by Maggie Ford
Today, enfolded in his arms, she almost succumbed to the need inside her but seconds later, as so often happened, Simon’s image shot into her mind. ‘No, Chester, not today.’ How many times in the past had she said that?
But she wanted to be made love to. That overwhelming excitement was pounding deep inside her, lately becoming ever more frequent and urgent. These days her mind seemed to be in a constant whirl, affecting her whole concentration on ordinary everyday things.
On top of it all Ginny’s marriage to Robert in August was rushing closer until Julia was near to exhaustion trying to fit in her own work as well as putting the finishing touches to the bridal gown and in the absence of her parents organizing the event with Simon. During the final week before the wedding Julia found it impossible to see Chester. All thought of him was driven from her mind; her only concern was for her sister, and Ginny’s sadness that her mother would not be there to see her youngest daughter wed.
In church, listening to Ginny hardly able to say her vows for tears, Julia felt her own throat constrict as she in turn fought her own tears. Next to her, where their mother should have been sitting, was Stephanie, with her husband on her other side. Stephanie was staring ahead, eyes bleak but dry, with Edward’s arm around her.
She was holding her baby son while little Violet, sitting beside her father, toyed happily with a doll. The child had hardly known her grandmother, she had so seldom been taken to see her. And Stephanie had the audacity to look sorrowful, Julia thought bitterly. Glancing at James and his wife further along the pew, he too seemed unmoved by the absence of his mother at the wedding and Julia knew he hadn’t thought once about her.
Sadness, however, vanished completely amid the fun of photos being taken, wedding guests filling the rooms at the Savoy to be welcomed by the newly-weds, champagne flowing, the three-tiered wedding cake cut. The band played throughout the evening, dance music, slow foxtrots like ‘Stardust’, ‘A Room With a View’, as well as lively quicksteps such as ‘I Can’t Give you Anything but Love, Baby’, waltzes, the first of which the happy couple started off, and of course jazz numbers. That year, 1929, was a good year for jazz and swing. There was lots of money for the rich to spend and investments were riding high.
Julia forgot all about Chester as she and Simon danced together. That night they made love and it seemed somehow different, new, full of passion and joy. Somehow Julia felt something happen in that moment of climax, though she couldn’t have defined what it was even if she had wanted to.
* * *
The wedding had been five days ago and the couple were still away on honeymoon in the South of France. Already Julia was missing the sight of her sister’s face.
Today she looked up from speaking to a client to glimpse what seemed to be Chester’s white car pass slowly by the door to her establishment. She tried not to look on edge as her client continued discussing the new designs she was being shown, but after half an hour the business was concluded and the customer left, well pleased after having placed a substantial order.
Hurrying outside, Julia looked towards New Bond Street to see the white car standing there. It could only be Chester.
Simon was out for the morning, his assistant Merriman keeping an eye on things in his absence. Her own helper, Miss Cleaves, was occupied neatly folding and putting away materials.
‘I have to go out for a few minutes,’ Julia called to both young people who glanced up and nodded.
Making towards the car she saw that the driver was Chester but when he greeted her it was not with his usual smiling face. He patted the passenger seat as she approached. ‘Get in, Julia.’
She stood where she was. ‘I can’t go with you just like that,’ she said. ‘We have to make proper times to meet, you know that.’
‘Please, Julia,’ he interrupted. ‘Get in. I’ve something I need to tell you. It’s important. I can’t tell you while you’re standing there in the street.’
Wondering, she opened the door and slipped in beside him. It was a while before he spoke. When he did his voice was low and grave.
‘Look, darling, I don’t know how you’re going to take this. But I need to talk about these meetings of ours. Things are going to have to change.’
Julia felt her body give a jolt, apprehension filling every part of her. What did he mean, things would have to change? But he was still talking – slowly, his voice low, yet buried within was a hint of excitement.
‘The thing is, with this divorce on the verge of being concluded I had a letter from the solicitor yesterday. It’s taken me until this morning to come and tell you about it – about you and me.’
Julia’s heart raced. Was he asking her to marry him?
Conflicting thoughts were winging through her head, all mixed up. Now it came to it, did she want to finish with Simon and marry Chester?
If she refused the offer she was sure she was about to hear, she could be losing her chance of exciting love. Yet that night with Simon after Ginny’s wedding had been every bit as exciting as any time with Chester. Of course though, they might lapse back into their old comfy situation. Did she want that?
And what of Simon, how would he feel when she told him what had been going on with Chester? He loved her in his way and as she visualized his face when she told him… no, she couldn’t do that to him. But here was Chester…
She could hear him talking as if from a distance and forced her mind back to him.
‘You see, darling,’ he was saying. He was calling her darling. He had never done that before even at the height of their love making.
‘It’s like this. The moment I got the solicitor’s letter I went straight round to see Helen, my wife, and we had a long talk. She told me she had broken up several weeks ago with the man she’d been seeing and asked me if I could ever forgive her. She looked so sad and I realized I still love her. I don’t know how to say this but we’ve both decided to try and make another go of it. I’ve got to pick her up in a few moments and we’re going to see our solicitors to sort things out.’
