‘To talk to?’ Julia asked, knowing perfectly well that would not be the reason.
Janice shook her head vigorously. ‘I wouldn’t talk,’ she said, ‘I’d just have someone regular to walk with.’
‘Who would you prefer, of all the girls in your class?’ Julia asked.
Janice shrugged. She waited. Janice then began a list of elimination. She named eight girls very rapidly and then, more hesitantly, another six. ‘Does that leave ten, or twelve, who wouldn’t be so bad to walk with once a week?’ ‘Ten,’ Janice said.
‘And who, of the ten, would be the most bearable?’
Long pause. A lot of looking at the ceiling, and then, ‘I know what you’re trying to get me to say,’ Janice said.
‘Do you?’ Julia said. ‘You tell me what you think I’m trying to get you to say and I’ll tell you if you’re right.’
She told her.
‘Very good,’ Julia said, ‘spot on. And now you’ve said it, how reasonable does my theory sound? Do you think I’m right, and in fact there are at least two girls you would quite like to get to know and walk with and maybe become friends with?’
‘Possibly,’ Janice said, ‘but I don’t care, I won’t try to get them to walk with me anyway, I wouldn’t ever ask them.’
‘Of course you wouldn’t,’ Julia said, ‘you wouldn’t ask, that would be against your own rules. It’s called pride, Janice. You’re too proud to show you would quite like occasional companionship.’
‘No,’ Janice said, ‘I’m not too proud.’
‘So,’ Julia said, ‘if one of those girls actually asked you to walk with her to swimming, what would you say?’
‘Nobody would ask,’ Janice said, ‘nobody does any asking, it just happens.’
‘Well then,’ Julia persisted, ‘suppose it just happened, suppose one of these girls gravitated towards you and assumed you’d be happy to walk with her, what then, what would you do?’
‘Walk with her, of course,’ Janice said.
Julia had no worries at all about this child. She wasn’t as peculiar as her mother suspected, just content with her own company. She might never develop any liking for being in any kind of social group but in time she would make one or two friends of like mind, people who shared her outlook on life and were as discerning as herself. Her mother was fretting about nothing.
But Julia was doubtful if she could convince Janice’s mother of this.
There was a call from the police station that afternoon. An appropriate adult was needed to attend with a young girl who had thrown a bottle of Coca-Cola at an elderly woman and was going to be charged with assault. It was not Julia’s job to be an appropriate adult but her name had been suggested by the social worker who knew Julia had worked with this girl before. The social worker couldn’t be there herself, and there was no parent available – the girl was in a home after her foster-mother refused to keep her following a fight – so the need was urgent. All Julia was required to do was be present at the questioning. It wouldn’t take long. A car would collect her and take her back.
Julia remembered the girl. She’d been about nine at the time, so must be around fifteen by now. Julia couldn’t remember exactly why this girl had come to her but it had been for some kind of unexceptionable bad behaviour, stealing of some sort, nothing too unusual. Walking into the police station, something she hated doing and hadn’t found got any easier, she wondered if she would recognise the girl, who was surely bound to have changed dramatically in the intervening years. But she did recognise her, from the hair alone, black and unruly, dropping heavily all round her face, quite distinctive hair. The girl, Gill, didn’t recognise Julia, though, or if she did she was determined not to admit it.
‘Who’s this?’ she said to the policewoman sitting with her.
The policewoman told her who Julia was and why she was there.
‘I don’t care,’ the girl said, ‘doesn’t matter to me.’
‘Shall we get started, then?’ the policewoman said.
Julia settled in at the new school quite quickly, to her mother’s relief. She even made a friend, Caroline, in the third week. There were no more ‘funny’ episodes. But at home, she was ‘not right’, as her mother described it to Maureen. But then nobody in the family was quite right. Iris barely stirred from her bed. Her mind, Julia heard her whisper, was full of images in which her baby was being cut to pieces, hacked at with saws and knives. Julia immediately had these same images herself. When the autopsy was over, and Iris was taken to see little Reggie, Julia scandalised her mother by asking if she could go too. But whatever the dead baby had looked like, Iris came back calmer. ‘He looked perfect,’ she told Julia, which disappointed Julia. There was a lot of talk that day about the cause of little Reggie’s death but Julia understood hardly any of it. She caught odd words, but not clearly enough to retain them in her mind so that she could look them up afterwards.
