Pure Juliet (20 page)

‘Why are you giggling, love?' He turned smiling to her, beginning to laugh too.

‘I was thinking – no one but you would sit staring at a spoon when you've just been proposed to.'

‘Spoon – nice old Victorian word – most appropriate,' and he went over to her and began kissing her.

‘You don't like being kissed, do you?' he said anxiously, in a moment, drawing back.

And Clemence, still suffering the effects of whisky and putty, burst out: ‘How can you
expect
me to like it, when I'm so tired, and it's all so, oh,
do
let me go home to Grandmamma!'

Both were laughing as they went out of the Cowshed, but her laughter was not free from hysteria.

The next morning at six o'clock, an hour which she preferred to pretend did not exist, Mrs Massey, dimly dreaming, heard two loud bangs and, with confused and indignant thoughts of the IRA, sat up in bed. Her snowy curls were crowned by a cap with lilac and white bows and her night attire was unsuitable and gallant.

She at once realized, as the bangs were repeated on a miniature scale, that they had been magnified the first time (in the peculiar way that light sleep does magnify sounds) from the noise made by three small stones thrown against her window. A fourth one tinkled against the pane as she sat up.

She glanced at her watch on the bedside table, in the full sunlight of the first day of June, and having drawn on an equally unsuitable and gallant dressing-gown, she marched across to the window, vigorously opened it and peered down into the dewy little garden.

‘Frank! What on earth—?'

‘I've come to breakfast.'

‘We don't breakfast until eight.'

‘Oh – well – I'll wait. Is Clem there – awake, I mean?'

‘Of course she's
here
, and probably awake by now, too, with us bellowing at each other—'

‘Can I see her?'

‘I suppose so – she was rather seedy and peculiar when she got in last night. She went straight up to bed. If it had been anyone but Clem I'd say she had been drinking.'

‘Didn't she tell you?'

‘Tell me what? (For heaven's sake come in, if you're coming. I'm freezing.)'

The air was white with drifting pear blossom.

‘We're going to be married. We got engaged last night. I'm taking her over to St Alberics this morning to get the ring.'

‘My
dear
boy! How perfectly delightful! I
couldn't
be more pleased! Come in, come in, I'll wake her up.'
A generous allowance, at least. Quite thousand a year, if not more
. . .

‘Grandmamma, what
is
going on?'

Clemence, rosy from deep sleep, her brown curls in a Rossetti cloud they seldom got the chance to display, appeared at the door, knotting the girdle of her housecoat. She looked, as she leant from the window to smile down at her betrothed, for the first time in her life, beautiful.

Frank blew her a kiss, and repeated that he had come to breakfast.

‘I'll get dressed,' Clemence said and retreated, feeling solidly and bread-and-butterly happy.
It's going to work
, she thought as she brushed her hair and put on one of her sensible dresses.

Mrs Massey's aim in life was to present to the world the image of a perfectly behaved, gracious and tactful being; but she was not so tactful as to suggest that she should breakfast in bed. There would be lots of interesting things to hear, and she would enjoy seeing dear Clem looking so happy.

Dear Clem looked shy and rather glum.
I was radiant, I remember, when James proposed; quite radiant; everyone said so
, thought Mrs Massey, in the intervals of calculating how much a year she could count on from Frank after the wedding.
Such a pity the child hasn't a more expressive face
.

The conversation was about practical affairs, and hardly touched upon the future, until a certain name was mentioned and Frank spoke of ‘semi-adoption'.

‘Juliet?' exclaimed Mrs Massey, more sharply than she intended. ‘You're surely not thinking—'

‘She's going to live with us, isn't she, Frank?' Clemence said bravely. This was what she feared most, and she thought it best to get the statement of her fear over.

‘
Live
with you? Are you serious?' Mrs Massey put down an egg spoon with deliberation. ‘Do you mean to tell me –
is
she serious?' looking at Frank.

‘Perfectly,' he answered coolly. ‘It was Juliet – in a way – who made me ask Clem to marry me.'

Clemence darted him a look bright with love.

‘It was
Juliet
– what
are
you—? Have you both taken leave of your senses?'

