Julia had said she would be returning early, but it was in point of fact well after two that Leon Carstairs’ car drew up outside her flat in Bayswater. Her earlier mood of lassitude had returned, so that she hesitated when he asked if he might come in with her. It was late. She was tired, and her alarm clock was set for eight o’clock.
“Only for a second,” he pleaded. “Just for a nightcap.”
“Very well, just for a minute, then.”
Wearily she climbed the stairs. Wearily looked round the flat. Three years ago she had been very proud of it. It had been the symbol of her independence. It had looked very fresh and jolly with its new paint and its bright chair covers and curtains. That was three years ago, however, and the paint had cracked and grown discoloured, the curtains had been bleached by sunlight, the chair covers stained by cocktail juice, the edge of the mantelpiece browned by cigarette ends. It wore now a draggled and dreary air; like the emotions that it had housed, thought Julia.
“There is whisky in the cupboard,” she said, as she knelt down to put a match to the gas fire.
She shook her head, and, flinging herself in an arm-chair, watched Carstairs as he mixed himself a drink. At this late hour, with the dark shadow of growing hair upon his chin, he made a forlorn, pathetic picture in his over-bright mauve and grey pyjamas.
In silence, through half-closed eyes she lay back watching him.
“Tired?” he asked.
“Naturally.”
She answered wearily, and he looked at her quickly and unhappily.
“I know,” he said, “I know. But, darling, don’t you think I realise that it’s just as much a strain for you as it is for me?”
She had it on the tip of her tongue to retort bitterly: as much of a strain for him as it was for her! Yes, that was all very well, but the strain was of his making. It was his life that was in a mess, not hers. It was he, not she, that was not free. She had it on the tip of her tongue to answer bitterly. She bit the words back, however. What purpose would it serve? He was hurt so easily. Better sit still and listen while the flood of self-pity took its course.
She knew so well how it would go. It was such an impossible situation, he would tell her. And his wife was such a fine person. He owed so much to her. He could not bear the idea of hurting her. But he was going to, oh, yes, he was resolved on that. He would induce her to divorce him the moment this business of the partnership went through. But till then, how could he ...? And for the thousandth time he would explain that he would never be able to arrange to be made a partner in his firm under the shadow of such a scandal as this divorce would be. The senior partner was an old Victorian. He would never believe in the financial integrity of a man whose emotional life was muddled. If he was to suspect Carstairs, he would get rid of him at once.
“It’s impossible,” Leon would say. “You see, don’t you, how utterly impossible it is? Once I’m a partner it’ll be all right. And in a very little while now I’m bound to be. But till I am, well. . . suppose I were to get chucked out now, think what a mess we’ld be in, the three of us, without any money.”
That’s how it would go, thought Julia. And then he would come across from the table and kneel down beside her, and take her hand in his and he would tell her how wretched he was, how lonely. . . “the strain of it,” he would say, “the strain of it. These few stolen moments, never being together openly. If you knew how I felt, night after night, alone and aching for you; and in the mornings waking and wondering whether I shall see you at all all that day. You can’t think what the days are like when I don’t see you. They are just so many dead hours to be lived through.”
And as he spoke of his unhappiness, slowly, little by little, her bitterness and impatience would slip from her. And she would find herself growing soft and tender, and her lips would smile and her eyes be kindly, because, oh, because he was so sad and because she had the power to assuage that sadness, because it was a joy to use that power, to change this broken, pathetic, unhappy man into an eager, an ecstatic, into a triumphant lover.
And he would cease speaking of himself. “If it weren’t for you I don’t know how I should survive.” That would be the bridge that he would throw across between his rapture and his self-pity. “I don’t know how I’ld exist without you. You’re so marvellous.” And he would begin to tell her how marvellous she was, and his mouth would be close against her ear, and his fingers would be tightening on her arm, tightening and caressing, waking again that fever in her blood, that hunger to be loved, that thirst for the syllables of adoration. And her eyes would close and her breath would falter, and, “tell me,” she would whisper, “tell me!”
