Pure Juliet (9 page)

‘Except making her sick, I should think,' said Mrs Massey. ‘Give me one, Frank, will you? No, not your home-made horrors, an Embassy. Thanks—' as he held a match for her. ‘Now tell me, how is
your
house going?' She puffed, in a self-conscious, Edwardian style.

‘Well enough for me to sleep there next week – if that suits you, Great-Aunt?' turning to her.

‘Of course, dear, you know you can come and go as you please, though I always love to have you here. But won't it be terribly damp?'

‘Not in my sleeping bag.'

‘And so isolated, Frank. It really worries me.'

‘A mile from the M1,' smiling. ‘This place is more isolated, really, you know.'

‘Yes, but we have two strong young men on the premises—'

‘And aren't I a strong young man?'

She laughed reluctantly. ‘Of course, dear boy. But it really will be – it sounds – such a
peculiar
way to live, it isn't as though it were
necessary
,' delicately implying the healthy state of his income. ‘The fact is, you have made yourself
unfit
to live as most people do.' (Here Mrs Massey nodded emphatically.)

His expression, which had been indulgent and amused, hardened.

‘I've given that life a fair trial – some twelve years of it. It didn't work. Now I'm going to try living as I want to.'

‘You'll be so
uncomfortable.
'

‘Not half as uncomfortable as I would be living surrounded by hundreds of unnecessary objects, as most people do.' (He suppressed
as you do
; he was fond of his great-aunt.) ‘In a hundred years most people will either want, or have, to live as I'm going to. Have to is more likely, at the rate things are going.'

Juliet was staring into space.

He can't surely fall for such a mannerless, ungrateful brat
, Clemence thought; and then,
Oh yes he can – what about Fiona, and Deirdre, and Melisande and that awful Ottolie?

Clemence was a gifted pianist, but with her duties as Dr Masters's receptionist, the supervision of housekeeping, and the demands of her grandmother, she got little enough time for the practise necessary to keep her technique at its best.

She loved her music, which seemed in some way to soothe those feelings which she was too sensible and sober to indulge freely, and when on the next evening Miss Pennecuick said, turning to her, ‘Clemmie, give us some music, won't you, dear,' she went to the handsome old rosewood piano with a sensation of relief.

A long walk in the afternoon had brought colour to Juliet's cheeks, and made her a little less plain than usual. Frank had commented casually but favourably on the flush, and now Clemence felt inclined to dash into her stormiest Beethoven.

‘Don't give us any of that dreadful modern stuff,' warned her grandmother, elegant in soft shades of brown, from the long sofa.

‘Yes, something tuneful and pretty, dear,' from Miss Pennecuick, haggard in rose silk in the wheeled chair.

Clemence mentally dismissed Beethoven.
But I'm damned if I'm giving them the Spring Song
, she thought, as she gently lifted the piano's shining lid, inlaid with sprays of pale yellow and cedar-coloured flowers.

She settled herself on the stool, paused for a moment looking down at her large hands – so useful for a stretch – then struck out the first chill, simple notes of an air by Bach.

It wound and rippled on: to each listener suggesting vague pictures, or merely an agreeable sound. But Frank was looking at Juliet.

Her head, as he watched, had turned slowly towards the piano, and as the themes proceeded, growing ever more complex
and interwoven, and giving an ever-increasing beauty to the simple opening theme, her gaze did not move from the player's hands. She was listening – listening as she had listened to the song of the robin.

It was the first time, except when she had looked at the robin, that she had shown attention to anything but her own unguessable thoughts.

The beautiful sounds ceased. Clemence allowed her hands to rest on the keys for a moment. Then she turned to her audience:

‘That's only the first movement. Shall I go on?'

‘Rather heavy, isn't it?' from Dolly.

‘Very pretty, and thank you, dear, but what I'd really like is some Mendelssohn. I'm so fond of him,' said Miss Pennecuick.

Clemence found some Mendelssohn in the rosewood chest, and played on for another half hour. Juliet was again staring into the ferns: not listening, now, he thought. But she
had
been listening: listening more intently than most people do in a lifetime.

