BOOK TWO
11
The days began to lengthen and whiten, with snowdrops and blackthorn and lingering evening light.
Frank was always aware of the wish, growing stronger rather than declining, to proceed with the humanization of Juliet: this was partly caused by the awakening of the year in its immemorial beauty, and partly by the fact that his great-aunt’s health was declining rapidly.
‘Excitement is the thing to avoid,’ Dr Masters said to him, one morning late in March. ‘Any kind of agitation. It’s a vicious circle; the heart condition tends to induce excitement, and the excitement weakens the heart. And I’m afraid she is deteriorating, every week.’
He paused. He had the admirable bedside manner inculcated by precept and example in medical students fifty years ago.
Frank looked steadily into the kind, clever old face.
‘I’m afraid there’s very little to be done, Frank.’ Dr Masters went on, ‘Of course, I can’t speak definitely, but I can tell you what you already know. We’ – Dr Masters meant the medical profession – ‘can postpone decay and death but we can’t stop them, and in Addy’s case I’m afraid the limit has nearly been reached.’
‘I’m very sorry. She’s been good to me; I’ve always been fond of her: my own mother died when I was six.’
‘Pity Addy never married. Made for it. Extraordinary, the way things go. Do you think she’s been happier since that odd-looking girl came here?’
‘Oh yes, in a way (I’ll see you out), though she worries about her; Juliet sits up late, chain-smoking, that sort of thing.’
‘Well, I hope the girl’s provided for, that’s all, otherwise she’ll be in a hole.’
Frank ran upstairs to Juliet’s room.
‘Yes,’ called an absent voice after the inevitable pause.
‘It’s me – Frank. I want your mother’s address.’
Another pause, and the door opened six inches showing a yellowish face and bloodshot eyes; Clemence would have been comforted.
‘What for?’ Sullenly.
‘I want to talk to her. Come on, Juliet, this is very important, it may affect your whole life.’
‘I got something I got to work out – been up most of the night.’
‘Yes, you look it . . . Come for a walk for ten minutes – it’ll do you good.’
She glanced back at the open pages of the books on her table, their whiteness reflecting the white glow of the spring sun, and some emanation from the young light seemed to call to her own youth.
‘All right – but I don’t say I’ll tell you nothing. ’T’isn’t any of your business, and,’ the expression became sulkier, ‘I’ll have to ask her first.’
She was taking down her cape from its place behind the door.
‘All right – only hurry up, and don’t upset her. Dr Masters has just been telling me she must avoid excitement of any kind.’
Juliet made a face, and skimmed away.
‘Oh, it’s you. What do you want?’ Sarah opened Miss Pennecuick’s door grudgingly.
‘Is that my girlie?’ A faint voice from the bed.
‘Now don’t you go tiring her,’ Sarah muttered.
The spring light was merciless to Juliet’s benefactress, in a housecoat adorned with delicate lace which deepened the greenish-yellow tint of her face, over which she would permit only the lightest veil of powder – ladies did not ‘paint’.
She held out trembling arms.
‘Come and give old Auntie a hug, my baby.’
There was no strength in the clasp; the arms folded themselves about the shrinking Juliet with an effort.
‘What is it, love? Come to sit with me for a little while?’ she gasped.
‘Frank wants me to go for a walk.’
‘Oh . . . I was so hoping . . . Well, you go, darling. I wish I could have got the car out for you.’
‘I like walkin’, Auntie,’ Juliet was already at the door. ‘Bye-bye.’
‘Tell him to take good care of you, my precious,’ came the feeble voice.
Sarah muttered: ‘And you be back in good time for luncheon. Keeping everything hanging about. Shouldn’t wonder if she isn’t setting her cap at him,’ picking up a half-finished baby’s jacket which she was expertly knitting.
‘Oh no. Frank is thirty.’
‘Ought to marry Miss Clemence, if you ask me,’ Sarah said suddenly.
‘Clemence, yes. Clemence is what I hope for, Sarah . . . But I also want my baby to be safe before I go.’
‘Who’s talking about going? Here, let’s have a bit of music to cheer us up.’
