Never Such Innocence, page 35
‘Thank you, Felicity. I’ll let you know. Goodbye,’ said Julia and left the pretty house with the first faint stirrings of an idea for smashing through the impasse that faced her. It would be violent, but it might be the only way.
When Peter Suvarov got home later that afternoon, having scoured the local greengrocers for grapes to take his wife and paid exorbitantly for them, he found her unusually introspective. Assuming at first that it was just an effect of the immense physical upheaval that she had endured, he said nothing, but sat on her bed and stroked her lovely head. She leaned into his hand, responding as generously as she always did every time he touched her.
‘Peter,’ she said after a while.
‘What can I do for you, my dearest heart?’ he said.
‘Julia Gillingham is pregnant,’ she said and told him the whole story, knowing that he would never betray the confidence.
‘You needn’t worry about her, Flixe,’ he said when he had heard it all. ‘She’s the most competent woman I’ve ever met – and that includes your elder sister – and she’s got tremendous guts, too. She’ll be all right.’
Flixe was silent for a while, thinking that over.
‘I suppose,’ she said at last, ‘that it wasn’t really her I was worrying about.’ She twisted her head against the pillows so that she could look at her husband. ‘Julia said that being pregnant she was afraid that David Wallington would think she was trying to blackmail him into marrying her,’ she added so fast that the words tumbled over each other.
Suvarov took her face between both hands and kissed her.
‘Flixe, darling,’ he said. ‘The only reason you and I did not get married on VE Day was because I was still married to Diana. You may remember that I asked you to marry me then.’
‘Yes, I do remember,’ she said in a small voice, ‘but you only asked me because she had told you to, and you might well have changed your mind before she died.’
Her purplish-blue eyes looked enormous in her pale face and her mouth was pinched. Suvarov decided to tackle the root of her fears.
‘Darling,’ he said firmly, ‘I know that I had a terrible reputation as a rake; I know that I had a short and stupid affair with your sister; I know that your father told you you would never be safe with a foreigner of such dubious reputation as me, but do you really think that if I had fallen out of love with you I would have done anything so silly as to allow us to conceive a child?’
Flixe looked at him, searching his face for clues as to what he really thought. He was a master of concealment and had successfully hidden the fact that he loved her at all for the entire war. She longed to believe him and yet it was hard.
‘Come on, Flixe,’ he said, spreading his hands with their palms upwards. ‘A man of my experience?’
She laughed then, recognising the sense of it.
‘I love you so much, you see,’ she said after a while, ‘that I … Oh, never mind saying it. You know, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘I know and because you are you, it’s the greatest compliment that you could pay me.’
‘Good,’ she said, sitting up and looking much healthier than when he had returned. ‘Let’s have some of those grapes and decide how we can help poor Julia Gillingham deal with this catastrophe.’
‘Poor Julia Gillingham is quite capable of helping herself,’ Suvarov said, breaking off a small bunch of grapes and handing them to his wife. ‘This “catastrophe” as you called it will be the making of her if it rescues her from that marriage.’
‘But do you know anything about the marriage?’ Flixe asked, eating a grape and closing her eyes in delight as her tastebuds recognised the smooth sweetness of the juice trickling into her mouth when she broke the grapeskin with her tongue.
‘Not a lot,’ answered Peter as he watched her in amusement. One of the things he loved about his wife was her capacity to enjoy every kind of sensuous pleasure to the full. ‘But I know quite a lot about her husband and so, having met her, I can imagine it.’
‘What’s he like?’ asked Flixe. ‘Or rather what was he like with the partisans? I presume that’s why you know about him?’
‘Yes; David reported fully. He had to, after all. We sent him to join up with the partisans so that we could find out who was doing what out there and how powerful the Communists were likely to be once the war was won. And then when I went to Rome at the end of the war I had to interview Gillingham myself. That may well be why he refused to dine with us. We didn’t get on.’
‘And?’ said Flixe. ‘Come on, Peter. The war’s over. You don’t need to conceal it all any longer.’
‘You’d be surprised,’ he said, absent-mindedly eating one of her grapes. ‘I can’t tell you much except perhaps that he’s said to be a brilliant doctor, he’s undoubtedly very arrogant like so many of them, he was physically brave and quite prepared to make sacrifices for the good of the war.’
‘That all sounds admirable,’ said Flixe. ‘There must be more.’
‘There is and I’d say it boils down to the fact that, unlike David Wallington, Gillingham is a man who uses other people whenever he needs them and is not able to give anything back when his need for them is over,’ said Suvarov at last. ‘And I don’t think that he has much natural warmth, unlike her; I’d have said he was not at all … sensual. I feel sorry for her. She’d do far better with David.’
‘Poor Julia,’ said Flixe when she had digested that.
Julia would have been surprised if she had heard Peter Suvarov’s strictures on her husband. At the time he made them, she was sitting at her desk in the dark-green study writing to Anthony.
