A Pin to See the Peepshow

by F. Tennyson Jesse

  She wondered desperately if it would be any good if she took Gipsy and Marian into her confidence—if she asked them for a rise. She was worth more than she was getting, she knew; she was the one treasure who is always being looked for in a little shop, and is so seldom found. If she could get two pounds a week, perhaps she could manage to live on that somewhere; get a room and boil herself eggs. Anne … would she let her a room in the house, which must be much too big for Dr. Ackroyd and herself at the corner of Saint Clement’s Square? But she didn’t really want to live with Dr. Ackroyd and Anne. She admired them, but they somehow weren’t comfortable people. They looked too clearly at things to be quite comfortable.

  Her great friend was still Ruby, who was always kind to her, but in a desperate case like this Julia ceased to romance, and faced facts. She knew she couldn’t live with Ruby; that she would degenerate into a mixture of maid and dresser and unpaid companion if she were to do so, and there would be perpetual scenes about Ruby’s lovers, and Ruby would always be wanting to discuss the lovers. Nobody but Ruby could exist as a personality in Ruby’s flat. If only one of the men Julia had met had been marriageable, even mildly marriageable! But no one had been any good to her except Alfie, and he had only been physically right. Still, if there had been an Alfie now she’d have married him all right.

  Julia fell asleep at last, to dream that Elsa was sitting up in the bed opposite, looking at her with impish glee, and repeating over and over again: “I’m here for life. I’m here for life.” Towards dawn Bobby crept up the bed and placed his head beside hers on the pillow. She stirred a little in her sleep, and suddenly woke with a cry, pushing him away from her. It hadn’t been Bobby … ridiculously enough, it had been Herbert Starling whose head had been upon the pillow, his large florid cheek almost touching hers.

  She sat up in bed, still shaking, to see Bobby gazing at her reproachfully in the wan light. She stared round the room, and the sense of where she was and what had happened came suddenly back to her. There was the horrible little bed, with the striped ticking on its pillows, and here was Bobby’s reproachful face close to her own. What a relief!

  She stroked his head and settled down to sleep again, but sleep would not come, and eventually she got up, lit the geyser and ran a hot bath. Then she went down to the kitchen, made herself some tea, and cooked some eggs and bacon, for she felt ravenous by now. After all, there were still four more days. Something would happen. Perhaps Elsa would fall off an omnibus and get run over. Something surely must happen. She couldn’t give up her room.

  But when Julia came home next day, most of the Beales’ furniture had arrived, and on the Friday the Beales themselves turned up to see that everything was to their liking. What impossible people, thought Julia, her ears far more attuned by now to the light gay voices of the Darlings, and the quick, rich tones of Gipsy’s voice, and the cool drawl of Marian’s.

  There was Uncle George booming and blustering. There was Aunt Mildred, oddly dominating through all the booming and blustering. Perhaps, thought Julia, that was why Uncle George was always so noisy, he knew that really Aunt Mildred was far stronger than he was, and had never been frightened by him. Aunt Mildred looked as though she had been cut out of wood. She was rather of the same type as Bertha Starling, except that no one could ever have mistaken Aunt Mildred for anything but a matron, or Bertha Starling for anything but a virgin. Where Aunt Mildred’s hard contours were rounded, Miss Starling’s were concave. Aunt Mildred had a high colour exactly in the middle of each solid cheek, and Miss Starling’s thin face was pale, but they both looked as though they would be hard to the touch. Their eyes were close together, their mouths were thin. Both knew what they wanted in life, but Aunt Mildred had got it, and Miss Starling never had, until now. She was keeping Herbert’s flat for him; she was saving money, but the unfortunate Herbert didn’t want, at the moment, to save money, though no one had been more “careful” than he all his life till now. Aunt Mildred would save money too, but it would always be to her own advantage; Bertha saved money to Herbert’s advantage, although he didn’t want her to. Herbert wanted to be cutting a gallant figure just now. Look at this move, thought Julia; Uncle George appeared to have blustered his way into it, but she didn’t doubt that the irresistible force of Aunt Mildred, relentless as one of those tanks the papers were full of, was behind him. Look what they were getting—a nice house, Mum to do most of the work, and all of that for nothing except paying cheaper rent than they had been paying before, and giving Mum the little bit of food she ate. The eight shillings a week Julia contributed to the housekeeping would pay for her own breakfast and supper all right.

