The Truth About Julia: A Chillingly Timely Psychological Novel

by Schaffner Anna

  ‘Rose had arrived by then, and understandably wasn’t very happy about my explanation of what had happened. But she hid her anger for Julia’s sake. You know, Rose is always very professional about everything, including mothering. Anyway, we tried to talk to Julia and to reassure her. We talked about how much Rose and I loved each other, and we tried to explain that Alina had misunderstood something and was terribly lonely and unhappy, and so on. Julia seemed to grow calmer and eventually appeared to accept my explanation. We felt confident that all was well again when she finally went up to her room, tired out by all the crying. I helped her change into her pyjamas and tucked her in and kissed her goodnight before I switched off the lights in her bedroom.

  ‘Once Julia was in bed Rose and I had an argument in the kitchen that lasted for a long time, probably two or three hours. You know, Rose didn’t quite believe my version of the story, and it took me for ever to convince her. It was well past midnight when we heard loud crashing sounds from the living room. When we rushed over to see what was happening we found Julia with the broken neck of her violin in her hand. She must have smashed it repeatedly against the grand piano until it was in pieces and all its strings had snapped. She looked at us with her big green eyes, and her pale, small face radiated a strange calmness that I found almost more unsettling than her destructive act. Then she said: “Dad, Mum – I’ll never play the violin again.” And she didn’t. She never touched any musical instruments again in her life.’

  ‘I really don’t understand why you had to tell that sorry story,’ Rose said, after another uncomfortable silence. ‘What does that have to do with anything?’ She didn’t even try to hide her anger.

  ‘Well… I don’t know, darling. I’ve been thinking about that episode a lot lately. I just can’t forget Julia’s face when she saw Alina and me, that white, frightened little face. I keep thinking that seeing her father kiss another woman at such a young age must have broken something in her, that it did some kind of damage. That I’m to blame for what has happened, somehow. I don’t know. I can’t really explain.’

  Timothy covered his face with his hands. Rose didn’t say anything. Eventually, she got up to pour herself another drink. Then she started to speak. Again, she only addressed Timothy. It was as though I wasn’t even in the room.

  ‘If anything did do damage to Julia, it was the way you spoiled her. The way you so clearly favoured her over our other children. The way you always made her feel special. The way you always sided with her, no matter what she’d done – even if it meant siding against me and undermining my authority. The way you fostered in her a sense of being better than everybody else. That – all of that – messed her up, not that silly kissing episode. It means nothing; it explains nothing. But you spoiled that child. If anyone has corrupted her, it’s you, Tim. You! You alone.’

  Timothy raised his head. ‘Don’t say that, darling. I know you don’t mean it. We’re all tired and at the end of our tethers.’

  ‘But I do mean it,’ Rose said. ‘You spoiled that child. You completely idolized her! It just wasn’t natural – it was sick, obsessive! Just look at Amy! She’s a wreck. Look at Jonathan! He never got over the feeling that his father didn’t really love him. He desperately tried to copy you, in all kinds of ways, just to get your attention and win your respect. And look at me, just look at me now! All you ever really cared about was your beloved Julia. You didn’t give a shit about the rest of your family. She could do anything, she could get away with murder. Ha! Hang on. She just did! You’d always support her and tell her how special she was. You never criticized her. Never, not once in your life. All Julia did and said was goodness and wisdom incarnate for you. You never showed her any boundaries. It just wasn’t right. And look at the result of your sick idolatry! If Julia let you see her now you’d probably still try to “understand” her motivations. In fact you’d probably applaud her for what she’s done.’

  ‘Rose, darling, that isn’t fair. Please stop it.’

  ‘“Rose, darling, that isn’t fair. Please stop it.” Oh, you and your cowardly liberalism and your eternally understanding nature make me so sick. You make me want to vomit, Tim. Vomit! I detest your hypocritical tolerance. I detest your saintly lenience and your “decency”, and your blindness. It makes me want to vomit my heart out.’

