Between the best of friends a difference of opinion may arise. So it was with Selena and myself on the matter of Sunday. It seemed to me plainly convenient that I should spend the day at Selena’s. Thus Timothy, when he telephoned, would have the immediate benefit of my advice.
“I’m sorry, Hilary,” said Selena. “I have an Opinion to write on the Settled Land Act. I can’t spend the day in cooking and idle gossip.”
She was quite wrong in supposing that she would have been put to any trouble for my entertainment: the tastes of the scholar are simple to the point of austerity. An omelette of some kind for lunch, with a salad and a few new potatoes; for dinner, a plain grilled sole, perhaps with a caper sauce—
“No,” said Selena. “Moreover, I have plans for the evening which do not admit of the presence of a third party.”
In that case, naturally, there was nothing more
to be said. Selena has an amiable arrangement for the weekends with a young colleague of mine: I would not for the world encroach on the pleasures of either. I spent Sunday, therefore, in Islington, conversing with the cats and reading back copies of The Times: both, in their way, instructive occupations.
Selena telephoned me at half past six. Timothy’s news, so far as it went, was, she felt, satisfactory. He had not yet seen Julia — accommodation had been found for her in the little resort of Chioggia, on the other side of the Lagoon — but would be dining with her that evening. His client, having chosen to make the journey from Cyprus by sea, had become unwell during the journey and had fortunately not yet recovered.
“Fortunately?” I said, with a touch of severity. “One wishes him, of course, no harm.” The smoothness of Selena’s voice was not impaired by the intervening telephone wires. “It does seem convenient, however, that Timothy is free for the time being to pursue his enquiries on Julia’s behalf without having to initiate his client into the mysteries of Schedule 5 to the Finance Act 1975.”
“Have his enquiries made any progress?”
“He hasn’t managed to see Graziella yet or talk to the police. But he’s been in touch with a man at the British Consulate who seems to know something of the matter. So far as one can tell at present, there’s nothing solid against Julia at all. It’s just that she made a rather unfortunate first impression on the police. They knew from the start, you see, about her exchanges with the young man from the Revenue: the whole affair was apparently common knowledge among the staff of the Cytherea, from the management to the chambermaids. So when they began to question her and she said she’d never heard of him, they found her attitude suspicious.”
“I can see that they might,” I said. “Why did she say that she’d never heard of him?”
“My dear Hilary, it’s quite understandable. They obviously told her that they were enquiring into the death by violence of a Mr. Edward Watson. It doesn’t immediately occur to one that a person referred to as Edward is someone one knows as Ned. And Julia, naturally, wouldn’t know his surname.”
“Would you care,” I asked, “to justify the adverb?”
“How could she have known his surname? Eleanor Frostfield doesn’t seem to have mentioned it when she introduced them. How do you suggest that she could afterwards have discovered it? Would you expect her, in the middle of telling the young man about his beautiful eyelashes and quoting Catullus, suddenly to ask his surname? Going on, perhaps, to demand such further particulars as his place of birth, his mother’s maiden name and the number of his passport? Of course not. Still less can you imagine that Julia would stoop, in search of such information, to questioning their mutual acquaintances or prying through the young man’s correspondence. My dear Hilary.” Her voice seemed to melt in a delicate mixture of amusement and reproach: an effect, I am told, which has caused a number of her opponents, realizing the absurdity of their submissions, to settle hastily over the luncheon adjournment on terms favourable to her client.
“My dear Selena,” I said, “you quite persuade me that no woman of breeding and refinement could be expected to know the surname of any young man whom she was trying to seduce. I hope that Timothy will be equally successful with the Italian police. Was there anything else that made a bad impression on them?”
“Well—” said Selena. “They seem to have got rather excited about Julia’s Finance Act. I’m sorry, Hilary, I’ll have to go — there’s someone at the door.”
