Never such innocence, p.14
Never Such Innocence, page 14
They talked amiably enough about the international situation and the trial on which they would both be working, and Julia allowed herself to relax a little. She found David both charming and amusing, and he asked her no more unsuitably personal questions, but she wished that he were somewhere else.
For his part, he discovered that she was not quite as formidable as she had seemed at first and that beneath her seriousness there lurked a sense of humour and a warmth of interest in other people. Despite that, he still found it hard to connect her with Anthony. There was nothing in Mrs Gillingham’s gritty intelligence and common sense to match the mixture of passionate commitment, powerful anger and inexplicable sadness that made her husband’s friendship at once so important and such a challenge, and nothing in her pleasant looks to compete with his extraordinary handsomeness. David wondered how they had ever come to marry.
Attempting to find out more about her, he asked Julia what she was reading.
‘I’m rereading the Sonnets from the Portuguese,’ she said readily, picking up the thin, floppy, brown-leather book.
‘I don’t much like Elizabeth Barrett’s stuff,’ said David, wrinkling his nose.
‘Perhaps you prefer her husband’s,’ suggested Julia, and then in a voice of deliberate casualness, which made David smile, quoted: ‘“That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall, Looking as if she were alive …”’
‘Not really,’ he admitted with a laugh. ‘I like novels better than poetry.’
‘So do I normally,’ said Julia with a slight smile, ‘but I was moved to read these because … Never mind,’ she finished, not knowing him well enough to say what she really meant: I was moved to read them because they were written by a woman out of passionate devotion to her husband.
‘You must know Italy very well,’ she said to change the subject.
‘Only parts,’ he said. ‘My mother used to bring my brother and me to her house at Fiesole every summer. It was never as much home as Scotland, but we both got awfully fond of it, and made a lot of friends among the other families there.’
‘Where is your brother now?’ asked Julia and then wished she had not as his face seemed to close down as though shutters had been put up over his eyes. It was a stupid question to have asked any young man of fighting age after such a war. She watched David make an effort to answer.
‘He’s in Scotland now and all right, they think,’ he said slowly. ‘But he had a bad time in Changi.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ said Julia at once. ‘It was crass of me to ask.’
‘No, no, please don’t worry, Mrs Gillingham,’ said David, seeing that she really minded having upset him. ‘He is getting better now, although still pretty weak, I gather.’
‘Don’t bother with the “Mrs Gillingham”,’ said Julia, trying to make amends for her insensitivity. ‘Do please call me Julia.’
‘All right. Thank you very much. Can I pour you some more wine?’
‘I think not,’ she said and looked down at her gold wristwatch. ‘Do you know what time dinner is likely to be?’
‘Half-past seven,’ he said.
‘Then I think I’ll go and have a bath if there’s any water,’ she said. David’s expression seemed to say, ‘You’ll be lucky.’
‘I see,’ said Julia. ‘Well, I’ll try. See you later, David.’
‘Yes, indeed,’ he said, getting up and watching her as she walked to the door. It seemed strange to him that so tall a woman could move with such easy grace, and he wondered whether she had always carried herself so well or whether she had had to work to achieve such unselfconscious assurance.
David thought that he had never met a woman who could talk so well and yet demand so little in return, and it occurred to him that it might have been that combination of attributes that had attracted Anthony in the beginning. Although Julia had obviously considered his first question impertinent, she had not appeared to mind when he disagreed with her quite robustly and she had tried neither to drag the conversation round to herself nor to draw compliments from him. Perhaps it was because she was so much older, he thought as he refilled his pipe and picked up the paper again, that she seemed so different from the women he had known in London before the war.
Chapter Eleven
Julia had her bath in tepid water and then hurried to dress in a warm woollen frock. Despite the winter underclothes she had on and the thick material of the dress, she was still cold and she wished that there were a fire in her room instead of the stove that was warm enough to the touch but seemed to do nothing to temper the icy chill of the marble floor or the echoing space of the room. There were no curtains at the windows, only external shutters, and no carpets. Despite its magnificence the room seemed comfortless as well as cold.
Julia looked longingly at her thick grey dressing gown, which she had often worn over her clothes at home during the worst winters of the war. If she had been about to dine alone with Anthony she might have worn it, but David Wallington’s presence irritatingly imposed a certain formality on her.
Having done her face and hair, she went downstairs and was relieved to see Anthony standing next to the stove, a glass of wine in his hand. He smiled when he saw her.
‘Did you manage to sort everything out?’ she asked, walking towards him.
‘Yes,’ he said, holding out a hand to her. Julia took it briefly in hers and he exclaimed at its coldness.
‘As David almost warned me, there wasn’t any hot water for my bath,’ she said, ‘and I think I’m colder even than I was before it.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Anthony. ‘I’m afraid the boiler is erratic.’
‘It’s all right,’ Julia said. ‘I’m used to it. I don’t know when I last had a proper, deep, hot bath.’
‘I’m glad you got back all right,’ he said a little stiffly. ‘I…’
‘Never mind,’ said Julia pre-empting whatever excuse he had been going to make for sending her off so abruptly. She did not want to embark on such a subject with David listening to them. ‘Here’s Annunziata with supper.’