Eventually, there was a funeral. Julia, to her fury, was not allowed to go to it. Her mother said she had been through enough and it would do her no good to see the tiny coffin and Iris in a state of collapse. So Julia stayed at home, sulking, in the company of a cousin of her mother and Aunt Maureen, who had turned up at the house saying she couldn’t after all face the funeral but she wanted to pay her respects. She was an odd woman. Julia was embarrassed to be left with her and tried to retreat to her room to read. The cousin wouldn’t allow this. ‘You need company,’ she told Julia, ‘it isn’t good to be alone on a day like this. Come on now, we’ll bake a cake.’ Julia said she didn’t want to bake a cake. There was plenty of mother’s gingerbread in the cake tin already, thank you. The cousin said in that case they could play I spy – that was harmless enough. I’ll start, she said, something beginning with F. Julia wanted to say ‘fool’ and ‘it’s you’ but instead went into the kitchen and banged about, running the tap and boiling the kettle, pointlessly, just as her mother did when she was cross.
The hour the funeral took passed so slowly Julia began to think the clock had stopped. It sat on the mantelpiece, fair and square in the middle, a toby jug to the right, a toby jug to the left, both exactly the same distance from the clock. Julia hated the clock and hated the jugs. She wanted to be at the funeral, she wanted to see the little white coffin. Then, it would be real. Real, and over. Nothing could be done, once she’d seen the coffin buried. She didn’t know what might have happened if she’d been allowed to go to the funeral. She would have cried, of course, but she might not just have cried. She might, at last, have said something, and then what would have happened? Julia looked away from the clock, and stared at the cousin: small, stupid, horrible skirt, horrible jacket, ugly shoes. She thought about shocking her. She thought about telling this cousin, whose name she hadn’t even listened to, that she, Julia, might have killed little Reggie. She thought about describing the walk she’d taken with the Silver Cross pram, and what had happened on the way back. She opened her mouth to begin talking just as the cousin said, ‘My baby died, Julia, same thing, six weeks old, no reason.’ There were tears running down the cousin’s powder-encrusted cheeks. ‘Well,’ the cousin said, ‘it was a long time ago. I never have got over it, though.’
So Julia said nothing. She couldn’t do the shocking she’d thought about. Instead, she made the cousin a cup of tea, and was thanked for it. The remaining time was spent listening to the cousin reminisce about when she and Aunt Maureen had been children. Julia noticed that her mother wasn’t mentioned in any of these rambling anecdotes, just Aunt Maureen. She vaguely wondered why. Then her mother came home. ‘Thank you, Doris,’ she said, ‘you’ll be wanting to get to the tea. Tom’s waiting to take you. I hope Julia has been no trouble.’ There was no pausing for the answer. ‘Julia, get Doris’s coat. Have you got your bag there, Doris? Good. And thank you again.’ Cousin Doris was out of the door before she had time to say a word.
‘Thank God,’ Julia’s mother said, ‘she never stops talking.’
‘Her baby died,
’ Julia said, ‘just like little Reggie.’
Julia’s mother said, ‘She told you that, did she? Just like Doris, just like her, typical.’
‘Of what?’ Julia asked, and was told not to be irritating. As usual, this didn’t make sense, but Julia didn’t point this out. She wanted to hear about the funeral.
Later, she went with Aunt Maureen to the cemetery. Julia’s mother never knew about this. Julia had tried asking her mother if she could go and look at little Reggie’s grave, and her mother was appalled. ‘What an idea!’ she said, and that was that. But Aunt Maureen, when Julia got her on her own, responded quite differently. ‘Of course, my pet,’ she said, ‘of course you can, we’ll go together, no need to mention it to you-know-who.’ Julia knew who. She was spending the day with Aunt Maureen anyway, while her mother went to see a solicitor about something to do with money. Julia didn’t know what it was all about, all questions being ignored, but the visit to the solicitor was important enough, Julia noticed, for her mother to dress in her best outfit and put lipstick on. Julia was told to go straight to Aunt Maureen’s after school, which she did. Aunt Maureen gave her a glass of orange juice and a biscuit and then they went down to the cemetery, closing the door very quietly behind them because Iris was resting.
