Simon Called Peter, Robert Keable [read e books online free txt] 📗

"It's a good thing I didn't notice, Julie. Even now I should hate to see you look like that, say, at Donovan. You do it too well. Oh, here's the tea. Praise the Lord! I'm dying for a cup. You can have all the cakes; I've smoked too much."

"Wouldn't you prefer a whisky?"

"No, not now—afterwards. What's that they're playing?"

They listened, Julie seemingly intent, and Peter, who soon gave up the attempt to recognise the piece, glanced sideways at the couple on the lounge. They did not notice him. He took them both in and caught—he could not help it—a few words.

She was thirty-five, he guessed, slightly made-up, but handsome and full figured, a woman of whom any man might have been proud. He was an officer, in Major's uniform, and he was smoking a cigarette impatiently and staring down the lounge. She, on the other hand, had her eyes fixed on him as if to read every expression on his face, which was heavy and sullen and mutinous.

"Is that final, then, George?" she said.

"I tell you I can't help it; I promised I'd dine with Carstairs to-night."

A look swept across her face. Peter could not altogether read it. It was not merely anger, or pique, or disappointment; it certainly was not merely grief. There was all that in it, but there was more. And she said—he only just caught the sentence of any of their words, but there was the world of bitter meaning in it:

"Quite alone, I suppose? And there will be no necessity for me to sit up?"

"Peter," said Julie suddenly, "the tea's cold. Take me upstairs, will you? we can have better sent up."

He turned to her in surprise, and then saw that she too had heard and seen.

"Right, dear," he said, "It is beastly stuff. I think, after all, I'd prefer a spot, and I believe you would too."

He rose carefully, not looking towards the lounge, like a man; and Julie got up too, glancing at that other couple with such an ordinary merely interested look that Peter smiled to himself to see it. They threaded their way in necessary silence through the tables and chairs to the doors, and said hardly a word in the lift. But in their sitting-room, cosy as ever, Julie turned to him in a passion of emotion such as he had scarcely dreamed could exist even in her.

"Oh, you darling," she said, "pick me up, and sit me in that chair on your knee. Love me, Peter, love me as you've never loved me before. Hold me tight, tight, Peter hurt me, kiss me, love me, say you love me…" and she choked her own utterance, and buried her face on his shoulder, straining her body to his, twining her slim foot and leg round his ankle. In a moment she was up again, however, and glanced at the clock. "Peter, we must dress early and dine early, mustn't we? The thing begins at seven-forty-five. Now I know what we'll do. First, give me a drink, a long one, Solomon, and take one yourself. Thanks. That'll do. Here's the best…. Oh, that's good, Peter. Can't you feel it running through you and electrifying you? Now, come"—she seized him by the arm—"come on! I'll tell you what you've got to do."

Smiling, though a little astonished at this outburst, Peter allowed himself to be pulled into the bedroom. She sat down on the bed and pushed out a foot. "Take it off, you darling, while I take down my hair," she said.

He knelt and undid the laces and took off the brown shoes one by one, feeling her little foot through the silk as he did so. Then he looked up. She had pulled out a comb or two, and her hair was hanging down. With swift fingers she finished her work, and was waiting for him. He caught her in his arms, and she buried her face again. "Oh, Peter, love me, love me! Undress me, will you? I want you to. Play with me, own me, Peter. See, I am yours, yours, Peter, all yours. Am I worth having, Peter? Do you want more than me?" And she flung herself back on the bed in her disorder, the little ribbons heaving at her breast, her eyes afire, her cheeks aflame.

"Well," said Peter, an hour or two later, "we've got to get this dinner through as quickly as we've ever eaten anything. You'll have to digest like one of your South African ostriches. I say," he said to the waitress in a confidential tone and with a smile, "do you think you can get us stuff in ten minutes all told? We're late as it is, and we'll miss half the theatre else."

"It depends what you order," said the girl, rather sharply. Then, after a glance at them both: "See, if you'll have what I say, I'll get you through quick. I know what's on easiest. Do you mind?"

"The very thing," said Peter; "and send the wine-man over on your way, will you? How will that do?" he added to Julie.

"I'll risk everything to-night, Peter, except your smiling at the waitress," she said. "But I must have that champagne. There's something about champagne that inspires confidence. When a man gives you the gold bottle you know that he is really serious, or as serious as he can be, which isn't saying much for most men. And not half a bottle; I've had half-bottles heaps of times at tête-à-tête dinners. It always means indecision, which is a beastly thing in anyone, and especially in a man. It's insulting, for one thing…. Oh, Peter, do look at that girl over there. Do you suppose she has anything on underneath? I suppose I couldn't ask her, but you might, you know, if you put on that smile of yours. Do walk over, beg her pardon, and say very nicely: 'Excuse me, but I'm a chaplain, and it's my business to know these things. I see you've no stays on, but have you a bathing costume?'"

"Julie, do be quiet; someone will hear you. You must remember we're in
England, and that you're talking English."

