And downstairs, James. Julia could hear him moving around the kitchen, though it was barely dawn. She wondered if he had slept. He had come in as angry as she had been—she’d seen his face, and barely recognized it. Angry with Nathan, angrier with Gwen, raging with Julia for having witnessed his son behaving with such callous immaturity. She had caught him out being imperfect, and knew from experience that for each to bear witness to the other’s child’s foolishness became quickly unforgivable.
But hours had passed and James would already be calm. He would have poured himself a glass of wine and talked himself around. Julia had all but banned his son from the house; to carry on James would decide to forget she had spoken that banishment. His door must always be open to his boy—no other way for him was possible.
Their love had seemed enduring and immutable, huge and sturdy as an ancient redwood, and was in the end, she saw, so easily felled. No matter how broad the trunk, each light fall of the axe deepens the wound and now, though it still appeared to stand, its roots were severed. Just a single stroke and the whole vast tree would crack and topple. She would not bear its slow precarious decay. For in the half-shadows of Queen’s Crescent she had seen James’s expression and had understood, as she had never before allowed herself to believe, that he hated Gwen. She realized with a sharp contraction of pain that he hated Gwen as she herself hated Nathan, for he had nurtured such wild, unrealistic hopes for his son, only to see them dashed to pieces against the solid enduring bulk of Gwen’s foolishness. James hated her daughter. The thought fell into her consciousness with the steady clarity of a stone dropped in still water and settled there, black and solid. She had seen his hostility, and could not unsee it. By now he would have hidden it, packed it tidily away again beneath the right words and an appearance of limitless tender understanding. But she would raise her daughter only with love, and for that, she now understood, she must raise her daughter alone.
She would not be needed long. Three years, maybe four, while Gwen made her painful, inelegant transition into womanhood and strode, or tiptoed, or limped back out into the world. Gwen would leave and Julia would be—where? But she could not think of it. That sorrow was inevitable and didn’t, couldn’t alter her course now. Julia took a breath and stood. Then she went downstairs to break her own heart. Wasn’t this, after all, a mother’s love? And if she could not know it yet, one day, Gwen would learn.
part four
50.
“I just wanted to say enjoy, darling.”
It was Iris. In the foyer of the Everyman, Julia wedged the phone between ear and shoulder and continued to hunt for her ticket in the recesses of her battered bag. As usual her mother-in-law had caught her at a moment of minor panic; Julia stepped aside to allow other, more organized cinema-goers ahead of her. Out came pens, dry cleaning tickets, loose Polo mints, car keys, and then a block of fresh fudge wrapped in striped waxed paper, a miniature pot of clotted cream and another of strawberry jam. There, beneath this odd collection, was the ticket. Julia had come from an early supper at a nearby gastropub with the new Dr. and Mrs. Alden, who had just returned from a weekend in Cornwall. It was in Joan’s nature to package up and distribute to loved ones what she herself had barely had time to enjoy or even experience—in another bag Julia also carried a pair of luminous green and sapphire sea-glass coasters, a tea towel printed with a recipe for cheese and onion pasties, and a white cardboard box tied with pink curling ribbon containing scones. “They’ve gone hard since this morning,” Joan had fussed, dithering while she presented them, as if she might decide at the last minute to take the unsatisfactory cakes back again. “You must promise you’ll do them in the oven a little.” Over fish and chips (“so we can pretend we’re still at the seaside”) Joan recounted their adventures in Tintagel, where the purchase of these souvenirs, as well as innumerable others for her sons, daughters-in-law, and assorted grandchildren, seemed happily to have occupied the visit. She and Philip were full of praise for the weather and the coast, and Joan was only sorry they’d had to leave the dogs, who would have loved the beach. By way of atonement Daisy had joined them for dinner, gently head-butting Philip’s shins in gratitude for each scrap he delivered, tenderly, beneath the table. He had caught a little sun, Julia had noticed.
“Thank you. I’m late already; I don’t know how I always do this.” Julia switched her phone from beneath her left ear to her right and offered her ticket to the usher.
