The Nutmeg Tree

by Margery Sharp

  “Rubbish!” cried Julia indignantly.

  “As you say. And what’s all the more puzzling to me is that right from the beginning—right from then—I thought we were going to get on. As soon as I saw you, I thought, ‘Good!’ If you were a bit disapproving at lunch, I’d deserved it and didn’t mind. But you’ve been disapproving ever since, and it isn’t natural.”

  “Got a good conceit of yourself, haven’t you?” said Julia.

  He looked quite hurt.

  “I never thought we should have to have all this beating about the bush, either. I should have thought that if you disliked my ties or my table manners you’d tell me straight out, and probably box my ears into the bargain. I expected any number of black eyes, Julia darling, but not the frozen mitt.”

  The statement was so outrageous that Julia, who had been behaving like a perfect lady for four solid days, could not let it pass.

  “Do I look the sort of person who gives black eyes?” she demanded.

  “Yes, you do, darling. You are. Just as I’m the sort of person who gets them. The fact of the matter is—”

  Julia beat the bush no longer, but finished for him.

  “You’re the same kind as I am,” she said grimly.

  It was out, and she felt a certain relief; but she was also resentful. He had chased her off the sunny wall of her self-complacency; he had shown that her impersonation of a lady was not so good as she had thought. Worse still, he was going to make her say things, do things, that would have a definite effect; that might lead to scenes with Susan, to explanations with Mrs. Packett; that would put an end, in short, to the happy period of her carefree basking.…

  “Well,” said Bryan, looking at her under his lids, “that’s not such a bad sort to be—is it?”

  Julia did not immediately reply. To marshal her thoughts, to produce an ordered sequence of ideas, was not a business which came easily to her. She had first to disentangle her own meaning, then to fit it with words; and since what she now had to communicate was of the utmost importance, so the preliminaries were correspondingly long.

  “Not bad,” she said at last. “Not out-and-out bad. But bad compared with people like Susan and her grandmother. Compared with other people, we’re quite good. If you ask me,” said Julia, “we’re sort of half-and-halves. So long as we stay with our own lot, we’re all right. We don’t do any harm. It’s only when we begin to mix with the others—with the real good—that trouble starts. If you married Susan, you’d make her miserable.”

  “You married Susan’s father,” said Bryan swiftly.

  Julia shrugged.

  “That was different. It was the war. If he hadn’t been killed, I should have made him miserable.”

  “You’d have given him a damned good time.”

  “It’s not a good time they want,” said Julia soberly. “They want a different sort of time altogether. I’m rotten at explaining. But I remember when Susan was coming, and after, how good they were to me—you see, you can’t say a thing about them without bringing in good—and yet we couldn’t get on. They really wanted me, too; they wanted to have me for a daughter, and I was so grateful, especially as I’d half-expected to be thrown out on my neck; I thought I could do anything in the world for them. I tried, and they tried; but it didn’t work.”

  The young man moved impatiently. “It’s all dead and gone to him,” thought Julia.

  “I admit all that,” he said; “but you must see it’s a very different thing, my marrying Susan. We’re both young, we’re in love with each other—”

  “What are you going to do with yourself?” interrupted Julia. “You’re a sort of lawyer, aren’t you?”

  “A barrister, darling. At any rate, I’ve been called. But I’m not sure I shall ever practise.”

  “Why not?”

  “Too much of a grind. I don’t want to spend the next ten years grinding. I want to knock about the world and look at things and talk to people. I got five hundred a year from my mother, and if I married Susan I dare say the old man would stump up a bit more. He’ll adore her.”

  Julia’s thoughts flew back to the dressing-room at the Frivolity, and to the recumbent figure of Sir James Relton. Bryan was quite right: to a daughter-in-law like Susan the old rip would be generous indeed. He’d know what he was getting. And then Susan would no doubt have money too; together she and Bryan would be able to knock about—first-class—to their hearts’ content. Only—would Susan’s heart thus be contented? Did she realize what lay in store for her? “I don’t believe they know a thing about each other,” thought Julia.…

  “I see your idea,” continued Bryan tolerantly; “but—if you’ll excuse my saying so—it’s all wrong.”

