Pure Juliet (23 page)

‘Fancy – I'd like to see that,' the face said shyly.

‘I hear it's going to be sold to some cranky society for making us all eat boiled grass. Of course, it would have been more suitable to keep it up, but nowadays, even for a wealthy man . . .' She shrugged.

Rose was beginning to feel faint apprehension for Julie's future. Living in a lot of barns and eating boiled grass! Perhaps that twenty thousand pounds wasn't real. Yet this old lady seemed sensible enough, if she did wear a queer hat too young for her. The bride was dressed proper. But it was a funny set-up, and Rose was glad George hadn't come. She would never have heard the last of it.

And no carpets! Ten minutes later, standing by a long table laden with unfamilar foods, she thought she had never heard of such a thing. She stared slowly at the thirty animated, and mostly elderly, faces surrounding her. Several of them glanced at her curiously. She ate another of those little things: tasted of ham and cream this time and very good it was; and she wondered how ever she was to get back to that station and catch the train in time to get George's tea.

No one spoke to her. And there was Julie, standing in a corner and looking miles away,
Just as she always had from the time she was a kiddie. No more manners than a bluebottle
, her mother thought resignedly. But she also felt a faint bond of companionship with her child.
Two of us – both out of it
.

‘Hullo, Mrs Slater, my wife and I are so pleased that you could come.' It was the bridegroom, coming up to her with the bride beside him.
Nice face he had, really, and her silk was real, you could tell
.
Ever so happy she looked, too
.
Ah well, let her
.
It didn't last long
, and Rose's eyes slowly moistened.

Clemence was getting used to this break with convention, the newly married pair circulating among the guests instead of the latter filing before them. ‘I'm sorry Mr Slater couldn't come,' she said, making her manner warmer than usual because Juliet's mother was tearful.

She was a little shaken by the unexpectedly firm reply: ‘Oh him. He never wants to do anything what other people do.' (
Just like someone else I know
, mused the new Mrs Pennecuick.) ‘'Sides, he's workin' today. This here's good stuff, Mr Pennecuick,' holding up her glass of the wine which had temporarily banished her shyness. ‘Home-made, is it?'

‘Yes – from parsnips – I'm glad you like it.'

‘Fancy – I've seen home-made wine on the television but haven't never had it before.'

Followed a pause – filled with the cheerful screeching of that ugliest of sounds, the human voice in volume, and the smell of delicious conventional food which Frank had arranged to be served, to please his bride.

‘I'm sure General Penley— Would you care to meet him?' Frank began, but Rose's shrinking away and her mutter showing him that she would not, he ended with: ‘Well, perhaps if you will excuse us . . .' And the two moved away.

General Penley had got hold of Edmund Spencer. The General, red-faced and blue-eyed and typical-looking, had a shy reverance for poets; Edmund, who had at first refused Frank's invitation, had a far from shy dislike for what he thought of as blimps.

There was much to satisfy the General at young Pennecuick's wedding: food was very good; this stuff was actually drinkable; bride looked pretty and happy – but, nevertheless, there was something . . . General Penley, as not seldom, was unable to express his thoughts, but it was there all right. Peculiar, cranky, no carpet, no
comfort
. . . all those weeds in glass bottles . . .

Edmund could have told him that there were present those rarest of luxuries: beauty of light, flowers that not been tortured into blooming in the wrong season, and true love. But the mere thought of saying this to anyone present except the bridegroom sent up the corners of his long, beautiful mouth.

‘You known Pennecuick long?' the General asked, looking around at the faces familiar from many a conversation about gardening or gadgets over neighbourly dinner tables.

‘Yes.' Edmund's voice, always faint from nervous exhaustion, was now nearly inaudible.

‘School together?'

‘No. Frank was at Harrow.'

‘Ah. You're not a Harrovian.'

The General was not inquisitive – he genuinely felt admiration for this titchy red-haired chap who proclaimed himself a poet, a creature whom the General had always wanted (behind his satisfaction with his military career) to be.

‘Where were you, then?'

‘I don't expect you've heard of it . . . sir.'