  ‘I think it’s the drinking that makes you want to vomit, Rose,’ Timothy said. ‘You’ve really had enough now. You should watch your alcohol consumption. You’re not well, Rose.’

  But Rose had no intention of stopping. ‘There were so many warning signs that something wasn’t right with Julia. But you just weren’t prepared to admit it. Never. You always defended her, no matter what she did. Even after she ruined your son’s wedding day. Even after that speech she gave at your birthday. Do you even remember that? Just a few months ago? It was so cold and inappropriate, that speech – everyone was shocked by it but you. You just spouted out your eternally understanding babble: “It’s a bad phase, Rose, darling, she’ll regret it soon, darling, she’s not herself at the moment, darling, let’s be patient with her, darling, I’m sure she’ll turn a corner soon, darling.” Ha! Well, so much for your powers of insight. Christ!’

  And then, for the first time, Rose looked me in the eye and addressed me directly. ‘Clare, let me tell you about that day. Now that’s a story that is relevant. It was Tim’s sixty-fifth birthday, and Julia had very reluctantly agreed to come and celebrate with us, the rest of the family and a few friends and business partners. I’d booked a room and two big tables in a French restaurant in Knightsbridge. It was Tim’s sixty-fifth, after all. Of course, straight after her very late arrival the oh-so-politically-correct avenger of all the downtrodden stuck her nose up in the air and made some biting comments about the haut-bourgeois surroundings and the fact that the produce on the menu wasn’t organic. She made a massive fuss about her order, and demanded reassurance that her dish wouldn’t just be vegan but that the chef would only use locally sourced bio-dynamically grown ingredients, and so on. It was ridiculous and embarrassing. I was really shocked by her dogmatism. Honestly, a religious fanatic afraid of being fed pork would have been a pussycat in comparison.

  ‘While everyone was eating their main courses, she stood up to give a speech. Not a single word about her father, his birthday and his numerous achievements. I don’t think she even remembered to congratulate Tim! Instead, she launched straight into a very graphic diatribe against meat consumption. Most of us had chosen meat, of course – it was a French restaurant, after all. Julia went out of her way to describe the gory, inhumane conditions in which European farm animals were kept and the horrible sufferings they had to endure – the diseases, the transport issues, the slaughtering methods, and so on. She fully succeeded in spoiling everyone’s appetite. I don’t think anyone finished their plate after she was done. Then she stormed out in a huff during the dessert course, because she was convinced that, in spite of her detailed instructions to the waiter and the chef, her dish had pig-skin gelatine in it.’

  ‘I think you’re misrepresenting this event a little, Rose,’ Timothy interrupted. ‘She did congratulate me, she even gave me a hug, and I was really grateful that she came at all. She hates gatherings like that. And you know very well that Julia takes her veganism seriously, and feels passionately about meat consumption. A lot of her arguments were actually very convincing, and her speech wasn’t at all as extreme as you make it sound. And she had every right to insist that her dietary requirements be taken seriously: a Michelin-starred chef should be able to respond to personal dietary requests, don’t you think? I was actually quite shocked that this particular chef didn’t. And her pudding did have gelatine in it. Even I could see that. It quivered and wobbled on her plate like a lump of pure jelly.’

  ‘That’s not the fucking point!’ Rose shouted. ‘See what I mean, Clare? Can you see what he does? He always takes Julia’s dogmatic outbursts seriously; he always engages with the content of her diatribes. He ca
n always see her bloody point. What he can’t see is that there is something pathological about her fanaticism. It was his bloody birthday, for fuck’s sake. She should have tried to say something nice and loving about her father, with all his friends and colleagues there and all that, instead of ranting about the bloody food.’

  ‘I think you’re being unfair, Rose. Julia happens to have very strong political convictions – that’s just who she is. You’ve always been too harsh on her; you always assume there are darker motives behind her actions... ’

  ‘There we go – I have been too harsh on her? So you think it is my fault that Julia turned into a killer? I knew it! But guess what: I happen to disagree with your assessment, Tim, I disagree profoundly – I think you bloody idolized her, and if anyone is responsible it’s you! You with your blind faith in her and your sick veneration complex! You rotted her soul!’