I saw no prospect, until I knew why Julia’s Finance Act had disturbed the equanimity of the Italian police, of giving my attention to the concept of causa. On the following morning, therefore, I proceeded directly to 62 New Square. Not pausing to announce myself in the Clerks’ Room, I climbed the stone staircase to the second floor. Being occupied for the purposes of their profession by the younger members of the Chambers, the second floor is commonly referred to as the Nursery. The Nursery comprises three rooms, of varying sizes: I shall not delay my narrative to explain the finely balanced considerations of decorum, convenience and seniority by virtue of which Selena has the small one to herself, Ragwort and Cantrip share the large one and Timothy occupies the one of intermediate size.
For conversation, their natural tendency is to gather in the large one. I found Selena already there, repeating to Ragwort and Cantrip the news from Timothy which she had given me on the previous evening.
“Selena,” I said, “what’s all this about the Finance Act?”
“Ah yes,” said Selena. “The Finance Act. It appears that a copy of this year’s Finance Act, inscribed with Julia’s name and professional address, was found a few feet away from the corpse.”
“Oh, strewth,” said Cantrip.
“Dear me,” said Ragwort.
“The Italian police,” continued Selena, “with childish naïveté, took this to be a clue. As your own more sophisticated minds will immediately perceive, it is, of course, nothing of the kind. One cannot infer Julia’s presence from the presence of her Finance Act.”
“Indeed not,” said Ragwort. “Any more than one could infer, from the presence last Thursday fortnight in Lower Liversidge County Court of a copy of Woodfall on Landlord and Tenant, clearly inscribed with my name, to indicate that it was my property, purchased out of my own resources, that I myself was appearing before that learned and august tribunal; or that I was absent from London; or that, being in London, I had no need of the volume in question for the purpose of advising my clients. It can merely be inferred that certain members of these Chambers—”
“I said I was sorry,” said Cantrip. “There’s no need to keep on about it”
“That certain members of these Chambers,” continued Ragwort, “whose names I shall not mention because they have apologized and I, as was my duty, have forgiven them, have very little notion, when it comes to books, of the difference between meum and tuum.”
“Exactly,” said Selena. Cantrip, overcome by the joy of Ragwort’s forgiveness, said nothing.
“Have you,” I asked, “heard anything more from Julia?”
“As a matter of fact,” said Selena, “there was another letter this morning. I was just going to read it.”
Terrace of the Cytherea.
Thursday evening.
Dearest Selena,
My letters to you — are they mere ephemera, stop-gap economies for telephone calls? Or are they to serve, in half a century’s time, when you are retired from high judicial office and I, too improvident to afford retirement, still pursuing the vain chimera of paying the last year’s income tax, am advising my clients from the comfort of a Bath chair — are they to serve then as a journal or memoir, when we seek diversion in reminiscence? If so, it would be absurd, though nothing I now write can reach London before me, to end the correspondence with yesterday’s letter. The postscript, it is true, will tell us that I had my way. But when you ask me how I achieved it, I shall have forgotten; and when I ask you whether I enjoyed it, you will be unable to remind me; and when we say to each other that surely there was some curious and interesting sequel, but cannot quite remember what it was, there will be nothing to recall it to our aging memories. For the avoidance of which and the resolution of all doubts, I shall continue to write until tomorrow evening.
My postscript may have occasioned you some surprise, following, as I recollect, a passage in which I spoke with some bitterness of Ned’s behaviour and announced my intention to upbraid him severely. On the way to lunch, however, I happened to call to mind some advice once given me by my Aunt Regina, who told me that the surest way to a man’s affections was to let him think he knew more about something than you did. It seemed worth trying — my Aunt Regina must be regarded as an authority on such matters, for she has had four husbands; though I cannot actually recall her thinking that any of them knew better than she did on any subject whatever.
On the previous evening, as I have told you, I had sought consolation in the Finance Act: Schedule 7 seemed a suitable subject for Ned to know more about than I did. Finding, as I had hoped, that we were the only Art Lovers present at lunch, I turned the conversation to the question of income tax.
“I suppose,” I said, “if Eleanor is hoping to persuade your Department that she is in Venice for business purposes, she might as well take the matter to its logical conclusion and claim relief under Schedule 7 of this year’s Act on the proportion of her earnings attributable to work done abroad.”
“Yes,” he said, “but she’d have to spend at least thirty days of the year working abroad.”