Julia had only ever been in one cemetery, the one where her father was buried. Her mother didn’t believe in what she called ‘making an exhibition’ of herself by frequent graveside visits, but on the anniversary of her husband’s death she and Julia always put flowers in the metal holder before the gravestone. Julia rather liked the ceremony of it. She felt important, and enjoyed filling the holder with water and arranging the flowers. Tulips, the flowers were always tulips, white ones. Julia sometimes suggested yellow or red tulips but her mother just gave her a withering look and bought white ones. They would stand in front of the grave for a moment or two, Julia’s mother with her eyes closed, and then she would say, ‘Come on, that’s enough,’ and they’d leave. Julia was never sure what her mother’s closed eyes signified. She’d scrutinised her mother’s face, when the eyes were closed to see if any tears were leaking out, but they never were. Once, she’d asked her mother if closing her eyes meant she was praying, to which her mother replied, ‘Certainly not.’ So Julia concluded that when her eyes were closed her mother must just be remembering her father. She liked that thought, but never put it to the test, in case her mother disillusioned her.
But the cemetery in which little Reggie was buried was nothing like the place where Julia’s father lay. Julia’s father’s grave was in a small cemetery, a churchyard, in fact, a pretty place on a hillside. Little Reggie was buried in a vast cemetery lying between two thunderingly noisy main roads. Aunt Maureen led Julia under an archway and then up a long, broad path that was almost another road. There were flower beds at intervals, full of rigid rows of violently coloured blooms, and beyond them masses of gravestones, crosses and angels and peculiar stone columns. They seemed to walk forever along this gruesome highway, the thought of so many people under the earth horrifying Julia, but then Aunt Maureen turned off along a narrower path, and then almost immediately turned again, down a grassy path this time, until they came to some trees planted in a circle. ‘Here,’ Aunt Maureen whispered, ‘it’s where they lay the babies to rest.’ Inside the circle of trees the wind that had been stinging their faces all the way up the main path was lessened. They were sheltered, standing there, and the sound of traffic could no longer be heard. ‘There,’ Aunt Maureen was saying, still in a whisper, ‘that’s little Reggie’s place. There’ll be a stone later. An angel, white marble, we think, with his name and dates on.’
Julia never told her mother she had been to the cemetery and Aunt Maureen kept quiet about it. Weeks later she took Julia aside and asked her if she’d like to ‘slip off’ again, to visit little Reggie and see the stone angel. But Julia shook her head. She’d seen the grave once. She could visualise the stone angel well enough. Little Reggie was dead and buried, and the police asked no more questions. ‘We just have to get on with life,’ Julia’s mother said. She said this repeatedly. If Iris was in the room and heard her, she left it. But Julia agreed with her mother. She had to get on with her life, and part of getting on was not to think about her mishap with the Silver Cross pram. Ever.
V
THE CONFERENCE WAS in Manchester. Julia went by train, dreading the arrival at the station, fearing she would be troubled, even after the thirty-year gap, by upsetting memories, but none surfaced, which seemed like a victory of some sort. Manchester, as she passed through the streets in a taxi, looked much the same. It was raining, hard, and the grimness she recalled hadn’t changed. Colleagues of hers were fond of Manchester and could never understand her aversion to the city. They’d told her she should go again, she would be surprised at how vibrant the place now was, how cleaned up and splendid. She could see no sign of splendour out of the rain-battered taxi windows.
She was staying one night only, sufficient time to fit in two sessions at the conference, both of them to do with trauma experienced by children. The speakers were known to her and were highly regarded in their field. She’d read the book one of them had recently published (and which she privately considered she could have written better herself) and the paper the other had contributed to an American journal. She reread the paper that evening, in her hotel, after a room-service meal, marking it with pencilled queries. She wasn’t intending to ask any questions of the speaker, but just in case she might be tempted she wanted to be prepared. She’d sit at the back, as near to the door as possible. These sessions could go on far too long, in spite of the best efforts of the organisers. She intended to slip out if it all got too much.