  “If I had my way,” said Julia, following her own train of thought, “I’d pack you off for a month together and let you find out for yourselves.”

  Bryan grinned.

  “There’s nothing I’d like better, darling.”

  “I’ve no doubt there isn’t,” said Julia sharply. “Why don’t you suggest it to her?”

  “Because—”

  “Because you know she’d send you packing in double-quick time.”

  “Not at all,” corrected Bryan, with a sudden return to dignity. “Because, as I should have thought you’d know, a fellow feels very differently about a girl he’s going to marry and a girl he just wants to … have fun with. He feels—well, scrupulous.”

  Julia looked at him.

  “You ought to have seen your face just now,” she said. “There wasn’t a scruple in sight.”

  The last word, this time, was hers.

  7

  She did not, however, get much pleasure from it. She was ruffled, put out, and more than ever convinced that she would soon have to make herself extremely unpopular. And popularity, to Julia, was the breath of life: she would rather shine at a coffee-stall than eat a good dinner unnoticed. “They’ll never understand,” thought Julia dismally. “They’ll just think I want to throw my weight about.” She sighed deeply. There was another thing—her weight! She was almost certain that her stays felt tighter than they did a week ago. They weren’t the sort that laced, either: they had a good stout zip-fastener, full strength.…

  It was thus in no cheerful frame of mind that Julia ascended the stone steps and met her hostess at the top. Mrs. Packett, however, looked pleased; she held a letter in her hand, and was evidently full of news.

  “Sir William comes next week!” she said. “He’s Susan’s guardian, you know, and so charming!”

  “A man!” thought Julia.

  The black clouds of depression still enveloped her; but she perceived a slight rift.

  Chapter 10

  1

  Every morning, just as Julia herself had done in that long-ago time at Barton, Susan arranged the flowers. But with her it was a labour of love; she picked not only the roses, but wild flowers as well, making what she called “tangles” of them—large, and to Julia’s eye rather straggling, bouquets that died almost the next day. Susan didn’t seem to mind: every morning she went up into the vine and picked more. Some of them were really pretty, thin sprays of forget-me-not with tiny flowers, and clover with big purple heads, and something tall and tough that had bright blue rosettes growing all down the stem. But Susan didn’t stop even there. She actually picked grass, and dead bits of twig.

  “I believe you like the tangles best,” said Julia once, in her astonishment.

  “Yes,” agreed Susan. They were in the old garden-room, next door to the kitchen, where Susan kept her vases amongst the cobwebs and firewood. Bryan lounged in the doorway, idle as Julia: they had both expressed a wish to be of use, but so halfheartedly that even Susan’s good manners had permitted her to refuse.

  “Why?” asked Julia.

  “Because I can do so much more with them.”

  Julia looked at a mass of yellow roses triumphant in their cream jar.

  “They don’t make half so much show as those …?”


  “No,” admitted Susan. “But that—that’s just the roses themselves. I’ve done hardly anything. A tangle makes a show because of me.”

  Involuntarily Julia glanced towards the door; but if this explanation reached Bryan’s ears, he gave no sign. Or perhaps he didn’t realize how complete an explanation it was, or how particularly ominous to a young man who didn’t want to do anything special, but just knock around the world. Their conversation of the previous day was still fresh in Julia’s mind; but there was something else on her mind as well, and she did not, as she no doubt should have done, seize the opportunity of showing Bryan up.

  Instead, she said casually, “Aren’t we expecting another visitor? Your grandmother said something—?”

  Susan looked up from her flowers.

  “That’s Uncle William. He isn’t an uncle really, of course, but I’ve always called him that. He’s a dear. He’s coming the day after to-morrow.”

  “To inspect me,” observed Bryan from the doorway.

  Julia ignored the interruption.

  “Sir William, isn’t he?” she asked.

  “Sir William Waring. He was a great friend of Grandfather’s.”

  That made him seventy at least, thought Julia gloomily. Men of seventy had no interest for her: they were always, in her experience, either doddering or spry; and the spry were the worst.

