A Pin to See the Peepshow

by F. Tennyson Jesse

  Julia felt the tears come into her eyes, and an absurd thought of Bobby to her mind. How dependent, how sweetly and happily dependent were men and dogs. A child must be very like that too. Herbert wasn’t like that, because he snored. Besides, he looked even more completely Herbert when he was asleep, not oddly different as Leo did.

  That night Leo went back to Portsmouth, where his mother, and Elsa, who had joined forces with her, arrived to find him. The four wonderful days had been worth everything to both Julia and Leo. He looked curiously at Elsa’s little, pretty face, and wondered why he had taken her to the movies. He was all the time absorbed in the thought of Julia.

  Julia was already installed at Saint Clement’s Square when Herbert came back, and he found nothing at which he could complain. His bacon was cut thick, his flat was spotlessly clean, and he had no suspicion of how Julia had been passing her time; and yet he was somehow aware that she was changed. And he could not tell where the danger lay. She spoke amiably to him, even during the first week when, Emily not yet being back, she had to do the housework. She ignored their quarrel at Torquay, and its cause. This made him hope at first that she had repented; but when he tried to go into her bedroom he found out his mistake. She slammed the door in his face and bolted it. If the damned door, thought Herbert, had simply had a key, he would have taken it away; but he was helpless in face of the bolt.

  A few nights later he went up to bed before her and installed himself in the front bedroom. Julia took one look and went straight into the back bedroom, and slept there. Even Herbert thought it would be ridiculous to go after her. He was deeply, burningly angry with the intense anger of the frustrated male, or, indeed, of the frustrated female. The very currents of his blood would never forgive Julia, just as her blood would never forgive him for his violation of her, that had been, for her, unattended by any pleasure. However sorry she might sometimes be for him—and having imagination she was far more sorry for him, in spite of her greater ruthlessness, than he was for her—her body would never forgive him, any more than his would forgive her.

  When he was not being actively angry he felt suddenly desolate and a little afraid. He thought longingly of the days before the war that would never come again, when money had gone so much further, when Mrs. Starling, even if she did not attract him violently, was uncomplaining and submissive; when he had been in his own little circle a somebody, and the only prop of his household.

  A sort of peace had been patched up between Julia and the Beales. Young Carr was with his ship in northern waters, outwardly all was peace; and yet Herbert was aware that this was a very different Julia. Julia was aware of it herself.

  She was still the triumphant and fulfilled woman of the days in Essex, but although she herself was not aware of it she had changed even since Essex. As René Imbert had told her long ago, her talent was for love, and in France she would have enjoyed her talent happily; but in England such was the force of her upbringing, and the social sphere in which she had been born, that even her association with the shop had been unable to rid her of an intense instinct for respectability. Knowledge of the Darlings had loosened her moral code, but not her social one, and already the pagan goddess of the mere was being transformed into a passionate and possessive woman, who wished to enjoy her love openly and without criticism from the world. The woodland spirit that had been hers changed to the actual; it was as though the laurel tree had become a city Daphne, and the reed had taken on the flesh of Syrinx.

  Julia did not deny, even to herself, the beauty and the wildness of those days by the mere. She did not reflect that perhaps to go back there, and try to recapture the same emotions with a Leo whom she had succeeded in marrying, might be to find those emotions changed like fairy gold into a handful of rubbish. She only knew, what most women know, that life is an affair of compromise; that the dream had somehow to be welded with the facts of living, and, like most women, desiring this compromise, she insisted that the dream would gain and not lose by it.

  It had been all very well, she told herself, during those few idyllic days in Essex, to think that this was all she asked of life; but now that she had love, she had begun to ask a great deal more instead of a great deal less of life.

