A Pin to See the Peepshow

by F. Tennyson Jesse

  Herbert went up to the top floor of the flat when he had finished his tea, lugging his heavy kit-bag with him. He put it down on the top landing, and sat for a moment looking about him, then he opened the door of the front room, Julia’s room, and went in. It was quite dark and he switched on the light. The curtains were not drawn, and outside the night suddenly turned a deep, soft blue. Herbert stood looking about him. The furniture was just the same as it had been in poor Constance’s day, but how different Julia had made it all look. … There were more chrysanthemums on the dressing-table, and the curtains were a shiny chintz, covered all over with Chinese pagodas, and funny little men, and humped bridges and flowers. Curious things, he thought, all green and bright red on a shiny white ground. The legs of the dressing-table were covered with skirts of the same stuff, and the old grey carpet had been dyed vermilion. The greatest change was in the bed. Herbert stood staring at it suspiciously. He had always liked that bed, it had looked so cheerful with its round, shiny, brass knobs that winked in the light. Now Julia had covered both ends of it with the same material as the curtains; pretty cleverly too, he had to admit, quite a tailor-made sort of job, fitting very neatly and bound with green, so that the ends of the bed looked more like painted wood than anything else, with all those little trees and Chinese men and pagodas and God knows what, upon the stiff, stretched, shiny white background. The coverlet was vermilion, and a panel of the chintz; a whole little pagoda, with a man sitting beneath it, and a tree bending over it, had been cut out and appliquéd just where the coverlet rose up over the single pillow.

  Yes, it was a single pillow. Herbert stretched forward and turned the coverlet down. Well, he wasn’t going to keep up that nonsense about sleeping in the other room. He’d bring his pillow in now, and he went firmly into the other room. That was just as he had known it, and he couldn’t tell whether he was disappointed or relieved. She might, he thought, have put herself out a bit for him. On the other hand, he certainly did like things as they had always been. The single bedstead twinkled at him brassily, the coverlet was a clean white honeycomb one, the curtains were the dark red curtains that used to be in the front bedroom, cut down to fit this window.

  Herbert went up to the bed, lugged out the pillow, moved Julia’s pillow to one side of the double bed and planted his firmly beside it. There, he reflected with a grim humour, she can have all the damned Chinese men sitting in pagodas that she likes, but she’ll damn well have to have me along with them.

  He looked at the wrist-watch that he had worn since he became an officer and a gentleman. Nearly seven o’clock. Surely she must be in any minute now? Should he have a bath? He had been travelling all day from that beastly rail-head. Or should he wait and have one before he went to bed? Better have it now. He had found out during their honeymoon that Julia was funny about those things, and was horrified that he just shaved and washed his neck and hands in the morning.

  He went into the bathroom. That looked different too. There was a jar of bath-salts on a glass shelf that had been put up behind the bath. Herbert hesitated, then could not resist the temptation to take a handful and throw them into the hot water. He sniffed critically. Pleasant, he couldn’t deny it, but he’d smell like a tart if he got into that. However, he did get into it, and found that the smell soon wore off. He scrubbed himself well, reflecting that that would do for two or three days anyway, whatever Julia might say, and then dressed himself in a pre-war suit of dark blue, which, he was pleased to see, was a couple of inches too big round the waist.

  He was downstairs in the sitting-room again, and was having time to wonder rather discontentedly why Julia had hidden all his family photographs, good silver frames and all, when he heard her key in the lock. Bobby had already recognised her step in the Square, and was standing against the front door of the flat, his chocolate nose pressed against it, trembling with excitement.

  Julia’s greeting to Herbert got rather mixed up with her greeting to Bobby, who would talk and jump up at her, and Herbert felt the moment had come to assert himself. He pushed Bobby out of the way and took Julia firmly in his arms.

  “Well, now, let’s have a look at you, my girl. You’re a nice one to be so late when you knew I was coming back.”

  He tilted her face up under the white glare of the bell-shaped electric light in the little hall. Julia was very pale, and there were dark shadows under her eyes.

