After Julius (22 page)

‘Have you kept it?’

‘Oh yes,’ she said wearily. ‘I’ve kept everything. Mervyn started to try and collect all the facts about his brother’s venture. He wanted to publish a little book
– privately. He went to a great deal of trouble. He tracked down the two men who got back alive in Julius’s boat. The mother of one of them wrote to me. He wanted that letter and
anything else that I had. He saw the owner of the yacht, he did everything he could. He was very hard hit by his brother’s death. Julius had written to
him
as well.’

‘
Did
he print the book?’

‘No – he couldn’t. He wanted to see the letter that Julius had written to me; he didn’t try to force me, of course, but in the end I felt it would be dishonest not to
show him.’

‘That was very brave of you.’

‘It wasn’t. I really felt I had nothing to lose: but I did know that Julius would have hated a distorted account of his – his end to have been even privately printed. I saw
Mervyn and told him, and then showed him the letter. He was extraordinarily nice about it – really astonishing. He’d always admired his brother, you see – not that this made him
admire Julius any less, but it somehow changed the whole thing in a way which made it much less simple. He – Mervyn — knew that you’d gone – perhaps that made him kinder to
me. Anyway he
was
: we’re much better friends than we were when Julius was alive. He gave me the folder with all the material to keep. I keep it, but of course, I haven’t shown it
to anyone – not even the girls.’

‘May
I
see it?’

Without answering, she got up and went to her desk. ‘Of course, it’s locked.’ She fumbled in her bag and found the key. Then she opened a drawer and pulled out a dark-green
folder which was tied with tapes, and handed it to him. ‘Don’t read it now,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I could bear it. Read it in bed tonight.’ For once, her
voice was almost acid. He supposed that the document made her feel very emotional, even now.

CHAPTER 11

CRESSY

A
FTER
Dan and Emma had left the music-room, she opened her Haydn at the third movement, changed her mind and went back to
the first. At least there had been one thing she hadn’t told that wretched man. She must have been
mad
to tell him such a lot. ‘The trouble is, that the moment I’m alone
with
anyone
I talk far too much. I’ll be a crashing bore when I’m old.’ She’d only gone on because he’d been unexpectedly sympathetic and much more serious than
she’d thought him. Of course, she’d been quite wrong about him being just some kind of glamorous layabout. He certainly wasn’t that. In a way, he’d been interesting to talk
to – in a way. She turned to Haydn, and as she did so remembered Dick. Sunday night would be the end. She felt calm and poised about it: obviously it couldn’t matter if that was all she
felt about it. She rolled up her cuffs to get them out of the way and settled down to work.

At the end of an hour the muscle was hurting again. She got up from the piano and had a cigarette. Apathy was attacking her about going on working – a sensation she
associated now with the weeks before giving a recital. At least he was trying to help people who badly needed it when there wasn’t enough help to go round, instead of coercing a few unwilling
people with too much time on their hands to pay upwards of a pound to listen to her. Put like that, there was no earthly point in her going on with music. No music, no Dick – it would
certainly be a clean sweep: it would make her
have
to do something. Perhaps Ann would have her in some very humble capacity. Presumably, for charitable enterprises – like any other
kind – you need twice as many people in humble capacities as you needed the other sort. Perhaps
she
ought to go to Korea or that place in Africa where Dr Schweitzer had his leper
colony . . . Silly and dramatic. If she wanted to help people she could do it perfectly well in Uxbridge or Liverpool.

She wandered to the window: it was nearly dark, but she could just see Daniel and Emma working away at their fireworks – talking to each other only about what they were doing she betted,
like children. She supposed the other two, her mother and Felix, were having a cosy heart-to-heart by the fire – God! What could that be like? It made her feel savage to think of it: it was
so – so
unsuitable!
Perhaps he really
had
just come back to see that her mother was all right. Couldn’t blame him for that. She seemed to be the odd woman out. Better get
used to
that
. She went back to the piano and shut it. When she turned off the working lamp, the room seemed enormous and nearly dark, and she wanted to stay there and be sad; not to turn on
the sadness exactly but to let it out. But then if she did, she had an even worse fear that there might be nothing left of her – nothing at all. Should she make tea for everybody, as a way of
marking this new leaf? She decided against it: they would all, in their different ways, regard this kind of help as an interference – ‘which a lot of help is, after all,’ she
thought. She decided to go and have a bath.

