Nothing in the least like that ever really happened in spite of prayers. He was quite indifferent.
Once she spent the night next door because Mamma and Papa were away and Nurse’s mother was going at last. It seemed too exciting to be true, but it happened. The grandmother said she was Mariella’s little guest, so Mariella showed her the visitors’ lavatory. Charlie met her coming out of it, and passed by politely, pretending not to notice. It was a great pity. She had hoped to appear noble in all her works to him. There was no chance now. It nearly made the visit a failure.
They had a midnight feast of caramels and banana mess which Julian knew how to make because he was at Eton; and next morning Charlie did not come to breakfast and Julian said he had been sick in the night and gone to Grannie. He was always the one to be sick after things. They went up to see him, and he was in bed with a basin beside him, flushed and very cross. He turned to the wall and told them to get out. He spoke to the grandmother in a whining baby voice and would not let her leave him. Julian muttered that he was a spoilt sugar-baby and they all went away again. So the visit was quite a failure. Judith went home pondering.
But next time she saw him he was so beautiful and lordly she had to go on worshipping. Secretly she recognised his faults, but it was no use: she had to worship him.
Once they turned out all the lights and played hide and seek. The darkness in the hall was like crouching enormous black velvet animals. Suddenly Charlie whispered: ‘Come on, let’s look together;’ and his damp hand sought hers and clutched it, and she knew he was afraid of the dark. He pretended he was brave and she the frightened one, but he trembled and would not let go her hand. It was wonderful, touching and protecting him in the dark: it made the blackness lose its terrors. When the lights went on again he was inclined to swagger. But Julian looked at him with his sharp jeering look. He knew.
Julian and Charlie had terrible quarrels. Julian was always quite quiet: only his eyes and tongue snapped and bit. He was dreadfully sarcastic. The quiet things he said lashed and tortured Charlie to screaming frenzies; and he would give a little dry bit of laugh now and then as he observed the boiling up of his brother. Once they fought with croquet mallets on the lawn, and even Mariella was alarmed. And once Charlie picked up an open penknife and flung it. Julian held his hand up. The knife was stuck in the palm. He looked at it heavily, and a haggard sick horror crept over his face and he fainted with a bang on the floor. Everybody thought he was dead. But the grandmother said ‘Nonsense’ when Martin went to her and announced the fatality; and she was right. After she had revived and bandaged him, poor trembling Charlie was sent in to apologise. Later all the others went in, full of awe and reverence, and everybody was rather embarrassed. Charlie was a trifle hysterical and turned somersaults and threw himself about, making noises in his throat. Everybody giggled a lot with the relief, and Julian was very gentle and modest on the sofa. After that Julian and Charlie were better friends and sometimes called each other ‘Old chap.’
Once at a children’s gymkhana that somebody had, Charlie fell down; and when he saw a trickle of blood on his knee he went white and began to whimper. He never could bear blood. Some of the gymkhana children looked mocking and whispered, and Julian came along and told them to shut up, very fiercely. Then he patted Charlie on the back and said: ‘Buck up, old chap,’ and put an arm round him and took him up to the house to be bandaged. Judith watched them going away, pressed close to each other, the backs of their heads and their thin childish shoulders looking lonely and pathetic. She thought suddenly: ‘They’ve no Mother and Father;’ and her throat ached.
Charlie sometimes told you things. Once, after one of the quarrels, chucking pebbles into the river, he said:
‘It’s pretty rotten Julian and me always quarreling.’
‘But it’s his fault, Charlie.’