Pure Juliet

by Stella Gibbons

  The door was flung open. Sarah stood there with, behind her, the flushed faces of Rosa and Maria.

  ‘She’s been taken very bad indeed,’ Sarah shouted. ‘Very bad, she is. I phoned for Dr Masters and told him to stop on the way at that place’ – Sarah meant the Cowshed – ‘and pick up Mr Frank. And you come along, too, and stay with her, seeing it’s all your fault, God forgive you.’

  Juliet got up and came over to her, meeting the shocked gaze of the two girls with a defiant stare.

  Along the passage the four went; she could smell lunch cooking and, suddenly, felt hungry.

  At Miss Pennecuick’s door, Sarah turned on the two maids.

  ‘You be off downstairs and don’t you leave that hall for one second. I want the doctor in the house the very instant he comes. And none of your chattering and giggling, neither.’

  ‘Oh no, Senora Sarah!’ Two shocked voices, and tears welling into four dark eyes. ‘Of course we don’t make laughing. She been so kind like a mother—’

  ‘Yes, all right, never mind all that . . . You just be off and mind what I say. You,’ to Juliet, ‘I hope God’ll punish you, that’s all,’ and she noiselessly opened the door.

  The scene was quiet enough. Antonio and Rosario were at either side of the bed, the younger man clasping Miss Pennecuick’s hand as he knelt beside her, and Antonio reading slowly aloud, his deep voice reverently softened to the occasion: ‘“He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His Name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death”’ – the voice sank, became full of awe – ‘“I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me.”’

  His eyes were fixed upon Miss Pennecuick’s worn prayer book, the gift to her, when she was twelve, of her mother; his expression, with lowered lids, was all solemnity and sorrow.

  Miss Pennecuick’s eyes were shut, but as the quiet sounds of entry came, she stirred. ‘Jul . . .’ she mumbled, and a speck of saliva came from the corner of her twisted mouth. ‘Where’s my baby?’

  ‘Go on – speak to her,’ hissed Sarah, giving Juliet a savage push towards the bed.

  Juliet stumbled, turned, and pierced Sarah with a look that made her draw back, then went slowly forward.

  Antonio let his voice fade off: ‘“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,”’ and stood in silence, his eyes fixed upon the book, which he gently shut.

  Rosario, with a delicacy and tenderness unexpected in so carnal a creature, was gently stroking the hand he held, his eyes fixed mournfully upon the unrecognizable face.

  Juliet stood, staring. Christ, she looks ugly, she thought. Like some old guy what’s going to be burnt. She forced herself to speak softly:

  ‘Auntie? It’s me – Juliet.’

  ‘Jul . . .’ The mauve lips tried to form words but failed; the head moved from side to side.

  ‘Take her hand – go on – take it,’ Sarah whispered fiercely.

  Juliet reluctantly put her fingers about the skeletal wrist; then, in imitation of Rosario, began to stroke it. She had to bend over the bed; the position irked her, so she knelt – and that was more uncomfortable still, from its unfamiliarity. She half turned: ‘Get me a stool.’

  Antonio noiselessly carried up one of the tuffets kept in every room where Juliet would expect to sit down.

  Juliet settled herself, and the familiar position was welcome. Miss Pennecuick’s eyelids came down, shutting her faded eyes into their dark little caverns, and she seemed asleep.

  ‘How long’ll the doctor be?’ Juliet did not bother to lower her voice, and Rosario’s eyes fixed her in a shocked stare.

  ‘Never mind. You stay where you are,’ Sarah whispered.

  ‘I’m hungry.’

  ‘Yes, and she’s dying. Now you shut up. Your place is there.’

  Sarah sat down in the chair which was her own, and there was silence but for the tick of the clock. Some twenty minutes passed, during which Sarah once made an imperious gesture, and the young men tiptoed out, with last, awed looks at the still figure in the bed.

  As Catholics, living a full family life, they were used to such scenes at the bedsides of elderly aunts, grandfathers, cousins and in-laws, and, while perhaps there was some acting of a part, there was also true grief, true religious awe, and none of the fear mingled with embarrassment which might have been felt by English servants.

  Sarah suddenly sat upright. She had heard the front-door bell.

