Was that his taxi stopping in George Street now? She dusted a little rouge over her cheeks—the use of rouge, begun when she “modelled,” had made all the difference to Julia’s looks—and gathering her cloak about her, went downstairs just as a knock came on the house door. Herbert was standing on the pavement; he came quickly inside the passage before she could step out.
“I’ve told the man to turn the taxi,” he said, speaking rather thickly, so that for a horrified moment she imagined he had been drinking. Then, with a little thrill of triumph, she realised it was sight of her which had affected him. She held the cloak wide for him to see the black lace frock, and her bare arms against the silver lining.
“Do you like me?” she asked
“You know I like you all right, Julia. …”
“I’d better turn out the light before we open the door again, or we shall be arrested for signalling to the enemy or something,” Julia interrupted hurriedly. She had seen the flame that lit in his eyes, and she felt she didn’t want him to speak, not yet, anyway. She clicked out the electric light, and put her hand out to the door-handle. The same moment she knew she had done a foolish thing. Herbert had caught her roughly, both arms about her, and was holding her hard against him. In the darkness his lips settled on hers. He kissed her long and hungrily till she felt she could hardly breathe, and began to struggle. He still held her, she could make no impression against that solidity and strength. She hadn’t minded it at first; it was pleasant to be kissed, even if it did not send through her body the thrills which she had known, but the feeling of choking terrified her. At last the grip of his arms slackened, and with a little sob Julia switched on the light. Herbert looked very ashamed, his face was red. Julia’s composure grew as she noted the loss of his.
“A nice mess you’ve made of me,” she observed coldly, and opening her evening bag, took out a little mirror and a pocket-comb. Herbert watched her dumbly while she put herself to rights.
“I didn’t know I was dining out with someone from the Zoo,” went on Julia, reddening her bruised lips with her lipstick.
“Julia … I don’t know what came over me, I’m sure. …”
“Don’t you? That’s not very nice of you, Herbert.” And she laughed up at him as she shut her bag.
“You mean you’re not angry …? Oh, Julia. …”
“I won’t say I’m not angry; you’ll have to behave yourself very well all the evening to make up. I’ll have to risk the police and open the door with the light on. …”
And Julia threw the door open and then switched off the light. Herbert followed her out and closed the door behind him. The taxi was ticking away by the pavement, Julia stepped into it as calmly as though nothing had happened to disturb her. Still looking rather sheepish, Herbert ordered the man to drive to the Pall Mall Restaurant, and sat down in the taxi beside her. Julia smiled a little to herself in the darkness of the taxi. Thus should he see her home, but it would be Julia and not Herbert who set the pace.
The evening was a success. Ruby took Herbert for a very nice gentleman indeed, though the young “flying boy” stressed his “sirs” rather impudently when he spoke to him. Herbert knew how to order a dinner and how to treat a waiter. Julia had dined once or twice with temporary gentlemen, who thought it was the correct thing to bully the waiter, and Julia had hated them passionately. Herbert made no such mistake. He was, if anything, a little too cordial, but not slavish.
Ruby looked lovely, far lovelier than Julia, though not with Julia’s fine, pure beauty of bone in limbs and body. But Ruby’s face was, so Julia always told herself enviously, a real face. It didn’t vary from day to day and hour to hour as Julia’s did. Julia watched Herbert a little anxiously … it seemed to her that any man must prefer Ruby to herself. But Herbert came as well out of the Ruby test as out of the waiter test.
He admired Ruby, that was evident, and Julia knew him well enough to know that he must be pleased and flattered at being seen out with an actress, but he didn’t lose his head, or, for a moment, let Ruby absorb the chief place in his thoughts. That, all through the evening, was quite obviously held by Julia.
The play was very interesting, Julia thought, although Ruby criticised most of the performances.
“My dear, they could have got a laugh there. You agree, don’t you, Mr. Starling? You see how easily one could have got a laugh? Why, if I’d been playing it, I’d have put in quite a different inflection,” and Ruby imitated what Billie Carleton had just said upon the stage. “You see? If she’d said it that way, she’d have got a laugh.”
Got a laugh … got a laugh. … How often had Julia heard it. It seemed to be the great ambition of actors and actresses to get a laugh, the other ambition was that nobody should steal your own particular laugh. How often she had heard Ruby say: “You see, dear, what a mean thing she does there? She won’t wait for my laugh,” or, “You see what he does? Goes right down centre, and with that bit of business steals my laugh. That was really my laugh there.”
Julia sometimes thought that if Ruby had played Lady Macbeth, she would have tried to get a laugh. She might get a laugh, too, thought Julia grimly, but it wouldn’t be the sort she wanted.
However, this evening, Julia rather agreed that Billie Carleton did nothing much save look pretty, but after all, there was Dennis Eadie, who had taken the place in Julia’s heart held in her childhood by Lewis Waller. He played the lawyer’s clerk—Alfie had been a lawyer’s clerk —called George Smith, who fell in love with his employer’s daughter and was sacked, but the war was the saving of him, for he got a commission in the Navy, and then, three years later, in command of a tramp steamer, he found his employer and daughter torpedoed, and saved them. Julia felt her heart beat harder and faster; and as always from her childhood when she was at the theatre for a few entranced hours, she passed into what seemed for the time being to be the real world.
