‘Juliet! Post for you, and tea’s ready.’
There followed that pause, which he associated with summoning Juliet from behind a shut door ever since he had known her.
Afterwards, he knew that those pauses would never seem the same in memory again.
The door slowly opened. She stood there, hair newly dragged into its usual knot, wearing one of what the girls called her ‘sandies’, but this one had a wide, delicate lace collar and her arms were bare.
‘Hullo – I’m just ready.’ Then she saw the parcel and letter and absolutely snatched them from him, turned and shut the door in his face.
‘Mannerless Maggie,’ said Alice.
Juliet stood in the hush and tempered heat and silence of her house, staring at the envelope. She was as solitary as the city of Qu’aid, in the desert where it had stood for a thousand years. She had never felt fear in her life, but she felt it now: she feared the contents of the envelope, with its row of exotic stamps, printed with silver crescents and graceful green Arabic symbols.
She shivered in the heat and said, aloud, in the flat tones that had not altered much over the years:
‘I haven’t got it.’
Then, slowly, she turned and took from her table a paper knife, and again slowly, with the deftness that marked all her minor actions, slit the envelope and unfolded the contents.
In her hands were two sheets of thick, creamy paper, so rich in texture as to suggest parchment, one covered in delicate red and green loops, whirls and curves, the other with ordinary typing, and in English. Hardly noting the lovely shield that headed both sheets, she rushed at the typed one:
Miss Juliet Slater:
Madam,
The Governors and Doctorate of the University of Qu’aid have the honour to inform you that your paper The Law of Coincidence: Some Investigations and a Conclusion has received the Avicenna Award totalling the sum of one hundred thousand pounds sterling, together with election to the Doctorate of the University.
You are instructed to attend at the University on November the fifteenth next, to receive the doctorate, bringing such of your family as may wish to be present.
Dr Abdul Kamin, Head of the Governing Body, requests me to add that he trusts you are sensible of the honour bestowed upon you.
I remain, dear Madam,
Yours sincerely,
Mark B. Audley
(Secretary to His Highness
the Emir Abdul Ahmet, UAR)
Juliet did not move. She reread the letter three times. There was no sound but the frenzied beating of a bumble bee against the slats of the venetian blinds.
There then came to her an emotion totally unfamiliar: gratitude. To Frank, and his quarter-century watch over her; to Aunt Addy whose death-bed words she had almost forgotten, whose legacy had bestowed upon her solitude and silence, and freedom to work steadily and in patience; to her mother, who had neither wanted to live with her nor insisted upon her going ‘home’; to all the things which made her home: the birds and the animals, and even her great table and the bamboo and rattan chairs. All these things, living or inanimate, seemed to her in this unfamiliar exultant mood to have helped the seed within her to grow, at last, over long years, into a mighty, solidly rooted tree.
A sound, faint and regular, invaded the confused storm of feeling, and she slowly turned her head to look at the clock. She had been standing, the letter in her hand, for nearly fifteen minutes. At the same moment, there came a roar from outside: ‘Josh wants tea!’ followed by a hesitant rapping, and Clemence’s voice: ‘Juliet, are you all right?’
Juliet went slowly across the room and as slowly opened the door.
Josh instantly threw a handful of grass at her, again bellowing his desire for tea.
Clemence, after one look, put a hand on her bare arm. ‘Juliet. What is it?’ She had never seen Juliet’s expression like this – broken up, moved, the eyes behind the enlarging lenses blazing.
Juliet silently handed her the letter, keeping the parcel in one hand, and Clemence’s eyes ran down the typed sheet until her lightning perusal ended in a gasp: ‘Juliet! How super! How absolutely marvellous for you – I’m so glad – hundreds and hundreds of congratulations . . . Oh, where’s Frank. We must tell him.’
Then they were rushing towards the group gathered around fire and kettle, all staring in some alarm.
Frank got up and hurried towards Clem.
Josh, still demanding tea, stooped and reinforced himself with more grass. Edmund, Alice, Edith, Emma and Hugh began to raise themselves from the ground. Nanny, hearing the noise, descended from the house upon Josh with a piece of bread and jam.
