Latter End

CHAPTER 41

Julia dropped three pairs of stockings into a drawer and shut them in. She was back in London again, and she felt hot and tired, and quite desperately flat. Unpacking is a slightly less sordid occupation than packing, but there isn’t much in it, and whether you are going or coming, you always leave something behind. Julia had left her toothpaste, and that meant she would have to go out and buy some. When you have recently been living through a tragedy in a state of extremely high tension there is something paltry about being depressed about toothpaste.

She had opened all the windows but the room felt hot and airless. There seemed to be an extraordinary amount of dust. She got out a mop and a duster and began to clean up. By the time she had finished she wondered whether it wouldn’t have been better to leave the dust where it was-such a lot of it seemed to have collected on her hands and face.

She had made a start with the hands, because it’s no use washing your face if your hands are going to come off on it in damp black patches, when the door-bell rang. She took a hasty look in the glass. The face was dirty, but not so very dirty-more, as it were, submerged in a general murk. Or perhaps it wasn’t dirty at all, perhaps that was just the way she looked. Anyhow she decided that it would have to do. She dried the partly washed hands, observed that they left a black mark on the towel, and went to the door.

Antony, beautifully tidy, stepped inside, gazed at her with mild surprise, and enquired why she was spring-cleaning. Of course it would be Antony! If she sat waiting for him in her most becoming dress, for ninety-nine days out of a hundred she wouldn’t see hair, hide or hoof of him, but on the hundredth day, when she was inked to the elbows and more or less negroid with dust, the flat would draw him like a magnet. She said,

“You always come when I’m filthy-but I was just getting it off.”

“There must have been a great deal to start with.”

“Well, there was. You’ll have to wait-unless-I suppose you wouldn’t like to go out and get me a tube of toothpaste? I’ve left mine.”

“I’d hate to, but I will.”

It would give her time to change. She really was perfectly clean and tidy by the time he came back.

He produced the toothpaste with a flourish.

“Bridegroom to bride!”

If he expected Julia to laugh he was disappointed. She took the tube away into the cubby-hole which concealed the bath, and came back with one-and-tenpence-halfpenny in a hand still damp and pink from scrubbing.

He said, “What’s this for?”

“The toothpaste. Take it, please.”

“Darling, it was a handsome present-bridegroom to bride-part of the worldly goods with which I’m going to thee endow.”

There was rather a thundery pause. Julia had the sort of temper which can take the bit between its teeth. It was touch-and-go whether it got away with her now.

The moment passed. She put the coins down on the edge of the writing-table and said,

“Just as you like. You can call it a Christmas present in advance, then you won’t have to wander round wondering what you can give me in three months’ time.”

Antony hit back rather hard.

“Do I give you a Christmas present?”

She said, “Not since our Christmas tree days.”

Why had she said that? The words were no sooner out than it came over her with a rush how immeasurably good those days had been, and how immeasurably far removed. It was like looking back at a small bright picture a long way off. She turned very pale, and heard Antony say with an odd note in his voice,

“Are we obliged to talk standing up? You look just about all in.”

She was glad enough to feel the sofa under her and a cushion at her back. For one idiotic moment she hadn’t quite known what she was going to do. She might have burst into tears-she might have buckled at the knees. Either alternative simply too humiliating to bear thinking about. She found herself saying,

“It’s too hot for housework.”

Antony was frowning. They had not met since that early morning funeral a week ago. Frightful! Why couldn’t she think about something else? Nobody who was there would ever want to think about it again. But of course that was just the sort of thing you couldn’t get out of your head. She wished Antony hadn’t come to see her. She wished that he had come and gone. She wished she could feel quite sure that she wasn’t going to cry. There wasn’t anything she could do about it.

Antony broke in on a note of sharp exasperation.

“My darling child, the ship isn’t a total wreck. There are some survivors-you, for instance, and I. Is it necessary for you to look at me as if we were not only dead but buried? Snap out of it! How did you leave the other survivors?”

He was pleased to observe that a little of her colour came back. She said in a hurry,

“I’m sorry-I don’t mean to do it. If my eyes were blue it would be all right.”

“Darling, you’d look foul with blue eyes.”

“I know. But I shouldn’t give people the pip when I looked at them. I’m always getting told about it, and it’s so difficult to remember.”

Antony laughed.

“I shouldn’t worry. It’s the clutch-at-the-heartstrings touch that does us in. Nobody really likes having their heartstrings clutched. An occasional smile assists us to bear up. Try it! How’s Jimmy?”

She answered with relief.

“Oh, definitely better. He isn’t going to keep Lois’ money, you know.”

“I didn’t think he would.”