At ten, Sarah arrived to help her mistress to bed, and greeted Mrs Massey with a respectful near-sparkle.

Mrs Massey was her ideal of what a lady who was ‘getting on' ought to be.
Nicely dressed and fond of a laugh, and no ailments. Quite cheered you up, to have her in the house. Not but what Miss Addie didn't dress nice
, Sarah mused.

Those remaining by the fire tactfully refrained from watching the piteous exit and, as the two disappeared, Mrs Massey turned determinedly on Juliet. (
Contributing nothing, but nothing, to the evening's entertainment, which, heaven knew, had been dull enough
!)

‘Now,' she began, ‘
you
can tell us your plans. What are you – Seventeen? At seventeen' – two stout arms spread wide – ‘I felt the
world
was at my feet!'

Juliet looked away from the self-important old face. Her own expression made Frank think of an animal being poked out of its hole by a stick.

As no one said anything, Mrs Massey retreated in excellent order by snapping, ‘It wasn't, of course. But I
felt
that it was, and that's the important thing. What do
you
want to
do
– to
become
– to
be
?'

‘Dunno.' Juliet looked at the floor.

‘Don't know! But you must have
some
idea. What are your hobbies, interests, tastes? Do you like this “punk” music?'

‘Nope,' decidedly.

‘Well, that's something, I suppose . . . but how do you intend to earn a living? I had played in a Number One tour of
Our Miss Gibbs
when I was your age.'

‘Had j'oo?' It might have been the original production of
Phèdre
for all the interest Juliet expressed.

‘Plenty of time, Juliet,' Clemence put in. (Frank must be irritated to see the girl baited.) ‘The important thing is to know
what
you want.'

‘Maths and physics are all right,' Juliet said after a pause. ‘I got A levels in all them subjects.'

‘“Those subjects” dear,' from Frank.

‘Those subjects.'

‘Then why,' demanded Mrs Massey, ‘didn't you go to a university? All those As and Os – so confusing – oh for the good old days when young people went to a university when their parents could afford it, and didn't when they couldn't.'

‘Pardon?'

‘Didn't when they couldn't. Afford it,' snapped Mrs Massey. She disliked having to repeat her pronouncements.

‘My dad wouldn't have it. Set on me getting a job he is . . .'

Juliet's voice, already faint, died off into a mumble. But this time, one hand went slowly up to her mouth and two fingers stroked her lips,
As though
Frank thought,
to hush them into silence. So she's a liar, is she? I'd thought as much. We'll certainly have another walk.

But no one else seemed to have noticed the slip.

‘Don't see meself stuck in some factory all day,' Juliet went on smoothly, lighting a cigarette and shaking out the match with force.

Mrs Massey saw no reason why someone with that accent should not be stuck in a factory. But she never let herself appear disagreeable when she could avoid it; an amusing elderly tartness is one thing, an old woman's spite another. She said indulgently:

‘But with all those levels or whatever they're called, surely you could get something better than a factory?'

Juliet shrugged.

‘As a secretary?' Mrs Massey turned to Frank. ‘
Two thousand a year
girls are getting now; I saw an advertisement the other day.
Two thousand pounds
– why, my father brought us up, three of us, on five hundred – and very well he did it, too.'

‘Wouldn't keep me in fags, that wouldn't.'

What strange eyes Juliet has
, Clemence thought.
But all his girls are weirdies, in some way
. Then, suddenly, there came into her head the lines written of Newton – ‘
A mind
for ever / Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone
.'

‘If everybody won't think me rude,' she said, ‘I'm off to bed; we've got to be up early tomorrow, you know, if I'm going to drop you at home, Grandmother.'

‘Of course, dear,' said Mrs Massey briskly. ‘I'll come up too. I make it a rule,' addressing the room, ‘to be in bed by half-past ten . . . unless, of course, I'm at a party.'

Neither Frank nor Juliet registering surprise or admiration at this statement.