  Elsa seemed insufferable that evening to Julia. For Elsa was being the gay, spoilt, little much-loved daughter. She ran up and down the stairs, sang at the top of her rather pleasing little voice, played with Bobby, and managed, Julia noticed, to get hold of the best things to eat.

  “I’ve great plans for Elsa,” Uncle George boomed from the hearth-rug, “great plans. Her teacher says she’s never seen a child so advanced for her age.”

  Julia suffered in stony silence till supper-time, when Herbert Starling walked in unexpectedly. He looked a fine figure of a man in his uniform. He was an officer now, and he had come to show himself off. He did so good-naturedly, while Elsa asked bright, childish questions about his various buttons and badges. He looked, thought Julia, suddenly seeing him anew, very much nicer than he had ever looked before. His field-boots were beautifully polished—trust Bertha to see to that—his buttons were bright, he carried himself with great dignity, and the drill had taken at least four inches off his stomach. But at tea-time she decided despairingly that he was as stupid at ever.

  “Well, well, Julia,” he said, “so you’re going to be quite a happy little family party here. That’s right. I don’t like to think of you and your mother alone here, thinking about the old days.”

  What a fool, Julia thought, resentfully. The old days—as though Dad had ever amounted to anything particular. What was the good, when people were dead, of talking as though they had been perfect? Why was it always done? She remembered Mrs. Starling’s funeral, nearly two years ago now, everybody had spoken then as though they had lost somebody irreplaceable, and now they were doing the same thing over poor, ineffectual Dad.

  Julia had been fond of her father in a sort of way. When she had been a very little girl and things hadn’t been going too badly with them, he had liked to play with her sometimes on a Saturday afternoon, but she had never known quite where she was with him. His own affairs had always preoccupied him to the extent of making his relationship with other human beings very immature and slight. Little Julia had never known how her advances would be received. In company, who was more fond of children than Mr. Almond, who more playful? And yet, when the visitors had left, and Julia expected him to finish the game with her, he would often turn and snap at her and tell her to be quiet. Even her infant sense of justice had realised that he hadn’t meant to be a hypocrite. He was just trying to be the sort of person that he wanted to be in front of visitors, a family man who was fond of children and clever with children. When the visitors had gone and he was tired, and his nerves were ragged, he didn’t want to be bothered with children. When one of his schemes for making money had gone wrong, he didn’t want to be bothered with anyone. When he had managed to land a good job, Eldorado opened before his eyes, when the job dwindled into nothing and disappeared, the whole horizon was black to him. Julia had been accustomed ever since she remembered anything, to the opening of the black side of the fan or the white, at a flick of fortune’s wrist. The poor little man who had, by chance, caused her mother to conceive her and had through all her adolescent years caused these fluttering fortunes in the daily life, had died, and that was all there was to be said about it.

  Poor Dad. … Julia was sorry for him, as she was sorry for all helpless things, or rather she was pitiful for the mess he had made of her li
fe. She wasn’t sorry for him personally, because he didn’t exist any more. She was sorry for the pity of it all. Poor Dad, he had kept together this little house, and now Uncle George had entered it like a north wind, and was blowing about in its once-sheltered corners—Uncle George, who had got Dad his best job—how Julia hated him for that.

  “Half-past nine …” Herbert Starling interrupted all Julia’s sequence of thoughts by standing up and announcing that he must be getting home, Bertha would be expecting him. He stood looking expectantly at Julia across the dining-room table, still covered with the litter of the solid Sunday supper-tea, and it suddenly dawned upon Julia that he was expecting her to see him off at the front door. She couldn’t have told how this knowledge came to her nerves, whether it was by a curious stillness in the elderly people around her, a certain muffled eagerness, in Uncle George and Aunt Mildred and Mum, or a pert, precocious interest on Elsa’s part, but suddenly she was aware of the fact. For a moment it seemed to her so absurd that she remained sitting, her elbows upon the table, her chin upon her hands.