  Nothing is as voracious as a woman who, for the first time in her life, has had physical satisfaction. She must go on having it—and Julia was not as one of the Darlings—she wanted respectability with her romance, and this was not, in Julia’s case, from the base desire for safety. But unless she had respectability, how could she have any romance at all? Leo had nothing but his pay, which was only 5s. 6d. a day, though when he was twenty-one, which he would be shortly, he would be getting more. Julia always made over £5 a week at the shop, but they couldn’t keep her if Herbert came and made “scenes” there. With her capabilities, and the reference Gipsy would give her, she would certainly get another job; but Herbert would probably pursue her there as well. If even Gipsy, who was fond of her, and respected the work she had done, couldn’t keep her, because of the “scenes,” a strange firm certainly would not do so. And romance could not live in sordid poverty.

  She and Leo might never find it as easy again to snatch a few days together. It could not be, she told herself passionately, that already she had experienced both the beginning and the end. She, too, must have her happiness; other women did. Why should the mere accident of money, and of class, make it impossible for her? Herbert must be made to see reason; he must.

  A day or two after Leo’s ship had arrived in Northern waters, she found a letter from him awaiting her at l’Etrangère’s; for an added difficulty in their lives was that she could no longer call for letters at Wigmore Street. You were supposed, she discovered, only to use a poste restante when you were travelling and had no London address, and then only for three months. She had been so often that she had been recognised, and the clerk, on the last occasion she had called for letters, had been a surly man and had made trouble.

  However, Julia was always the first at the shop, and her fine susceptibilities as to the sacredness of the shop were wearing off. Leo marked his letters “Personal,” and Julia had enough authority now to be sure that no one would open her letters. If she were away Gipsy might do so, imagining the letter to be on business, but Julia knew that directly Gipsy was confronted by a personal letter she would seal it up again without reading it. That was one thing you knew about with people like Gipsy, although she was no longer what was called a “moral woman.” She had, Julia supposed, lost her honour, and yet Gipsy would never be dishonourable.

  Well, she herself was like that too, Julia thought defiantly; she asked nothing better than to be honourable. Armed with this conviction, she attacked Herbert again after reading Leo’s letter, for it was the first passionate love-letter he had ever written her. It was as though he had become articulate. Fire had touched him with the gift of tongues. It was the sort of letter that looks ordinary enough when read in the unsympathetic atmosphere of the divorce court, or printed in the more sensational papers. It was full of “darlings” and “dearests” and the word “love,” but to Julia it was wonderful. It was not only the most ardent love-letter he had written her, although she had had several of those since he rejoined his ship; but it was the first one in which he had touched on the subject that lay deepest in her heart—the subject of marriage.

  I must have you for myself always, he wrote. What is the good of my thinking I can marry anyone ordinary after you; and as I told you before I’m only flesh and blood. I can’t live a life of just seeing you at tea-shops, or taking Bobby for a walk in the Park. I used to be sorry for the men who had to stick in little homes when they were on leave, who had wives and children, while I could go out and enjoy myself. Well, I don’t think I want the children, in fact, I know I don’t; but it’s you I want to go out and enjoy myself with, and it’s you I want to go home with. Herbert will just have to consent to a divorce.

  She wrote a short answ
ering letter before she left the shop.

  Leo, my darling, your letter has come, and I am so happy. I could sing, if only I could sing in tune—which I can’t! You’ve never heard me try to sing, have you? It would make you laugh. Some day when we’re quite alone I may do it for you, if you are very good, because I don’t mind you laughing at me.

  Darling, do you know the thing that pleased me most about your letter? It was the last sentence, when you say, “I wish you belonged to me really, darling.” Of course, I know you do, and I want everyone else to know it, too! Leo, that’s how I feel. Everything is changed since I belonged to you. I thought I could be quite happy just meeting whenever we could, and making love, but now I don’t want to have to hide it. I hate the thought of having to plan and scheme, and perhaps not being able to manage it. That’s the worst thought of all, isn’t it, darling? You and I must belong to each other, because we were made for that. You know at first I used to mind being a few years older than you. Now I don’t. All that’s unimportant. It’s only you and me that matter, darling. I’m going to talk to him again to-night. He must agree to something. After all, everyone divorces nowadays, and if I don’t want any money, I don’t see that it matters to him. Oh, Leo, I’m going to put your letter next to my heart, like a sort of magic armour, then he won’t be able to hurt me whatever he says.