Clemence held out her hands to help her grandmother rise.

As she did so, she thought with gratitude of her grandmother's part in her own life: never allowing a situation to become embarrassing if she could steer it round the social rocks; so amusing; so comfortingly devoted to Clemence herself, and, yes, so silently understanding of the ‘situation'.
How infinitely worse my life might be
, Clemence thought.

When Frank and Juliet were alone, and the voices of the others had died away, he felt stealing upon him a familiar, dreamy pleasure. It stole up, to a point: then, so to speak, it shook itself and was replaced by other feelings.

Outside, the great stars of late summer blazed in the clear darkness; the house in its wide garden was surrounded by fields dimly seen under the albescent moon.

The two were alone, and he knew that the romantic aspects of the situation were felt solely within his own imaginaton.

Juliet was smoking and staring at the floor. This evening's exchange of ordinary remarks with four other people was the closest she had ever come in her life to conversation.

At school, words had not got beyond snaps at her fellow scholars, answers in class and, on the occasion when her possible
application for a university place had been discussed, a ten-minute shooting out of monosyllabic answers to the dutiful, mechanical probings of a headmaster too drained by exhaustion to feel more than a faint interest in the brilliance of her A level results.

She had made no friends.

In her home no one but a guest at their table (but there so seldom were any) could have known how few and how uncommunicative were the sentences exchanged between herself and her parents.

Demands for food or drink to be passed; comments grudgingly commendatory or sulkily complaining, about the cooking; an occasional announcement from Dad that he was ‘off now' or from Mum that she was ‘just going to pop out'. A ‘Shocking, that's what I say it is,' about some scandal illuminated by the
Daily Mirror
. These had been the Slater versions of conversation, every day, every week, since Juliet had been a silent, swift-moving child old enough to understand words.

The mere unusualness, the mere gentleness, of the exchange between the guests at Hightower had compelled her attention. She was so accustomed after nearly seventeen years, to grunts and mispronounced sounds passing for communication that it was only when the rise and fall of agreeable voices – and Frank's was beautiful – had continued for some time that she had begun to notice it. She had liked it;
smashing
, she had thought.

‘Smashing', and ‘all right' were the only words of commendation she knew; and she had picked them up at the comprehensive as she might have done a germ.

‘Oh!' She uttered a little scream and shook her fingers. ‘Burnt meself – wasn't thinkin'.' She ground out the stub in the ashtray.

‘But that's just what you were doing, Juliet. Thinking.' Frank leant forward. ‘What about?'

The usual shrug. ‘Oh – nothin' much.'

He studied her coolly. He felt, strongly, that there, sitting across the hearth from him – thin and angular, with glittering hair spread above the girlish, unbecoming dress chosen by Miss Pennecuick – was someone very
strange. Not quite human,
he thought suddenly, with satisfaction at having solved what had been puzzling him,
not quite human
.
Something vital to human beings is lacking.

‘That piano music she was playing,' Juliet said suddenly. ‘Did she make it up, then?'

‘Of course not, Juliet.'

He had to talk to her as if she were a child. But how else could he talk? He was generally sensitive to the vibrations given out by human beings, but never had he encountered any like those of Juliet. Immense force and – immense negativeness. Extraordinary.

‘It was written by—'

‘Do people write music, then? Like books?'

‘Of course – do you really mean that you didn't know that?'

‘The groups make it up,' on a note of defiance.

‘Yes, but that's different. Didn't you notice that she, Miss Massey, had some sheet music on the piano while she was playing the other thing – the Mendelssohn?'

‘Wasn't listenin' to that. That other what she was playing—'

‘
Which
or
that
, she was playing.' He began to laugh, looking at her affectionately: ‘Oh Juliet! You really are . . . did you like it?'

Silence for a moment. Then, in an expressionless voice, with a nod: ‘Yes . . . It was like maths.'

‘Some people see a connection between the two,' he said casually. ‘People who are good at one are often good at the other.'

‘I couldn't never play on the piano.' She shook her head. ‘Maths – I'm all right with them.'