Pure Juliet

by Stella Gibbons

  Juliet sat beside her open window, gazing into the dimness, breathing the sweetness of the air, vaguely hearing the rustle of the rain. Vaguely, too, she felt a power for which she had no name, rising about her: it was the aura surrounding a tall young maple which looked with myriad leaf-eyes into her room, and soothed her tumult of dreamy thoughts. It was benevolence.

  16

  Before the procession of black cars, the foremost laden with its tribute of glowing bunches and wreaths, rolled through the gates of Hightower, Frank drew Juliet aside.

  ‘Don’t think about what’s being done when we’re standing by the grave,’ he instructed calmly. ‘Think about the wild flowers, and the weather.’

  ‘Why?’ she demanded at last; she was very pale and looked plainer than usual.

  ‘Because you’re frightened. And I don’t want you to be.’ (In one way, I don’t, that is, he inwardly finished the sentence.)

  She was silent, looking away at a tall chestnut in blossom.

  ‘Aren’t you?’ he insisted.

  ‘It’s creepy,’ she said sullenly.

  ‘That’s a natural response. But it’ll soon be over. Do as I say – think about the weather. It’s very old, and it’s always there. I think you’ll find that – comforting.’

  ‘All right. But I better remember to keep me face sad,’ and Frank stifled a laugh as there slowly emerged from the drawing-room the Barrows, Dr Masters, Clemence, her grandmother (elegant in grey and black) and Sarah (with handkerchief conspicuous). The Spaniards joined the procession in the hall; they were to be accommodated in the final car.

  Juliet tried to follow Frank’s advice. But although the rain of the previous night had drawn out subtle scents from grass and wild roses, and the sky showed every change of a fitful spring, from violet-grey to purest azure, she could not let these comforters take charge of her.

  Her feelings swung between shrinking fear of what was being lowered into that space of disturbed earth, and the dim, fruitful half-dreams of the previous night. Sarah’s loud sobbing, and the awful words spoken by the clergyman drifted past her unheard.

  ‘Juliet! Don’t let me catch you putting plastic forget-me-nots on my stone when I’m dead,’ Frank said, as they left the churchyard when it was over. ‘Beech leaves will suit me nicely, thank you.’

  He pointed to a violently blue cluster on a nearby stone, and Mrs Massey, glad of a chance of a possibly entertaining argument, said: ‘Really, Frank.’

  ‘The colours are filthy and the idea’s worse, eh, Juliet?’

  ‘Pardon?’ She turned, listlessly.

  ‘Ah, she’s thinking about this afternoon, aren’t you, Juliet?’ (Mrs Massey was certainly thinking about it.) ‘You need not be ashamed, my dear, and it isn’t heartless – dear old Addy would have understood. Your whole future may depend upon it.’

  Juliet did not hear the remark, as she scrambled into the car behind Frank. She glanced with relief at his calm face. He would look after her.

  Clemence was thinking, despondently, how badly her grandmother and Frank ‘got on’. It was another obstacle in the way of her ever getting her heart’s desire. I’m developing into a typical apprehensive old maid, she thought.

  The procession turned in through the gates of Hightower, where Antonio now stood sentinal, in black jacket and with exactly the correct expression of dignified regret on his face.

  In ten minutes the party was seated at the cold luncheon set out by the Spaniards, to which, on Frank’s instructions, had been added champagne.

  ‘It seems . . . rather heartless,’ Phyllis Barrow observed, sipping affectedly. ‘More like a celebration.’

  ‘Addy will be pleased,’ Frank snapped, and his use of the present tense aroused such reflections among the mourners that no more was heard from Phyllis.

  About half-past three, when the elders had rested, and Frank and Clemence had strolled round the garden (Frank deploring the absence of useful weeds, and Clemence dolefully adding, in secret, her own approval of weedlessness to her list of the Obstacles), young Mr Chesney arrived, the son of that old Mr Chesney who had been the Pennecuicks’ lawyer for forty years, and deputizing for his father. The party drifted, from various parts of the house, into the library.

  ‘Do you think, Mr Chesney . . . er . . . the servants . . . Our dear friend gave me to understand, on one occasion, that she had “remembered” them. Do you think that they should be present?’

