A Pin to See the Peepshow

by F. Tennyson Jesse

  “You talk about my meeting girls,” said Leo at last. “What about all the men you meet? What about What’s-his-name, who stands you champagne at the Regent Palace?”

  “Oh. … Mr. Coppinger. He’s a dear old thing. Besides, that’s business. That doesn’t count.”

  “Well, what about your husband?” said Leo. “He counts, I suppose?”

  “Not really, not at all,” said Julia, and suddenly she had a curious sensation of feeling light and free as air. Herbert had always seemed to matter such a lot, to be such a dead weight, and now she suddenly realised that he didn’t matter at all.

  “What I mean is …” She stopped.

  “Oh, you can’t get round it, say what you like,” said Leo. “After all, he is your husband, isn’t he?”

  Julia put her hands to her ears. “For heaven’s sake don’t say that. It’s his favourite remark—‘after all, I am your husband.’ He always says it when. …” She stopped, and a deep burning colour spread over her face and neck. It was the first time Leo had seen her blush, and he gazed at her fascinated.

  Into his shrewd, matter-of-fact mind, there came at once the end of the sentence that she had not uttered—“when he wants to make love to me.” That had been the thought in her mind. Unimaginative as he was, he could almost hear Herbert saying it. He changed the subject abruptly.

  “How’s business?” he asked.

  “Oh well! Work-girls come, and work-girls go, but, like matchers, they’re all very much the same. We have a good apprentice, thank God, which is the chief thing. Customers don’t pay, but still we survive.”

  They were back on the facts of everyday life, where Leo was at home; and the more they stayed in that world the easier he found it to play the urgent, masterful young man. While he had been away from Julia she had seemed in an odd way to control his movements, as she had certainly his thoughts. Now they were together he took his place as leader.

  “I suppose,” said Julia, “you’ll stay here for your leave so as to be with Elsa?”

  “Not if I can arrange anything different, I shan’t. Mum’ll be a difficult person to manage, but I’ll do it somehow.”

  Julia felt a little quickening of triumph. Easy enough to steal someone from insipid Elsa, but not so easy to steal from that old, tenacious country woman, with her bright robin’s eyes.

  “Well, I don’t know how you’ll explain it to Elsa either,” she said.

  He thrust her head back against the sand, and sat looking down at her.

  “I’ve never kissed Elsa the way I did you,” he said. “Never wanted to. Do you remember that night in Saint Clement’s Square, Julia?”

  Julia remembered it; she felt faint with desire as she lay there.

  “You’ve got to love me, you know, Julia, you’ve got to.”

  “Leo, I’m married.”

  “Well, what’s that? What about all your fine friends that you tell me about—the Honourable What’s-her-name? Dishonourable, I should think, from what I hear of her. We’ve a pretty plain name for her sort at sea, I can tell you.”

  “I don’t suppose you’ve any peculiar words at sea, you probably only mean ‘bitch.’ It’s said quite a lot in business circles, believe me, especially with customers who are troublesome. Besides, you see, Leo, I’m not that sort. I want to be happy, of course, who doesn’t? But I’m not like that, I’m not easy. I’ve never let anybody make love to me, not really, and Herbert’s so difficult,” ended Julia, in a burst of truthfulness.

  “He needn’t know. Why should he?”

  “Of course he will. Elsa will suspect, for one thing, if you aren’t hanging round her all the time; and Herbert likes me to account for every minute of my time I spend away from him. Goodness knows what I shall say I’ve been doing when I get back this evening.”

  “Well, you haven’t been doing anything,” said Leo ruefully. “I wish you had. Julia, what are we going to do?”

  “I don’t know, you’ll have to think of something. Oh, Leo, it’s funny. I’ve never felt anyone was stronger than me before. I’ve never waited for them to plan and arrange things. You’re different somehow. … It’s all very well,” she said, after five minutes had been spent in the ever-delightful exercise of discussing just how they both were different from the rest of the world, “but what are we to do? We’ll never be alone together for a moment, not without …” she corrected herself, “not unless I stay in the boarding-house and pretend to have a headache, and then you can pretend to sprain your ankle and come back after you have all set out for an excursion. And, believe me, that wouldn’t be much good, for Elsa would come back with you. And, anyhow, the boarding-house is filled with stuffy old cats. Boarding-houses always are.”

