by Rosie Thomas
‘Bliss. Are you horrified? I had dinner with Felix, and he said he was driving down, so I came for the ride. There must be a pub in the village I can stay at for a night or two?’
Her face was turned up to him and so he kissed it. Her mouth was slightly open, and the soft brush of it sent a jolt all through him.
‘There are at least a dozen bedrooms in this house, all crying out for occupation. Stay for as long as you like. We’re very pleased to see you, aren’t we, Lily?’ Somehow, that seemed an understatement. Looking at Mattie he saw that her milky skin, too pale to tan, was powdered with faint freckles. The down of fine hairs was pale gold. He made himself look away again, shake hands with Felix.
‘What’s the time? Gone twelve. Pimms on the grass, don’t you think? You must have left very early.’ Inane remarks, Alexander thought. More like a boy of fourteen than a man of forty.
‘Before dawn, darling.’ Mattie’s throaty giggle was exactly the same as it had always been. ‘I’m ready for a Pimms.’
They sat on the lawn, facing the house. Mattie tilted her head to look up at it, and Alexander watched the line of her throat.
‘It’s so long since I’ve been here,’ Mattie murmured. ‘Do you know, this house is too beautiful to be real. You expect to step through the door and find it’s a Pinewood mock-up.’
‘It’s real,’ Felix laughed. ‘Every bloody brick and beam. It’s taken almost ten years of our lives, hasn’t it, Alexander?’
Ten years, at the end of this year. Since the fire destroyed …
The shadow lay across the grass, as though a cloud had passed over the sun.
It was Alexander who swept it away again. He lifted his glass, sprouting the blue borage that Lily had run to pick from the garden. ‘Here’s to the completion of a magnificent undertaking.’
He leaned over to clink his glass around Felix’s, but Felix amended hastily, ‘Of course, these things are never really completed …’
Mattie and Alexander snorted with laughter, and after a moment Felix joined in. Mattie was thinking, There are only about three men in the entire world who are truly worth loving. And two of them are sitting here, under a blue sky.
Mattie and Felix stayed for five days. The sun shone, and in the sleepy heat they explored the countryside, walking and driving, played games with Lily, dozed on the lawns and swam in the river. They drove to Chesil Beach and collected a perfectly graded set of pebbles for Lily, and they wandered through the little towns where Felix rummaged in the antique shops and complained, as he always did, that the prices were higher than in London. In the evenings, after Lily was in bed, they ate and drank and talked, and Mattie sang while Alexander played the piano.
‘If only Julia was here,’ Mattie sighed, ‘it would be just like old times.’
On the fifth evening Alexander asked, ‘Can’t you stay a day or two longer?’
‘I must go back to George,’ Felix told him.
That evening Alexander opened two bottles of champagne and they drank them outside, with the scent of nicotiana drifting across the grass and bats dipping under the veil of the copper beech tree. Looking at their two faces, Felix felt for the first time that he made a crowd.
After dinner, Alexander played Chopin. Mattie, half drunk, swayed dreamily to the music.
‘Do you have to go?’ Alexander asked in a low voice.
Mattie stood still. The fanciful chiffon points of her skirt floated around her. ‘No, I don’t have to go. I’ll stay, if you would like me to.’
Sitting a little apart, as dark and immobile as if he was carved from polished wood, Felix wanted to whisper, Be careful. But he didn’t deliver his warning, because he guessed that it was already too late for that.
In the morning, Lily and Alexander and Mattie stood waving until the white Alfa had disappeared under the tunnel of trees.
And that evening, when Alexander went to lift the lid of the piano, Mattie put her hands over his, closing it again. ‘Don’t play tonight.’
‘What, then?’
But Alexander answered his own question. He put his hands on her shoulders, let his palms slide down over her bare arms. Her skin seemed soft enough to melt as he touched it. He kissed her, probing insistently with his tongue until her head fell back and her mouth opened to him. And then, as he had longed to do all week, he undid the front of her dress and let her breasts fall loose. They rested in his hands, ripe and heavy, moon-pale in the dim room. He put his mouth to them, tasting her rich, musky sweetness. He wondered why, in all the years, he had never noticed how sexy Mattie was, until now. He wanted her so badly that he could have pushed her to the floor and torn her clothes, stabbing himself into her and crying out, Mattie.