Although tired, she didn’t sleep well. The hotel was not exactly noisy, but there was a constant padding about along its corridors and the frequent opening and closing of doors. At six she got up and had a long, hot shower, and then made herself tea. There was a selection of individual tea bags, all neatly stacked in a box. She remembered the contempt Aunt Maureen and all her generation had for tea bags of any kind. Loose tea and a proper teapot had to be used at all times. Watching her Darjeeling bag float in the hot water, pressing it down with a spoon until the water was the right colour, Julia saw in her mind’s eye the look of disgust on Aunt Maureen’s face and heard her say that’s not proper tea, Julia.
For months, all that grief had floated on tea, until one day Iris said she preferred coffee. Just like that; Julia had been there. ‘I prefer coffee, Mum,’ Iris had said. Aunt Maureen looked aghast and said she didn’t have any coffee, as Iris knew perfectly well. They were a tea-drinking household, and that was that. Iris said she’d bought some coffee from a new coffee bar, which was also a shop, near where Iris now worked as a secretary in a solicitor’s office. Julia and her mother had passed it, and the aroma drifting out as the coffee beans were being ground was overpowering. Julia loved it but, predictably, her mother did not. She said it made her feel faint, it knocked her out as if it were a poisonous fume. ‘Iris is going to buy some ground coffee,’ Julia had volunteered, ‘and a machine to make it in.’ ‘Her mother won’t like that,’ Julia’s mother had said, with grim satisfaction.
The machine was a percolator, and Iris kept it in her bedroom, only bringing it down to the kitchen when her mother wasn’t in it because the mere sight of it resting beside the teapots could upset her. Julia loved to watch this strange machine bubbling away, though she found the actual coffee it produced a bit strong. So did Iris, but she persevered bravely and came to like it. Julia went with her sometimes to buy the coffee. She’d imagined the man who managed it would be foreign, Italian or French maybe, and old, but he was young and English, and though not conventionally handsome (in Julia’s opinion) he was tall and strong-looking and had black curly hair, worn quite long. He gave Iris a great welcome, and Julia saw how she blushed and smiled and, on the way out, hummed.
‘Do you like him?’ Julia ventured.
‘Wh
o?’ Iris said.
‘The coffee man,’ Julia said.
‘Oh, him? Well, I don’t know him, do I? I just buy coffee there sometimes.’
‘He likes you,’ Julia said, and Iris laughed and said she was being silly.
It was good to hear Iris laugh, of course. Julia’s mother and Aunt Maureen agreed; they commented to each other that ‘things’ were ‘looking up’ and ‘turning round’, and it was about time. ‘I think,’ Julia heard Aunt Maureen say, ‘it’s that Michael Osborne in the office, you know, the boss’s son. He seems, from what she’s said, to pay a lot of attention to her.’ Julia kept quiet. Maybe Iris wouldn’t like the coffee man mentioned, but she was sure he, and not this Osborne man, was the one making Iris happier. Maybe Iris would prefer this to remain a secret, and Julia was still good at keeping secrets. It had only just recently struck her that other girls were not. At school, secrets were traded ruthlessly. Girls told by other girls not to tell a soul almost immediately told someone else, adding ‘Keep it quiet’ to cover themselves. The secrets involved were not, in Julia’s opinion, interesting, or even worthy of the name ‘secret’. She knew what a secret was. She had one, and had never told anyone, and never would.
She wondered often whether Iris perhaps felt the same about secrets. She had never, Julia knew, revealed what it was that Reginald had given Julia to give to her. After a long time she had unwrapped it, but afterwards had carefully rewrapped it so that no one could see that it had been unwrapped. No one except Julia, who had seen it in Iris’s bedside cabinet drawer one day and spotted straight away that the little white ribbon had been snipped off and not replaced exactly in the centre. She shouldn’t have been looking in drawers, of course. This, as her mother had told her long ago, was snooping, and a very unpleasant activity, something to be ashamed of. But Julia was not particularly ashamed. A little bit, yes, but not much, so long as no one found out. All she did was gently slide drawers open, and just look. She didn’t touch. She simply liked to see what others had in the drawers of their different bits of furniture. What was wrong with that?
The Unknown Bridesmaid Page 10