The chap's accent made the last word sound as though he were a waiter. Suit made him look rather like one too: hired probably.

‘One of the lesser-known places, eh?'

‘The Charles Darwin School, Luton,' Edmund invented desperately; some fifteen years of kindly interrogation by the gentry had not given him enough confidence to relate the details of an education which had ended at fourteen.

‘Oh – ah – yes – never heard of it, I'm afraid – excuse me, someone over there I must talk to . . .' and the General marched away. Pity. He had hoped the chap might talk about poetry.

Those corners of Edmund's mouth turned down slightly in a bitter smile.

‘Oh hullo, Mum.'

‘Julie, I got to be going. That train goes at four, and you know what Dad is if his tea's not ready.'

‘Oh all right.' She glanced round. ‘Eddy, here's my mum wants to get to the station. You'll take her, won't you?'

Edmund looked fleetingly at Mrs Slater's bulk.

‘I – don't think your mother . . . how do you do?' with a bow ‘ . . . would be comfortable on the back of my motorcycle.'

‘Oh no!' Rose exclaimed, in more than dismay.

‘But the cars are waiting. If you'll come with me,' smiling, ‘I'll find you a nice one.'

‘All right then. Cheerio, Mum,' nodded Juliet. She had dragged off her hat and hung it on the wall above a cluster of peacock's feathers, and her freshly washed hair rayed about sallow cheeks unbecomingly flushed by parsnip wine.

‘Cheerio, Julie.'

‘Give my love to Bertie-bird.'

‘Him! He's cheeky, that's what he is. So long, then. See you, Ju.'

‘P'raps I'll send you a postcard,' Juliet smiled.

‘That'll be the day,' her mother retorted, and waddled away after the little chap. He seemed all right, but she wouldn't half be glad to get home.

Julie seemed just the same, for all her new clothes and the money. Leaning back in the luxurious car, surveying the pretty country going by, Rose could not decide whether this was a comfort or not. One thing she did know: she herself was ever so lonely. But she was used to that.

At half-past three Clemence came out of Frank's austere bedroom wearing the dove-coloured suit and frilled blouse of broderie anglaise that had, in defiance of convention, been hanging for the past week in his wardrobe. Her brown curls clustered under a close cap of cream silk adorned with a single white camellia, and she looked calmly happy.

Bless her, she's been such a good girl, earning for us both and putting up with my crotchets
, thought her grandmother (who did
not really believe that she had any crotchets),
and thank heaven I need not worry about money again as long as I live
.

‘So odd,' many of the guests were muttering. ‘Not going abroad . . .'

‘I know. I did suggest it, but
he
came up with some nonsense about there being quite enough new impressions to absorb without having to gape at
sights
,' Frank's new grandmother-in-law explained, not minding the oddness because it was not caused by lack of funds. ‘But there you are.'

General Penley so far forgot social customs and military discipline as to grunt, and Mrs Massey felt, with gratification, that he shared her views.

There was the usual, always touching, little ceremony with the bouquet. Then the big car glided away, with Clemence's face, made charming with happiness, laughing through the window.

The only discord was provided by the two little unliberated bridesmaids, sulking in a corner because no photographs had been taken, and their prolonged drive home would cause them to miss
Star Trek
.

Edmund and Juliet stood at the door of Frank's house after the last guest had gone, with the July dusk hardly begun; silent, gazing at the elongated, lazy shadows lying across the grass damp with dew. Edmund at last observed that there was all that washing-up.

‘Aren't you goin', then?' she asked, and he shook his head.

He was curious about his companion, and did not feel at ease with her, but who did he feel at ease with? Certainly not his current bed-partner.

‘Didn't Frank tell you? I'm staying here for the week while they're away.'

‘Never said a thing. Where they goin', then?'

‘To my cottage on the Essex border. It's near Bury St Edmunds.'

‘Have I got to cook for you?' Juliet demanded angrily, and he laughed.

‘I probably cook a damn sight better than you do, and I'm used to looking after myself, and I prefer it.'

