Pure Juliet (6 page)

And he pulled.

She did not look up, but struck out so violently, with a shoving movement, that he lost his balance on the highly polished floor, and fell flat on his back, uttering a roar of rage.

At this moment the door was slowly opened by Sarah, and Miss Pennecuick crept in. Both paused, exclaiming and aghast.

‘Rosario! What's the matter? Are you hurt, my poor boy?' Much rubbing of the curls was going on. ‘Juliet, what happened?'

Juliet smiled, and said, ‘Morning, Auntie.'

‘Come on, now, get up, you aren't dead,' Sarah said roughly, as he continued to lie there and shout in Spanish.

‘Did he slip on the floor?'

‘What on earth's going on?' demanded Frank, coming in at that minute.

‘Rosario fell down—'

‘There's nothing the matter with him—'

‘Here, let's see if any bones are broken—'

But even as Frank advanced upon him, Rosario scrambled up, bowed fiercely to the elder ladies, and marched out, shutting the door with a slam that shook the room.

Frank raised his eyebrows.

Juliet got up to kiss Miss Pennecuick's cheek; then sat down again.

‘Now you come out of that book, Miss, show a bit of sympathy for once – poor young fellow, that floor's hard, as my knees know to their cost. You be in to lunch, Mr Frank?'

‘Yes please, Sarah.'

‘It's a nice bit of roast lamb – but I expect you've brought your own grass and stuff?'

‘No, I could manage a nice bit of roast lamb, for once' – cheerfully.

He sat in an armchair opposite to Juliet, noticing that red burned in her cheeks, though she was apparently interested only in her book.

‘Well, Aunt Addy, I've got some good news—'

‘Oh have you, dear boy? Well done – let's hear it. Juliet,' gently, ‘it isn't nice to read when other people are talking – put your book away, dear.'

‘Sorry, Auntie.' The book obediently dropped at the side of the tuffet; the red deepened, as Juliet fixed her gaze on Miss Pennecuick's face.

‘Yes, I really think everything's arranged at last. I'm going to get the necessary papers signed next Monday.'

‘Then you'll be in by Christmas. How delightful. We must have a party – and talking of parties, Clemence and Dolly are coming for the weekend.'

At this point the luncheon gong sounded, and they went in.

‘I already see lots of Clem in Wanby,' Frank said, as he drew his great-aunt's chair for her, and she laughed and pinched his cheek.

Here Sarah, who was sourly handing vegetables, said loudly, ‘Dr Masters ought to see that boy, Miss Addy. He's got a bump on the back of his head the size of an egg. Some people ought to be ashamed of themselves,' fixing Juliet with a glare.

Juliet, gobbling, did not look up.

‘Well, Sarah, I did ask you to tell Pilar not to polish the floors so highly.'

‘You like the floors well polished, Miss Addy, and besides it wasn't the floor. She pushed him.'

‘Pilar? His own sister?'

‘No, Miss Addy. Her,' indicating Juliet with a jerk of the head.

‘Did you, Juliet dear? Surely not – what happened? Tell old Auntie – she promises not to be cross with her girlie.'

‘I expect he pulled her hair,' Frank said. ‘I've seen him at it more than once.'

‘Did he, Juliet?'

A nod.

‘And did you push him?'

‘Yes. As hard as I could.' She gulped some water.

‘Well . . .' Miss Pennecuick said helplessly, while Sarah's voice cut in: ‘Comes of wearing it all over the place, instead of done up decent. What does she expect?'

‘It served him damn well right,' Frank said calmly, ‘and if he does it again, you do it again, Juliet. That will do, Sarah, thank you,' with a smile.

Sarah crept out of the room.

‘I – I really don't know what to say . . .' Miss Pennecuick leant back feebly, pushing away her plate. ‘Sarah can be so tiresome – she's faithfulness itself, of course, and she's been with me so long, nearly fifty years, but it makes it so difficult sometimes, she gets jealous, I don't know how it is,
you
can always manage things—'

‘I'm a man,' and he laughed.

Juliet continued to eat.

