“I know,” said Julia. “But how can we?”
“You don’t understand,” said Leo. His face was flushed after the wine he had drunk, and he seemed to Julia a creature of the light, from the wave of his thick hair—which her fingers longed to touch—to the brightness of his eyes and mouth, and the warm pressure of his hands.
“We can’t,” she repeated dully. “We can’t.”
“I don’t believe in ‘can’t.’ Wait until I get back again.”
“You’ll have forgotten about me by then.”
“Oh no, I shan’t,” he said. “I’m going to write to you for one thing, and you’re going to write to me.”
“Herbert would see the letters.”
“Oh, I’ll just write a polite and friendly one to Saint Clement’s Square; but there must be somewhere else I can write? What about the shop?”
“No.” Julia shook her head. “Mrs. Danvers doesn’t like us to have private letters there. Besides, it might be opened; they might think it was business.”
“What’s the best post-office for you?” he asked. “I can write poste restante.”
Julia’s eyes shone. This was romance indeed. She thought it over for a minute.
“Wimpole Street’s the nearest,” she said, “but it’s the wrong way of the stuff for me, so to speak. Wigmore Street would be the best. You see, I could take it on my way home, or on my way to work.”
“What shall I write to you … what name?”
“I don’t know, my own name, I suppose. It’s uncommon enough; nobody else would get it—Miss J. Almond.”
“Very well. … Miss J. Almond,” he said, rising to his feet and looking down at her. “Now we’re going to have this last dance together before we go home.”
Before we go home, echoed Julia’s heart as they danced. If only it could be true. Already she was seeing Leo less as the wild and free young man that she had described him at Frascati’s. Already she was wishing that they were, indeed, going home together. But then she, Julia, was different. She wouldn’t have made home a cage. She would have made it a place that Leo loved to come to. She shook her head a little impatiently. It’s no good; no one can rearrange life; there was always something just wrong somewhere. She must just enjoy this while she had it. It was fun, and had lifted her out of the dull rut of her days, and given her back some of the old uplift of the spirit.
“Where shall I write to you?” she asked, as they sat down again at their table and Leo called for his bill.
“To my ship, care of the G.P.O.,” he said, “that always finds me.”
“I wonder what sort of letters you want,” said Julia, as she wrapped her cloak about her.
“I want the sort you’ll write,” he told her, grinning like a schoolboy.
“Oh, you’re hopeless,” said Julia. “You’ve an answer for everything.”
They went back by Underground because of the time. Leo saw her safely across the road to the corner of Saint Clement’s Square, then he withdrew her into the dark shadow of a tree.
“Julia,” he said, “I shan’t see you again till. … Julia. …”
She lifted her face to his, and for the first time since the far-off days of Alfie she felt her body respond naturally and swiftly. Her fingers tightened on his arms.
“Oh, Leo, why are you going?”
“I don’t know. We ought to have done this before. I’ll let you know directly I get back. I must hurry now, Julia. I have to get down to Portsmouth.”
“Is there a train so late?”
“I expect so; if not I’ll jump a lorry. So long as I’m there by the morning it’s all right.”
“Wait a minute.” She clung to him. “You’ll write me before your ship sails? To Wigmore Street?”
“Yes, I’ll write.”
“I’ll send you a wire,” she promised him. “You might not get a letter. Oh, Leo. …” They kissed again, more deeply, then parted, and she saw his figure with its easy, swinging walk become one with the shadows and the blurred lines towards the main road.
She went slowly down to her house. Her legs felt strangely weak, and yet her body was clamorously alive. If Herbert tried any of that funny stuff to-night, she would murder him.
She went up between the grinning plaster lions, let herself in softly at the outer door, and then went quietly up the stairs to her own door. She put the key very gently into the lock and crept into the darkened hall. The steady thump, thump, thump of the tail against the floor told her that Bobby lay there waiting for her. He could no longer jump all over her with the old excitement, but she never came into the flat, or, indeed, into a room where he was, without that thump, thump thump greeting her ears even if it were in the dark.