Mrs Massey fumbled in her bag for her spectacles, which she only put on in rare moments of agitation. ‘You'd better tell me exactly what happened.'

That we won't
, said two pairs of eyes, exchanging glances.

‘It's perfectly simple, Grandmamma. Frank was worried about what's going to happen to Juliet. She's . . . so brilliant and so odd. We feel someone has to look after her.'

‘She has a perfectly good mother, from what I hear, and twenty thousand pounds – what else does she want?'

‘Love,' Frank said, and Mrs Massey made a sound as near to a sniff as a perfectly behaved, gracious and tactful being can produce.

‘Does she, indeed. Well with no looks and no figure and no manners, she isn't likely to get it.'

Frank considered explaining that he had not meant that kind of love, but decided that no explanation of his could satisfy Mrs Massey's complete incomprehension, while Clemence felt uneasily that her grandmother was only taking the common-sense view.

‘We shall have to see how it works out,' Frank said dismissively. ‘Certainly, it's settled. She's coming to us. So there's no point in discussing it, is there – Grandmamma?' He smiled at the self-willed, pretty old face, and hurried on before she had time to speak. ‘Any ideas about the ring, dear?' to Clemence.

‘Oh . . . well, I'd like to go to that shop in the cathedral precinct that sells old jewellery. I'd like a Victorian one, I think, if we can find it.'

‘Of course – I'd like that too. How soon can you be ready?'

‘Oh – twenty minutes – but it's only half-past seven. The shops won't be open.'

‘We'll have a little tour round the lanes – I'll pick you up at eight. Goodbye for now, love. Goodbye, Grandmamma,' with a mischievous smile.

He was gone and Mrs Massey instantly leant towards Clemence with drama: ‘My dear! Of course you aren't serious? You'll talk him out of it.'

‘Indeed I shan't, Grandmamma. If I try, I'll talk myself out of marrying him.'

‘But I never
heard
of anything so – so insane. It isn't even as if she were an ordinary pretty girl who was sure to marry. You'll be lumbered with her for life. Suppose he falls in love with her?'

‘Oh
Grandmamma
. . .'

‘Or she with him, which would be worse. She's such a cunning little creature . . .'

‘Oh, not cunning. Half the time she isn't thinking about what she's doing, I'm sure.'

‘Then she's half dotty, which is worse. Really, my poor Clem, I do beg you to think very, very seriously before you take her on. It may ruin your entire married life.'

Clemence suddenly tired of her grandmother's company. She stood up, and saying: ‘I must go and telephone Edward,' went out of the room. Mingled with her feeling of solid content, there was an increasing determination not to let anything – shame, embarrassment, or Grandmamma's interfering – not
anything
spoil her happiness.

And especially not Juliet. Oh never, never Juliet.

Juliet slept.

The death of Miss Pennecuick, the utterance of that clearly articulated and clearly heard sentence, the funeral, and the announcement of her own inheritance, had drawn nervous energy even from her.

She had slept deeply for nine hours, without stirring, lying on her back amid unruffled bedclothes and outspread hair, and now the rays of the early June sun bathed her in their full light, and she began to dream.

She was moving swiftly through a vast forest of immensely tall trees, drifting effortlessly past massive trunks, visible in a remote filtered light. There was no undergrowth, only an endless carpet of dully tinted leaves that swirled up in clouds about her feet as she went; and sometimes, between the unchanging vista of silvery holes, she caught a glimpse of low hills of a tender blue, giving an impression of heat. Occasionally, across her path, there drifted slowly down a ghostly leaf.

The place seemed beautiful to her; she was almost content to be there, alone, and moving through the dim silence. Yet
something was lacking. Ah,
the question
was still there: formless in her dream, yet moving beside and within her, asking, demanding. And how could she feel fully content, and find the forest completely beautiful, while that continued to go with her?

She sighed, and looked around at the ghostly trees and down at the delicate leaf shapes rising about her feet, and then away at the hills that seemed – like all hills except the great mountains – to beckon. At last she looked upward. And the leaves on those majestic trees were dead; skeletons, pale and transparent against the pale sky, sapless and colourless and dead.

She cried out, and woke with the tears streaming down.

