Judith

by Noel Streatfeild

  Eunice fixed Marion firmly with her eyes.

  “Stop beating about the bush, Mrs. Charles Winster. You didn’t ask me to luncheon just for the pleasure of seeing me, you want something. What is it?”

  Marion sighed.

  “I wish it was as simple as that. I suppose what I was hoping for was advice. You know just how I’ve felt that Charles and I haven’t had a child, the doctor says it still could happen, but I don’t reckon it will. Although I’ve only recently met Judith, in my mind I have always thought of her as a daughter, and prayed that one day she would come to us. Now she’s here and I’ve failed her. Whatever it is she needs, Eunice, I’m not giving it to her. She doesn’t seem to want anything, not even a good time. You’ve got girls. How would you help Judith if she were yours?”

  Eunice lit a cigarette while she thought about Judith.

  “Maybe she needs something to do. Most unmarried girls in her age group are working.”

  “I thought of that, but Charles says she can’t. She’s a British visitor and hasn’t got permission to work.”

  “You can get round that.”

  “Not with Charles I couldn’t, he would drop dead rather than break a law.”

  Eunice came to a decision.

  “Then you must make work for her. From the times I’ve seen her I would say what that girl is searching for is not only affection but to feel needed. I have it. It’s April, why not take her to your beach house?”

  Charles and Marion had built a cottage on the Connecticut coast. All through the summer they spent Saturdays and Sundays there, and lived there when there was a heat wave. As Eunice spoke a vision of the cottage rose before Marion’s eyes. The living-room took up most of the house, with great windows looking out over the ocean. The kitchen was part of the living-room, divided off by folding screens. There was a wide porch where she and Charles ate their meals. There was seldom a day, however hot, when there was not a breeze. There was never a moment, day or night, which had not its surf accompaniment. Marion worshipped the place, she would like to take Judith there, but there were difficulties.

  “Charles would have to commute, and that kills him.”

  “Well, leave Charles in New York.”

  “Who would look after him?”

  “What’s the matter with Rose?”

  Marion thought about Rose, her coloured help. What was the matter with Rose? Nothing really, only somehow she had never left Rose in charge.

  “It’s quite a lot of work opening the place up after the winter. I usually take Rose along.”

  Eunice leant across the table.

  “Don’t take my advice if you don’t want to. But I would use Judith instead of Rose, and I wouldn’t do too much myself, I would act kind of helpless and let Judith feel you need her.”

  Marion smoked for a while in silence, turning over the fors and againsts. Then she stubbed out her cigarette.

  “I’ll try it. Oh, Eunice, that poor little girl! I do pray God that it works.”

  * * * * *

  At first the beach house seemed no more of a success than the New York apartment. Then Marion thought she detected a slight easing up in Judith’s manner. She had worked hard at spring-cleaning, and had seemed to enjoy it. Marion’s warm-toned voice had purred loving words. “Thank you darling, that’s just wonderful.” “You certainly are good around a house, Judith, I could never have gotten everything done without you.” “I don’t know about you, Judith, but I have had the best time in years. It’s been fun being on our own.” Charles, arriving each Friday night, taught Judith to drive the run-about and during the lessons for seconds it had been as if Judith were twelve again. “That’s my little sweetheart.” “Who’s got a smart daughter? You might have been driving for years.” In return he got smiles, and flashes of enthusiasm.

  “Oh Daddy, fancy me driving a car!” Then, as suddenly and apparently as inexplicably, she retired back into herself, a strained look on her face. It was outside Charles’s powers of imagination to guess that Judith was praying to be protected from his love. “Don’t let me start loving again. Please help me not to love him.”

  Judith found it hard to hold her heart against Marion. Marion was new, she was a stepmother, and she had never known a stepmother before. It was difficult to resist someone who was so like what she had pretended Avis was like. Since they had come to the beach house Marion was also a bit like Grandmother, she had the same way of giving her things to do, and making them hers. Bounding with health, busy from morning to night, it was impossible always to be on guard. Sitting on the steps leading to the beach Judith would find herself describing to Marion what had happened when she went shopping. Imitations tripped off her tongue, warmth and vivacity lit her up, then something, Marion’s too keen interest or too amused laugh at a perfect imitation, and Judith would pause, pull herself together and, though she went on talking, it was as if she was a sponge out of which all water had been squeezed.

  “But she’s better, truly she is,” Marion told Charles. “There’s something holding her back, if only I knew what it was. Maybe I ought to take her into New York for Mr. Prist to see her again.”

  “Over my dead body,” said Charles. “Take her in the fall if you must, but why undo the good you’ve done? She’s still not the little Judith I knew, but there are times when she certainly is a whole lot better.”

  Mr. Prist had advised Marion that England, and Judith’s relatives, should be discussed openly, otherwise there was a danger that she would mentally close the door on England as she might close a door shutting out an unpleasant sight. This would increase her inhibitions and make her more of an introvert than she already was. In the New York apartment it had been impossible to carry out these instructions. Letters came from England regularly, from Mercy and Miss Simpson, and there was one from Charlotte, and another from Lucy, but you had, as Marion told Charles, to be tougher than she was to question Judith about them. Judith seemed to have got inhibitions about everything to such an extent that the sight of an English stamp on an envelope took the colour from her cheeks and brought a slight stammer to her speech, and the friendliest query about their contents sent her scurrying back into what Marion called her closed-clam manner.

