For the moment she did not think of Tom, she was so disturbed at what Roger was saying.
‘I don’t think it’s so much really. I don’t see it’s anything to make all that fuss about.’
She could not speak. The tears filled her eyes and ran quickly down her face.
‘Mummy, what’s the matter? Why are you crying?’
‘But you’re a little boy.’
He came over to her and sitting on the side of her bed took her in his arms.
‘Darling, don’t cry. I wouldn’t have told you if I’d thought it was going to upset you. After all, it had to happen sooner or later.’
‘But so soon. So soon. It makes me feel so old.’
‘Not you, darling. Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety.’
She giggled through her tears.
‘You fool, Roger, d’you think Cleopatra would have liked what that silly old donkey said of her? You might have waited a little longer.’
‘It’s just as well I didn’t. I know all about it now. To tell you the truth I think it’s rather disgusting.’
She sighed deeply. It was a comfort to feel him holding her so tenderly. But she felt terribly sorry for herself.
‘You’re not angry with me, darling?’ he asked.
‘Angry? No. But if it had to come I wish it hadn’t been quite so matter of fact. You talk as though it had just been a rather curious experiment.’
‘I suppose it was in a way.’
She gave him a little smile.
‘And you really think that was love?’
‘Well, it’s what most people mean by it, isn’t it?’
‘No, they don’t, they mean pain and anguish, shame, ecstasy, heaven and hell; they mean the sense of living more intensely, and unutterable boredom; they mean freedom and slavery; they mean peace and unrest.’
Something in the stillness with which he listened to her made her give him a glance through her eyelashes. There was a curious expression in his eyes. She did not know what it meant. It was as though he were gravely listening to a sound that came from a long way off.
‘It doesn’t sound as though it were much fun,’ he murmured.
She took his smooth face in her hands and kissed his lips.
‘I’m a fool, aren’t I? You see, I still see you as a little baby boy that I’m holding in my arms.’
A twinkle shone in his eyes.
‘What are you grinning at, you ape?’
‘It made a damned good photograph, didn’t it?’
She could not but laugh.
‘You pig. You filthy pig.’
‘I say, about the understudy, is there any chance for Joan?’
‘Tell her to come and see me one day.’
But when Roger left her she sighed. She was depressed. She felt very lonely. Her life had always been so full and so exciting that she had never had the time to busy herself much with Roger. She got in a state, of course, when he had whooping-cough or measles, but he was for the most part in robust health, and then he occupied a pleasant place in the background of her consciousness. But she had always felt that he was there to be attended to when she was inclined and she had often thought it would be nice when he was old enough really to share her interests. It came to her as a shock now to realize that, without ever having really possessed him, she had lost him. Her lips tightened when she thought of the girl who had taken him from her.
‘An understudy. My foot.’
Her pain absorbed her so that she could not feel the grief she might have felt from her discovery of Tom’s perfidy. She had always known in her bones that he was unfaithful to her. At his age, with his wanton temperament, with herself tied down by her performances at the theatre, by all manner of engagements which her position forced upon her, it was plain that he had ample opportunity to gratify his inclinations. She had shut her eyes. All she asked was that she should not know. This was the first time that an actual fact had been thrust upon her notice.
‘I must just put up with it,’ she sighed. Thoughts wandered through her mind. ‘It’s like lying and not knowing you’re lying, that’s what’s fatal; I suppose it’s better to be a fool and know it than a fool and not know it.’
20
TOM went to Eastbourne with his family for Christmas. Julia had two performances on Boxing Day, so the Gosselyns stayed in town; they went to a large party at the Savoy that Dolly de Vries gave to see the New Year in; and a few days later Roger set off for Vienna. While he was in London Julia saw little of Tom. She did not ask Roger what they did when they tore about the town together, she did not want to know, she steeled herself not to think and distracted her mind by going to as many parties as she could. And there was always her acting; when once she got into the theatre her anguish, her humiliation, her jealousy were allayed. It gave her a sense of triumphant power to find, as it were in her pot of grease paint, another personality that could be touched by no human griefs. With that refuge always at hand she could support anything.
On the day that Roger left, Tom rang her up from his office.
‘Are you doing anything tonight? What about going out on the binge?’
‘No, I’m busy.’
It was not true, but the words slipped out of her mouth, independent of her will.
‘Oh, are you? Well, what about tomorrow?’
If he had expressed disappointment, if he had asked her to cut the date he supposed she had, she might have had strength to break with him then and there. His casualness defeated her. ‘Tomorrow’s all right.’
‘O.K. I’ll fetch you at the theatre after the show. Bye-bye.’
Julia was ready and waiting when he was shown into her dressing-room. She was strangely nervous. His face lit up when he saw her, and when Evie went out of the room for a moment he caught her in his arms and warmly kissed her on the lips.
‘I feel all the better for that,’ he laughed.
You would never have thought to look at him, so young, fresh and ingenuous, in such high spirits, that he was capable of giving her so much pain. You would never have thought that he was so deceitful. It was quite plain that he had not noticed that for more than a fortnight he had hardly seen her.
(‘Oh, God, if I could only tell him to go to hell.’)
But she looked at him with a gay smile in her lovely eyes.
‘Where are we going?’
‘I’ve got a table at Quag’s. They’ve got a new turn there, an American conjurer, who’s grand.’
She talked with vivacity all through supper. She told him about the various parties she had been to, and the theatrical functions she had not been able to get out of, so that it seemed only on account of her engagements that they had not met. It disconcerted her to perceive that he took it as perfectly natural. He was glad to see her, that was plain, he was interested in what she had been doing and in the people she had seen, but it was plain also that he had not missed her. To see what he would say she told him that she had had an offer to take the play in which she was acting to New York. She told him the terms that had been suggested.
‘They’re marvellous,’ he said, his eyes glittering. ‘What a snip. You can’t lose and you may make a packet.’
‘The only thing is, I don’t much care for leaving London.’
‘Why on earth not? I should have thought you’d jump at it. The play’s had a good long run, for all you know it’ll be pretty well through by Easter, and if you want to make a stab at America you couldn’t have a better vehicle.’
‘I don’t see why it shouldn’t run through the summer. Besides, I don’t like strangers very much. I’m fond of my friends.’
‘I think that’s silly. Your friends’ll get along without you all right. And you’ll have a grand time in New York.’