“Oh, Julia,” she cried, “how lovely! An Italian officer’s cape. Where did you get it?”
“A friend who has been in the Mediterranean sent it to me,” said Julia, blushing slightly. “Do you like it?”
“It’s lovely. I’ve always admired those capes, quite apart from capes being so fashionable nowadays. It makes your eyes look quite blue, Julia.”
“It’s frightfully heavy,” said Julia, pouting a little. “I shouldn’t like to walk far in it.”
“I know, they weigh a tremendous amount. They’re frightfully expensive. Just think, it will never go out of fashion, and will always clean as good as new. It does suit you, Julia. Try throwing one side over the other shoulder. … Yes, that’s it.”
Julia did so, and gazed at herself in the glass. Yes, it was very becoming, with the little black helmet hat which came down to her eyebrows … and her eyes did look quite blue. When Gipsy had gone, Julia hunted in the parcel and found a note.
This is for you, my beauty, wrote Leo. I don’t pretend I didn’t get it second-hand, it would have cost about £10 otherwise; but I didn’t get it from another girl, so don’t be anxious. Directly I saw it I thought of you. I suppose you’ll have to say you got it from a customer, or something. You’ve probably got it on while you’re reading this note, and I shall be at home at Heronscourt Park. Do you realise it? I daren’t meet you on my first evening back. You told me in your last letter you would be staying in London for Easter, but I expect I’ll have to go away with my people just for the holiday. You know what families are. I wonder if you’re going to live up to the things you’ve been writing me, Julia, or whether we shall find we are only friends after all? It might be easier that way, but I haven’t met a girl as good as you yet. Leo.
Julia wore the cloak home, trying in its warm folds to forget the little chill that his letter had given her. It wasn’t an enthusiastic letter, and who could wonder? Just look what his last leave had been! But she would make him forget all his caution, all his doubts. She would manage something this time. She was desperate.
She learned—with apparently a mild interest—that young Carr was home again and off with his parents and some friends of theirs, girls, of course, added Herbert, for the Easter holidays. They wouldn’t be back until the Tuesday; and her heart sank still further. But to Bertha’s watching eyes she presented not the slightest flicker of emotion.
Elsa, happy with her bank clerk, and successfully weaned by Julia from her pale blue to the more subtle shades of that colour, was frankly admiring of the Italian officer’s cloak.
“You are lucky,” she said enviously, “the way you get your clothes cheap.”
“D’you think it’s lucky to have a bad debt?” said Julia. “It was from a customer who couldn’t pay us. It’s no good to us, of course, and Mrs. Danvers let me have it. I’ve paid for it in a way, because I’ve missed the commission on the clothes the woman had. It’s all in a day’s work, I suppose. You ought to wear this sort of blue, Elsa, it would suit you.”
“Yes,” agreed Elsa. “I always did like a nice saxe.”
Julia winced, but made no reply. “A nice saxe,” indeed! Oh, shades of the little “matcher”!
On Tuesday Leo telephoned her at the shop, a thing she rarely allowed him to do. She felt her heart beating with the old sweet suffocation at the sound of his voice. What did it matter how he behaved, how casual he was, when he had this power to move her? She agreed to meet him at a tea-shop that afternoon. There was no business at the shop, and she knew Gipsy would let her off early.
This was very different from the last meal they had had together. No hostage of Herbert’s made a barrier between them now, and it was a triumphant Julia—who had dared pain and danger, and perhaps death, to preserve her integrity for her lover—who met Leo. Julia, moreover, in the excitement of the meeting, was prepared to promise anything to keep up the fairy story of the letters; she’d say anything to make him see that they were not just meeting as friends; that there was still no girl like her, that for him there never could be.
Leo hardly knew her as she sat chattering. A high natural colour burned in her cheeks, her eyes shone under the level brim of the little close-fitting hat; the blue cloak he had sent her covered her shoulders. Julia’s invention had never flown faster. She gave a description of how she had begged Herbert again and again for a divorce, and how he still refused. And she told Leo, with that measure of truth which always mingled with her fantasy, that she had kept herself for him, that Herbert had never touched her again. Even now, when, owing to necessity, they were sharing the same bed.
