a sick certainty that if pushed far enough he would do it, and that all her years would go for nothing. There could be no scandal, no rows at the shop.

  Julia, her victory over Herbert won, went to bed gloomily enough, but next evening all was changed for her again. As she was leaving l’Etrangère’s—she had stayed behind wrestling with the accounts—Julia became aware that someone was pacing to and fro a little farther down the street. She put the key into her bag, as she pulled the door after her, and started to walk briskly in the opposite direction.

  “Evening,” said Leonard Carr’s voice. “Elsa told me that was where your place was, so I thought as I was coming back this way …” The voice trailed off a little, and Julia looked at him severely. To herself she said: He might have thought of a better one than that! And what cheek, anyway! He needed taking down a peg or two. But directly she found herself meeting the glance of his bright shallow eyes, seeing the light of the street lamp upon his curling hair, and on his smiling mouth, as he stood hesitating before her, severity vanished.

  “I thought you’d be out half an hour ago,” said Leonard, dropping into easy step beside her. “I hoped you’d come and have some tea with me.”

  “Oh, I can’t,” said Julia quickly. “I’m late as it is. Herbert doesn’t like it if I’m not back.”

  “You’re too good to him,” said Leonard, “you spoil him. Why shouldn’t you have a little amusement? It seems to me you work hard enough!”

  “Herbert doesn’t like going out at night,” murmured Julia.

  “Well, that’s no reason why you shouldn’t like it. Look! Ring him up. Make an excuse, and come and have something to eat with me, and we’ll go to the early house at the pictures. It won’t make you really late. There’s someone to give him his supper, isn’t there?”

&nbs
p; “Oh yes, there’s the maid.”

  Julia hesitated. It was very tempting. It was so long since she had had such an offer made to her, except in the cheery impersonal fashion of Mr. Coppinger. Again she was struck by a strange likeness to Alfie in this young man, although Alfie had had something about his whole aspect that Leonard lacked. And yet Leonard, in spite of his youth, was very much of a man. Her instincts told her that. And suddenly she remembered Alfie, and a little note of warning sounded in her mind like a bell, and was gone.

  “I don’t think I’ll come to-night, thank you,” she said quickly. “Why don’t you ask Elsa? I’m sure she’d love to go.”

  “I will,” he said easily. “Let me see, we go back on the same bus, don’t we?”

  Julia had the poor satisfaction of sitting beside him during that long homeward ride along the north side of the Park, and down through Shepherd’s Bush to Heronscourt Park and Young’s Corner; knowing that through her own fault he was going to take that silly, giggling little Elsa out, while she herself was going back to the usual dreary evening with Herbert.

  The next night the family came in from Two Beresford, Leonard Carr with them, as before.

  Leonard had brought a lot of snapshots of the Mediterranean with him, and he sat between Elsa and Julia on the sofa displaying them.

  “Oh, I like the one of Naples best, Leonard,” said Elsa. “Show her the one you showed me the other night.”

  Elsa was, in fact, determined to show Julia that she was a great friend of Leonard’s, and that the snapshots were not new to her. This plan had its drawback because it enabled Leonard to devote most of his time to Julia and to spend longer over the photographs with her. When Elsa got up to get herself some lemonade, he said to her in a low voice: