I like having it thrown in my face that even my tips have to be given me.
I thought it rather strange that you didn’t send me the money for a third-class ticket back to London.’
Although Julia was in a pitiable state of anxiety, so that she could hardly get the words out of her mouth, she almost smiled at his fatuous irony.
He was a silly little thing.
‘But you can’t imagine that I wanted to hurt your feelings.
You surely know me well enough to know that’s the last thing I should do.’
‘That only makes it worse.’ (‘Damn and curse,’ thought Julia.) ‘I ought never to have let you make me those presents. I should never have let you lend me money.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.
It’s all some horrible misunderstanding.
Come and fetch me after the play and we’ll have it out.
I know I can explain.’
‘I’m going to dinner with my people and I shall sleep at home.’
‘Tomorrow then.’
‘I’m engaged tomorrow.’
‘I must see you, Tom.
We’ve been too much to one another to part like this.
You can’t condemn me unheard.
It’s so unjust to punish me for no fault of mine.’
‘I think it’s much better that we shouldn’t meet again.’
Julia was growing desperate.
‘But I love you, Tom.
I love you.
Let me see you once more and then, if you’re still angry with me, we’ll call it a day.’
There was a long pause before he answered.
‘All right.
I’ll come after the matinee on Wednesday.’
‘Don’t think unkindly of me, Tom.’ She put down the receiver.
At all events he was coming.
She wrapped up again the things he had returned to her, and hid them away where she was pretty sure Evie would not see them.
She undressed, put on her old pink dressing-gown and began to make-up.
She was out of humour: this was the first time she had ever told him that she loved him.
It vexed her that she had been forced to humiliate herself by begging him to come and see her.
Till then it had always been he who sought her company.
She was not pleased to think that the situation between them now was openly reversed.
Julia gave a very poor performance at the matinee on Wednesday.
The heat wave had affected business and the house was apathetic.
Julia was indifferent.
With that sickness of apprehension gnawing at her heart she could not care how the play went. (‘What the hell do they want to come to the theatre for on a day like this anyway?’) She was glad when it was over.
‘I’m expecting Mr Fennell,’ she told Evie.
‘While he’s here I don’t want to be disturbed.’
Evie did not answer.
Julia gave her a glance and saw that she was looking grim. (To hell with her. What do I care what she thinks!’) He ought to have been there by now. It was after five.
He was bound to come; after all, he’d promised, hadn’t he?
She put on a dressing-gown, not the one she made up in, but a man’s dressing-gown, in plum-coloured silk.
Evie took an interminable time to put things straight.
‘For God’s sake don’t fuss, Evie.
Leave me alone.’
Evie did not speak.
She went on methodically arranging the various objects on the dressing-table exactly as Julia always wanted them.
‘Why the devil don’t you answer when I speak to you?’