She began to move away, saying over her shoulder: ‘That's all right then. S'pose you wouldn't like to do the washing-up as well?' with a gleam of mischief towards the small red-haired man standing on Frank's threshold.

‘I'll do it tomorrow,' he said mildly. ‘Goodnight. See you when I do.'

She was already halfway across the long-grassed, buttercup-spangled meadow and did not reply. But as she opened her own door, and at once the waves of the strange seas of thought began to sound within her, her last thought was:
We'll get on all right, him and me
.

Juliet and Edmund existed amiably enough by the simple method of each doing what they liked, without consulting the other.

Edmund, mindful of certain instructions from Frank about the care of this unique creature, did venture once to tap on her door and call, ‘Juliet, how long since you ate?' to be rebuffed with an absent-sounding snarl: ‘I'm all right. Got some cheese. And watercress.'

However, on the evening of the day on which he had thus been rebuffed, she appeared at the door of the Cowshed.

‘Got any supper? . . . Hullo.'

‘Oh, hullo. Yes, of course, stew. Just ready. Come on in.'

‘I got up, see,' explained Juliet, as she seated herself, rather carefully, at the table, ‘and me legs give way and down I went. Me head felt funny, too.'

‘Starvation,' he muttered, ladling out mutton and dumplings.

She pulled up her jeans and revealed a thin leg, faintly sheened with hair and showing a long scratch, seeping blood. ‘Done that on me biscuit tin.'

‘Your what? You'll need some TCP,' he said, paling. (He had been known to faint at the sight of blood.)

‘I'll finish this first,' voraciously eating. ‘Me biscuit tin what I keep me notes in.'

‘Oh.'

The meal continued in silence.

Edmund felt that he should have been aware, as a healthy youngish male, of their isolation in the midst of the flower-starred fields; in fact he felt nothing but a sense of how odd she was, and a bored impulse about telling her to eat sensibly in order to keep up strength for her ‘work'.

Glancing at her from under his long reddish eyelashes, he wondered if she were slightly dotty. Was the ‘work' the obsession of a mentally deficient?

On the fifth day of the Pennecuick honeymoon, Juliet retched on coming in to supper for only the second time. Edmund turned from Frank's small iron range, where he was putting the final touches to a ratatouille, and snapped:

‘You are— It's just bloody selfishness.'

Juliet stared.

‘How j'oo mean?' she said at last, sitting down as she absently retched again, and still staring at him.

‘Being such a nuisance.' He poured the rich mess into her soup plate. ‘Starving yourself until you're sick with hunger, worrying me and—'

‘Who wants you to worry?' Her eyes, those of a hungry child, were now on the food.

‘God knows I don't want to, but Frank asked me to keep an eye on you.'

‘I never used to feel sick, like, when I was hungry,' she said, with her mouth full.

‘It's probably because your health is better. Your body got used to regular meals at Hightower.'

The word ‘body' sent him off into a fantasy about kissing her. He felt not the faintest impulse to do anything of the sort, but he did wonder what effect it would have. Suddenly he laughed.

‘What's funny?' She did not look up from her plate.

‘Do you
ever
think about whether you're inconveniencing or hurting other people?'

‘Why should I?'

‘Thanks – at least now we know where we are. By the way, what is it that you
do
think about?'

Juliet was half full of excellent food, and a little drunk in consequence: fullness, after prolonged deprivation, can produce this effect. She fixed on him her extraordinary eyes, and said with as much earnestness as her flat tones could convey: ‘Coincidence.'

He was disappointed. He half expected, after old Frank's enthusiastic talk, some exotic revelation of the science-fiction type.

‘Do you mean to say you sit there all day and half the night chewing over that? Coincidence like when people say “What a coincidence!”?'

‘Course not,' with an impatient shake of her head. ‘That's ordinary, everybody does that. What I think about is . . . why?'

She bent over her food again, eyelids lowered, knife and fork moving inelegantly.

‘“
Why
?” But how do you mean? A coincidence is just a coincidence.'

She shook her head.

He made his tone gentler, as he said: ‘Do tell me. I'm really interested.'