When she had been a little girl of seven, Mr. Almond happened for the moment to be better off than usual, and he had taken her to the pantomime. It was Little Red Riding Hood. Julia had never forgotten the thrill of admiration that had passed through her when she had first seen the chorus of fairies, lovely creatures in pink tights and high-heeled slippers, glittering with spangles, with gauzy wings springing from their shoulders. Just at the moment when she was most entranced, leaning over the Upper Circle, Mr. Almond had remarked: “Pretty solid fairies,” and for a queer moment two thoughts had existed side by side in Julia’s brain. There was the Julia, there still was the Julia, who saw these lovely beings from another world, and believed in them without a doubt; and there was the other Julia, who suddenly, with a sense of shock amounting to horror, realised that these weren’t fairies, that perhaps they weren’t even beautiful, that they were creatures whom her father saw as solid young women. Young as she was, at that moment she had felt a resentment against him for destroying her illusion.
A few months later she was taken to see Henry V. The excitement she felt was far profounder than anything she had been aware of at the pantomime. The beauty of the words beat through her like a rhythmic pulse; she went nearly wild with excitement, and when Henry V had recited:
“I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game’s afoot;
Follow your spirit: and, upon this charge,
Cry—God for Harry! England! and Saint George!”
Julia had leaned forward wanting to cry out: “I’ll go! I’ll go!” … Only a tiny little thing at the back of her brain prevented her, a tiny little thing that said: “Although this is the loveliest and most exciting thing you have ever met, it isn’t quite real. You’ll make yourself noticeable if you call out, the grown-ups will be angry with you. This isn’t real life.” But for years there had persisted with Julia the memory of Henry V. It had, in a way, been more real to her than things like meals and washing-up and the quarrels of her parents,
and the discussions as to what should be done for the best.
Now, of course, she was grown-up and critical, and yet always the glamour of the theatre captured her. Even the sense that Herbert was by her side; that he was an officer, and was standing dinner and the theatre to Ruby, who was a real actress, even the knowledge that Herbert desired her, and that his and her future were in her hands, ceased to exist for her as she watched the stage. She was Billie Carleton, or at least, she was half the part that Billie Carleton played, and the other half of her was Billie Carleton playing it.
Only after the play was over did Julia start to apply certain things in it to her own circumstances.
“A squirrel will not keep to the ground.” That was a phrase used in the play, and Julia felt its truth. She wouldn’t keep to the ground for ever, she was made for the tree-tops, as Smith for the freedom of the seas. No Uncle Georges should stand in her way. Oh, it was time she broke away from home, thought Julia, with a sudden definite conviction. How could she ever have any peace or freedom at Two Beresford? How could she ever become the self that she felt she had it in her to become?
She glanced up under her dark, straight lashes at Herbert Starling. He was gazing entranced at the stage, his lips were parted, and his solid pleasant face gave the curious effect of being open, like a window with a blind up to the top. As though he felt her eyes upon him, he looked down at her, his lips closed, but the shutter of caution which most people wear ordinarily over their eyes did not, for once, close down over his. For the first time they looked at Julia simply and frankly, and told a very simple story. He could never be again the man who had tried to persuade himself that he felt a paternal interest in the daughter of a friend, nor could he be the business man pretending that he wished to help an attractive girl to make the best of her career. He could not even be the widower who had joined up and was doing his best for his country, and liked taking a pretty girl out for the evening; he was just Herbert Starling looking at Julia Almond, and candidly admitting that he desired her. For the first time with him, Julia felt a flutter of that stirring she had known so well with Alfie, and she felt it merely at the meeting of their eyes.
Later when he was helping her on with her coat, and ran his hand down her bare arm as he did so, she felt no response at all, but her mind was still lit with excitement. She said good-bye to Ruby and the young man, and only protested feebly when Herbert said he was going to drive her all the way back in a taxi.
“It’ll cost the earth,” she protested.
“I don’t care if it does,” said Herbert. “You’re worth the earth, aren’t you?”
He chose the best taxi he could find, in which they started out together on the long drive to Heronscourt Park. Herbert, remembering the terrible thing he had done at the shop, remained seated firmly in his corner of the cab, with his hands locked between his knees. Julia yawned and murmured: “I’m sorry, but I’m so dreadfully sleepy.”