  Perhaps Herbert was not able to hurt her with the things he said that night, but he was certainly able to irritate her, to plunge her into despair. When he realised that she was actually asking for a divorce, although she only put it on the grounds of not being happy with him, he was furious.

  “It’s that young Carr,” he kept on repeating. “I know what it is. You want to go off with that young Carr.”

  “Herbert, if only you would listen to me. You can’t enjoy living like this, any more than I do.”

  “You think of nothing but enjoyment. That’s your trouble. We’re husband and wife, that’s what matters. We’re husband and wife, and we’re going to stick it whether we enjoy it or not. Nobody else shall have you.”

  Julia was terribly tempted to tell him that somebody else had already had her, but she refrained. Leo’s career and her own, these were too precious to be lightly thrown away.

  Oh, Leo, he’s hopeless, she wrote, quite hopeless. What are we to do? He has utterly refused to divorce me. He has accused me of wanting to marry you. He is wild with anger and jealousy, and I can’t bear anyone but you to be jealous. I want you to be jealous, darling. Isn’t that odd, although there is really nothing for you to be jealous of, yet I want you to be. Isn’t Miss Lestrange lucky? Frank Bellingham was going to divorce her, and instead he has died, so there won’t be any trouble after all. It appears he had some sort of heart disease, though he wasn’t ill for more than a few hours. So now she will be able to marry her third husband, and she has had heaps of affairs as well; and all I want is you, my own darling lover. I’ve been so good always, and Herbert has never been easy. You said to me once, do you remember, “Why did you marry him? Why couldn’t you have waited?” Darling, was that a reproach? I’ve often wondered. I couldn’t tell you were coming into my life, could I? Of course, I would have waited if I had known; but one doesn’t know things till it’s too late. I’ve just been reading about Lucretia Borgia. It must have been wonderful to have lived then, and been a great lady, and been able to hire bravos to kill people who got in their way. I should have been quite ruthless if I had lived then, and shall I tell you, darling, I believe any woman would. Men aren’t nearly as ruthless as we are. You see, darling, when a woman, especially a good woman, loves—I don’t mean one who keeps on having affairs, but one who loves just once tremendously—she would do anything for the man she loves. There is no longer any right or wrong for her, except what is good and what is bad for the man she loves, and our love is good for both of us. Tell me you agree with me, darling.

  Leo, excited and stimulated by her letter, wrote back that he did.

  I had forgotten asking you why you married him, he wrote, but I expect if I said it it was in a moment of curiosity, not in reproach. It is wonderful to know that you would do anything for me. You say men aren’t as ruthless. Does this mean that you think I wouldn’t do anything for you? You don’t do all the loving, you know.

  Julia had a moment of wondering why it was that no two persons ever remembered quite the same thing, quite the same phrase, quite the same aspect of an hour together. It made the past oddly unreal that this should be so, that only the general effect of the time shared together should be the same to two people. Why, she reflected, two people did not even see the same person. She had Leo in front of her eyes whenever she “thought back,” and he had her.

  She wrote her thought to him: not that it matters, she added, because you and I are the same, really, aren’t we, darling? We’re one.

  Yet this feeling of one-ness was very difficult to hold in her mind with Leo in Scotland and herself going back and forward between Saint Clement’s Square and George Street.

