‘Swear.’
‘On my honour.’
‘Don’t be too long.’
He insisted on coming down stairs with her and putting her into a cab.
She had wanted to go down alone, so that she could have a look at the cards attached to the bells on the lintel.
‘Damn it all, I ought at least to know his name.’
But he gave her no chance.
When the taxi drove off she sank into one corner of it and gurgled with laughter.
‘Raped, my dear.
Practically raped.
At my time of life.
And without so much as a by your leave.
Treated me like a tart.
Eighteenth-century comedy, that’s what it is.
I might have been a waiting-maid.
In a hoop, with those funny puffy things—what the devil are they called?—that they wore to emphasize their hips, an apron and a scarf round me neck.’
Then with vague memories of Farquhar and Goldsmith she invented the dialogue.
‘La, sir, ’tis shame to take advantage of a poor country girl.
What would Mrs Abigail, her ladyship’s woman, say an she knew her ladyship’s brother had ravished me of the most precious treasure a young woman in my station of life can possess, videlicet her innocence. Fie, o fie, sir.’
When Julia got home the masseuse was already waiting for her.
Miss Phillips and Evie were having a chat.
‘Wherever ’ave you been, Miss Lambert?’ said Evie.
‘An’ what about your rest, I should like to know.’
‘Damn my rest.’
Julia tore off her clothes, and flung them with ample gestures all over the room.
Then, stark naked, she skipped on to the bed, stood up on it for a moment, like Venus rising from the waves, and then throwing herself down stretched herself out.
‘What’s the idea?’ said Evie.
‘I feel good.’
‘Well, if I behaved like that people’d say I’d been drinkin’.’
Miss Phillips began to massage her feet.
She rubbed gently, to rest and not to tire her.
‘When you came in just now, like a whirlwind,’ she said, ‘I thought you looked twenty years younger.
Your eyes were shining something wonderful.’ ‘Oh, keep that for Mr Gosselyn, Miss Phillips.’ And then as an afterthought, ‘I feel like a two-year-old.’
And it was the same at the theatre later on.
Archie Dexter, who was her leading man, came into her dressing-room to speak about something.
She had just finished making-up.
He was startled.
‘Hulloa, Julia, what’s the matter with you tonight?
Gosh, you look swell.
Why you don’t look a day more than twenty-five.’
‘With a son of sixteen it’s no good pretending I’m so terribly young any more.
I’m forty and I don’t care who knows it.’
‘What have you done to your eyes?
I’ve never seen them shine like that before.’
She felt in tremendous form.
They had been playing the play, it was called The Powder Puff, for a good many weeks, but tonight Julia played it as though it were the first time.
Her performance was brilliant.
She got laughs that she had never got before.
She always had magnetism, but on this occasion it seemed to flow over the house in a great radiance.
Michael happened to be watching the last two acts from the corner of a box and at the end he came into her dressing-room.