Never such innocence, p.9
Never Such Innocence, page 9
Not more than fifteen minutes after the last of the ladies – winding her foxes around her neck, her face freshly powdered and her lips carmined with lipstick – had left, Julia’s father had returned home from his office for lunch. His wife, similarly repaired after her exhausting morning, stood in the doorway of her morning room, her arms outstretched. The caressing voice was back, the wheedling smile flicking up the corners of her red mouth, and she asked him for something. At that distance Julia could not remember what it had been; but it was probably money. It usually had been.
‘Julia, darling, what’s the matter?’ Another caressing voice broke into Julia’s thoughts. She looked up, wiping her hand across her eyes as though to push away the pictures her memory had conjured up, and saw Anthony looking at her with anxiety in his eyes.
‘Nothing, Anthony,’ she said, smiling at him in reassurance. ‘For some reason I was reminded of a trivial but upsetting incident in my childhood. Not important. Sorry. Where were we?’
‘We were just about to have breakfast and then open Anthony’s presents,’ said Comfort, pouring some coffee into her cup.
When they had finished, Anthony produced two identically wrapped parcels, which proved to contain almost identical angels, carved and gilded in Venice some time in the nineteenth century. Julia handed over her presents, three books for Anthony and a complete set of new paint brushes for Comfort, who reciprocated with one of her charcoal drawings of the ruins for Julia and a delicately coloured oil of the square at twilight one snowy evening for her brother.
There was a moment of peace as he and Julia admired the painting, but Comfort resumed hostilities within half an hour. Julia felt very close to Anthony and found herself wishing for almost the first time that they did not share the house with Comfort. She chided herself for her meanness and tried to be extra nice to Comfort to make up for it, but the effort showed and Comfort became more and more difficult. Whenever Julia expressed any opinion, whether it was about the chances of rationing being eased or the latest film they had seen together or even the policies being hammered out by the government, Comfort would contradict her. Anthony became visibly uncomfortable, but he said nothing to his sister until Julia had disappeared into the kitchen to roast the chicken that she had bought in default of turkey or goose for their Christmas lunch.
‘Comfort,’ he said, taking advantage of her absence, ‘why are you being so beastly to Julia?’
Comfort hunched one thin shoulder.
‘She’s just so irritating these days … so pedestrian and dull and reasonable. Imagine giving you three boring books for your first post-war Christmas! She hasn’t any idea, doesn’t understand that we –’
‘I think she understands most things rather well. She’s very sensible,’ said Anthony, quietly interrupting her. ‘But she’s sensitive too and you’re hurting her, you know.’
‘Julia?’ said Comfort with a hardness in her voice that shocked her brother. ‘Nothing I could do would hurt her. She doesn’t care a bit for me and just wishes that I wasn’t here so that she could be alone with you.’
‘That isn’t fair, and you know it. She cares a lot for both of us and she does so much for us.… Can’t you try to be kinder? Or at least not so aggressive? Please, Comfort.’
‘All right. But I think you’re wrong. Oh I’ve got a present for you. Here.’
‘But you’ve already given me that lovely painting,’ he protested, accepting a small, rectangular parcel from her.
‘That was a public present,’ she said with a faint smile curling the edges of her mouth as she watched him unwrap the box. It contained a pair of heavy, smooth, gold cuff-links. Anthony looked down at them, wondering what on earth to say to his sister. He could not tell her that it seemed almost shocking for anyone to spend so much on something so unnecessary when all over Europe children like his patients were starving, dressed in pathetic rags and living in corrugated-iron shacks in makeshift camps.
‘They’re wonderful,’ he said dully. ‘You shouldn’t have.’ Then he looked up and caught her eye. ‘But thank you,’ he said making an effort to sound more cheerful. ‘Thank you, Comfort.’
When Julia came back to say that lunch would be ready at one o’clock she found them sitting reading in silence. Comfort had the previous day’s Times and Anthony was reading one of the novels she had given him. There was a faint smile in his grey eyes as he looked up.
