Pure Juliet (24 page)

‘Why they happen, I mean.' She put her knife and fork together and stood up. ‘Maths comes into it, and geometry, but a lot more than that. Thanks, I feel better now, that was good. I have to – to get into a kind of – a way of thinkin', see. That's why I forget to eat.'

‘So it's mathematical problems you work on all day?'

She shook her head. ‘Not really working them out – I kind of see the answers straight off.'

‘You
what
?'

‘Look, I'm busy on something now – can't spare the time to explain, and you wouldn't understand anyway – cheerio,' and she was gone.

He glanced gloomily at the washing-up. It was a beautiful evening: the dandelions had changed from broad feathery discs to dark pointed buds, the shadows spread languidly from great elm and tiny spearhead of grass. He wandered out into the fading light, wondering vaguely how the honeymooners were faring – in three days they would be home.

Edmund's own cottage had been a complete surprise, left to him by an ungracious uncle whose comment on Edmund's poetry had always been, ‘That boy will never make a ha'penny out of his scribbling.'

Edmund went there infrequently; he loved it, and the landscape of low undulating hills and fields of dark purple or corn gold in which it was set. But he could not write poetry there: the Suffolk sky was too vast; the beauty laid on him too gentle a silencing hand. He found it impossible to live in the midst of poetry and also write it, and was always pleased to return
to his dingy bed-sitting room in a Luton backstreet. There, he could write poetry as he wanted.

He made little money, but it was more than the ha'penny referred to by his benefactor, and his tastes, though difficult to satisfy in an age which lauded simplicity while making it increasingly difficult and expensive to attain, were simple. As a poet, reviewers bracketed him with Charles Causley. He avoided the society of literary people.

On the morning of the return of the honeymooners, Edmund was up at five and out in the meadows, picking handfuls of buttercups and varied grasses to fill one of Frank's big red clay jars. He lit a fire which he banked down, made a stew of meat, herbs and assorted vegetables, and, having set it to simmer, printed W
ELCOME
H
OME
on a sheet of paper, spread it conspicuously on the hand-woven hearthrug, looked with satisfaction about the long, light, bare, charming room, and got on his motorcycle and chugged away to the dingy Luton bed-sitter.

Glancing at Juliet's house as he passed, he saw through its low window a fair head pillowed on two arms, resting on the table amidst books.
Up all night
, he reflected;
thank goodness I'm quit of her
, and rode lightheartedly on.

He would be glad to be alone again. He had avoided with a snail-like shrinking those cries of ‘Here you are, then!' and ‘Well, what was the weather like?' with which normal people greet returning travellers. Frank, he remembered, had once told him that his, Edmund's, idea of perfect enjoyment was sitting alone on a tombstone by moonlight, and there had been enough truth in the remark to make him laugh.

Juliet woke about seven, aroused by the scraping of a starling's wings against the window. Yawning, she stumbled across the room, crumbling bread as she went, and opened her house to the bird, which was a regular visitor. While it was pecking superciliously at the scatterings on her doorstep, she thought,
Oh Lord, she's coming back today
.

With Frank, she now felt as unconscious and comfortable as she did with her hooded cape or her books; but there was a quality of natural practicality in Clemence that disturbed her.

About half-past three that afternoon, a taxi deposited its occupants at the gate leading into Frank's meadows, and he and Clemence, carrying suitcases, came across the new grass and marguerites, and set down their baggage in front of the Cowshed.

Frank showed a tendency to go off immediately to his vegetable patch, but checked himself, and returned smiling to his bride, advancing upon her with outstretched arms.

‘Come on . . . over the threshold.'

He held her closely as, in two strides, he set her down over the doorstep.

‘There. Didn't think I could do that, did you?'

‘I hoped you would – though everybody does seem to make a joke of it – but I didn't think – you're so slim . . .'

‘Sounds prettier than “skinny”. You forget, my love, that I spend hours digging.' He rolled up his sleeve, displaying impressive muscles. ‘There – look at that.'

