After Julius (24 page)

‘. . . if it wasn’t for the Russians, we shouldn’t be faced with rhubarb today,’ Major Hawkes was saying when he saw his angelica. ‘Starving fellers ate it on the
banks of the Don in the first world war . . .’

‘It’s not rhubarb, Brian, it’s angelica.’

‘I was only touching on rhubarb, Esme dear. What really worries me is the geographical position of England. The trouble with Europe is’ – he dropped his voice –
‘that it’s nothing but foreigners as far as the eye can see. But then you have to consider the latitude – you
must
do that. England’s a damn good climate: wet enough
to keep the tourists out; mild enough to stop people getting all those nasty tropical diseases. I’ve spent hours with an old globe that belonged to my dear wife, and the only possible
solution would be to place our island on the east coast of the United States. Not too far in, of course, and not too far north. Can’t have our ladies losing their famous English complexions.
Nice for the Canadians to have us nearer. The whole thing would be a considerable change for the better . . .’

Felix, who seemed to have taken to Major Hawkes, enlarged upon this tremendous notion, and the tensions submerged for a while. Only Dan, Emma noticed, seemed to have eaten very little, seemed to
be more than usually silent. Cressy had tried to talk to him, but he had courteously blocked conversation. Emma, to sort of pay her back for trying, had tried to talk to Dick, but the fact that she
knew him in his double life, and that he was aware of and embarrassed by this, made them very stilted. Also, Emma had felt Jennifer’s attention instantly veer towards her when she tried to
talk to Dick, and anyway, she was worried about Dan. When prompted, Esme explained about the fireworks, and Major Hawkes was instantly so excited at the prospect that Dan was visibly cheered. It
was agreed that everybody should have coffee and some brandy first, and then watch the show from the sitting-room windows. Black coffee, Esme thought, would do Jennifer good.

Emma stayed to clear the table, and Dan lingered with her.

‘Are you hating it?’

‘They’re not nice together, are they? What’s wrong?’

‘
I
don’t know.’ (How could she say?) ‘They won’t spoil the fireworks, will they? I wish they’d go home, though.’

‘Poor girl,’ he said unexpectedly: ‘she’s just foolish: he’s a real swine.’ He said that word as though he had invented it after some thought.

In due course Esme had them all assembled rather scrappily in the drawing-room. As soon as Major Hawkes had grasped exactly what was entailed by the forthcoming firework display, he took some
sort of charge and started arranging a line of chairs in front of the french windows. But this took so long – because he kept thinking of fresh things to explain to Esme about the history of
gunnery, and he declined offers of assistance from Dan and Felix so firmly – that, by the time he had got three chairs lined up and Esme and Cressy installed in the ones on each flank, the
others were settled elsewhere in the room. Jennifer Hammond, by now looking a little bewildered, sat by the fireplace and was dealing with brandy-glass, coffee cup, handbag, cigarette and lighter.
Out of the corner of her eye, Cressy saw her grab Dick’s hand – no mean feat considering her other manual commitments – and pull him, against some resistance, to a stool at her
side. He said something indistinguishable in a slow level undertone Cressy hated like hell, or would have done, she felt, up to a few hours ago.

Dan was by the window looking into the garden. He said to Felix with some dissatisfaction, ‘They won’t get the benefit from in here, you know. I’ve tried to put as many off the
ground as possible but there’s some you can’t. And there’s the rockets. The take-off’s nothing compared to the burst.’

‘Well, it’s up to them,’ said Emma. ‘They can come out if they want to. Anyway,
we
’ll see the best of it.’

‘That’s true. Come on, then.’

‘Can I give you a hand?’ asked Felix. ‘Or watch, anyway.’ Fireworks for him meant boredom, plus sharp uneasiness if anyone looked like getting himself burnt, but he
wanted an excuse for getting out for a bit – away from the couple by the fireplace with their slowly but steadily increasing repulsiveness, also away from Cressy, who a moment before had
looked up into his eyes and away again with a twist of her head that showed off the beauty of her neck and collar-bone. Ill temper again? Never mind what – he needed a rest from her: a short
one, anyhow. He added hastily, ‘We’d better wrap up warm; it’ll be pretty chilly out there.’

‘I’m wearing my clothes,’ said Dan.

