The Snare

15. DIVERGENCE

15. DIVERGENCE When Julia returned to the Mulligan house it was dark. Edie and Paul Fowler were waiting for her, and now it was she who stopped, in moonlight, where Jake Springland had stood in the afternoon sun, and she knew that something was about to happen this time, too. The same day. It wasn't over. A taste of steak lingered in her mouth. Hamburger and coleslaw for lunch, steak, potatoes and tomatoes at night. She and Edie had given up cooking some time ago; the camaraderie over mutually planned menus was a game that could not interest Julia very long. Edie, who had to stick to her little budget regardless, had gone on cooking; she and Paul went halves, when he was there; neat as a small animal cleaning up its daily portion of newspaper, she ate alone when he was not. The little wood-creature, Julia thought. Now, the creature, immaculate, you could be sure, in low-heeled white pumps and clean cotton, waited in shadow and beside her rose the dark, intelligent but nondescript head of the boyfriend, whose purpose was to back her up. Only it would be a little more than that in it now, Julia thought. Backing up Edie would not satisfy Paul Fowler for long. They were going to turn into a chorus quoting self-evident truths both of them had held through the centuries. She felt her back straighten. It wasn't only Jake who got judged. Julia thought for a minute that Edie was going to get up and come down the steps as she had done from iiQ I 2 O T H E S N A R E time to time to retrieve a fallen book or save a bird, but this did not happen. Instead, as Julia reached somewhere about the fifth step up, Edie called to her. "Hi," said Julia, pretending to notice for the first time. "Can you sit down a minute?" said Paul, out of the shadows. "What for?" Julia asked. "Just a piece of news," Paul Fowler said, the first she knew that something had actually happened. He told her. The Misses Mulligan, it seems, had noticed Jake Springland that afternoon. Not only noticed but identified him. He was that young man you saw in all the newspapers, mixed up with criminals. They were not interested in criminals, but they did not wish to be around them. They were made uneasy to think he might be a friend of Julia Garrett's. It was as though, all this time with them, she'd been wearing a false face. Where would it stop? They were scared now, those two old sisters. "Dieu," said Julia. "What those two can sit there and know. They've got X-ray eyes. They can see through walls." "They've got eyes like anybody else," Paul Fowler corrected her, coldly. "They keep them open, that's all." "Well, so what?" said Julia. "Just doing guesswork, we think Springland's in with a lot of pushers," Edie confided. "There's something else you ought to know," said Paul Fowler. "The Misses Mulligan have a cousin on the police force. They hated to mention it. It didn't seem polite." The young couple (as Julia sometimes ironically called them, mainly to herself) had bent their serious heads. Out from the swirling clouds of her own exalted day which should have ended with the quiet grace of consummation and a new beginning, she knew her experience was not of much consequence to either one of Elizabeth Spencer 121 them. Who can judge me today? she wondered. Well, they could; they were doing it. "Nobody ought to get killed," she murmured, "and nobody ought to be frightened. But I—" Paul Fowler's intelligence snapped like a light in the deepening dusk. "You what?" he asked. She turned aside, groped in her bag for a cigarette, lit it, and sat down on the steps, looking out. The two of them sat behind her, off to the side. It was more or less where she had sat reading in the afternoon before Jake appeared. So much had happened, time had got bigger to let it all in. Love had happened; time had stretched until it broke. She placed her hand against the post and the strong colliding texture, wood still warm from the sun, recalled the long afternoon, the man at one with...