by Sara Seale
“I don’t mind,” said Jennet quickly. “Only I can’t help her. She won’t take comfort.”
“She’ll get over it. There are plenty of the little perishers yapping away in the kennels to take this one’s place. I’m rather surprised at Aunt Emily. She’s usually so level-headed.”
“But everyone has to have affection in some shape or form,” said Jennet softly. Only Julian was without need, she thought, denying others as he denied himself.
“When one witnesses a display of this kind,” Julian was saying, “it would seem to be an excellent thing to have a sense of proportion.”
“Yes, but one doesn’t know,” said Jennet, “one doesn’t know what happens in people’s lives to make them what they are. Aunt Emily may have loved someone once, or she may never have loved anyone, so she has to have an outlet somewhere.”
He glanced at her sharply.
“Is there supposed to be a moral in that?” he asked.
“No,” she said, “a truth. Everyone wants an outlet of some kind. Even you, Julian, have your music.”
“What do you mean by even you, Julian? Am I to be considered above normal outlets, as you call it?”
She considered him gravely.
“You like to think you are,” she told him, and added carefully: “Perhaps you are. Perhaps you’re different.”
A curious expression crossed his face.
“I’m beginning to think—” he said slowly, then finished with an odd gentleness: “You’re a strange mixture, Jennet. One moment you’re just a child, and the next you produce some comic little profundity that puts us all in our place.”
Jennet smiled.
“But then, you see, you still think of me as a child, Julian, and I wouldn’t dream of putting you in your place. That’s what you do to me.”
He laughed a little self-consciously. “Do I, indeed? And very good for you, too, no doubt, with Luke and old Jeremy falling over themselves to make a fuss of you.”
She crinkled her nose at him.
“They don’t pounce,” she said: “It makes a lot of difference.”
He grunted.
“H’m. They don’t pounce, and they flatter very charmingly. I wonder what you’d say if I was to try some of these pretty speeches on you.”
“I’d think it very odd,” she said politely, and he gave her hair a half-exasperated tweak.
“One day you may get a surprise, so don’t be too sure of me,” he said, and watched the faint flush mount in her bony little face, but she only said:
“Be patient with Aunt Emily while we’re here. She really is unhappy.”
To Emily she said impulsively the night before they left:
“Would you like me to stay, Aunt Emily? I don’t need to go back with Julian.”
Emily looked surprised.
“No; thank you, dear child. You must go back for that final sitting, and in any case, I prefer to be alone with Homer just now.”
But she was touched by Jennet’s offer, and the next morning, although she did not kiss her good-bye, she held her hand for a brief moment, giving it a squeeze which was the nearest approach to emotion that she had ever shown her.
They reached Piggy’s flat in time for a late tea, and Piggy herself rose to greet them from what seemed to be a bower of flowers. The room was filled with great shaggy-headed chrysanthemums.
“What’s all this?” exclaimed Julian with amusement. “Have you been spending a fortune, Piggy, or has some secret admirer been busy in our absence?”
“Luke brought them for Jennet,” said Piggy shortly. “Said they were a welcome-home offering and he would be looking in to-night with more.”
“Oh!” Jennet, flushing, went from one cluster of flowers to another, touching their petals with loving fingers.
Julian’s eyebrows went up and he remarked a little acidly:
“Luke always did rather overdo things. Well, Jennet, you ought to be flattered.”
“Luke’s gestures are always extravagant when he wants something,” said Piggy dryly.
Julian’s eyes narrowed.
“And what do you mean by that remark?”
“Only that when you were little, I remember Luke presenting you with all the expensive surplus of his schoolroom to get your one most treasured possession in exchange. Stop admiring your flowers, now, Jennet, and sit down.”
Julian left soon after tea, telling Jennet he would see her at Jeremy’s studio the next afternoon. She ran downstairs ahead of him and into the street to look for a taxi for him, and he came and stood beside her on the edge of the pavement, tapping his stick against the curb with a nervous gesture.
“This street is too quiet,” Jennet said. “I'll run up to Cromwell Road and fetch one back for you.”
He turned to stop her, but she was too quick for him, and calling after her to be careful of the traffic, he picked up his heavy suitcase, and started to walk slowly along the pavement to meet her.
She found a taxi very quickly and came back with it, standing on the step, leaning outwards as she had seen street urchins do, her hair flowing behind her.
“I’d make a good page-boy, don’t you think?” she said, opening the door for him with a flourish.
He paused, and taking her chin in his hand, turned her face up to him.
“Jennet, I—” he began.
She waited, her clear eyes raised enquiringly to his, and the expression in his face puzzled her. She shivered a little, and he picked up his suitcase and got into the taxi.
“Run on in,” he said abruptly. “You’ll catch cold. I’ll see you tomorrow at Jeremy’s. Good night.”
True to his promise, Luke arrived just before seven, carrying a large spray of orchids.
“Quite wrong for you, darling, really,” he told her as he watched her pin them to her dress. “But orchids do seem to have a great moral uplift for most women. Hurry up, my poppet. I’ve booked a table for dinner a deux.”