  Mr. Starling … he had always admired her, an instinct in her had told her that, and admired her in what she called to herself “that way,” but that it could be taken seriously by people other than herself seemed suddenly amazing. Herbert Starling … why! he was years and years and years old, and though it was true that he looked much younger now in his officer’s uniform, and his stomach was flatter, you couldn’t make a figure of romance out of poor old Herbert Starling, not if you tried to ever so. Nevertheless, the thing that would never let Julia be, the wish to be attractive to men, and her own interest in herself whenever they were attracted, rose within her now, and even in her misery she felt a faint stirring of interest.

  “Must you go?” she said mechanically, as she pushed back her chair and rose to her feet. “Got a coat?—not that it’s not a warm evening for the time of year,” and, still talking what she felt to be utter banalities, she did what was expected of her. She went out to the hall, picked up Herbert’s British-warm, and held it for him. Herbert wriggled into it, and turned towards her.

  “When are you coming to see me, Julia—Bertha and me, I mean, of course? You know I’ll be going off to France in a few days.” He didn’t add that he would be busy sitting on a stool at a mysterious place called Railhead.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Julia vaguely, “we’re very busy at the shop, you know.”

  “You’re not busy on Saturday afternoons, my girl. What about to-morrow afternoon? I know I can manage that. Look here, Julia, I’ll tell you what I’ll do, I’ll call for you, and we’ll dine, and go to the pictures or a theatre. It’s too early in the year for the country or I’d suggest going to the country for the day; but I’ll get a box somewhere, say the Coliseum, just for us two. What about it?”

  Julia hesitated—a box, the Coliseum—she and Alfie. Alfie … she had no longer the smallest sentiment regarding him, but the effect he had had upon her lingered. He represented the sole intimacy she had had with the male sex until now. Herbert … if she went out with him it would be admitting in a way that she knew what he wanted. She looked at him. He did look rather splendid, after all. He was so very much of a man, or so it seemed to Julia; his rosy, clean-shaven cheeks, the essentially masculine odour of tobacco and soap lingered about him … he wasn’t so bad, poor old Herbert. After all, an evening with Herbert wouldn’t kill her.

  Julia enjoyed her evening with Herbert. He was respectful though hungry-looking, and she found herself regretting that it would be the last time she would see him for some months. Yet, at the same time, she didn’t wish him to propose to her, although marriage with him would have solved all her problems; that is to say, she didn’t wish him to propose yet. He’d have to go away anyhow, so there was no point in it. She’d see what she was feeling like when he came back on his first leave, and it would be fun to refuse him, kindly and respectfully. She might have met someone simply wonderful by then; that person whom she always expected round each corner.

  Meanwhile, she enjoyed the dinner. She enjoyed the admiration in Herbert’s eyes; his clumsy attempts at gallantry. He made a fuss of her, and nobody had made a fuss of her for a long time.

  On Tuesday the Beale family moved into Two Beresford. Julia was spared that great event, but she came in for the full horror of the accomplished fact.

  Julia had accepted an invitation to see Ruby in her new play that had only been running for a couple of days, and whose fate was still hanging in the balance. She had the notion that if she got back to her room after Elsa was asleep it would at least be better than enduring the childish conversation which went on ceaselessly from the hope of Uncle George’s house.

  So Julia danced the whole evening through; danced, she was quite well aware, not nearly as well as she usually did, and of the men she met, two out of the three were already in love with Ruby; the third was sixty years old, and did nothing to encourage a cheerful view of the future as regarded herself.

