Pure Juliet (10 page)

‘What did the Mendelssohn make you think of?'

‘Nothing – I told you, I wasn't listenin'.' She stood up quickly, and stretched. ‘I'm off upstairs. Got some work to do .'Night.'

She was half across the room.

‘At this time of night? For heaven's sake?'

‘Oh – just somethin' I'm tryin' to work out.'

She flashed a real smile at him, and was gone.

The presence in St Alberics of an ancient grammar school, which had so far successfully resisted attempts to turn it into a comprehensive, had encouraged the proprietors of the Pickwick, the Owl and the Waverley to establish their bookshop in the town. They had hoped for a regular flow of customers, drawn from a predominently middle-class background: schoolchildren in search of books to help with their homework and the two levels; old people who had retired to St Alberics to die. The Pickwick, the Owl, and the Waverley sold books. No book tokens; no cards of any kind – birthday, wedding or Christmas; no pencils, no pens, no rubbers, no pocket devices for adding up sums. Just books.

One morning late in November, Juliet darted in with a book in her hand and thrust it at Arthur Robinson, aged nineteen, in charge of the shop while the manageress went out for a coffee.

‘Got anything about this?' she demanded.

If Juliet was a most unusual girl, Arthur Robinson was a not quite ordinary boy. He looked at
The Roots of Coincidence
by Arthur Koestler, which came from St Alberics public library.

‘About coincidence, do you mean?'

A nod.

Arthur's spirits had lifted on seeing that hair come through the door. There was hardly any light in the low sky, and her head caught what there was, and glittered. But her face caused his heart to sink again – even puppy fat and trousers thrust into cowboy boots were better than a face like that. Reg Porter, who boasted that he could make the toughest chick, would have said:
Why the hell does a pretty girl like you want to read about coincidence? It's a coincidence you and me's here together, that's all that matters
.

Oh, Arthur could invent the dialogue all right (he was, like most young men in the British Isles, writing a novel). But he could not speak it. Besides, she might know she was not pretty and one couldn't (at least if one was A. Robinson) go around hurting girls' feelings.

‘There's one by Sir Alister Hardy,' he said. ‘That's about decoincidence, written together with that chap,' nodding towards the book she held.

She hesitated. ‘All right if I look round?'

‘My pleasure,' said Arthur, pleased with his reply.

He returned to his duties. One or two customers came in and were served. An unexpected-looking person went off, obviously gratified, with
The Lesbian Murders
, and someone else parted (gloomily, and with the air of one doing their duty) with £9.99p for
Anxiety and Lust
, by J. Benelheim in paperback.

Half an hour passed.

‘Found anything?' he enquired, appearing round one of the tall, double-sided bookcases that were arranged about the shop. Unerringly, he had approached the one carrying titles on New
Mathematics, Geometry, the New Physics, and similar works dealing with the sciences.

Her months at Hightower, eating nutritious food and enjoying plenty of solitude, had put flesh on Juliet's frame and removed the slight frown, caused by the perpetual straining after that solitude.

She would never, now, have the usual bloom of the late teens, but the aura of some kind of starvation that had hung about her had gone. And, although Miss Pennecuick worried about her darling's small appetite, every day thousands of cubic feet of pure air poured into her narrow lungs, thickening and reddening her seventeen-year-old blood.

‘Come to the movies with me tonight?' blurted Arthur Robinson, affronted at being looked through, and wishing to emulate Reg Porter.

She laughed.

What he afterwards described in his novel as a ‘bloody awful sensation' came down upon Arthur: a mixture of pain somewhere within himself (
It's because I wear glasses
) and an impulse to hit something.

But almost before the pain had time to grow, she said: ‘Can't help laughing. Reminds me of elephants.'

‘
Elephants
?'

The pain subsided. Was she a mental case?

‘Yes . . . My mum, see, she says I'm more interested in elephants than what I am in boys, that was why I laughed. Kind of a joke, really.'

He smiled rather constrainedly.

‘Well, how about it? It's
Star Wars
at the Odeon.'