She turned on the light, and went down on her knees beside him as he whimpered, and waved his white paw in the air to her. She kissed him between the shining yellow eyes and led him upstairs. On the outer landing she paused and listened. Herbert’s snores, long and rhythmic, came from the back bedroom. He knew, by now, that if he went to sleep in Julia’s room she would simply take the back bedroom for herself; and he had learnt that it was better to make his demands of her when he really wanted them satisfied rather than to irritate her by his sleeping presence.
Julia and Bobby passed into the front bedroom. She shut the door quietly, and as quietly bolted it, to be on the safe side. She lay awake most of the night, her hungry pulses clamorous as she had not known them for a long time. Then towards dawn she fell asleep and dreamed uneasily a dream in which the blind Apollo in the Square and Alfie and Leo were all somehow inextricably mixed together. Somehow they kept changing from one to another, and yet always maintained a continuity of personality.
Julia entered upon a new phase of existence, a phase of building up the most dangerous relationship in the world—that spun of words and, worse still, of words put on paper. As the weeks went by she lived more and more for her letters to Leo and his answers to them. They were getting to know each other, she felt, in a far more real and true way than they would have had they been together. This, she felt convinced, was the right way to begin a relationship.
Her hair, her skin, even her eyes, seemed to take on an added brightness as the summer months drew on. Herbert used to stare at her suspiciously sometimes. She was so obviously a woman with a secret happiness, and yet what could it be? That young Leonard Carr was tossing about somewhere off Scotland, he knew that much. She had only had one polite letter, and a picture postcard, as far as Herbert knew; and yet he felt more than ever before that Julia was escaping him, that she had escaped; that her brightness, that glow about her, which was what had always enchanted him, had slipped hopelessly through his grasp. He couldn’t put it into words, but he was dimly aware of the fact.
Nevertheless, thank goodness, that young Carr had joined his ship again. An unsatisfactory sort of young fellow; played fast and loose with all women as far as Herbert could see. Was supposed to be courting Elsa. Then, apparently, got an infatuation for Julia, and though he laughed and joked with Elsa, he never bothered about being alone with her at all. And now, apparently, he had gone off and bothered just as little about Julia. Probably he had seen that he, Herbert, would stand no nonsense. Good riddance, too, thought Herbert. Probably Julia had flirted with him a little, because she was always down on that kid Elsa, and wanted to show her that she could take her young man away from her. Women were like that—such was Herbert’s honest conviction.
Perhaps he did get jealous for nothing, made too much of a few dances and cinemas. Julia seemed as happy now that the fellow had gone, anyway, and it was a consolation to Herbert that if the happiness had nothing to do with himself, it at least had nothing to do with Leonard.
And Julia went on her way in a dream, more vivid than she had ever known. Even the shop had lost some of its objective reality for her, and no longer did she stare at the lighted window
s at night, or wonder about the other people in the bus. She lived in her letters, as much in those she wrote as in those she received; yet neither her letters, nor Leo’s, could really be called love-letters. They were still, she felt, exploring, getting to know each other, although she was sure he would tell her he loved her when next he came home.
Meanwhile, her life at the shop, even her life at Saint Clement’s Square, became more vivid for her as she crystallised them in her letters. She never talked about the shop to Herbert. Now, at last, she was able to put down all she thought and felt about it; describing the customers, the funny ones, the tiresome ones, those who paid and those who didn’t. She described her visit to Paris, dwelling a little perhaps on the politeness and attentiveness of Frenchmen.