I can only appeal to your generosity [she wrote towards the end of a long, frank letter] and you have always shown me so much of that before. This child exists and I cannot take steps to change that: it must be born. I want to bring it up myself, which I can do provided there is no scandal that might prevent my continuing to work. What I should like to do, therefore, is to remain married to you in name for as long as you continue in Italy and then try to arrange a quiet divorce. That way the child would bear your name, but of course I would not want you to have to take any financial responsibility for either of us.
I don’t want David to know about the child, because he would rush to our support and that could ruin us all.
She thought for a while and then added:
I don’t know what you plan to do about your future and whether you intend to come back here at all. I am sorry that our years together should have ended like this. I have never wanted to hurt you and I know how badly it can hurt to discover that your spouse has a child conceived with someone else.
Julia.
That oblique reference to Raffaella’s child was the only one in the letter and Julia was sure that it would be enough. She was sure, too, that most men of her acquaintance would consider Anthony’s illegitimate child to be of infinitely less significance than his wife’s, but she had a high enough opinion of his intelligence and his basic decency to believe that he might think differently.
Chapter Twenty-Five
A week later Julia shared a perfectly cooked omelette with Comfort and Tibor. The eggs, a lavish half dozen, had been given to Comfort by an admirer who kept chickens, and she had decided to blow them all on one delicious meal instead of eking them out for weeks to augment the mean ration of one each a week. The butter had been contributed by Julia from her weekly six ounces. Tibor had done the cooking and provided a bottle of claret, which he had bought on the strength of the proceeds of his first sale of the exhibition.
Comfort had got out the Waterford glasses and the best china in celebration of the extravagant omelette and enjoyed the contrast of the rough deal table with her smooth white bone china, which was was decorated in dark-blue and real gold leaf. She began to toy with the idea of a still life, a watercolour perhaps, that would point up the contrasts and provide a pleasantly witty commentary on post-war life. She leaned slightly to her left so that her bare forearm just brushed Tibor’s arm and turned to smile at him. He looked at her from under his drooping eyelids and she wondered again whether he really loved her as he said he did or whether it was her house and her china and her money that he wanted.
Julia, almost at peace since sending her letter to Anthony, watched them across the wide, scrubbed table and thought that she had never seen Comfort so easy or so ordinary. She was working well and apparently happy, still looking beautiful, but far less eccentric or intense than in the old days. Tibor seemed to have found a key to her that had eluded every other man who had tried to love her. He stood no nonsense from her, Julia had noticed with amusement, and when she tried to manipulate him into abasing himself so that she could despise him, he simply went away.
He was in a difficult situation, having lost everything in the war and having to live on Comfort’s charity, and yet he managed it with great dignity, contributing to the housekeeping budget whenever he could and unobtrusively taking over more than his share of household chores when he could not, and taking immense care not to compromise her. Julia hoped that the two of them would make a success of life together and marry, but she suspected that Tibor would not even consider it until he had made enough money to salve his pride and allow him something to offer Comfort.
Rather bleakly Julia realised that even if they did marry she would be unlikely to know much about it. David’s child would come between her and Comfort more surely than almost anything else. There were going to be very few more evenings when Julia could sit and watch Comfort smiling at her with all the old open affection in her slate-grey eyes.
David’s child, Julia thought and recognised that she was bracketing them together in her mind. She knew that she had to stop that. My child, she corrected herself.
‘Isn’t it time for the news?’ said Comfort. ‘Come on, Julia, what’s the matter with you? You’re usually itching to hear the latest slice of BBC gloom.’
Julia smiled a little sadly.
‘I was dreaming,’ she said.
‘Of what?’ asked Comfort, swivelling in her chair and reaching to the big, cream-painted dresser behind her to switch on the wireless.
‘Oh, a time in the future,’ she said and then flogged her mind to produce some optimistic hopes. ‘When a six-egg omelette will seem no more than a matter of course and when the country isn’t on the brink of ruin and when everyone has come home and the Middle East is at peace and Cyprus is sorted out and India is not being torn in pieces by its own people,’ she said.
‘Some hope,’ said Comfort as the wireless crackled and the sound of Big Ben’s chimes boomed through the basement kitchen. The three of them listened in growing surprise to the first item of news: an account of a speech to be delivered the following day at Harvard by General Marshall, in which he explained that America would have to provide financial assistance if the ruined countries of Europe were ever to be rebuilt.
‘The truth of the matter is [went the speech] that Europe’s requirements for the next three or four years of foreign food and other essential products – principally from America – are so much greater than her present ability to pay that she must have substantial additional help or face economic, social, and political deterioration of a very grave character.’
‘You see,’ said Comfort, her face glowing, when the news ended, ‘America is going to save the world after all.’
‘Thank God,’ said Julia quietly, remembering the bitter arguments she and Comfort had had in the summer of 1945. ‘There’s hope after all.’
‘There is always hope,’ said Tibor, who, alone of the three of them, had known at first hand what it was to be occupied by an enemy like the Nazis. Compared with the bleakness of his future then, Julia knew that her difficulties were small.
She got up from the table suddenly and ran for the sink. Reaching it just in time, she vomited up all the omelette and the vegetables and the wine. While she was being sick, Tibor followed her and held her head until she had finished.
