She held him now.
He was proud to be her lover, it gave him confidence in himself, and he was pleased to be on familiar terms with a large number of more or less distinguished persons whom after all he only knew through her.
He was anxious now to join a good club and Julia was preparing the ground.
Charles had never refused her anything, and with tact she was certain that she could wheedle him into proposing Tom for one of those to which he belonged.
It was a new and delicious sensation for Tom to have money to spend; she encouraged him to be extravagant; she had a notion that he would get used to living in a certain way and then would realize that he could not do without her.
‘Of course it can’t last,’ she told herself, ‘but when it comes to an end it will have been a wonderful experience for him.
It’ll really have made a man of him.’
But though she told herself that it could not last she did not see really why it shouldn’t.
As the years went by and he grew older there wouldn’t be any particular difference between them.
He would no longer be so very young in ten or fifteen years and she would be just the same age as she was now.
They were very comfortable together.
Men were creatures of habit; that gave women such a hold on them.
She did not feel a day older than he, and she was convinced that the disparity in their ages had never even occurred to him.
It was true that on this point she had once had a moment’s disquietude.
She was lying on his bed. He was standing at the dressing-table, in his shirt sleeves, brushing his hair. She was stark naked and she lay in the position of a Venus by Titian that she remembered to have seen in a country house at which she had stayed.
She felt that she made really a lovely picture, and in complete awareness of the charming sight she offered, held the pose.
She was happy and satisfied.
‘This is romance,’ she thought, and a light, quick smile hovered over her lips.
He caught sight of her in the mirror, turned round and without a word, twitched the sheet over her.
Though she smiled at him affectionately, it gave her quite a turn.
Was he afraid that she would catch cold or was it that his English modesty was shocked at her nakedness?
Or could it be that, his boyish lust satisfied, he was a trifle disgusted at the sight of her ageing body?
When she got home she again took all her clothes off and examined herself in the looking-glass.
She determined not to spare herself.
She looked at her neck, there was no sign of age there, especially when she held her chin up; and her breasts were small and firm; they might have been a girl’s.
Her belly was flat, her hips were small, there was a very small roll of fat there, like a long sausage, but everyone had that, and anyhow Miss Phillips could have a go at it.
No one could say that her legs weren’t good, they were long and slim and comely; she passed her hands over her body, her skin was as soft as velvet and there wasn’t a blemish on it.
Of course there were a few wrinkles under her eyes, but you had to peer to see them; they said there was an operation now by which you could get rid of them, it might be worth while to inquire into that; it was lucky that her hair had retained its colour; however well hair was dyed, to dye hardened the face; hers remained a rich, deep brown.
Her teeth were all right too.
‘Prudishness, that’s all it was.’ She had a moment’s recollection of the Spaniard with the beard in the wagon-lit and she smiled roguishly at herself in the glass. ‘No damned modesty about him.’
But all the same from that day on she took care to act up to Tom’s standards of decency.
Julia’s reputation was so good that she felt she need not hesitate to show herself with Tom in public places.
It was a new experience for her to go to night clubs, she enjoyed it, and though no one could have been better aware than she that she could go nowhere without being stared at, it never entered her head that such a change in her habits must excite comment.
With twenty years of fidelity behind her, for of course she did not count the Spaniard, an accident that might happen to any woman, Julia was confident that no one would imagine for a moment that she was having an affair with a boy young enough to be her son.
It never occurred to her that perhaps Tom was not always so discreet as he might have been.
It never occurred to her that the look in her eyes when they danced together betrayed her.
She looked upon her position as so privileged that it never occurred to her that people at last were beginning to gossip.
When this gossip reached the ears of Dolly de Vries she laughed.
At Julia’s request she had invited Tom to parties and once or twice had him down for a weekend in the country, but she had never paid any attention to him.
He seemed a nice little thing, a useful escort for Julia when Michael was busy, but perfectly insignificant.
He was one of those persons who everywhere pass unnoticed, and even after you had met him you could not remember what he was like.
He was the extra man you invited to dinner to make an odd number even.
Julia talked of him gaily as ‘me boy friend’ or as ‘my young man’; she could hardly have been so cool about it, so open, if there were anything in it.
Besides, Dolly knew very well that the only two men there had ever been in Julia’s life were Michael and Charles Tamerley.
But it was funny of Julia, after taking so much care of herself for years, suddenly to start going to night clubs three or four times a week.
Dolly had seen little of her of late and indeed had been somewhat piqued by her neglect.
She had many friends in theatrical circles and she began to make inquiries.
She did not at all like what she heard.
She did not know what to think.
One thing was evident, Julia couldn’t know what was being said about her, and someone must tell her.