Jerusalem the Golden Read Free Page B

the other hand he might have other fish to fry. So she was quite relieved when Clelia’s father said, ‘Don’t go, Clelia, come and have a drink. I’ll give you a lift home if you hang on for half an hour. And I promised to have a word with Maurice. Not more than half an hour.’
    Clelia looked at her watch. She appeared to be slightly, very slightly annoyed. ‘Oh, all right,’ she said. ‘I’ll see you down there.’ And she went.
    Clara was also relieved by the universal assumption that there was only one pub to be visited; she had always had a horror of ending up, by some misunderstanding, in the wrong and empty and unfashionable place. She could not quite see why the pub, relentlessly nameless, should be so clearly recognized by everyone there as an obvious destination, as she had not yet grasped the principle that nearly every theatre has its own pub. There was no reason why she should have grasped it. She had no experience of such things. But when she and Peter and Samuel and Eric made their way down the wooden, broken staircase, and through the dark warren of small rooms full of light switches, and out through the stage door, she could see that it would have been difficult to miss the correct pub. Because it was part of the theatre: the other half of the theatre. And it was full of the theatre audience, and the stage management, and of unmistakable actors and actresses; even the Lionel man, who had
departed so resolutely, was there having a quick whisky. And Clelia was there, leaning on the bar, snapping her fingers at the barman. She ordered herself a drink. Clara was impressed; she had never in her life dared to buy herself a drink. Somewhere, in the depths of her heart, she feared that if she were to ask a man in a public house for a gin and tonic, he would spit in her eye or call the police or laugh at her or rape her on the spot. She could not overcome this fear, and it was too shameful to confess. She did not mind drinking, and accepted Samuel Wisden’s offer of a drink with pleasure, but she looked at Clelia Denham’s back with initial stirrings of respect.
    Eric’s friend, after a few moments, turned up; he was a high-powered school teacher, and he provoked a new and somewhat repetitive discussion of the poetry reading. Clara listened, but she spent more of her time watching. She noted, with satisfaction, the lovely entrance of Margarita Cassell, who arrived with one arm through her husband’s and the other through the arm of the pretty young man; in the sombre Victorian gloom her dress and her wide cold neck shone with a pale and striking colour. And her voice preceded her and welled out from her, deep and vibrant and delightful: an instrument of sound rather than of communication. She and her entourage established themselves within speaking distance of Samuel’s group; they talked, and from time to time a remark was flung across the gap between the two parties. Clara could not help noticing that although Margarita relinquished her husband’s arm fairly promptly (as soon, in fact, as he had been dispatched to order drinks) she instantly took hold of the boy’s hand, and kept a firm though flippant grasp upon it, almost as though she did not dare to let him roam loose upon the pub floor. Clara found this sight cheering, disturbing, and exciting. She wondered if in such circles such an act meant something or nothing, and then concluded that nothing, anywhere, in any circle, meant nothing.
    After a while, it occurred to her to wonder what had happened to Clelia Denham and her independent drink. She looked round for her, and there she was, talking to a completely disconnected man, and looking, from time to time, at her watch. There was still no sign of her father. Clara looked at her more closely, and wondered, as
soon as she did so, why she had not bothered to look at her before, because she repaid inspection. She still looked rather restless and annoyed – sullen, almost, Clara might have thought,