That was how it would be. That was how it had been a hundred times. And this is free love, she thought, and this is freedom.
“And this is freedom,” she repeated, five hours later, when the alarm clock beside her bed rattled its imperious summons. Her head throbbed and her limbs ached and her eyes were heavy. “And if I’d been born twenty years earlier,” she thought, “I’d have slept on till ten o’clock, when a maid would have brought my breakfast and newspapers and letters, and I’d have lazed among them till twelve o’clock, when I’d have had my bath and slowly prepared myself for a fresh and radiant appearance five minutes before lunch. But I wasn’t born in the eighteen eighties. I’m an independent modern woman, and the alarm clock’s gone, and the slattern who ‘does’ for me will be here in twenty minutes, and I’ve got to have my bath before she comes or there won’t be enough gas to heat the range. So however I feel I’ve got to get up at once.”
So she got up, though she felt like death; and made her face up so that she should not look like death. And at nine o’clock she was in Brooke Street sorting out frocks and checking invoices: resisting every temptation to snap off Jean Ryland’s head. For three hours she worked incessantly, answering telephones, receiving clients, showing dresses; feeling with each minute as it passed, more and more like death.
And then at twelve o’clock when she had reached the stage of feeling that alcohol only could pull her through the day, in walked Melanie, fresh and laughing and excited; clear-eyed, clear-skinned, with the dew of youth and supreme health on her; to remark at the top of a clear-toned voice, “My word, Julia, you look sunk!”
There existed no adequate repartee. Her fists upon her hips, Julia Terance stared venomously and enviously at her younger sister. “Of course you can look like that,” she thought. “I should if I could sleep on till ten and then spend the morning in a beauty parlour.”
“Well,” she said ungraciously, “and what do you want?”
“Darling, such a lot of things.”
And her eyes flashing and her voice a babble of excitement she rattled off a list. Stockings, she wanted: a dozen pairs of them; and three frocks, afternoon frocks with hats to go with them. Two evening frocks and an evening cloak.
“And, angel,” she finished, “I want them all this afternoon.”
“This afternoon!”
“At four o’clock, yes. I’ll be calling for them. And we’ve hardly any time, have we, so let’s get busy.”
And hurrying through to the dressing-room, she proceeded to ransack the long row of hangers, choosing recklessly, at hazard, as though she scarcely knew what she was buying, maintaining the whole time an unceasing flow of irrelevant chatter. “What’s the matter with her?” thought Julia. “I’ve never seen her like this before.”
Usually her choice of dress was a laborious business. Anything up to two hours over the selection of a single frock; an endless business of adjustments, of tryings on, and viewings from selected angles. But here she was deciding on five frocks, four hats and a cloak, in twenty minutes.
“That’s that,” she cried. “Never tell me again I don’t know my own mind. And, angel, you’ll have them ready, won’t you, by four o’clock?”
Julia hesitated. To three of the frocks there were alterations necessary. It would mean shelving a great deal of quite urgent work to get them done. She could not believe that Melanie was in such desperate need of them.
“Won’t two of them be enough?” she asked.
For answer Melanie came close to her, like a wheedling child, and put her arm round her neck and kissed her.
“Please, darling,” she whispered, “to please me, all of them.”
“All of them?” Julia echoed.
“Yes, all of them. It’s so important.”
“But what can you want three afternoon dresses for by four o’clock?”
“I’m going to a cocktail party this afternoon. I shan’t know which one I want to wear till I’ve tried them all on twice.”
Julia gazed at her in astonishment.
“If it’s as important as all that,” she said, “who on earth are you going to it with?”
Melanie was half-way across the shop by now. At first she did not appear to have heard. But in the doorway she turned, to look round with a look of resourceful mischief in her eyes.
“Who am I going with?” she laughed. “Why, who would I be except Druce Mander?”