Julia Holt was never impressed. Not being impressed, indeed, was one of the chief things about her. Any new friend who ran to her with news, like a pup prancing up with a mouldy bone between its teeth, learned this. The new friend, as it were, fell back a step or two in an effort to bring the whole of Julia into focus again, while Julia looked knowing and laughed, almost accusing her of lying.
Protestations—‘But, Julia, I am flying round the world with Toby’—were beside the point. Julia hadn’t doubted it for an instant. She doubted nothing. Yes, Harry had been elected captain of his school. Yes, Grace had won first prize in the lottery. All right, the stars of the Old Vic touring company had accepted invitations to Edna’s party, and yes, Nancy and Stewart were dining with the governor-general. Okay. All right. Very well.
‘You knew already, Julia! Someone told you!’
But no one had. And yet there was no mistaking Julia’s extreme lack of interest in world tours and vice-regal dinners. Her lovely eyes roamed the most distant prospect available to them, moved, dully persecuted, across the skyline from east to west. No concert pianist obliged to support herself by rearing chickens, rounding them up for the night, could have seemed more disengaged than she. It was dispiriting to Julia’s new friend. Caught up by the thrilling news just delivered—to Julia first, before everyone—she was not sufficiently detached to find comfort in the thought that this tone of voice brought out the buried Australian in Julia.
Up at the end of every remark her voice went, in that unconsciously tentative way that makes the most affirmative statement sound like a question. It is irritating when people seem not absolutely certain even of their own names.
No, but if Julia did believe and still looked so amused and pitying, it could only mean that she had secrets beside which her new friend’s offerings were paltry indeed. Her friend felt discontented, dashed. What was the use? What was life all about, anyway?
Then, just at this awful moment, wonderfully, Julia noticed and declared the most spontaneous and tremendous admiration for, say, her new friend’s nylon stockings, her hand-stitched gloves, her gold earrings or the colour of her hair.
This free gift of herself was so unexpected that it threw Julia’s friend off balance. With a shrill little laugh she protested and wriggled and twisted her admired hands and legs, like a tiny pampered lapdog yapping fiendishly and chasing her own tail.
This sort of incident, which occurred over and over in Julia’s life, always featured one of her Grade II friends. Her equal, Grade I friends were, without exception, notable people who had hung in society’s sky long before Julia herself was hailed by astronomers. These Grade II girls were, strictly speaking, protégées, the hoity-toity daughters of earthy butchers, or pretty secretaries living in two-bedroomed bungalows, learning about etiquette and hygiene and make-up from teenagers’ weeklies. They married young men who’d left school at fifteen and entered insurance offices and finance companies, studying their product—money—from the ground up. Now, to the astonishment of relations and old neighbours, these youthful couples were rich.
Julia Holt had belonged to this caste once herself, but uncanny natural qualities, ten years’ advantage in age, and Ralph’s exceptional flair for finance had put her in a category of her own. She was an example to them all.
What inspired the Grade II protégées was the impossibility of impressing Julia. Her sophistication was immense. The odd smart aleck would sometimes throw names and words at her in an exasperated attempt to wrench a reaction: Tolstoy, Chartres, Frank Lloyd Wright, mother, Casals, concentration camps, the Parthenon, love, Gandhi, bomb, the Marx Brothers…
One of Julia’s eyebrows disposed of them all. She was like a bronze idol, impervious to life’s trials. The possibility that her imperviousness might extend into the territory of life’s joys occurred to no one. For the second most striking thing about Julia was the amount of happiness she possessed. (It was usual to think of Julia’s happiness as something owned, rather than experienced.) She wore it like an aphrodisiac.
Julia and Ralph Holt…Regarding their wealth, they would only say in a modest fashion, ‘Well, we’ll always have three meals a day.’ Modesty in regard to their marriage, however, which was a legend in Sydney society, would have seemed hypocritical. The Holts were generous with their private life, displaying, discussing, analysing it with humanity and wit. Even Ralph, a man with many large transactions on his mind and not a conversationalist at all, took time off to contribute a description. Together he and Julia sang a kind of hymn to their happiness.
Ralph Holt was remarkable as any man must be to leave school at fifteen and turn from farm boy to delivery boy to office boy to millionaire at the age of forty. Now money, Julia, and their two sons were his entire life. While his family naturally came first, he did feel for money: it was his Rosetta Stone.
