My indignation almost caused me to forget the business in hand; but Ned brought back my attention to it by repeating, rather crossly, that the day-off-abroad provision was not embodied in a Press release but in the Act itself.
“My dear Ned,” I replied, “I am prepared to bet you a bottle of wine that it isn’t.”
“By all means,” he said. “But I’ll have to wait for my wine until we get back to England. We can’t settle it without a Finance Act.”
“We can settle it right away,” I said. “I have the Finance Act in my room.”
And thus it was that the beautiful Ned returned with me across the bridge to the annexe.
It is a great advantage in an enterprise of this nature to know that one’s room will have been cleaned and tidied. How often has some promising pursuit been brought to a standstill by my recalling the chaos and squalor of my bedroom? I looked with gratitude, therefore, as we went through the entrance-way to the annexe, at the little group of chambermaids, as pretty as a flock of angels in some Renaissance painting, who gather there to rest in the afternoon. They smiled at me, I thought, with an eye of complicity, as if knowing and approving my purpose. We went up the staircase and came to my room.
“Sit down,” I said, “while I find my Finance Act.” There being nothing else to sit on — the chair by
the dressing table was occupied by a pile of clothes — he sat down on the bed, on the edge nearer to the door. I was careful, having found my Finance Act, to hand it to him from the other side of the bed, thus drawing him down from a perpendicular to a horizontal position — lying, that is to say, across the bed, rather than sitting on the edge of it. I sat down beside him on the edge further from the door.
“Show me,” I said, “this mythical amendment.”
It is hardly possible, when two people are sitting on the same bed and trying to read the same copy of the Finance Act, for all physical contact to be avoided. I, indeed, made no attempt to avoid it; but neither, it seemed to me, did Ned. This gave me some encouragement — one would not wish, as a woman of principle, to impose attentions actually distasteful.
The advice of yourself and my Aunt Regina, excellent as both had proved to be, could take me, I felt, no further — it was time to put complete reliance in that given by the dramatist Shakespeare. Leaning across Ned’s shoulders, I rested my hand on the area of the bed which lay on the further side of them. So that when, in due course, he looked up from the statute to say, with forgivable complacency, “Here you are, Julia — sub-paragraph (b) of paragraph 2 of the Schedule,” he found himself, as it were, encircled.
“Why, you are perfectly right,” I said, “and I owe you a bottle of wine. But I hope you are too kind to insist on immediate payment.”
“Oh, Julia,” he said, opening his eyes very wide with reproach, “how can you be so shameless?”
“Ah, Ned,” I answered, “because you are so beautiful.” And met with no further resistance.
“It just shows one,” said Ragwort sadly, “how dangerous it is to gamble. Even when one knows one is right.”
“Come off it,” said Cantrip. “Going off with Julia to her bedroom in the middle of the afternoon — you can’t tell me he didn’t think she’d make a pass.”
“Quite so,” said Selena. “But the charge is not one of ravishment.”
Delicacy precludes any more detailed account of the afternoon. This letter may be read in the presence of the virtuous and lovely Ragwort — one would not like to make him blush. That is to say, one would like very much to do so — nothing could be more delightful. But I shall resist the temptation. I shall merely say that the dramatist Shakespeare, in imputing to the forthright and vigorous approach a merely limited success, was shown to have been less than candid.
Afterwards, as is the way with beautiful young men when they wish to show in spite of the evidence that they are not creatures of easy virtue, the lovely Ned put on an expression of prim decorum, as one disapproving of all that has occurred and accepting no share of responsibility for it. Such a look, at such a time, inspires a particular tenderness; for after the horse has been persuaded to bolt, the careful locking of the stable door is extraordinarily endearing.
“Julia,” he said, “you will keep quiet about this, won’t you? I wouldn’t like Ken to know about it.”
I assured him that he might count on my discretion. I had already established, as you know, that it was logically impossible for Kenneth to be distressed by anything that might occur between Ned and myself; but Kenneth, being an artist, has perhaps not studied logic and is unaware of the impossibility.
The great danger of such an episode is the sense which it induces of benevolent euphoria, the consequences of which are almost always disastrous. After washing and changing for dinner, I had made my way to the bar of the Cytherea with a view to consuming a refreshing Campari soda and writing you a full account of my success. There, however, I found the Major, looking dejected and reading The Times.
My sympathies were aroused. The Major, after all, had no doubt come to Venice hoping, just like me, for a little innocent entertainment, but unlike me had failed to find it. I felt I should do what I could to raise his spirits. In a sense, it is true, it was his own fault: any hopes he might have had of success had been reduced, by his wearing of Bermuda shorts, from the small to the minuscule. On the other hand, I thought, it might be argued that it did him credit to wear a garment which so immediately revealed the frightfulness of his spider-like legs: an unscrupulous man would have tried to keep them concealed until the point at which a well-bred woman would feel embarrassment at withdrawing in revulsion.
“Cheer up, Bob,” I said briskly. “The news can’t be that bad.”
“Just looking at the jolly old investments,” said the Major. “I’ve saved a quid or two from time to time and a chap I know told me to buy some shares. Down again as per usual. Got to expect it, I suppose, with this Socialist shower running the show.”