  “I’m sorry, Herbert, but we’re having such an awful rush. People will come in and buy things at the last minute at Christmas time. We’ve got a special line of novelties over from Paris as Christmas presents, and I couldn’t get away.”

  “Well, you’ll get away to-morrow all right, or I’ll come and fetch you. I’m novelty enough for you this Christmas.”

  “Emily got you your tea all right, didn’t she?” asked Julia, disengaging herself and pulling off her hat wearily.

  “Oh yes, and I’ve had a bath because I guessed that would be the first thing you would ask me. Put some of those scented things of yours into it, just to see what they were like.”

  “I must go and wash,” said Julia. “I’ll tell Emily supper for half-past seven—liver and bacon, because I remembered you liked it. I won’t be long. I’ll tell her to put it on now,” and Julia escaped from his arms and ran upstairs.

  She washed quickly, and changed into a little black frock with a lacquer-red belt, and slipped a long string of red beads round her neck. She leaned forward and stared at herself in the glass on the dressing-table. She was looking rotten. She quickly made up her face, and combed out the shining wing of her hair across her forehead. That was a bit better. Her short-sighted eyes didn’t observe the bigger lump the two pillows made at the end of the bed.

  “Come on, my girl,” roared the voice of Herbert from below, “supper’s in and I shall have eaten it all if you don’t hurry up.”

  “You can,” said Julia, languidly, as she came downstairs. “I’m much too tired to eat.”

  However, she forced herself to be cheerful, as she felt it was rather a shame that poor old Herbert should come home and find her so unresponsive. The fact of the matter was she was not feeling tired, so much as spiritually exhausted. Ever since Herbert had written to her saying he would be back in a week’s time, she had been trying to face the thought of a life spent with Herbert as its central figure. That morning when his wire had arrived, she had felt quite sick and faint for a few minutes. It was absurd, she told herself angrily. After all, she knew Herbert. She had managed to get through the honeymoon, and that last time hadn’t been so bad. She’d be away all day, there’d only be the week-ends to get through somehow. Yes, but how? She’d be happy enough with a book, just resting and reading, but Herbert didn’t read. He didn’t even converse, as Julia by now understood the term. She had been happy these last few months alone in Saint Clement’s Square. She loved her new surroundings, she loved the sanctuary that the whole quiet place had been to her. She had loved being mistress of the little establishment, and sometimes having Dr. Ackroyd and Anne in for coffee. She had liked being a refuge to poor little Mrs. Almond, who would blow in like a leaf, and subside with a faint rustling sound in a corner of the room, when she could get away from Uncle George and Aunt Mildred. She had even loved pouring out tea for the Beale family in this spacious room that belonged to an older age, where she was the mistress, and where the Beales had to behave themselves.

  Now all this was to be invaded by Herbert, rather as a quiet flowery meadow might be invaded by a bull, and yet she couldn’t have had it without Herbert. She must be grateful to him for that.

  Julia sat and watched him enjoying his liver and bacon, and had a curious little feeling that she must be dreaming, that she couldn’t be going to live here with that strange man. He didn’t seem somehow the same Herbert Starling who had given dinner to her and Ruby and the young flying man at the “Pall Mall,” who had tipped the waiters, and taken them all to the theatr
e. “A squirrel cannot keep to the ground.” Well, Herbert would keep to the ground all right, there wasn’t any doubt about that. You might as soon expect him to alter as to expect him to leave this warm room and go out into the cold, blustery Square and start climbing one of the trees that swayed in the wind. Julia couldn’t help laughing a little to herself at the mental picture of Herbert perched on the topmost bough for the night.

  Herbert leaned back in his chair and wiped his mouth with a deep sigh of content.

  “Pretty good, that,” he said, “only you might tell her to cut the bacon a bit thicker. It’s all fried to nothing. Where do you get it?”

  “Palmer’s Stores. I have it cut on number three on the machine on purpose. I can’t bear it unless it’s crisp like that. I’ll have mine cut on number three, and yours cut thicker.”

