Rosie Thomas 4-Book Collection

by Rosie Thomas

  ‘A long time,’ Julia said, at the end.

  Josh stood up. He came to perch on the rail beside her, and the old wood creaked in protest. He leaned over and kissed the top of her head.

  ‘What now?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Julia said softly.

  But she was thinking, I do know. She wanted to go home, to Lily and Alexander. The thought of them, together at Ladyhill, pulled sharply at her. And the thought of Alexander himself was more important still. It seemed to have grown in her consciousness, always demanding more of her attention, although, superstitiously, she had refused to give it. He had been in her head in New York and he was present even more strongly, now, while Josh sat beside her on the porch rail. She had dreamed of coming here, of seeing Josh again, but with sharpened perception she wondered if she had come out of a need to knit up loose ends. To draw a neat line, freeing herself. So that she could see Alexander again? She didn’t expect him to say anything, or to do anything, any more than he ever did. She knew his mild, dry, English demeanour well enough by now. But she suddenly understood that she was ready, at last, to go to Ladyhill again, without fear of the black fingers of the old terrors snatching at them again.

  She would like to visit them, to see Lily and Alexander happy together in the old house. That was all, wasn’t it?

  But she could no more confess to Josh what she felt now than, in London, she could have told Alexander that she was going to look for her comic-book hero.

  Subterfuges, Julia thought suddenly. I’m tired of them. I want everything to be simple. She turned her face up to look at Josh in the yellow light of the lamp.

  It was Josh who was here with her. He was still her aviator, and she felt the force of the old attraction. It had followed her like a shadow for so long, but now she felt that she had the power to reach down and roll up the shadow, to put it away in a drawer with the other, musty keepsakes from long ago, or to take it out, and examine it, at her own pleasure.

  The recognition of that power released an erotic charge inside her.

  Deliberately, she reached up and put her mouth to his. She held herself still for an instant and then she leaned back again, breaking the connection.

  It was an added satisfaction for both of them, she understood, to play with the moment before it overtook them. They were old enough, now, to postpone it, and so to heighten the eventual satisfaction. Once, they would have fallen on each other, incapable of any delay.

  ‘Do you remember the Swann Hotel?’ Julia asked, her voice ripe with amusement.

  ‘And the Pensione Flora. And the Signora in the next room, who must have heard everything.’ His fingers touched her cheek. ‘Shall I cook you some dinner?’

  Postponement, imagination, recollection; the delicate refinements of adulthood.

  ‘Yes, please,’ Julia said.

  Josh made a simple meal in the bare kitchen, and Julia watched him, leaning against the door frame and sipping the glass of red wine that he gave her. He moved economically in the cramped space, and she knew that she liked watching the turn of his wrists, and the set of his head on his tanned neck.

  They sat facing each other across the small table, talking, leaning back in their creaking chairs to look at one another. From the darkness outside the moths went on batting against the windowpanes. When they had eaten they carried the dishes out into the little kitchen. Julia washed them and Josh took them from her and dried them and put them neatly away. She remembered how the parody of domesticity had been so painful in the empty white house in London, and she wondered how the pain could have evaporated. She understood that the net of longing and wishing that she had tangled around herself had simply dropped away, and set her free.

  She was glad to be with Josh. She felt a girl’s excitement, and an adult’s satisfaction in their closeness, but she didn’t want, or expect, any more. Not any longer. She felt just as Josh must have done, she thought, in Wengen and in Montebellate and in the times afterwards. And all through those times she had been beating herself against his indifference to the future as hopelessly as the big, pale moths beat themselves against the glass.

  Well, now, Julia thought, she wasn’t indifferent to the future herself, but simply understood that her hopes for it lay elsewhere.

  The recognition of her own blindness, and the simplicity of the vision that replaced it, dazzled her, for a moment. And the happiness that came after it added to her pleasure in her freedom and her power.

  Josh was looking at her. He took her hands, twisting his fingers in hers, and kissed the skin inside her wrists.