Her tears were not accompanied by any feeling of sorrow. She sat up and wiped them away with the sheet, and wondered why she should be crying, and thought:
What a funny dream
.

She ran downstairs ten minutes later, feeling hungry. The dream had faded, its original strength depleted into a memory. The dining-room was empty, and no places were set. Juliet, irritated at this break with custom, hurried to the kitchen. The house was silent.

Pilar was there with Sarah, sitting at the table. Sarah was holding a copy of the
Daily Mirror
, and scolding Pilar. ‘Hullo, Juliet. Enjoyed your lie-in?' she said spitefully.

‘Can I have my breakfast, please,' to Pilar.

‘What you like? Weetabix? Or sausage?' enquired Pilar, lazy voiced and not moving. A more imaginative spectator than Juliet would have felt that the machinery organizing the big house had run down almost to a stop.

‘Sausage'll do me.'

Suddenly she wanted a sausage as she seldom wanted food: a brown, tasty sausage, shining with the fat it had exuded in the pan. The thought of it successfully banished the last of another thought – those skeletal leaves outlined against the dead sky.

‘I fix you two. I think you might want. They are in the oven. Keep them hot. Because I think you hungry after all the kerfuffle yesterday.'

Pilar got up unhurriedly and crossed to the Aga.

‘All the what?' asked Juliet.

‘Ought to be ashamed, calling Miss Adelaide's funeral by a low word,' said Sarah.

‘Isn't a low word. It means a disturbance. Maria's boyfriend teaches it to me. He is university student.' Pilar handed Juliet two sausages on a warmed plate.

Juliet paused to pour tea from a new-fangled pot which retained its heat, from which Sarah and Pilar had evidently been helping themselves. She snatched up a tray from the dresser, loaded it, and was at the door when a sound came out of the kitchen. It was a loud sob. Sarah was saying something unintelligible into the hands covering her face. Pilar made to go to her.

‘Oh leave her alone – she's got to get used to it,' said Juliet over her shoulder. ‘Where's the others?'

‘They sit in our rooms. I come to sit wiz her because she is sad. I sink,' Pilar lowered her voice, ‘she be the next one to go. These old ones, they get a bad shock, and they die soon. There was Senora Elvirez in our village, I remember—'

‘Yes, well, cheerio.' And Juliet was gone.

She ate her breakfast greedily, and when she had sucked down the last of the strong tea, put her elbows on the table
and sat staring at the sun-rays driving in between the half-drawn curtains.

The house's stopped like – like some clock
, thought Juliet, with uncharacteristic fancifulness.
I might phone Mum
. . .

Her unconscious wish for human company was satisfied by the distant sound of a car, and, after a pause, voices in the hall. The door opened. ‘Hullo,' said Frank, coming in followed by Clemence, who went straight across to the windows and drew back the curtains.

‘Oh – hullo. Hullo,' said Juliet to Clemence, who turned, nodded and smiled. ‘I say, what's going to happen? I mean, am I staying here, or what?'

‘That's exactly what I've come to see about,' Frank said.

(
And done me out of our little tour round the lanes. Here it begins
, Clemence thought.)

‘You see, Miss Massey and I are going to be married.'

‘Oh. Congratulations and all that . . . That's what they say, isn't it?'

‘That, as you put it, is what they say, and thank you, Juliet.' (A silent smile from Clemence.) ‘No, of course you aren't staying here, and I take it that you don't want to go home?'

‘No fear,' emphatically.

‘The servants will be off any time now – and I must see about a caretaker.'

‘Won't that old – won't Sarah stay? Caretake, I mean.'

‘Sarah has money now. Anyway, she's too old, and she would be frightened.'

‘I could stay with her.' Juliet leant forward amidst the remnants of her breakfast. ‘Oh, come on,' as Frank shook
his head. ‘Why can't I? It's quiet, and there'd be no one to bother me.'

‘You would have to shop for yourself, and probably cook and Sarah would certainly “bother” you,' Clemence put in quietly. ‘To say nothing of loneliness, and possibly vandals.'

‘There's that chippy down at Leete, I could eat there, and who's afraid of vandals?'