“But he’ll try, of course, Leo, he’ll try. But I won’t let him, whatever happens. Everything is for you.”
“That’s all very well,” said Leo excitedly, all his fears and his caution blown away from him now he saw her in the flesh, “but what are we going to do? Think of that Christmas leave. I can’t go on like that again. You know I’ve always warned you, Julia.”
“Oh, I know, I know. I tell you what, Leo, I was going to the theatre with Ruby to-morrow night. I told Herbert about it a week ago. She won’t mind if I put her off; she only asked me because she hadn’t anyone else. She can always get someone. But where can we go? Leo—can’t you find a safe hotel? where they’d think we were married? I’d love that. …”
“No, no, that’s not possible. We’ll have to go to the shop,” said Leo. “You must forget all that nonsense you’ve talked about them trusting you, and the rest of it. It won’t hurt the shop, will it? Nobody will know. You’ve told me yourself that the whole house is empty at night.” And, looking at his eager face, feeling she had recaptured his interest, Julia found that her old arguments no longer held good. Where could they go, if not to the shop?
So the next evening, after a little dinner in Soho, it was to the shop they went. What an exciting adventure it was waiting until the street was darkened and quiet. They did not have to wait very long, for hardly anyone lived in George Street, and Julia slipped her key into the familiar door and crept in with Leo, without turning on the light.
As she made her way before him, through the dark passage, lit only from the Georgian fanlight at the top of the door, she had a sudden recollection of the evening when Herbert had called for her in the war, and kissed her so roughly. It gave added zest to what she was doing now. Served Herbert right, although he mustn’t know of it.
It was exquisite to feel Leo’s arms go round her, even before she had reached the foot of the stairs, and to meet his gentle, burning kisses. Until that moment they had only been able to press each other’s hands since his return.
They groped their way up the little narrow stairs, up to the second floor, and Julia led the way into the fitting-room. For a while she stood by the window listening. It was all right; nobody had seen them come in; nobody was going to inform the police of a suspicious entry into l’Etrangère.
Leo gazed about him as the room became visible to his eyes in the soft light from the street lamp which shone through the gold net curtains that allowed him to look out, although it prevented anyone seeing in.
“I can’t think what they have that bed for,” he whispered, “unless it’s for this sort of thing.” Somehow the effect of the time and the place, and the secrecy, was to make them both whisper.
She took her cloak off, and pulled off her hat, and then he picked her up and laid her down on the divan, while she stayed quiescent with an exquisite submission in his arms. He threw aside the painted doll, which subsided in the corner of the room standing on its shock of red hair, with its skirts falling over its face. He looked down at her, as she had been wont to imagine him when, with closed eyes, she had submitted to Herbert. There was his dark, high-held head; there were his bright eyes staring at her; here were his hands, closing slowly about her body. She lay absolutely relaxed, her outstretched arms lying over the edge of the divan, and the light from the s
treet lamp upon her face. The shadows of the window-bars lay across her as though they were impalpable bands tying her down. She laughed for pure happiness as she looked up at Leo.
“This is better than the punt,” she whispered; “we’ve two or three hours, Leo, and no fear of anyone coming in.”
It was the first time they had been absolutely free from the fear of an eavesdropper, and that the hours had been theirs to dally with as they liked.
It was nearly midnight when Julia let herself in at Saint Clement’s Square, and Herbert was already asleep on his side of the big bed. Julia slipped in beside him, and turned out the light. She closed her eyes and slept all night, not with her husband, but with her lover.