‘Don't know – I'm stayin' with my auntie, and she likes me in evenin's.'

‘Oh, you don't want to take too much notice of her!' cried Arthur, with that confidence in giving advice bestowed by an, on the whole, contented temperament and an easy home life. ‘Can't you get away without her knowing?'

Juliet considered. ‘S'pose so . . . I know, I'll say I'm going over to Frank's.'

‘Who's Frank?' Was this girl, interesting now to the novelist Arthur rather than to the Arthur who wanted to get level with Reg Porter, already booked?

‘A friend. All right, what time?'

‘Seven, it starts. Meet you outside, twenty-to? We'll have to queue.'

‘All right . . . I must be off.' And she was round the shelf and at the door almost before he could cry:

‘Here – what's your name?'

‘Juliet Slater.' She did not turn round or ask what was his name, and now she had gone.

A solemn, luxuriantly haired male had been a silent observer of their exchange. Having purchased a copy of Freud's
The Future of an Illusion
, he marched home and wrote a short story with which he was pleased. It was about two young people, tormented by unremitting lust, who slept together in a ‘grubby bed-sitter'. They were sadly disappointed by their encounter, which ruined both their lives. It got itself published in a little magazine, and in another realm, certain lesser angels, who should have known better, held their dazzling sides while they laughed.

Arthur arrived at the meeting place in his usual observant state of mind, mildly interested to see how Juliet Slater would ‘turn out'.

This was far from his first date. Although no Reg Porter, he had pleased certain girls since his sixteenth birthday by his good manners and his lack of grabbing, and was going steady with Brenda Lewis, who lived just down his road.

True, there were female admirers of Reg Porter who described Arthur as wet; he did not like this, though he was still quietly determined to be what he was, rather than what others expected him to be. It was because he felt that it would give him more standing with Reg's girls (whom he both feared and found boring, yet wished to impress) that he had, on impulse, invited this unusual Juliet Slater to see
Star Wars
.

He had expected her to arrive late, and had timed the meeting with this possibility in mind, but at twenty-two minutes to seven there she was, caped and hooded, her thin face pink from the bitter wind and her eyes – gosh, they were smashing – glittering.

‘Hi, there,' he said, advancing.

‘Hi,' said Juliet.

Some unconscious calling of youth to youth had prompted her acceptance of Arthur's invitation. At home, she would have had to sit with Auntie, and she had also decided that some fieldwork, some looking out for coincidences in streets and shops and buses, might provide useful material.

Arthur had taken some trouble to get seats in the second most expensive part of the house, but he did not expect Juliet to comment on this and she did not; nor did she look about her with any interest until the audience began crowding in; then her gaze swept over them, and the expression of her eyes changed.

Takes no more notice of me than if I was invisible
, Arthur thought resentfully. Either she
was
mental or she was the rudest girl he had ever met.

‘Don't you like the movies?' he asked at last: the house was full now and an electronic overture, of a nature suitable to the film, was thundering forth.

‘Only been once before, when I was a kid.'

She turned the light-filled eyes on him, and a shiver touched his spine: she certainly was a funny-peculiar girl.

‘Bit unusual, isn't it? Most kids go through a stage of going a lot.'

‘Went with my mum.' (
Oh. Yes, they had that ‘joke' about the elephants. Probably a funny kind of mum, too.
) ‘Took me for a treat, like, but I wasn't all that interested, so she never took me again.'

‘Oh . . . I see . . . What are your . . . hobbies, then?'

By this time Reg Porter would have been in the full flow of a taunting, tantalizing dialogue, laden with hints and double meanings. But with this girl, Arthur's own modest imitation of Reg could not get started.

‘Oh – readin'. I read a lot.'

‘Georgette Heyer, I suppose.'

She was Brenda's favourite author, together with the anonymous presenters of the articles in
Over 21
and
Honey
. (Arthur's attempt to ‘get her on to Jane Austen' had met with a bewildered, ‘But, Artie, it's so dull.')

‘Who's she?'