  ‘I love you,’ he said.

  ‘I love you too,’ she answered, and for the first time she thought that she was recognising the different kinds of love, subtle and infinite and changeable gradations, instead of dreaming of one shining version that would transcend everything else, if only she could catch it, and make it.

  They went out on to the porch, and in the doorway the moths swooped around their heads and plunged towards the yellow lights. The blackness was thick enough to make Julia feel that she could reach out and touch it, pressing the cool, earthy folds of it against her skin, disturbing the unimaginable creatures that rustled and stalked under the invisible trees. Listening to the sound of them she shivered in her thin shirt.

  Josh turned abruptly and put his arms around her.

  They felt one another’s heat through the thickness of their clothes.

  The bedroom of the cabin was so small that there was only room for the bed, the chair with Josh’s folded clothes, and a rickety chest of drawers. In the eagerness that they had kindled between them Josh bumped against the chest and knocked over the lamp that stood on it. The light went out, leaving them in the dense dark. Josh swore, but Julia put her hand to his mouth.

  ‘Leave it. I like the dark.’

  He felt for her instead. His fingers moved over her neck to her throat, and to the vee of bare skin below it. He unbuttoned her shirt, and discarded it. The white linen glimmered as it fell at their feet. Impatience made him clumsy. He whispered, ‘Julia’, and she helped him, stepping out of her city clothes and letting the wisps of silk and lace underclothes drop after them.

  They lay down together, matching their bodies, touch intensified by the absence of sight.

  Julia remembered the weight, and the taste, and the texture of him, as vividly as if they had been lying together like this last night, instead of years ago, in the sad little white house. But the old Josh had been imperious, taking the lead and letting her follow, because there had been no question that she wouldn’t follow, giving whatever she could offer, because she wanted him to have everything. That had been part of their contract in bed, and it had fuelled their physical pleasure. This different Josh was more tentative. With unusual gentleness his hands touched the points of her hips, and the tips of his fingers smoothed the white skin inside her thighs. It was as if he was afraid that she might not respond.

  There had never, before, been any element of doubt.

  With her mouth against his she whispered, ‘Josh, I’m here.’

  His arms tightened around her. The word he whispered back might have been Stay. Julia smiled. She lifted herself and lay down on top of him, taking his wrists and pinioning them above their heads. With small, precise movements she kissed his cheeks and the corners of his mouth, his eyelids and his throat and the curling mat of hair on his chest. She stretched and their toes touched, their faces and their mouths, blind, rediscovering hunger. Julia sat up and with one movement she fitted herself around him. The pleasure was as intense as it had ever been. For an instant she crouched over him, motionless, possessing him. She remembered other times, the Swann Hotel with the shouts and laughter in the snow under their window, the Pensione Flora when she had longed to possess him without understanding that she already did, and London, and the sadness there, and all the years since.

  Josh’s hands gripped her waist and lifted her, triumphantly, holding her poised before he d
rove upwards into her again.

  The tentativeness, if it had been there, was gone.

  Julia gave herself up to him, as she always had, and if there was a part of her that she held back, then that little separateness only heightened her pleasure in what they could and did give to one another.

  And at the end, when the fierce waves possessed her and her eyes opened without seeing the dark, there was only Josh. She called his name and heard him answer, whispering and shouting, the intimate voice that she had forgotten. It was over so quickly.

  There’s no reason to be sad, she told herself.

  Afterwards they lay companionably with their heads together, watching the darker square of the window at the end of the tiny room. The unknown animals in the trees sounded louder, and closer. There was the call of a bird, perhaps an owl, and then a high, eerie sound that was neither a bark nor a yelp.

  ‘What are they?’ Julia asked.

  She felt Josh’s smile against her cheek. ‘Deer. Perhaps coyote.’

  ‘Not wolves?’

  ‘No, darling. Not wolves.’

  ‘Aren’t you ever afraid?’

  ‘Of wild animals?’

  ‘Just afraid, I meant.’

  He was silent, thinking.