Through the lengthening sunbeams of earliest evening they came towards Juliet: the young faces alight with curiosity, the older ones anxious.
Clemence thrust the letter into Frank’s outstretched hand.
He read it apparently with one glance, then lifted his head and looked at Juliet’s transformed face. He was too moved to speak. She had kept her gaze upon his, and now moved forward and clumsily put her arms about him and held him for a moment.
‘Thanks for everything, all you done . . .’ Her voice died and her arms dropped at her sides and she stood, staring, eyes bright behind the great lenses of her spectacles.
‘For heaven’s sake,’ screamed Alice. ‘What IS it?’ and she darted at the letter, while the rest crowded over her shoulder, reading and muttering.
‘Great God,’ Edmund said mildly at last. ‘Well, what a birthday present, eh? Hearty congratulations, Juliet.’
‘I can’t take it in – it’s too wonderful – I’m so glad, Juliet,’ Clemence babbled, and almost added, So glad for Frank after years of disappointment.
Juliet turned quickly and, darting at her, bestowed a smacking kiss. Then withdrew rapidly, like a retreating animal. ‘And – and thank you, too, Clemence. Choosing me clothes and all that . . .’
‘I want more cake.’
‘Ssh, ssh, Josh – you shall have it. Pipe down,’ soothed Nanny. ‘Well, Juliet, ever so many congratulations, I’m sure. Will you be on television, do you think?’
‘Oh God,’ muttered Edmund, hastening up with the replenished kettle. ‘Of course there will be interviews and all the other horrors.’
‘Josh light cangles.’
‘No he won’t, he isn’t old enough.’ Nanny sat him down firmly at the edge of the display of pretty foods. ‘But he may blow one out, if he asks Juliet nicely. It’s her birthday, you know.’
‘Josh’s birthday.’
‘No it isn’t, Josh. I’ve told you, yours is—’
The argument was lost in the clamour of excited voices as they gathered around the cloth. Long greenish shadows from the great oak fell across the party.
Edmund instinctively responded to the idyllic circumstances, but even so he knew that he himself would have welcomed ‘interviews and all the other horrors’, while Hugh was thinking Cripes! A hundred thousand. What I couldn’t do with that – though of course, she’s got a lot already, and after tax . . . Might marry her . . . no. On second thoughts. No. And his long, thin, clever face smiled. His strong interest in the making of money, which was not encouraged in the family, sometimes took refuge in fantasy.
And Nanny’s thoughts were pitying, rather than admiring. Who wouldn’t rather be twenty-four, and engaged, than win some old prize and be a dried-up old maid?
Everyone was drinking tea and talking at once.
‘Where is this place? I’ve never heard of it.’
‘Oh miles from anywhere. Bang in the middle of the desert. The proper desert, not all touristy,’ from Edith, with her mouth full. ‘What’s the UAR?’
‘Where did it get a hundred thousand pounds from, if it’s in the middle of a desert?’ asked Clemence.
‘Oil, of course—’ began Hugh.
‘Be quiet, everybody, please.’ Frank turned to Juliet, who was sipping tea with eyes fixed on the distance. ‘Juliet . . . won’t you please – tell us a
bout it?’
She turned away from the sunlit meadow.
‘Not much to tell, really,’ she said, in her usual flat tones. ‘You know I’ve been working all this time on my thesis. And last year I thought, it’s really finished, I can’t do anything more to it. But I gave it a year . . . to kind of get . . . ripe . . . if you know what I mean. Errors to come up to the surface . . . like when Clemence makes soup. And meantime, I came across this book.’
She paused to light a cigarette. The eight faces around the picnic cloth were fixed in the same expression of eager attention, with the exception of Josh, who was drawing pictures on his plate in jam.
‘Saw a copy when I was up at that library in London, so I wrote in and ordered it. Last year about this time, it was—’
‘Was that the parcel all over gorgeous green squiggles and stamps? I wondered when it came,’ said Alice.
‘That’d be it. Then I got to thinking – it’s proved. And I got wanting someone to read it and see it’ – her voice rose – ‘so I sent it to this here Arab journal.’
‘What?’ Clemence exclaimed before she could check herself.