‘I'm so pleased and relieved, dear boy, that you're coming to live at Wanby. Now if only you would settle down with that sweet girl—'

‘What sweet girl, Aunt?'

‘Now you know perfectly well who I mean—'

‘I assure you I haven't the faintest idea . . . are you ready for pud?' and he rang the bell.

It was true; he had not the faintest idea. For he did not think of his great friend, Clemence Massey, as a sweet girl.

Once or twice during the consumption of the pud, Juliet looked at Frank with a long stare. He had stood up for her. Not as that old fool of an auntie would have, but sensibly. If someone at the Comp hit you or pulled your hair, you hit or pulled back. Only common sense, that was, only natural.

For the first time since their meeting in St Alberics high street, she thought about Frank Pennecuick. Bolting pudding, because she had forgotten Auntie's gentle reproof, she let him invade her mind.

An unfamiliar feeling came upon her when she looked at his long brown face. She wondered if she could talk to him about that part of her mind which was suffering confusion. For what she was beginning to feel towards him, without knowing its nature, was trust.

At the Comp, the mathematics master had been permanently irritable and exhausted, and the one thing that he had always made starkly plain was the fact that no individual could have more than three minutes, preferably two, of his time.

Juliet wanted an hour, perhaps half a day; she did not know how long because she did not know exactly what she wanted to talk about. It was something to do with maths . . . and why certain things happened . . . and if there was an answer . . .

She had a vague, yet strong, idea that ‘coincidence' was the word that expressed her fascination, interest, whatever it was.

But what, exactly, was coincidence?

She knew about reference books; she had been, one Saturday afternoon, to the public library and, having asked the girl assistant for a ‘dictionary', and being asked what kind, had answered that she did not know.

‘Well, what do you want to look up, dear?'

‘Some word . . . coincidence.'

The assistant was tactful as well as kind. She went herself to fetch the
Pocket Oxford
, and gave it to this dwarfish enquirer with a smile.

How eagerly Juliet had turned the pages! She did not know what revelation she was expecting – perhaps some other long words which would explain the lure, the fascination that, for her, surrounded this particular word and its associations. She read: ‘Coincide: fill the same portion of space or time; occur simultaneously.' Her eyes hurried on, that wasn't exactly what . . . ah . . . ‘Coincidence: notable concurrence of events suggestive of but not having causal connection.'

She could not quite . . . quite . . . the words were so long, and most of them she had never heard of.

Then the page before her eyes drifted away, and there came upon her a double inner sensation: as of immense size and microscopic smallness; both together; not feelings; not pictures, though images of stars were in the hugeness; the experience was unlike anything she had ever felt in her life . . . or was it?

A memory floated up from somewhere within herself. She had had this sensation before. She could feel the damp warmth of her cot blankets enclosing her baby body . . .

‘Find what you wanted, dear?'

She looked up into the young assistant's smiling face.

‘Yes. Wasn't sure how to spell it.' And she was off.

Funny her eyes looked
, the girl thought, looking doubtfully after her.

The experience of double-size – as Juliet came to think of it – haunted her from that day, although she reluctantly came to believe that there would never be any explanation of it in the mathematical terms which she had at first expected. She must just ‘take it for granted', as she put it.

But that other sentence –
why
should there be no ‘causal connection'? (She went to another library to look up those two words, not relishing the elder-sisterly attentions of the young assistant.)

Why?

And she began to turn the question over in her mind, to approach it mathematically, because mathematics was the only subject in which any difficulties she encountered were worked through, or leapt over, by her brain – without effort, and with enjoyment.

Examples is what's needed
, she thought;
lots of them
,
like they give you in the textbooks.
And, from the age of fourteen, she had begun to collect coincidences, laboriously writing them down in a notebook in her squared, state-educated hand, numbering each carefully, and adding after each one the comment ‘Pure' or ‘Only half' (‘Pure' in the sense of absolute coincidence: one in which
apparently
no ‘causal connection' could be found.)

And gradually, as the noisy, dull months went by, lit only by this interest within her mind, she came to what she called to
herself
me ambition
–
to find some reason that explains why these things happen seemingly without cause
.