‘It’s very entertaining, Julia,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’ He wanted to add something about being glad that she had not been extravagant, but he could not with Comfort listening.
‘I’m glad,’ said Julia. ‘And I love my angel. I’ll hang it in my study, I think. The gold will look wonderful against those dark-green walls.’
‘Good idea; the green needs something bright to lighten it,’ said Comfort more pleasantly than she had spoken that morning. Julia responded with a smile and between them they managed to create a sweeter atmosphere. Lunch went well, even though it was spartan in comparison with pre-war Christmas meals, and afterwards all three of them went out for a walk.
Huddled inside her fur coat, Julia smiled secretly as she thought of childhood Christmas walks when she had always felt as though she had been stuffed so full of food that she could hardly move. It had been years before she had discovered the pleasures of self-restraint, but once learned it was a lesson she had never forgotten.
They walked across Guildford Street and down through Bloomsbury. As they passed Anthony’s old hospital, Julia noticed that his face looked even more drawn than usual. Not certain whether it was regret for his old job or concern for his existing patients, she said nothing but she did slide her gloved hand into his crooked elbow. He squeezed her hand closer to his body and smiled at her, but he said nothing either.
Then they turned their backs on his past and wandered through the old familiar streets until they came to Gray’s Inn.
‘Has it survived?’ Anthony asked as they crossed one of the roads leading into the Inn. Julia shook her head.
‘The hall was bombed, but most of the rest is all right,’ she said.
‘How sad,’ said Anthony, remembering the few occasions when he and Julia had dined there as guests of one or other of her colleagues. ‘I suppose they’ll be able to rebuild it eventually.’
‘Yes, but no reconstruction can be as good as the original. It was built in 1556, you know,’ said Julia.
‘Yes, you told me –’ Anthony was beginning when Comfort interrupted, saying in an irritable voice:
‘It’s bitterly cold standing around. Can’t we get on?’
Without a word the others turned away from the ruin and walked out of the square. They took a great loop through the empty market at Covent Garden, past the opera house, up Endell Street, into Bloomsbury Street and right into Russell Street. Anthony stopped for a moment in front of the great grey portico of the British Museum.
‘Well at least that’s still here,’ said Comfort, as though trying to make up for her lack of sympathy for the hall at Gray’s Inn.
‘Yes, in fact it is extraordinary how much has survived,’ said Anthony, thinking of the complete devastation of some of the European cities. He had seen photographs of Nuremberg and Dresden and Cologne with their acres of rubble punctuated with the remnants of bombed and burned buildings. He had also seen and tried to deal with some of the casualties of the bombed cities of Italy. He felt Julia’s hand on his arm again and knew that she understood some of the anguish he could not completely suppress.
He wished that he could talk to her about the things he had seen and had to do, and he knew that she wanted to hear about them, but for some reason he could not take himself across the barrier their different wars had erected between them. It might come down in the end, but it seemed solid and very high to him then.
‘Tea, I think,’ Julia said, and he realised that they were back outside his own front door. Comfort opened it and when Julia had gone down to kitchen to boil a kettle, she took his hand.
‘What is it?’ she asked, her face unhappy and her voice strained.
‘I just can’t help thinking of my patients. They’re so young and so ill and they have so little resistance, Comfort. I don’t know which of them …’ His voice trembled slightly and he swallowed. ‘I don’t know which of them will have died by the time I get back.’
She drew back from him at once, dropping his hand as though it had hurt her.
‘Do you hate me for making you come back?’ she asked.
He put an arm round her shoulders and leaned his head sideways so that it rested on hers.
‘Of course not. Never that, But …’ he said, breaking off before he could put his caveat into words.
‘But you can’t wait to get back,’ she supplied. ‘I see.’
‘Comfort, please don’t make it more difficult than it already is. I feel torn in pieces by what I want and by what I have to do. There’re you and Julia here and in some ways I long to be back with you; then there are those children there and they need me so much.’
‘Do you think we don’t?’ came the quick question from his sister.