  “That’s a good girl,” he approved; “where’s the whisky?”

  Julia got up and fetched it, and put it beside him with a syphon. He helped himself lavishly and took a long drink.

  “You look as though you wouldn’t be the worse for a drink of this,” he said kindly. “Here, give me your glass.”

  He was right. Julia did feel better after she had drunk half a tumbler of the fairly stiff whisky and soda he mixed her.

  After supper had been cleared away Herbert sat down in the best and biggest arm-chair, and stretched his legs out to the gas-fire. That had been Julia’s chair until now, but she saw him take it without any resentment. She had been brought up to expect, as a matter of course, that the best chair was for the man of the house, but she made a vow to make him get another one equally comfortable as soon as she could.

  Emily appeared at the door and announced that she had come for Bobby. Emily was devoted to him, and whatever the weather, always took him out for his little run, a fact for which Julia was very grateful, for she was often so tired herself that she hardly knew how she could have faced the stairs down to the front door and back. Bobby, always pleased at any suggestion, bounded off with Emily.

  Herbert emptied his glass of whisky and soda, drew his feet in from the gas-fire and sat forward, knees apart, and hands clasped between them. He looked at Julia with little eyes that were rather like Bertha’s, set flush with his face like chips of steel, but more kindly than his sister’s could ever be.

  “She won’t be long,” he said. “Ready for bed, my girl? Drink up the rest of that whisky and soda, it won’t hurt you.”

  Julia picked the glass up and began to drink. As the fluid became less she found she was staring at Herbert through the bottom of the tumbler. Like all short-sighted and astigmatic people, she could see better even when looking through the bottom of a tumbler, or between two finger-tips held close together against her eyes, or between the chinks in the brim of a coarsely-woven straw-hat, than she could without anything to narrow down and focus the field of her vision. Now she stared at Herbert and saw him distorted through the curved glass at the bottom of the tumbler, but much more clearly and sharply than she could have if she had been looking at him in the ordinary manner. There was a little flaw in the bottom of the glass, and she sipped very slowly so as to be able to see his face as it changed, as the flaw caught it now at one place, now at another. Quite suddenly the whole of his lower jaw would swell out till his face looked like that of a hippopotamus, a tiny tilt of the tumbler, and he would have practically no jaw at all, only a thin little slit of a mouth, and a bulbous forehead. Another little swing and he would have eyes set up under his hair, a long thin nose, a long upper lip and practically nothing below it.

  What with being very tired, not having eaten much, and having taken a strong whisky and soda, and also being very nervous about Herbert’s reappearance at Saint Clement’s Square, Julia began to giggle a little. There was Herbert’s face, as she put down the tumbler, just as she had always known it, pink, healthy, clean-shaven, obstinate, kindly, and oddly blank; but she had only to put up the tumbler and this amazing fantasy of faces, of which each was Herbert’s face, was hers for the asking.

  Herbert looked sharply across at her and sat up.

  “What are you smiling at?” he asked. “Pleased to have the old man back, after all; is that it, Julia?”

  “Yes, I suppose so,” said Julia lightly, standing up and stretching to show how tired she was. “You’re not such a bad old thing, Herbert.”

  “I should say I’m not,” he agreed; “it’s not such a bad little home either, is it, or such a bad girl to come back to?” And without warning, his big arms closed about her.

  Julia let herself go limp within them, she merely yawned in his face and said:

  “Oh, Herbert, I’m so dreadfully sleepy.”

  “Ready for bed then,” said Herbert. “Up you go.”

  Julia went up to the bathroom, and through the noise she made cleaning her teeth, she heard the bang of the street door as Emily and Bobby returned, and the low sound of conversation. She creamed her face, wiped the cream off, and then, instead of, as usual, going straight to bed, lightly-powdered her face again. After all, if you were married, you couldn’t go to bed all shiny.

