by Rosie Thomas
‘A long time ago,’ Josh murmured. He smiled at Felix. ‘I’d like it, very much. I remember we were listening to Bill Haley.’
Julia imagined the picture tacked up on the bare walls of the cabin in the mountains, or in the impersonal Vail apartment. She looked down at her own drawing. A few months ago she might have folded it, and put it lovingly in her marquetry box. But she was trying to live without her talisman now. Life was to be lived, its chances seized, and not to be propitiated as she had tried to do. She had thrown away Valerie Hall’s birth certificate because she had no need of it, and she had replaced the Rapunzel book in the palazzo library. Her engagement and wedding rings were still in the box. If she was right, if she was lucky, they could be taken out again.
And then, because she had started to buy them once more, she could keep her strings of pearls and pairs of garish earrings in George’s marquetry box.
She held the, picture out to Lily. ‘You take it, Lily,’ she said. ‘When Felix made that drawing, Mattie and I were just the age that you are now. We knew that we had everything to happen to us, but we still thought that we were such clever, bad girls.’
‘You became good women,’ Alexander said. ‘Both of you did.’
They came together, all the old friends, in the white-painted cellar for Mattie’s party. Julia had searched them out, and tracing the networks of marriages and removals and remarriages made her feel at home again in London.
Ricky brought a reformed version of The Dandelions, and a little crowd of fans followed them, They were closer to Lily’s age than to Mattie and Julia’s. Rozzie’s children were amongst them, and the Banner party was completed by Rozzie herself with Marilyn and Sam. Phil had got married and gone to live in Canada. Mattie hadn’t left a will, but most of Mitch’s money and her own considerable estate had been divided between the five brothers and sisters. Marilyn put her arms around Julia. The waves of blonde hair were just like Mattie’s.
‘I’d give anything in the world to have her back again,’ Marilyn sobbed.
‘I know,’ Julia soothed her. ‘All of us would.’
She looked around the crowded cellar. The noise of talk and laughter swelled as the drink began to flow. It was comforting, and an affirmation, to be here with Mattie’s friends, enjoying themselves as Mattie once would have done. My friends too, Julia thought, feeling the invisible threads of familiarity, common experience, draw her close to them all. She could see Ricky talking to a group of men who had once played trad jazz in this same cellar. With Mattie, she had tried to dance to it all night. She could see Thomas Tree with his wife, in a corner with Marilyn and her husband, and she could see the two boys, husbands and fathers now, who had driven Johnny Flowers to Ladyhill for a party to celebrate a new decade. One of them had had long sideburns, Julia remembered, and she had danced the conga with him. She could see Jimmy Proffitt lounging against a wall, arguing with Chris Fredericks. Jimmy had just published his autobiography, with the story of One More Day and Mattie’s great success in it. Julia had picked the book up in a bookshop, and turned the pages, looking at the photographs. There was one of Mattie, in the last scene of the play. Her face stared up from the page, peering across a great distance. Julia had put the book back on the glossy pile and turned slowly away.
Julia saw Felix, sinuously moving through the crowded space. In the dim light, in his sweater, he looked hardly any older than when she had first seen him. He caught her hand in his.
‘A good party,’ Felix said. ‘Do you think Mattie would be happy?’
‘I know she would. Felix, do you remember the party we gave after Jessie’s funeral?’
A sad day. Somehow, miraculously, this day wasn’t sad.
‘I remember,’ he answered.
She saw the tilt of his head, his white teeth, and the flicker of candlelight emphasised the high planes and deep hollows of his face. Julia and Felix remembered what had happened afterwards. He lifted her hand and kissed it, then went on into the clamour of the party, looking for William.
It was Felix who had decorated the restaurant for the party. There were candles in Chianti bottles, and travel posters set at angles on the walls. With just a few touches, he had brought the Rocket back for them. Everyone was finding their places now, sitting down at tables with checked cloths to eat chilli and French bread, a meal like the ones that Felix used to cook in the flat overlooking the square.
In the crush Julia saw Lily sit down firmly next to Josh and, at the furthest point from where she stood herself, she saw Alexander.