She left the two men and went to help Annunziata unload her tray and lay the table. There was some quite ordinary-looking cutlery, pretty porcelain plates and really magnificent wine glasses. The clear glass bowls were the shape of well-opened tulips and the elaborate stems had flecks of pure gold caught in the glass.
‘I’ve never seen glasses like these before,’ said Julia, holding one up to the flame of one of the candles on the table. The light caught the gold and sparkled.
‘They were made at Murano,’ said David, who had followed her to the table and was helping to lay out the plates. ‘I often think that most modern Murano glass is unbelievably ugly – far too elaborate – but these are nice, and they’re nice to drink out of, too.’
He waited until Julia and Anthony had both sat down before pulling out his own chair. Annunziata handed Julia a deep dish filled with ribbons of white pasta in a wonderful sauce of tomatoes and mushrooms and what tasted to Julia like cream. David correctly interpreted her expression of doubt, surprise and pleasure.
‘Yes it is cream,’ he said. ‘Annunziata has been planning a special dinner for you ever since Anthony told us you were coming.’
‘How kind,’ said Julia. ‘It is delectable – particularly after sardines, sausages and powdered egg, which is what I’ve been used to at home. Will you tell her, please?’
Anthony translated Julia’s compliments. Annunziata thanked her and left them to their food.
‘How is London?’ asked David courteously while Julia was still trying to think of something to say and wishing that she and Anthony could be alone together. ‘I haven’t been back since I was sent out here after the Italians surrendered.’
‘Much the same,’ said Julia, putting down her fork. ‘Battered and bloody but quite unbowed. People seem to be losing their patience with queues and rationing. Most of us thought naïvely that once the war was over life would get back to normal in London – not progressively worse the further we got from VE Day. But you probably don’t want to hear about that.’
‘I suspect he does,’ said Anthony with an edge in his voice that surprised Julia. ‘David has a particular interest in the feelings of Londoners – particularly the feckless poor.’
Julia looked at David, and was about to ask a question, but Anthony forestalled her. She ate another mouthful of pasta and listened.
‘Yes, he plans to nurse a London constituency until the next election.’
‘Really?’ said Julia, rather amused. ‘What made you decide to go into politics?’
‘He wants to change the world,’ said Anthony, again in that edgy voice. ‘You see, my dear, he is going to stand as a Socialist.’
‘Good Lord!’ said Julia before she could stop herself. ‘I mean, how interesting.’
David laughed and raised his glass as though in a toast. It was not clear whether it was a mocking salutation to Anthony’s contempt or a more serious one to his own parliamentary hopes.
‘Anthony seems to think that adherence to Socialism is a sign of pathological lunacy,’ said David, ‘instead of a reasoned decision based on the past performance and the future ideals of both major parties and the needs of the great majority of the people. He can’t accept that what I want for the country is more likely to be achieved by the Labour Party.’
Anthony snorted in derision and proceeded to shock Julia with his bitter mockery of David’s ambitions. They seemed misguided to her, but she would never have allowed herself to give expression to such overt contempt. There had been many times in the past when Anthony had appeared to be unaware that his sarcasm sounded much crueller than he meant it to be, but Julia had the uncomfortable impression that this was different. He seemed positively to want to hurt – or at least needle – David, who seemed perfectly harmless to Julia, if rather in the way.
‘And what is it that you want to achieve?’ she said kindly.
‘Simple little things,’ said David, his lean good-looking face breaking into a cheerful smile. ‘Things like plenty of food for everyone, proper family allowances, no more slums, really good free education for all children irrespective of their parents’means; excellent free medical care for everyone …’
‘But why free for everyone?’ asked Julia, no longer trying to be kind. ‘That’s the aspect of the National Health Service Bill that I simply cannot understand. What on earth is the justification for allowing people like Anthony and me to have free doctoring? There are so many people who need so much and can afford so little that it seems madness.’
‘Precisely,’ said Anthony. ‘But that’s only one of the lunacies. They’re simply making doctors servants of the bureaucrats – we’ll be wasting our time filling in forms instead of caring for the ill. Interfered with at every turn, subject to pettifogging rules written by civil servants who know nothing whatever of medicine. It’s outrageous.’
‘But, Mrs Gillingham … Julia I mean,’ said David Wallington, ignoring Anthony. He swallowed some pasta, planted both elbows on the table and swivelled in his chair so that he could look directly at her. ‘Unless people like you and Anthony – articulate, demanding, informed – share the national health and education, the rest of the population who are none of those things will never get a fair deal.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Anthony. ‘What will stop them getting a fair deal as you call it is the interference of the State.’
‘The State is likely to produce a better service for the people than self-interested groups like –’
‘You sound quite implacable,’ said Julia, surprised at the change from ingenuous young man to determined theorist.
‘He is,’ said Anthony coldly. ‘He’s an idealist and all idealists are wreckers. They are so infatuated with their dogmas that they can never see the human cost and reality of what they do.’
