The pudding is probably eatable already, said Frances.
The great glistening dark mass of pudding was set on a very fine blue plate. She put out plates, spoons, and poured more wine. She stuck the sprig ofholly from Julia's offering on to the pudding. She found a tin of custard.
They ate.
Soon the telephone rang. Sophie, in tears, and so Colin went up a floor to talk to her, at length, at very great length, and then came down to say he would return to Sophie's, to stay the night there, poor Sophie couldn't cope. Or perhaps he would bring her back here.
Then Julia's taxi was heard outside, and in came Sylvia, flushed, smiling, a pretty girl: who would have thought that possible, a few weeks ago? She dropped a curtsy to them in her good-girl's dress, both liking it and amused at the lace collar, lace cuffs and embroidery. Julia came in behind her. Frances said, Oh, Julia, do please sit down.'
But Julia had seen Rose, who was like a clown now that her make-up had smeared with crying, and was cramming in Christmas pudding.
'Another time,' said Julia.
It could be seen that Sylvia would have stayed with Andrew, but she went up after Julia.
'Stupid dress,' said Rose.
You' re right, said Andrew. Not your style at all. '
Then Frances remembered she had not thanked Julia and, shocked at herself, ran up the stairs. She caught Julia up on the top landing. Now she should embrace Julia. She should simply put her arms around this stiff, critical old woman and kiss her. She could not, her arms simply would not lift, would not go out to hold Julia.
' Thank you, said Frances. ' That was such a lovely thing to do. You have no idea what it did for me...
I am glad you liked it, said Julia, turning to go in her door, and Frances said after her, feeling futile, ridiculous, ' Thank you, thank you so much.' Sylvia had no difficulty in kissing Julia, allowing herself to be kissed and held, and she even sat on Julia's knee.
It was May, and the windows were open on to a jolly spring evening, the birds hard at it, louder than the traffic. A light rain sparkled on leaves and spring flowers.
The company around the table looked like a chorus for a musical, because they were all wearing tunics striped horizontally in blue and white, over tight black legs. Frances wore black and white stripes, feeling that this might do something to assert a difference. The boys wore the same stripes over jeans. Their hair was, had to be, well below their ears, a statement of their independence, and the girls all had Evansky haircuts. An Evansky haircut, that was the heart's desire of every with-it girl, and by hook, or most likely by crook, they had achieved it. This cut was between a 1920s bob, and the shingle, with a fringe to the eyebrows. Straight, it went without saying. Curly hair out. Even Rose's hair, the mass of crinkly black, was Evansky. Little neat heads, little-ickle cutesy girls, little bitsey things and the boys like shaggy ponies, and all in the blue and white stripes that had originated in matelot shirts, matching the blue and white mugs they used for breakfast. When the geist speaks, the zeit must obey. Here they were, the girls and the boys of the sexual revolution, though they didn't know yet that was what they would be famed for.
There was one exception to the Evansky imperative, every bit as strong as Vidal Sassoon's. Mrs Evansky, a decided lady, had refused to cut Sophie's hair. She had stood behind the girl, lifting those satiny black masses, letting them slide through her fingers, and then had pronounced: 'I am sorry, I can't do it.And then, as Sophie protested, 'Besides you've a long face. It wouldn'tdo anything for you. ' Sophie had sat, rejected, cast out, and then Mrs Evansky had said, 'Go away and think about it, and if you insist but it would kill me: cutting this off.'
And so, alone among the girls, Sophie sat with her sparkling black tresses intact, and felt she was some kind of freak.
The whirligigs of the time had done pretty well for four months. What was four months? nothing, and yet everything had changed.
First, Sylvia. She too had achieved full uniformity. Her haircut, begged from Julia, did not really suit her, but everyone knew it was important for her to feel normal and like the others. She was eating, ifnot well, and obeyed Julia in everything. The old woman and the very young girl would sit together for hours in Julia's sitting-room, while Julia made Sylvia little treats, fed her chocolates given her by her admirer Wilhelm Stein, and told her stories about pre-war Germany pre-First-World-War Germany. Sylvia did once ask, gently, for she would have died rather than hurt Julia, ' Didn't anything bad ever happen, then?' Julia was taken aback and then she laughed. Im not going to admit it, even if bad things did happen. But she genuinely could not remember bad things. Her girlhood seemed to her, in that house full of music and kind people, like a paradise. And was there anything like that now, anywhere?
Andrew had promised his mother and his grandmother that he would go to Cambridge in the autumn, but meanwhile he hardly left the house. He loafed about and read, and smoked in his room. Sylvia visited him, knocking formally, and tidied his room, and scolded him. 'If I can do it, so can you.' Meaning, now, smoking pot. For her, who had frayed so badly apart, and come together with such difficulty, anything was a threat alcohol, tobacco, pot, loud voices, and people quarrelling sent her back under her bedclothes with her fingers in her ears. She was going to school, and already doing well. Julia sat with her over her homework every evening.