The Girl in Blue (2 page)

The
jury took their places in the box; the official whose job it was to keep the
court stuffy made it stuffier; and Jerry, gazing at the girl at the far end of
the row in which he sat, became more convinced than ever that the odd illusion
of having been struck on the frontal bone by an atom bomb, experienced by him
on his initial glimpse of her, had been due to love at first sight. It happens
that way sometimes. A’s love for B, or for the matter of that C’s love for D,
often requiring long months before it comes to the boil, can occasionally start
functioning with the sudden abruptness of one of those explosions in a London
street which slay six. There seems to be no fixed rule.

She was
a girl of trim and dean-cut appearance, the open-air type. He could picture her
poised on the high board at the swimming pool, about to make a dive so expert
that it would scarcely ruffle the surface of the water. He could see her
driving a golf ball two hundred yards down the middle, a practice to which he
himself was greatly addicted. She was also, he thought, though as yet he could
not true presentment make, good at tennis. Her hair was a sort of soft brown,
her chin firm and rounded. She was too far away for him to note the colour of
her eyes, but he knew instinctively that they were just the colour eyes ought
to be.

Ironical,
he reflected, that when the jury summons reached him he had cursed so
peevishly. An artist by profession, specializing in comic cartoons, he liked,
when not playing golf, to devote the day to the practice of his art, and it was
just his luck, he had felt, that he was not a borough treasurer, a registered
dentist, a gaoler’s sub-officer or one of the Brethren of Trinity House, for
these pampered pets of the System are for some reason exempted from jury duty.
Had he known that the summoners were also summoning girls like this one, how
different his reception of their invasion of his privacy would have been.

What he
and she and ten other males and females who were not registered dentists had
come to sit in judgement on was the case of Onapoulos and Onapoulos versus the
Lincolnshire and Eastern Counties Glass Bottling Corporation, one of those dull
disputes between business firms where counsel keep handing books to the Judge
and asking his lordship with the greatest respect to cast an eye on the passage
marked in pencil on the right-hand page, upon which he immediately looks at the
left-hand page. (‘Who is this Mr Jones? I have nothing about him in my notes.’

‘Your
lordship is looking at the wrong page. If your lordship would kindly look at
the right-hand page instead of the left-hand page.’

‘But
why should I
not
look at the left-hand page?’

‘Because,
my lord, with great deference there is nothing there concerning this
.particular case.’) The only thing that kept Jerry from finding the proceedings
intolerably tedious was the fortunate circumstance that the Judge, the counsel
for the defence and several others of those present had richly comic faces, if
some of them could be called faces at all, and he was able to occupy himself by
making sketches of them in his note-book.

Emil
Onapoulos was being cross-examined now concerning a verbal agreement alleged to
have been made on November the fourth of the previous year, and Jerry saw a set
look come into the face of the girl he loved, as if witness’s responses were
not satisfying her. Once or twice she pursed her attractive lips and her
attractive nose gave a meaningful twitch. She seemed to be saying to herself
that if he expected to have the ladies and gentlemen of the jury with him, Emil
would have to do better than this.

His
admiration of her became intensified. Here plainly was a girl who had
everything — not only good at golf, swimming and tennis, but one with solid
brains who could sift and weigh evidence, a girl whose swift intelligence
enabled her to understand what the hell all these cryptic blighters were
talking about, a thing which he himself had long since given up hope of doing.

Ages
passed. Suddenly with a start of surprise — he was putting the finishing
touches to his sketch of counsel for the defence at the moment — he found that
the lawyers had had their say and that the jury was being requested to retire
and consider its verdict.

The
foreman called the meeting to order, and the arbiters of the fate of two
Onapouloses and probably dozens of glass bottlers, for these glass bottlers breed
like rabbits, especially in Lincolnshire and the eastern counties, began to
express their opinions.

As is
customary on these occasions, they varied from the fairly fatuous to the
completely fatuous. It was left to the girl to take command of the proceedings.
In a clear, musical voice which sounded to Jerry like the song of birds in the
shrubbery of some old-world garden at eventide she indicated the course a
conscientious jury was morally bound to take.

She
was, it appeared, one hundred per cent for the glass bottlers. If she had been
the affectionate niece of one of the company’s vice-presidents, she could not
have been more definite in her views.

She
swayed her hearers from the start, especially Jerry. To say that he followed
her reasoning would be an overstatement, but he agreed with every word of it. A
Daniel come to judgement, he was saying to himself. He had no shadow of a doubt
about following her lead. What was good enough for her, he felt, was good
enough for him. He was sorry for Johnny Halliday, the Onapoulos’s counsel, who
was a personal friend of his, but
fiat justitia, ruat coelum,
as the
fellow said, and a barrister of Johnny’s experience must long ago have learned
the lesson that you can’t win ‘em all. Without hesitation he added his contribution
to the unanimous vote, and the diligent enquirers filed back into court to
bring the glass bottlers the glad news which would send them strewing roses — or
possibly bottles — from their hats all over Lincolnshire and the eastern
counties.

2

Except for the Gadarene
swine, famous though the ages for their prowess at the short sprint, no group
is quicker off the mark than a jury at long last released from bondage, and in
the stampede for the door Jerry and the girl were swept apart. But he caught up
with her in the street outside and opened the conversation with an ingratiating
cough.

Too
often when a devout lover has worshipped from afar and is afforded for the
first time a close-up of the adored object, there is a sense of disappointment
on his part. Jerry had no such feeling. She had appealed to his depths at long
range, and she appealed to them even more now that they were standing face to
face. Her eyes, he saw as she turned, were a sort of brown with golden lights
in them and absolutely perfect, as he had known they would be.