(The boys, Peter and Paul, were twins, aged nine. Ralph doted on them. Julia doted, too, she worshipped them: it was just that she saw their defects rather clearly. Julia had never wanted children. Her life had been perfect. Who but a fool would have tried to improve on it? But there was some mischance. She was pregnant and Ralph wanted a son. To call that period of her existence nightmarish, ghastly beyond belief, would be a ludicrous understatement. Only Ralph and her doctor had the least inkling of what her feelings were then, and they had sworn to forget the episode forever.)
Ralph’s great appeal for his fellow man was that, though he was rich, he treated everyone the same. He wasn’t a bit arrogant. He never bullied. Away from head office he was goodnatured, easily led, easily diverted, even soft. He evinced the universal balloon-like simplicity that humans display when temporarily bereft of their vocations. Unplugged from his niche in the gymnasium of circumstance, he was like a horse in an aeroplane.
It was Ralph’s boast that good luck hadn’t altered him, but in connection with money one gradual change had overtaken him. Whereas in his youth he had spent carelessly, he was now inclined to go through the house at night switching off lights. He’d been known to walk in the rain rather than hail a taxi, and there was the story Julia told against him about a box of cakes.
Valerie Turner, a Grade III girlfriend of Julia’s, one of the disciples, had been deputed to buy and deliver some cake from the patisserie. Before she reached the shop she was knocked down by a car on a pedestrian crossing, and she had to send Julia an apology from hospital. She felt awful about inconveniencing Julia, but her leg had been hurt and the doctor insisted she stay in bed. So what could she do?
‘Don’t worry! I’ll call Ralph,’ Julia said. ‘He can get one of the juniors to collect them and then bring them home himself this evening.’
When Ralph walked in the door with the cake box, his eyebrows were up among his hair, and his mouth was wide open with the pressure of throttled speech just waiting for Julia’s presence for release.
‘What do you think these things cost? I used to like them. What do they think they’re made of? What do they think we’re made of? It’s just eating money!’
Ralph had no time for games or hobbies. He read the financial papers. He understood world affairs insofar as they affected the stock markets, and prayed for governments to rise and fall to the advantage of his company’s holdings. He was mildly indifferent to his personal appearance, feeling no pressure to spend inordinately on clothes. The arts embarrassed him the way churches did. Julia could take an interest in both as long as he was not invited to watch male ballet dancers cavorting like a lot of ——, or to be earbashed by some lecherous old ——. (Ralph rarely used unpleasant language.)
He belonged to the best clubs. He and Julia attended all the state dinners, balls and receptions in honour of visiting royalty, and while Ralph cursed these social duties he had to admit that it was only fitting that the people who amounted to something should congregate to pay and receive a quota of homage.
Really, he enjoyed high life. He enjoyed dancing with Julia and her girlfriends (Ralph was apt to identify other women as Julia’s girlfriends, rather than as the wives of their husbands), and talking over dinner to politicians and knights, some of whom, these days, were inclined to defer to him.
It wasn’t that Ralph felt unkindly towards the men he had met on his climb to the top. He could recall one or two fishing mates who were more congenial than some of his daily associates. But he was wise enough to know how impossible friendship with them was. Small men always hoped for some advantage. They would want to pick his brains, ask advice, expect him to use his influence and find jobs for relations. Without thinking twice, Ralph directed his favours to men of his own stature.
There was a party one night at his and Julia’s place, and Zelda Burton, the wife of a bright youngster in the company, crashed the men’s end of the room to harangue them about some tragic event in the life of her housekeeper, Molly. From their end of the room, the other wives watched coldly. ‘Zelda must be with the men, have you noticed? Our company doesn’t mean a thing to Zelda.’
‘I’ll go to the rescue, if you’re worried.’ Julia laughed, her voice tender and teasing. ‘Wait a sec! Fear not!’ Off she went…
‘And poor Molly’s been starving herself to pay off her sewing machine,’ Zelda was saying. ‘She makes overalls at night for some clothing factory. She’s got too many kids and her husband’s a no-hoper, and she’s had to pay twice the regular price for her machine because of the interest to our company.’
All the men grinned sheepishly except Zelda’s husband and Ralph.
Julia said drily, ‘I think your Molly should have her head examined.’
Everyone laughed, but Zelda insisted: ‘Some people have rotten luck, though, Julia. She was sick for years after the Depression from malnutrition, and now—’ Zelda was impassioned, her dark eyes big.
Julia smiled. Her eyelids drooped. ‘Really? Malnutrition?’
