A Midwinter Promise

by Lulu Taylor

  Chapter Seven

  July 1981

  Lala and Julia sat in the small sitting room at the back of the house, unglamorous but cosy with its mismatched furniture and the sofa with cushions sinking into the springs. They were crossed-legged on the floor, a packet of cigarettes each – Silk Cut for Julia, which she’d grown a taste for since she’d started nicking Lorraine’s a few years back, and strong Gauloises from France for Lala, the same as Monsieur de Pelet had smoked. Julia thought smoking Gauloises was incredibly sophisticated, although she found they made her dizzy and a little bit sick when she tried them herself. She suspected that Lala had had some kind of relationship with Monsieur de Pelet after the mural had been finished, though she had never quite dared to ask about it.

  Julia admired Lala even more now that Lala was almost twenty-three and had developed a style of her own, a mixture of English and French influences that was, to Julia, hugely chic. Today Lala wore jeans and a black and white striped top, and looked effortlessly elegant. Her fair hair was in a beehive and she wore frosted white lipstick and had batwing eye liner painted on her lids. Julia was in a gauzy old tea dress she’d found in a trunk in one of the attics, and she’d pin-curled her thick tawny hair into tight waves and put on red lipstick. The girls couldn’t have looked more different.

  Lala reached for another Gauloise and sparked it up with the lighter. ‘It’s practically child abuse, that’s all,’ she said, breathing out a cloud of fragrant smoke.

  ‘Is it?’ Julia, at seventeen, thought that twenty was a decent age.

  ‘Er. Yeah.’ Lala laughed. ‘It’s bloody weird if you ask me. He’s – what? – thirty-two. Twelve years older than she is!’

  They were watching the royal wedding on the television, just the two of them in the empty house, trying to see if they could spot Daddy, who was one of the many thousands of guests. Mummy had gone with him to London but she wasn’t likely to be in the cathedral. She found it hard to be outside her safe places. She would be in the London flat, no doubt, watching it all on the telly, as they were, despite the engraved invitation from the Lord Chamberlain on the chimney piece and her hat in the striped box, in case she’d changed her mind and decided to go.

  ‘Is that Daddy?’ Julia said suddenly as the camera panned the congregation as it waited for the arrival of the bride.

  ‘Is it? Blast, I missed him. We aren’t likely to see him. Look how many people there are! We’re only going to see the ones in the best seats. He’s bound to be tucked away behind a pillar.’

  ‘Still. Lucky thing. I wish I were there.’ Julia sighed. She had begged her father to take her instead of Mummy, but he’d said the palace wouldn’t allow it. Security or something. It was a bloody bore. Julia liked saying things like that. ‘A bloody bore!’ It sounded very grown-up.

  Lala laughed. ‘You’re so sweet! I bet you think Lady Di is amazing.’

  ‘No!’ Julia protested, blushing a bit because, secretly, she did think that Lady Di was both amazing – so pretty and so stylish – and incredibly lucky because now, for the rest of her life, she was going to matter. She would be loved and adored and feted, and live a life that was the closest to a fairy tale that was still possible in the world. ‘I’m interested, that’s all. Everyone is. Look at the crowds!’

  Lala shrugged. ‘I suppose so. France has done away with all of that, you see, so I don’t really get it. I suppose I find it kind of funny.’

  Lala was completely and utterly Frenchified now. She had even gone to live in France, doing a further degree in fashion and design at a college in Paris before looking for work in the ateliers of the design houses.

  ‘Funny?’

  ‘It’s all a bit hilarious from the outside. I couldn’t believe the state of the village!’

  ‘What’s wrong with it?’ Julia was slightly indignant. The village looked wonderful, a riot of red, white and blue. There was bunting everywhere, and huge Union Jack flags were draped over hedges or hung from flagpoles. The pub was practically hidden under the fluttering flags and rosettes and posters celebrating the royal couple and their big day. Later, after the ceremony – which was being broadcast in the village hall for those who didn’t have a television or who wanted to be with others at the big moment – there would be a party in the village, food and drink served on trestle tables, a bonfire and fireworks once darkness had fallen. After all, it was the first marriage of a Prince of Wales for seventy years, or something like that. Everyone thought it was worth doing properly when the opportunity came along.