Clemence laughed, looking approvingly around her, and then, rather avidly, at the stack of parcels large and small in a far corner. The wedding presents!

‘Ha!' he said, and peered into the casserole, where a barely moving reddish surface was just sheened by delicate fat. ‘Good for Edmund – his manners are on the inside, unlike most people's, which are on the outside. Leave the cases, dear – I'm going to inspect my vegetables.'

He was off; and, sighing with contentment, she ventured to cross the room and open one of the smaller parcels.

She was packing a basket to take tea into the meadow, when a shadow fell across the open door and a flat voice said:

‘Hullo. Can I— Will it be OK if I have tea with you?'

She turned. Juliet stood there, holding out – horrors! – a wild orchid of a rare type growing only in three or four places in England. Frank would
explode
– it was marked with an asterisk on the list of plants forbidden to be gathered.

‘Found it in that wood over there,' jerking her head. ‘There was only one. It's – pretty, isn't it?' doubtfully.

In fact, it was strange and ominous-looking rather than pretty. But Clemence's one thought was to get the thing out of sight before Frank appeared from his inspection of the vegetables, and she almost snatched it.

‘It's beautiful,' heartily, ‘and thank you very much from us both – I'll put it in water, in the bedroom. Of course, we were expecting you,' hurrying off with the precious object, which she shoved into a drawer, thinking,
Blow everything
. ‘And get out a pot of jam, will you?'

‘What sort?' called Juliet, standing before the rows of comely jars.

‘Oh strawberry – that's the best, don't you think? And,' Clemence hurried back into the living-room and thrust the tea basket at her, ‘be a dear and carry that for me.'

They went out into the westering sunlight, and saw Frank coming towards them with his scythe over his shoulder.

‘Let's have it under my tree,' Juliet called. ‘There's cow muck, but we can put those big leaves over it,' kicking at a dock plant as she passed.

‘The authentic rustic scene is a blend of the idyllic and the coarse,' said Frank, bending to kiss his wife. ‘There . . . I shall do that every time.'

She said, ‘You are an ass,' and laughed, but she experienced a calm, deep happiness.

The sun went down; the afterglow lingered; back at the house Frank worked over some excruciatingly boring-looking figures supplied by the AIEG, and Clemence, having stolen away to destroy the already fading orchid, began to unpack another wedding present.

The air was very still. The fire in the massive range gave out its barely noticeable heat; a cricket obligingly chirped, and some miles away on the St Alberics road car headlights probed the soft sky, while their noise offended the ancient country silence, yet left it, after their unhappy passing, unstained. And Juliet had vanished after tea; her light burned steadily at the other end of the Big Meadow.

‘Well,' Frank said at last, looking up from his work with an air of finality, ‘something's been achieved.'

‘Going well, is it?' Clemence asked, being the good-wife-interested-in-husband's-boring-business, and he laughed.

‘I didn't mean the AIEG – I meant Juliet asking us to have tea under her oak.'

‘Oh, that . . . Yes, it was nice of her.'

‘In anybody – ordinary – it wouldn't have been worth remembering. But from her, it was a distinct step forward. I'm very pleased – and very happy,' glancing round him. ‘God, I am turning into an old pussy cat. Is there any cheese?'

There came an afternoon some weeks later when he returned exulting from his interviews with experts at Hightower.

‘It's on,' he shouted to his wife, striding across the meadow. ‘We're keeping the house and running it as a centre for the AIEG . . . A grant from the Min. of Ag., a goodish bit from the Soil Society raised by that appeal, lots of fifty pieces from the Friends of the Earth (bless their mostly young hearts). We're in business. We've just been going through the finances.'

Clemence, at the front door in her cooking apron, nearly exclaimed, ‘Oh Frank!' in dismay. Hightower, with its land, had been valued at £500,000. It was true that they had plenty of money, but what were the hypothetical children going to say when they were twenty about this throwing away (for so she regarded it) of potential riches?

She said nothing.