David flushed, but to Julia’s admiration he did not even try to answer. He was obviously angry, but instead of arguing he calmly ate the rest of his pasta and then poured some more wine into her glass. The dark purple-red looked superb against the gold-flecked glass in the candlelight.
‘How far have you got?’ Julia asked him temperately. ‘I mean has the party allocated you a particular constituency yet?’
‘Not yet, although I’m in correspondence with Transport House,’ he said, ‘and it looks as though I may get one in South London if the selection committee approve. The member there has warned them that he’s likely to retire at the next election, but they haven’t got as far as selecting a new candidate luckily. I hadn’t got going quickly enough for the last election, but I have hopes for next time.’
‘Only next time,’ said Anthony with obvious satisfaction, ‘Dalton will have made such an unholy mess of the economy and Bevin will have antagonised the Americans beyond bearing, aggravated the Russian situation and completely ruined any possibility of a solution to the Palestine problem, and the electorate will get rid of the Socialists. All your friends will be out on their ears and you won’t have a hope of getting elected.’
‘Anthony!’ said Julia, allowing herself to sound angry at last. It was none of her business whether the two of them quarrelled or not, although she disliked seeing her husband needling anyone so unnecessarily, but she thought it ill-mannered of him to stage an argument on such an occasion. David was obviously inhibited by her presence from giving as good as he got.
‘Well they have already started to wreck the economy,’ said Anthony. ‘This idiotic business of agreeing to make sterling convertible as a quid pro quo for the American loan is going to cause an appalling drop in the value of sterling as soon as it comes into force.’
‘Well that was the price of the loan. The Americans would never have given way and the money was desperately needed,’ said Julia, trying to make peace.
‘Only because the Socialists promised so much extra in the way of welfare to get themselves elected. And we’ll be paying the price for decades,’ said Anthony. He reached for the carafe of wine and poured some more into his glass, splashing some over the edge.
‘Not entirely,’ said David quietly. ‘Most of the money is needed to finance the policing of the Palestine Mandate, the sorting out and support of Greece against the Communists, and the assistance to every other country that might otherwise look to Russia for food and arms.’
Julia thought it time to change the subject and asked Anthony whether he had heard from his mother recently.
‘She’s apparently very well,’ he said, ‘although she keeps trying to make me persuade Comfort to move back to the States, which is tiresome.’
‘She must miss you both,’ said Julia gently.
‘Hardly me, my dear,’ came the dry answer. ‘After all, she left me with my father when I was six and never troubled about me then.’
Realising that she had chosen an unsuitable subject for diverting them all, Julia tried once more and succeeded in getting Anthony and David to talk in reasonable amity about what sights she ought to see while she was in Italy.
Later, when Anthony escorted her up to her bedroom, she asked him why he had ever invited David to live with them since he so clearly found him unbearably irritating. Anthony shrugged.
‘We were friends in the war – great friends – as I told you,’ he said, shutting her bedroom door behind them. ‘Although I always did get irritated with all his half-baked, sentimental Socialism.’ He struck a match to light the candles on either side of the bed. The dim light they threw looked warm and welcoming. ‘When he wrote to suggest that I move in to this flat with him, it seemed a good idea. But he’s changed.’
‘I rather liked him when we were talking before dinner. What on earth did he do to make you so angry with him?’ asked Julia.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Anthony irritably. ‘But he behaves so charmingly and seems so ingenuous and innocent that one can be quite taken in. Don’t be, Julia. He’s not the simple friendly boy he seems. He can be utterly ruthless and do the most damaging things without a second’s thought … He’s really very dangerous under all that easy friendliness.’
‘But …’ she started when Anthony took her in his arms.
‘But don’t let’s talk about him any more. He’s not important now you’re here,’ he said, stroking her back and kissing her. Julia leaned against him, pleased that he seemed to want her.
They made love, happily enough but without great passion, and afterwards lay side by side in the ludicrously grand bed, talking comfortably of nothing very much in the candlelight until Julia said:
‘Anthony, in the old days we used to talk about starting a family one day. Don’t you think now would –?’
‘What a moment to pick!’ he said before she could get any further. ‘No, Julia, I don’t.’
‘But why?’ she asked.
‘With the world in ruins, parentless children starving all over Europe, too many mouths to feed … Why on earth now?’
‘I suppose,’ said Julia, who had flinched at the unexpected impatience in his voice, ‘because between them the war and losing you for so long have taught me that having children – your children, I mean, not just children in general – matters … that we haven’t all that much time left and that we ought to make the most of it.’
‘What do you mean “not much time”?’ Anthony asked quickly with an odd inflexion in his voice. Julia pushed herself into a half-sitting position so that she could look at him and try to understand what was making him angry.
‘Just that I’m thirty-two, which is old to be starting a first baby,’ she said after a moment.
Anthony blinked and then shook his head slightly.
‘Perhaps, but you’ve plenty of time. It’s no more dangerous at thirty-six than at thirty-two,’ he said, which struck her as being rather clinical in the circumstances.
‘I really would like to try,’ she said, smiling and not letting his reaction make her sound irritable.
‘For God’s sake, Julia,’ he said even more impatiently than before, ‘this is the worst possible moment.’
