A Pin to See the Peepshow

by F. Tennyson Jesse

  “I don’t know,” said Herbert. “In the kitchen with Emily, I suppose. She’s as silly about that dog as you are.”

  Julia went out into the little hall, and closed the sitting-room door behind her. So this is what Herbert had arranged! She knew the workings of his mind so well. As long as Bertha was with them it meant that she would have to have the back bedroom, and that Herbert would have to share the front room with Julia. Oh, it was insufferable, she told herself, putting her hands to her hot cheeks. She pulled off her hat, threw it down on the hall-table, and went into the kitchen.

  Emily, who was nursing Bobby, looked up at her anxiously. She knew well enough what was going on in Julia’s mind. She helped Bobby down carefully, he was in the middle of one of his attacks of rheumatism, and he limped painfully across to Julia, whining with pleasure and trying to hold his paw up to her. Julia fell on her knees and gathered him gently to her, kissing his satiny rumpled forehead, and talking to him in a low voice.

  “Emily,” she said suddenly, when Bobby’s rapture had subsided, “where does Bobby sleep now?”

  “With me,” said Emily, “I wasn’t going to have him sleep on that nasty oilcloth in the kitchen, and so I told the master.”

  “He’ll have to stay with you, I’m afraid,” said Julia, “it’s awfully good of you, Emily.”

  “I like having him,” said Emily, “I always was fond of dumb animals. If a person isn’t fond of dumb animals, there’s something wrong with them, that’s what I say.”

  “What should I do without you, Emily? I’ve brought you a blouse from Paris, by the way, I think you’ll like it. It’s navy crêpe de Chine.”

  “Oh, thank you,” said Emily, “I always did say there was nothing like a nice navy. It’s sure to be in good taste if you chose it.”

  Julia’s heart warmed a little. Emily’s loyalty was a very precious thing to her. Many old servants would have resented the incursion of a young second wife. Emily had taken to Julia from the first. Emily felt that her young mistress gave a little life to the place, and Emily was all for a bit of life, just as she was all for dumb animals and a nice navy.

  Then began weeks of misery for Julia. She could not dislodge Bertha. After all, it was Herbert’s house, and if he chose to have his sister to live with him, what could she do? Julia fretted and grew thin. She watched anxiously for fresh lines about her eyes. She was getting very little sleep, for Herbert’s bulk and his snores made her bed a place of discomfort rather than rest.

  Also Herbert, a sort of lazy lust engendered in him by warmth and proximity, began to demand his rights once again. This is partly why he had Bertha here, thought Julia, and determined not to give way to him. One night she told him in her anger that she would never give way to him as long as he had his sister living with them.

  “That’s why you had her, I know,” she said, “so that you would have to sleep with me. Well, that’s not the way to get me, Herbert.”

  Herbert lost his temper, not with Julia, but with Bertha and obscurely with himself.

  “She can go,” he said, recklessly. “I’ll tell her to go, if it means that we can live as husband and wife should. I won’t have anyone here, I promise you, Julia. I was desperate. That’s why I got her, I don’t really want her, I don’t want anybody but you.”

  “That’s all very well,” said Julia, “but you’ve got her and she’s here.”

  “Look here,” said Herbert, “I swear to you, I’ll send her away if you will be nice to me now.”

  Julia wavered. After all, Herbert was a good deal stronger physically than she was. She couldn’t fight him all night, and short of crying for help out of the window, which she had threatened to do, there seemed to be no way but to do what he wanted.

  “When will you tell her to go?” she asked.

  “Directly she can arrange it.”

  He caught hold of her and Julia yielded. She put out her hand and turned off the light. “Be gentle, Herbert,” she whispered, and to his surprise he found her becoming languid instead of rigid in his hands. Passive she always had been, but this was something softer, more vital, than mere passivity. Herbert was happy, not knowing that the clumsy touches of his hands were being translated by Julia into the light caresses of her lover. She was being unfaithful to her husband in her mind, as thousands of women all over England were probably being unfaithful to their husbands at that moment. He was aware for the first time of her answering pleasure, unaware that in his flesh her lover was betraying him.

