From down the passage Stanley’s snuffly voice called me. He said something about, come on you two lovebirds, it’s time Juliet was in bed. Something nauseating, anyway.
I kissed her again. She did her best to respond, but her heart was not in it. I went along to the sitting room, and found Stanley alone. He said Elaine had gone to bed. I wanted to go to bed, too, but he was standing by the drinks tray, fiddling about with his cutglass whisky decanter, and tumblers, and soda syphon. I thought he was going to say, “Well, what about a nightcap, old boy?” but he didn’t. He said, “What about one for the road, old boy?” To make it worse, he said, “If you drink, don’t drive-if you drive, don’t drink. Well, you aren’t driving, old boy.”
“That’s right,” I said. “I’m walking back. I’ll have a small one.”
I lit a cigarette and sighed. He handed me a whisky.
“Tired, old boy?”
“No, not really.”
I wasn’t feeling particularly tired. I was just dismayed, once again, at the prospect of endless periodic drinks with Stanley, of being pinned in corners by him, of looking up at him and into his protruding watery grey eyes with their touch of ex-ophthalmic goitre, while he smoothed his sparse hair with one hand, held a glass in the other, and told me yet another feeble, smutty story.
“Well, drink up, old boy-all the best!”
I drank half the tumbler of whisky and soda without a pause.
The sooner it was finished, the sooner I could go. He was standing by the mantelpiece, his back to me, and without looking round he said:
“Look, old boy, there’s something I think you should know.”
His voice was as snuffly as ever, but lacked the normal lighthearted overtones.
“It’s about Juliet, old boy.”
CHAPTER 5
What about Juliet?”
“I expect she’d tell you herself, if she hasn’t done so already. I suppose she hasn’t?”
“Hasn’t told me
It was late, and I know now that subconsciously I was beginning to worry about Juliet’s attitude.
“I can’t tell you whether she has or whether she hasn’t, unless you tell what she might or might not have told me, or be about to tell me, can I? Well, can I?”
He turned round from the mantelpiece and gawked down at me, tall and spindly, and I noticed that his tow- coloured moustache had not turned as grey as his thin hair. He looked, as he sometimes implied to other people that he was, like a former member of a crack cavalry regiment officered by rich young men, though I knew from Elaine Bristow that in fact he had been in the Pay Corps during the last war.
“Well, it’s only fair you should know, old boy-in point of fact, Juliet is not really our daughter. She’s an adopted child.”
He looked anxiously at me, swirling his whisky in his glass. He looked really worried. I could have laughed in his face.
So far from feeling dismay, I was aware of a surge of relief that Juliet was not the result of the marriage of this uninteresting couple; and mingled with the relief, piercing through it, here and there, I began to ponder certain things, such as her dark, withdrawn attractiveness, her mixture of gaiety and seriousness, the touch of mystery about her, the occasional secretive look. Were they due to her blood or to the knowledge she had of herself? Had she, in fact, suspected the truth long before they confirmed it? An overheard remark, a hastily broken off conversation, can reveal more to a child than adults realise. Children are no fools.
None of her characteristics could have stemmed from the Bristows, and I should have known it; and even if, as I had thought, she had had some more interesting ancestor, the dull Bristow blood would have thinned it beyond hope.
“My dear Stanley, what on earth does that matter?” I said lightly, and realised that in my relief that Juliet was a full-blooded non-Bristow I had for the first time called him by his Christian name.
“I hoped you’d say that, old boy. I’d have said the same myself. I’ll tell you about her parents, I’ll tell you something she doesn’t know herself.”
“You don’t need to.”
“It’s only fair, old boy.”
He went ostentatiously to the door, opened it quietly, an inch or two, as if to make sure that nobody was coming along the passage, then closed it and walked back to the fireplace.
“Actually, I’d rather not know,” I said quickly. “I’d rather not have that sort of secret between Juliet and me.”
“I think you should, old boy-you see she’s only half English.”
He spoke in a half whisper, and looked at me as if he expected me to fall down in a dead faint.
“Half English-half Italian,” he muttered. “Remember that hotel I recommended near Sorrento? Remember Signor Bardoni? That’s her father. Good fellow, eh? Don’t know her mother, old boy. English, but just a name-Smith, or Brown or something. Disappeared. Got it?”
I nodded. I’d got it all right. But I couldn’t speak.
“And she doesn’t know?”
“She knows she’s an adopted child, old boy. But she doesn’t know who her parents are, she doesn’t know Bardoni is her father. And her father doesn’t know who adopted her. That’s the way these adoptions go, of course, and quite right, too, old boy, saves a lot of trouble and heartache in later years. But I found out-through a friend of a friend. You know? Made inquiries. Can’t be too careful.”
“And you went and stayed at the hotel a couple of years ago? You and Elaine and Juliet?”
I stared at him in amazement.
“There was no danger, old boy-Elaine knew of the relationship of course, but nobody else. Wanted to go to Italy anyway. Thought it would be an interesting experiment-you know, see what happened, call of the blood and all that stuff, see if they were attracted to each other. Do you know what happened, old boy?”
I was stuck with him for years and years. It was no good showing disapproval, no good saying that in an indefinable way I felt the whole idea repellent. He wanted me to ask, “What happened?” but I couldn’t. I couldn’t bring myself to give him the satisfaction. I took a sip of whisky and fumbled for a cigarette.
“Do you know what happened?” he asked again. So I had to say something in the end.
“What happened?” I said.
“Nothing! Nothing at all, old boy! We all talked to Bardoni now and again. But they didn’t take any interest in each other at all. Fascinating, old boy.”
“How did you know he was managing the hotel?”
“Through this adoption society chap-indirectly. They keep in touch, you know, sometimes. Just in case. You know?”
I sat looking into my whisky glass, wondering why Juliet hadn’t told me herself that she was an adopted child. She must have known it would make no difference. I wondered again if it accounted for her withdrawn manner, her secretiveness. I was aware of a feeling of hurt. I said:
“At what age did you tell her that she was an adopted child?”
“At what age? Well, at the age of twenty-two, old boy! We told her tonight-after you dropped her here in your car. While she was changing to go out. Elaine went in and told her.”
“Just like that-a sort of ‘Welcome home’ greeting?”
I couldn’t keep the bitterness out of my voice. I thought if anything was typical of this dull and unimaginative pair it was to spring this news on her just when she had arrived back tired and exhausted. I was angry, and he saw it.
He went all stiff and more snuffly than ever:
“There was no need for us to tell her-or you, old boy. I trust you realise that? In these days the birth