Jennet had not expected to be taken out to dinner and she was grateful for such flattering attention as Luke was bestowing on her. After the rather depressing weekend, it was exhilarating to sit opposite him in the softly lighted restaurant, surrounded by warmth and chatter, and listen to his charming compliments again.
She asked him how he had spent the week-end and he told her he had been working hard on his new novel and had seen nobody.
“It’s going well,” he said. “My heroine’s shaping very nicely, thanks to you.”
“To me?”
“Yes, don’t you remember I told you she was very like you? Would you like to read the first chapters some time? You might be able to put me right on some points of character.”
Jennet was flattered. She did not imagine her criticism could be of real value, but she was curious to see how she herself appeared in his eyes.
“I’ll bring the typescript along next time we meet,” he said, then proceeded for the rest of the evening to make delicate love to her in those skilful phrases which he had once said were so important.
“I’m so fond of you, Jennet,” he told her in the car. “You have such a store of giving tucked away there for the right man. Don’t let Julian make you like poor Aunt Emily.”
She turned a startled gaze to him.
“You sometimes talk of him as if he was some inhuman monster,” she said.
Luke laughed and patted her knee.
“Not a monster, but a little inhuman perhaps—don’t you agree? Are you going to let him rule your life for ever?”
Her eyes widened in the darkness.
“I don’t know. I have no choice really,” she said, and he replied softly:
“You have the choice given to every individual—your own free will. Marry him if you must, but don’t deny your own fulfilment. There are other men who’d like what Julian doesn’t want, you know.”
She knew the old desire for affection, the urge to give and to receive, not from Luke himself, but from some nebulous being only half-conceived, and
he felt her tremble beside him.
“Darling, let me teach you these things,” he said quickly. “Give me the right to help you discover those delights which make life so eminently desirable.”
“No,” she said, and drew away from him a little. “No.”
The car stopped in front of Piggy’s flat, and Luke touched her cheek with caressing fingers.
“You won’t always be content with your bondage, you know,” he told her. “You, like every other creature, have a right to independence.”
“Blacker’s didn’t teach independence,” she said slowly. “Only a debt to charity. Julian is charity now.”
He looked at her curiously, not at all piqued by her lack of response.
“He has an extraordinary influence over you, hasn’t he?” he said. “Are you really so grateful to charity, or can it be, my sweet, that you’re a little in love with him?”
“No,” said Jennet bleakly as she had answered before, then more violently: “No!”
The warmth and well-being seemed gone from the evening, and even Luke was a stranger. “Good night,” she said, and her voice sounded lost and», bewildered. She could not even remember to thank him.
“God bless ...” he said softly, and watched her fumble a little with her latchkey before she slipped inside the house and shut the door gently behind her.
She was glad to see Jeremy again. With him all doubts retreated, and she knew a great sadness that after to-day, she would come to the studio no more.
“But of course you will,” he told her. “You are not just a sitter any more. You’re a friend, and. I hope will call upon me whenever you like.”
Jeremy had laid down his brushes for the last time and Jennet was stretching on the dais when Julian’s dragging footsteps could be heard on the stairs. Jennet had a queer impression of Luke’s swift passage, light and eager, symbol of his free, untrammelled body, and she turned to Julian in the doorway, compassion and a fierce resentment at the strong limbs of other men, in the swift, unconscious gesture she made towards him.
Jeremy was watching her, and his eyes went to Julian, who touched her hand in passing, giving it a little shake of greeting.
“And now,” the old man said, rubbing his hands together in anticipation, “I suppose you want to have a view.”
Julian smiled.
“Am I allowed audience, now?” he said, limping over to the easel.
“Yes, you’re allowed audience now.” Jeremy took the drape from the portrait.
It was very quiet in the studio. Jennet still sat on the model’s throne, her eyes on Julian’s face. He was silent for so long that she gave a little nervous cough, and Jeremy, watching him shrewdly, said:
“You see I was right when I said that you and I would see her differently.”
“Yes,” said Julian slowly, his eyes never leading the portrait. “Yes, you were right.”
Jeremy chuckled.
“You don’t like it? It’s not your conception of her?”
“It wasn’t my conception of her.” Julian, leaning rather heavily on his stick, paused, then stated brusquely: “I like it very much. I want to buy it.”
Jeremy rubbed his nose with a thoughtful gesture.
“I don’t know that I want to sell it,” he replied. “Remember I painted Jennet for my own pleasure.”
“Still,” said Julian with a grin, “you wouldn’t be averse to taking your usual fee for it, I imagine.”
Jeremy pulled the drape over the portrait with a final gesture.
“No,” he said unexpectedly, “Jennet is not for sale—even to you.”
Julian’s expression altered.
“What do you mean by that remark?”
The old man’s bright blue eyes were round with innocent surprise.
“Just what I said, my dear boy,” he retorted smoothly. “The portrait is not for sale—anyway, at present. Later on, perhaps—well, we’ll see.”
Julian did not press the question further, but Jennet thought he looked puzzled, and a little hurt. She was pinning Lube’s orchids, which she had been made to discard for the sitting, on to the shoulder of her frock.