  ‘Sometimes. More than I used to be. What are you afraid of, Julia?’

  ‘I think I’m afraid of making mistakes.’ Looking back, there seemed to have been so many. Made almost wilfully. She wondered if recognising the ones that had gone made any difference to the ones that would come. If there were enough chances left, now, to put any of it right.

  Alexander, she thought. Lily. If I can come home. Just to see you there, at Ladyhill.

  Josh settled her head more comfortably against him, drawing the covers around their shoulders. ‘You’re safe in my cabin in the woods,’ he said. ‘Safer than you would be in London, or in New York.’

  ‘I know,’ Julia said, turning her face to him and closing her eyes. ‘I’m not afraid of the wolves.’

  Waiting to go to sleep, she listened to the noises of the trees beyond the wooden walls. There was no resemblance, and there were thousands of miles separating them, but the eddies of wind and the scraping branches and the sudden, mystifying animal cries reminded her of Ladyhill. She had been afraid of Ladyhill, of course. Even before the flames and smoke came. She had imagined that she was mistress of it, playing with the furniture and curtains and dressing it up for her fantasy Christmas, but in reality it had mastered her. She had been too young, and too silly, and too impatient for it.

  ‘I’m not afraid now,’ she repeated.

  Julia stayed with Josh in his forest cabin for three days.

  In the Honey Creek store Julia bought Levis and a pair of boots, and they went walking. ‘Scrambling,’ Julia gasped, following Josh up the steep wooded slopes. ‘I’m getting old.’

  Josh held out his hand to help her. ‘I don’t think so.’

  For all her mild, citified protesting Julia enjoyed the blue, empty days. It occurred to her that she had never spent so many hours at a time out of the shelter of roofs and rooms. Her cheeks and arms flushed in the sunshine, then turned pale gold. She tied her hair back with a piece of string, and wore Josh’s frayed shirts with her Levis.

  ‘You look about seventeen,’ he told her.

  ‘I’m glad I’m not,’ Julia said soberly.

  In the pale evenings, when the sun’s glare had faded, Josh went fishing. The streams and waterfalls that netted the mountainside ran down into a wide, mirror-faced lake. Julia sat on the bank beside Josh, watching the ripples that spread lazily from his casts. She was surprised by his absorption, and by his ability to sit still for so long.

  Her images of him, well defined by re-examination over the years, were all active. She remembered Josh racing in the Inferno, his face briefly turned towards the watchers as he skimmed past, and Josh at the controls of the Auster Autocrat over the green and brown patchwork of English fields. She had no recollections of times like this. Josh had always been a coiled spring; it was his energy that she had fallen in love with. She loved it still, but it was as if the clarity of the mountain air was allowing her to see more clearly what was missing.

  Sitting beside the reflecting water, with her chin resting on her knees, Julia tried to unravel the threads. They had been knotted together for so long that they were difficult to unpick, but she made herself do it, dispassionately following the strands.

  Of course she loved Josh. She always had done. From the beginning, from the first night. She had fallen in love with the dash and sparkle, but she had wanted to do it. Had almost determined to do it.

  It was the day that Betty had come to the flat in the square. Julia could see her hands nervously folded over the clasp of her old handbag, the brown felt hat pulled tightly down over her colourless hair.

  A dirty little baby, those were the words.

  Julia had lifted her chin and pretended not to care. Pretended relief, even. And that night she had gone out, with Jessie’s five pounds, to dinner with her best friends. Hungry, and defiant, she thought now.

  And there Josh had been.

  She had transferred all the weight of her love and need to a bright-haired American pilot. He had bought her a bottle of pink champagne, and taken her to a nightclub, and he had been kind to her. He had always been kind to her, Julia reflected, within his own definition of kindness.

  She turned her head on her knees so that she could look at him.

  Josh was watching the motionless tip of his rod, then glancing away to the black arc of line. His face was half hidden by the peak of his cap, but she knew every line of it. Fifteen years had blurred the sharp angles a little, that was all.

