The morning of the dinner with Josh and his friends was supremely beautiful, the sun breaking slowly and gently through the early drifting mist, soaking up the heavy dew; the tops of the trees ghostly pale; the shrubs below still a young, fresh green. Jillie, leaning out of her bedroom window, smiled at it, and blew it a kiss, a rather fanciful trick of her mother’s when confronted by any particularly glorious view, and hoped it would be a good omen for the evening.
Her parents were indeed away; she had told Mrs Hemmings to poach a small salmon, and to serve it with baby new potatoes from the vegetable garden, or rather the useful garden as her father always called it, and summer pudding for dessert. She could never do wine, so when he arrived, considerately early, Josh was dispatched to her father’s cellar to choose. He came up fifteen minutes later, looking rather dazed. ‘That is a real treasure trove he’s got down there. Anyway, I’ve found a really nice white burgundy, and a Sauternes to go with the summer pudding. I’ve put them in the fridge. Lucky people, getting all this.’
‘Well, let’s have a cocktail in the morning room, shall we, before they arrive. Something really easy like, like Bellinis,’ she said, reminded painfully only when Josh arrived with the jug of peach juice and the bottle of champagne that Bellinis were the drink she and Ned had always had on special occasions. No longer the wild grief, just – joylessness in everything.
Too late now, though; she took her Bellini, smiled at Josh and drank it with reckless speed. It would help: it had to.
She was just slightly tipsy when the car scrunched on the gravel; just enough to be a tiny bit dizzy, and – she could feel it – flushed. She stayed in the morning room, while Josh let them in. Nell came in first – pretty, brown-haired, with a dimpled smile – holding out her hand, saying how kind of Jillie this was; and then Julius appeared from behind her.
She told herself it was the Bellini, on top of her exhaustion, that did it – the sweet shock of something, a slight unsteadiness as the ground seemed to shift in some odd way, a sense of recognition of something, rather than someone, something promising, something warm, something confusing. She took his proffered hand, put her own into it, rather than shook it, then said, ‘You are so welcome,’ in response to his echo of Nell’s gratitude, and meant it. Never was any moment, any fragment of time, more welcome.
He was tall and slim, with brown eyes and rather wild dark hair; his natural expression was serious, but when he smiled it was like a child’s, a sudden brilliant expression of delight. He wore very nice clothes, which she liked – Ned had always looked marvellous, but conventionally so. Julius was more avant-garde – dressed in a very nice suit, the jacket a little longer, more waisted, than would have been considered the norm. His shirt was white silk, his blue tie almost cravat wide, tied in the loose ‘Windsor knot’, and his shoes brogues in style, but in very soft, light brown leather. Had Diana Southcott been present, she could have explained that his was the perfect personal interpretation of the Edwardian look that was so fashionable for men, expressed at its extreme by the Teddy Boys with their greased quiffed hair, their over-tight trousers, their narrow leather ties; Jillie only liked the fact that he looked unusually stylish, and had clearly given some consideration to how he dressed for the occasion. She wished promptly that she had gone to more trouble herself than the blue fine wool shirtwaister she had dragged irritably from her wardrobe.
Nell’s dress, which she had not taken in before, was, she noticed also rather irritably, quite special: a shirtwaister too, to be sure, but in green and white spotted silk, with long, very full sleeves, gathered on the shoulders and then caught in at the wrist.
Then she wondered why she cared so much what any of them was wearing. She offered them Bellinis, smiling graciously at their admiration of the house, and again at her hospitality, and said, ‘I don’t know how much help I can be to you, Nell, but I’ll try.’
Nell said, ‘The thing is, I do take my research terribly seriously, and hate getting things wrong.’
’Quite right,’ said Jillie. ‘Well, I’ll try not to let you down.’
‘Thank you.’
And then, feeling she had done enough for her for a moment or two, turned to Julius and said, ‘And Julius, what do you do?’
‘I’m an antiques dealer.’
‘How perfectly lovely. What fun.’
‘Yes, it is. Some of the time, anyway.’
‘And – do you specialise in any particular period?’
‘Yes, deco mostly. It’s coming back in, fortunately for me, especially the ceramics, and of course the bronze pieces, the borzois—’
‘He is terribly knowledgeable about it,’ said Nell, just a little automatically. ‘And he can tell repro from real just with the briefest glance.’
‘Darling, not really,’ said Julius. ‘I often make mistakes, actually,’ he said, turning back to Jillie, laughing at himself. ‘Terrible one the other day, paid over twenty guineas for something worth ten shillings.’
‘But that’s jolly rare,’ said Nell. ‘Usually you’re a genius at it.’
‘No more than you are at your writing,’ said Julius, smiling at her.
How sweet they were, Jillie thought. Totally in love. Lucky, lucky them.