The listeners gaped, then gasped and gave a shout of laughter as her innuendo struck them like some gorgeous, shocking snowball.
A mistress of Zen, Julia! Illumination! Obviously, Molly was a fraud. Obviously, old Zelda had been knocking back more Scotch than was good for her.
‘Now, look, my sweet,’ Julia was saying. ‘Who makes your Molly woman pay the price of two machines for one? Who twists her arm? I’m not saying she’s not a fine character! But she just hasn’t got the nous to think it out, and save up, and buy the damn thing outright. Now, isn’t that true? And isn’t she also starving herself to pay for clothes for these kids of hers?’
Undermined, but still frowning at the mild-faced, milky men, Zelda said, ‘But the point is…When my kids wanted a machine to play at making dresses in the school holidays, we got one through the company half-price.’
Holding glasses, standing in strategic formation, the men were fascinated. Though the sum of money involved was too trivial, it was, nevertheless, money, and the whole story began to symbolise some problem, to involve principles…By the instant, they grew harder.
‘Just keep her out of the files,’ Ralph joked. ‘That’s all I ask.’
With her usual aplomb, Julia was leading Zelda to her proper place among the ladies. Back they went together across the parquet floor, past the new portrait of Julia, the windows, and the roses, into female territory.
‘But, Julia, it’s hell finding someone to replace a worker like Molly. She used to slave for me. I’m just so miserable—’
With her eyes fixed on the women they approached, Julia was saying, ‘Yes, yes, but if you’re worried about her dying of hunger, get on the phone and order a hamper to go to her house. That’s what I did when Mrs Whatnot went to hospital, and she adored it. It made a great impression in the ward.’
The other wives remembered how generous Julia had been to Mrs Whatnot, who had rather ungraciously died just the same.
‘You sent blankets, too, before they took her away,’ Rose Lewis reminded her.
‘Oh, God, yes! Ralph thought I was mad. He kept asking me for a handout. He kept saying, “Got any spare tenners today, lady?”’
Poor Ralph! The cleverest thing he ever did was marry Julia. He confessed that she knew as much about the workings of the company as he did himself. He discussed everything with her. God alone knew what he would have made of himself without her!
Julia was realistic about these things: she was superior to Ralph. He knew it. She knew it. How could she act the little woman? If she had been a man, if she had even been a woman (of course she was), she would have run rings round Ralph, and every other…Ah, well!
There were ways in which Ralph and Julia had grown alike. For instance, money was nearly the most alluring topic of conversation in the world, especially for Julia when her Grade III girlfriends, the disciples, were about. With a rakish grin and an expression of mock terror, she’d cry, ‘I’ve just spent three hundred guineas on three dresses. Ralph’ll murder me!’
The girls always exclaimed, and looked envious and horrified and proud of her. If they ever reflected that three hundred guineas were to Ralph what three pennies were to them, they never said so.
The first two questions Julia asked potential disciple material were, ‘How much do you make?’ and ‘How much have you got in the bank?’ She knew how poverty-stricken the members of her Grade III contingent were. Alice Wright was a typical example: fortyish, faded, and single. She lived alone in one room, and had no family. Out of her salary she saved four pounds a week, which wasn’t easy, and therefore had two hundred and eight pounds a year to represent security, to spend on clothes, cosmetics, holidays, insurance, Christmas presents, doctors, dentists, eiderdowns, coffee percolators, entertainment, chocolate bars and headache tablets. Moreover, she wanted very much to visit Europe one day, so her savings stood for hope, as well. When she confided this dream to Julia one night, mistiming it, Julia said a little cruelly, ‘What are you going to use for money?’
It was a tiny flaw in Julia that she resented, seemed—impossibly!—almost jealous of, any sign of initiative or individual desire on the part of her girlfriends. But it was only that she didn’t want to lose them. After all, she had acquired these companions, one by one, over the years, by a process of most intense and flattering cultivation. They’d found themselves unutterably charmed that Julia Holt was moved by the secrets of their small lives. And now they were lucky to live vicariously through her. Only Julia had need of them, Julia, whose life was so rich in events that she needed all their help to cope with it.
‘Sweetie, would you slip out of the office at lunchtime and get those satin shoes from that French dyeing place?’
‘Can you get my pearls out to me before a quarter-past six, lamb? They’re fixing the clasp at Huntley’s. I must have them tonight.’