  But we’ll be married some day, darling, she wrote, determined not to let even her fits of despair weaken her ambitions. Of course, they will all have a fit at Two Beresford, but what does that matter? What would they say if they knew I was sitting here writing to my lover? Fancy if I said to them—I’ve got a lover. Can’t you see all their faces? Oh, darling, you will be home again by Christmas. Just imagine if you were coming home to me. If we had a little flat, however small, together. I shall be going to Paris before you are back. It won’t be a bit the same. All the time I shall wish you were with me. They don’t mind a bit if they know you are just lovers in French hotels. They like it. Isn’t it lovely of them? So different from England. Now I must stop. He has gone to bed, and I am sitting by the fire talking to you. It doesn’t matter to me that the opposite chair is empty, because you are not sitting in it. You are sitting on the arm of my chair, darling, with your arm round me, and I am leaning my head against you. Do say you feel it that way.

  Thus the dream went on, building itself up in both their minds.

  Julia came back from a few days’ successful buying in Paris and Gipsy was pleased with her, as always. What Julia had to keep secret was that she had tried to find out something for herself, something that affected her personal life; and what she had found out did not encourage her.

  Before leaving for Paris she had had a less optimistic letter from Leo than usual. For the first time she heard in his letters that note of defeat which her own soul sounded sometimes in the small hours of the morning. She remembered—what she had never entirely forgotten —that he had told her how pretty the girls were in Scotland. Once when they had discussed them, he had told her that they were “hot stuff” as well. She tortured herself with the thought that perhaps this pessimistic letter of Leo’s meant that he had met some Scotch girl who attracted him more than she did. She sunk into one of her moods when she wished she had not done what she always phrased to herself as “given him everything.” She had always been brought up to believe that once you gave a man everything, he thought less of you, and wanted you less ardently. She knew with a certainty of absolute knowledge, however much she might tell herself to the contrary, that Herbert would not give her a divorce, and that if she left him for Leo, he would come and make “scenes” at l’Etrangère’s. During the rather dreary crossing to France, it had occurred to her it might be possible to get a job in Paris. There must be some little shops, or some big dressmakers, who wanted somebody who spoke English perfectly, and yet who could wear clothes, to talk to the English and American customers. And, after all, she could deal with the business side of the transaction as well in French as in English. If only she could get a job in Paris, it would not be too impossibly far for Leo to come on his leaves, and she could arrange her holidays for the weeks he was in the Mediterranean. It would be easier to arrange in Paris, where nobody knew her, to stay at an hotel with Leo whenever he came over, some quiet l
ittle hotel in the outskirts of Paris. For the first time she wished ardently that she had not quarrelled with René Imbert. She wished it still more when, having finished in one hectic week all her business for the shop, she started going round on her personal quest. Trade was not so good in Paris that anyone wanted to turn off a Frenchwoman and take an Englishwoman in her place. Besides, the only firms she knew in Paris were the wholesale model-houses, and her business gifts, which were largely personal, would be wasted in a wholesale house. She knew nothing of the little shops, the equivalents of l’Etrangère, and it was impossible to get a position in one of the big dressmakers. They paid you so little, for one thing, expecting you to supplement your income in another manner, and that, for the exalted Julia, was impossible.

  So, in spite of Gipsy’s praise, it was a depressed Julia who arrived at Saint Clement’s Square. She paid off the taxi, and carried up herself the small suitcase containing her personal luggage. She fitted her key into the lock, and went into the hall. The murmur of voices came from the sitting-room. She opened the door and went in. Herbert was seated one side of the fire and Bertha the other. Bertha was obviously not paying an afternoon call. She was bare-headed, and she was busily knitting. Julia stared at her in surprise.

  “Hullo, Bertha,” she said. “Where did you spring from?”

  “Bertha’s staying with me,” said Herbert.

  “How nice for you,” said Julia. “Prevented you feeling lonely while I was away. Well, I’m back now.”

  “Herbert has asked me to stay on,” said Bertha. “He says, and I quite agree with him, that he gets very little attention, what with your being out at business all day and very often gadding in the evenings. Herbert likes his home, as you always knew,” she said.

  Julia stared first at her, then at Herbert. “Oh, well, I suppose we can manage for a short time. If you look after your own business, Bertha, I’ll look after mine. Where’s Bobby, Herbert?”