“Oh,” I said, “I expect she could manage that. She’d have to remember, of course, that she could only count days devoted to the duties of her employment. If she spent a week overseas and rested on the Sabbath, only six days would count.”
“No, Julia,” he said, “you’re thinking of the Bill. They amended it on its way through Parliament. If you’re abroad for at least seven consecutive days which taken as a whole are substantially devoted to the duties of your employment, they all count, even if you take a day off.” This was said with such charming modesty and so little arrogance at finding me in error that I almost felt a qualm of conscience; but I remembered his treachery of the previous day — my heart was hardened and I kept my course.
“Nonsense,” I said firmly. “The Act says that a qualifying day is a day substantially devoted to the performance of the duties of the employment. What you mean is, I suppose, that your Department has decided to make an extra-statutory concession, legislating by way of Press release. To the burden of penal taxation there is now added the tyranny of secret law-making — as it is, when one cannot advise one’s clients without ferreting through correspondence columns for proclamations of Revenue policy.”
My indignation almost caused me to forget the business in hand; but Ned brought back my attention to it by repeating, rather crossly, that the day-off-abroad provision was not embodied in a Press release but in the Act itself.
“My dear Ned,” I replied, “I am prepared to bet you a bottle of wine that it isn’t.”
“By all means,” he said. “But I’ll have to wait for my wine until we get back to England. We can’t settle it without a Finance Act.”
“We can settle it right away,” I said. “I have the Finance Act in my room.”
And thus it was that the beautiful Ned returned with me across the bridge to the annexe.
It is a great advantage in an enterprise of this nature to know that one’s room will have been cleaned and tidied. How often has some promising pursuit been brought to a standstill by my recalling the chaos and squalor of my bedroom? I looked with gratitude, therefore, as we went through the entrance-way to the annexe, at the little group of chambermaids, as pretty as a flock of angels in some Renaissance painting, who gather there to rest in the afternoon. They smiled at me, I thought, with an eye of complicity, as if knowing and approving my purpose. We went up the staircase and came to my room.
“Sit down,” I said, “while I find my Finance Act.” There being nothing else to sit on — the chair by
the dressing table was occupied by a pile of clothes — he sat down on the bed, on the edge nearer to the door. I was careful, having found my Finance Act, to hand it to him from the other side of the bed, thus drawing him down from a perpendicular to a horizontal position — lying, that is to say, across the bed, rather than sitting on the edge of it. I sat down beside him on the edge further from the door.
“Show me,” I said, “this mythical amendment.”
It is hardly possible, when two people are sitting on the same bed and trying to read the same copy of the Finance Act, for all physical contact to be avoided. I, indeed, made no attempt to avoid it; but neither, it seemed to me, did Ned. This gave me some encouragement — one would not wish, as a woman of principle, to impose attentions actually distasteful.
The advice of yourself and my Aunt Regina, excellent as both had proved to be, could take me, I felt, no further — it was time to put complete reliance in that given by the dramatist Shakespeare. Leaning across Ned’s shoulders, I rested my hand on the area of the bed which lay on the further side of them. So that when, in due course, he looked up from the statute to say, with forgivable complacency, “Here you are, Julia — sub-paragraph (b) of paragraph 2 of the Schedule,” he found himself, as it were, encircled.
“Why, you are perfectly right,” I said, “and I owe you a bottle of wine. But I hope you are too kind to insist on immediate payment.”
“Oh, Julia,” he said, opening his eyes very wide with reproach, “how can you be so shameless?”
“Ah, Ned,” I answered, “because you are so beautiful.” And met with no further resistance.
“It just shows one,” said Ragwort sadly, “how dangerous it is to gamble. Even when one knows one is right.”
“Come off it,” said Cantrip. “Going off with Julia to her bedroom in the middle of the afternoon — you can’t tell me he didn’t think she’d make a pass.”
“Quite so,” said Selena. “But the charge is not one of ravishment.”