But they really are wonderful, Leo, she wrote. I don’t mean that agent we had, who tried to make love to me, the one I had to give up, but all of them. It seems so funny to be back in England and to the downrightness, if there is such a word, of Mr. Coppinger. We have put through quite a big deal with him, though, and he stood me some champagne at the Regent Palace, and actually backed a winner for me. I have no luck racing, as a rule. I have no luck even when we play rummy at home; but don’t they always say—lucky at cards, unlucky in love? but after all, love’s more important than cards, isn’t it? Not that I seem to have been very lucky at either, but one can’t help always hoping and wishing. What are you doing, I wonder? I think about you such a lot. There’s none of the men I meet in business who can be a friend to me the way I feel you are. It’s funny, isn’t it, because we didn’t meet very often. Oh, I had another bit of luck with Mr. Coppinger that I forgot to tell you about, besides the champagne. He ordered some copies of the original models he bought, and let us have the real Paris labels from them without extra charge. This makes a lot of difference when it comes to selling a frock. Americans will pay twelve or fifteen guineas for something with a Paris label, when they will only pay seven or eight for an English one; and that’s important for me, Leo, because you see I get a percentage now, and that is the way I hope to make really important money some day soon.
Another day she wrote: We have had a spell of warm weather, and I couldn’t help thinking of you somewhere in the grey and the wet … doesn’t it always rain in Scotland? I’ve not much news—life just goes on from day to day, but none of it’s very funny. We have a fairly nice lot of girls in the workroom now, and that makes an awful lot of difference to Mrs. Danvers and me; and we have got a new apprentice who cries all day, of course; I used to myself. The workroom girls are rather rowdy, and Mrs. Danvers went up the other day and found them all sitting along the floor sucking oranges, and seeing who could spit the pips out the furthest at a line of new model dresses hanging on the opposite wall!
A letter like that amused Julia to write. She loved the life at the shop, and to build it up like this, touch by touch, for Leo’s eyes, seemed to make it more important to her even than before. More and more she escaped into her letters as Herbert became grumpier and grumpier. It was all very well, he thought angrily, for Julia to seem happy. Her salary had been raised, and she was getting a percentage on sales—but he was still stuck at the £500 he was making before the war, and it was hardly worth more than half what it had been. He scowled at each new frock or hat that he saw Julia wearing.
“I should think you might be thinking of saving,” he said to her one day, “with things beginning to crumble as they are.”
“Dick Dash’s may be crumbling, but l’Etrangère’s isn’t,” retorted Julia. “We’ve weathered the slump. Why, we’ve got five more girls now, and give real dress-shows. If people only paid, we’d be on velvet; and as it is, our credit’s as good as anyone’s.”
He has been grousing again, she wrote to Leo during her luncheon-hour the next day. He says everything is crumbling, and the world is going to the dogs, I suppose, as usual. Of course, we aren’t too flourishing, even here, because the customers won’t pay their bills; but what’s the good of worrying. I do think society women can be pretty awful, though. Just fancy, last month we did the whole of a trousseau for a young bride, very rich people, and she never paid. So at last we had to bring an action against her, and would you believe it, we lost it. Her father said he wasn’t responsible because she was now a married woman, her husband said he wasn’t responsible because she contracted the debt before her marriage, and she said she wasn’t responsible because she was under age. I know Mrs. Danvers was awfully worried, and you would think you couldn’t lose a case like that, wouldn’t you? Makes you wonder whether there really is any justice at all. However, we’ve managed to get round the corner again.
Herbert had followed the case in the papers, and commented on it acidly to Julia.
“Lose a few more like that, my girl, and your precious shop will be on the rocks,” he said to her. He was suffering again from jealousy, not a personal jealousy of her so much as a jealousy because life seemed to be treating her better than it had been treating him. Poor Herbert, thought Julia suddenly, looking at his despondent face with an impulsive pity. Gents’ outfitters during the war had done a roaring trade because all the temporary gents had two uniforms as well as greatcoats, hold-alls, kit-bags and the rest. But now the temporary gents were back from the war, finding they had lost several inches round the waist, and could get into their pre-war mufti comfortably, Dick Dash was not selling as much as he had, either off the peg or bespoke tailoring.