A blare of sound, threaded by the voices of apparently imbecile adolescent females, sprang from Radio 2.
Frank and Juliet turned down a narrow way signposted FOOTPATH TO MOPP’S END.
But before this alluringly named region was attained, they crossed a big meadow glistening with dew; went along another path, and then into a lane under blackthorn covered in frail, milky blossom.
‘Too early for scents yet,’ he observed. ‘The may won’t be out for another fortnight . . . look at the buds . . . and then we’ll need a week of hot sun to bring out the scents.’
This brief walk was being undertaken to discuss practical affairs. But he never lost an opportunity of sowing seeds on that stony ground. He glanced at her. Her face had settled into its usual remote expression.
‘How beautiful that thorn is against the blue!’ he exclaimed, pausing and staring upwards. The damp, ordinary little lane was full of the frenzied chinking and whistling of nesting birds. ‘Do see, Juliet.’
She paused and turned back reluctantly; looked first at him with impatience, then slowly tilted her head to look at blackthorn and sky. He waited, feeling an excitement that reason told him was foolish.
‘It’s . . . I . . .’ she said flatly at last, and glanced at him. ‘It’s beautiful, I s’pose, like you said. But I . . . I . . .’
‘“I see, not feel, how beautiful they are!”’ he quoted as they walked on. ‘Is that it?’
Then inevitably: ‘S’pose so.’
‘You were going to give me your parents’ address?’ he said pleasantly in a moment.
‘Why j’oo want it?’
‘I’ll tell you. I’m afraid Miss Pennecuick is fading . . . Juliet, she may die quite soon . . . in fact, Dr Masters only an hour ago warned me that she may . . .’
‘She won’t!’ exclaimed Juliet angrily, stopping in her swift stride. Was all her new-won peace to be swept away? ‘What’s that got to do with Mum, anyway?’
‘I assure you that my aunt may die sooner than any of us thought likely. That’s why I want to see your parents.’
He made no attempt, now, to avoid using the plural.
‘What for, Frank?’ She turned, goaded, and stared at him.
‘Because I want to have your parents’ approval and consent – have them backing me up – in case there’s any trouble about her will.’
‘Trouble? What d’you mean – trouble?’
It was plain to him, as he stared helplessly at her, that for all the plotting, she had never given a thought to the future. She had assumed, as a child of eight might have done, that her refuge, secured by clumsy lies and based on her benefactress’s gullibility, would continue undisturbed.
‘I mean this.’ They walked on, skirting a wide pool of rain reflecting the changing sky. ‘If she does go soon, and she leaves you a lot of money in her will, which she may well do, there may be protests, and even – er – going to law about it, by other members of the family.’
Juliet appeared to reflect.
‘Nothing to do with them, is it?’ she said sulkily at last.
‘Isn’t it? You’ll very soon find out that people find it is something to do with them where money’s concerned.’
‘Who’d make this here trouble, then?’ the tone was contemptuous, half disbelieving.
‘Oh . . . old Cousin Harry and his family. He isn’t a bad old boy, but his daughte
rs, Phyllis and Althea, might plead undue influence.’
‘What’s that?’
‘They’d say you worked on Great-Aunt’s affection for you, and persuaded her to leave you the money.’
‘Never said a word! Never thought about it.’
‘No. I don’t think you did, Juliet. And a matter of fact, I come in for most of the dear old thing’s money, as her nearest relative—’
‘Then I’ll be all right, won’t I,’ she said indifferently.
This silenced Frank.
It implied so much. She accepted the fact that he was her friend and that he would look after her. It was as flattering as a caressing head-butt from a normally ill-natured dog, and he swore to himself that her casual acceptance should never be abused. I’ll stick to her for her lifetime, he vowed. I’m most certainly not in love with her, I’m not certain I even like her. But I do feel I’ve been – entrusted with something unique, which trusts me, and I’ll keep the trust.
‘I want that address, please Juliet, just in case.’
‘All right,’ after a pause, and sulkily, ‘but you remember what I said about grassing to Auntie.’
‘Are they on the telephone?’
‘Course not. Why should they be?’
‘Well – people are.’