  Mr Chesney having answered cheerfully that that depended upon what Mr Pennecuick thought about it, Mrs Massey asserted her position by glancing fretfully about her and demanding: ‘Now where is that girl?’

  Here Juliet came hurrying in, with a cross, pale face and a compass between her teeth, both hands being full of books and sheets of paper.

  Mrs Massey made a gesture indicating despair, as she turned to Mr Chesney. ‘Mr Chesney, this is Juliet Slater.’

  She left the statement unadorned, and indeed Mr Chesney had been briefed by his father about the teenager.

  ‘How do you do?’

  ‘Hullo.’

  Juliet’s smile and articulation were restricted by the compass, and Mrs Massey struck in sharply: ‘Put those things down at once, please, here,’ and she indicated a side table.

  ‘Oh all right – just thought I’d fill up time if there was any arguin’—’

  ‘We don’t think there will be, do we, Chesney?’ Frank said good-naturedly as the company seated itself. It would do no harm to warn the Barrows that he, the chief heir, took it for granted that there would not be.

  Young Mr Chesney smiled, and said that he hoped not.

  Juliet slid into her place only half aware of what was going on. The scant two hours since lunch had been ‘spent’ by her indeed, and royally. A new line of thought had opened itself, leading to regions hitherto unexplored, and her eyes were shining with an excitement that Phyllis Barrow thought of as disgusting. Clemence, noticing it, felt some disappointment on Frank’s behalf. Was it greed? If it was, his attempts to humanize his protegée had succeeded only too well.

  Mrs Massey was enjoying the fact that Juliet was ‘glaring’ out of the window at the vast white clouds massed in the summer sky. Really, the girl looked hardly sane; excitement over the will must have temporarily unbalanced her.

  The servants were present; Frank had invited them into the room with a friendly smile, which Mrs Massey had modified by indicating that they should stand ranged in decent order by the door, where there were no chairs. Such small triumphs made the juice of Mrs Massey’s life.

  Mr Chesney’s agreeable young voice broke the attentive silence. The sun shone between the noble clouds onto the dark colours and the worn, lined, ordinary faces – ordinary all, except one.

  The bulk of the estate, young Mr Chesney began, was left to the deceased’s great-nephew, Mr Francis Pennecuick; it amounted to some three hundred and forty thousand pounds. Of this sum, over thirty thousand pounds had been set aside for legacies, of which the largest, twenty thousand pounds, went to the deceased’s ‘beloved adopted daughter, Juliet Slater’.

  Mrs Dorothy Massey, of Rose Cottage, Wanby, Herts; Miss Clemence Massey of the same address; and Dr Edward Masters of Beech House, Wanby, each received one thousand pounds. And ‘my dear faithful old friend Sarah (Mrs Bason) eight thousand pounds’.

  (Mr Chesney felt that a quaver in his voice would have been appropriate here, but could feel nothing but an un-legal envy of the old housekeeper, because he himself was hagridden by a mortgage.)

  ‘A hundred pounds each to . . .’ and here followed the full names of each of the Spanish servants, which Miss Pennecuick had memorized, written out, and given to old Mr Chesney on his last visit to her; these legacies were given in codicil.

  When he had concluded, in a silence that was noticeable, he laid the will before him on the table and sat down, keeping his gaze fixed upon the document. Give them time to get their faces in order.

  He looked up.

  Phyllis Barrow
said instantly: ‘We knew that we were unlikely to benefit from Cousin Adelaide’s will. But we should of course like to have some small personal memento of her. Isn’t there any jewellery?’ ending the sentence rather faster than she liked, but unable to repress her eagerness.

  Clemence was gently patting the weeping Sarah’s shoulder.

  ‘There is indeed a long list of personal bequests.’ Mr Chesney tapped some sheets of foolscap.

  ‘Put everyone out of their misery,’ muttered old Mr Barrow.

  ‘Well – yes.’ Mr Chesney sent him a properly proportioned smile. ‘My congratulations, Mr Pennecuick,’ to Frank, who nodded absently and said: ‘Who are the executors?’

  ‘I was coming to that. Mrs Massey is sole executrix. My client told me she felt her old friend would not find the duties involved fatiguing, but might even – er – rather enjoy them.’