‘Darling, would you go and look after old Auntie Win for me this weekend? You can go straight from work on Friday. I can’t very well leave Ralph and the boys, and she’d hate a nurse, and she’s pretty sick—or she thinks she is! Someone has to be there. You haven’t got anything else fixed, have you? Because if you have, I can easily get Kate, or Brenda, or Valerie, to go along for me.’
When Ralph had to travel interstate and Julia curtailed her social life, the faithful disciples came into their own. Out to the North Shore they went as soon as summoned, and along the dark avenue to the beautiful house. Like equals, they relaxed with Julia in front of the television screen and, under disenchanted expressions, half-swooned with the relief of being safe and warm within solid walls, in a lamp-lit room where every artefact was what it seemed to be. The wood was flawless and polished by hand; the roses were home-grown and hanging, heavy, from silver bowls.
While they watched the screen and smoked, and drank their whisky, Julia chatted about local scandals, her small staff and the price of grapes. If it happened that she was constrained, en route to some homely subject, to refer to her new sables, or the two new paintings chosen by that eminent art-critic man whom, unfortunately, there was less time now to see, or to some titled personages who were Grade I bosom friends, it was not that Julia had any desire to stir up envy. On the contrary, it distressed her that Kate (or Alice, or Brenda, or Valerie) should make a fuss.
‘What’s who like?’ she would repeat after them with a repressive frown and a small pained movement of her hand. ‘Oh, him…Oh, all right.’
Naturally, the girls had no news of any consequence. But if Kate, for instance, being present, could shed light on some suspected weakness in Brenda, being absent, Julia was warmly responsive. She adored human nature. She saw through people so easily, she should have been a psychologist.
When the pre-dinner drink or two were disposed of, Julia and her companion strolled through to the kitchen to see what Elsie, the cook, had concocted for them. In front of the screen again, with the coffee table holding the huge tray (‘Let’s rough it tonight!’), they ate and drank and lounged against cushions.
‘More? Oh, go on! You know you’d like to.’ Smiling and frowning at her in an odd, critical way, Julia heaped another spoonful of curry onto her friend’s plate. For no reason, Julia gave a short frustrated laugh. But second helpings are often a disappointment. Julia was conscious that this same Kate (or Alice, or Brenda, or Valerie) would have been dining at home tonight on boiled eggs, or frozen fish fingers, or a single lamb chop with a tomato, and finishing with Nescafé and a sweet biscuit.
The knowledge caused Julia a confused sort of suffering. She didn’t mind Kate eating her dinner…It was only that she was afraid that she was sinning against her own kind, that she was harbouring anarchists and revolutionaries.
But, in justice, as she quickly reminded herself, the girls never tried to take advantage of her position. It was one of the really lovely things about them that they never expected help from her though they did long to entertain her in return, in their bedsitting rooms, buying in her special brand of Scotch and coping with casseroles swimming in cream and herbs as well as their funny little ovens allowed. But Julia was never free. When Ralph was away, it was bliss to snatch a quiet evening at home. ‘Yes, I will truly come to your place next time, but look, lamb, you’re flat out at the office all day. Elsie here can knock us up a bite, and we can put our feet up and watch quizzes on TV like a couple of old maids.’
How could they mind? She was charming. She was their claim to fame, their connection with life. Charm and Julia were synonymous to all who knew her. She admitted herself that, without her charm, she and Ralph would have been merely part of the Grade II crowd. As this was Australia, where millionaires tended to be less exclusive and eccentric than in most other countries, left to himself Ralph would not have known how to be exceptional. Julia just was.
Every now and then, as a sort of change of diet, Julia would invite some junior university men to an informal dinner. ‘You’ll just have to take us as you find us!’ she’d say, laughing a warning.
Frankness can be enchanting, especially in the rich. It seems so unnatural in them.
‘Come and sit next to me, John. Leave those old businessmen to bore each other.’ With a thoughtful, almost intimate expression she would watch him, her young expert.
Patting his tie and smiling and blinking at Mrs Holt—Julia—who was not bad-looking for her age (about thirty-seven?), John approached.
The way she looked at him, with such extreme unwavering attention, it was obvious that she was interested. Wasn’t it? Now that he was beside her on the sofa, blandly staring back—he was a good ten years younger than the woman and could afford to be bland, let’s face it!—she even put a hand on his, warmly.
No. Instantly, he realised that she’d done it as an older woman innocently would. It was sweet. He had misjudged the situation altogether. She smelled marvellous. Her make-up was very pretty, though she naturally had a few lines on her face.
