Not notably successful in exams and certainly not in the least bookish, Julian had left school at sixteen. She had spent a year in France, more at Arnold's insistence than out of her own sense of adventure, or so it had seemed to me at the time. She returned from France unimpressed by that country and speaking very bad French which she promptly forgot, and went on to a typists' training course. Fledged as a typist she took a job in the «typing pool» at a Government office. When she was about nineteen she decided that she was a painter, and Arnold eagerly wangled her into an art school, which she left after a year. After that she had entered a teachers' training college somewhere in the Midlands where she had been, I think, for a year or perhaps two when I saw her on that evening strewing the white petals in the path of the oncoming motorcars.
«Hello, Bradley.»
Owing to her absence at college and the demise of our Sundays I had not seen Julian for nearly a year, and before that indeed infrequently. I found her older, the face still sulky but with more of a brooding expression, suggestive of the occurrence of thought. She had a rather bad complexion, or perhaps it was just that Arnold's «greasy» look looked less healthy on a woman. She never used make-up. She had watery-blue eyes, not the flecked hazel-brown of her mother's, nor did her secretive and dog-like face repeat Rachel's large bland freckled features. Her thick undulating mane, which had no trace of red, was streakily fair with that dark blond colour which is almost suggestive of green. Even at close quarters she still slightly resembled a boy, tallish, dour, who had just cut himself in a premature attempt to shave his first whisker. I did not mind the dourness. I dislike girls who are skittish.
«Hello, Julian. Whatever are you doing?»
«Have you been to see Daddy?»
«Yes.» I reflected that it was just as well Julian was out this evening.
«Good. I thought you'd quarrelled.»
«Certainly not!»
«You don't come any more.»
«I do. Only you're away.»
«Not now. I'm doing teaching practice in London. What was happening when you left?»
«Where? At home? Oh-nothing special-«They were quarrelling so I left the house. Have they calmed town?»
«Yes, of course-«Don't you think they quarrel more than they used to?»
«No, I-How smart you are, Julian. Quite a dandy.»
«It's an exorcism. These are love letters.»
«Love letters?»
«From my ex-boy friend.»
I remembered that Arnold had mentioned rather unenthusiastically a «hairy swain,» an art student or something.
«Have you parted company?»
«Yes. I've torn them into the smallest possible pieces. When I've got rid of them all I'll be free. Here goes the last, I think.»
Taking from her neck the receptacle rather like a nose-bag which had contained the dismembered missives she turned it inside out. A few more white petals flew with the passing wind and were gone.
«But what were you saying, you were chanting something, a spell or such.»