In the bath she decided to give up any idea, hope or prospect of love: and she thought that this would probably and naturally rule out sex. If she found that after all she couldn’t do
without sex she would seek it from a position of strength. Like a man, she thought with triumphant austerity, she would not confuse it with anything else – an accusation which had been
constantly levelled at her in the past. Life would then be very much simpler: would it turn out to be dull? Not if one filled up one’s life with prolonged good deeds. If she managed to keep
this regime up for a year or two, she might become one of those understanding, untouched confidantes: a woman to whom the poor wretches still struggling with the confusion she was now renouncing
would come. She would explain it to them and they would not understand and she would understand. She would care so little that she would get a tremendous reputation for kindness. She would also be
able to help those people who confused love with getting married from it: who acted on the basis that if you shared enough houses, motor cars, a name and a routine everything must be all right.
This she had always distrusted: but generally speaking, these people
were
all right, since they had been aiming at the houses and motor cars and called it love because they really
couldn’t feel any better. ‘I should never have had a private income,’ she thought: ‘It makes you feel you ought to take short cuts before you are old enough to know
how.’ If she had ever
had
simply
had
to earn her own living, she would have learned the primary lessons. As it was, she felt as though she had been pushed into a high form much
too young and then had to stay there because she had never understood the homework. But now, she would at last be able to use this to advantage. She could afford to pay for a training so that she
would
be some use to somebody: she need not be accepted simply as someone who could address envelopes. Usually, when people had the reputation for knowing a great deal about life, they knew
about a lot of things going wrong, so it oughtn’t to be difficult for her to acquire the reputation. In the end she would become quite famous and people would come to interview her to find
out why she was so wise and calm. ‘Mrs Egerton received me simply in her simple flat: it was simply furnished with the barest essentials . . .’ (What were
they
? Urban simplicity,
in her experience, was very, very expensive except for white walls and Penguins and blue jeans.)
Anyway.
Some sort of old flat – jolly simple and nice. ‘I was immediately struck
by her simple manner – the aura of calm wisdom which seemed to emanate from . . .’ She stared down the naked length of her body trying to think where the hell wisdom and calmness were
most likely to emanate from. Nothing that she could see.

There was a knock on the door: ‘It’s me,’ said Emma’s voice: ‘I’ve brought you some tea.’

She got out of the bath and wrapped herself in a towel to unlock the door. Emma came in with a huge mug.

‘I thought you might like some.’ Her face was pink and her eyes shining. ‘Do you want to get back in?’

She shook her head and sat on the rim of the bath. ‘Thanks awfully. Where’s Dan?’

‘Eating crumpets,’ said Emma proudly. ‘He doesn’t look as though he could possibly eat so much, do you think?’

‘I suppose he doesn’t. Perhaps he just eats at week-ends.’

‘You do like him, don’t you?’ Emma had perched on the clothes basket and seemed to want to stay.

‘Of course I like him. I think he’s a honey. A remarkable man,’ she added, seeing Emma’s face.

‘So do I. I say, could you lend me something for this evening? The thing is my long flannel skirt is here, but there’s nothing to put on top.’

‘You can have anything I’ve got. Except I wouldn’t take a shirt because you look funny in mine. Try the jersey shelf. You’d better let me do it with you. Fit you
out.’

‘Yes. One other thing.’

‘Eh?’

‘Would you mind awfully if Dan came back to Lansdowne Road just for Sunday night? Or would it be awkward with Dick there?’

It
was
awkward: but Emma almost never had anyone to stay – had never had a man there at all, as far as she could remember.

‘No – it’ll be all right. Dick won’t be there for long. I’ll need the sitting-room to talk to him in though.’

‘Oh, Dan won’t mind what time he gets to bed. We could go out to a film or something. It’s just that he hasn’t
got
anywhere. We’ll find him somewhere on
Monday.’