She had brought Alexander to the Rocket as a test. He had passed it as he had passed every other test, except for one, and that had required him to be Josh Flood. Julia flushed at the thought of it, and felt a great rush of love for Alexander.
Feeling her eyes on him, he looked across at her. His mouth twisted, briefly and humorously, an acknowledgement and the most private greeting to her. The old, ironic Alexander, irony masking his tenderness.
Yes, Julia thought. Yes, now, at last.
All the way away from her he sat down, and she saw him incline his head to listen courteously to something that Rozzie Banner was telling him.
Julia sat down too, very suddenly, at a table with The Dandelions and some of Lily’s friends and a jazz trumpeter. Or perhaps he was a saxophonist. The memory of Jessie’s stories made her smile, and suddenly Julia felt a warm bubble of happiness swelling up inside her. It pressed against her ribcage, making her breathless and causing her heart to knock in her throat. Julia swept up her glass and drank, toasting The Dandelions and Lily’s friends and the trumpeter-saxophonist. The cheap red wine curled her tongue, and the taste of it launched its own flotilla of memories.
She wanted to drink, to laugh and to dance and to celebrate the years that had brought them all here, back to the Rocket again. To celebrate, because tonight was not a night to mourn.
After they had finished eating, the tables were pushed back against the walls to make room for the dancing. Julia drank the wine, and danced, and as the wine and the heat and the candlelight worked on her she felt dreamy and yet abundantly alive. The dancers’ shadows flickered on the white walls. Watching them as she danced, seeing only the bold puppet shapes blacker than the cruel faint shadows of reality, Julia could have believed that they were all young again, that she was seventeen once more, that she was Lily’s age, after all.
Julia was jiving with the trumpeter-saxophonist. It was a long time since she had danced at all, and much longer since she had tried to recall the intricate rhythms of twenty years ago. But the jazz player was a good dancer, although not as good as Alexander, and dreamily she matched her steps to his. He swung her out in a flamboyant twirl, and as she whirled, past the dancers, beside the kinder shadows on the white wall, Julia saw Lily. Tonight Lily was a punk princess again, but even the wilfulness of her self-presentation failed to disguise her beauty.
She was standing right against the opposite wall, turned away from the dancers, so that Julia only saw her profile. She was looking up at Josh, and Josh was listening to her, smiling. Easy, fatal Josh, Julia remembered.
The movements and the music slowed around Julia. The moment seemed to freeze, and stretch itself, as time lost its familiar dimensions. Lily and Josh were captured in Julia’s eyes under a white light, held in a black frame that shut out everyone else.
Lily reached up and put one hand at the back of Josh’s neck. Julia saw him hesitate, neither drawing back nor reaching forward. Then Lily laughed. She tilted her face up, and drew his down so that their mouths met.
Then her bare arm uncoiled and she stepped back again.
It was the briefest of kisses, but there was no mistaking it. It told Julia how much Lily knew, and the mocking, confident ease of the kiss stirred a contraction of protective jealousy in Julia that was as fierce as a birth pang. She dropped the musician’s hand and stood still, staring at them. Josh put his hand to Lily’s cheek, turning her head to look into her eyes. Lily laughed again, te
asing, mistress of herself. In that instant Julia was sure that it was Lily who led and Josh who stumbled, hopeful and bewildered.
Then the picture shuddered in its frame and began to move again, faster, catching up with reality. The frame itself dissolved and the party recomposed itself, flowing around Lily and Josh and hiding them from Julia’s gaze.
Someone’s arm came round her shoulders, half supporting her. She thought it was the jazz player and turned, startled. It was Alexander.
‘My dance, next, I think?’ It was the first time he had spoken to her since the beginning of the party. Helplessly Julia looked back, to the place where the shadows leapt against the wall. Lily and Josh had gone, swallowed up into the party’s heart. Alexander drew her closer, making her turn to him again. He looked into her face and she felt his scrutiny penetrate her, keen enough to peel the flesh from her bones. The trumpeter slid past them, leaving them to one another.
‘I don’t think we need to dance, do we?’ Alexander murmured. ‘We don’t need to make any beginnings, you and I. Let’s go, now. Come on, come with me.’