‘My dad likes a bit of peace and quiet – s’pose Mum might like one, but he won’t have it . . . Ooh, look! There’s a squirrel.’
She stopped, her gaze fixed on the creature, tail curled over its back with sunlight shining through the silvery hairs. It was squatting on a fallen beech and studying the pair of them.
He made an involuntary movement, and she hissed: ‘Don’t! Very nervous, they are.’
The squirrel, with the apparent aimlessness of wild creatures, darted away.
‘Pretty little things. But I like the native red ones best,’ he said as they walked on. ‘We’d better be turning back – we’ll be late for lunch.’
Animals, he was thinking, as they went swiftly homewards. They seem to be the only things outside her mysterious ‘work’ that she takes any interest in. There were the questions about Bach, but she seems to have forgotten those. She was feeding the squirrels in that park when Aunt found her . . .
Meanwhile, the twenty minutes between here and Hightower could be put to use. ‘Look at the grass,’ he remarked, as they crossed one of the verges bordering a secondary road. ‘It was cut probably yesterday afternoon. The tips of the blades are square; uncut ones are pointed.’
She looked downwards.
‘Square,’ she said in a minute, ‘like you,’ and gave him a mischievous glance.
He laughed with pleasure. ‘That’s the last thing I am. Now see this—’ They had entered the great meadow. ‘Someone’s been here after us. This path was hardly noticeable when we first came through. It’s been pressed in more deeply. See.’
He felt that the more impersonal word was less likely to irritate her than the imperious ‘look’.
‘Yes – kind of faint-like. Don’t let’s walk on it,’ and she moved aside into the long grass thick with buttercups.
‘Why not? It’s meant to be a path.’
She did not answer, and he suddenly felt in need of lunch.
12
George Slater, having woken at eleven, was sitting up in bed sucking down tea and reading the Daily Mirror, when the front door chimes sounded.
He ignored them: Rose was in. He concentrated on the photograph of one Brenda Beezeley, who had Disappeared, and was the object of police suspicions of Foul Play.
Rose said: ‘Drat – who can that be, this time o’ day?’ and got up from her chair in the kitchen, where she had been about to open a tin, and rolled along the passage to the front door.
Mr Slater continued to read down a column headed WHERE IS BRENDA’S BODY? but, unwillingly, part of his attention was given to a prolonged mumbling which was just audible from the front door.
‘Yes?’ Rose Slater looked up at Frank with large, softly gazing eyes. Her face was also large and soft. She was shapeless, and covered in drooping, clean, bright clothes, the whole protected by a plastic apron. Her bedroom slippers were new and coloured, and her hair rolled up in pink curlers; she suggested a woman not quite in bed and not quite out of it, and Frank supposed that some men would like that. And when she had been nineteen, he thought, she must have been unusually pretty. But – Juliet’s mother!
‘Good morning,’ he began, as she stood silently gazing and irresistibly suggesting to him one of the cows in a meadow at Wanby. ‘I’m a friend of Juliet’s – your daughter – you are Mrs Slater?’
‘That’s right.’ Amiable tone, but no movement or smile.
‘Well – may I come in for a moment, and have a word with you and her father? My name’s Frank Pennecuick – I’m great-nephew to Miss Pennecuick, the lady your daughter is living with.’
He was prepared for an exclamation – Oh, Juliet isn’t in any trouble, is she? None came. Nor was there a sulky We don’t want to hear nothing about her, thank you. Instead, Mrs Slater rotated – that was the word her movement suggested – in the direction of a closed door on her right, and mumbled: ‘I’ll jus’ ask him,’ and opened it, and went in.
He waited at the open front door, studying the neatness and brightness of the tiny hall. The stuffy air was pierced by the song of a bird, accompanying a cacophony on the radio. The chill spring wind blew against his shoulders. Listening intently now, he caught the sustained mutter of a conversation behind a shut door: a kind of whining rush broken by occasional monosyllables, like rocks impeding the flow of a stream.
After a pause of quite eight minutes, the door opened, and Mrs Slater came out. She had been crying.
‘Come in, will you, please,’ keeping her head turned away. ‘In ’ere,’ she added almost inaudibly, standing aside.