She
greeted him as if he were an old friend.

‘Oh,
hullo. You were on the jury, weren’t you?’ she said, and it surprised and
pleased Jerry that she should have remembered him. Yes, he said, he had been on
the jury, adding that he had had no alternative.

‘The
summons told me not to hereof fail, and I wasn’t taking any chances. I wonder
what they do to you if you hereof fail.’

‘I
believe they get awfully annoyed.’

‘Something
lingering with boiling oil in it?’

‘I
shouldn’t wonder.’

‘Not
that it could be much worse than having to sit through a trial like that one.’

‘Were
you bored?’

‘Stiff.’

‘Poor
Mr… Poor Mr what?’

‘Poor
Mr West. Poor Mr G. G. F. West!’

‘It is
too bad it affected you like that. I enjoyed it myself. But I’m surprised that
you should have been bored. You seemed so interested.’

‘Me?’

‘I saw
you making notes very intently all the time in your note-book. I was
tremendously impressed.’

‘Not
notes. Sketches. I was drawing the Judge and other freaks.’

‘Are
you an artist?’

‘Sort
of. Cartoons mostly.’

‘Well,
that’s better than painting Russian princesses lying in the nude on tiger
skins.’

‘Why do
you specify that?’

‘It’s
what an aunt of mine who lives in Bournemouth thinks artists do. What kind of
cartoons? Comic?’

‘They try
to be.’

‘Curious.
I’m a comic cartoon aficionado, but I don’t remember ever seeing one by G. G.
F. West.’

‘I sign
them Jerry.’

‘For
heaven’s sake! May I have your autograph, maitre? I’m one of your greatest
admirers.’

Jerry
gulped to facilitate speech, of which this astounding revelation had
momentarily deprived him. Resisting an urge to say that it seemed to draw them
very close together, he substituted the weaker ‘Oh, really?’

‘You’ve
cheered me up more often than you could shake a stick at. And in my line of
business you need constant cheering up.’

‘Why’s
that?’

Too
much smiling to do. Very lowering to the spirits. I’m an air hostess. And not
only lowering to the spirits; extremely wearing on the cheek muscles.’

‘Still,
you must meet a lot of interesting people.’

‘Why
the still?’

‘You
spoke as if you didn’t like the job.’

‘Oh, I
do. I like it a lot. One sees the great world and, as you say, one meets a lot
of interesting people.’ She laughed. Analysing it, Jerry described it to
himself as a silvery laugh. Rather like, he thought, for there was a touch of
the poet in him, the sound ice makes in a jug of beer on a hot day in August. ‘I
was thinking,’ she explained, ‘of an old man named Donahue who travelled with
us a good deal and was always in a bad temper. “Girl!” he used to bellow at me,
and he never failed to snarl at me like a wounded puma for not coming quick
enough. Finally I told him the trouble was that he always seemed to catch me
when I wasn’t in my spiked shoes and running shorts, and after that we got on
fine. Somebody told me just before I went on leave that he was dead. I was
sorry. Oh yes, it’s quite a pleasant life.’

‘Of
course, you really ought to be a barrister.’

‘What
makes you say that?’

‘I was
thinking of your summing up just now. You were extraordinarily lucid when
addressing us. I was stunned by your eloquence. How did you get that way?’

‘I did
a lot of debating at school.’

‘Roedean?’

‘Cheltenham.’

‘Good
Lord, I was at Cheltenham myself. Not the girls’ school, the other one.’

‘What a
shame we never met.’

‘Well,
we’ve met now.’

‘We
have indeed.’

‘So how
about a bite of lunch? No, sorry, I was forgetting. I’ve got to lunch with my
trustee.’

‘Have
you a trustee? How grand.’

‘How
about dinner?’

‘I shan’t
be here for dinner. I’m going to Bournemouth to stay with my aunt.’

‘For
long?’

‘A few
days.’

‘So
tomorrow won’t be any good either?’

‘I’m
afraid not.’

The day
after tomorrow?’

‘I
doubt it.’

‘The
day after the day after tomorrow?’

‘Still
doubtful.’

‘Then
let’s make it the day after the day after the day after tomorrow.’

‘Where
does that land us?’

‘It’s a
Friday. I think’

‘That
ought to be all right. Where?’

‘Barribault’s.
Round about eight.’

‘I’ll
be there.’

She
hailed a passing taxi, and was gone, and as he stood there looking after her a
passer-by might have observed a soft glow in his eyes, if passers-by do observe
soft glows in people’s eyes. Probably they do not, but it was there. He was
dreaming an opalescent day dream. Previously he had seemed to see her on the
high board, about to make a perfect dive. He now saw her in the office of a
registrar licensed to perform marriages, for he was sure that a girl like that
would not want one of those ghastly choral weddings with bishops and assistant
clergy horsing about all over the place. They would get it all fixed up in a
couple of minutes, and later on they would sit together in their cosy little
nest like two love birds on a perch. In the long winter evenings that would be,
of course. In the summer they would be playing golf or enjoying a refreshing
swim.

It was
as his mind’s eye was probing even more deeply into their domestic life that
there came to him the realization that there was an obstacle, and a rather
serious one, in the way of the bliss he was contemplating. He had suddenly
remembered, what for the moment had slipped his mind, that he was engaged to be
married to someone else.

3

But even if he had not
happened to recall this, his memory would have been refreshed a minute later,
for as the taxi melted into the traffic a voice spoke his name, and pivoting on
his axis with the disagreeable feeling that someone muscular had struck him in
the solar plexus he perceived the Vera Upshaw to whom some weeks earlier he had
plighted his troth.