  ‘Quite right. So I shall,’ Dolly said briskly. ‘If you’ll let me have that list, Mr Chesney. Thank you.’ Then she whispered to Sarah that she could tell the servants to bring tea to the drawing-room, and Clemence led Sarah, still wiping her eyes, to the door.

  Mr Chesney was eager to be off. No thank you, Mrs Massey, he would not stay to tea. He decided that the house was certainly an interesting specimen mummified in the Thirties, the girl looked odd, even unusual, and he hoped the firm might retain the management of the Pennecuick affairs; nevertheless, he could hardly wait to get back to Lucy and the children and his garden and the mortgage and the dogs.

  In the drawing-room, the party was drinking tea and dissecting the afternoon’s announcements, after a polite interval, of course, during which the weather was introduced.

  Everyone studied Juliet, stealthily, but avidly; everyone essayed little remarks, intended to convey kindly interest in her future and a complete lack of envy. At last, when the ladies (with the exception of Clemence) had ceased lying, old Mr Barrow said: ‘And what are you going to do with your money, young lady?’

  He had been eating his way, with gusto, through a plateful of hot tea cakes. Tea cakes! It must be forty years since anyone had bothered to send up the little hot buttery things for his delectation.

  Juliet looked up absently and muttered, ‘Oh – I can’t say yet.’

  But Frank said with decision: ‘University is the place for her. Isn’t it, Juliet?’

  ‘S’pose so.’

  ‘Very wise,’ said Mr Barrow, whose income, provided by a small fortune he had made at forty, had been devoted to padding him round with every comfort purchasable on this planet. ‘Where do you think of going?’

  Silence. The May wind sailed past the windows.

  ‘Cambridge, I s’pose,’ she said at last. ‘They’re best for maths.’

  ‘Whew! Flyin’ high, aren’t you? You’ll have to work damned hard if you want to get in there.’

  ‘Juliet will get her place all right,’ said Frank. ‘The problem is what’s to be done with her until she goes up in probably a year’s time.’

  Clemence looked at him steadily. Yes, his chief interest (next to Edible Grasses) was now Juliet Slater. I’m sick and tired of waiting.

  ‘Can’t I stay on here?’ Juliet asked. Her quiet room and her table were calling, and the theory that had danced in her mind before she came downstairs was beginning to throb again, with an almost painful force.

  ‘Hardly, dear.’ Frank brought out the last word clearly, and stealthy glances were exchanged. ‘The servants will be going back to Spain, and I shall probably sell the house to some institution. Or I might just pull it down and put the land under cultivation.’

  ‘Or turn it into a country club,’ Clemence said rather shrilly. And as he glanced at her in surprise, her grandmother exclaimed:

  ‘What a good idea! Bring some life into this very dreary part of the world.’

  Mr Barrow, having eaten most of the tea cakes and a thick slice of sponge cake, glanced at the clock and said that they must be going. (It was Kojak this evening.)

  There was a general setting aside of cups, and everybody rose.

  The warm wind pressed against the windows, and the haunting theory danced its stately pavane in Juliet’s head as she almost ran out of the room.

  17

  ‘Grandmamma,’ in a half whisper, ‘ask Edward to drive. Please.’

  ‘Oh dear – must I? You know he hates driving and that makes him nervous, and if there’s anything that does frighten me—’

  ‘Please. I – want a word with Frank. He and I will walk.’

  Mrs Massey, glancing down to ascertain that her ample grey folds were in order, noticed that Clemence’s hands were clenched at her sides. Most unusual. Poor child.

  ‘Very well, dear,’ she said and advanced upon Dr Masters. ‘Clem doesn’t feel quite up to the mark. So will you be a dear, Edward . . . ?’

  Dr Masters, no better pleased than she, made himself be a dear, and off the pair went.

  ‘Frank, walk me home, will you? I feel a bit – I don’t know – queasy, and I need exercise.’

  ‘Of course. I thought you sounded on edge. Need an arm or anything?’

  She shook her head, not looking at him.

  ‘Right. I won’t be a minute. Must just speak to the servants.’

  She stood, waiting: as she had waited since she was fourteen. Addy’s death, unloved, unmated, childless, had been the last straw. Must she, Clemence Massey, that nice woman who’s been with Dr Masters for years, die some fifty years on, perhaps, in the same way? And the long rays of evening sunlight, and all the brilliant, throbbing spring life around her, even the scent of hawthorn, increased her pain. She had no idea what she was going to do or say. But say or do something she must.

