Pure Juliet (3 page)

Sarah had disappeared.

Juliet gently opened the door, there was a pause, then a soft old voice exclaimed: ‘Why, it's my girl! Darling! I was getting so worried!' and Juliet went forward into the room.

A long face, irresistibly suggesting that of a sheep, below silver hair, smiled at her from a wheelchair drawn up to an electric fire. The room was stiflingly hot, in spite of the summer heat outside; the occupant of the chair's skeletal arms were bared to the elbow by a long dress of blue silk.

Juliet went up to her, sank to her knees beside the chair and, putting her arms round the thin old body, lifted her face passively to receive kiss after lingering kiss, while she shut her senses against the odour of verbena toilet water and eighty-year-old flesh.

‘You're really here! I can't believe it, let me look at you – that lovely, lovely hair – how long is it since you were here, my darling?'

‘Easter, Auntie.'

‘I couldn't believe it when I got your letter – how can your mother bear to part with you?'

Juliet sat back on her heels.

‘Five of us, Auntie, and no dad. 'T'isn't easy for her.'

‘Yes. Yes. Oh that was a day blessed by God, when I saw the sun shining on your hair . . .' She leant forward, with difficulty, to lift a tress in her knotted fingers. ‘My girl! Here at last. My lovely, lovely . . .
daughter
.'

The last word came out reverently, as if she spoke of something sacred.

‘What have I done,' she went on, quaveringly, ‘that God should be so good to me?'

She paused to wipe her eyes, while Juliet, moving no closer, made vague sounds that might have been intended for comfort.

‘Ah, here's Sarah – and Rosa with your supper, dear – we can't call it dinner, it's only something light, but you must be hungry. I told Sarah to save some chicken, the nicest part. Now you eat it up, my darling, while I watch you.'

Sarah, looking more than sour, prowled in silence finding small unnecessary things to do while the plump, pretty Rosa set down a tray on a low table, smiling shyly at Juliet. With the air of one being at home, Juliet got up and fetched a tuffet covered in rose-red brocade, and arranged it beside the wheelchair.

Chicken and salad, with fruit and a glass of orange juice, were set out appetizingly, and, settling herself on the tuffet, Juliet began to eat, while the sheep-face watched with an expression of the purest, foolish delight.

‘Time for your bed, Miss Addy,' Sarah said. ‘Close on nine.'

‘I know that, Sarah, thank you,' the old lady said sharply. ‘I'm staying up.'

‘Upset yourself – you know what Dr Masters said.'

‘It won't hurt for once. I'm so happy, and this is a special occasion.'

‘Please yourself.'

Sarah was going out of the room when her employer said, in a different voice: ‘Sarah!'

‘Yes, Miss Addy?' turning sulkily.

‘Ask Antonio to bring up a magnum of champagne – and eight glasses. We're going to celebrate.'

‘Champagne! There's none chilled, and it'll kill you, this time of night.'

‘In half an hour, Sarah, please. And tell the other servants they are to be my guests.'

Sarah stalked out. Her hands were at her sides, but her expression raised them in the position of those of the old steward in Hogarth's painting.

Juliet had not watched any of this tiny drama, nor noticed the deliberate use of the expression ‘other servants'; she was eating.

In a moment the old lady said: ‘And so you passed all your examinations, darling?'

Juliet, with her mouth full, nodded.

‘A levels, they call them now, don't they? I'm sure my clever girl did well, didn't she? And was she nervous?'

‘Course not.' Juliet gulped orange juice.

‘Were you – top, would it be – in any of the subjects? What were they?'

The faded eyes, behind the spectacles of the strongest power available, fixed themselves greedily on the young face, as if passionate to draw from it information about a world, ideas,
habits, of which their owner was ignorant. Behind the glare of curiosity there was a hint, too, of piteousness:
I am so old
, said the look.
And helpless. And helpless, for all my five servants and my faithful Sarah. Helpless.

‘Oh' – Juliet used her tongue to dislodge a fragment of lettuce – ‘mathematics, physics, chemistry – that kind of subject. I got five As.'