  Julia sighed, thinking of her own sixteen-year-old naivety. She had fallen in love in an hour, and she had made Josh carry the weight of it for all the years because the love had seemed too big and deep-rooted to dislodge.

  She turned her head sharply again, and stared out over the water. It made her feel guilty to think of the responsibility she had thrust on him. Josh wasn’t made for responsibility. He had told her that, over and over, but she had been deaf.

  She thought of the little shock of recognition that she had experienced in his Mercedes, racing up towards Honey Creek. Josh was a boy, showing off his car to impress his girl. He had always been the same, with his aeroplanes and his skis. Not quite grown-up. Your comic-book hero. Alexander’s words.

  Josh was the perfect hero for a girl of sixteen. No wonder she had loved him then; the sadness was that she had made the love into a totem.

  And now she was thirty-one, too old for heroes.

  Julia contemplated the threads that she had untangled, without pleasure and without liking for the images of herself that were revealed.

  She had clung to the romantic ideal of loving Josh, with a schoolgirl’s fervour. She had been sure that it would last for ever, at whatever cost. She had allowed herself to feel tragic. Luxuriating in her own passion.

  What it had cost her, she understood, was her marriage.

  And because of that, what had Lily lost?

  Julia wrapped her arms more tightly around her knees, containing herself. She couldn’t jump up and run to Ladyhill, not yet. The threads must be set straight, finally, so that they could never tangle again.

  Alexander had always been too grown-up, that was the difference. He was simply himself, not a hero, except when heroism was necessary. Alexander had run back under the stone arch at Ladyhill, into the smoke and heat. She closed her eyes on the image of that. When she opened them again she saw that the last light had gone. The lake had turned from a mirror into a sheet of cold, black glass.

  Has it taken until now, she wondered, all this time, for me to grow up enough myself? The thought shamed her, but it was also an encouragement.

  She had needed the struggle, for her own independence and for the success of Garlic & Sapphires. The old restlessness had gone, at least. Only it was Lily who had suffered. T
hinking of her, Julia smiled a little. Lily was resilient, almost in the same way as Josh himself.

  Perhaps even the flare of sexual energy that had overtaken her in New York had been necessary. It had meant that she had stopped dreaming of Josh, and waiting for him like Patience on her monument – clever, sharp Mattie – and had come to find him instead. And it was coming here, to the cabin under the trees, that had made her see the way that she should go.

  If she could follow it, all the way back to Ladyhill, and find Alexander and Lily there, then that would be enough. She didn’t know how much she could hope for beyond that. Slowly, Julia uncoiled her arms. She stood up, stiff with sitting still for so long, and touched her hand to Josh’s shoulder.

  ‘It’s gone dark,’ she said.

  Josh must have been as absorbed in his own thoughts. He started, and then squeezed her cold fingers.

  ‘Time to pack up.’ He began reeling in his line, the rapid ticktick of the mechanism very loud in the stillness. He seemed more like a boy than ever, frowning intently over his task. Watching him, Julia felt the draught of guilt again.

  Don’t be guilty, she warned herself. Josh’s self-protective mechanisms must be well enough developed by now.

  She bent to help him to pack the scatter of equipment into the fishing basket. Josh lifted it, and held out his hand. She took it and they turned to walk together, along the rutted track to where the white nose of the Mercedes glimmered in the dimness.

  Even in the late evenings, they sat outside on the porch. Josh put away the fishing tackle and came out with two tumblers of Jack Daniels. Julia took hers and wrapped her fingers round it, looking away into the infinity under the trees. The noises that had seemed threatening on the first night were familiar now. She felt that she had been here a long time, and had reached a crossroads. The way that she had glimpsed beside the lake seemed clearer still, beckoning her.

  ‘Josh, I’ve got to go home soon.’

  He didn’t answer for a moment. He stood up and went to lean on the porch rail, staring intently out, as if he could see something that Julia couldn’t. When he turned back again, she could see his face lit by the glow from inside the cabin.