  Even as she was struggling up from her chair, there were sounds approaching, and then the door opened quietly and there was Dr Masters, with Frank’s grave face behind him.

  ‘Oh, Mr Frank—’ Sarah began. ‘Oh, Mr Frank . . .’

  ‘Now you go out with Mr Frank while I have a look at her,’ Dr Masters said kindly, putting his hand for an instant on Sarah’s shoulder, ‘and send one of the girls up – Pilar would be best. You go too,’ he added to Juliet, ‘but stay outside in case she wants you.’

  Juliet sprang up, dropping the hand she was holding, and darted to the door. Dr Masters’s glance went after her, then he turned to his patient.

  When Pilar had hurried in, and shut the door, the three stood on the landing in silence, Frank softly patting the sobbing Sarah’s back while Juliet stared over the balusters down at the dining-room door.

  In a moment, restless with hunger, she said to Frank: ‘You got home before he came for you?’ jerking her head towards the shut door.

  ‘Just. I was starting to make lunch.’

  Her grin flashed. ‘Don’t talk about lunch! I’m starving.’

  Frank let quite half a minute pass before he said deliberately, ‘Juliet, I sometimes wonder if you’re human. A human being, as most people understand the words. Even if you are “starving”, can’t you keep the fact to yourself? No, it’s no use. You can’t understand.’

  ‘Can’t help being hungry, neither. Still,’ defiantly, ‘I done a bit of work since I got in.’

  14

  The bedroom door opened noiselessly. ‘Frank?’ said Dr Masters. ‘Asleep. Here a minute, will you.’

  Frank went in, and the door shut again. Sarah continued to sob, and Juliet ran downstairs and pushed open the door of the servants’ quarters.

  ‘She’s better, she’s asleep,’ she announced to the doleful group seated around the big room, ‘and Mr Frank says will you bring in the lunch.’

  ‘Good – good.’ Rosario produced a surprisingly robust smile. ‘We must eat to keep ourselves strong for the grief to come,’ which, judging by various signs, they had already been doing.

  Antonio now made imperious gestures, and bustling began.

  Pilar timidly approached Juliet, who was already at the door.

  ‘Oh, Mees – what you think will happen to us, to me and all of us, if she die? We don’t weesh to go home. No work, not much food, no fun and our muzzer is very, very old—’

  ‘God knows. But you make up to Mr Frank, he’s a softie, he’ll look after you. Oh, there’s the bell.’ Juliet always thus referred to the gong, which Rosario was striking softly in the hall. ‘Mr Frank’s the one.’

  She was gone, leaving Pilar, as a good Catholic girl, shocked by advice which she had misinterpreted.

  When they were seated at lunch, to which Dr Masters had been asked to stay, he said: ‘You must have a nurse, and at once.’

  ‘Sarah won’t like that,’ observed Frank.

  ‘I’m afraid we can’t consider the Sarahs of this world when someone’s dying.’

  Frank glanced at him, but said nothing.

  Juliet continued to eat roast beef.

  ‘I was thinking that there’ll be no one really in charge,’ Frank said presently.

  ‘I know. I might spare Clemence, but—’

  ‘Oh, you can’t do that. No, I’ve a much better idea – what about Clem’s mother? There’s no one in this house who could stand up to old Dolly. She’s f
ond of Addy, and she’d enjoy it.’

  Dr Masters smiled drily. ‘Yes, wouldn’t she. I’ll look in on my way home.’

  Juliet having bolted a portion of some exotic Spanish sweet muttered something about ‘work’, and sped up to her room.

  For a moment she sat motionless, staring unseeingly through the open window. Then her mind turned away from the ‘real’ world, into that world of immovable laws which, to her, was the real one. Her last thought, as she forgot everyone, was: Why do there have to be other people?

  At about four o’clock her train of thought was interrupted by irritating sounds. A taxi driving up, distant voices – an imperious old one, debating the fixed amount of the fare from Wanby to Leete. Later, footsteps along the passage and the penetrating old voice:

  ‘Where’s that child? Tell her I shall expect her for tea in the drawing-room in twenty minutes. And Pilar – you are Pilar, aren’t you? I thought so, I remember that attractive way of doing your hair – toast please, and see that it’s really hot, and the tea made with boiling water.’