‘And did you expect to – is that exceptional, dear? Five As? You must forgive your old auntie, she isn't “brainy”, like you. You know, at my school, the North London Collegiate, only the cleverest girls studied science. That was more than sixty years ago . . .'

Juliet pushed the tray aside and drew her knees up to her chin and circled them with her arms, in her first gesture that evening suggesting youthfulness. She wanted a cigarette, but decided against asking; there would be a fuss, probably a lecture.

‘Five As is good,' she said. ‘
Very
good, they said at the school.'

‘But didn't you find those scientific subjects very dry, dear? And such hard work, all those figures . . . I never was any good at arithmetic. I used to cry over my sums. Wasn't I a silly-billy?'

‘Course they aren't dry – they're ever so interesting. Easy, too. Only . . .'

Juliet paused, and her gaze moved away from the eager old face into some other world. Her own face became expressionless.

‘Are you thinking about – him, darling?' the old lady said softly, in a moment.

‘Who?' The thoughts, whatever they had been, vanished beneath Juliet's eyes, like some unknown species of fish
darting down into fathoms of icy water. ‘Who do you mean – him?'

‘Silly Auntie thought perhaps there might be some young man – some boy, don't they say nowadays? – that her girlie was . . . very fond of.'

‘Chr—! Course not, Auntie. I don't like boys, they're always making a row. Me and Mum, we have a joke about that, see, 'cos she says I take as much notice of boys as if they was elephants, and I say, if they
was
elephants, I'd take a bit more notice.'

She smiled. Her little teeth flashed: the too-white teeth of the child fed on the wrong food.

The old lady was looking bewildered. ‘Do you like elephants so much, then, dear?'

‘Not all that. But better than what I do boys.'

‘“Better than I
do
boys,” Juliet. Not “what I do”.' Her voice was gentle as ever, but authoritative.

‘Better than I
do
boys.'

‘You see, my darling' – lifting a tress of silver-gold hair – ‘you're such a lovely girl . . . and I want my girlie to talk as prettily as she looks. You don't mind my telling you about these little faults?'

‘Course not, Auntie.' Juliet was staring down at her shabby jogging shoes. They were dirty, and the side of one of them was split.

A procession entered, with Sarah, looking disapproving, at its head. She was followed by the white-coated servant, carrying a silver bucket from which peered the head of the magnum. A young man was negligently flourishing a grubby white cloth to wipe up spilt drops; he had found a red plastic carnation
somewhere and stuck it in his buttonhole. Three pretty young women were carrying glasses.

Their employer clapped her hands feebly. Her face had suddenly gone pale from exhaustion, but seemed to be shining from inward joy.

The white-coated servant set down the bucket on the table, copying the demeanour of an English butler seen on television, and, beckoning imperiously to the girls, took two glasses (which needed polishing) and handed them ceremoniously, one to the old lady and one to Juliet. He gestured that a glass should be given to Sarah, who grimly waved it away.

The champagne was opened with a satisfactorily loud pop, and the cork flew off somewhere into one of the dim corners of the hall amid much ducking and many screeches. The wine, never lacking glamour for some ingenuous hearts, slid hissing into the shallow glasses. The servants, in response to beckoning from the old lady, drew near to her wheelchair and stood in a circle about it. She reached out and took Juliet's hand in her own.

‘Goodness, childie!' she exclaimed in a startled tone. ‘How cold you are! Do you feel quite well?'

‘Course, Auntie.'

‘Well – so long as you feel all right.'

She looked straight at Sarah, who was standing with folded arms outside the circle.

‘To Miss Juliet,' she said, raising her glass together with her weak, ancient voice, ‘who's going to be my dear adopted daughter for a – a – whole . . . wonderful . . . year . . . to Miss Juliet.'

‘To Miss Juliet!' came the cheerful echo in five young voices, sending for a moment a ripple of human gaiety through the large old house standing in its great gardens under the wide country sky.

Their glasses glowed like topaz in the lamplight. The eyes of the young man, dark under the perfect bow of his brows and shaded by heavy lashes, wandered speculatively, as he sipped, over Juliet's meagre body.
She was nearly seventeen, wasn't she? Well then, let her get what girls of seventeen must get. It would be difficult, of course. The more fun for that
.

