Читать книгу Old Wine and New - Warwick Deeping - Страница 18

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At No. 53 Spellthorn Terrace, Marwood’s daughter sat in front of the fire. It was only a little fire, and she had lit it because the war was over, and because she had just emerged from a most devastating row with her mother. She had felt cold and a little sick after she had fought her battle and won it.

She was alone. She had been pelted with words, and some of them still stuck like gobbets of cold wet mud. Her mother had lost all self-control; she had screamed obscenities. “Your father was always a mean, dirty little dog—and you—you’re just his daughter.” Yes, she was alone and glad to be alone after sitting stolidly in a chair, and letting her mother tear the last tempest to pieces. She—Julia—had not spoken more than two dozen words.

“The house and the furniture are mine. I am going to run this house as I please.”

“You want me out of it. I’ll get out of it.”

Her mother had banged doors. She had been like a furious, large noise in the house, an overheated human presence, pushing furniture about, opening and shutting drawers. Something overhead had gone over with a crash, and the glass globes in the chandelier had rattled. Then, her mother had come down the stairs quite silently, and had gone out of the house, leaving a stillness behind her. No. 53 seemed to hold its breath.

Julia nursed her knees. She was alone, for both her brothers were out on this epic November night when a great fear died and other fears were born. She did not want to go out, but warmed herself at the fire, and felt torn, and sombre and triumphant. O, but it had hurt, as most shameful things can hurt, and yet as she hugged her knees and brooded she knew that she would not relent. She could not relent. She too had brought her war to an end. The little house seemed to draw deep breaths.

Like Spencer Scarsdale in his orchard she too confronted the future, sitting squarely over against it as she sat in front of this fire, with her eyes at gaze and her chin pushed forward. Someone had once said to her—“O, you young things never know what you want,” but Julia knew what she wanted, and knew that she knew it. No. 53 Spellthorn Terrace had compelled her to recognize certain realities and to choose between them. She had chosen. She wanted her mother and Master Robert out of the house, so that No. 53 Spellthorn Terrace could be herself and Harry.

That was her first objective, and beyond it, stretched other objectives that were less definite, though her attitude to life was practical. She had ambitions, however limited they might appear. The centre point of her human purposefulness was Harry, for it was Harry who evoked in her rather hard young soul a maternal glow, a saving tenderness. She wanted Harry out of that blue jacket with its silver buttons. She wanted Mr. Paul Jimson to admit her value and to raise her salary to four pounds a week. She had more than a suspicion that she coveted a share in Mr. Paul Jimson’s business, and that she could develop that business. She wanted authority, independence, results, hard cash.

For Julia Marwood had been educated in no dame-school. She had grown up in No. 53 Spellthorn Terrace, in an atmosphere of wranglings, and shabbiness, and physical clashes. She had been up against the physical most of her life, and in contact with crude appetites. She had been afraid, and had learnt that other people could be more afraid. She had had to fight, and very realistically so with young Bob whose animal arrogance had used fists and feet. She had fought him with a cold, white fury, and with a strength and a courage that had driven him down steps and into corners; she had fought him until he had flinched and covered up; she had fought him for herself and for Harry. Now he was afraid of her. She had impressed her dominance upon him.

She had fought her mother, but otherwise. Their war, until the last clash, had been more of a siege or a blockade, silent, watchful. And she had suffered. She had suffered in the most impressionable part of her young self, in all those softnesses and flushings of sex, in the bloom of her young womanhood. Her mother had disgusted her with sex, left her with a maggot in the bud of her rose, and somehow the flower had not unfolded as it should. Bob’s hands had bruised her bosom and torn her hair, but Florence Marwood’s excursions into the physical had left other bruises.

So, she sat before the fire and stared at it. She did not see in it the pictures which so many girls see, but coal and flame, a blackness and a redness. She looked through the windows of No. 53 Spellthorn Terrace and the windows of Messrs. Jimson & Stent. She saw beds to be made, and Harry in his buttons, shops, and the prices of things, food, clothing, some advantage to be seized, some person or situation to be confronted. Life was reality, shillings and pence, No. 53 Spellthorn Terrace, shoe-leather, a ninepenny seat in a cinema, bus fares, bargains at shops, necessities, the urgent greeds of other people. She confronted it all; she was strong; she was ten years older than her twenty-one.

Her attitude was significant, though she did not realize its significance. Almost it symbolized the pose of the new generation towards the phase that was unfolding. She had not been to any place of worship since the age of ten. Her ethics were herself, the product of her own individual make-up, and of her parentage and her environment. She had known nothing of beauty, save her father’s rather inarticulate and commonplace affection for her, and the bright and eager face of her small brother. She had had to push sturdily and stubbornly against edges and obstructions in a world that was too full of people who were hard up and in a hurry.

She had learnt to grip. She had learnt to look at the price of every article. She had meant to watch the face of Mr. Jimson, and of her mother, and to keep a sophisticated scrutiny upon a blackguard brother. Life had for her few soft edges, or purple patches. Her own face, firm and white and enigmatic, was a confrontation of reality, of circumstance.

And the war was over. She was sick of the war. It had had no glamour for her. Her practical young soul wanted it swept up and tumbled away into some hole in the ground. It had been a stupid, and abominable mess. She had no sentimental feelings about it, and she did not want to sentimentalize about its products, or about the men who would come back from it.

She wanted to get on with her own particular job.

About nine o’clock Julia heard the front-door knocker; three light taps and one final and emphatic thud. That would be Harry. She got up quickly and let him in.

“O, Ju, what a beano! Everyone’s gone jolly well mad.”

She closed and locked the door.

“Celebrating, are they?”

“I should think so! I went as far as Piccadilly. Such a squash. And the row! An old woman kissed me.”

“Did she.”

“Funny, wasn’t it? She was blubbing.”

“Well, I don’t know. Had any supper, old lad?”

“No.”

“I left some out for you.”

He was flushed and excited, and she had to sit in the kitchen and listen to his description of the crowd and the crowd’s exultation. He had thought it all a huge joke. “Women holding their skirts up high and dancing, Ju. Kicking their legs up. And officers. And lots of ’em squiffy. And the row! I saw one girl rolling in the gutter.” She listened with an air of dark-eyed thoughtfulness, watching him and over him; he was so innocent. Life was a great joke.

When he had gone to bed, she sat down again on the foot-stool in front of the sitting-room fire which had dwindled to a meagre redness. She poked it and sat holding the poker; she listened; her figure had an expectant rigidity.

She was wondering whether her mother would come back and try that locked door.

But her mother never came back.