‘Now, what’s all this?’ she asked with a troubled sincerity like nothing he’d encountered in his life before. ‘Just what is all this about India?’
Wonderful woman! Out of the whole room, she had picked the one person who could tell her.
‘I can say this much—’ John began.
A minute later she interrupted him reproachfully, half-laughing. ‘Darling, darling. I’m an intelligent woman, I hope, but make it a little easier for me. I’m not a scholar, you know, and I don’t pretend to be.’
Oh! Her eyes looked so deeply into his, and were so blue, and seemed to mean, to suggest…John condensed his encyclopaedic knowledge of the problems of India into three wise sentences. For her part, Julia seemed to learn them word for word; more, seemed to grasp the exciting ramifications, implications, the whole complex of thought that lay behind them. Rarely had his perceptions been so acutely appreciated.
When Harry Grieve was cornered by her lovely boisterous blue gaze he didn’t object at all. He looked at her speculatively over his glass, and Julia said, ‘What’s all this about Greek sculpture? No, seriously, Harry. I want to know. There’s a museum at Delphi, they tell me—’
She was right! There was! There is! Harry’s expression altered. She smelled marvellous. Her make-up was smooth and pearly, though she bore those visible traces of preservation that were natural and becoming to her age. Her way of searching your eyes was not so much provocative as—well, yes, it was provocative.
Julia listened to Harry’s wise sentences.
The distinguished men she met, about whose interests Who’s Who was so helpful, were delighted to hear the subjects closest to their hearts—India, Greek sculpture, geology, fishing, the United Nations, cricket—receiving such sensible attention from this good-looking society woman. Now she was appealing to the company for support. What ignoramuses! She was the only one at the table who knew anything about it!
A certain look and two or three smart words she’d learned the week before were enough to convince them all that she knew what they were talking about. And cared. These were the world shakers, were they? Internationally known. And she, she, little Julia Holt had tricked them.
These formal occasions were all very well, but Julia much preferred an evening at home with a few handpicked visitors from abroad. She loved new people. The Holts diverted them with tales about associates and acquaintances whom the newcomers would soon number in their circle. Someone had to give these lambs the lowdown. It was only fair.
‘Oh, you can tell a mile off they commit incest,’ Ralph would say with his gentle smile. ‘Ask Julia. She’s got an instinct for these things.’
‘Blanche and her son? Listen, sweeties, it’s quite common. You know it is.’
Of course they did.
As eyes slid, full of glee, from one face to another, saluting their own kind now that they were certain, Ralph would continue with his revelations. He still had the placid country face of a farm boy, which added a peculiar piquancy to the night. ‘Of course, James and Martha—we think they’re both queer.’
‘Well, they are. No think about it. And then—’
Once Julia started ticking them off on her fingers, there was really no end to the newsworthy misdemeanours their friends were guilty of. Obscenity was everywhere! Like spies they searched it out, exchanging clues, drawing inferences, inventing hilarious episodes for their private amusement. It was all good fun, and livened their small parties wonderfully.
If human beings were automatically rendered ideal, creatures of the highest order, as a result of successful sexual relations, the Holts should have been enshrined in a mountain grotto somewhere and worshipped. By their own account, they were uniquely happy in their marriage. Who knew but this was absolutely true?
Looking through a magazine at her hairdresser’s, Julia read, To deny love is the only crime. The words were written in a box in the centre of the page. She read them again, liked them, remembered them, and introduced them to the company assembled for dinner the following night, thus furthering her reputation as a thinker.
Unluckily, a pedantic oaf called Edward Driscoll—who was nothing, yet seemed to consider himself something—had the crassness to put her statement on a different plane altogether.
‘I wonder if that’s true?’ he said—as if it mattered—staring into his claret. ‘Whoever said it would know what he meant, I suppose. He was probably right then, for himself. But generally, to deny love you must at some time have affirmed it. Surely, not to have done that would be a greater crime?
‘Although,’ he went on, incredibly, as if someone had contradicted him, ‘if you like to say that no one should be held responsible for an inherent disability, you’d have a point.’ He seemed to brood. Round about him, heads sank. ‘Of course,’ he glanced up quickly at Julia, ‘he—that is, you—may have meant deny in that sense?’
Julia’s eyes swivelled. Her mouth opened, then closed.