  “I can’t go on like this. Either we’ll have to fix something or I’ll have to give you up.”

  Julia’s eyes dilated, and it seemed to her in the pain of the moment as though she could actually feel the blood drain from her heart.

  “Leo,” was all she could say, “Leo. …” She was inarticulate in the face of the first profound emotion of her life.

  “Well, I’m only flesh and blood,” said Leo, as his under-lip thrust out, and his eyes became surly. “I’m not getting much out of this, am I? You know I’m crazy about you, and I’ve got to have you; and you don’t do anything to make it easy.”

  “What can I do?” said Julia, hopelessly. “Don’t you see how impossible it is?”

  Leo leaned forward towards her, and spoke in a low voice.

  “Julia,” he said, “there are rooms in that house of yours—where the shop is … isn’t there a room where we could? … You’ve got the key, haven’t you, if we could get back to London …?”

  “Oh no, Leo, no, I couldn’t do that. The shop … you don’t understand. The shop’s quite different. Mrs. Danvers trusts me. I couldn’t do that.”

  “Well, if your precious Mrs. Danvers is more to you than I am … I thought she did a bit in that line herself?”

  “It isn’t that,” said Julia. “You don’t understand. It’s the shop,” yet even as she spoke the vision of the fitting-room, as she had often seen it when she had turned out the light and left it, floated before her mind’s eye. All dark, except the faint light from the street-lamp below; darker than the world outside, so that you could move about in it safely without being seen, and yet see your way quite well; even see the glitter of the different-coloured tinsel cushions on the wide divan, and the pale face, and dark mouth, of the red-haired doll. She put the vision from her hastily. The shop was sacred.

  “We’ll have to think of something. We’ll arrange something, we must,” she said. “Leo, don’t talk of leaving me, you can’t.”

  “Well, I can’t go on like this,” said Leo.

  Julia gazed at him despairingly, realising for the first time how the poor live. She couldn’t stay away for a night, and go to an hotel. What could she possibly say to Herbert? Besides, what sort of hotel did one go to for that sort of thing? She hadn’t the faintest idea. Perhaps Leo had, she thought, with a little jealous pain. She had heard stories of quite a big hotel near Paddington, but that would be horrible, sordid and dreadful. And there probably wouldn’t be such a place at Torquay, and anyway, she and Leo couldn’t be missing at the same time.

  It came over her, with a dreadful pang of certainty, that she would have to give Leo up. It was too difficult, too impossible. She wanted love as much as he did, but failing the fulfilment of their desire, she still could have found happiness, she told herself, in just seeing him, talking to him, meeting him. It wasn’t enough for him. He would sooner have nothing, if he could not have everything he wanted. She stared at him hopelessly, and her mouth began to quiver, and her eyes filled with tears. He looked at her:

  “That’s all you can do, is it—cry. Isn’t that like a woman. You work me up to this, and then you can’t think what to do abou
t it.”

  “But how can I, Leo, how can I? What’s there to think of?”

  “There must be something. I’ve only got ten days from to-morrow. Come out with me for the day on a motor-bike?”

  “Oh, Leo, think of the trouble there’d be. Think of Herbert, think of Elsa. It would be simply ghastly. Everybody in the boarding-house would hear about it.”

  “Well, if they do … You’re not there for life.”

  “No, but I’m with Herbert for life, at least he seems to think so. Oh, Leo, if only we had money. I could always support myself. I make plenty at the shop, but Herbert is always threatening, if I leave him, to come and make trouble, and that would be the end of everything. Oh, Leo, it isn’t possible. What can I do, what can I do?”