‘I'm so
tired
.' The old lady suddenly set down her glass. ‘Sarah, take me up. Goodnight Antonio, Maria, Rosa, Pilar, Rosario. Goodnight, my girlie,' patting Juliet's arm. ‘You'll come up and say nighty-night to old Auntie when she's in beddy-byes, won't you? Goodnight, then. Goodnight to you all.'

‘There's a good half of that magnum left,' Sarah observed. ‘More'n half, I'd say.'

‘Oh never
mind
, Sarah – let them have it. I said it was a celebration.'

The senior servant – Antonio – who had been unobtrusively hastening the departure of his retinue in case this fact should be noted, turned at the door with a flashing smile as he heard the permission, then disappeared.

Only young Rosario had lingered, on pretext of looking for the champagne cork.

Juliet had seated herself on the tuffet which had been established as her own place since her first visit four years ago, and was lifting her almost untouched glass to her lips.

He circled about until he stood above her, looking down with his bold, usually successful, smile. ‘You come and sit with us
in our room, Juliet?' he said softly in the broken English that, in a man's voice, is irresistible to some women. ‘When
she
in bed? We laugh and perhaps sing – you come?'

She did not look up at him, but uttered in a quiet but clear voice a phrase of the harshest vulgarity which told him to go away.

He stared down at the fair, lowered head with the eyes of a hurt dog. It was less the insult than the shock of hearing those words, which he had heard in the backstreets of Stevenham, from the lips of a creature who seemed to him, though not beautiful, of a stubborn virginity, and therefore the better worth conquering.

He turned away and followed his family out of the room.

Juliet, slowly sipping champagne, did not look towards the staircase, visible through the door which Rosario, in his wounded pride, had deliberately left open.

The wheelchair stood at the foot of the stairs, and a figure was crawling upwards, with one swollen hand grasping at the banister; the elegant, floating blue dress gave the final grotesqueness to the hardly human, bent shape. Sarah hovered above it; the sound of her grumbling, affectionate voice came to Juliet through the silence. She leant forward and turned out the fire.

She drank off the champagne and glanced at the ornate French clock, set with gilt symbolical figures of Peace and Plenty. Ten. She could count on four hours of reading before she felt the need for sleep.

The air had been overheated for too long for any cooling to be noticeable, but the heat was no longer coming at her in waves. There was not a sound in the long, coldly lit room, nor
from the blue night outside where hung the great stars and planets of late summer, low, and stilly burning.

Gradually Juliet's face became as calm, as still, as those circlers in the depths, with the same look of remoteness. She sat as if charmed.

‘Here, Miss Pennecuick wants you to go up.'

It was Sarah, standing over her, morose and pale.

Juliet did not move for some seconds. Slowly her eyelids lifted and she looked at the old retainer in silence, and smiled. It was well that Sarah thought a smile from Juliet, any smile, suitable in any circumstance, and did not observe its quality.

Juliet's mother knew the smile well; she had seen it when Julie came out of her bedroom at the request of well-meaning visitors. Mrs Slater had never allowed herself to think consciously about it, because it frightened her.

Sarah, mollified by a gossip and an affectionate goodnight from her mistress, was feeling penitent. She stooped with difficulty and switched the logs on again.

‘Freezing in here . . . have a bit o' warmth. Up you go.'

Miss Pennecuick, piteous in nylon and lace, was sitting up in another stifling room.

‘Ah, there you are, my pet. Come and sit by old Auntie.' She patted the coverlet of fine embroidered lawn, and Juliet obeyed.

There followed twenty minutes of explanation as to why Miss Pennecuick preferred to climb the stairs unseen by anyone but Sarah. ‘When I was young like you, darling, Auntie was pretty. And then this old arthritis came along and took all my
prettiness away . . . It hurts me, dear. Perhaps you'll understand, one day . . . that's why I don't want you to see me unless I'm nicely dressed, or all covered up as I am now. Wipe my eyes, love – as if you were my own dear daughter . . . hanky under the pillow, dear.'

Juliet, with a delicacy of touch learnt from using geometrical instruments, mopped Miss Pennecuick's tears as carefully as if her heart were full of love.

‘Hadn't you better settle down, Auntie?'