“Pah! Orchids!” Jeremy exclaimed, watching her, “They’re about as incongruous on you as peacock’s feathers is on a humming-bird!”
“I know,” said Jennet sedately, “but Luke said they give a woman moral uplift.”
Jeremy snorted.
“Luke would! It’s the sort of banal cliché he uses in his cheap novels. Now, if you, Julian, only saw fit to buy her an appropriate buttonhole, she wouldn’t feel compelled to rely on the moral uplift of other men!”
Julian looked at her with a strange expression:
“I will,” he said gravely. “If you throw that floral monstrosity into Jeremy’s stove. I’ll take you out now and choose you something.”
“Throw away my orchids?” she said with swift protest.
“If you will,” said Julian, and she was struck by the fact that only a short time ago he would have ordered her to take them off, while now he asked a favor.
Without another word, she unpinned the flowers, stroked a petal once with a last lingering touch, and dropped them into the stove.
“Thank you,” said Julian unexpectedly, and Jennet crossed to where Jeremy stood, silently observing them both, and held out her hand.
“Good-bye, dear Mr. Pritchard,” she said. “And thank you for painting me.”
He took her hand and shook it gravely, turning it over and straightening out the slim fingers.
“Nice hands,” he murmured, then ruffled her hair with an affectionate gesture. “But I’m not going to say good-bye, young lady. I shall see you again plenty of times. You’re not going back to the country yet, are you?”
“I don’t know.” She glanced at Julian.
“We must talk about that,” he said non-committally. “You’re having dinner with me at the flat tonight, and we can settle a few things. Come along if we’re to get that posy before the florist’s close.”
In the flat he poured her out a glass of sherry and put it on a small table by the electric fire, and watched her unpin his flowers from her coat and fasten them with great care to her frock.
“Oh, by the way,” he said, “Luke was here this afternoon. He left this for you. Said you’d promised to read the first chapters of his new novel.” He picked up a large Manila envelope from the desk and gave it to her. “It can keep you busy while I'm having a bath. I won’t be longer than I can help.”
He limped out of the room and she sat down by the fire and drew the neat sheets of typescript from the envelope. Julian, she knew, was unable to hurry over bathing and dressing. There would be time and to spare to read Luke’s manuscript while she waited.
For a long time there was no sound in the quiet room but the crisp crackle of the pages as she slowly turned them. She read on to the end, her glass of sherry forgotten, and her face as she quietly put the typescript back in its envelope had a pinched, hurt look.
It was all there, the amusingly sketched-in impression of the gauche, plain little girl from an institution, the pathetic plea for love and affection in any form, the pitiful ripening of what Luke intended to be the first affaire. Even her own words were there, whole slices of their recent conversations, and the absurd reluctance which he imagined sprang from a shy timidity. The story stopped abruptly at a point where the young girl was about to succumb to the charms and persuasions of a man who was obviously Luke himself, and she remembered him saying to her: “... let me teach you these things ... don’t deny your own fulfilment...” And she might have listened. If it had not been for that debt to charity, she might have listened and given her first starved affections to someone who only probed emotion with a skilful pen to stir up copy. Julian, bathed and changed, and freshly shaved, came back, apologizing for being so long, and she glanced at the clock. She had been unaware of the passing of time.
“You haven’t drunk your sherry,” he remarked with surprise, a
nd she picked up the glass and drained it off, making him raise his eyebrows. “That’s no way to drink good sherry,” he said, amused. “You tossed it off like an old gin addict.”
He took her glass and refilled it, and as he handed it back to her, he looked at her more closely.
“Are you feeling all right? You’re rather flushed,” he said.
She took the glass from him, pushing Luke’s manuscript into a corner of the sofa.
“Quite all right, thank you. I expect it’s the fire.”
“I expect it’s the sherry!” he retorted. “Drink this one more slowly or it will go to your head. What’s Luke’s latest masterpiece like?”
“Very amusing,” she replied.
Her manner puzzled him a little. “You aren’t losing your heart a little to Luke, are you, Jennet?” he asked casually.
“To Luke?” She jerked her glass and a little of its contents spilled on her frock.
“I just wondered. You’ve seen a good deal of him of late and his attentions have been very flattering to someone as young as you are.” Julian paused, and his eyes rested on her still face. “Luke’s manner can be rather misleading to the inexperienced, although I’d trust him to behave himself properly where you are concerned.”
She raised grave eyes to his.
“I think,” she said slowly, “you either trust people too much or not enough.”
He regarded her thoughtfully.
“What do you mean by that!”
“Well, you don’t trust me at all—to wear the right clothes, know the right people make decisions—almost everything.”
He laughed.
“What a child you are! That’s scarcely the proper meaning of trust.”
She was silent, feeling, as so often, that she had said something stupid.
Later they brought their coffee back to the living room, and Jennet said:
“Did you really like the portrait, Julian?”
“Very much,” he replied, but he would not enlarge the subject.
“I suppose,” she said tentatively, “I’ll be going back to Pennycross soon.”
“Do you want to go back?”