  Darling, I’ve had to give way to him, wrote Julia with remorse the next day. It wasn’t possible to go on, but I feel I can’t ever give way to him again. And that was true. Julia hated herself for the pleasure she had felt, because to her it was a betrayal of Leo. She hated herself still more when a few days later Herbert made excuses for not getting rid of Bertha. It was hardly worth while, he pointed out, before Christmas. She would have to come back to them for Christmas anyway, and why the double move and the double railway fare? Julia knew it was no good arguing, and she looked at him with a sick contempt that was half for him and half for herself.

  But her surrender was renewed and renewed again. The flame that Leo had lit within her could not go unappeased and Herbert, half fearful of his luck, became more gentle and considerate. She could shut her eyes and imagine Herbert to be Leo, so that it was actually as though Leo was standing by the bed, bending over her with his dark head, and round young neck, and bright glinting eyes, saying softly, with a sort of deep anger of love: “Now I’m going to have you whether you want it or not. …” and this dream-Leo transmuted by her imagination into the actuality of her husband’s flesh, claimed for hers a toll of pleasure that was in truth her lover’s and not her husband’s.

  Of course, you know what we quarrel about, don’t you, darling? she wrote to Leo, what he wants and what I hate to give him. I can’t really give it to anybody but you. In a way I am giving it to you. I can’t explain, and yet I hate it. Oh, I’m so tired. It hardly seems worth while holding out any longer.

  Leo wrote back impetuously, almost angrily, and Julia felt that her troubles were almost worth while to rouse Leo to such fullness of expression and such a blaze of jealousy.

  Oh, she wrote back, there’s no doubt about it, I love you to be jealous, darling. If you’re jealous you’ll think and plan how to get me away, for you’ll get me away, won’t you? I know you can plan anything if you only think hard enough. I enclose you a very sad bit out of the paper. Two people who loved each other like we do, not as much as us—nobody could do that—but I’m sure they did love each other. His wife would not divorce him, so they decided to kill themselves. It must be a dreadful thing to decide, mustn’t it, when you’re full of youth and life, and you’re driven to it because somebody won’t let you go? And you see she died and he didn’t, and they’re going to try him for murder when he’s well enough. I think that’s awful when they both decided to die, and he was only doing what he promised when he shot her, before he shot himself. Think how she must have loved him to let him do it. Yes, darling, I think perhaps they did love each other as much as we do after all. I think I could be happy while you were holding the revolver against me, I do really. Do you think all that’s very absurd, and exaggerated? Do say you don’t, my heart. Do you like that expression—my heart? It seemed just to write itself. I didn’t even know I was thinking it. That’s what you are, Leo, my heart, and I am yours. Do they give you a revolver in the Air Force? I don’t want us to have to do anything dreadful, but I feel I can’t go on for ever like this, and I want you to feel it too. Anything would be better than that.

  Leo had no intention of killing himself or her. Suicide pacts seemed to him foolishness as, indeed, they did to Julia, except in moments when she luxuriated, with closed eyes, in that imagination of death at Leo’s hands. After all, they could always meet somehow, but he couldn’t help feeling flattered at Julia’s ardour.
It was true, he reflected, smiling a little, she would let him shoot her if she knew he was going to follow her. You might say what you like, but a woman like that had got something that a girl like Elsa could never have.

  Leo’s letters reflected all his moods: his complacency, his jealous anger and his fits of weariness. He was not like Julia. He carried no living image of his love in his mind. Julia knew this only too well. Beside the perpetual fear which the difference in age imposed upon her, the fear of losing him to some young girl—not Elsa, for she had long ceased to be jealous of her, she knew she could outshine Elsa—but some new and beautiful unknown: she had now another fear.

  She was terrified that she was going to have a child. Her anger against Herbert rose deep and dark, for go over her dates as she would, there was no doubt that it would be Herbert’s child, and not Leo’s. To have had Leo’s child would have been somehow marvellous. Matters would have been taken out of her hands. The affair would have become too big for the petty rulings of the Starlings and the Beales. There would have to be a divorce, and she would be able to marry Leo. And she would have a child like him, bright-eyed and vigorous, in whom he would see himself when he came back on leave. But to have Herbert’s child meant being caught for good. He must have been careless on purpose, she told herself, angrily. He must have meant to catch and keep her this way, once and for all.