“The Major,” said Selena, “must have been singularly unlucky in his choice of investments. The Stock Market is at its highest for five years.”
I pointed out that the decline in his investments would give him an excellent opportunity to establish a loss for capital gains tax purposes; but he seemed unwilling to perceive the advantages of this. Having undertaken, however, the task of cheering him up, I persisted with it until dinner, sparing only a moment to add a postscript to my letter to you and consign it to the evening post.
My efforts to improve the Major’s spirits were rewarded with such success that by the end of dinner he raised again the matter of the rug-cutting expedition. This put me in a dilemma. The only places I had seen where there might be dancing were nightclubs which looked to me formidably expensive; if I permitted the Major, in such an establishment, to bear the whole expense, it would be so enormous as to place me under obligations of an unmentionable nature. To avoid this, I should have to contribute equally; but to spend a large sum of money in order to shuffle round an over-crowded room in distasteful proximity to such a man — well, there were limits to my benevolence.
“Bob,” I said, “you can’t really want to spend the evening in a stuffy nightclub. I have noticed a most attractive little bar only a few minutes away, where we could sit out of doors and drink coffee and grappa—don’t you think that would be much more amusing?”
The bar to which I actually took the Major may not have been quite the bar to which I had intended to take him. Any route one follows in Venice is of necessity devious: alleyways which seem to lead in one direction, finding themselves interrupted by an unexpected canal, turn round and go somewhere entirely different; it is always possible — but never certain — that the bridge you are crossing is the same bridge that you crossed five minutes ago. Still, whether it was the right bar or the wrong bar, it was a perfectly good place to drink grappa and coffee.
Perceiving that we were close to the Teatro Fenice and somehow feeling that the responsibilities of guide sti
ll rested on my shoulders, I was anxious to tell the Major something of the building’s history and significance; but Ragwort’s guide book was unhelpful.
“You will observe,” I said, “that the date over the door is 1792. We may confidently assume, therefore, that the Theatre was the scene of very few of the comedies and musical entertainments for which Venice was celebrated in the eighteenth century. Beyond that, I can tell you nothing: the guide book refrains from any account of it.”
“Never mind, m’dear,” said the Major. “Can’t always rely on guide books, can you?” His tone was sombre, as if the remark had some deeper, possibly metaphysical significance. “Still,” he added, “not your fault, m’dear.”
Among the many defects in the state of things which people have from time to time considered to be my fault — but which you have always kindly explained were not my fault at all — the inadequacy of guide books has not so far been included. Still, I answered that it was kind of him to say so.
He continued to speak of his financial position, giving me to understand that in spite of the decline in his investments he had done not too badly for himself and was quite comfortably fixed. 1 made congratulatory comment.
I would think it odd, he said, that he had never married. I did not in fact think it at all odd — the statistical chances against any woman being prepared to endure both the hairiness of his legs and the tedium of his conversation seemed to me to be negligible. 1 did not express this view, but said sympathetically that the military life must be difficult to combine with the domestic.
“That’s it, m’dear,” said the Major. “All right for the chap, but no life for the little woman. Ends in heartbreak — seen it often. And since I’ve been in Civvy Street — well, I’ve often thought I’d like to settle down. But it’s no good if it’s not the right woman.”
I agreed that it was undoubtedly better to be married to no one than to someone uncongenial.
“Well, m’dear,” said the Major, “how about it?”
I did my best to misunderstand. No use — it was a proposal of marriage.
If the survival of the human species were to depend on an act of physical conjunction between the Major and myself, then I suppose — while reserving the right, should the contingency actually arise, to consider the matter further — I suppose that in that event I should somehow bring myself to it. Once. Not twice. No, Selena, I am sorry, but even with the future of the species at stake, I really think not twice: you could not reasonably expect it of me. The institution of marriage, I have been led to believe, involves the occurrence of such acts on a regular and frequent basis. Marriage to the Major is a concept to make the blood run cold.
I had expected, at worst, some overture of a manifestly improper nature, such as might be rebuffed by adopting a Ragwort-like manner. For responding, however, to a proposal of marriage, the conduct of Ragwort affords no useful precedent. The ungoverned merriment with which he habitually receives such an offer is all very well with a friend and colleague, but would be excessively wounding in reply to a comparative stranger. I made some disjointed remarks to the effect that it was kind of him to ask me but marriage was not a habit of mine.
“Know I’m rushing my fences a bit, m’dear,” he said. “Don’t expect you to decide at once. But I’d better warn you, an old soldier doesn’t give up easily when he’s set his mind on something.”
The stars continued to shine in the velvet sky; but my spirits were enveloped in a cloud of sudden gloom.
The making of the proposal, albeit unaccepted, appeared in the Major’s opinion to entitle him, on wishing me good-night, to embrace me, though a well-judged movement of the head enabled me to reduce the unpleasantness of the whole thing to a rasping of my cheek. The emery-board texture of his chin put me in mind by contrast of the alabaster smoothness of Ned’s. I remain very worried about Desdemona.