When he was in the room, he heard the door shut softly behind him, and was so full of indignation over that tear-marked face that for a moment he could not get a word out; he stood staring at the big man sitting up in the big double bed. And when he did speak, he said, not ‘Good morning’, but: ‘I should prefer Mrs Slater to be here, please; I want to talk to you both.’
‘Morning.’ Mr Slater never took his stare from Frank’s face. ‘Oh – all right.’ He opened his mouth wider, and sent out a mighty shout: ‘Rose! Chap wants a word.’
Frank received an impression that ‘chap’ had been substituted for ‘gentleman’ out of principle, rather than from insolence. The room was tidy, except for Mr Slater’s large underclothing flung on the floor. It was furnished in bright colours, and was very clean, and stiff.
‘May I sit down?’ he asked, as Mrs Slater, with hastily repaired face, hurried into the room and she muttered, ‘Course’, and pushed a pink mini-armchair at him. He waited, standing, until she had rolled herself into its twin, muttering, ‘May as well be comf’able.’
Mr Slater folded the Daily Mirror and said: ‘Only to be expected, is what I say.’
‘Oh – er . . .’ Frank sought for a suitable reply. Could this apply to Juliet?
‘This Beezeley girl. Ask for it, girls do. Out all hours, dressed any’ow, talk to anyone what chats ’em up instead of acting quiet and walking off ’ome, and then don’t like it when they get murdered . . . you read about it?’
‘Er – no. Murder doesn’t interest me, as a matter of fact.’
Frank perceived that the subject had been introduced as a kind of social ice-breaker, the Slater equivalent of ‘Do-you-know-the-Rowden-Smiths?’
‘Ah. I like a good murder. Interestin’. The police work and that. But this one isn’t much good. Straightforward. Soon’s they find the body they’ll be home and dry.’ A slight movement, altering the shape of Mr Slater’s mouth, appeared at its corners. ‘Though dry isn’t the word, reely. Drowned, they think she was. The frogmen are out.’
The frogmen are out. The sentence might have come from some thriller. Frank roused himself from an instant’s fantasy.
‘Mr Slater, I want to talk to you both about Juliet,’ he began, ‘and I’m going to be frank with you. I don’t want you to – er – misunderstand my interest in her—’
‘That’s all right,’ Mr Slater interrupted. ‘She isn’t that sort. Clever, but never looks at boys nor had boys look at her, so far as me and her mother knows.’
Here Mrs Slater gave a watery smile and said: ‘Julie and me says she’s no more interested in boys than if they was elephants – not so much, tell you the truth, she always says, it’s a kind of—’
‘Belt up, Rose,’ Mr Slater commanded. ‘Besides,’ to Frank, ‘you’re old enough to be her father.’
This was not heard by Frank with pleasure. ‘Well. Perhaps more like an uncle. That’s the way I’ve come to feel towards her. Not as – er – close – as a father. Now this is the point’ – he leant forwards – ‘and we must be realistic about it. The old lady, Miss Pennecuick, my great-aunt, is failing; her doctor told me only a few days ago that the end may come at any moment. And she may have left Juliet money in her will.’
He paused, studying the faces turned towards him, and expecting exclamations of excited greed. What he had not expected was a manifestation of that now almost extinct and forgotten quality: pride.
Mr Slater’s expression changed not at all, but he said in his hardest tone: ‘Oh she may, may she? Well, for all me and Rose cares, she can keep it, we can do without it, thank you all the same. Rose! Hot us up another, will you?’ and he thrust the teacup at her. ‘I can keep me family all right, and Julie can go out to work, like any other bit of a girl.’
Mrs Slater rolled hastily out of the room with the teacup.
‘Any money will be left to Juliet,’ Frank said, gently emphasizing the name. ‘Of course, if she wanted to share—’
‘We don’t want nothing!’ Mr Slater dashed his hand down on the Daily Mirror. He had become plum-coloured in face and neck. ‘Let her take the old girl’s money and do what she likes with it. She won’t go to the bad, that’s certain sure, not with her looks.’
‘No . . . but she might go to university, Mr Slater.’
Pure Juliet Page 10