And even now they didn’t talk, and Julian realised he didn’t mind. There was no awkwardness to it. It was companionable. It was a shared understanding.
Julian was invited to three more dinners. After the fourth, Mr. Davison called Mr. Morris, and told him that a proposal of marriage to his daughter would not be unacceptable. Mr. Morris was very pleased, and Mrs. Morris took Julian to her bedroom and had him go through her jewellery box to pick out a ring he could give his fiancée, and Julian marvelled, he had never seen such beautiful things.
Julian didn’t meet Mr. Davison until the wedding day, whereupon the man clapped him on the back as if they were old friends, and told him he was proud to call him his son. Mr. Morris clapped Julian on the back too; even Julian’s brothers were at it. And Julian marvelled at how he had been transformed into a man by dint of a simple service and signed certificate. Neither of his brothers had married yet, he had beaten them to the punch, and was there jealousy in that back clapping? They called Julian a lucky dog, that his bride was quite the catch. And so, Julian felt, she was; on her day of glory she did nothing but beam with smiles, and there was no trace of her customary truculence. She was charming, even witty, and Julian wondered why she had chosen to hide these qualities from him — had she recognised that it would have made him scared of her? Had she been shy and hard just to win his heart? Julian thought this might be so, and in that belief discovered that he did love her, he loved her after all — and maybe, in spite of everything, the marriage might just work out.
For a wedding present, the families had bought them a house in Chelsea. It was small, but perfectly situated, and they could always upgrade when they had children. As an extra present, Mr. Davison had bought his daughter a doll — a bit of a monstrosity, really, about the size of a fat infant, with blonde curly hair and red lips as thick as a darkie’s, and wearing its own imitation wedding dress. Karen seemed pleased with it. Julian thought little about it at the time.
They honeymooned in Venice for two weeks, in a comfortable hotel near the Rialto.
Karen didn’t show much interest in Venice. No, that wasn’t true; she said she was fascinated by Venice. But she preferred to read about it in her guidebook. Outside there was noise, and people, and stink; she could better experience the city indoors. Julian offered to stay with her, but she told him he was free to do as he liked. So in the daytime he’d leave her, and he’d go and visit St. Mark’s Square, climb the basilica, take a gondola ride. In the evening he’d return, and over dinner he’d try to tell her all about it. She’d frown, and say there was no need to explain, she’d already read it all in her Baedeker. Then they would eat in silence.
On the first night, he’d been tired from travel. On the second, from sightseeing. On the third night, Karen told her husband that there were certain manly duties he was expected to perform. Her father was wanting a grandson; for her part, she wanted lots of daughters. Julian said he would do his very best, and drank half a bottle of claret to give him courage. She stripped off, and he found her body interesting, and even attractive, but not in the least arousing. He stripped off too.
“Oh!” she said. “But you have hardly any hair! I’ve got more hair than you!” And it was true, there was a faint buzz of fur over her skin, and over his next to nothing — just the odd clump where Nature had started work, rethought the matter, given up. Karen laughed, but it was not unkind. She ran her fingers over his body. “It’s so smooth, how did you get it so smooth?
“Wait a moment,” she then said, and hurried to the bathroom. She was excited. Julian had never seen his wife excited. She returned with a razor. “Let’s make you perfect,” she said.
She soaped him down, and shaved his body bald. She only cut him twice, and that wasn’t her fault, that was because he’d moved. She left him only the hairs on his head. And even there, she plucked the eyebrows, and trimmed his fine wavy hair into a neat bob.
“There,” she said, and looked over her handiwork proudly, and ran her hands all over him, and this time there was nothing that got in their way.
And at that, he tried to kiss her, and she laughed again, and pushed him away.
“No, no,” she said. “Your duties can wait until we’re in England. We’re on holiday.”
So he started going out at night as well, with her blessing. He saw how romantic Venice could be by moonlight. He didn’t know Italian well, and so could barely understand what the ragazzi said to him, but it didn’t matter, they were very accommodating. And by the time he returned to his wife’s side, she was always asleep.
The house in Chelsea had been done up for them, ready for their return. He asked her whether she’d like him to carry her over the threshold. She looked surprised at that, and said he could try. She lay back in his arms, and he was expecting her to be quite heavy, but it went all right really, and he got her through the doorway without doing anything to disgrace himself.
As far as he’d been aware, Karen had never been to the house before. But she knew exactly where to go, walking straight to the study, and to the wooden desk inside, and to the third drawer down. “I have a present for you,” she said, and from the drawer she took a gun.
“It was my brother’s,” she said.
“Oh. Really?”
“It may not have been his. But it’s what they gave us anyway.”
She handed it to Julian. Julian weighed it in his hands. Like his wife, it was lighter than he’d expected.
“You’re the man of the house now,” Karen said.
There was no nanny to fetch them dinner. Julian said he didn’t mind cooking. He fixed them some eggs. He liked eggs.
After they’d eaten, and Julian had rinsed the plates and left them to dry, Karen said that they should inspect the bedroom. And Julian agreed. They’d inspected the rest of the house; that room, quite deliberately, both had left as yet unexplored.
The first impression that Julian got as he pushed open the door was pink, that everything was pink; the bedroom was unapologetically feminine, that blazed out from the soft pink carpet and the wallpaper of pink rose on pink background, And there was a perfume to it too, the perfume of Karen herself, and he still didn’t much care for it.
That was before he saw the bed.
He was startled, and gasped, and then laughed at himself for gasping. The bed was covered with dolls. There were at least a dozen of them, all pale plastic skin and curls and lips that were ruby red, and some were wearing pretty little hats, and some carrying pretty little nosegays, all of them in pretty dresses. In the centre of them, in pride of place, was the doll Karen’s father had given as a wedding present — resplendent in her wedding dress, still fat, her facial features smoothed away beneath that fat, sitting amongst the others like a queen. And all of them were smiling. And all of them were looking at him, expectantly, as if they’d been waiting to see who it was they’d heard climb the stairs, as if they’d been waiting for him all this time.
Julian said, “Well! Well. Well, we won’t be able to get much sleep with that lot crowding about us!” He chuckled. “I mean, I won’t know which is which! Which one is just a doll, and which one my pretty wife!” He chuckled. “Well.”