Delicacy precludes any more detailed account of the afternoon. This letter may be read in the presence of the virtuous and lovely Ragwort — one would not like to make him blush. That is to say, one would like very much to do so — nothing could be more delightful. But I shall resist the temptation. I shall merely say that the dramatist Shakespeare, in imputing to the forthright and vigorous approach a merely limited success, was shown to have been less than candid.
Afterwards, as is the way with beautiful young men when they wish to show in spite of the evidence that they are not creatures of easy virtue, the lovely Ned put on an expression of prim decorum, as one disapproving of all that has occurred and accepting no share of responsibility for it. Such a look, at such a time, inspires a particular tenderness; for after the horse has been persuaded to bolt, the careful locking of the stable door is extraordinarily endearing.
“Julia,” he said, “you will keep quiet about this, won’t you? I wouldn’t like Ken to know about it.”
I assured him that he might count on my discretion. I had already established, as you know, that it was logically impossible for Kenneth to be distressed by anything that might occur between Ned and myself; but Kenneth, being an artist, has perhaps not studied logic and is unaware of the impossibility.
The great danger of such an episode is the sense which it induces of benevolent euphoria, the consequences of which are almost always disastrous. After washing and changing for dinner, I had made my way to the bar of the Cytherea with a view to consuming a refreshing Campari soda and writing you a full account of my success. There, however, I found the Major, looking dejected and reading The Times.
My sympathies were aroused. The Major, after all, had no doubt come to Venice hoping, just like me, for a little innocent entertainment, but unlike me had failed to find it. I felt I should do what I could to raise his spirits. In a sense, it is true, it was his own fault: any hopes he might have had of success had been reduced, by his wearing of Bermuda shorts, from the small to the minuscule. On the other hand, I thought, it might be argued that it did him credit to wear a garment which so immediately revealed the frightfulness of his spider-like legs: an unscrupulous man would have tried to keep them concealed until the point at which a well-bred woman would feel embarrassment at withdrawing in revulsion.
“Cheer up, Bob,” I said briskly. “The news can’t be that bad.”
“Just looking at the jolly old investments,” said the Major. “I’ve saved a quid or two from time to time and a chap I know told me to buy some shares. Down again as per usual. Got to expect it, I suppose, with this Socialist shower running the show.”
“The Major,” said Selena, “must have been singularly unlucky in his choice of investments. The Stock Market is at its highest for five years.”
I pointed out that the decline in his investments would give him an excellent opportunity to establish a loss for capital gains tax purposes; but he seemed unwilling to perceive the advantages of this. Having undertaken, however, the task of cheering him up, I persisted with it until dinner, sparing only a moment to add a postscript to my letter to you and consign it to the evening post.
My efforts to improve the Major’s spirits were rewarded with such success that by the end of dinner he raised again the matter of the rug-cutting expedition. This put me in a dilemma. The only places I had seen where there might be dancing were nightclubs which looked to me formidably expensive; if I permitted the Major, in such an establishment, to bear the whole expense, it would be so enormous as to place me under obligations of an unmentionable nature. To avoid this, I should have to contribute equally; but to spend a large sum of money in order to shuffle round an over-crowded room in distasteful proximity to such a man — well, there were limits to my benevolence.
“Bob,” I said, “you can’t really want to spend the evening in a stuffy nightclub. I have noticed a most attractive little bar only a few minutes away, where we could sit out of doors and drink coffee and grappa—don’t you think that would be much more amusing?”
The bar to which I actually took the Major may not have been quite the bar to which I had intended to take him. Any route one follows in Venice is of necessity devious: alleyways which seem to lead in one direction, finding themselves interrupted by an unexpected canal, turn round and go somewhere entirely different; it is always possible — but never certain — that the bridge you are crossing is the same bridge that you crossed five minutes ago. Still, whether it was the right bar or the wrong bar, it was a perfectly good place to drink grappa and coffee.
Perceiving that we were close to the Teatro Fenice and somehow feeling that the responsibilities of guide still rested on my shoulders, I was anxious to tell the Major something of the building’s history and significance; but Ragwort’s guide book was unhelpful.