  But at the beach house it was different. It was one of Judith’s chores to collect the letters from the mail-box, and somehow, perhaps because she was unused to mail-boxes and they seemed more anonymous than a postman, she definitely unbuttoned about her letters, and one day actually of her own free will produced family news.

  “I’ve had a letter from Cynthia, she’s the youngest Carlyle cousin. Robert’s book is going to be published. Cynthia’s awfully surprised because she didn’t know he had written a book, but I did.”

  Marion carefully hid from Judith that she had heard of Robert, though not as a writer.

  “Isn’t that just wonderful! Isn’t Cynthia proud of her brother?”

  Judith was still quite relaxed.

  “She didn’t really write about that. She wants to be an air hostess, she’s always changing what she wants to be. She wants to know if the ones I’ve seen are air-sick. She says she thinks Catherine is going to be engaged.”

  Marion, if she had heard Catherine mentioned, had forgotten the name.

  “Well, isn’t that exciting? Does Cynthia say who he is?”

  Across the years Judith heard Catherine’s voice.

  “Whoever Robert marries has got to have a brother for me, and if possible another one for Cynthia.” Evidently even people as sure of themselves as Catherine either changed or did not get what they wanted.

  “Only that he’s rich, and that she and Robert don’t like him.”

  “I guess brothers and sisters often don’t take to the bride or groom.” Marion did not want to lose the subject of the Carlyles while Judith would still talk about them, for they were, she knew, at the core of her troubl
es. It was the Carlyle Aunt about whom Miss Simpson had spoken so bitterly. It was in the Carlyle house that boy had been found in Judith’s bed. Marion cast round for another safe question.

  “When you hear the engagement is announced we must choose a really nice present.”

  Now what, thought Marion, could be wrong with that remark, but wrong it had certainly been. As she watched, animation died from Judith’s face, and back came her clam look. All Judith said was “That will be very nice, thank you.” But fear gnawed at her. She could not send a wedding present. Catherine would certainly send it back. Even talking of a wedding present brought the Hampstead house too close. The row about Robert. The things Aunt Beatrice had said that last dreadful morning. Mrs. Welsh’s sobs. Lance’s screamed “You bitch, you”. Why, oh why had she spoken about Catherine? Clutching her solar plexus Judith went outside to sit on the porch.

  Because Judith seemed happy at the beach house Marion and Charles decided to forgo their usual summer trip and to stay where they were. A second reason was a letter Charles had received from Edward. A young doctor whom Edward did not know personally, but was a friend of a friend, had won a scholarship which had given him a year’s study in America. His name was Philip Ironside. Before returning to England he was trying to see something of America. Edward had given his friend Charles’s office address in case the boy turned up in New York. If he did would Charles give him a drink or a lunch?

  “I told the office, the telephone operator and the janitor about him,” Charles explained to Marion, “and said if he called up, or came round, he should be sent straight on here.”

  Marion knew from experience how Charles clutched at visiting British, building a temporary outpost of Great Britain in the apartment, bar or restaurant, or wherever he entertained them. Judith was in the only guest room, which meant that either Charles or the visitor would have to sleep on the porch, which was inconvenient, but she did not let Charles know this.

  “Well, isn’t that nice! If this Doctor Ironside comes, with you and Judith around as well, maybe we ought to fly the Union Jack.”

  When Charles arrived at the beach house for his vacation during July he brought with him two small half-dead turtles.

  “Someone left them in the office. I guess they haven’t eaten for over a week, I don’t suppose there is much hope of saving the little fellows, but it’s worth a try.”

  The turtles, christened Bessie and Ben, were given to Judith to look after. For two days the little things were so lifeless it was doubtful if they could be saved. Then the third evening, when Judith brought them some food, a small head was raised waiting for her. It is difficult not to get attached to any creature nursed back to health, and Judith unconsciously grew to love her turtles. It had not struck her when they were put into her charge that it was possible to be fond of creatures so dull and lacking in personality, but as they came back to health they developed what to her were personalities and loving ways. As the days passed she came to spend any spare time she had watching them, and, though she was not aware of it, talked of them constantly.

  “Well, I suppose loving a turtle is better than loving nobody,” Marion said to Charles, “but when I think of all the nice boys around it surely seems a waste.”

  The day after Judith’s nineteenth birthday there was a telephone call from Charles’s office. Doctor Philip Ironside had called up and was on his way. Marion refused to be flustered.

  “You go and meet him, Charles. I’ll figure out where he’s to sleep.”

  The result of Marion’s figuring was that she borrowed a camp bed from neighbours called Swartz, who brought it over in their wagon, and helped her to set it up on the porch. Not knowing what was to happen Judith had placed the turtle tank on the edge of the porch. Mr. Swartz, backing in with the bed, failed to see the tank, which fell into the sea. When Judith came in, though Marion had fished with a shrimp net, she knew the turtles would not be seen again. Although she thought it foolish for a nineteen-year-old to have pets more suited to a six-year-old, with a great effort she accepted that it was so, and broke the bad news to Judith as if she had to report the death of a much-loved dog. The result of her words was to her as moving as if she had been at Lourdes and witnessed a miracle. Judith under her eyes broke up—those were the only words she found to describe what she saw. Her face crumpled, tears flowed, and suddenly she was in Marion’s arms, clinging to her, and sobbing.

