Straub, Peter - Julia by Straub Peter

Author:Straub, Peter [Straub, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-02-25T14:37:33+00:00

Magnus stood in shock beside the sandboxes, children all about him. He was staring up at the window of Julia’s bedroom. It was impossible, what he had seen there for a moment. He touched the bottle in his jacket pocket. A little boy brushed against his legs and Magnus stepped backward, feeling sand grind beneath his heel. His pulse seemed to have stopped. Gradually, into the silent vacuum which had dropped over him like a bell jar, sounds began to come. He heard children’s piping voices and the far-off booming wash of a jet. One of the children pressed against his left leg. He had walked through the park from Plane Tree House, irritated. Lily had been more than usually coy with him, as if she were keeping a secret. She’d assumed her you’re-such-a-naughty-boy manner, as she sometimes did when she had learned something upsetting about him, but she had refused to speak directly about his supposed transgression. Instead, she had babbled about Julia’s “privacy,” about her need for “an honest meeting” with Magnus, about “the needs of all concerned,” all the while her eyes shining with bright, needling admonition. He had supposed that all this had to do with his drinking.

Then she had got onto his not being a Queen’s Counsel again.

“For God’s sake, Lily,” he had said. “I’ve explained this to you a hundred times. If I wanted to be a QCI could be one. But all I would do would be to double my prices and drop my cases down to a fourth of what they are now. You don’t understand what a Queen’s Counsel is. For a man in my position it would be a ludicrous mistake.”

“I want my distinguished brother to be a QC.”

“You mean you want to be the sister of a QC without first understanding what it means. Absurd. And it has nothing to do with Julia. Can you get that into your head?”

“Magnim “

“And don’t start to stroke me with Durm.”

She had brightly pulled back. “You should have your clothes looked after. That suit looks as though you’ve slept in it.”

“I probably did, damn it.”

By the time he had left Lily’s flat, he had a headache and the sour beginnings of indigestion. He had walked gloomily through the park, irritated with the sunshine and the loafers sprawling on the grass. The newspapers predicted a change in the weather in the next few days, which suited him. He wanted rain. He longed for clouds and cold blustery weather. Eventually he reached the play area and stepped off the path onto the springy grass. Then he looked angrily up at Julia’s window and saw Kate—the back of her head shining through the glass. In the next second she had disappeared. But it was Kate. He knew the color of that hair better than he knew the color of his own. For a long moment Magnus forgot to breathe.

He extracted a grinning black girl of two or three from his leg and, gulping air, stepped forward on the grass.

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