  Ruby was at her most distracted, full of her debts, of the way her friends had failed her, of the way the other actors stole her laughs, of the way Mr. Gordon had behaved since he had wanted more of her than a good woman could give, and since she had, of course, refused him. … And what was she to do about the two young men, one in the Flying Corps and one in the Submarine Service, who at the moment wished to marry her?

  And the odd thing was, thought Julia, watching them, they did both wish to marry her. There sat Ruby, with her red hair, her big sleepy brown eyes, her dark deeply-modelled mouth, and her full white cheeks; obviously not a virgin, obviously not what she said, a clergyman’s daughter; quite obvious to anybody who had seen her on the stage not a very good actress; and yet here were two ardent, earnest young men, only too anxious to endow her with their very good family names and their pay, in the touching confidence that, if she accepted, it would be because it was the love of a lifetime, and that she would be a good and faithful wife. Is it, thought Julia to herself in humorous despair, being on the stage that makes people able to believe these things, so that they are able to make other people believe them too? Yes—that was it, she decided, in one of her flashes of insight. It was because Ruby believed it herself that these young men believed it. What luck, to be able to cheat yourself like that. … And Julia’s thoughts flew back to Herbert, in his tent or his billet, or wherever it was that people like Herbert were sleeping. She knew by now that Herbert wanted her. She couldn’t cheat herself about that. Ruby could always label any emotion love, but Julia couldn’t. She hadn’t, even in the first flush of a young girl’s awakening desire, been able to call her feelings for Alfie, love; how much less then could she thus label this feeling that she had for Herbert, and that he had for her? He had begun to interest her, that was true; it was so obvious that he wanted her, and to be wanted by a man could never leave Julia quite unmoved. As to what Herbert felt for her … that was unmistakable. Julia thought of last Saturday. After all, he wasn’t so bad, poor old Herbert.

  She was very tired when she got home, so tired that, oddly enough, for the time being she had forgotten Elsa. Bobby didn’t meet her in the hall, and she concluded that he was already up in her bedroom. She went up the short flight from the front door and stopped short as she heard the sound of a masculine snore from the back bedroom. Of course, Uncle George and Aunt Mildred … there they were, snoring away in that ghastly manner, inside the room where Dad and Mum had snored in the same fashion. Somehow it was worse, more indecent, because it was Uncle George and Aunt Mildred. Upstairs there would be Bobby on her bed, and Elsa tucked away in the little bed, her nose pointed to the ceiling, her plaits pointed right and left over the pillow.

  Julia went very quietly and slowly up the stairs, crept quietly into the room, and saw the tap of the incandescent gas had been turned down, and a faint glow only lit the room. Yes, Elsa was asleep, thank God, sound asleep, her mouth a little open, her nose a little shiny,
her plaits right and left, just as Julia had imagined them. But Bobby, where was Bobby? Julia looked everywhere; no Bobby. Then she guessed—of course—Uncle George and Aunt Mildred would think it unhealthy for Bobby to sleep in the same room as their precious Elsa. Again the hot, burning tide, as when first she had seen Elsa’s bed in her room, invaded her. She slipped out of the room again and down the stairs to the sitting-room, calling Bobby’s name softly. There was no answer. She opened the dining-room door; no, he wasn’t there; the kitchen; no, he wasn’t there. She went through to the scullery, and was greeted with a sudden whimpering that rose to a wild scream of joy. There was her precious Bobby, lying on an old sack; Bobby, who had always slept on her bed. Julia went down on her knees on the stone floor and gathered him into her arms against her only evening-dress.

  “Mother’s darling,” she murmured. “Did they put him to sleep in the scullery?”

  “Wow-oo, wow-oo, wow-oo,” said Bobby.

  Julia set her jaw. She might have to have that awful little rat of a girl to sleep in her room, but at least she would have Bobby also. Whispering to him to be quiet, she led the way upstairs again, Bobby creeping very quietly behind her without speaking. He realised perfectly well that this was a dangerous adventure. Julia took him into the bathroom with her while she made ready for the night, and then he crept quietly into the bedroom and on to her bed, without even thumping his tail as usual.