Julia turned her head one more time. ‘Lily,’ she whispered. ‘I saw Lily …’
‘Forget about Lily now,’ Alexander ordered her. ‘She is her own self.’
His grip on her wasn’t gentle any longer. It hurt, and she almost broke away from him. She was going to say, I can’t let Lily … but the words stopped in her mouth, and Alexander saw that they did.
‘Yes, you can,’ he told her. ‘You must.’
Julia stared at him, amazed, and he laughed at her.
‘Julia. How many years, and you haven’t learned?’
She thought of Betty and Vernon, and Margaret Hall and China and Jessie. Parents and children.
‘Not with Josh,’ she begged.
Alexander wouldn’t let her turn away, not even look away from him. ‘Are you afraid?’ he asked. ‘Or are you jealous?’
The noise of the party seemed a long way off, even though it was all around them. Julia felt the importance of this one moment, as if all the years were being called to account. It frightened her, but it also made her brave.’ I’m not jealous. I’ve known for a long time that I don’t want anyone but you.’
‘Then are you afraid?’
For Lily? But Lily wouldn’t make her mother’s mistakes. Recognising that, admiring it, Julia knew that she, in her turn, must not fail her daughter as Betty had done. She took a breath, tasting the forgotten, familiar smoke of crowded rooms.
‘No, I’m not afraid either.’
Not for Lily. Not even, she realised in wonderment, for Lily with Josh. It was Lily who had the strength, after all. She must use it for herself.
‘Then let her be.’
Julia looked round once more. There were dancers, shadows flickering on the white walls, no sign of her daughter, or of Josh. It was a party, the kind of party that Mattie would have loved, and Lily was somewhere in the thick of it. Suddenly, Julia smiled.
‘Come with me,’ Alexander repeated.
Without turning back again Julia followed him up the narrow basement stairs.
Outside, in the street, the air was cold. Julia stumbled and Alexander held on to her. The passing traffic dipped and hummed, at a distance.
‘I think I must be a bit drunk.’ Oh, Mattie.
‘Let’s walk a little way.’
Arm in arm, leaning inwards as if there was a much stronger wind blowing, Julia and Alexander made their way through Soho. Over twenty years the continental grocers frequented by Felix, and the glovemakers and musical instrument shops had mostly disappeared, replaced by brasher establishments, but to Julia it seemed just the same place. The Showbox was still open, offering Girls, Girls, Girls. It was hard to believe that if they went inside they wouldn’t find Miss Matilda snapping her cane.
They held tighter to one another and walked on, leaving Soho behind them. With no thought of where they were going, they came at last to the Strand. The north entrance of the Savoy filled its cul-de-sac, glittering with revolving lights and polished metal. Julia and Alexander turned aside and plunged into the dark, steep alleyway that led down to the river.
The light from the single old-fashioned street lamp was dimmed by the mist off the river, and their footsteps were loud in the close quietness.
Opposite the doorway Julia stopped. The floor of the recess was lined with flattened cardboard, and a bundle wrapped in a sack was pushed into one corner. The space was unoccupied but it was claimed, and before long one of the old men who crouched under the bridges along the Embankment would shuffle back to his refuge for the night. Overhead, the grille in the wall puffed out the smell of stale food. Julia closed her eyes, trying to see herself and Mattie curled up together in the dingy space. Lying there, she had glimpsed Betty’s fear of the disorderly unknown, and made her own naive promises to herself. With a beat inside her that seemed almost indecently triumphant Julia realised that, more or less, she had kept those promises. What had Mattie’s promises been? Already, with sad finality, Mattie seemed to have melted away. There would be no answer now.
‘We were so desperate to be free,’ Julia said. ‘And so dismayed to find that it could mean sleeping in a doorway.’
‘You told me about it,’ Alexander answered. ‘The first time we met. Do you remember?’
‘I exaggerated everything.’
They had walked down to the river then, too, and looked over the Embankment wall into the olive-green water.
Julia glanced again at the doorway, at the shreds of a nest that announced someone’s claim on it. Her own claims on a wider world seemed as ephemeral, as easily swept away, and of equal importance. No more, no less. The chances of happiness remained with her, intact as they had been on the night when she and Mattie had sheltered here. That was her good fortune. Mattie’s was gone.