‘Well, you must tell us more about it later. My mother loves deco, especially Clarice Cliff, in fact she’s got a complete tea set –’
‘My God,’ said Julius. ‘Really? Not – not in the crocus design?’
‘Not sure. We can go and look later, it’s in a cabinet in the morning room.’
‘I’d love that.’
‘You would, wouldn’t you?’ said Nell. ‘Gosh, we didn’t expect this, both of us so lucky.’
‘I hope you’ll go on thinking so,’ said Jillie. ‘Tell me, Nell, who is your publisher?’
‘Well,’ she said, rather reluctantly, ‘at the moment I’m between publishers.’ She blushed, and then giggled rather self-consciously. ‘Which actually means I haven’t got one – quite. But I have got a very good agent.’
‘That’s more than half the battle,’ said Josh. The evening was working out rather better than he had expected. So far anyway. He hadn’t seen Jillie so animated for a very long time.
‘She’ll find you someone soon,’ said Julius. ‘You’re so good.’
‘Well, let’s go in to dinner, and you can tell me about it, the plot and so on,’ Jillie said, thinking that this mutual adoration society could quite quickly get boring.
‘Wonderful,’ said Nell. ‘Can I help, Josh?’ He was gathering glasses together, overloading the tray rather dangerously. They disappeared towards the kitchen.
Jillie stood up and smiled at Julius. She felt odd, being alone with him. As if it was dangerous. How stupid. But he clearly felt it too; the easy relaxation had gone, and he was obviously thinking rather wildly of something to say. Finally, he managed to remark on the beauty of their garden.
‘And so big.’
‘Yes, we’re very lucky. Or rather they are, I really shouldn’t be here at all, bit old to be living at home but I’ve only just passed my finals. Now I have to find some hospital that will have me. I’m doing a locum at the moment.’
‘You can’t stay where you’ve trained?’
‘No, sadly not. They only keep about one student each year, and she has to be outstanding. I’m not. And Miss Moran, the big white chief surgeon, has taken against me, unfortunately. I’m not very good and I irritate her.’
There was a silence. Then Julius said, ‘I can’t imagine anyone being irritated by you.’ He spoke very seriously, presenting the opinion not as a meaningless compliment, but something he needed to say.
‘Well,’ said Jillie, ‘I am a bit nervous and clumsy, and those are two things surgeons absolutely cannot be. And – well, I missed a lot last year, about six weeks altogether.’
‘Were you ill?’
‘Sort of – let’s go in, shall we?’
‘Sorry,’ he said, looking stricken, sensing a forbidden territory. ‘I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to cross-question you –’
‘No, no, it’s fine. Honestly. You weren’t,’ she said, flustered on his behalf. ‘Come on, hope you’re hungry …’
They were finally gone; she felt exhausted. Nell’s questions had been predictable, easy to answer – yes, it was a man’s world, surgery, you had to prove yourself twice as good as they were; no, the worst hostility tended to come not from the other doctors, you just had to flirt with them. Jillie didn’t exactly like her – she was quite outstandingly self-confident – but her questions were well thought through, and she seemed genuinely eager to learn.
Jillie did ask them when they planned to get married and Nell said, ‘Oh, next spring soonest – so much to arrange, isn’t there, darling? We’ve actually only just got engaged.’
Jillie offered her congratulations, then asked Julius if he would like to see the Clarice Cliff tea service in its cabinet and he stood there, gazing at it, his face very solemn, and then turned to her with his brilliant smile, and said, ‘Thank you so much. It’ s – well, it’s wonderful. Wonderful things.’
He sounded rather like Harold Carter, confronted by the tomb of Tutankhamun for the first time, as reverent and as astonished.
‘It’s been the most wonderful evening,’ he said, his brown eyes very serious on hers. ‘I’ve loved it. You’ve been wonderful to Nell –’
‘Not at all. And congratulations again on your engagement.’
And may you never know, she thought, the tears back behind her eyes, the misery of it not ending as you think it will.
Lying in bed, wide awake, she felt disturbed, confused even. Julius had done odd things to her; made her feel – goodness, what had he made her feel? Aware, she realised finally, for the first time for many months, aware of herself, as if she mattered, indeed as if anything at all mattered. For so long, she had plodded dutifully along: working, because it was the only thing to do, while not caring too much what the outcome was; being pleasant to people, while feeling no interest in them whatsoever, while avoiding them indeed whenever she could; holding herself back, locking her emotions away as things not to be trusted, not released. Julius, with his intense enthusiasms, his untidy charm, had broken into her passivity, had made her want to know more of him, more of what he thought and enjoyed and disliked and desired. She felt for him, in the purest sense, felt herself involved by the charm, the enthusiasm, the way he dressed, the way he talked, the way he was.
But he was not hers to be explored, to be sought out, investigated: he belonged to Nell. He was forbidden, dangerous territory and disturb her as he might, she had no option but to turn her back on him and walk away.