Driscoll resumed his monologue somewhat moodily. ‘I suppose one is apt to blame people unfairly for blankness of feeling.’
Behind this lunatic’s back, Ralph signalled to Julia: What’s he talking about? She cast up her eyes.
‘The trouble is,’ Driscoll went on, ‘there are people, and people, all looking very much like human beings.’
The smooth lid of Julia’s left eye descended in a wink. It evoked five responsive smiles in the five who saw it.
‘The total absence of empathy that you could assume in a cat in relation to a human being exists everywhere between people who are allegedly of one species,’ Driscoll said. He wasn’t bad-looking, either.
‘And so what do you make of it all?’ Julia asked soothingly, with a tremendous bending of her personality over the young man.
He raised his eyes from the glass in his hand and smiled at Julia, obviously, disconcertingly, stone-cold sober.
‘Maybe a new race of non-human people?’ He seemed to consult her. ‘Or the old race of non-humans increasing their numbers? Anyway, there are more and more of them all the time, and all disguised to look like humans.’ His eyes were a striking sandy-gold colour.
In other circumstances, Julia felt she might have let rip, might have said something gigantically coarse and relieved her contempt. But she only said, ‘Where are they coming from, do you think? Outer space?’
‘Oh, yes.’ He smiled. ‘I should think so. Definitely.’
Inevitably, there were small failures in Julia’s life but, as Ralph said, the tender-hearted ones of this world have always laid themselves open to failure, without ever letting it change them. If Julia had taken the Anne-Marie affair to heart, for instance, she wouldn’t have been Julia.
Ralph and Julia were on the committee of an organisation dedicated to the relief of the needy. Through this charity they were brought into touch with Anne-Marie Grant, a neglected child of sixteen, the daughter of an alcoholic father, recently killed, and a mother, classified in the family’s case history as ‘weak and feckless’, who had run off with a bus conductor to Melbourne after her husband’s fatal accident.
Having decided to employ some young person to help the help in the house, Ralph and Julia interviewed and hired Anne-Marie for the job. As Julia put it to the girls, they fell in love with her on sight. She was beautiful. People who had only heard of girls with faces like flowers, seeing Anne-Marie, understood for the first time what the words meant and stopped to stare.
Moreover, as it appeared, she was sweet-natured, and innocent and quick to learn. Elsie adored her, and so did the cleaners, and Ralph and the boys.
If Anne-Marie had a fault, it was that she was a fraction cold and uncommunicative. Oh, she was intelligent, and even sensitive in a way, but there was a lack of heart somewhere in her that repelled Julia. Time and time again she failed to respond to Julia’s sincere efforts to draw her out. And it wasn’t—God knew—that Julia was prying. She only hoped the little soul would unburden herself of that dreadful past, shed as many tears as need be, and then take up her life like any normal girl.
‘Don’t worry, pet,’ Ralph said. ‘She’ll come to you like all the others. She’ll be your little disciple for life, wait and see.’
But, as the weeks continued to pass, the number of small wounding incidents began to mount. Anne-Marie took to avoiding Julia’s eyes. She would not give smile for conspiratorial smile. Alternatively, she had a habit of looking at Julia out of those blue-grey eyes that were, in truth, like stars, and flowers, and precious stones. She looked at Julia with these wonderful eyes and seemed to think at her, or about her, in some disconcerting way.
Elsie did her share of damage by passing on to Julia one afternoon the details of a series of conversations she had had with Anne-Marie.
As hurt as she had ever been, indescribably bleak, Julia listened while painful revelations of deep feeling on the part of the child were repeated to her, by her own cook.
‘Ah, she’s had a hard time,’ said Elsie. ‘But I mustn’t talk about that.’
It emerged that Anne-Marie saw herself as a nurse or a social worker like the one who’d rescued her. She wanted not to be left helpless and without skill in middle age, the way her mother had been. She wanted to learn all about the world, and not to marry till she was twenty-seven.
‘She’s seen too much of marriage to rush into it with maybe the wrong one,’ the cook said sombrely.
‘I said,’ Julia later told Ralph drily, ‘“Look, don’t encourage the girl’s delusions of grandeur! She’s had all of six years at school, so she isn’t eligible to train as a dogcatcher! Do you know how many certificates girls have to have before they’ll accept them as trainee nurses? That sort of future is out for Anne-Marie, and it’s no kindness to her to pretend otherwise.”’
‘How soon people’s lives are over and ruined!’ cried Elsie.