“Poor little girl,” said Herbert clumsily, but still attempted no further measure of comfort. Julia’s eyelids dropped and closed, and a few moments later she had sagged gently towards him, and her head was resting against his arm. Herbert clenched his hands more firmly than ever. Julia stirred a little, half woke, stretched, and sleepily laid one bare arm across his knee. Gently Herbert’s big fingers closed over it. Julia’s fingers made no movement to withdraw, she just seemed to lean against him a little more heavily, and to go to sleep like a tired child. Stealthily Herbert’s arm came round behind her, and then, as a jerk of the taxi threatened almost to dislodge her from her seat, gathered her more firmly to him. Julia slept peacefully. Herbert, his very forehead pink with emotion, continued to hold her. This was what he had missed by marrying, when he was still a boy, a girl several years older than himself, who was a minister’s daughter. This was life, this warm, lovely, breathing thing he held in his arms. There’d be trouble with Bertha, of course, but that couldn’t be helped, a man couldn’t regulate his life by his sister’s. She didn’t like Julia … well, what plain, elderly woman would like Julia? It wasn’t to be expected. Get a real good-looker and high-stepper like Ruby Safford, and she liked Julia all right; thought no end of her, anybody could see that. “A squirrel will not keep to the ground,” the same phrase had struck the prosaic Herbert as the imaginative Julia. Well, this squirrel shouldn’t be kept to the ground. He’d make a nest for her wherever it was that squirrels had their nests, high up in the trees. Not literally, of course, because there was the flat in Saint Clement’s Square, and very good solid furniture he wouldn’t dream of getting rid of, but she should re-decorate the place as she wished.
Through war-time London the taxi drove, and Julia slept, or so Herbert thought. As the taxi began the long run down Holland Park Avenue, for it had taken the road north of the Park, Julia stirred, awoke, yawned, stretched, and found herself in Herbert’s arms. She tried to sit up, with a little apologetic laugh, but he held her firmly.
“No, you don’t, my girl,” he said, and stooping over her he picked her up, although she was no feather-weight, and held her on his knees.
“Give me my answer now, Julia. Will you marry me before I go out to France again? There’s just time.”
“Will I what? Oh … Herbert, put me down, suppose the taxi-driver looks round.”
“Can’t see if he does,” said Herbert. “That’s the best of London nowadays. I shan’t put you down till you give me your answer.”
Julia, lying across Herbert’s solid thighs, with his solid arm holding her firmly against him, allowed herself the luxury of complete relaxation. How strong he seemed. … This would be the solution of all her troubles. She could get away from Two Beresford at last. She could go on working at the shop. Herbert would mostly be away at the war, and she would have that lovely flat in Saint Clement’s Square, and Bobby to keep her company. What would it be like, though, to be married to Herbert? She supposed it would be as all right as being married to most people. Her body didn’t thrill like a harp when he touched her, as it had thrilled to Alfie, but then he hadn’t caressed her as Alfie had caressed her. Doubtless when you were married all that followed. Julia had not the slightest idea how personal and how much a matter of chance success in this thing could be. It had been so dreadful lately at Two Beresford; the horror of going home to share a room with Elsa quite prevented Julia from thinking that it might be even worse to share a room with Herbert. After all, he was a man, and it was much more natural to share a room with a man than with someone of your own sex; besides, people like Marian didn’t share a room, so why should she? She could start a new order of things at Saint Clement’s Square; be the little queen of the flat, and Herbert should knock at her door when he wanted to come in. Besides, the war wasn’t over yet. There was heaps of time to think of really settling down.
The taxi hesitated, and came to a stop. Julia slipped off Herbert’s knee to the seat beside him. The driver leaned back and shouted: “Which turning did you say it was? I don’t know the place.”
Julia put her head out of the window. “The next to the left. Don’t go all the way down. Just stop at the corner.”
The taxi came to a stop again at the corner of Heronscourt Place.
“Shall you keep him?” asked Julia, as she got out.
“No,” said Herbert. “It’s a fine night. It won’t take me any time to walk down and across the High Road. Besides, I want to speak to you.”
He paid the man and she noted he was lavish, as he had been with the waiters. That pleased her, and she didn’t realise that it was Herbert, the officer in his uniform, who was being generous, not Herbert Starling, the ordinary business man.
The taxi drove off, and they started to walk down to Two Beresford, Herbert, with his big, careful hand taking a firm grip of her upper arm lest she should stumble. It was very dark, and the precaution was not unwarranted. As they reached the gate of Two Beresford and stood there for a moment, the great
white pencil of a searchlight slowly swung its way across the night, making a pool of brightness against the surface of the sky. Julia followed it with her eyes. How lovely it was, in spite of the air-raids, which, as a matter of fact, she never minded. Searchlights always thrilled her, strange, bright enquirers into space, bringing the sky so much nearer by holding that pool of light pressed against it.
“A fine night for a raid,” said Herbert. He glanced up at Two Beresford, which, of course, was shrouded in darkness, like all the other houses in London; no faintest thin thread of light showed down the edge of curtain or shutter at Two Beresford; the whole household was asleep, perhaps even Elsa.
“Julia,” said Herbert thickly, “Julia, you know how I feel. You must answer me. I shall have to make arrangements. There’s not much time. I’ll be good to you, I swear I will,” and again his arms went about her.
She peered at him through the darkness. It was good to be held like that, and her body began faintly to respond to his, as though from a long distance away. She felt very tired after the weeks of conflict with the Beales, and the worry over Bobby, and the nervous fret of always having Elsa in her room.
“I’m not in love with you, Herbert,” she said.
“Have you ever been in love with anybody?”
“No,” said Julia truthfully, and realising how hopeless it would be to try and explain the exact place of Alfie to Herbert.
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