  ‘Perhaps I simply tried to make up for your coldness, Rose.’ Timothy suddenly looked incredibly tired, as though he hadn’t slept for weeks.

  ‘What do you mean by that? I’ve never been cold to any of our children – never!’

  ‘Let’s not go there, Rose. I’m sorry. Let’s stop this, please. This won’t lead to anything.’

  ‘Oh no, no, no, I want to hear. Tell me in what ways you think I’ve been harsh and cold to our children. I demand to know.’

  Both of them had stood up and were facing each other.

  ‘Fine,’ Timothy said, ‘since you’re not holding back any of your own resentment… I think you’ve always overemphasized the importance of achievement. The children always felt they had to perform well and behave impeccably in order to be worthy of your love. Your affection could never be taken for granted. It had to be earned, you know? It always struck me as… well, conditional rather than unconditional.’

  ‘You mean I didn’t just sit back and say “Great, do go ahead and hit boys on the head with beer bottles when you feel like it, Julia, darling”, and “Great, well done for dropping out of Edinburgh to go travelling, Julia, sounds like a brilliant idea to me”? Is that what you mean?’

  ‘No, that’s not what I mean, obviously. And she did that to defend Amy, Rose, who’d just been sexually molested, remember? Don’t twist the facts, please. I’m not talking about placidly agreeing with every one of our children’s actions and choices. I’m talking about a more general lack of… I don’t know… warmth. Compassion.’

  ‘Hear hear! The good old cold mother narrative – how original, Tim. Please. Unlike you, I had to earn my privileges – I had to work my way up from the very bottom. I achieved what I achieved through discipline and hard work and by putting in very long hours. I wasn’t born rich – as your bloody family doesn’t tire of reminding me. They never liked me. They thought you were marrying beneath you and that I wasn’t good enough for their precious son. Can you even begin to imagine how hurtful and humiliating that was? Yes, I believe that a good work ethic matters, I’m the first to admit that, and I won’t apologize for it either. And guess what: I sincerely hope I passed this value on to my children. But that doesn’t make me cold!’

  ‘You just don’t get it, do you?’ Timothy’s voice had become hard. ‘You know the way you garden, Rose? You focus exclusively on weeding, on cutting back trees and hedges, on stripping down and ripping out bad seeds. You never plant stuff, or design new beds, or even nourish the existing plants sufficiently. And as you garden, so you mothered: you always focused on what you didn’t like in our children, on their perceived negative qualities, which you tried to eliminate. I don’t think you ever concentrated enough on nurturing them and on helping them to blossom.’

  Rose sneered. ‘That is such a fucking preposterous analogy. My gardening style has nothing to do with any of this! Nothing! But given that you insist on pursuing that idiotic comparison, you clearly should have weeded out the bad tendencies in Julia while it was still possible, before they stifled all her good qualities. You can’t just let bad things take over your garden without putting up a fight. You should have shown her boundaries. You should have cut out her cancerous fanaticism while it was still possible to operate without killing the patient. Instead, you encouraged those tendencies in her by always taking her arguments seriously, no matter how crazy and absurd and hurtful they were.

  ‘When she decided to abandon her studies, all you said was “That’s fine, Julia, darling, if you want to, please go ahead and become a drop-out; your oh-so-tolerant Daddy is happy to finance your world travels. Don’t worry about the future and about ruining your career prospects! Don’t worry about breaking your parents’ hearts! Just follow your whims and indulge in your teenage anti-everything rebellion – Daddy will finance you! Daddy loves you so very, very much!”’

  ‘You know very well that isn’t what I said to her,’ Timothy said. ‘That’s just not fair. I tried my very best to persuade her to continue with her studies. You know that! It hurt me more than anyone else that she threw away her academic prospects. I even flew up to Scotland to talk her out of it. Don’t you remember that? But given that I could neither persuade her nor force her to stay in Edinburgh, I did at least want to make sure she’d be safe on her travels. I couldn’t let her head off to South-East Asia without any money now, could I? It was our obligation to ensure our daughter’s safety. The less money you have to spend in those countries, the cheaper the places you stay, the greater the risks of kidnapping, rape, robbery and all that. You know that, Rose; we agreed to do this together. Don’t you remember that? Can’t you remember anything right? Has the bloody gin impaired not just your judgement but also your memory?’