Julia continued, quite brusquely for Julia, ‘It’s obvious she was made to settle down and have babies, anyway.’ (If Julia had accepted this role as her destiny, was it too much to expect Anne-Marie to do the same?)
But Elsie could be stubborn. She pounded the bit of dough she was mangling about, showing that she meant to continue inciting the girl.
So Julia had no choice but to talk to Anne-Marie herself.
It took forty minutes and several cigarettes to put the matter of her future into perspective for the child. They were in Julia’s lovely bedroom, a room coloured mother-of-pearl, with views of trees and lawns and sky. Anne-Marie looked down at her hands throughout, except when ordered to lift her head.
There was something forbidding about the girl’s small Mediterranean face. As she noticed and debated this and, inconceivably, felt herself rebuked, a whim tickled Julia. It was just a whim, a silly little notion in a corner of her mind. Then, miraculously, everything was all at once reversed and Julia found that she was just a tiny little person in a corner of the notion. She was impelled to mention the facts of life.
Julia was devoutly frank. It seemed necessary to pass on all the curious customs and practices of a sexual nature that had ever been brought to her attention. Many men and women must have lived their lives without knowing all the facts she bestowed on Anne-Marie. But you can never know too much about anything. It was for the child’s own protection. And she did look so surprised.
‘My God, look at the time! Off you run, you baby Cleopatra! You’ve made me late for my appointment.’ Julia laughed, admiring her, and Anne-Marie rose to go.
When she swayed, Julia laughed again and looked closely into the girl’s face. She had the dulled look of one who had suffered a shock to the mind. She grasped the back of the chair for balance, her eyes closed, and Julia laughed yet again, indulgently. There was more than one way of skinning a cat, as the old saying went. And more than one way of deflowering a virgin, too. The child was glassy-eyed.
It was typical of a number of disappointments that Julia endured over the years that Anne-Marie should have wandered off shortly after this, leaving no word of thanks or explanation. Everyone was upset, but there was nothing to be done. Ralph was preparing for a short series of television interviews—an ordeal he detested, being a man of action rather than words—and Julia had to help him rehearse. Also the boys’ school concert, the charity ball of the year, and one of her most lavish parties to date all fell in the same few days.
‘Really, there’s never a moment!’ Julia said. What with marquees and floodlights in the garden to think about, and workmen tramping up and down the paths, and grouse, salmon, truffles, and pheasants being flown in from Europe for the occasion, and the disciples fleeing about on her behalf when they could escape from their tedious offices, it was impossible to give much thought to Anne-Marie’s fate.
That ghastly Edward Driscoll sought her out at a diplomatic party to say, ‘They’ve invented a death ray, Julia, to kill us all off.’
‘Good on them!’ she said, hostile. ‘Who have?’
‘The non-humans, remember? From outer space. They’re highly organised.’
Julia humoured him. ‘Why would they want to kill anyone? It’s such a lovely night!’
‘Well,’ he said, almost apologetically, ‘they are insane.’ He seemed to know what Julia was thinking. ‘It makes them dangerous.’
Julia cast into the depths. In the most condescending tone she had ever commanded in her life, she asked, ‘Are you afraid of dying, Edward?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
With closed lips she smiled and turned away. If only she had had a death ray handy!
Kate (or Alice, or Brenda, or Valerie) spotted Anne-Marie in Hyde Park one day, a few months after she had left the house. She was pregnant, and her hands were ringless. Apparently she was in some bizarre get-up, with her hair straggling down her back, and looking miserable as sin.
Julia was terrifically interested when she heard. Looking as if she’d won a bet with herself, she started to laugh. ‘Pregnant! Silly little thing! Why didn’t she use something?’
Elsie cried and carried on when she heard the news, saying that the girl was capable of doing something desperate. ‘Suicide, even!’ Elsie cried. ‘You didn’t know her!’
Suicide! Some people had morbid minds.
No small failure ever changed Julia. She continued to lead the loveliest life. On Sundays, when they were free for a few hours, she and Ralph took the boys out sailing, or to watch polo matches. Ralph opened more branch offices. There were exhibitions of modern painting and pottery to arrange on behalf of Julia’s pet charity, and talk of another royal visit to Australia. Edward Driscoll mysteriously vanished, and none of the disciples sighted Anne-Marie again. The world situation got worse, and then better, and then worse again. No one more remarkable than Julia ever appeared. No one took up the gauntlet she had thrown in the face of the universe.