‘It’s not the same,’ he answered. He put a hand on her cold pink cheek. ‘Try to understand. They have nothing, and I care for them. There’s no one else to care.’
‘And that’s really all it is?’ Comfort said, peering at him as she sometimes peered at people whose portraits she was painting.
‘All?’ he asked, puzzled and a little worried.
‘All that’s kept you away from home? You haven’t met someone else, who –’
‘Certainly not, Comfort. Whatever you do, don’t go upsetting Julia with idiotic suggestions like that. That’s really silly of you,’ he said angrily and moved away from her.
Comfort waited a long time before saying:
‘OK. Good. I’m going up to change. Tell Julia I’ll be down for tea in five minutes.’
‘Before you go,’ Anthony said, grabbing hold of her elbow, ‘and while we’re on that subject: did Julia?’
‘What? Meet someone else? Anthony, that’s ridiculous,’ said Comfort, laughing. ‘Of course she didn’t. She spent the entire war working, talking her everlasting legal talk with that dreary KC in her chambers, and knitting … unpicking old sweaters and reknitting them into things she could wear now. Oh, and firewatching and queuing for rations and helping sometimes at rest centres for the blitzed. She even wanted to import some homeless people into this house.’
‘I see,’ said Anthony. ‘It sounds as though she worked hard.’
‘Of course she did,’ said Comfort with a foot on the bottom stair. She looked over her shoulder at him. ‘She almost made herself ill in 1941, doing far too much, and never getting enough sleep, but then she toughened up and stopped trying to do everything for everyone.’
He watched Comfort as she walked gracefully upstairs in her long mink.
‘I made a cake, but I’m not sure it’s worked out.’ Julia’s cheerful voice from the top of the basement stairs woke him out of his thoughts. ‘I always read the recipe and do exactly as I’m told, but either I’m a congenitally rotten cook or there’s something wrong with my eyesight. It never turns out right.’
‘Poor Julia,’ said Anthony. ‘You shouldn’t have to do the cooking as well as everything else. Comfort has just been telling me how hard you worked in the war, doing “everything for everybody”.’
‘Oh, what nonsense!’ Julia exclaimed. She balanced the heavy tray on her left hipbone and took her right hand away to open the drawing-room door. ‘Oh, good; the fire’s lasted. I did no more than most Londoners. Come and have tea. We’ll have to eat the cake even if it’s disgusting: it’s got the last of the fat ration in it and two whole tablespoons of dried egg, not to speak of an extravagant amount of golden syrup.’
‘It sounds … wonderful,’ said Anthony with such a boyish grin that Julia knew he had been going to say ‘disgusting’. Since she agreed with him and had no self-esteem about her cookery, she smiled happily back.
Anthony made love to her again that night and once more she found herself completely overwhelmed by sensations that left her gasping and almost afraid. Before she had recovered her usual discretion, she asked him the question that had been tormenting her ever since she had realised how unhappy he was.
‘Anthony, are you lonely there?’
He looked at her then with such tenderness and sadness mixed that she almost burst into tears.
‘No. There isn’t time to be lonely,’ he said simply. ‘Up in the hills we’d had to live so hugger-mugger with each other that I used to long to be alone sometimes and so I cherish the little time I have to myself.’
‘I’m glad,’ said Julia. ‘I was afraid that you might miss the friends you must have made there.’
‘The best friend I had up there, David Wallington – did I ever write about him?’ Anthony said. Julia shook her head. ‘A young chap. He was parachuted in to join us very early in 1944 and organised supplies that made survival possible. He’s stayed in Italy, too, working in Rome on various legal matters for the Occupation authorities, and he comes up to Venice whenever he can snatch a weekend or a week’s leave. Then there’s Annunziata, the children, the nurses … Loneliness isn’t really possible, although of course I miss you badly.’
‘I wish I could go back with you,’ she said, ‘but …’
‘I know it isn’t possible, Julia,’ said Anthony quickly. ‘Don’t upset yourself about that. You’ve an important job to do and you’ve worked so hard to get where you are, you can’t chuck it in.’