“Go, go,” Iris commanded. “I’m envious, I must say I’m rather theater-starved out here. A feistier Desdemona than Verdi’s, no? There was meant to be a wonderful revival in Milan last summer, but of course the Met’s the Met. These live link-up things are so clever, though I do wish people didn’t feel they had to munch their way through it like ruminants; it’s still opera even at the cinema. Oh, and listen, if you speak to Gwendolen, tell her that Katy left some sort of fuchsia straw fedora number in their room; I only spotted it when I got back from dropping them at the train.”
“I’ll text her, I’ve been instructed not to ring.”
“Quite right. And it’s not important, no doubt she can pick up something equally hideous in Italy. It feels like it’s made of polythene, or polyester or polystyrene—I don’t know, something flammable. They’re absolutely fine by the way, though Gwendolen’s done something ghastly with her hair, did you know?”
“She sent me a picture last week, I wasn’t sure if it was that bad in real life.”
“Worse. Sort of carroty-blonde, and patchy. Never mind; it will perhaps fend off the Italians. Enjoy, darling. All those tenors. How bad can it be?”
Julia switched off her phone and went in. She was directed to a wide leather armchair in the back row and she set down her glass of wine to curl into the cushions, pulling her knees up beneath her. She had Pinot Noir and Rossini. What more could she want? Some company, perhaps. The seat beside hers was empty. But Anne had canceled at the last moment and Gwen could never be dragged to opera even had she been in London. In any case it was time, Julia had long known, to get used to doing things on her own.
She spotted him just before the house lights fell. At the front, sharing a burgundy velvet sofa and a small bowl of popcorn with Claire, his former registrar. Claire’s cropped hair had grown long and heavy down her back, and she was laughing as she reached forward into the bowl. Her other hand wasn’t visible, but might have been on James’s knee.
It had been a year. It was, Julia told herself, only to be expected. Yet still she found she was fumbling on the floor for her jacket and her gifts from Joan, hearing loose change and unknown possessions spill from her handbag as she leaned forward. Claire was young and wore leather trousers, and had been unquestioningly attentive and compassionate and efficient when they had needed her on a very dark morning last spring. Julia would go home. She would not listen to the Rossini, which she now realized would have been a mistake. Under cover of darkness she left, knocking her wine over into her vacated seat and whispering a hurried apology to the usher without pausing to explain. She would not sit alone, watching them from the shadows.
James caught her wrist in the lobby.
“Julia.”
“Hello.”
“You’re leaving.” This sounded like an accusation, and she flushed.
“I didn’t think you’d seen me.”
“I hadn’t, Claire did.”
“How is Claire?”
“What? Oh, good, she’s good, she’s moved to the Homerton. How are you?”
Julia assured him she was fine, without elaborating. She did not say, I have plans to become someone else. After months of prevarication she had made an appointment at the salon for the following morning—she intended to shear her hair off, blunt and neat and high above her shoulders, and to color it the true blonde for which Iris and her hairdresser had always lobbied. It was happening tomorrow. Tomorrow she would become her new self: sharper, better defined, mor
e definitive. Today, by accident, she still resembled the person she had always been. But she had no way to explain any of this and instead said, “Anne was meant to be— She had to work, in the end. How are you? How is Nathan?”
“He’s good. Great. Loving it. Rowing, the whole deal. I’ll see him next week, I’m stopping on my way to California.” He seemed to hesitate and then rushed on: “I’ve been offered a job at UCSF, I’m going to talk to some people, check out some apartments, get a feel . . . it’s a research post again. Better weather. Much better Chinese food, you know, which is definitely something to consider.” He had been speaking very quickly but now seemed to catch himself and slowed. His hair on one side stood on end where he’d held it briefly in his fist. He added, softly, “Time for a change, maybe.”
Julia pulled her jacket tighter. From the auditorium came the sounds of the orchestra tuning, loud and discordant, a sweltering afternoon in Lincoln Center beamed live into this mild north London summer evening. Any minute the overture would begin, and she would no longer be able to ensure her composure.