  “About fifty-one,” said Bryan, who had been watching her face.

  Julia ignored him again.

  “And have you,” she asked Susan cunningly, “an Auntie as well?”

  “Unmarried,” said Bryan.

  Susan glanced at him sharply. “Are you meaning,” said that look—and a very Packett look it was—“to make fun of my mother? I do not suspect you,” said that look, “of deliberate impertinence; but aren’t you a little forgetting yourself?”

  Warm gratitude flooded Julia’s breast; it was sweet to be so protected by one’s daughter, and for a moment that sweetness was all she felt. Then under her pleasure, marring it, stirred a feeling of guilt, almost of shame. For she didn’t deserve such protection: Susan was wrong, and Bryan right. Bryan, because his own thoughts no doubt worked the same way, knew what she, Julia, was getting at: Susan’s lovely mind never even suspected it. Yet from all this complication of wrongs and rights emerged one certain good: Susan had, possibly for the first time, recognized and admitted in her lover something alien to herself.

  “She’s never seen him against his own background,” thought Julia. “It’s queer that I should be it.” She looked at her daughter’s stern face, and at once Susan smiled. It was the most loving smile Julia had ever received from her. “Let her find him out without finding me out too,” prayed Julia selfishly; “I shan’t be here long, O Lord!”

  “Lady Waring,” said Susan, addressing herself pointedly to her mother, “died about ten years ago. I hardly remember her, except that she was very nice. They never had any children: I expect that was why they made such a fuss of me.”

  “It must be dreadful to have no children, with a title,” said Julia seriously. “It seems such waste.”

  Susan laughed. Like a good schoolmistress, she knew that severity should be tempered with kindness, and having properly frozen the atmosphere, she now proceeded to thaw it again.

  “Uncle William isn’t a baronet—he’s a mere knight. He was something in the Admiralty, and they knighted him after the war. Will you have roses for your room, or a tangle?”

  “A tangle,” said Julia. She still liked the roses best, but she wanted to show her gratitude.

  Bryan lounged in and swung himself onto the table.

  “What about me?” he asked. “What about my room?”

  “You’ve flowers enough,” said Susan. “You’ve still the whole bunch we picked yesterday.”

  “But I want one now, from you. Give me a rose, Susan.”

  Flushed, smiling, very pretty, she broke off a yellow bud. Bryan received it with suitable gratitude. But his eyes were not on Susan; they looked over her shoulder, at Julia, with defiance.

  2

  That afternoon, immediately after lunch, Julia set out to look at a tree. Both Susan and Mrs. Packett were able to contemplate trees for minutes together, and her natural spirit of emulation made Julia covet the same power. There must, she thought, be something in it: some esoteric connection between garden-seats and the gentility she so much admired. For her daughter and mother-in-law were by no means isolated examples: every real lady Julia had ever met—most of whom, indeed, she had encountered actually at Barton—showed the same idiosyncrasy. On the Tuesday afternoon, therefore, Julia went out to have a whack at it herself.

  She had selected her object the day before—a small mirabelle plum covered with hard yellowish fruit. Compared with the pines, to be sure, it had something of a twopence-coloured look; but for that very reason Julia felt it would be easier. She could work up to pines later on.

  The mirabelle was situated on the second terrace, and as she walked up the zigzag path, dragging a garden-chair, Julia conscientiously looked about her. It was very pretty, and all the prettier because the vines were badly neglected. Between their rows the ground was green and sweet with clover and wild strawberry: where the wires had broken, full-leaved garlands, tinted turquoise-blue by sulphate, drooped and mingled with the tall flowering grass. All this Julia saw, and to a certain extent enjoyed; but the chair had a knack of hitting against her ankles, and she determined to put off all serious appreciation until she was comfortably seated. The path wound up: at the second angle it passed through a little grove of nut trees, some springing from the edge of the vine, some from the side of a great outcropping rock. There were steps cut in its base, and by peering through the nut boughs Julia could see the dilapidated shell of a tiny pavilion. But she did not allow it to distract her; she mounted steadily on, growing hotter and hotter, to the second terrace and the mirabelle plum.