That was all there was of pleasure. Leo had already had a week’s leave, of which he had had to spend the greater part with his parents. There only remained to him two evenings. The evening following the wonderful night at the shop was a repetition of many other evenings—a family reunion to celebrate Elsa’s engagement; and Leo now rather surprisingly found himself in the position of the rejected suitor, or so the Beales seemed to think, and had to be present at the party to show there was no ill-will. And, of course, the Starlings had to be there also because they were “the family.” They all played “Up Jenkins” and “Consequences,” and there was much laughter when, as a result of the latter game, Elsa was proved to have met her fiancé in the bathroom. Julia endured the evening. She was even bright and amusing in a perfectly respectable way, not enough to make Bertha or Herbert eye her suspiciously. She tried to be specially nice to old Mrs. Carr, but old Mrs. Carr had her simple country obstinacies, which she had never lost, and she refused to like Julia, whom she saw as the scarlet woman of the Bible, laying traps for the feet of her good, young son. If an angel from heaven had appeared to Mrs. Carr and told her that Leo dominated Julia’s every thought and action, that his had been the first advances, as his had been the threats of making an end of the affair, threats which had always brought her to heel, Mrs. Carr would have refused to believe it. She would have been almost equally indignant with Julia if the latter had not thought Leo attractive and lovable.
She could not argue. She could only feel with the whole of her sturdy, muscular old body; even with her mind she felt rather than thought.
Leo had time for a few angry words to Julia as the Carrs and the Starlings went down Love Lane to their respective homes.
“You must come out with me to-morrow night, Julia, it’s my last night. I don’t believe anything you said, anything you’ve written. It was all pretence. I thought it was at the time, and now I’m sure of it … if you don’t come out to-morrow night.”
A perilous moment of reality hung between them. If she once acknowledged to him that he had spoken the truth when he voiced his disbelief in her fairy story, something bright and lovely and shining would be gone for ever.
“Leo, I can’t, I daren’t,” she said hurriedly. “I’ve arranged with Herbert for ages to go with him to-morrow. There’s no getting out of it this time. I can’t say any more now. Ring me up at the shop to-morrow lunchtime … and don’t talk like that, Leo, you’ll break my heart.”
She pressed his hand feverishly, and hurried on to catch up with Herbert. She was very unhappy. This banal “family” evening had been horrible after the beauty of last night. If only she could have got hold of Leo sooner … if only those wretched Easter holidays had not taken him from her … if only … there she was again. It always came back to the same thing … if only …
“I can’t get out of it, Leo, I can’t,” she told him urgently on the telephone the next day. “I’ll slip out and meet you at tea. I can’t do anything else. Herbert takes these tickets every year, and he so seldom takes theatre tickets. It’s for an awful dud amateur show that the men in his business put up every year. It’ll be dreadful, but I don’t see how I can get out of it. Herbert always has to put in an appearance, and I always have to go with him. I’ve never missed. No, Bertha can’t go with him. You know the row there’d be. Why, he has known about this for weeks, long before I said Bertha could come back to the flat. Besides, she’s fixed up to go to some old crony of hers for the evening, and nothing makes her alter her plans. I’d give the world to get out of it, you know I would. Look, I can’t talk any more now, I’ll see you for tea.”
She hastily replaced the receiver as she heard the buzzer of the door sound.
She went over and over the argument wearily with Leo at tea-time, wondering where the gentle, ardent lover of two nights ago had gone. This was Leo at his sulkiest, his most bitter. His leave was up, wasn’t it? he would have to go back to Portsmouth, and then to Scottish waters for the summer cruise; she had known all that; she knew the routine by now.
“But you knew it all, too, Leo,” she pleaded. “Why did you go away for the Easter holiday?”
“Because I had to. Dad and Mum had fixed it all for me. It’s all very well, Julia, I couldn’t get out of it.”
“And I can’t get out of this, Leo.”
“Well, you don’t love me.”
“How can you say that, when you know what I’ve tried to do for you!”
“Oh yes, so you said. Fairy stories! You know that, and I know it. Giving Herbert chlorodyne!”
Again that awful moment of truth hung between them. She felt oddly helpless, her usually quick wits would not come to her aid. Leo went on:
“As though that would hurt a kitten, anyway! Could I get anything to give him! I don’t suppose you really even talked to him about divorce.”