‘I miss her so much. I wish she would come back,’ Julia said.
‘Mattie’s dead. She won’t come back. Do you think I don’t miss her too?’
Abruptly, Julia turned to face Alexander. ‘I know you do. I’m sorry, I was selfish. It was selfish to shut myself in at Coppins after she died, and then to run off back to Italy. I’m here now, if it isn’t too late. If you want me. I’m afraid to ask, Alexander, but I must, mustn’t I?’
In the dim light, Julia tried to read his face. But he took her arm, leading her away. ‘I don’t want to talk here.’
They walked on, out of the alleyway and up some stone steps, to a point overlooking the river. It smelt, as always at low tide, of alluvial mud thatched with decaying weed. Side by side, they leaned on the cold, smooth stone wall and looked over into the Thames. The depths beneath them seemed very black, but in midstream and on the opposite side the surface was braceleted with chains of reflected light, like a silent fairground. And then a riverboat, itself a layer cake of lights, ploughed through and scattered the reflections as it carried a noisy party on up the river towards Kew.
Alexander said, ‘I was wrong too, years ago.’ It was time to make certain of her now. Josh Flood had made him aware of that. ‘I tried to tell you before, do you remember? The night we were together, the night Mattie died.’
‘There was no need,’ Julia murmured. ‘It was enough to find each other, after all.’
‘I was wrong at Ladyhill, before the fire, as well as afterwards. I shouldn’t have expected you to adopt my life in place of your own.’
Julia listened intently to the calling to account. If their debts couldn’t be settled now, beside the dark river, then truly she and Alexander had nowhere to go on to together.
‘I shouldn’t have been disappointed in you because you didn’t want to. And I might justifiably have been angry, but I shouldn’t have been so amazed when you left me for Joshua Flood. Felix understood you better than I did.’
Julia nodded, surprised. ‘Felix did, and Mattie didn’t. Not then.’
‘Mattie wanted what you rejected. I don’t mean me, although Mattie and I loved each
other in a way. She wanted a house, and a family. A place to belong.’
Alexander and Mattie, sitting with Lily under the apple trees in the Ladyhill orchard. Mattie’s gold sandal, discarded, and her underclothes dropped on the bedroom chair. Mattie had found what she wanted, with Mitch at Coppins, and then she had lost it all. It was cruel, but there was no place for guilt amongst those who were left. Julia lifted her head. ‘Wait,’ Alexander said. ‘Something else. I shouldn’t have expected you to marry a house. Or to live with my passion for rebuilding it. I spent years, after you’d gone, trying to make love to roof beams and oak boards and plaster mouldings. Then I tried to find a substitute for you. I worked quite hard at it, Lily knows that. But I couldn’t replace you. Least of all with Ladyhill.’
Alexander took Julia in his arms. He looked at each of her features in turn, as if he wanted to relearn them. The generosity of his admission, and the importance of it, caught Julia’s breath in her throat. She held out her own painful contribution, her breathlessness chopping the words.
‘I was helpless, as far as Josh was concerned. I needn’t have been, but I half wanted it. I convinced myself that I would follow him anywhere, if he would only let me. I was in love with the very idea of my infatuation. It was only quite lately that I found I could see Josh clearly enough. I saw, and I came running back to Ladyhill. That’s when I found Mattie there with you.’
‘Yes. And now it’s Lily’s turn to see, do you think?’ The old, ironic twist when Alexander smiled. He had seen that kiss in the Rocket too, of course.
‘If I’m afraid for anyone, it’s Josh. I don’t think Lily’s heart will break.’
‘Neither do I.’
They laughed, and just as quickly as it had come the laughter died away. Alexander’s mouth was close to hers but she held him away, as long as she could.
‘Listen. I did everything wrong. I know I did. To you, and to Lily. I was jealous of Ladyhill and Lily, even of China. And then after the fire, when I’d ruined it all and run away, I had a feast of guilt.’ She tried again to read his expression, but his face was too close to hers. She found herself laughing again. She didn’t know how appropriate her happiness was, but she couldn’t suppress it. ‘Guilt and jealousy,’ she managed to murmur. ‘Two essentials I’m trying to live without.’