  “It’s my fault, they’ve gone because I loved them too much. Don’t let me love you, Marion.”

  There was no time before Charles and the guest arrived for Marion to search out what was meant. Instead she drew on her bottled-up maternal love, and sprayed it over Judith.

  “Marion’s here, darling. Don’t hold out on me, honey. You’ve had terrible times, but you are safe home now, you are Daddy’s and my little girl, the little girl I always wanted and never had . . .”

  When Charles ushered in Philip Ironside, Marion, having greeted him, lowered her voice, but even so rapture sang through it.

  “The most wonderful thing has happened, well, sad really, but it has worked out wonderfully. The Swartzes brought over the bed, and Fred Swartz pushed against Ben and Bessie. They fell right into the ocean. I had to tell Judith, and of course it broke her up. But imagine, Charles, she cried right here in my arms.”

  “Where is she now?” Charles asked.

  “In her room. I told her to relax a while on her bed, and she’ll need to do something to her face before she meets our guest.” She looked at Philip and registered he was six foot, very reserved and British-looking. “You’ll have heard of Judith, she won’t be long, she has been very, very brave.”

  “Who are Ben and Bessie?” Philip asked.

  Charles, who had told Philip that Judith was nineteen, was about to make an evasive reply, but Marion forestalled him. To her the young visiting Britisher was nothing, and Judith’s breakdown in her arms everything.

  “Little turtles.” Then she turned again to Charles. “I’m just so happy you’ll never know. Imagine, after all these months, her crying here in my arms!”

  * * * * *

  Philip’s Father was a doctor and the son of a Methodist minister. The family came of Quaker stock, and this blood was strong. Indulgence, in any form, was anathema to him. Philip’s Mother was a Scot, Mary, the only daughter of a granite-tough family who valued learning above food. Mary’s father worked as a shunter on the railway, and saw no reason to aim higher merely because two of his sons were barristers, the third a research chemist and his daughter had married a doctor. Philip and his brothers were reared on the combined principles of both parents. Education should not be taken as a right, it should be fought for, therefore each step meant a scholarship. A boy who could not win a scholarship should accept that he must work with his hands, and be thankful there was a useful place in the world for him. Philip and his brothers won their scholarships. Each in turn, first on the small pocket money and later the minute allowance their Father thought would suffice without indulgence, shoved up their chins and pushed their way doggedly, proudly and with honour through public schools and universities.

  Philip, a true sprig of the tree from which he sprang, arrived in America raw and narrow, with his shoulders squared, ready to show the upstart Americans they could not put anything over him. Now, a year later, though still a sprig of the family tree, still intensely British, he had so far unbent as to admit there was much in America and in Americans of which he approved, and he had advanced so far as to accept the possibility, that in some fields, American medicine was ahead of medicine at home.

  Charles had not wanted Philip to pre-judge Judith, so all he had said in the car was that his daughter was staying with them, that she was English, and nineteen. Philip had been pleased. He admired American girls’ looks, but those he had met had terrified him. Their easy acceptance that they were girls, and he a man, and so were meant to have
fun together, was contrary to his upbringing. Approach should be made slowly, no forward step taken without careful consideration; there should be avoidance of too close contact for that could lead to familiarities, and familiarities were indulgence. Because he had been so unapproachable and apparently playing hard-to-get, he had been sought after. It was, he thought, very difficult to behave with propriety in America. It would be a relief to meet an English girl who would not only not expect to be made love to but would probably tell him off if he tried to.

  Prepared for a hearty English no-nonsense girl, it was dismaying to Philip to hear about Ben and Bessie. The American girls he had met might have been frightening, but they were young women, not children. He wished, if anyone had to behave so foolishly, it did not have to be the only English girl he had met in America. He wished still more that if Judith wanted to behave like a child she would mourn in private. Relaxing on her bed! Been very brave! Because of Judith he took a dislike to the household, which sounded to him maudlin and unhealthy. Charles had said in the car he must stay for some days, but he would get out of that. He could easily find he was expected somewhere else.

  Judith, at that first meeting, scarcely noticed Philip. She had been terrified by the death of Ben and Bessie; it was another proof, if proof were needed, that anything she loved disappeared, but it was what had happened afterwards that blinded her. She had known she had got fond of the turtles but she had not thought Marion knew, and had supposed, if she had guessed, she would think it rather odd. Loving dogs, cats and horses was usual, but only children and sometimes very old people loved pets like canaries, goldfish and turtles. But Marion had known, had not thought it queer; she had understood why she should not have loved them, should not love anybody. Marion had said she had had a terrible time. Marion said she was safe . . . safe. With that word spoken, how could Judith notice a tall, sandy-haired young doctor, who stared at her as if she were something he was looking at through his microscope?