‘What a waste,’ she gasped when it was over at last. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Never mind,’ he said, pouring her a glass of water. She rinsed her mouth and started to clean the sink.
‘Go and sit down,’ said Tibor. ‘I can do that.’
‘But it’s so horrible … Julia began.
‘Go and sit down,’ he said more firmly and gratefully she obeyed.
‘Are you all right, Julia?’ said Comfort when Julia sat back in her hard chair and leaned her head in her hands.
‘Of course she’s not all right,’ said Tibor. ‘She’s just been sick. Make some tea, Comfort.’
‘It’s all right. I’m fine,’ said Julia, waiting for Comfort to draw the obvious conclusion, which she did soon enough.
‘Yes,’ said Julia to the inevitable question.
‘But that’s wonderful, darling,’ said Comfort, coming to embrace her. ‘It’s what I’ve always wanted for the three of us. You and me and Anthony and a child. He’ll have to come back now.’ Her face was radiant as she laid her head on Julia’s shoulder. Julia felt cold all through her bones.
‘We’ll see,’ she said. ‘I’ve written to him, but I haven’t heard yet.’
‘I’ll write too,’ said Comfort, lifting her head to smile at Julia again. ‘He’ll have to come back now. Well done, Julia. Now we can all be happy again.’
Julia could not answer. She felt sick and afraid and, for the first time, guilty. Whatever Anthony had done had been done in the war. It was Julia who had threatened the life they might have regained in peacetime.
‘I never thought it would happen,’ said Comfort.
‘Nor I,’ answered Julia truthfully, removing herself from Comfort’s embrace as gently as she could. ‘I must go to bed.’
‘I’ll take you up,’ Comfort said, but Tibor gripped her wrist and stopped her following Julia.
‘She’s too tired, Comfort,’ he said firmly. ‘Let her go.’
Julia pulled herself up the stone stairs alone.
She woke the next morning to one of the most horrible sounds in the world: bitter voices arguing furiously but very quietly. It was obvious that Comfort and Tibor were fighting a battle and trying to keep it from waking Julia. She lay against her pillows with her eyes closed, hoping that it was just a skirmish rather than all-out war.
Up in Comfort’s studio it was clear that it was war. She was standing with her back to the green-and-blue tapestry screen, staring at Tibor as though she had never seen him properly. His short legs and his exceptionally broad shoulders looked almost grotesque and she wondered why she had never noticed before that his hair was pathetically thin over his scalp.
‘I do not have to give you reasons,’ she said coldly, ‘I have no obligations to you. The boot is firmly on the other foot. I have housed you and fed you, given you canvasses and paints, introduced you to critics and European dealers and made sure you could have a major exhibition. That is enough. I have put up with your sponging for long enough.’
‘I do not understand,’ said Tibor quietly.
‘What don’t you understand?’ asked Comfort. ‘It all seems quite clear to me.’
‘I do not understand the word “sponging”. What does it mean?’ he asked with a dangerous note in his voice
Comfort laughed, but quietly, because she did not want to wake Julia, who needed all the sleep she could get.
‘Taking,’ said Comfort. ‘Take, take, take. You’re like a sponge soaking up water – but it isn’t water, it’s money and food and canvasses and –’
‘You said that you loved me,’ said Tibor blankly, interrupting the flow of accusation.
Comfort wished that he had lost his temper so that she could lose hers, but he sounded merely puzzled.
‘For a time I thought that perhaps I did,’ she whispered, turning away and filling her kettle. With it held in her wet right hand she looked round the screen again: ‘But now I know that I do not, and I am fed up with having you hanging around sponging on me and Julia.’
‘I see,’ he whispered back, ‘I am sponging on her, too, am I? What has made you so protective of her? A few months ago, you told me that she had ruined your brother’s life and that you would never forgive her.’
Comfort put the kettle down on the gas ring and washed her hands. She hated him for reminding her of the things she had said about Julia in the unhappy past and could hardly bear to look at him any more. But she had to say something to prevent him going straight to Julia and spoiling things again.
‘I thought so at the time, but I was wrong,’ she said. ‘I’ll make it up to her. But it’s none of your business. I want you out of here. There isn’t room in the house any more and I don’t have to explain myself to you. You’ve had plenty out of me; you can hardly complain.’
‘Stop,’ said Tibor loudly. He stamped on the bare polished floorboards.
‘Shhh,’ said Comfort. ‘You’ll wake her.’
‘That is enough,’ said Tibor. ‘I am going. I will send for my things.’
Julia heard that, although she could not hear what Comfort said in reply. Then there was the sound of a door opening and Tibor’s heavy tread coming down the stairs. Julia flung back her blankets and got out of bed, thrusting her arms into her grey dressing gown before she opened the door. She was just in time to see him pass Anthony’s dressing-room door.
‘Tibor,’ she said urgently.
He looked back for a moment and then shrugged.
‘I am sorry,’ he said and went on down the stairs.
Julia shuffled her feet into a pair of bedroom slippers and followed him. She caught him up in the high, cold hall.
‘Don’t go,’ she said. ‘At least not without telling me why. Please, Tibor.’