To work on this ambition she needed solitude and time: uninterrupted, endless time. That was why she had run away to Hightower. ‘It's quieter there,' she would say to herself, in the weeks before she walked out of her home on that last day of the summer term. ‘I'll get a bit of peace there, p'raps.'

It was not quite as peaceful and quiet as she had hoped.
Auntie was for ever on at you. But Frank, he let you alone. All right, he was.
And he had stuck up for her against that Rosario. She might talk to Frank, perhaps; about coincidence. Not about her ambition: that was a secret.

But she did not get away on her walk at once, because there was that business of having coffee in the drawing-room, as usual.

‘How is that poor boy's head?' Miss Pennecuick enquired of Maria, whose task it was to bring in the tray.

‘He suffers much,' was the simple and disconcerting reply, as cups and jugs were deftly arranged.

‘Oh dear! You don't think . . . perhaps . . . the doctor?'

‘It is in his feelings he suffers.' On a more sombre note: ‘He is a loving boy, Rosario, our mother say he is.'

‘Yes, thank you, Maria. Coffee looks good, as usual,' said Frank, and he sent her away smiling.

‘Dear boy! Are you going to join us?' Miss Pennecuick paused, holding a frail red and gold cup in one shaking hand.

‘Good heavens, no, Aunt dear. Absolute poison. Like me to do that?' And her cup was whisked away and half full of the poison before she could wipe off two tears of gratitude and love.

‘Aren't you having something else, dear?'

‘I'll wait until tea. I've got a new herb brew I'd like you to sample,' smiling.

‘No wonder you're too thin. Clemence may be here by tea-time – I'll get her to lecture you.'

‘Clem knows it wouldn't have any effect, so she never tries.'

‘It would have an effect if you were married.'

But the mutter was not heard by Frank, who had turned to Juliet.

‘Going for a walk? Mind if I come?'

She hesitated.

‘I won't talk,' he added, and the unfamiliar feeling of trust came upon her once more.

‘All right. I'll get me things,' and she rushed out of the room.

‘Frank?'

‘What, Aunt?' turning, as Sarah wheeled in the chair.

‘You – you aren't . . . ?'

Sarah began to bustle with cushions, listening intently.

Miss Pennecuick indicated her, and made helpless gestures. ‘Getting – fond,' she mouthed at him.

‘Not a bit. I give you my solemn word.'

He stood straight before her, looking, for once, grave and without the playful expression that usually made his face attractive. And as he said the words, he felt, with a little surprise, how true they were. Not one glimmer of romantic feeling had he for Juliet Slater.

When Frank went through the hall with Juliet he saw Rosa and Pilar, singing softly as they polished and dusted. Telling himself that he was rejoicing aesthetically in the sight of rounded bosoms and smooth skins, he said, ‘Surely those girls don't work all day?'

‘Fit it in when they like, seems. That old Sarah, she does try to make a kind of timetable, but Auntie don't mind, so they do as they please.'

‘Doesn't mind, dear.'

She just glanced at him; no coquettishness, no consciousness. ‘“Doesn't mind”', obediently.

‘Do you mind my correcting your grammar . . . and . . . calling you “dear”?'

She looked up at him and smiled, not her usual dutiful grin. Then she shook her head, and he opened the front door and they went out into the quiet golden afternoon.

‘That house is too dark and hot,' he said.

‘I know. I'm always gaspin' for a bit of air.'

‘But it isn't depressing. The girls wouldn't sing, if it were. That's Aunt Addie, of course; she's full of love and kindness, and it gets through the house.'

‘Bit too full of it, if you ask me. Gets you down.'

‘Aren't you fond of her, Juliet? She loves you so much and she's been very kind to you.'

‘S'pose so.'

Withdrawal, and the usual shrug.

But this afternoon he was not going to be put off by Juliet's reserve; he meant to find out
what she was.
When they got back to Hightower, Clem and that old monster, her mother, would be there, and there would be fewer opportunities.

‘You don't like people, do you?' he asked.

‘They're always on at you,' sullenly.

‘That's partly because you're young. They're always on at me, too, in a different way, because my views on life aren't like theirs. We'll turn down here, I want to show you my meadows.'