Читать книгу Old Wine and New - Warwick Deeping - Страница 15

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Julia’s alarum was set to wake her at half-past six, and when it sounded she would lie on her back for a quarter of a minute, and then with one swift movement and swish of the clothes get herself out of bed. For she was a young woman of affairs. She had housework to do, and breakfast for herself and the two boys to prepare before her day’s work at Messrs. Jimson & Stent, who were estate agents. Before the war James Marwood had been Mr. Jimson’s confidential clerk, and when Marwood had gone to the war, his daughter had taken his place. She had understudied her father for a month. Mr. Jimson, a little, fat, pallid man with a worried manner and a squeaky voice, had accepted the war’s inevitable improvisations.

“We’ll get along as best we can. Miss Marwood will be one of our impromptus.”

Mr. Jimson was musical, with a taste for light opera, but Julia as an impromptu had startled his musical ear. She had seated herself at her father’s desk in the office of Martagon Terrace and in six months she had developed into a dark young symphony full chorded and confident.

But on this particular morning she allowed herself to lie for a little while and contemplate the ceiling, a white sheet upon which her consciousness projected its thoughts and plans. No. 53 Spellthorn Terrace was not the house of yesterday and she arose and looked in that bottom drawer as though to assure herself that the black box was in its place. She knocked on the wall as a hint to Harry that it was time for him to get up. Her window showed her a broken sky with patches of blueness and clouds alight with fingers of gold. An old pear-tree in the narrow back garden was still afire with leaves of amber and maroon, and from its brilliant branches yellow flakes slanted noiselessly to earth.

Julia shook out her vigorous hair. The day was full of a feeling of movement, and as she sat on the edge of the bed and pulled on her stockings she thought for a moment of the man who had brought her that packet of letters. She was grateful to him, but casually so. She had thought Scarsdale quite old, older than her father, a queer and rather ineffectual old stick, but likeable. She dressed quickly. She knocked at Harry’s door before going downstairs.

“Getting up?”

“O,—rather.”

Her voice changed when she spoke to her younger brother. Harry was different from all the other people in the world; he was hers. She went downstairs and began to pull up blinds and draw back curtains, and on the hard sofa in the sitting-room she discovered a dishevelled figure still grossly asleep, collarless and tousled, with the hearthrug for a coverlet. Her brother Bob! Also she noticed that a window-pane had been broken.

She looked at Robert with an ominous, still hostility. So he had broken in at some scandalous hour and in a state to be satisfied with the sofa. She did not wake him. This house was a house of realities, however ugly and merciless they might be, and she closed the door on the roue of seventeen whom the war had provided with a precocious insolence and too much money. She knew that she was going to cleanse the house of some of its realities. She was all for reality as she saw it, but not for reality as it was exhibited by Robert and her mother.

In the kitchen overlooking the narrow garden and the brilliant foliage of the pear-tree, she filled the kettle, put a match to one of the rings of the gas stove, and took the breakfast cloth from the table drawer. She was aware of them as her cloth, her table. She heard Harry on the stairs, and her sense of new power and of possession exulted. The boy came in, buttoning up his page’s jacket. His face had a brightness.

“What’s on, Ju?”

“On?”

“Yes, grub.”

She could smile at Harry. She knew that with an unshocked soul she would give him Bob’s breakfast ration of bacon. If love could not boast of favouritism what was the use of love?

“O, the usual. There’s some margarine.”

“Your turn, Ju.”

“I don’t fancy it.”

He set about helping her, getting down the plates and cups and saucers from the dresser, and her dark glances touched him. He was such a clean, happy child, sensitive, affectionate. Never was it necessary to inspect his neck, or to be suspicious as to the use of a toothbrush, whereas Bob was a sloven, flashy and unclean. Certainly young Robert worked at a garage, but oil and grease and black smudges seemed to adhere to him naturally, as did other greasinesses. And the soul of Julia gave thanks for Harry’s cleanliness, for his bright eyes and for the way he looked you in the face. Harry consoled and reassured her; he was worth while; he saved No. 53 Spellthorn Terrace from being hopeless.

As she placed four rashers of bacon in the frying-pan she confronted the reality of Harry’s row of buttons. He carried them with a boyish debonairness, but that did not reconcile her to the buttons. Money had to be earned, but it might be earned with a difference.

“I say,—there’s some jam.”

“Secret. Not for Bob.”

She admonished him playfully with the fork.

“Just a dessertspoonful. Lock it up.”

She felt exultant; she wanted to laugh. The bacon began to sizzle in the pan, and it, too, seemed merry. But her gaiety had a fierce edge to it. She kept glancing at her brother.

“Boots all right?”

“O, quite, Ju. But I’ve got a hole in my socks.”

“Put them out to-night.”

He was a good child; he seemed to understand that clothes had to be taken care of and that thoughtless devastations had to be remedied by his sister’s hands. He had a kind of wisdom, and he was not too old or too awkward to be kissed.

So they breakfasted together, while Mrs. Marwood remained abed, and Robert continued to sleep on the sofa. Julia had turned the key on Bob, and already she was proposing to turn the front-door key on him finally and relentlessly. He was a dirty young animal, and being somehow wise to the ways of the young male, she had taken care that Harry should not be soiled by contact with his brother. All the same, she wanted Bob out of the house; he could go and wallow elsewhere on his four pounds a week.

Harry helped her to wash up the crockery. He could handle a glass-cloth daintily.

“What about mother, Ju?”

“O, she’ll be down later. Time you buzzed off, my dear.”

“Right-o.”

She unlocked the front door for him and saw him off, and then she unlocked the other door and surprised Bob in the act of sitting up with his hair flopping, and his socked feet protruding from under the hearthrug. She eyed him with disrelish. Her only concern was to make sure that this young man was not late at his work; she did not want him sacked and on her hands.

She said: “Nice person you are. You’ll pay for that window. Get up.”

He glowered at her.

“Hallo Jujube. What about breakfast?”

“You can get your own breakfast, or go out and get it.”

“Aw,—sulks!”

She left him. Always she had a feeling of being soiled and cheapened by an altercation with this lout. She might have few illusions, but she was fastidious about her realities. Some people seemed to tarnish life even as they left smears on brass handles and on linoleum and tablecloths. Having many things to do, and liking them done cleanly she had no use for messy and inconsiderate people who left trails of untidiness and slimy selfishness behind them.

She went upstairs and made Harry’s bed and her own, and dealt with the slops. Then she put on her hat and coat, and slipping her father’s will into the little fibre attaché-case she carried with her to Martagon Terrace, she set forth upon the day’s adventure.