Free Pure Juliet by Stella Gibbons Page A

encouraged the idea.
    Mrs Massey drank strong and well-sugared coffee. Frank held a light for Juliet’s cigarette.
    ‘Juliet, baby, I wish you wouldn’t smoke so much. It worries me,’ said Miss Pennecuick plaintively. ‘You know, the doctors say dreadful things can happen.’
    Juliet used the weapon she had found the most useful for many years: silence. Her mother called it the sulks.
    ‘I can put you onto a cigarette made from herbs, Juliet, that won’t hurt you at all,’ said Frank.
    ‘Except making her sick, I should think,’ said Mrs Massey. ‘Give me one, Frank, will you? No, not your home-made horrors, an Embassy. Thanks—’ as he held a match for her. ‘Now tell me, how is your house going?’ She puffed, in a self-conscious, Edwardian style.
    ‘Well enough for me to sleep there next week – if that suits you, Great-Aunt?’ turning to her.
    ‘Of course, dear, you know you can come and go as you please, though I always love to have you here. But won’t it be terribly damp?’
    ‘Not in my sleeping bag.’
    ‘And so isolated, Frank. It really worries me.’
    ‘A mile from the M1,’ smiling. ‘This place is more isolated, really, you know.’
    ‘Yes, but we have two strong young men on the premises—’
    ‘And aren’t I a strong young man?’
    She laughed reluctantly. ‘Of course, dear boy. But it really will be – it sounds – such a peculiar way to live, it isn’t as though it were necessary ,’ delicately implying the healthy state of his income. ‘The fact is, you have made yourself unfit to live as most people do.’ (Here Mrs Massey nodded emphatically.)
    His expression, which had been indulgent and amused, hardened.
    ‘I’ve given that life a fair trial – some twelve years of it. It didn’t work. Now I’m going to try living as I want to.’
    ‘You’ll be so uncomfortable. ’
    ‘Not half as uncomfortable as I would be living surrounded by hundreds of unnecessary objects, as most people do.’ (He suppressed as you do ; he was fond of his great-aunt.) ‘In a hundred years most people will either want, or have, to live as I’m going to. Have to is more likely, at the rate things are going.’
    Juliet was staring into space.
    He can’t surely fall for such a mannerless, ungrateful brat , Clemence thought; and then, Oh yes he can – what about Fiona, and Deirdre, and Melisande and that awful Ottolie?
    Clemence was a gifted pianist, but with her duties as Dr Masters’s receptionist, the supervision of housekeeping, and the demands of her grandmother, she got little enough time for the practise necessary to keep her technique at its best.
    She loved her music, which seemed in some way to soothe those feelings which she was too sensible and sober to indulge freely, and when on the next evening Miss Pennecuick said, turning to her, ‘Clemmie, give us some music, won’t you, dear,’ she went to the handsome old rosewood piano with a sensation of relief.
    A long walk in the afternoon had brought colour to Juliet’s cheeks, and made her a little less plain than usual. Frank had commented casually but favourably on the flush, and now Clemence felt inclined to dash into her stormiest Beethoven.
    ‘Don’t give us any of that dreadful modern stuff,’ warned her grandmother, elegant in soft shades of brown, from the long sofa.
    ‘Yes, something tuneful and pretty, dear,’ from Miss Pennecuick, haggard in rose silk in the wheeled chair.
    Clemence mentally dismissed Beethoven. But I’m damned if I’m giving them the Spring Song , she thought, as she gently lifted the piano’s shining lid, inlaid with sprays of pale yellow and cedar-coloured flowers.
    She settled herself on the stool, paused for a moment looking down at her large hands – so useful for a stretch – then struck out the first chill, simple notes of an air by Bach.
    It wound and rippled on: to each listener suggesting vague pictures, or merely an agreeable sound. But Frank was looking at Juliet.
    Her head,