  Enjoyment in giving orders, like Lady Somebody in the second act of a Pinero play, coloured the well-produced tones. But Juliet had not heard of Pinero, and her impulse was to slip into her coat, and run.

  Too late.

  One of those taps on her door, which were such an irritating feature of life at Hightower: ‘Senora Massey, she want you having tea wiz her in the drawing-room.’

  ‘Oh all right. Tell her I’ll be right down.’

  But first she washed her face and hands with some expensive soap that was a present from her patroness.

  She went downstairs smelling strongly of ‘Blue Grass’. Her satisfaction in being clean was linked with the austere perfection of the shapes that were her constant inward companions. As well imagine grease or dust coating a droplet of mercury as staining those abstractions; and, vaguely, she liked the same feeling to be about her own body.

  Mrs Massey, wearing a becoming dress printed with mauve poppies, was sitting before the electric fire. Her eye fixed itself at once upon Juliet’s slacks and T-shirt.

  ‘May I enquire if you think that is the proper way to dress in a house where someone is gravely ill?’

  ‘I been out and didn’t think to change.’

  Juliet sat down on her tuffet and looked Mrs Massey full in the eye. What a goblin, thought the old lady, who was relishing every minute of her position as friend of the family left in charge. She began to pour out tea.

  ‘No milk,’ Juliet instructed, and took the lid off the toast dish.

  ‘I hope you are not “slimming”, my dear, you are much too thin as it is and it is customary to wait for your hostess to help herself first. Have you never heard of anorexia nervosa?’

  Juliet, mouth full of toast, shook her head.

  ‘Then I will not enlighten you,’ said Mrs Massey, suddenly bored and eager to get at the toast. Then, after a few moments, when boredom was verging on irritation, the door opened and Dr Masters came in, followed by Frank, and someone in nurse’s uniform.

  ‘Everything all right?’ asked Frank. ‘Oh, I beg your pardon – this is Nurse Judson. Mrs Massey, Miss Slater.’

  ‘How do you do, Nurse, such a comfort to have you here,’ Mrs Massey said graciously; Juliet made a vague sound and an awkward movement, and Nurse Judson said ‘Good afternoon’ in a voice suggesting that it was a bad one.

  ‘Tea – Edward? – Frank? It isn’t very hot, but I’m sure you could drink a cup, Nurse. I’ll ring for some more.’

  ‘No. No, thank you. We must go to our patient. But if you would get one of the girls to bring some up—’

  ‘Of course.’ Mrs Massey rang; and when she looked away from the bell-push, Juliet was not there.

  When Dr Masters had made his examination, having expressed the opinion that there would be no serious deterioration that night and promising to telephone early the next morning, he left, taking Frank with him; and there settled upon Hightower that atmosphere of awed expectation which invades a house where a death is awaited.

  Towards evening the wind subsided, as if with lingering sighs, in the boughs of hawthorn and apple tree; and pearly clouds clustered about a pearly moon. The servants stayed in their sitting-room with television silenced as a mark of respect, awaiting a summons from the two upstairs whom they already called the Old Ones. They abandoned English, and muttered in Spanish.

  About half-past eleven, Juliet was seated at her table with fists thrust into her hair and her mind moving in another world, when her door was flung open.

  ‘You come along and stay in her room,’ Sarah burst out hoarsely. ‘All night if need be. She don’t’ – she began to cry – ‘don’t want . . . me. Just woke up and said so. Took one look at me and that’s what she said: “I don’t want you, where’s my baby? I want my baby.” That’s what she said . . .’

  ‘But isn’t the nurse there?’ Juliet did not move; her eyes slid round beneath the disordered pale mass of hair.

  ‘Course she’s there, but you get off that chair and show a bit o’ feelin’ – after what Miss Addy done for you—’ Sarah began to cry again as she turned away and went along the passage to her own room.

  Juliet went sullenly to the sickroom door, and tapped; it was opened noiselessly by Nurse Judson.

  ‘Yes? What do you want?’ Her eyes were full of disapproval.

  ‘Sarah said I’d better come and sit with her,’ jerking her head towards the bed.