  Julia bought every kind of patent medicine that urged married ladies to end irregularities and delays now. No Female Pill advertised failed to pass her lips, but beyond making her feel wretchedly ill, achieved nothing. She walked most of the way back from the shop every night, jumped on and off the bus, and ran feverishly with Bobby in Heronscourt Park; but still nothing happened. She was still hoping for the best, but fearing the worst, when Leo came back to London for his Christmas leave. He came determined that he and Julia should seize every opportunity to be lovers, but the fates seemed against them. Herbert seemed suddenly endowed, as Julia declared, with the watchfulness of the “Big Five” rolled into one. Leo’s mother always managed to know where he was. The Beale family, without saying it in words, managed to convey that they forgave him for any little neglect at Torquay. Indeed, that they really only blamed Julia.

  But again the hard compulsion of the world was upon the lovers, and not only of the world but of their particular class in it. Julia dared not be late home more than once or twice, and swift meals at a tea-shop, rides home on the top of a bus, and large family parties were all they could attain. Julia, for all the urgency of her pulses, was happy merely to be with Leo, to pour out her thoughts as she had never been able to do with Herbert, or indeed to anyone else. That in itself was bliss. Self-expression was hers for the first time, and she was dizzy with it. Much as she longed for his love-making, she could be, and was, happy discussing the little flat that they had planned one day to have together; to be kissed, danger adding to its charm, in a dark corner of Saint Clement’s Square. But with Leo this was not enough. Julia, herself, and what she could give him was what he wanted; and now that he was back in London a change of leadership took place. Her letters ceased to influence him, but her physical presence influenced him very much, and he became discontented, moody. Even his quick decisiveness was helpless in the web of circumstances in which they were caught.

  Julia had not dared to discuss divorce again with Herbert for fear he would make it impossible for her to see Leo at all; and she did not dare tell Leo of her cowardice. He would have very little sympathy, she knew. Therefore, she had to invent scenes that she had had with Herbert; rages on the part of Herbert.

  “I’ve done all I can, I really have, Leo,” she said. “Last night when I got home, you know I was a bit late, he was waiting and was frightfully angry. He guessed I had been with you. Of course, I said I hadn’t, but I don’t think he believed me. If it were not that we both act so well when we meet with the family, I don’t know what would happen. That does put him off. I notice him looking at me in a puzzled way when you are talking to Elsa, and I’m paying no attention to you.”

  “It’s all very well,” said Leo, thrusting away his coffee-cup—they were having a quiet lunch at Lyons’—“I can’t go on like this for ever.”

  “Nor can I, darling,” said Julia, suddenly despairing.

  “You’ll have to leave him, that’s all there is to it.”

  “Yes, and if I leave him I shan’t be able to keep my job, and he won’t support me, and you can’t.”

  Leo propped his chin in his hands, and stared at her hungrily. “Risk it,” he said. “After all, he can’t make more than one or two rows at the shop, they could have him run in.”

  Julia shook her head. “They’d never stand for it,” she said. “It’s one thing if one of Miss Lestrange’s lovers were to come in and let off a revolver; that might be good for trade. All the customers would come to see where it had been done, and want to talk it over; but it wouldn’t be a bit the same thing if Herbert were to come and just make a scene about me. Oh, I’m terrified it will have to be that suicide pact, darling. You can’t go on like this, I can’t go on like this, but what are we to do? We can’t live on air. I’d take ever such a small job abroad if I could just live on it.”

  “I’d leave the Service if I could get a job,” said Leo. “But you can’t get jobs nowadays. There are hundreds of good men out of work, and then you’ve always got to be married. I’d have to really be married, or pretend I was. It may be all right in France, as you say, but it isn’t all right in England or the Colonies. They hoof you out of the country in the Colonies if you haven’t got a marriage certificate, and so they do in America.”