  He stood up and helped her to her feet, and started mechanically to brush the sand from her shoulders and skirt. He looked sulky and incredibly young. How difficult men were, thought Julia; Herbert in his way, and now Leo in his.

  They walked back together, only separating in the outskirts of Torquay. Julia clung to him at parting, speechless from the sense of loss. She went back to the boarding-house, bitterly unhappy. It was much later than she thought, and the whole party, excepting Bertha, was already gathered in the gloomy little lounge, where the wicker-chairs and cheap cretonne curtains tried to give an impression of alfresco gaiety.

  Julia looked about her. Everybody seemed to be there except Bertha …

  “I say, I had no idea it was so late,” she said. “I’ll run up and change. Don’t wait for me, any of you.”

  To herself she thought: I don’t care if I miss their beastly supper. There’s never enough to eat anyway, and they look shocked at the mere thought of a drink. What a life!

  But the party, with the tenacity peculiar to families that go about in herds, waited for her. Indeed, when she came down again some ten minutes later in the afternoon frock that was considered suitable for the occasion, Bertha had joined them. Bertha looked flushed, as though she had been walking fast. She was dressed in her I outdoor things. She turned and stared at Julia.

  “So you got back before me,” she said. “Young legs walk faster than old ones. You’ve changed too, I see.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” said Julia. “I always change.”

  “I mean I saw you coming down the hill from Babbacombe with young Carr. As a matter of fact, I saw you going up the hill from the beach, too. I’ve been having tea there. That’s a nice thing, I must say, to leave your husband and go out and spend the afternoon flirting with your little cousin’s young man.”

  “Oh,” cried Elsa, jumping up, “he told me he couldn’t get on shore this afternoon. It can’t be true.”

  “What’s this?” said Herbert. “Julia, what’s the truth of this?”

  “For heaven’s sake keep your voice down,” said Julia. “D’you want the whole boarding-house to know that you don’t know how to behave? All right, since Bertha has, apparently, been spending the afternoon spying, I did go out with Leonard. I did meet him at Babbacombe; he asked me to yesterday when we went over the ship, and if you don’t like it,” she ended with more force than elegance, “you can lump it.”

  “Oh, Julia,” came in a feeble little cry from Mrs. Almond, but nobody paid any attention to her.

  Dinner was eaten somehow. Nobody spoke much. Herbert reserved what he had to say for the bedroom.

  Julia had come back from her walk feeling unhappy, but virtuous, because she had decided that there was nothing to be done about Leo, felt the genuine indignation that everyone feels when only half an accusation is true. The half that was untrue seemed to her far the more important. She put her hands over her ears at last and sat wearily down on the edge of the bed.

  “What’s the good of going on?” she said; “you know I saw him—well, what about it? As a matter of fact, I told him I couldn’t see him any more. That it wasn’t possible, he must give up thinking about me. Now what have you got to say?”

  “I don’t believe you,” said Herbert.

  “Very well, then, don’t believe me, but I can prove it to you. I’m sick to death of you, of the whole lot of you. Nothing comes into my life that is at all different, or beautiful, that you do not try to spoil. I’ll leave to-morrow. I’ll go back to London.”

  “You can’t,” said Herbert, “I’ve paid for your first week here.”

  “Well, you can ask them to give you double portions. It won’t hurt them: they nearly starve us. But I’m going back. I shall probably go down to Essex after all. I’ve another week of my holiday.”

  Herbert began to be alarmed. It would look very odd if Julia left suddenly the next day. Besides, there had been something in her voice which had made him believe her when she said she had been telling Leonard that he couldn’t see her again alone.

  “There’s no need to do anything in a hurry,” he mumbled shamefacedly.

  Julia got into bed and lay with her back to him without answering. Herbert followed her into bed and tried to “make it up,” which led to another quarrel. There were two things, Julia reflected ruefully, that she and Herbert invariably had rows about: one was bed and the other was bacon. Since they were in a boarding-house, where bacon was never cut on number three of the machine, this particular row was about bed. Julia would give Herbert no solace; she felt exalted, dedicated. If she could not be for Leo, she would not be for anyone. She was no longer for Herbert.