‘Don’t bother to go out.’ It was the law not to ask questions: Emma never did – always waited to be told; but she couldn’t help saying: ‘I’ve never seen
you like this, Em.’

‘I’m not like anything,’ said Emma, seized her mug and went.

Cressy dried, realized that she hadn’t brought her dressing-gown, and wrapped in the bath towel she wandered to her room. On the way she came face to face with Felix who dropped some sort
of file he was carrying and said ‘Christ!’

She glared dreamily at him: her future had reached the point where she was gracefully, humbly refusing to be made a Dame . . .

‘Sorry,’ said Felix.

In her room she thought that the new regime must already be having some effect: if anybody was to try and make a pass at her now, they’d have to try about fifty times harder than
they’d ever tried before. That showed you something.

She had nearly finished a tremendous clearing out of clothes in her room – a lot of them were not going to be suitable for her new life, and others she was simply tired of – when
Emma returned to be fitted out.

‘Are you having one of your clean sweeps? Or are these all for me to choose from?’

‘They’re all things I’ve no need of. You can choose all right, but I’m not going to have you wearing things that don’t fit you.’

‘All right,’ said Emma meekly. ‘I won’t have me doing that either.’

‘Where’s the skirt?’

‘In my room.’

‘Well get it, you halfwit. How can you see what will go best with it, without it?’

‘What are the others doing?’ she asked when Emma returned with her skirt.

‘Mummy’s doing the table. Felix is making an enormous jug of martini. Dan’s playing solitaire. Do you know, he can easily end up with one marble, but now he’s working out
how to leave the marble in whatever hole he’s planned. We thought fireworks after dinner. They’ll be a terrific show. Black news. Jennifer Hammond is coming to dinner.’

‘She’s not!’

‘She is. And Major Hawkes.’

‘Major Hawkes
and
Jennifer Hammond! How do you know?’

‘I was looking for some paper for scoring and saw it in Ma’s diary. You know what: I think he wants to marry her.’

‘He may want to. But think of straining to hear every word he says in his soft brown voice and getting too near and being spat at.’

‘She calls him Brian,’ said Emma primly, holding up a scarlet jersey against herself. ’I think if you married someone like that, you’d be entitled to ask them to speak
up. Or get him some new teeth.’

‘You’d be
entitled
to – but he never would. The thing to do would be to steer the conversation off foreign place-names: they’re the wettest.’

They started to play their Major Hawkes game. ‘What’s Major Hawkes’s favourite drink?’

‘Sarsaparilla,’ said Emma after some thought.

You played the game while you were doing other things. Now Cressy ripped the scarlet jersey away from Emma. ‘You
know
scarlet doesn’t suit either of your eyes, you
fool.’

‘Which does Major Hawkes call the bravest little country in Europe?’

‘Czechoslovakia. Damn Jennifer Hammond. Let’s make her sit next to him. What’s Major Hawkes’s worst trouble when he gets ill?’

Emma thought. ‘Can’t do it. Could I have this? Not for tonight – ’

‘Septicaemia,’ said Cressy triumphantly. ‘Yes, you can. Put your skirt on – let’s see. What’s his favourite English county?’

‘That’s easy. Somerset.’

‘It’s a very good blue – your skirt. Not Somerset, you fool – Sussex!’

‘This is what you should wear.’ She held up a tobacco-brown cashmere. It was sleeveless – ‘Sleeveless,’ hissed Emma as she put it on. ‘Who’s his
favourite composer?’

‘Rimsky-Korsakov . . .’

‘Shostakovich.’

‘Stravinsky . . .’

‘Saint-Saëns . . . He simply loves music, doesn’t he?’

‘Mad about it. You know I think our mother is seriously lacking in social sense.’

‘No she’s not. It’s just that you get to like more boring people as you get older. How do I look?’

‘Not bad: keep still. Wait a second – I want to try tucking it in.’

‘It’s so like life,’ Emma said pensively. ‘The only person who could
do
anything about his teeth is his dentist. And when he goes there, either
they’re
out for the count, or else
he
is. So the poor dentist would never know.’

‘You either need a wide belt or else have it outside. As it’s a bit big for you I recommend the belt. You don’t think
she
wants to marry him, do you?’