  ‘My memory works just fine, thank you very much. I wasn’t in favour of funding that trip. Never. I just thought it pointless to object, because I knew you’d give her money anyway. I mean, come on. Of course you would have. I know you and your sick obsession with your golden girl. But what you didn’t consider is that without your money Julia would have returned much sooner. I’m convinced that it was precisely the squalor and misery and danger abroad, from which your money protected her, that would have curbed her desire to stay away for that long. I think funding her travels was a very bad idea – look at what has become of her. I mean, just look, Tim. She came back even more alienated and fanatical than before. If anything, her travels made everything so much worse.’

  ‘Well, hindsight is always difficult to argue against, isn’t it? But it was our decision, Rose, not just mine.’

  ‘You know what I think? Your love was never properly paternal. I think you overcompensated. You were so afraid that you wouldn’t be able to love Julia enough that you ended up…’

  ‘Stop!’ Timothy’s voice was suddenly piercing, like the cry of a bird of prey, and Rose rubbed her eyes, shook her head and then smoothed her hair, as if trying to brush off a bad dream.

  Then they both fell silent, their faces sad and tired, their energies spent. Timothy poured all of us another drink, and the two of them sat back down again. We were silent for a few minutes, before I dared to ask my next question.

  ‘Can you tell me a little bit more about the ways in which Julia had changed when she returned from her travels? And how was your relationship with her in the past few months?’

  Timothy cleared his throat. ‘Well, that’s quite difficult to describe. When Julia finally returned to the UK we were all really excited to have her back. The whole family, with the exception of Jonathan, who was still sore about her wedding speech, went to the airport to welcome her home. Amy was elated by the prospect of regaining her beloved sister. We just couldn’t wait for her to walk through the arrival gates. When she finally did come through, though, I was quite shocked by her appearance. You know, we hadn’t seen her for two years. She’d grown haggard, her face looked thinner and her mouth harder; she was wearing cargo pants, army boots and an old pullover with holes in it, and her once-so-pretty hair was dishevelled and had clearly not been cut for a very long time.

  ‘We hugged, and I was overjoyed tha
t she was back home safely. She, too, seemed very pleased to see us, and for a few days she talked almost non-stop about her experiences during her trip. But she mainly told us about facts. It was curiously impersonal… Economic, political, ecological questions, that kind of thing, you know? We got a pretty clear sense of where she’d been, what she’d witnessed, and that the abject poverty and working conditions in these places had made a profound and lasting impression on her. She seemed angry and distressed, and very restless – all at the same time.

  ‘I think Amy was very disappointed that Julia didn’t really appear to be particularly interested in her own news. Amy had just won a scholarship to study for a PhD, and was really excited about her project and all that, and had so much been looking forward to discussing it all with Julia. Julia stayed with us for about two weeks or so, and then moved to a flat in Camden to live on her own. She must have arranged that before her return. It was a rather shabby flat, in a building that looked as though it was about to fall down. I didn’t like what I saw at all when we delivered her things there. We agreed to pay her rent for a while, until she knew what she wanted to do next. But, as I said, after a year or so we decided to stop doing that.

  ‘Then she began to work in that ghastly vegetable shop near Camden market, and moved in with a friend she’d met there. That shop was a terribly run-down place, utterly unhygienic, populated by smelly mongrels that had never been properly trained and that didn’t follow orders. The people who worked and hung out there were all aggressive, joyless fanatics, not friendly laughter-loving hippies, you know? They always looked at Rose and me as though they thought us the bourgeois enemy incarnate and would like nothing more than to stake us with the meagre organic carrots we bought from them. Instead, they begrudgingly wrapped them in ancient left-wing newspapers and handed them over in the most contemptuous manner possible.’