Read Online After Julius by Elizabeth Jane Howard - Free Book Online
Authors: Elizabeth Jane Howard
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easily. ‘ You don’t know anything about that : hundreds – thousands of people have
no idea of it: they have fine lives filled up with change and success and concern – once you’ve discovered the trick of what you are, you just have to live up to it. That’s it,
isn’t it?’ He felt frantic for her agreement: this attentive silence was simply blotting out his horizons. ‘Take – anything! Take trees, for instance. They’re on the
move all their lives – moving up, in air, and down in earth, changing, making growth, they never stop until they get chopped or fall, and I’m not talking about murder and death.
I’m just talking about how one is from day to day. All life must be some kind of movement or other, only we’re meant to see why we’re going, it doesn’t just happen to us
– we – move – isn’t that the point?’
He had been speaking with his eyes fixed on her face, wanting her to argue, to understand, to be the exception, to show him that he was one; and while these, and many other requirements of her
divided, dissolved, and recurred, she started to speak, checked herself, and got to her feet.
‘Give me my coat.’ She indicated the back of the door. ‘You’ll have to hold it for me – I get stuck with this thick jersey.’
He followed her down the stairs, past the knitter at the switchboard and out into the street in a silence charged with protest. She set off purposefully, walked fast for a few minutes, with her
hands in her pockets and little streams of warm white breath drifting round the edge of the scarf which obscured most of her face. Then, in a voice too quick for the casual words, she said:
‘I usually go home to Sussex for the week-ends. I catch the four twenty from Charing Cross. If you’ve nothing better to do, you might like to come too?’
CHAPTER 4
CRESSIDA
W HEN Cressy was alone, she became quite good, and very different company. She had a strong sense of ridicule, and found
herself a continuously rewarding subject. In company, she was a serious romantic, applying her mind to aspects of life which do not depend on thought for their success. She therefore struck
emotional attitudes and then found it difficult, or impossible, to keep still in them: people pushed her and she wobbled, which few attitudes will stand. Although she was usually entertained after
the event, at the time (and her life attracted endless variations upon no more than two themes) whichever it was loomed so large that she had no proportion about it – became a straw in a
whirlpool, the only pebble on the beach: played desperately to the gallery and forgot completely who she was. Nobody had ever really enjoyed the best of her, and it was this that made her sift and
search through even unlikely material in her constant pursuit of someone with whom she could communicate, could share her amusement, could be herself whoever she happened to be at the time. She was
amiable, physically attractive, possessed of small private means and connected with the arts, and although one would have said that these advantages perfectly equipped her for settling down with
some pleasant, overworked, civilized man (somebody whose illusions had been knocked off him, like the celebrated corners at school), this had so far never been the case. Her own nature and one or
two unfortunate early events blocked the way. Leaving these aside, her very advantages were, of course, capable of more than one direction. All men, and very many women, hold the view that women
are designed to please – an idea of elastic luxury: Cressy, with her amiable temperament, was incapable of forgoing the attempt at least, often with insidious success. Pleasing meant
approximating to the man’s idea of the sort of woman his position and intelligence owed him, and as there is nothing more rigorous than anybody’s idea of their rights, the image could
never be sustained. Her physical attractions made this part of it worse: she was
no idea of it: they have fine lives filled up with change and success and concern – once you’ve discovered the trick of what you are, you just have to live up to it. That’s it,
isn’t it?’ He felt frantic for her agreement: this attentive silence was simply blotting out his horizons. ‘Take – anything! Take trees, for instance. They’re on the
move all their lives – moving up, in air, and down in earth, changing, making growth, they never stop until they get chopped or fall, and I’m not talking about murder and death.
I’m just talking about how one is from day to day. All life must be some kind of movement or other, only we’re meant to see why we’re going, it doesn’t just happen to us
– we – move – isn’t that the point?’
He had been speaking with his eyes fixed on her face, wanting her to argue, to understand, to be the exception, to show him that he was one; and while these, and many other requirements of her
divided, dissolved, and recurred, she started to speak, checked herself, and got to her feet.
‘Give me my coat.’ She indicated the back of the door. ‘You’ll have to hold it for me – I get stuck with this thick jersey.’
He followed her down the stairs, past the knitter at the switchboard and out into the street in a silence charged with protest. She set off purposefully, walked fast for a few minutes, with her
hands in her pockets and little streams of warm white breath drifting round the edge of the scarf which obscured most of her face. Then, in a voice too quick for the casual words, she said:
‘I usually go home to Sussex for the week-ends. I catch the four twenty from Charing Cross. If you’ve nothing better to do, you might like to come too?’
CHAPTER 4
CRESSIDA
W HEN Cressy was alone, she became quite good, and very different company. She had a strong sense of ridicule, and found
herself a continuously rewarding subject. In company, she was a serious romantic, applying her mind to aspects of life which do not depend on thought for their success. She therefore struck
emotional attitudes and then found it difficult, or impossible, to keep still in them: people pushed her and she wobbled, which few attitudes will stand. Although she was usually entertained after
the event, at the time (and her life attracted endless variations upon no more than two themes) whichever it was loomed so large that she had no proportion about it – became a straw in a
whirlpool, the only pebble on the beach: played desperately to the gallery and forgot completely who she was. Nobody had ever really enjoyed the best of her, and it was this that made her sift and
search through even unlikely material in her constant pursuit of someone with whom she could communicate, could share her amusement, could be herself whoever she happened to be at the time. She was
amiable, physically attractive, possessed of small private means and connected with the arts, and although one would have said that these advantages perfectly equipped her for settling down with
some pleasant, overworked, civilized man (somebody whose illusions had been knocked off him, like the celebrated corners at school), this had so far never been the case. Her own nature and one or
two unfortunate early events blocked the way. Leaving these aside, her very advantages were, of course, capable of more than one direction. All men, and very many women, hold the view that women
are designed to please – an idea of elastic luxury: Cressy, with her amiable temperament, was incapable of forgoing the attempt at least, often with insidious success. Pleasing meant
approximating to the man’s idea of the sort of woman his position and intelligence owed him, and as there is nothing more rigorous than anybody’s idea of their rights, the image could
never be sustained. Her physical attractions made this part of it worse: she was
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