  In ten minutes they were walking down the drive.

  ‘Don’t let’s hurry, shall we?’ she said, as Frank shut the little door after them, having smilingly waved back Antonio, who had accompanied them, beaming. ‘It’s such a – lovely evening.’ She gulped.

  ‘Clem, dear, what is the matter? Has the funeral upset you?’ Frank looked concernedly into her face, unbecomingly flushed.

  ‘Of course it has,’ she almost burst out. ‘Someone dying like that – poor Addy – with no one to love her – or – anything.’

  He was silent for a moment, surprised and a little embarrassed. Then he said: ‘Does that matter so much? I don’t think – that side of life – troubled her much. She had all the money and comfort she wanted – friends, travel (when she was younger). I shouldn’t have said she was that kind of woman.’

  ‘What kind of woman?’ It was a snap, and an angry one, and she turned to glare – yes, it was a glare – at him.

  ‘Well, the kind to whom love and marriage mean a great deal.’

  ‘Oh Frank! They meant everything, poor, poor Addy. And all women are that kind of woman. If they aren’t, they aren’t women,’ she ended rather wildly.

  ‘There are so many different kinds of love, Clem.’

  ‘Addy didn’t have any kind of love. She made me think of a – a flowering branch that’s never lost its petals or formed any fruit. Wasted.’

  ‘Well, that’s enlarging the question considerably, to say her life was wasted. I like your comparison with the branch. I didn’t know you were a poet, Clem,’ teasingly, and with the object of lightening the atmosphere a little.

  ‘Oh why must men always generalize?’ was the angry and surprising answer, almost a cry. ‘And I’m not a poet, I’m—’ She choked the words back. ‘Oh, never mind what I am – let’s walk a bit faster, shall we?’ and for the remaining twenty minutes or so, going at a pace almost as swift as Juliet’s, they were silent.

  Clemence felt no better; rather worse. It was as if she had within her a miniature volcano of some indefinable kind, which had yet to erupt.

  ‘Come in for a drink?’ he suggested, when, hardly realizing where she was going, she had accompanied him across the meadow to the doorstep of the almost completed Cowshed.

  ‘Oh – all right. Thanks. I w
ill.

  He opened the door into the long, low, austere living-room, and she sank uninvited into a comfortable old chair and sat staring at nothing. The place smelled slightly of raw putty, which made her feel sick.

  ‘Frank,’ she said in a loud, harsh tone, as he was crossing the room to the cupboard where he kept his homebrews, ‘can I have an ordinary drink, please? Not that . . . You do keep some, I know.’

  ‘Of course. For the unregenerate, I do – yes,’ he grinned.

  He brought up one of the low tables which he had made himself during his scanty moments of leisure, and arranged glasses on it and drew up a chair opposite her, a glass of dandelion wine in his hand. Staring somewhere over her shoulder, he had plainly gone off into thoughts of something deeply interesting to himself.

  Clemence angrily took a large gulp of whisky.

  She usually drank little, and had today eaten sparsely because she had been so upset. The whisky rushed joyously straight up into her head, and she was instantaneously, blissfully drunk.

  He did not notice the changed expression in her eyes; nor did he lift his glass in the usual salute to the years of their shared childhood. She began to feel a strong wish to talk, to bubble out her longings and her pain, and her lips parted slowly, of their own volition, in a long sigh that was poised, like a breaking wave, over a rush of words that were yet to come.

  He looked across at her. ‘I’m wondering,’ he began, ‘about Juliet— What?’

  ‘Nothing.’ (In fact, it had been a furious murmur – ‘Blast Juliet.’)

  ‘You see,’ he leant forward, his thin face and large eyes alight with eagerness, ‘I feel she’s my treasure, my trust. I’m pretty certain she’s a mathematical genius in the range of Keppler or Einstein, quite incapable of making a living by teaching or anything of that sort. She needs unlimited solitude and privacy to let her powers develop. She can’t stay at Hightower. She can’t – and wouldn’t anyway – go back to her parents. What I’d like to do is to have her here with me, and give her complete freedom for the next year and a half – but I suppose there’d be gossip.’