  She went into her bedroom and looked round for Bobby, but he was not there. She called downstairs to Emily, whose room was between the kitchen and the sitting-room, below Herbert’s dressing-room. “Emily, Emily, where’s Bobby? Send him up, will you?”

  Emily’s own door opened, and she began to speak, but was interrupted by Bobby himself, who, escaping from her hold on his collar, came flying up the stairs. Herbert, who was in the sitting-room, must have heard all this, for he came out, slammed the sitting-room door, and said to Emily, who seemed uncertain what to do for the best—“Oh, that’ll be all right,” and came up the stairs, turning out the light on the downstairs landing as he came. He came into Julia’s bedroom and shut the door.

  “We can’t have Bobby sleeping with us,” he said, “it’s not healthy.”

  “With us?” Julia stared at him, and something in his gaze made her turn and look at the bed, and for the first time she saw the two pillows.

  “Oh, Herbert, I can’t have you here all night. I’m much too tired; beside, you know what you promised me.”

  “That! Oh, rats! I’d have promised you anything. This is different. I’m home now. Home for good.”

  “But you promised,” said Julia, “you promised. You know you did.”

  “I tell you that doesn’t matter,” said Herbert, getting suddenly angry; “this is my house, isn’t it? I’m not going to sleep in a beastly back bedroom, and besides, we’re married, aren’t we? I tell you what, Bobby shall sleep in my room if you like, if you don’t like him to be downstairs, though I don’t approve of it, but there it is, you can’t say I’m unreasonable.” And, seizing the surprised Bobby by his collar, he pulled him along into the back bedroom. Bobby set his four white paws against the floor, his collar rumpled his skin in a chestnut roll round his surprised face as he turned a protesting, yellow eye back at Julia. But Julia wasn’t noticing what happened to Bobby, she was gazing at her bed. She had known that Herbert would make love to her that night, she was prepared for that, she wasn’t unreasonable, but he had promised always to go away afterwards. She had looked forward to being able to forget all about it, to lie alone in the bed that would once again be hers, in the room that would once again be hers, as she had always thought of it. She had never worried about poor Constance, she had never cared enough about Herbert to suffer any retrospective jealousy on that account.

  She heard Herbert walking about in his bedroom, heard him going into the bathroom, heard him come out again. When he opened the door of her room without knocking, and came in and shut it behind him, she was still standing where he had left her.

  “Not in bed yet?” he said cheerfully.

  “Herbert, I don’t want to send you away, it isn’t that, but I can’t sleep with you all night. I’m too tired. I do want to be alon
e. You do understand, don’t you?”

  “No, I’m damned if I do,” said Herbert, and his face altered, thickened and swelled somehow, as it had when she looked at it through the flaw in the bottom of the glass. “Come on, Julia.”

  Julia got into bed. It wasn’t this she minded; even if she didn’t love Herbert, at least she didn’t love anyone else, and he was clean, and smelled of soap, and he wanted her, although he didn’t know how to make her want him. It wasn’t this, it was afterwards; and, long after Herbert had fallen asleep and—true to her fears, was snoring lightly—Julia lay awake, loathing him for his sleeping person, as she hadn’t loathed him while he held her in his arms.

  At about three in the morning a solution of the problem came to her. She slipped out of bed very cautiously without awakening him, and out of the room, opening and shutting the door with infinite caution, carrying her pillow with her. When the astounded Emily called them with tea in the morning, she found Herbert, pink and snoring, alone in the double-bedroom, and Julia sleeping heavily in the back bedroom, Bobby across her feet.

  “Of course,” said Julia desperately, across the breakfast-table to Herbert, “I knew there’d be a row. You can’t say I didn’t warn you. If you want to stay with me you shouldn’t snore.”

  “You’re my wife, aren’t you?” was all Herbert could think of, as he contemptuously tried to gather together on his fork the thin, brittle curls of bacon cut on number three.

  “Yes, I’m your wife,” said Julia, “but I’m not deaf, and I’m not a peasant woman who can sleep through anything, and I’m not a street-walker to be paid to sleep with you.”