For a moment Julia’s mind went blank and it took her a second or two to gather up the threads of what she’d been hearing. Then the meaning of his words crashed into her brain with such a force that she drew in her breath in one huge gasp, to release it in a sobbing, trembling shriek.
‘You bastard!’ She had never used a word like that in her life. ‘You disgusting, evil bastard, you knew all along. You were just using me until…’
She broke off and began beating both fists against his shoulder and head, blind to passers-by on the pavement, who had been stopped in their tracks by her shrieks.
He held both her fists, pulled her to him. ‘I didn’t know, Julia. Please believe me, I didn’t know. I’m so sorry.’ His lips were against her cheek. ‘I do still love you, Julia,’ he was saying. ‘I always will.’
In fury she pulled her face away but in the next second had pressed her lips to his. There was no response. She was making a fool of herself. With an effort she fought to control the uncharacteristic outburst that had so suddenly taken hold of her and fell back in her seat, suddenly coming to her senses, knowing she was humiliating herself. She wasn’t prepared to let that happen.
She became aware that people were pausing, staring into the car for a brief moment before moving on, embarrassed. But one person still stood looking at her.
In a panic she clambered out of the car but Simon was already walking away. She wanted to run after him but all she could do was stand transfixed by horror. Behind her Chester’s car revved up and drew away.
* * *
A whole week had passed. Simon hadn’t said a word about the incident and it was torturing her. Every time she tried to make an effort to explain he would change the subject to some matter to do with business, or walk away. He hadn’t resorted to sleeping apart from her but that made the situation even worse.
Tonight, as they had every other night since that awful day, they lay side by side, staring up at the
ceiling, not speaking. He finally turned over and she did too, their backs to each other. Sleep refused to come and she knew it was the same for him; she was aware of him fidgeting from time to time, his breathing irregular. He even got up at one point and went into the other room, only to return to lie down beside her again.
She knew he was hurting, as she was, but for different reasons – he seeing himself as having been made a fool of, she screwed up with misery as the guilty party – and there was nothing she could do. It was a waste of time trying to speak to him in the quietness of the night but now she tried again.
‘Simon?’
‘Go to sleep!’ His voice was muffled yet sharp.
But she had to say something. ‘If only we’d been married…’ She hadn’t intended to say that. The words had come out all on their own.
To her intense relief they produced a reaction, even if it was tortured and sour. ‘Would marriage have made any difference?’
Words now came tumbling out. ‘I wanted so much for us to marry. I suppose I was caught at a low point. You were content for things to stay as they were, interested it seemed only in making more and more money. Sometimes it was as if you didn’t care about me any more, other than us being partners and making a success of the business. We hardly made love at all as time went on and sometimes I felt love didn’t matter to you any more.’
As if he’d hardly been listening, he broke in sharply. ‘Who is he?’
Crushed, she could only reply, ‘I knew him a long time ago – before I ever met you. We were to be engaged. But his people saw my family’s downfall as complete humiliation and put a stop to the engagement.’
She started to relate the story of how she’d had to keep her family going, though Simon already knew all that, didn’t he? She realized it immediately as he interrupted her with a curt, ‘How long?’
‘How long?’ she echoed, not understanding the question.
‘How long have you been seeing each other?’
She told him how she and Chester had met again by chance at the London Fashion Exhibition in March, and how she had accepted his invitation to have coffee with him and talk over old times. ‘I saw no harm in it then,’ she said.
Simon listened without a word as she went on to tell him how she had intended only to let Chester see how contemptible she thought his behaviour had been towards her and to show him how well she had done for herself without him.
‘But it was all a long time ago,’ she said. ‘And we became more like old friends having coffee together. He told me he was in the middle of a nasty divorce. He was miserable and I felt sorry for him and in a way it made me feel superior. Then, somehow, I don’t know what really happened but…’
She let the rest trail off. It was in danger of becoming a sordid story and she wasn’t prepared to subject Simon to painful details. It was then she realized he was behaving strangely, every now and again clearing his throat like a person bored.
Defeated by this apparent indifference to what she was trying to say, she repeated bleakly, ‘If only you and I had been married.’
‘Then we’ll get married,’ he said, taking her by surprise. But there was no love in his tone. She reacted immediately.
‘No. I want you to want to marry me, not just as an arrangement but because you love me.’
‘I do love you.’
She couldn’t believe that, not after what she’d been telling him. ‘In spite of what happened?’ she burst out in disbelief.
‘In spite of what you say happened.’ He turned his face towards her. He was looking at her, studying her levelly, and suddenly she broke down.
She felt his arm go about her, drawing her close. Now crying into his shoulder she felt his arm tightening even more as her words came tumbling out, drowned in sobs and practically inaudible.
‘I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,’ she kept saying. ‘I’ve been such a fool. Nothing I can say will put it right. But I want only you, only you, darling…’ She was becoming more and more incoherent as he held her to him. How could he forgive? But that was just what he was doing and she didn’t deserve him.