  ‘I am in charge here. Still, you had better come in, in case Miss Pennecuick should become conscious and ask for you again.’ She rustled aside to let Juliet enter, then resumed her seat near the bedside lamp and took up some knitting. ‘You must keep absolutely quiet.’

  Juliet established herself on her low tuffet, avoiding glancing at the thing breathing noisily in the bed, and brought a pencil and sheet of paper from behind her back where she had been concealing them. She began to work again at her problem, picking up Miss Pennecuick’s prayer book from the bedside table to serve as a rest for the paper.

  The single lamp illuminated with its veiled glow the dim, hushed room. Nurse Judson took in Juliet’s every action: she had been given a twopence-coloured version of the situation at Hightower by Mrs Massey, and was prepared to see Juliet as a conniving snake.

  What a little oddity! And what was she doing? Sums? At near midnight, in a room with someone dying? Nurse Judson knitted faster and more accurately in a fit of moral relish. Presently she rose noiselessly and went over to her patient in silent inspection. Juliet did not look up.

  ‘I am going down to the kitchen,’ Nurse Judson announced, ‘to make a cup of tea. I shall be about ten minutes, and don’t you stir out of this room until I get back. And keep your eyes on her – not on that whatever-it-is you’re doing.’

  She went to the door and opened it, then hesitated. The upstart could not be a day older than the probationers at the hospital where she had trained.

  ‘Do you want one – some tea, I mean? If you do, I’ll bring another cup.’

  She had meant to keep her sentences curt and reserved. But some quality in the eyes now lifted to her own from what she inwardly termed ‘those blessed hieroglyphics’ caused her to expand a little in speech and manner.

  Juliet slowly shook her head, and Nurse Judson went noiselessly out.

  How still the room was now! An unfamiliar sensation began to creep upon Juliet. She kept her eyes fixed upon the sheet of paper.

  She could see, without looking, the white gleam of the bedcover, and the breathing thing that lay under it, the subdued tint of wallpaper and carpet. There was nothing to be afraid of.

  But she was afraid.

  Every vague remark that she had ever heard about death, the Vast Unmentionable of her century, floated in her mind, and in the warmth of the silent room she suddenly shivered.

  Her hand hovered over the paper. But it was useless; the dance in her head, so beautiful in its intricacy, would not return. Somewhere out
side time and space the dance went on, eternal and still beautiful; but human fear had broken in, and she could no longer enter that world where the dance continued.

  She started violently. A deep, snorting noise had burst from the lump beneath the bedclothes, and Miss Pennecuick moved, and threw out an arm. Juliet sprang up and crept to the bed, and stood fascinated into objective curiosity that drove out fear.

  Was she going to see death?

  Miss Pennecuick’s lips writhed uncertainly. Then her eyes slowly opened, and they were those of a sane and sorrowful old woman. She looked full at Juliet, standing in the glow of the lamp, with its light on her expressionless face.

  Miss Pennecuick’s lips writhed again, and she made a distorted attempt at speech. Then her voice came out on the silent air, soft and hoarse:

  ‘You never cared for me at all, did you?’ she said.

  A choking sound followed. And then all expression left her face. Her head rolled slowly sideways on the pillow, and was still.

  15

  Juliet did not move. Auntie must be dead. Was that all? – And her voice quite ordinary. How funny her eyes looked. And her face . . .

  She heard the door open.

  ‘I think she’s dead,’ she said, not lowering her voice and without turning round. She continued to stare at the unrecognizable face.

  Behind her there was a soft exclamation, and the sound of a tray being set down. Then Nurse Judson was at her side and bending over the bed, and taking certain actions with the body.

  The nurse stood up with the faintest of sighs.

  ‘Yes, she’s gone . . . what happened?’ she asked in a subdued voice.

  ‘Nothing much.’

  Juliet softened her own voice in imitation; apparently one did this when someone died.

  ‘I was sitting thinking, like, and she made a funny noise and opened her eyes and looked straight at me . . . quite ordinary –well, you know, sane, I mean – she looked . . . and then—’

  She broke off. Did the old woman’s sentence, spoken plainly and sadly, mean that she had not been left any money? But Frank would look after her. ‘Did she say anything?’ Juliet shook her head.