‘It's the best thing,' he argued, feeling a disappointed quality in the air. ‘The place might hang about for months waiting to be sold and there's so much to be done, here and with the AIEG . . . Now they can use the money we've collected and
start in a rent-free place . . . Besides, I know the soil round here like the back of my hand.'

‘Wouldn't the money you got for Hightower have been enough to start the AIEG?'

‘Perhaps. But there would be all the bother of finding a suitable place. No, this is a splendid solution. By the way, I shall be off to Canada next week.' He emerged from the cloakroom, flapping his hands vigorously.

‘Frank! Don't do that, it looks really dotty.
What
did you say?'

‘Saves towel-wear,' he grinned. ‘Besides, the Romans always did it—'

‘No they didn't. They had hot air.
What
about Canada?'

‘To investigate that four thousand square miles of scrub in the north-west – irrigation and fertilizing possibilities. A bunch of experts is going. Wives too – you can come. But I warn you, it will be no expense-account picnic.'

‘Who'd look after Juliet?' Clemence said grimly, seating herself before the teapot. ‘No, don't say she could look after herself – she'd starve to death.'

‘Yes – I hadn't forgotten her. I was going to think about that later. But wouldn't you like to come, darling?'

‘I'd like to be with you, of course.'

‘I don't expect you'd see much of me – I shall be flying all over the place, taking soil samples.'

‘And I'd be a bit bored and lonely . . . No, I think I won't come.'

‘Oh. Don't you want to be with me?'

‘Of course I want to be with you, you great goat, but we can't have everything in this world,' she said demurely. After
years of living almost beside him with the notion of marriage always in her head and never in his, there was certainly satisfaction in seeing him a little piqued at her decision.

When Frank came back from Canada, he set about organizing a place for Juliet at Cambridge.

He chose the Margaret Fuller Foundation, an American college that was the newest and glossiest addition to the cluster of ancient beauties gathered beside the Cam.

The building was the design of a Californian architect, and based upon the lines of a condor in flight; the effort of producing buildable plans, in which weight was married to airiness, had sent him mad at the beginning of what could have been a career as notable as that of Frank Lloyd Wright, but as the college was strongly imbued with the doctrines of the Women's Liberation Movement, his fate was seldom mentioned except as illustrating the inherent weakness of the male.

The staff tended towards youth. Flying hair, unconfined busts and large mouths – all displayed with intimidating arrogance and almost perpetual anger. They laughed a good deal, loudly and sneeringly. The old male dons at the old colleges shook their heads on encountering these Amazons,
and made unanswerable statements about biological facts; and very old Dr Amory, PhD and goodness knows what else, called them the Bacchae and quoted Tennyson – ‘Let them rave, let them rave.'

Frank did not notice the liberation flavour; what attracted him to the Margaret Fuller Foundation was the fact that it had produced, during its brief existence, four Double Firsts in Atomic Physics, while its Principal, Mrs Saltounstall, was currently engaged in discussions with the university's governing body about a new prize – for women only, and for some scientific subject. ‘There is absolutely no doubt at all,' she emphasized in her soft, accentless voice, ‘that the old theory that women cannot excel at the more, shall we say, objective disciplines, is extinct. And I am particularly anxious that the Foundation should draw in girls from the working class who have taken high numbers of A levels in the British comprehensive schools.'

Only once, during the train journey with Frank, did Juliet awake out of her thoughts to watch a bird glimpsed for a moment through the window.

‘There's a bird keepin' still in the air. Never saw that before.'

‘It's a hawk, I expect – yes,' as the train carried them on. ‘Did you notice the tiny head?'

She shook her own. ‘Only noticed it was keeping still, like.'

‘Hovering, it's called.'

She said no more and some minutes later the train drew into Cambridge.

Juliet did not notice Cambridge: the pale, austere classicism of the colleges and the lawns of richest green spread before
them, and the shadows that added to their grace – all passed her by.

‘You comin' along with me?' she asked Frank as they emerged from a superior restaurant, fortified by a good lunch and an excellent champagne.

‘Good heavens, no. You aren't a child or wrong in the head. Why? Nervous?'