‘I sent it to this book I got – it’s a journal, really, a scientific journal that the Arabs publish. It’s printed in that place – Qu’aid.’
‘Ah – I begin to see. You knew about the journal before you decided to send your thesis there.’
‘That’s it.’ She turned gratefully to Edmund. ‘I kept it by me when I’d read it. Liked the smell of it, as a matter of fact.’ A thin small laugh. ‘It goes all over the world, so I thought that it’d be the best place. See, I sent two papers there before, not about coincidence, and they printed them.’ A pause. ‘I didn’t show you all,’ apologetically, ‘because I wanted – when I did show you something – really true and big. And here’ – she held up the parcel which she had kept jealously at her side – ‘it is.’
‘You mean your thesis is actually there, printed in . . . Is that a copy of the journal with your thing printed in it?’ Frank demanded.
She nodded. ‘Hope so, anyway. They sometimes give a whole number to one paper. That’s why I sent it there.’
‘Oh do let’s see!’ cried everybody, and Juliet slowly unwrapped the thick paper, tied with a heavy silvery-gold string.
A volume bound in heavy green material was revealed, neither hardback nor paper. Printed, in English, in a beautiful silver type was the word Thought.
Below the single, impressive word was a note in the same type, but smaller: ‘This number of Thought is given entirely to The Law of Coincidence: Some Investigations and a Conclusion, by Juliet Slater of Great Britain.’ A silver crescent – slender, graceful, yet conveying a remorseless hardness and strength – finished the square, ornate cover.
‘What oil will do,’ muttered Hugh. ‘Shouldn’t like to say how much that cost to produce.’ He took it from his father’s hands – almost reverently. It represented such limitless and casual wealth. ‘How often does it come out, Juliet?’
‘Only once a year. S’pose they can’t get enough thought to make up any more copies,’ and everybody laughed.
‘Arabic – I suppose that’s Arabic? – on one page, English on the other,’ murmured Emma, as the journal went round the circle. ‘How pretty it is . . .’
‘Juliet!’ burst out Alice, sitting back on her heels, head held high up on her swan’s neck, eyes dancing. ‘You’re going, aren’t you? Oh, say you are, sweet Juliet, dear Juliet! And can I come too, as your lady-in-waiting? Ma, you’ll come, won’t you?’ to Clemence.
‘If I’m asked, Alice. It’s Juliet’s party, you know,’ Clemence said gently.
‘Oh – the candles!’ Emma exclaimed, and everyone turned to stare at the cake, except Frank, who was looking alternately at the journal he held open in his hands, and at Juliet.
Josh began to move towards the candles until Nanny, with firm clasp of one naked leg, brought him to a halt.
‘No, Josh. Juliet must blow. It’s her birthday. Quick, Juliet – that one’s nearly out!’ cried Edith.
Juliet leant across the cloth, pursed the lips from which youthful fullness had gone for ever, drew a breath into her thin chest, and blew.
It was not successful; five candles remained burning.
With the aid of Juliet’s encouraging hand, Josh launched a breathy gasp. Nothing would have happened had not a skilfully directed gust from behind extinguished the remaining candles.
‘Bravo!’ ‘Clever Josh!’ everyone dutifully cried, and Emma murmured, ‘Clever Nanny.’
‘Practise, dear, just practise.’ But Nanny looked gratified.
‘Well, what will you do with your cool hundred thou?’ Hugh asked, when everyone was lying back, replete with tea and excitement.
Juliet shrugged. The familiar, indifferent shrug. ‘Don’t know. S’pose they’ll tell me all that when I get there.’
‘You’re going, then?’ said Frank.
‘Oh yes,’ decidedly. ‘Always did want to see the desert.’ And she smiled at him, even with mischief.
‘And I can come too?’ from Alice once more, ignoring Hugh’s sharp nudge.
‘I want you all to come,’ said Juliet, looking round the circle of sun-warmed, familiar faces. ‘Frank and Clem and the girls and – oh – Piers’ll be at school.’
‘It’ll be his half-term,’ his mother said calmly. ‘I just worked it out.’
‘That’s good, Piers then, and Nanny, you’ll come? To look after old Josh?’