The memory of how coolly Chester had informed her that he was going back to his wife, betraying her for a second time, almost made her want to rage against him again. But even as she wept against Simon’s shoulder, sense told her that it would be disastrous to say any more about Chester. It was over. And she must stop punishing herself, too, for her foolishness and weakness. So long as Simon still loved her and consented to marry her, she was prepared to forget the past and spend the rest of her life loving only him.
Twenty-Seven
The wedding was short and simple, by special licence at a registry office on the third Friday in August. There were few guests: Ginny and Robert as witnesses, James and his wife, Betty who’d been with her and Simon all these years. Stephanie and her family were in Italy on holiday, their first ever trip abroad, but sent their love on a postcard with a view of Rome.
The little party had a quiet meal in a nearby restaurant, no one else was invited, not even friends, for as far as others were concerned they’d been married for years and there was no point in letting the cat out of the bag now.
The whole thing had taken a couple of hours, with Simon and Julia returning to their place of business as if nothing had happened. Business still came first. They were coming towards the end of a decade of rapidly changing fashion, from the voluminous fashions of 1921 to the skimpy ones of 1928 and 1929. Julia foresaw a settling down next year to sleeker, more flowing garments, already beginning to make an appearance. She couldn’t afford to be caught out, as had happened once before. At times she worked herself to near exhaustion to get the finished samples off to the factory for making up and dispatching to the shops.
She missed Ginny’s lively presence about the place as she draped her toiles, the muslin cloth from which she would cut her copies, on the plaster model she’d used for years or on one of her live models, altering a hemline, a bodice, a sleeve. Dear Ginny would endure these long, boring hours without complaint, allowing herself to be pulled this way and that so as to get a new idea just right, a trim added to the waist, a strap to the shoulder, a bit taken out of a bodice, a little more draping to a skirt – always with a smile as a garment slowly, laboriously took shape.
The girls Julia now used seldom smiled, behaving more like statues, straight-faced, eyes fixed, suffering what they were being paid to do as she fitted the material on them, pinning, cutting, redesigning as she went until finally she was satisfied, the finished garment ready to be completed and hung from the racks for dispatch to the factory to be made up and sent out.
Before Ginny had married she had proved herself to be almost as gifted as her sister at sketching. With an eye for colour she had even begun to work from just an idea in her head, often improving on Julia’s own ideas. She might even have become a designer in her own right. Instead she had become a wife.
They were living near Robert’s parents and would often drive over to see Julia, unlike James and Stephanie, neither of whom she saw very often now their mother was gone.
‘It wouldn’t hurt either of them to come over and see you and Simon now and again,’ Ginny said. ‘After all, considering the situation we were all left in after Father died, we’ve all done pretty well for ourselves and it’s all thanks to you, Julia. They should show some appreciation.’
It was a shame the others didn’t see it that way, but Julia was finding life too busy again to care about them. The order books were always full. They were even planning to enter for a fashion competition and had also arranged to go over to France before Christmas to attend the Paris Exhibition.
Married life, as for most newly-weds, held a certain wonder for Julia. She had always imagined that after all their years together marriage to Simon would feel no different. But she was wrong. Loving Simon all but overwhelmed her, as if that business with Chester Morrison had never been. All that remained of that episode was an occasional distur
bing dream in which Simon appeared to be running away from her, with Chester holding her back as he faded into the distance. In the dream she searched frantically for Simon, asking people if they knew where he was and meeting blank faces – her penitence perhaps. Simon never referred to her affair.
At other times she would dream that Simon had gambled away everything they had, reducing them to living in some horrible hovel, its walls falling in so that everyone could see her striving to pretend to be rich. Perhaps this was inspired by the memory of the earlier trauma that had befallen her family.
Yet she felt it had some substance to it. Simon did play the stock market far too rashly. Time and again she would warn him to think about what he was doing but he always laughed at her when she tried to recount her dream to him.
‘While the market’s this buoyant, I intend to make the most of it. Everyone else is doing it. No reason to worry, darling. Shares in all the big corporations are rising to unimaginable heights and I don’t want to be the one to miss out.’
Perhaps he was right. Their business was thriving and dreams were, well, just dreams. And she had her own private hope about which she had so far said nothing to him: her period was now more than a week overdue. She was sure she felt different too, an odd yet indefinable change in her body. Maybe it was only her imagination – it was best to let another month go before raising his hopes.
But what if he didn’t want children? He hadn’t been too eager for marriage, so maybe he wouldn’t be eager for children either. She knew he hadn’t seen his own parents for years. She had sent them an invitation to their wedding but there had been no reply. In the past he’d told her of the rift his refusal to take up his father’s business had caused. It seemed that, having spent a great deal on sending his son to public school and then to university, his father had been angered to a point of blind fury when Simon had disappointed him. His parents had never forgiven him and he in turn had determined never to forgive them. But would that jeopardize his wish for a family of his own? Perhaps he wasn’t cut out to be a family man. She had never asked.