  ‘Nothing wrong with it,’ Lala said, sucking on her Gauloise. ‘It’s just funny. Sweet but incredibly feudal.’

  The excitement on the television stepped up a notch. The glass carriage had left Clarence House and was rolling along the Mall on its way to St Paul’s, policemen riding alongside it, two footmen standing on the back plate, resplendent in red and gold. The crowds cheered and waved their flags, and the camera moved in on a sweet face obscured by a cloud of white veil, a smile and a waving hand.

  ‘There she is!’ Julia breathed, enraptured. Even Lala was interested, leaning forward to get a closer look. ‘Gosh, she looks amazing.’

  ‘The dress will be interesting,’ Lala allowed. ‘That’s why I’m watching it. Research.’

  ‘Keep telling yourself that,’ Julia said, and they watched as the carriage rolled through the streets of the city past hundreds of cheering onlookers before it drew up at last in front of the cathedral, where two bridesmaids waited on the steps. Then the door was open and the cheers increased as the bride descended in a mass of crumpled ivory and lace, her train following endlessly, the bridesmaids bustling about attempting to straighten it.

  ‘Oh,’ sighed Julia, drinking it all in: the fluttering veil, the great puffed sleeves, the vast bell of crushed silk. ‘I love it.’

  ‘It’s all creased!’ cried Lala, pointing her cigarette at the screen. ‘They’ll have to shake it out as fast as possible. What silk have they used? It’s like tissue paper! What a confection, she looks like a big cream bun.’

  ‘She looks amazing,’ retorted Julia. ‘Like a perfect princess.’

  Lala gave her a sideways look. ‘You’re a romantic. Like she is.’

  ‘Aren’t you?’

  Lala shrugged. ‘I like to think there’s an ideal attitude that mixes pragmatism with romance. Marry well, be a perfect wife – and take a lover.’

  ‘What?’ Julia was appalled. ‘Lala, how can you? You should marry for love alone. Your husband should be everything to you.’

  Lala looked wise and mature. ‘That’s far too much to ask of any man. Even a woman finds it hard to be everything, and she makes it her life’s work.’ She paused, pleased with her aphorism, then laughed again. ‘Ignore me. I’m cynical in my old age. Oh look, at least they’re getting her straightened out now.’

  The bride was standing by the cathedral door, hands fussing and primping around her, while she glowed with youthful beauty beneath her veil, gazing up the aisle to where her future awaited her. The trumpets sounded. Everything was ready. She folded her arm inside her father’s, and began her advance as he shuffled beside her, smiling and nodding at the congregation.

  ‘It’s weird,’ Julia said, her head on one side. ‘It’s like she’s not just marrying him, the prince. It’s like she’s marrying all of us, the whole country. That’s why everyone’s so happy. Now we get to keep her.’

  ‘That sounds romantic, but really she’s just there to provide an heir.’

  ‘Is she?’ Julia frowned. A chill settled on her shoulders and she shuddered involuntarily. She thought of her mother, pale and worn out, increasingly unable to go out or do anything, oppressed by being unable to fulfil her own duty. ‘But it doesn’t matter if she doesn’t have a boy. Girls can inherit. Not like it was in France,’ she added quickly, glad to have something to say in favour of her homeland.

  ‘I suppose that’s something,’ Lala said. She pointed her cigarette at the screen, where the whit
e-clad figure was still walking slowly down the aisle. ‘Look at that. On her way to the scaffold. Poor child. Someone ought to come down from the ceiling on a wire, like James Bond, and snatch her away. Save her before it’s too late.’

  ‘Don’t say anything else,’ Julia commanded. ‘You’ll spoil it. I want to watch it properly, so shh.’

  They watched the entire service but Lala was bored after that, and went outside. Julia stayed glued to everything, watching the carriage ride back, the veil now lifted to reveal the new princess in all her glory. She watched the appearance on the balcony, the kiss, and all the highlights they showed and reshowed. It was everything everyone had wanted: full of pomp and ceremony and youth and beauty and romance.