“Why,” asked Ragwort, “couldn’t she just say ‘No’?”
“They told her at school,” said Selena, “that she must avoid hurting people’s feelings.”
“One sometimes feels,” said Ragwort, “that Julia took her education altogether too literally.”
Today, therefore, my principal objective has been to avoid the Major. I should have liked to have another disagreement with Ned about the Finance Act; but I think I can hope for no further success in that quarter. Seeing the lovely creature on the terrace this morning, I reminded him that I owed him a bottle of wine.
“It is an obligation,” he answered with great coldness, “that I shall be quite happy to forget.”
From which I concluded that he is still set on proving himself not to be a young man of easy virtue and that it would accordingly take a full week of admiring his soul to prevail on him again.
In case I have anything to add, I shall not post this until tomorrow evening; though I do not suppose, since tomorrow is our last day in Venice, that anything will happen of sufficient interest to deserve reporting to you.
“The remainder of the letter,” said Selena, “is written, therefore, on the day of the murder. Would this be a convenient moment to adjourn for coffee?”
CHAPTER 10
Cantrip appeared thoughtful: he had conceded without even formal argument that it was his turn to buy the coffee.
“I say,” he said, as he brought it back to our table, “you know this bird Desdemona that Julia keeps on about? She married this chap Othello and he got the idea she was having a bit on the side. So he did her in.”
“I think,” said Selena, “that we are all reasonably familiar with the unfortunate events described in the tragedy of Othello.”
“Well, I’m jolly familiar with them,” said Cantrip, “because Julia took me to see it once. And I said afterwards I thought it was pretty silly, because the Othello chap’s meant to have done frightfully well in the army and be a wiz at strategy and all that. And in that case, he wouldn’t be the sort of twit who thought his wife was having it off with someone else just because she lost her handkerchief. And Julia didn’t agree. Well, what she actually said was that I was a semi-educated flibbertigibbet whose powers of dramatic appreciation would be strained to the utmost by a Punch and Judy show on Brighton Pier in the off season. So I biffed her with my umbrella. And she tried to biff me with her handbag. But she missed, of course — you know what she’s like.”
Evidently lost in the tenderness of this recollection, Cantrip fell silent. The sweep of black hair across his pale forehead gave him a romantic look, as of some poet or artist dying young in the nineteenth century. The events described had taken place, I suppose, before the spider episode: after it Julia would not, I think, have sought to return his biff.
“Did this literary discussion,” asked Selena, “at any stage return to the merely verbal?”
“Oh, rather,” said Cantrip. “You see, the way Julia saw it was that a chap who’d spent all his life in the army was just the sort of chap to get a bee in his bonnet about pure womanhood and so on, because he wouldn’t get the chance to find out that women were more or less like anyone else and he’d start getting all idealistic about them. So as soon as he found out Desdemona wasn’t perfect — I mean, the first time she spilt coffee or dropped cigarette ash on the carpet — he’d start feeling all disillusioned and thinking she’d betrayed his ideals. And after that, making him think she was having it off with some other chap would be absolute child’s play.”
“It is, I suppose,” said Ragwort, “a not unconvincing view.”
“You bet it’s not unconvincing. Because when I started thinking about it I realized it was just what happened to my Uncle Hereward. My Uncle Hereward spent the best years of his life in the Army, serving Queen and Country in distant outposts of Empire, and when he came out he was so far round the twist he was practically invisible. With special reference to women. He’s got this idea that when he went into the Army women were all pure and unattainable and when he came out they weren’t. And instead of being pleased, he’s as miffed as a magg
ot about it.”
“My dear Cantrip,” said Selena, “are the psychological difficulties of your relative in any way material to our present problem?”
“Well, of course they are, or I wouldn’t be telling you about them, would I? The point is that this Major of Julia’s is the same type as Othello and my Uncle Hereward. And Julia, poor grummit, with a view to discouraging his advances, has been setting herself up as a leading contender in the pure womanhood stakes. As a result of which, the Major thinks she’s the woman he’s been looking for all these years and asks her to marry him.”
“Oh, dear,” said Selena.
“‘Oh, dear’ is right. And since Julia doesn’t want to hurt his feelings by saying no, she wouldn’t marry him if he was the last man on earth, he probably thinks she’s more or less engaged to him.”
“No one,” said Selena, “could be as idiotic as that”
“You haven’t met my Uncle Hereward. Well, if that’s how the Major sees things, and then he finds out about Julia and the chap from the Revenue, with particular reference to last Wednesday afternoon, what’s he going to do about it?”
“I suppose,” said Ragwort, “taking Othello as his model, that he would have murdered Julia.”
“Ah,” said Cantrip, “that just shows you’re not as familiar with Othello as I am. If you’d been to the thing and sat all the way through it the way Julia made me do, you’d remember that before he did in Desdemona he took out a contract on this other chap he thought she’d been having it off with.”
“Cantrip is reminding us,” said Selena, fearing that our grasp of the Cambridge idiom might not be sufficient to enable us to follow this explanation, “that prior to strangling his wife Othello gave instructions to his subordinate for the murder of Michael Cassio, his supposed rival in her affections.”
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