Julia looked at Anthony, thinking gratefully that there must be few husbands who would take such an enlightened view of their wives’careers.
‘That’s generous of you,’ she said. ‘But then you’ve always been generous. I wish I could help in some way.’
‘You do,’ he said, sliding down the bed and pulling the blankets up under his chin. ‘Your letters help enormously.’
‘I’m glad,’ Julia said. That night she slept well.
When she had prepared breakfast the following morning and carried it into the drawing room, she noticed that Comfort’s garlands were beginning to wilt and realised that they were almost at the end of Anthony’s holiday. They had one more day and then he would disappear again and she would be left with Comfort. ‘And your work,’ she reminded herself bracingly and set about making the last day a good one.
It was. Comfort had recovered from whatever had been making her so crabby on Christmas Day, and the three of them spent almost as relaxed and cheerful a day as they had done long before the war when Anthony was working at the Radcliffe Infirmary and Julia and Comfort were at Somerville. They even began to make plans for when Anthony could come back to England for ever and they could repair and refurbish the house.
After such a day it was agonising for Julia to have to say goodbye to Anthony again. Due in chambers soon after ten, she had to leave the house at half-past nine. Comfort had stayed in bed late and so Anthony and Julia had the drawing room to themselves.
She looked at her watch for the tenth time and put down her coffee cup.
‘I’m going to have to …’ she began.
‘Leave,’ supplied Anthony. ‘I know. Julia, I … It’s been a wonderful holiday. Thank you.’ He stood up when she did and put his arms round her.
‘I’ve loved it,’ she said honestly. ‘And I’m so relieved … so pleased that … It won’t be so difficult being without you now that we’ve remarried, if you see what I mean.’
‘I think I do,’ he said, stroking her eyebrows with one long finger.
‘Don’t stop writing those letters, will you? They keep me in touch with what’s going on here.’
‘I promise,’ she said and then clung to him. ‘Be careful of yourself, won’t you?’
‘I’ll be careful,’ he said and then took his arms away from her suddenly. ‘And now you’d better go or we’ll make each other maudlin. The war’s over, Julia. I know I said some rather dramatic things the other night, but I’m perfectly all right.’
‘All right,’ she echoed. ‘Good. Well …’ she looked round the elegant room with its decaying garlands, trying to think of something suitable to say. In court she had never been so lost for words, not even during the most forlorn of cases. ‘Well, goodbye, Anthony.’
He kissed her cheek and watched her go, blessing her common sense and her capacity to absorb and deal with difficult emotions. Without it, he thought, Comfort’s terrifying swings from inspiriting happiness to aggressive melancholy could have made their life together unbearable. He hoped that she would become happy enough, now that she was painting again, not to put too great a strain on Julia’s tolerance. He needed them both and would have hated to be made to choose between them.
Chapter Eight
Julia had an hour-long meeting with James Norgrove, who was leading her in the murder case, and then returned to her desk to read through old cases to find precedents and authorities for the defence strategy they had planned. Glad to have something important to keep her mind off Anthony’s departure, Julia was so absorbed in her work that when she was interrupted by a knock at the door soon after twelve she was irritated.
‘Yes,’ she called coldly.
‘Julia, my dear, may I come in?’ said a familiar voice. The door opened and Julia’s expression changed as she recognised the long, lined face and tired blue eyes of Mark Heathwood.
‘I didn’t know you were back,’ she said, smiling. ‘Come in and sit down.’
‘We’ve been let out for ten days,’ said Mark, accepting a chair. ‘Thank God.’
‘Why? Is it awful?’
‘Ghastly!’ he said. ‘The evidence of what they’ve done in those unspeakable camps of theirs is enough to justify the tribunal in itself, quite apart from the other charges, but it is unbelievably frustrating having separate prosecution teams from each of the four powers: what with the Russians determined to have every defendant hanged and the Americans …’ He broke off, remembering that Julia’s husband was half-American.
