- •It was just before the end of the war that she fell out of love with him.
- •If you tried.”
- •It was disconcerting the way Julia knew what he was thinking. You couldn’t hide a thing from that woman.
- •It’ll bring us so close together and I shall be so proud of you.”
- •It seemed to her that none but she knew what it was like to live with a man who was such a monster of vanity.
- •It made Julia a little sad to think how much she had loved him. Because her love had died she felt that life had cheated her. She sighed.
It seemed to her that none but she knew what it was like to live with a man who was such a monster of vanity.
His complacency when he had beaten an opponent at golf or got the better of someone in a business deal was infuriating. He gloried in his artfulness. He was a bore, a crashing bore. He liked to tell Julia everything he did and every scheme that passed through his head; it had been charming when merely to have him with her was a delight, but for years she had found his prosiness intolerable. He could describe nothing without circumstantial detail. Nor was he only vain of his business acumen; with advancing years he had become outrageously vain of his person. As a youth he had taken his beauty for granted: now he began to pay more attention to it and spared no pains to keep what was left of it. It became an obsession. He devoted anxious care to his figure. He never ate a fattening thing and never forgot his exercises. He consulted hair specialists when he thought his hair was thinning, and Julia was convinced that had it been possible to get the operation done secretly he would have had his face lifted. He had got into the way of sitting with his chin slightly thrust out so that the wrinkles in his neck should not show and he held himself with an arched back to keep his belly from sagging. He could not pass a mirror without looking into it. He hankered for compliments and beamed with delight when he had managed to extract one. They were food and drink to him. Julia laughed bitterly when she remembered that it was she who had accustomed him to them. For years she had told him how beautiful he was and now he could not live without flattery. It was the only chink in his armour. An actress out of a job had only to tell him to his face that he was too handsome to be true for him to think that she might do for a part he had in mind. For years, so far as Julia knew, Michael had not bothered with women, but when he reached the middle forties he began to have little flirtations. Julia suspected that nothing much came of them. He was prudent, and all he wanted was admiration. She had heard that when women became pressing he used her as a pretext to get rid of them.
Either he couldn’t risk doing anything to hurt her, or she was jealous or suspicious and it seemed better that the friendship should cease.
“God knows what they see in him,” Julia exclaimed to the empty room.
She took up half a dozen of his photographs at random and looked at them carefully one by one. She shrugged
her shoulders.
“Well, I suppose I can’t blame them. I fell in love with him too. Of course he was better-looking in those days.”
It made Julia a little sad to think how much she had loved him. Because her love had died she felt that life had cheated her. She sighed.
“And my back’s aching,” she said.