Arthur stared, and was pleased. Here was a chance for some mind-improving, an exercise which gave him satisfaction.

‘Very popular romantic novelist. We sell about thirty a week of hers, in the shop. But I prefer Jane Austen.' (A part of him also ‘preferred' Isaac Asimov, but he did not think it necessary to mention this.)

‘We did about her at school, Jane Austen.'

‘Where was your school?'

‘Hawley Road Comprehensive – a dump, it was.'

‘In London?'

Nod. ‘I got five As,' she added suddenly, with that satisfaction she always felt when making the statement.

‘Crikey – you must be bright,' commented Arthur respectfully; he had two. ‘What subjects?'

‘Oh – all science. The other stuff wasn't interestin'; I done – did – badly in them.'

‘You must be very bright,' he said again (but mental people sometimes were).

‘S'pose so . . .' a shrug, and at that moment the lights began to dim. The film had been showing for over ten minutes before it engaged Arthur's attention. He saw then that it was a marvellous construction, a miracle of technology. Millions of dollars had been expended upon devices, costumes, conflicts – and not one gleam of imagination, not one, decided Arthur, who was a reader, and proud of it. Watching, he was confirmed in his belief that
Books Are Better.

He moved his hand slowly towards Juliet's, the position of which he had taken care to notice. It gleamed whiter than its actual tint in the immense glare from the screen. Brenda's hands were rosy and had dimples over the knuckles.

Gently he slid his own over it – gosh, it was cold! – not icy, just cool enough to be called cold, and faintly damp; not cosy at all.

She turned and looked at him.

‘What's up?'

Arthur was considerably taken aback.

‘Oh – nothing. Just thought we might hold hands.'

Juliet slid her hand away.

‘Don't want to.'

‘
Why
?' Arthur's whisper was conventionally urgent, concealing relief.

‘Cause you aren't an elephant,' with a quick grin that warmed him towards her, in spite of the snub.

The conventions appeased, Arthur proceeded to enjoy the film by criticizing it, while his thoughts turned occasionally to Juliet. Any girl thanked you for the seats: even Brenda, his steady, did. No. This was the last time, he decided, that he dated Juliet Slater, who, had there been a prize for dropability, would have won by many a head.

But he had his manners, and would keep them until the end.

‘Come for a coffee?' he asked, as the lights and sounds of the film died away, and there began a desperate scrambling among the audience to get out of the place while ‘The Queen' was being pumped forth. ‘We've got time. Your last bus is ten forty-five.'

‘I don't mind.'

But he took her to the cheaper of the little town's two cafés; the evening had cost him quite enough already, and his job at the Pickwick, the Owl and the Waverley was not paid at full-time assistant's rate, as it was only temporary, a fill-up before
he went into a small printing firm, owned by his uncle, in the town, where, he was warned (more frequently than he liked), he would start at the bottom and be expected to work his way up.

‘I'm hungry,' she announced, as they sat down in the hot, noisy, brightly lit place.

‘So'm I, but it'll have to be sandwiches – they take about twenty minutes doing a hamburger in this joint. We'd miss your bus.'

She gave her nod; and presently, when they were hastily eating and gulping a tepid brown fluid, she turned to take a prolonged stare round the room.

‘Nuisance,' she said at last. ‘I don't know . . .'

‘What did you say?' For she had spoken with her mouth full.

‘ . . . don't know . . . see, I wish I knew if all these here kids' – for the café's clientele was largely under eighteen – ‘if anything had happened to them like . . . a coincidence.'

Arthur, chewing hastily, stared at her.
It's like taking a talking animal out, or one of her blasted elephants
, he thought. Yet as her eyes fixed steadily upon his own, there was in them a light that never shone in those of any animal.

‘You'd have to ask them, I suppose,' he said gently. (
Or a very small kid. She's like that too. But five A levels!
)

‘Can't stick talkin' to people.'Sides, take me all the week.'

How precious time was to her! He had noticed that: she darted everywhere, her walk was almost a run; she seemed to grudge the passing of every minute.

‘You're crazy about coincidences, aren't you?' he said.