  “I’m going to bake,” thought Julia, as she set up her chair; and indeed the whole circle of the plain, on whose circumference she was placed, shimmered under a heat mist. In it the roofs and steeples of Belley, the smaller groupings of the villages, showed bright yet insubstantial; here and there, exquisitely distributed over the flat, rose small cone-shaped hills, each neatly girdled by a ring of poplars, and belonging, in that light, less to Agriculture than to Art. It was the landscape of a holy picture, in which saints, not peasants, should have enlivened the foreground; and Julia needed no more than one glance to identify it as a lovely view.

  She then settled back in her chair, looked at the time, and gave her eyes and mind to the plum tree. It leaned gracefully towards her, as though sensible of the compliment; its small hard fruit, already faintly speckled, made her think of bird’s eggs. They would look pretty in a mossy basket—like plovers’; and Julia wondered when they would be ripe. Would the nuts have been ripe, that she passed in the little thicket? From above they looked no more than bushes, the rock was a mere boulder, the pavilion a toy. Its roof peaked up like the roof of a pagoda: a stray architect, long before the Packetts came, had identified it as late eighteenth-century chinoiserie. But Julia’s interest was purely human; what a place, she thought, for assignations! Did Susan ever meet Bryan there, when the house slept and a moon shone through the nut trees? But the bushes about the steps grew thick and undisturbed; Julia very much feared that the pavilion was being wasted. Poor thing, it would probably be quite glad of someone—glad to hear a kiss again, to be filled with delicious stifled laughter and the murmuring of lover’s vows.…

  “I bet it’s seen a thing or two in its time,” thought Julia.

  She looked at her watch. She had been sitting there twelve and a half minutes—practically a quarter of an hour. To stay longer, in that heat, would be little short of dangerous, so she folded her chair again and went down into the cool.

  She was feeling extremely pleased with herself; but pride, notoriously, goes before a fall.

  3

  Returning
by the front door, she found Susan, Bryan and the postman all in a group on the steps.

  “Il y a quelqu’erreur,” Susan was saying firmly. “Bryan, give it back at once.”

  Always ready to join anything that looked like a crowd, Julia paused and craned over his shoulder. The object which Susan so eagerly repudiated was a picture postcard of extreme vulgarity.

  “What things they do think of!” began Julia, much interested; and the next moment felt Bryan’s elbow hard against her ribs. Susan was standing with a stony and averted face.

  Furious with herself, still more furious with Bryan for the very reason that she should have been grateful to him, Julia drew back.

  “Perhaps there isn’t a mistake after all,” said Susan.

  Bryan turned the card over so that Julia could see.

  It was addressed to “Mrs. Packard,” and in the space for correspondence was scrawled a tender message from Fred Genocchio.

  In spite of herself Julia felt the blood rise till she stood blushing like a schoolgirl. Ardently, violently, did she long to deny all knowledge of the thing; yet she had at the same time an obscure feeling that to do so would be to deny Fred himself. As though he had appeared on those steps in person, and she had cut him.…

  So torn, she could not find a word to say; and at last Susan spoke for her.

  “C’est bien,” she said calmly, addressing the postman. “J’ai mal lu. Coming up the vine, Bryan?”

  What with anger, mortification, and sentiment—the emotions called forth, in that order, by Bryan, Susan, and Mr. Genocchio,—Julia was glad to be left alone. The card now lay, in theory still unclaimed, on the stone balustrade; she took it up and bore it to her room. Fred had not written much, only four words; but a whole sonnet sequence could hardly have affected her more. “Still thinking about you, Fred.” He was still thinking about her! Despite her incredible hard-heartedness, amid the excitement and bustle of his professional affairs, he still thought of her! In her gratitude for the sentiment conveyed Julia almost forgave the tactlessness of the vehicle. For after all, it wasn’t so bad. It wasn’t dirty. He probably just chose it to try and cheer her up a bit, in case she was feeling blue.…