Pure Juliet Read Free

door. The sky, lucid blue and as yet starless, was gradually becoming the most noticeable part of the scene. The sky, and the silence.
    The last cottage was left behind, its garden glimmering with white dahlias. Fields stretched away, behind low hedges of thorn, into the twilight; the great elms typical of Hertfordshire were just distinguishable as darker masses against the darkening blue.
    Juliet was crossing a stone bridge, humped and ancient, with hidden water running quietly beneath, when a car came past,too quickly, headlights glaring; she pressed herself against the stone parapet just in time. Then the sky and the silence, as the brutal noise died away, resumed their power, and she turned down a lane, with a signpost that said, she knew, TO LEETE . And suddenly a high brick wall was beside her, some fifteen feet tall, ending in iron gates intricately wrought in a design of grapes and vine leaves and, in the centre, a group of initials.
    She stopped and pressed a bell set at the side door inserted in the brickwork.
    Then she put down her luggage, seated herself on the grass verge, and prepared to wait.

3
    It was dark, but a grain moon was rising, huge and warm-tinted above the elms. Through a thin place in the thorn hedge she could see swathes of mist covering the meadows. There were far-off sounds, and the sudden sweeps of distant headlights in the darkness, but all around her was stillness and silence. She glanced impatiently at the door.
    Now there were voices, approaching and raised in argument, though she could not make out what they were saying.
    The door jerked open suddenly, and she stood up. A light came on above the gates, revealing a figure known to her, in the familiar black dress which was too short and showed stout legs in pale stockings. A cross old face, a pompadour of white curls.
    Behind this person hovered the brown, smiling face of a man above a white jacket.
    ‘So it’s you, is it. Trust you to get here when dinner’s over—’
    ‘Hullo, Sarah.’ Juliet began to pick up her baggage. But the man darted forward.
    ‘I take for you.’ And she let him have them, even giving him a brief smile.
    ‘Mrs Bason, to you,’ said Sarah, in a voice meant to be dignified but betrayed by age at the conclusion of her sentence into a squeak.
    ‘Mrs Bason – sorry.’
    ‘How do you look when you’re glad? Come on, hurry up, she’s been all on edge ever since your letter come.’
    The old woman turned, grumbling under her breath, the man shut the door behind them, and they went along a wide, curving path leading up to a large house with lit windows.
    ‘When did it come?’ Juliet asked, knowing that Sarah was less irritable if a flow of unnecessary detailed talk was kept going.
    ‘This morning. Posted day before yesterday, wasn’t it? These posts, they get worse and worse. If I’d thought when I was your age I’d live to see the day when it took forty-eight hours for a letter to get from London to Leete, and seven pence to pay at that, and herrings at ten shillings the pound—’
    ‘Yes, awful,’ Juliet muttered.
    As they approached the house, whose door stood open revealing a dimly lit hall, a group of faces could be seen peering out into the dusk, and gabbling in Spanish became audible. There was waving of hands, to which Juliet responded slackly, and the group, consisting of a young man and three girls, moved forward to meet her.
    But Sarah, assuming an authoritative manner, said sharply, ‘That’ll do now, off you go,’ and they disappeared, without haste and smiling over their shoulders, in the direction of a door covered in green baize at the end of the hall.
    The older man shut the front door.
    Sarah turned to Juliet.
    ‘She’s in the drawing-room. Best go in. She’s bound to ask if you want something – I’ll see about it. Always on the go, I am. On a blessed tray, I s’pose.’
    ‘That’ll do nicely,’ Juliet quoted, showing teeth white and small between her pallid lips: it was