I wanted to see him.’
He chuckled at the thought of the joke he had up his sleeve.
Julia was looking forward to the evening.
At the cinema she would arrange the seating so that Tom sat next to her and he would hold her hand while she chatted in undertones to Charles on the other side of her.
Dear Charles, it was nice of him to have loved her so long and so devotedly; she would go out of her way to be very sweet to him.
Charles and Tom arrived together.
Tom was wearing his new dinner jacket for the first time and he and Julia exchanged a little private glance, of satisfaction on his part and of compliment on hers.
‘Well, young feller,’ said Michael heartily, rubbing his hands, ‘do you know what I hear about you?
I hear that you’re compromising my wife.’
Tom gave him a startled look and went scarlet.
The habit of flushing mortified him horribly, but he could not break himself of it.
‘Oh my dear,’ cried Julia gaily, ‘how marvellous!
I’ve been trying to get someone to compromise me all my life.
Who told you, Michael?’
‘A little bird,’ he said archly.
‘Well, Tom, if Michael divorces me you’ll have to marry me, you know.’
Charles smiled with his gentle, rather melancholy eyes.
‘What have you been doing, Tom?’ he asked.
Charles was gravely, Michael boisterously, diverted by the young man’s obvious embarrassment. Julia, though she seemed to share their amusement, was alert and watchful.
‘Well, it appears that the young rip has been taking Julia to night clubs when she ought to have been in bed and asleep.’
Julia crowed with delight.
‘Shall we deny it, Tom, or shall we brazen it out?’
‘Well, I’ll tell you what I said to the little bird,’ Michael broke in. ‘I said to her, as long as Julia doesn’t want me to go to night clubs with her…’ Julia ceased to listen to what he said.
Dolly, she thought, and oddly enough she described her to herself in exactly the words Michael had used a couple of days before.
Dinner was announced and their bright talk turned to other things.
But though Julia took part in it with gaiety, though she appeared to be giving her guests all her attention and even listened with a show of appreciation to one of Michael’s theatrical stories that she had heard twenty times before, she was privately holding an animated conversation with Dolly.
Dolly cowered before her while she told her exactly what she thought of her.
‘You old cow,’ she said to her.
‘How dare you interfere with my private concerns?
No, don’t speak.
Don’t try to excuse yourself.
I know exactly what you said to Michael.
It was unpardonable.
I thought you were a friend of mine.
I thought I could rely on you.
Well, that finishes it.
I’ll never speak to you again.
Never. Never.
D’you think I’m impressed by your rotten old money?
Oh, it’s no good saying you didn’t mean it.
Where would you be except for me, I should like to know.
Any distinction you’ve got, the only importance you have in the world, is that you happen to know me.
Who’s made your parties go all these years?
D’you think that people came to them to see you?
They came to see me.
Never again. Never.’
It was in point of fact a monologue rather than a conversation.
Later on, at the cinema, she sat next to Tom as she had intended and held his hand, but it seemed to her singularly unresponsive.
Like a fish’s fin.
She suspected that he was thinking uncomfortably of what Michael had said.