  She was still there, dreaming, when the newlyweds emerged from the palace in an open landau, on their way to Waterloo Station, a handwritten sign reading ‘Just Married’ on the back, and blue and silver heart-shaped balloons bobbing over them.

  Later, Julia and Lala went down to the village and joined in the street party. Everyone was there – villagers and the people from the big houses – eating, drinking and celebrating. Julia drank two pints of cider and felt as though her stomach had swollen as tight as a drum, but she also felt wonderfully carefree and elated, and when the band started up, she jumped and hopped and swayed with the best of them.

  A handsome boy took a shine to her and started dancing with her, grabbing at her hands and holding them, smiling at her and flashing meaningful glances in his liquid brown eyes. When they both were puffed out, he walked her into the darkness off the main street and, to her surprise, kissed her passionately behind the telephone box. It was her first kiss: smoky, sweet and astonishingly intense. The touch of his lips, his mouth opening against hers, seemed to take her on a direct route into herself, awakening sensations she’d never felt before. It set new nerves jangling and buzzing.

  A royal wedding. My first kiss. She wondered if the princess was being kissed like this right now, feeling the same thrill of awakening desire mixed with a strange rush of power that came from the sense of being wanted.

  They kissed for ages and then he muttered, ‘I wanna get to know you better. Wanna meet me tomorrow night?’

  He had the village burr, the soft twang of the locals.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she whispered back. ‘Maybe. I don’t even know your name!’

  ‘Paul. What’s yours?’

  ‘Julia.’

  ‘That’s a nice name.’ He was nuzzling at her, breathing heavily, eager for her lips again, and she let him kiss her, falling into it as though plummeting through the rabbit hole into a maddeningly blissful world of darkness, desire and the urgent, pressing, primitive sense that she needed to get somewhere, to some kind of resolution, and soon.

  She pulled away at last, longing and yet also sated. ‘I have to go now.’

  ‘So, you gonna come tomorrow?’

  She gazed at him in the summer darkness. He was beautiful and the kissing was divine and she wanted more of it, more of whatever he might like to share with her.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she said slowly. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Come here at nine o’clock tomorrow,’ he said. ‘I’ll be waiting for you.’

  He took her hand and they went back to the melee. He let go of her and she lost him in the crowd.

  ‘There you are!’ It was Lala, looking anxious. ‘Where’ve you been? I’ve been looking everywhere.’

  ‘Just around,’ Julia said. She felt grown-up suddenly, worldly and experienced, closer to Lala than she had before.

  ‘Come on then. We’d better go home. It’s late.’

  Paul, Paul, Paul.

  His name whirled around her head and his taste was still in her mouth.

  I’ll see him tomorrow night. Or maybe I won’t.

  He was sweet, he was exciting. But he wasn’t her prince, she knew that for certain.

  And when he comes, I’ll know. Because it will be perfect.

  Daddy was not a good reporter, it turned out. In response to Julia’s fevered questions about the royal wedding, he was vague and generally useless at remembering anything important. The bride looked ‘very nice’ and the atmosphere had been ‘jolly’. He’d been more interested in the difficulties of getting to the cathedral and home again afterwards. ‘Crowds everywhere like you wouldn’t believe. What a scrum it was.’

  Mother was calm and strangely happy, despite being pale and sickly. Julia saw the signs with a horrible prickle of fear. It had been so long, she’d almost forgotten the special kind of terror that her mother’s pregnancies engendered.

  Surely it can’t be true . . . she can’t be pregnant, not now.

  How could it be possible? Surely they don’t do . . . that! But once Mummy had retired to bed, gagging over sips of water, it was unavoidable. Her mother was pregnant again.

  Julia took fresh water and small bowls of food up to the bedroom for Mummy to attempt. She held Julia’s hand and gazed into her eyes, her own expression so pathetically hopeful, Julia could hardly bear it.

  ‘It’s going to be all right this time, darling. You’ll see. I’m going to do it this time, I just know it.’