When the three had left the room there was silence. Major Hawkes had that moment said he was talking too much again, and whenever he said this he usually stayed quiet for at least a minute. The
Hammonds and Cressy were all not looking at anybody. ‘Would anyone like another drink?’ asked Esme, realizing as she spoke that this was the opposite of what the situation called for.
Everybody said they would.

Answering for Jennifer, who he announced would like a change from brandy, Dick wondered if they had any crème de menthe or anything of that sort. Cressy hurried away into the dining-room,
knelt down in front of the sideboard and stayed there for a time just looking at it. She no longer felt ten feet high. Remembering what finishing with somebody had been like in the past turned out
to be remarkably difficult, considering how many times she’d done it. Was it inevitable to be overwhelmed by plain disbelief that one had done all those things with the person, experienced
all that, said all that? She thought it likely that none of the all thats had been very extravagant in this case, but at the moment her power of judging this appeared to have deserted her.
Possibly, again, she’d come to find some things out of the last six months that she’d be able to think of as all right or even better, something to salvage, but she sensed gloomily now
that what she’d be salvaging would be her idea of herself as one able to draw
some
real distinctions, instead of making self-deception a mode of existence. Unfortunately there was no
stage in any situation at which you could know you were seeing it as it really was.

The door opened. ‘What on earth are you up to?’ asked Dick, trying a smile.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘Oh, that’s all right – we’ve got a minute. I said I’d left my cigarettes.’

‘Christ, what are you
doing here
? Tonight. To dinner.’

‘What’s the matter with you all of a sudden? I didn’t come here on purpose, you know. Just wasn’t any way I could get out of it. I could tell it was a bit of a shock for
you when I came walking in the . . .’

She asked herself why she’d never noticed before that the skin on his cheeks where his beard showed was semi-transparent, so that it was like wax fruit with stubble. ‘Oh, good for
you. You’d never have guessed if you hadn’t been watching carefully, and anybody else wouldn’t have spotted it even if they had, but you know me so well . . .’

‘For God’s sake stop
kneeling
there like that! What’s it supposed to be in aid of?’ When she stayed just as she was, down to mouth and eyes, he went brisk in the
way that said he was generously and sensibly conceding a point in order to avert a row. ‘Well, whatever it is that’s bothering you, we’ll talk about it tomorrow night when
we’re at a bit less of a disadvantage.’

It was easy again then. She opened the sideboard door and pretended to consider, although there was only one possibility there, a bottle of Kümmel which she took out and carefully inspected
while she rose to her feet. On her way to the door she paused and turned her face in his direction long enough to say, ‘I don’t want that to happen – don’t you come,’
before going out. Behind her she heard his long sigh, and the faint slap as his horizontally raised arms fell to his sides.

Back in the sitting-room Jennifer said loudly, and more nasally than ever, ‘And where have you two been sneaking off to like a couple of . . . What have you been up to?’ She was very
close to not being funny about it at all.

‘Getting you a drink.’ Cressy found a clean glass and hesitated. Would a great deal or a very little be better? She chose a great deal, feeling vaguely it was more malicious, more
like poisoning someone.

‘Fetching my cigarettes – I told you. I freely admit to having run into Cressy and exchanged a few words with her.’ Dick considered that this was a case of a tricky situation
bringing out the best in him, and thought his voice sounded bantering or could have been taken so, when he went on: ‘Of course if I’d known you were going to take this line I’d
have been as silent as a monk and then we’d all have been happy.’

Outside, a rocket fizzed and flared briefly before disappearing. ‘I take it that means they’re ready,’ said Major Hawkes. ‘Dowse the glim, eh?’ He turned off the
lights and settled himself in his chair, rubbing his hands together slowly.

At his side, Esme strained to hear and see what was going on over by the fireplace. She was used to the idea of drink bringing out the worst in people, but the actuality was still worrying, and
there seemed no guarantee that the worst in Mrs Hammond was yet out. And whatever was wrong with Cressy was more than embarrassment. The light of two Roman candles from the garden showed the
Hammonds comparatively quietened down, with him talking emphatically but inaudibly at her turned-away face, but nothing was to be made of Cressy’s profile.