“You will observe,” I said, “that the date over the door is 1792. We may confidently assume, therefore, that the Theatre was the scene of very few of the comedies and musical entertainments for which Venice was celebrated in the eighteenth century. Beyond that, I can tell you nothing: the guide book refrains from any account of it.”
“Never mind, m’dear,” said the Major. “Can’t always rely on guide books, can you?” His tone was sombre, as if the remark had some deeper, possibly metaphysical significance. “Still,” he added, “not your fault, m’dear.”
Among the many defects in the state of things which people have from time to time considered to be my fault — but which you have always kindly explained were not my fault at all — the inadequacy of guide books has not so far been included. Still, I answered that it was kind of him to say so.
He continued to speak of his financial position, giving me to understand that in spite of the decline in his investments he had done not too badly for himself and was quite comfortably fixed. 1 made congratulatory comment.
I would think it odd, he said, that he had never married. I did not in fact think it at all odd — the statistical chances against any woman being prepared to endure both the hairiness of his legs and the tedium of his conversation seemed to me to be negligible. 1 did not express this view, but said sympathetically that the military life must be difficult to combine with the domestic.
“That’s it, m’dear,” said the Major. “All right for the chap, but no life for the little woman. Ends in heartbreak — seen it often. And since I’ve been in Civvy Street — well, I’ve often thought I’d like to settle down. But it’s no good if it’s not the right woman.”
I agreed that it was undoubtedly better to be married to no one than to someone uncongenial.
“Well, m’dear,” said the Major, “how about it?”
I did my best to misunderstand. No use — it was a proposal of marriage.
If the survival of the human species were to depend on an act of physical conjunction between the Major and myself, then I suppose — while reserving the right, should the contingency actually arise, to consider the matter further — I suppose that in that event I should somehow bring myself to it. Once. Not twice. No, Selena, I am sorry, but even with the future of the species at stake, I really think not twice: you could not reasonably expect it of me. The institution of marriage, I have been led to believe, involves the occurrence of such acts on a regular and frequent basis. Marriage to the Major is a concept to make the blood run cold.
I had expected, at worst, some overture of a manifestly improper nature, such as might be rebuffed by adopting a Ragwort-like manner. For responding, however, to a proposal of marriage, the conduct of Ragwort affords no useful precedent. The ungoverned merriment with which he habitually receives such an offer is all very well with a friend and colleague, but would be excessively wounding in reply to a comparative stranger. I made some disjointed remarks to the effect that it was kind of him to ask me but marriage was not a habit of mine.
“Know I’m rushing my fences a bit, m’dear,” he said. “Don’t expect you to decide at once. But I’d better warn you, an old soldier doesn’t give up easily when he’s set his mind on something.”
The stars continued to shine in the velvet sky; but my spirits were enveloped in a cloud of sudden gloom.
The making of the proposal, albeit unaccepted, appeared in the Major’s opinion to entitle him, on wishing me good-night, to embrace me, though a well-judged movement of the head enabled me to reduce the unpleasantness of the whole thing to a rasping of my cheek. The emery-board texture of his chin put me in mind by contrast of the alabaster smoothness of Ned’s. I remain very worried about Desdemona.
“Why,” asked Ragwort, “couldn’t she just say ‘No’?”
“They told her at school,” said Selena, “that she must avoid hurting people’s feelings.”
“One sometimes feels,” said Ragwort, “that Julia took her education altogether too literally.”
Today, therefore, my principal objective has been to avoid the Major. I should have liked to have another disagreement with Ned about the Finance Act; but I think I can hope for no further success in that quarter. Seeing the lovely creature on the terrace this morning, I reminded him that I owed him a bottle of wine.
“It is an obligation,” he answered with great coldness, “that I shall be quite happy to forget.”
From which I concluded that he is still set on proving himself not to be a young man of easy virtue and that it would accordingly take a full week of admiring his soul to prevail on him again.
In case I have anything to add, I shall not post this until tomorrow evening; though I do not suppose, since tomorrow is our last day in Venice, that anything will happen of sufficient interest to deserve reporting to you.
“The remainder of the letter,” said Selena, “is written, therefore, on the day of the murder. Would this be a convenient moment to adjourn for coffee?”