Scoops, Part III “Hullo,” he said. “Isn’t this a repulsive party? What are you going to say about it?” for they were both of them, as it happened, gossip writers for the daily papers. – Evelyn Waugh
C1: Domestic Affairs
They returned from Europe before William’s birthday, so he was not entirely surprised, upon returning home from work on that occasion, to find the Blue Room arranged just as usual. It was raining outside, so the French doors were closed and Julian, in a short-sleeved pink dress, was standing beside the tea table. He gave her a peck on the cheek and took his seat and she began to pour his cup, and then her own before she sat down. He stirred sugar into his cup while she first made the sign of the cross, gold bracelets clinking together faintly as she did, and then began spreading marmalade on a piece of toast.
“Well,” he said, as always. “Did you have a good day, sweetheart?”
“Oh, yes. I went to Mass with Mom this morning to pray for you, and then we had breakfast at this place at home – you don’t know it, of course – and I got home after lunch, and you’ve gotten so many cards.”
“Did you reply to them for me?”
“I wrote most of the notes, but don’t you want to sign them yourself?”
“Not particularly.”
“I’ll sign them for both of us and post them first thing tomorrow, then.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Did you have a nice day at the office?”
“Not particularly.”
“They didn’t do anything for your birthday?”
“No.”
“How rotten of them,” said Julian. “Do you want to see what I did for your birthday?”
William looked up from his toast and marmalade in mild surprise. He had expected Julian to make something he liked for supper at seven, maybe, and to have sex tonight, but the thought that she’d change the routine of teatime on his account had never occurred to him. “Of course,” he said.
“Just a second,” said Julian, standing and going over to the mantlepiece. She extracted a folded-up section of the newspaper from underneath a famille rose ginger jar; as she began unfolding it, he recognized it as the Society Bee. He frowned, confused now. He never read the Bee; that was women’s reading. It was Julian’s job to tell him about what was in it. How could something in the Bee comprise Julian ‘doing’ something for his birthday? “Here – read this.”
He looked at the article she was pointing at – page two, yes, but well-placed – and was startled to recognize his own picture, and hers. The two of them were in front of her relatives at the station where they’d reentered the country, largely blocking the family from sight, arm in arm and smiling; she was waving and still wearing one of those bright scarves over her hair that she’d taken to in France and he was smiling at no-one in particular with a hand half-raised in acknowledgement of someone. Who had even taken this?
Beneath it was a short column - Clearly some time in the sun has benefited the elusive Mr. and Mrs. William Welles, just returned from an extended tour of England and France. Rumors overheard at the Lilac Room and the Oak Court about Mr. Welles’ likely nomination to a position on the standing committee on public information sound more plausible than ever in light of this trip – could the Welles’ know something we don’t and have taken their holiday to celebrate?
William looked up at Julian, then back at the article, searching for a byline. Imogen Quest – who in the world was Imogen Quest? He had never heard of any such person, much less seen her byline in the paper….
“I don’t understand,” said William, realizing from Julian’s expectant expression as she knelt beside his chair that she expected some kind of reaction from him.
“I paid them to run that,” said Julian. “Two days ago, to be exact.” She reached in one of the pockets of her skirt – she always had concealed pockets on her dresses; it was peculiar, but undeniably useful at times – and removed a little handful of envelopes. “We’ve had three invitations already, and I’m planning a dinner party,” she said.
“Who is Imogen Quest?” asked William.
“That would be me,” said Julian, almost laughing now. “And a little bit Sallie and Bertram and Ceyda – I had them write up the first few Miss Quest gossips while we were gone, so people won’t automatically figure out who she really is. The name’s from a book – a figment of someone’s imagination who becomes the most sought-after socialite in London.”
And so finally, William thought he understood.
“You – you mean – “ Julian nodded, and William, without even thinking, kissed her. Her hands met around his neck, some of his hair tangling in her bracelets and possibly the prongs of her rings, and he, not noticing or caring, pulled her up onto his knees as she laughed in between kisses. “I can’t imagine what you’re trying to do will work, but darling – it’s a brilliant of you to try.”
“Leave that to me,” said Julian, smiling in a self-satisfied sort of way. “Happy birthday.”
* * * * * * * *
The next morning, after she and William had breakfast and he went to work, Julian posted the thank-you notes. That done, she retreated to her room and lay down on the sofa for a while, reading, as she often did in the mornings when she didn’t have to play landlady or go to church. It was nearly lunch before she went to her desk and unlocked it, then paused, her hands resting on the flat secretary lid for support, before removing her desk box from the inside of the desk proper.