‘Brilliant people, the Chinese,’ said Major Hawkes. ‘Wonderfully gifted. Taught the Japs everything they know, of course. There must have been a very high proportion of
first-class brains about at that time. Look at that, now.’ He indicated a multi-coloured upward shower just ignited by Dan, accompanied by a muted hissing roar. Esme gripped the sides of her
seat. When the bang came it was less bad than the totally unexpected shrieks and whizzes made by whatever the things were that came shooting out. One of them thudded lightly against the window.
Esme flinched and Major Hawkes laid his hand on her arm for a moment. ‘That’s a modern one, I suppose,’ he said. ‘New to me, at any rate. I think I’d call it rather
crude – not much beauty there. That’s always the trouble, my dear Esme – fellers just don’t seem to know how to leave well alone. Ah, now this’ – a large double
catherine-wheel, slowly accelerating, began to throw out jets of changing light – ‘this is nearer the kind of thing I look for. Imagination at work for a change. This sort doesn’t
go pop,’ he added more quietly.

It didn’t, and neither did the next, but during the one after that – another Roman candle – there was a sharp bang only a few yards away. It was no louder than the earlier one,
but it was unexpected. At any rate, Esme heard a rattle of china and a sort of yelp and gathered that Mrs Hammond had spilt her coffee over herself. Then, ‘It’s all
right
, I can
use this,’ she heard her say.

A Golden Rain spurted brilliantly in Emma’s hand and she ran about waving it aloft. Her face, sporadically illumined, and the movements of her body, conveyed the wild freedom of a much
younger Emma. Dan lit another of the same at the guttering Roman candle and bounded towards her, gesticulating with it. The two began a rudimentary capering dance. Then Esme saw Felix a little
farther off, stooping down by the dark tattered bulk of the magnolia and evidently about to ignite something on the ground. As she watched him he looked up and seemed to stare straight at her,
though she realized he could not have seen her through the blaze of reflections on the outside of the window. Then he dropped his head and she saw the small flare of a match.

She was gazing at him so attentively that she missed the first couple of remarks in what she soon recognized as an altercation, if nothing worse. Mrs Hammond was speaking, or rather half
shouting, in a voice of varying pitch. ‘I know it now all right, now I’ve had a second sniff at it. That’s the muck you come home stinking to high heaven of when you’ve been
up in London for one of your
boring business functions.
Of course it’s hers – she gave it to me before dinner to mop up my drink with. It is yours, isn’t it? You’re
not going to deny it, are you?’

In a huge green glow from outside Esme saw Cressy turn and half get to her feet, but couldn’t hear what she said because Major Hawkes cut in at his loudest. ‘Makes you look at things
as though you were seeing them for the first time. It isn’t only the colours, it’s the light and shade. That what I expect from a worthwhile painting, now. Or a photograph even –
they’ve made great strides with that. Remember how it used to be nothing but orange and green through foggy spectacles? All gone by the board these days.’

By the time Esme had disengaged herself and moved over to where the altercation was, Mrs Hammond was shouting again. Her husband had her by the arm and kept telling her that she was drunk and
must shut up and come home, but she took no notice of him. ‘Sneaking off. I knew the two of you were up to something. Laughing your heads off about me. What fun to have your
lover
and
his poor fool of a wife to dinner and play footie with him under the table and plan your next little dose of . . .’

Cressy was facing her. She said in tones of loathing, ‘I didn’t invite you here and I don’t want you here, either of you, and there isn’t going to be a next little
anything at all – anyway, please go. I can’t see why you’re not ashamed to stay.’

‘Would you like to go upstairs and lie down for a bit?’ asked Esme – sort of lowering the price, she thought.

‘No, I wouldn’t! I refuse to be shoved out of the way as if I was a . . . a piece of furniture. I’m staying here and we’re having this out.’

‘There’s nothing to have out,’ said Cressy in the same tone as before.

Just then the light in the room, which had faded almost to nothing, grew and changed abruptly to a tinny silver, like packaged moonlight. ‘Look!’ cried Major Hawkes, so sharply and
sincerely that all four turned and followed his pointing finger. Esme caught a glimpse of a tiny aeroplane-like object rising in an unsteady spiral towards the tops of the fruit trees. ‘Now
that kind of job I must confess I do rather admire. Probably a personal thing. It could be that as a child I was given a toy helicopter or whatever it might have been by some relative I
particularly admired – or it could just be a primitive desire to fly. Oh, that stuff isn’t all nonsense by any means.’