‘Well, thank you, Juliet, I’ve always had a longing to see the mysterious East.’
‘And Qu’aid is about the last chance you will have to see it,’ Edmund put in, speaking with an anger and jealousy firmly controlled, because he knew that Maida was never going to allow him to go to Qu’aid with the Pennecuicks. That was why, with unusual tact, Juliet had not mentioned him. ‘They’re not technologized at all, took a referendum under the new young Emir five years ago, and came out ninety-three per cent for staying as they were.’
‘I bet the other seven per cent were women,’ Edith cried.
‘I hope not,’ Edmund answered amiably. ‘He had them hanged.’
‘It sounds the most charming place,’ Hugh said, with something of Alice’s drawl.
‘And I’d like old Artie to come,’ Juliet went on, ‘but we’ll have to see about that.’
‘That’ was generally known to be Mrs Arthur, who shared Maida’s implacable jealousy and suspicion of their men’s friendships with ‘those people’.
‘It’ll be an entourage,’ exulted Alice, doing a half roll sideways in her flowing skirts: her affectation of general ignorance did not include French, which she considered elegant.
Juliet sank the knife into the rich round cake, and for a moment, while it was tasted and criticized, the Avicenna Award was forgotten. Then Frank said suddenly: ‘You do all know what the award’s given for, don’t you?’
Murmurs of ignorance, from mouths full of cake.
‘“For an outstanding contribution to the sum of human knowledge” – that’s what it’s given for. My God – Juliet – I’m – I’m so proud of you I could burst.’ He leant over and gently pressed her hand. ‘And something else – Thought, it says here, is dedicated “To the glory of Allah the All-Powerful, the All-Wise, the All-Merciful”. So you see, your coincidences arrived at an unpredictable destination. Tell me – when you first began to see – what you were after – did you ever think of that?’
‘Never had the faintest,’ was the answer.
27
This was in early September. There was much to be done before the fifteenth of November.
First, there were the reporters. It was a story that could be described as ‘a lulu’: hundred thousand pound prize as prestigious as the Nobel, remote desert city, mysterious young Emir, unintelligible new Law, a female discoverer of working-class origin. The press hardly knew where to start.
Frank, always aware of the value of publicity to the AIEG, kept a
n open drinks table and a loquacious welcome for the hordes, while seeing to it that Juliet gave a fifteen-minute press conference and thus did not become exhausted, during the exact seven days that the story lasted.
In a week it was off the front pages and onto the back; Juliet’s abrupt manner and plainness had undoubtedly a damping effect, and her one appearance on television successfully revived the general public opinion that all scientists were dotty.
There was some patting on the back from some quarters for Qu’aid, because it had spent part of its oil revenues on the encouragement of science (‘as if it needed encouraging,’ groaned Edmund) instead of megalomanic building and Rolls-Royces; and then the family at the House was left more or less in peace to prepare for its journey; though almost every day someone tapped at Juliet’s door flourishing a superior magazine and announcing, ‘Juliet, here’s a bit about you – want to see it?’
She would rouse herself slowly from the long chair where she had been lying, and come to the door. But her answer was always the same: ‘No thanks. What’s all the fuss about?’
But on one of these occasions, Emma replied, ‘They rang up; they want to interview you. What shall I tell them?’
Juliet glanced at the article – on the women’s page of the Custodian – which took umbrage at someone saying that her thesis ‘was of interest, unlike most scientific theories, to the woman in the street’.
‘Oh hell – I don’t know – yes, I s’pose so, Emma.’
The dedicated youthful feminist who arrived the next day (Edith having been sent in ignorance, by her mother, on an errand to St Alberics) was answered by Juliet mostly in monosyllables, and when, almost in despair, the reporter demanded: ‘Miss Slater, I want your honest opinion of the Women’s Movement, as it stands today,’ and received the reply, ‘I never thought about it. What is it?’ she left in cold annoyance, believing that she was being mocked. The interview never appeared.
Juliet continued to decline: in energy, in speech, in her interests.
‘I told you, Frank. It’s what the Victorians called “a general break-up of the constitution”,’ Edmund said.
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