“Do send my best to Claire and—and, I’m happy for you both.”
He frowned. “Thanks.”
She began to walk away, but after only a few steps he called after her, “I’m— We’re just friends, really.”
She turned back to see his face change almost instantly, from embarrassment to hesitation, or perhaps it was a trace of defiance. “I’ve been lonely.”
She said again, more softly, “I’m happy for you.”
“Stop saying that,” he said, irritably. He was wearing a pair of dark trousers she recognized, and a shirt that she did not. Behind him a woman’s laughing face magnified, chiseled by falling photographic sunlight and shadows on a huge framed playbill; a documentary he and she had seen together here, last year, in a former lifetime. The espresso machine behind the counter buzzed and thrummed. Julia began to search for her keys and James stepped forward, as if to bar her way. “Where are you going now?”
“Home.”
“How’s Gwen?”
“Shouldn’t you get back in?”
He waved away this suggestion, dismissing it. “Where’s she going in September?”
“Leeds, in the end. She’s Interrailing with Katy at the moment. Last heard of somewhere between Bargemon and Dubrovnik.”
“Quiet without them, no?”
“Yes. And less laundry.”
“And less laundry,” he agreed, holding her gaze. It was Julia, after a heartbeat, who looked away. In the mirrored wall beside them the lobby extended, doubled, and she became aware of their reflections, a slight, pale woman, face upturned; a tall man with new threads of silver in his fair hair, thumbs hooked into his pockets, his shoulders raised in a tense shrug. She shifted slightly to avoid the sight of these two, awkward strangers.
James said nothing further and yet made no move to return to the darkened cinema, from which was now clearly audible the galloping opening bars of the overture, eliding almost immediately into the plangent lovesick strains of hope and longing that would follow. Soon the foreshadowing of bloodshed, between bars of pomp and flourish. True love vanquished. Foolish, needless death. James glanced back toward the closed doors of the auditorium and Julia dared to look at him, studying his profile for signs of—what? He had not changed. Here was the face for which she searched in every crowd, scanning, hoping. All her life she would know its contours as her own. She had no right to wish him anything but happiness.
She said, “I can hear Jago, I think.”
“So what? You already made me miss the whole thing once in Milan.” And then seeing she looked stricken he sobered. “That wasn’t funny, I’m sorry. I’m nervous.”
“Nothing makes you nervous.”
“That’s not true. Unlicensed fireworks make me nervous. Pigeons. You.”
It was her turn now to smile. In the cinema behind them Otello was disembarking, welcomed by the grateful Doge as a son of Venice. Love, hoped Otello, would crown all his achievements in battle. His audience in Belsize Park knew better.
“It sounds so optimistic. Rossini has a way of making impending heartbreak sound so cheerful. Poor Otello.”
“Poor Desdemona,” James countered.
“Victims of their own flawed characters.”
“You think? Or of circumstance.”
“One leads to the other.”
“I think,” James said, softly, “that you’re being very hard on them.”
Without warning the couple in the mirror moved toward one another; she closed her eyes to feel his arms enfold her, one hand warm at the nape of her neck, his forehead resting lightly, for a moment, against her own. Her lungs filled with the scent of him; spice and citrus and skin. Against her cheek she felt his fist close, momentarily, in the falling mass of her hair. Then he released her and was gone. For as long as she could, she held her breath. She remained until the doors of the cinema closed behind him.
On Haverstock Hill she waited for the lights to change. Dusk was falling, London muted and softened by the thickening darkness. She would go home. Back to prim tidiness and silence, to objects untouched since she alone had touched them. Back to still, close air. But tonight, before the words she now knew that she would write to him, she could hope. That their two fragile human hearts continued to beat each hour she knew to be a miracle. A car slowed to let her cross and she nodded her thanks and found, when she reached the far side, that she was smiling. She had seen him. He might still love her; either way she would love him all her life. She felt her chest expand and fill. Tonight, she would open the French windows. She would sit in the garden. She would listen, after all, to the Rossini.
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The Awkward Age Page 29