I’m really very sorry for him, she wrote to Leo. It must be dreadful caring about nothing but money, though, of course, money is important. What one could do with it! I look at all our customers, they are all divorced about three deep, and it doesn’t seem to make any difference. Everybody knows them just the same, and if they hadn’t money they couldn’t do it.
Leo’s letters differed from Julia’s. His were more simple. He thought not at all of the problems of the world around him. He only knew that in spite of the good times he managed to have, the personality of Julia was always in some queer way present in his mind. He wrote to her, telling her of any funny things that had happened on board, or in port, and then with the naïveté of his class plunged straight into the personal, instead of weaving it into the fabric of his letters as Julia did even when she was not, apparently, writing about herself. Julia managed to build up for him her whole life so that he began to feel that something more definite and real was existing hundreds of miles away without him than the world he was actually in. This was an entirely new sensation to Leo, to whom the world ended with the present, and with his own immediate surroundings. He began to feel rather proud of himself that he had engaged the interest of such an “out-of-the-ordinary” woman as Julia; and directly he felt that he began to be more interested in her than ever.
This was a new game for him, this funny game of trying to capture thoughts and put them upon paper, so funny that they created another world for him. The letters were not all joy, though, and sometimes he seemed to feel a little drag at him as of a chain; and once he told himself, impatiently, that when he was back he would get her out of all these ifs and buts and whens and whys—all this wondering about life as she saw it going on around her. She won’t think of anything else, once I’ve got hold of her, he said to himself, but I suppose all women are like that. She’s clever, but I bet I could teach her a thing or two. I didn’t rush her enough, that was the trouble.
For Leo’s simple gospel was that you could always stop a woman’s mouth with kisses, and when that failed, and you were sick of each other, you could go away; “you,” of course, being Leo, and not the woman.
Julia loved his letters. She loved their matter-of-factness. Still more she loved the impatient note that began to sound through their pages. He would be back soon; it was July.
She realised the great annual problem of the holidays would be upon her. What would Leo do? Would he sink back into that sketchy position known at Two Beresford as “Elsa’s young man”
? or would he go where she and Herbert went? Was Herbert going to insist on the usual family party? In that case, she would see Leo; but it would be almost worse than not seeing him at all.
As a matter of fact, the holiday question was unexpectedly settled by a quarrel with Herbert. Julia came back one evening full of the news that Marian had grown tired of Frank Bellingham, and had gone off with someone called Hugh Carruthers. This time she was going to let her husband divorce her; it was less trouble. As the guilty party, she did not have to turn up in court, and more important still, you didn’t have, as Marian had very practically remarked, to live like a nun for the next six months. Herbert, who had been irritable for some time, now exploded angrily. He told Julia exactly what he thought of her fine friends, as he termed them. At first Julia tried to speak reasonably.
“After all, Herbert, it’s her own affair, isn’t it? Everybody doesn’t look at divorce the way we do, you know. After all, it’s more sensible, if you don’t get on, to leave each other, isn’t it?”
Herbert raved. He dragged in not only his mother, but his late wife, who, he said, would have been incapable of making such a remark. Julia suddenly lost her temper, and told him that he was crude, stupid, and, what was far worse, thoroughly common.
“You didn’t think so when you married me, my girl. You were glad enough to do that.”
“More fool I,” said Julia. “I didn’t know what it would be like. Do you think if I could get away from you now, I wouldn’t?”
“Well, you can’t,” said Herbert. “Understand that. I’ve got you, and I’m going to keep you.”
“Unfortunately,” said Julia, “you don’t keep me. I keep myself.”
Herbert’s face crimsoned, and Julia, for a moment, was afraid. He took her by the shoulders, and she felt his strong fingers digging into her flesh.
“I’m willing to keep you, you know that perfectly well. Leave that damn shop of yours, and come home and be a decent wife, and I’ll keep you all right.”
A Pin to See the Peepshow Page 26