"I don't care a damn if they do, Peter! Oh, here's the champagne, at any rate. Oh, and some soup. Well, that's something."

"I've got the fish coming," said the girl, "if you can be ready at once."

Julie seized her spoon. "I suppose I mustn't drink it?" she said. "I don't see why I shouldn't, as a matter of fact, but it might reflect on you, Peter, and you're looking so immaculate to-night. By the way, you've never had that manicure. Do send a note for the girl. I'd hide in the bathroom. I'd love to hear you. Peter, if I only thought you would do it, I'd like it better than the play. What is the play, by the way? Zigzag? Oh, Zigzag" (She mimicked in a French accent.) "Well, it will be all too sadly true if I leave you to that bottle of fizz all by yourself. Give me another glass, please."

"What about you?" demanded Peter. "If you're like this now, Heaven knows what you'll be by the time you've had half of this."

"Peter, you're an ignoramus. Girls like me never take too much. We began early for one thing, and we're used to it. For another, the more a girl talks, the soberer she is. She talks because she's thinking, and because she doesn't want the man to talk. Now, if you talked to-night, I don't know what you might not say. You'd probably be enormously sentimental, and I hate sentimental people. I do, really. Sentiment is wishy-washy, isn't it? I always associate it with comedians on the stage. Look over there. Do you see that girl in the big droopy hat and the thin hands? And the boy—one must say 'boy,' I suppose? He's a little fat and slightly bald, and he's got three pips up, and has had them for a long time. Well, look at them. He's searching her eyes, he is, Peter, really. That's how it's done: you just watch. And he doesn't know if he's eating pea-soup or oyster-sauce. And she's hoping her hat is drooping just right, and that he'll notice her ring is on the wrong finger, and how nice one would look in the right place. To do her justice, she isn't thinking much about dinner, either; but that's sinful waste, Peter, in the first place, and bad for one's tummy in the second. However, they're sentimental, they are, and there's a fortune in it. If they could only bring themselves to do just that for fifteen minutes at the Alhambra every night, they'd be the most popular turn in London."

"That's all very well," said he; "but if you eat so fast and talk at the same time, you'll pay for it very much as you think they will. Have you finished?"

"No, I haven't. I want cheese-straws, and I shall sit here till I get them or till the whole of London zigzags round me."

"I say," said Peter to their waitress, "if you possibly can, fetch us cheese-straws now. Not too many, but quickly. Can you? The lady won't go without them, and something must be done."

"Wouldn't the management wait if you telephoned, Peter dear?" inquired Julie sarcastically. "Just say who you are, and they sure will. If the chorus only knew, they'd go on strike against appearing before you came, or tear their tights or something dreadful like that, so that they couldn't come on. Yes, now I am ready. One wee last little drop of the bubbly—I see it there—and I'll sacrifice coffee for your sake. Give me a cigarette, though. Thanks. And now my wrap."

She rose, the cigarette in her fingers, smiling at him. Peter hastily followed, walking on air. He was beginning to realise how often he failed to understand Julie, and to see how completely she controlled her apparently more frivolous moods; but he loved her in them. He little knew, as he followed her out, the tumult of thoughts that raced through that little head with its wealth of brown hair. He little guessed how bravely she was already counting the fleeting minutes, how resolutely keeping grip of herself in the flood which threatened to sweep her—how gladly!—away.

A good revue must be a pageant of music, colour, scenery, song, dance, humour, and the impossible. There must be good songs in it, but one does not go for the songs, any more than one goes to see the working out of a plot. Strung-up men, forty-eight hours out of the trenches, with every nerve on edge, must come away with a smile of satisfaction on their faces, to have a last drink at home and sleep like babies. Women who have been on nervous tension for months must be able to go there, and allow their tired senses to drink in the feast of it all, so that they too may go home and sleep. And in a sense their evening meant all this to Peter and Julie; but only in a sense.

They both of them bathed in the performance. The possible and impossible scenes came and went in a bewildering variety, till one had the feeling that one was asleep and dreaming the incomprehensible jumble of a dream, and, as in a nice dream, one knew it was absurd, but did not care. The magnificent, brilliant staging dazzled till one lay back in one's chair and refused to name the colours to oneself or admire their blending any more. The chorus-girls trooped on and off till they seemed countless, and one abandoned any wish to pick the prettiest and follow her through. And the gay palace of luxury, with its hundreds of splendidly dressed women, its men in uniform, its height and width and gold and painting, and its great arching roof, where, high above, the stirring of human hearts still went on, took to itself an atmosphere and became sentient with humanity.

Julie and Peter were both emotional and imaginative, and they were spellbound till the notes of the National Anthem roused them. Then, with the commonplaces of departure, they left the place. "It's so near," said Julie in the crowd outside; "let's walk again."

"The other pavement, then," said Peter, and they crossed. It was cold, and Julie clung to him, and they walked swiftly.

At the entrance Peter suggested an hour under the palms, but Julie pleaded against it. "Why, dear?" she said. "It's so cosy upstairs, and we have all we want. Besides, the lounge would be an