“Oh, I have, I have, darling,” she declared, with truth, “how can you talk to me like this?” She was pale and shaking with misery. The tears rolled down and fell unheeded on her plate.
“Well, I’ll believe it when I see something. I’ll have to get myself a girl who doesn’t let me down, that’s all.”
“Leo, I can see you to-morrow before you go. I promise I’ll manage to see you to-morrow.”
“See me!” said Leo scornfully.
They parted miserably, and it was with even less expectation of pleasure than she had thought to have that Julia dressed in a grey evening gown, of which she was not particularly fond, for the amateur show that evening. Nevertheless, she thought, after she was dressed, one must always look one’s best. … She touched up her cheeks a little, darkened her lashes, and applied her lipstick with a conscientious care which was second nature. Her spirits rose a little as she placed the beautiful cloak about her shoulders, for it made a lovely evening wrap. None of the wives of Herbert’s stuffy colleagues would have anything like that!
The show, held in a hall in Baker Street, was boring to her as it had been in preceding years. More so, really, for there actually had been years, before she met Leo, when she had hoped vaguely that she would meet at one of those shows a captain of finance such as she had read of, who had taken, in her romantic imagination, the place of the khaki-clad captains of earlier days. Now, of course, she knew she couldn’t meet anyone thrilling at one of Herbert’s stuffy “shows.”
Herbert was full of importance—pleased to meet the managers of other branches and to show off Julia; but his friends bored her, and so did the amateur warblings and dancing upon the stage. She leaned back in her seat, at last, and yawned at great length, hardly bothering to put up her hand; and Herbert glanced at her reproachfully. He was enjoying himself. What did she want to come over all superior for?
He spoke to her sharply about it when they were on their way back in the Underground train. Julia was too tired and too unhappy to answer back. She merely said: “I’m sorry, Herbert, I’m tired,” and they lapsed into silence amid the swingings and rattlings of the train.
It was a dark mild evening, and they walked home, still in silence. How often, she thought drearily, as she walked up the street to Saint Clement’s Square, how often had she come this way; how many thousands of times had this pavement
echoed to her feet—and all her bright dreams of getting away, of a new and wonderful life with Leo, began to fade into nothingness. And would her feet, growing more and more weary, tap these same echoes into life for years to come?
A sense of darkness and futility weighed upon her. These months without Leo had somehow been so bright with dreams. That evening at l’Etrangère’s, though not the pretence of domesticity at an hotel for which she had hoped, had been such an ecstatic culmination, and now something at once solid and shining that she had seemed to have within her grasp, was vanishing into the mist. How could she keep Leo, how could she?
As they entered the Square they heard some footsteps running swiftly up from the road at right angles to them, but she paid no attention, and she and Herbert went on in silence. The footsteps came nearer, and suddenly Leo’s voice, thick and blurred with drink, spoke behind them.
“Stop … you’ve got to stop, I say.”
“What’s that?” said Herbert, startled and half turning round. “Why, what are you doing here?”
“I’ve come because I’m sick of you, and this way of going on,” said Leo. “Get out of the way, Julia, unless you’ll come with me now as you are. That’s what any decent woman would do.”
Yes, he was drunk. If only he had spoken like that when he was sober!
“What are you talking about?” said Herbert. “Julia, what’s all this?”
“Oh, Leo,” cried Julia, “go away. This isn’t any good. Go away.”
But Leo was scuffling with Herbert. Herbert’s hat fell off, but he got free from Leo’s detaining hands and turned his back upon him.
“You can go to hell, Carr,” he said, “and stay there,” and he stooped down to pick up his hat.
Leo, furious that Herbert was escaping him, gave him a violent blow on the back of his head. Herbert began to crumble up in the knees in a curious way, and fell forward. Beside himself with anger Leo hit him again. Herbert fell upon his face, striking his temple against the kerb. He rolled over the kerb and lay upon his back in the gutter, with his arms flung out. The whole thing only took a few moments, but it seemed to Julia like a slow-motion picture. She screamed from the moment Leo first hit Herbert:
A Pin to See the Peepshow Page 35