  Her box was packed before breakfast next morning. Elsa’s eyes looked very red and swollen at the breakfast-table, and so did her nose, Julia saw with pleasure.

  “Don’t worry, Elsa,” she said, “I’m leaving to-day.” Elsa only sniffed miserably, and did not reply.

  It was all very well, reflected Julia, to talk so glibly about leaving, but she must see Leo first. It all depended whether he turned up that morning or not. She sat turning the pages of the railway time-table in the lounge, pointedly ignored by the rest of the party, when the sallow youth who carried the luggage up and down, and in the afternoon donned a sort of hotel livery, came up to her and told her that she was wanted on the telephone.

  Julia went quickly to the office where the telephone was situated, and shut herself in the little glass box. Her heart beat as though it would suffocate her. Yes, it was Leo. She had known it from the moment she had seen the sallow youth approaching her. Quickly she told him what had happened.

  “I’m on shore now,” he told her, “and must see you. Julia, can you meet me in the Rock Walk, right away past the Torbay Hotel, in half an hour?”

  “I’ll be there,” she promised him. She put on her hat and walked quickly out of the house down to the sea front. She strolled into a shop, bought some picture-postcards, and putting on her glasses watched carefully to see if anyone came after her. No, she had managed it all right. She paid for the postcards and left the shop. A taxi was cruising slowly along; she jumped into it and gave her order. That’ll throw them off anyway, she told herself. I don’t see old Bertha, or Herbert for that matter, running to a taxi.

  Leo was already there waiting for her. They sat down in a sheltered seat, and Julia, who hadn’t cried, felt her eyes filling with tears again as they had on the beach at Babbacombe, as she looked at Leo’s face and then at the palm trees, which drooped their graceful heads against the brilliant sky.

  She told her story quickly.

  “So you see, Leo, we shan’t see each other again,” she ended, “except perhaps at yours and Elsa’s wedding. I’m going this afternoon.”

  “But you can’t go. You know, I’ve got my ten days’ leave now. It’s all I shall get till Christmas.”

  “I can’t help it. Bertha seeing us has absolutely torn it.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Back to Saint Clement’s Square at first, and then I shall probably go on to this farmhouse in Essex.”

 
“Can’t you wait at Saint Clement’s Square? I could come up there somehow.”

  “Leo, I couldn’t. They’re dreadfully nosy people in the flat below. Besides, I should hate it to be like that. I can’t explain it to you, but I should. I want it to be somewhere you’ve never been before, somewhere just for us. Besides, I should be frightened all the time of Herbert coming back, even if the people below didn’t see us. It would spoil it all.”

  “That’s all very well,” said Leo, his under-lip stuck out in the sulky way she had begun to dread, that made her heart soften over him; it made him look so absurdly like a little boy. “But I can’t give you up like this, Julia. I can get away for the end of my leave, if I spend a few days here now.”

  “They’ll want to know where you’re going,” said Julia. “You’ll have to write every day. They’ll be full of suspicions now, you know.”

  “Damn that old woman,” said Leo, angrily. “I bet she followed you on purpose, directly she heard you were going for a walk.”

  “I expect she did. She has always hated me. She doesn’t think I’m good enough for Herbert. She wants him to get rid of me. I wish to goodness he would. I don’t ask anything better.”

  “Let me think a few minutes,” said Leo. “There must be some plan.”

  Julia’s spirits rose. She had done all she could. She had practically given Leo up; she was leaving. If he insisted on following her, what could she do about it? Accustomed as she was to living in a world of make-believe, it was very difficult for her to think of practical plans. All that side of her went into the business, none of it into her own life. But Leo, for whom nothing was a dream, would surely manage somehow.

  “You can’t get recalled to Portsmouth?” she suggested timidly; “they couldn’t cut short your leave for anything, I suppose; I mean, you couldn’t pretend they did—that you were wanted?”