  Chapter Eight

  Present day

  They got back late to the Old Barn, Johnnie pulling in to park beside Alex’s car and then getting out, agitated.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ Alex asked, opening the front door and switching on the lights. The house always felt different without the girls. Hadji, her Jack Russell, came trotting out of the kitchen and barked happily to see her. Hadji walked with a sideways twist as a result of a run-in with a car door in which he had come off the worst but it never seemed to bother him. ‘Hello, Hadji, my love.’

  Johnnie walked past her into the kitchen and went straight to the fridge. ‘Do you have anything to drink?’

  ‘Open the wine in the door. I could do with a glass myself.’ She followed him into the kitchen and put her bag down on the counter. ‘So, are you hungry?’

  Johnnie shook his head and opened the drawer for the corkscrew. ‘No appetite at all.’ A moment later, he was pouring two large glasses of wine and sliding one over to Alex. ‘So the old cow’s won at last.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Pa’s going to die. She had the chance to call us when he was conscious and she didn’t.’

  Alex sighed, took her wine over to the sofa and sat down. When the barn had been converted, the vast old doors that had once let in tractors and lorries had been turned into a wall of glass and now the kitchen overlooked the rolling fields towards the woods. It was pitch black outside, and the whole room was reflected back at her, lights gleaming, Johnnie at the counter, herself on the sofa. After a moment, she jumped up and pulled the curtains shut.

  She looked over at Johnnie. She could see that his grief and fear about Pa was coming out as anger towards Sally. Just like it always does. ‘I don’t expect she thought that it was going to be this serious.’

  Johnnie frowned. He looked much older suddenly. It wasn’t always easy to see the changes in a familiar face, but the light overhead showed the furrows in his forehead, the lines between his brows and the fan of wrinkles at the edges of his eyes. He still looked like the handsome Johnnie of his youth, but he had that tired look, the one that never went away after a certain age. He took a gulp of wine and said, ‘Don’t stick up for her, Al. I don’t know why you do it when she’s always been so horrible to you. It wasn’t for her to decide whether to call or not. As soon as Pa got sick, she should have been in touch.’

  Alex said nothing as she went back to the sofa. He was right. As usual, Sally had placed herself firmly between the children and their father. It had been that way for so long, it was hard to remember a time when there hadn’t been that frosted pink and white figure between them, giving orders disguised as gentle suggestions: ‘Children, your father is tired now. Perhaps you should think about making a move and letting him get some rest?’

  Or: ‘Would it be a
good idea to cancel our little get-together on Sunday? We’re so frightfully oversubscribed with social duties at the moment.’

  Alex remembered how, after Scarlett was born, Sally kept ringing with excuse after excuse, all delivered with the same rueful tone, of how they were simply too busy to come and visit because of all their many obligations. Participation in the local bridge tournaments, games of golf and a commitment to the choral society’s performance of The Messiah were, apparently, more important that meeting the baby. When Pa and Sally finally came to the Old Barn, it was all Sally could do to drag her eyes away from the clock. She cooed over Scarlett for about two minutes, before handing her back and looking ready to leave. All the way through the childhoods of Johnnie’s children and Alex’s daughters, Sally had kept the same air of vague interest as though her husband’s grandchildren were really not her concern. Alex knew it would be quite different if Sally had grandchildren of her own.

  Oh yes, quite a different kettle of fish then.

  Johnnie came and sat beside her, hunching over his wine glass. Alex put her hand on his arm.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  He glanced up at her. ‘It’s just a lot to take in, that’s all. For all we knew, Pa was fine this morning.’

  Alex nodded, wondering why she felt so numb. Pa is dying. He’s had a fatal stroke. It’s all over.

  But another voice came in firmly behind that one, a voice that sounded like Sally’s. Oh no. He’s going to get better. The brain is capable of amazing things. A baby with only ten per cent of normal brain grew up and learned to windsurf, I read it in the paper. Of course he’ll come back. This isn’t the end. It can’t be.

  ‘We’ve got to be positive,’ she said firmly.

  ‘What good will that do?’

  ‘I don’t know, but it’s all we’ve got. How long can you stay?’

  Johnnie shrugged. ‘A few days, I suppose. I can do some work on the fly, and Netta can cope without me, but I’ll need to get back before too long.’