  “Oh dear, isn’t it absurd,” said Julia, laughing, “everybody knows people live in sin, or whatever it’s called, and that men have mistresses, and women have lovers, and married couples are unfaithful to each other, and yet unless you are somebody very great and important you are always in danger. Why, Miss Lestrange went to America one year when she was married to Frank Bellingham. He didn’t go with her, somebody else did; but it was all right, nobody made any trouble, although they stayed together in hotels everywhere. If you and I did that they’d pinch us. Leo,” she leaned forward to him across the table, “would you mind the suicide pact very much, darling? I get so tired, so dreadfully tired, what with working all day and then not having any peace at home, and not being able to see you alone sometimes. I think I’d not mind a bit.”

  “I’d mind,” said Leo, “my God, I’d mind. I want to live, Julia. I want us both to live.”

  “Still, we can always have it in the back of our minds. It makes me feel less hopeless. Let’s give ourselves a time. Let’s say if we haven’t managed to get free in three years’ time. That’ll make us work harder. We must think of everything, try everything, Leo.”

  “Try some weed-killer in his tea,” said Leo impatiently. “That’d be the best thing, only they’d be sure to find out.”

  “Oh, Leo,” said Julia, half laughing, “what awful things you say,” but even as she spoke her mind lit up with the notion of a woman who would dare all for love. Naturally, she would never really kill anyone, but it would be marvellous to feel that you were what she had read of in books, one of the “great lovers of history.” Of course, it was true, she supposed quickly, that Petrarch and Laura, Dante and Beatrice, hadn’t killed anyone, but then they didn’t really love anyway; and as far as she remembered Paola and Francesca got killed themselves instead of killing anyone; but there were plenty of those mediaeval Italian people who would do anything if they loved enough. She glanced at Leo’s face, fallen in the sullen lines she had grown to dread during the Christmas leave.

  “I believe,” she breathed earnestly, leaning forward, “that I’d do even that for you, Leo.” She could almost see herself, glowing and vibrant as she spoke, one of the “great lovers of history.”

  “Well, don’t,” said Leo, “or we shall both be in the cart.

 
“Oh no, weed-killer is silly,” said Julia. “I mean one is always hearing about it, and people are always caught. Do you remember I wrote to you and said I wished I had been one of those Italian women in the Renaissance? Just fancy, I could hire people to put Herbert out of the way. I wouldn’t let them hurt him, as long as he was sensible and agreed to a divorce. They could just keep him in one room somewhere and go on at him until he agreed.”

  “You could arrange all that in America, if you had the money,” said Leo, “and knew whom to go to.”

  “Oh,” said Julia, half laughing, “America is more civilised than I thought. Even if you do have to have a marriage licence you can hire gunmen!”

  Leo laughed a little too, but not for the first time Julia found he could not follow a twist of thought; that he was more amused by the jokes of the Beale family than by her two-edged little social comments. She changed to seriousness at once, quick to fall in with any mood of his; for to him she submitted all her thoughts with joy, and asked for nothing better than to be able to submit her actions.

  That evening they went home by train, alighting at Heronscourt Park and walking, not through the Park, for that was closed, but in the quiet by-roads on the way to Saint Clement’s Square. For the first time Julia forced herself to tell Leo of her fear. She felt herself blushing with shame and unhappiness as she did so.

  “I can’t have it, I won’t, Leo. Yours would be different. I can’t have any but yours.”

  “Good God,” said Leo, “I don’t want a kid, and this can’t be mine, Julia. You say so yourself.”

  A sort of sick disappointment welled up in Julia.

  “No, this isn’t yours,” she said dully. “I shouldn’t be minding if it were. But you must help me somehow, Leo. I’ve taken everything that I’ve ever heard of, and there must be something one can do, somewhere one can go to, but I don’t know how to begin. I don’t know whom to ask. I daresay somebody at the shop knows, but I couldn’t ask there, and of course it would be no good asking Mum or Aunt Mildred; and I don’t suppose your mother has ever heard of such a thing.”