She had two jewelry boxes now, and they had two bank vaults between them, and the organizer section of her desk held the narrow account books she and Sallie reviewed twice a month, but it was this box that she considered her most private space. Returning to the sofa, she unlocked and opened it, lifting half of the writing slope to access her correspondence. Doing things properly would entail going to Mass at eight every morning, breakfasting at nine-thirty, and then attending to her correspondence before going to do some charitable works, at least until she had children, but starting at lunch instead of finishing at lunch was better than not starting at all, she supposed, or waiting even later. There was too much of it to countenance waiting much later; she had spent a whole day when they first got home just writing thank-you notes to caretakers and relatives and well-wishers whose mail hadn’t caught up with them in Europe, that and checking to make sure the sum they both pretended didn’t exist had been properly deposited to John’s bank account. Surely eventually even he would realize it was not appropriate for him to live in the woods, or at least he would be embarrassed by resembling someone he loathed as much as he loathed Thoreau, and when one of those things happened, she wanted him to be able to afford proper lodging….
Today, there was relatively little to do. She had spent the previous day thanking people for thinking of William or remembering their anniversary. The day before that, she and Sallie had dealt with all the accounts for the first half of the month, and rent day wasn’t until next week. The kitchen was full, the dinner party set for Friday mostly already planned for her, and she hadn’t any personal letters that required responses. That just left her with things received on other days, the invitations and generic letters, and she couldn’t really focus on those either.
She should, she thought, have broken off the engagement before they’d ever announced it. When William had proposed to her, they’d been alone, and she could have very easily explained that she had been swept up in the moment – in actuality, momentarily possessed by the idea that a moment could be preserved, like a flower pressed in an album with only a few wrinkles, and also the old compulsion not to upset anyone or hurt any feelings – but that he had just started RCIA, and done so for bad reasons, and that she was in school, and that they just needed to slow things down. If he’d been serious about it all, he would have accepted that and things could have continued on the way they had been before they got engaged for – well, not forever, of course, nothing nice lasted forever, but at least longer. And they could have figured a lot more things out before things got serious. Instead, though – stupid, she thought, and sexually frustrated, and deriving some perverse thrills from having a secret, taking her ring out at night after the family was asleep to admire it and such childishness as that – she had let things go on and on, and then they had announced the engagement, and then she had realized how John felt about it, which had made it all that much harder to contemplate breaking off – she hadn’t wanted to give him the satisfaction; she knew him too well to think he wouldn’t’ have credited her breaking off the engagement because he’d wanted her to break off the engagement – and she hadn’t wanted to upset anyone or waste any money or have her family all murmur about how ‘I told you so’ behind her back, and then all that had happened with John, and William had been the only person in her life who wasn’t part of that burden she’d been trying to carry…
It had all just gotten completely out of hand, and the next thing she’d known, it had been the week before her wedding and she’d felt like she was on a runaway train, unable to do anything but watch it barreling toward her while her muscles froze and the nausea rose in her throat as she realized it really was too late to stop the thing without causing a huge, fatal, messy crash. And now they were married, and the past year had been like riding a ship – one day it was awful, they were fighting, undermining each other at every point, but then the next they’d visit her family and somehow, seeing their disapproving looks seemed worse than going home to another fight, or William would turn around and be so sweet, like when they first met, or they’d do something and be laughing and everything seem so perfect that the bad spells didn’t seem so bad. Or she’d do something like she had yesterday, something to imply she was the one who’d been in the wrong, and he’d treat her like a goddess – until the next time he felt slighted or emasculated in some way, and what was she supposed to do? She had to take care of her family; how many times had she explained that before they ever got engaged, and how many times had he assured her that was indeed the only thing she could do? Before they were married it had been like they agreed on everything, with no deviations, like there was such a thing as a love that wasn’t all sacrifice like Mom talked about, but then they’d gotten married and it had all changed -
It was one of those things they should have talked about before she accepted his proposal. She had thought they were on the same page, but clearly they weren’t – apparently, he’d understood ‘taking care of her family’ to mean ‘marrying someone who’d manage things for her,’ while she had meant ‘managing things herself,’ and this was the kind of essential disconnect which she didn’t know how to fix now that it was all said and done, but the thing was, if she had done that before or during their engagement, he might have left her, and she couldn’t bear the thought of that either.
This was why the idea to use the papers to her advantage had been such a relief. The fight before their anniversary had been her fault, she saw that now; he’d been quite right to complain about her treatment of him that time. She couldn’t admit it, though, without mentioning said fight, which would just stir up all those bad feelings again, but this was something she could do to – make up for it, sort of, through the same medium. And he really wanted that position on the standing committee sub-committee whatever….
She shoved the letters back in her desk, removed parchment from beneath the other half of the writing slope, and penned a quick note to Letitia Fenwyck, the tenant’s daughter who acted as a sort of secretary to her at times. She was going to have to organize more events, and figure out which invitations were most important to accept.