“No. He’s written to the solicitors and told them to make arrangements for handing it back to the Doubledays as soon as they get probate. That’s set him up a lot. And then Minnie’s awfully good with him. She keeps flying to him with things which can’t possibly be decided without the superior male intelligence-new washers for the bathroom taps, how to word an advertisement for a butler, how much extra on the laundry bill is five per cent, and will he please come at once and remove the largest spider ever from the sink in the housemaid’s cupboard, because Mrs. Huggins has gone, and she and Ellie just can’t cope. It’s what she used to do, and it’s frightfully good for him. Of course he ought to have married her years ago.”

“I don’t suppose he ever thought of it.”

“I’m sure he didn’t. But just think what a lot we’d all have been saved if he had. This time, I don’t mind telling you, I’m going to make it my business to see that he does think.”

Antony laughed, but he didn’t stop frowning.

“You’d better leave them alone.”

“Oh, I shan’t do anything yet. They’ll be all right as long as Ellie and Ronnie are there, but when it comes to Ronnie going off to his job and Ellie going with him, then someone will have to point out to Jimmy that Minnie can’t possibly stop on and keep house for him. Too, too compromising.”

“Rubbish!”

“Oh, no-not in a village. Besides, all that matters is that Jimmy should be induced to think. She’ll make him frightfully happy, and he deserves something to make up for all this. So does she.”

“Women haven’t any consciences at all. All they think about is getting the wretched man where they want him- in the bag.”

“It’s an awfully nice bag,” said Julia, her voice deep and soft.

“Oh, yes-that’s the way you get us into it. All the comforts of home and a ring through the nose-a nice strong, unbreakable wedding ring. You’ve had millions of years of practice, and you’re awfully good at it, darling.”

When Antony said “darling” something took hold of Julia’s heart and twisted it. The pain made her sit up straight and say,

“Well, I haven’t a bag, and I haven’t a ring-your nose is perfectly safe. And the sooner you tell everybody that we’re disengaged, the better I shall be pleased.”

Antony put up a finger.

“Temper, darling! Always count up to a hundred before you speak. It may slow conversation down a little, but all the best medical authorities agree that our lives are shortened by the fevered rush of the machine age.”

“In spite of which everyone lives a great deal longer than they used to. Do you know that Mr. Pickwick was only forty-three, and they all talk about him as a dear old gentleman?”

“Darling, this is not a Dickens Society. And we are not discussing Mr. Pickwick. At the moment when you dragged him across the trail I was about to go down gracefully on one knee and ask you to name the day. After which you would of course blush becomingly, swoon gracefully, and recover sufficiently to consult an almanac.”

So far from blushing, Julia was quite monumentally pale. She said,

“I wish you would stop talking nonsense. There is no point in our going on pretending to be engaged.”

Antony agreed cheerfully.

“None whatever. Engagements are damnable anyhow. I don’t think you’ve been attending, darling. I wasn’t asking you to go on being engaged, I was asking you to marry me.”

Her eyes were turned on him with a flash of anger.

“And I was telling you that I simply won’t go on with this pretence any longer! I wouldn’t have done it for anyone but Jimmy!”

He met the flash with rather a searching look.

“Oh, it was for Jimmy, was it?”

“You know it was! And there’s no need for it any longer, so will you please let everybody know.”

He leaned forward, his hands clasped about his knee.

“Are you supposed to have jilted me, or am I supposed to have jilted you? I’d better know, hadn’t I?”

Julia said, in a composed voice,

“Neither. We’re breaking it off because 1 think being married would interfere with my writing. But of course we’re going to go on being friends.”

Antony burst out laughing.

“The great Career motif! Darling, it’s quite dreadfully out of date. The modern woman can take a husband, several careers, a family, and a staffless home all in her stride, without turning a hair. But I think we’d better have a service flat-I seem to remember Manny being rude about your cooking.”

“I do all the right things, but it turns out like lead,” said Julia gloomily. “Look here, Antony, it’s no good dodging I won’t go on with this sham.”

He was silent for a moment. Then he came nearer and took her hands. She had said that she was hot, but he found them icy cold. He held them rather hard and said,

“What about the real thing, Julia?”

Where Julia got enough breath from, she had no idea, but she said,

“No.”

“Is that for me, or for you?”

She said, “Both.”

Because everything in her was shaking, the word shook too. She jerked at her hands to get them away, and he let them go.

“You don’t love me? Or I don’t love you?”

“We don’t-neither of us does-”

“Darling, you lie in your teeth! I love you-very much. Didn’t you know?”

“You don’t!”

“Don’t I? Do you remember, I asked you what you would say if I told you I loved you passionately. All right, I’m telling you now. I love you-passionately-and every other way. If you weren’t colossally stupid you’d have known without my telling you. Come here and stop talking!”

It was some time later that she said in a protesting voice,

“You simply haven’t bothered to ask me whether I care for you. Perhaps I don’t.”

“Then you oughtn’t to be letting me kiss you.”

“Don’t you want to know?”

Antony kissed her.

“Darling, I’m not colossally stupid.”