‘Come to bed, Mattie,’ he implored her.
She smiled at him, a surprising, crooked and sad smile. ‘Bliss. I’m not very good at sex, Bliss. Lots of other things, but not sex.’
With an effort, Alexander controlled himself. ‘You are, my darling. Look.’ He gestured at the pale, satiny smoothness of her. ‘You are so beautiful.’
‘I don’t want anything to be spoiled,’ Mattie whispered. ‘I’ve enjoyed these days with you so much.’
‘Nothing will be spoiled,’ he murmured. ‘Nothing. I promise.’ He kissed her neck and her throat, thinking that if he could take bites out of her flesh it would taste of ripe golden melons.
‘Bliss …’
He took her face between his hands. ‘Just answer one question. Is it the truth that you prefer girls?’
Her eyes were very soft now. ‘The truth is that I don’t know what I prefer.’
He smiled at her. ‘I’m not arrogant enough to say I’ll show you. Come to bed, Mattie.’
Almost inaudibly, she answered, ‘Yes. If you want me to.’
To Alexander, the naked abundance of Mattie in his bed seemed miraculous. Mattie had never been slim, and now the melting folds of her seemed to turn inwards and inwards, enclosing him and drawing him closer, submerging him in mounting, sensuous waves of pleasure. She filled his hands, and his mouth, and he wanted to feast on her, blind and greedy, until he couldn’t devour any more.
But Alexander clung to the last remnants of control. He bit his teeth together, and counting grimly from one to a thousand, as he had taught himself to do with the first girl he had ever made love to, he focused his attention on Mattie’s pleasure. He stroked her and cajoled her, and put his lips to the soft button of flesh, drawing it into the heat of his mouth. Mattie sighed, and smiled faintly behind the mask of her closed eyelids, but he couldn’t drive her any further.
Alexander reached one thousand. He knew that he couldn’t count much longer. He put his lips to her ear.
‘Mattie, I want you to come.’
Just perceptibly, she shook her head. ‘I can’t. But you can.’
Her smooth hand grasped him, and he groaned aloud. Then she guided him into her, lifting her hips to give him more of herself. It took just six long thrusts before Alexander came, his back arching and his breath shuddering out of him.
He was still for a long time afterwards, his eyes closed and his arms wrapped tightly around her, as if he was afraid that she would try to escape. Mattie lay still, thinking, Alexander. You’re as loving and generous as I knew you would be. I’m glad I found that out. I’m glad this happened, after all this time. I like you very much. Why didn’t I tell you?
‘Mattie,’ he whispered. ‘Why can’t you come? You gave me more pleasure then than I think I’ve ever had before.’
‘Hmm. That’s a paradox, isn’t it?’
He shifted his weight so that he could look into her eyes. ‘A paradox? How many film stars talk about paradoxes in bed?’
Brightly, Mattie said, ‘None of the ones I’ve had.’
They laughed, softly at first and then louder, gasping with it, lying in the darkness with their arms wrapped round each other.
Twenty
Julia looked around the Soho studio. Stacked all around the walls were
originals and prints by the three young artists who shared the loft, but there was none of the other familiar painters’ clutter. Instead there were drawing boards and airbrushes, plan chests and a boy in very clean OshKosh dungarees frowning at a computer terminal. The neat beige space looked more like the art department of a glossy magazine than anything else, Julia thought.
‘I like this stuff,’ Julia said. ‘I’m tired of flowers and beads.’
The boy looked up. ‘Yeah. All that faded shit.’
She prowled back along the line of pictures. The ones that interested her particularly were gleaming, airbrush paintings of jukeboxes, cars with grilles like sharks’ teeth, girls with overpointed breasts and tight dresses that emphasised the vee between their thighs. They were all more real than the real thing, sharp and shiny and cynical. There was nothing gentle or optimistic or pretty about them, and they made psychedelia seem as dated as the pennyfarthing. Julia smiled with satisfaction. She liked the prickle down her spine when she recognised a seller.
And interleaved with the super-realist paintings of space-age artefacts, there were computer graphics in which a circle composed of circles and dots transformed itself by stages into a leaping panther, and then back to a circle again. By the same progression, a Coca-Cola bottle became the Apollo 11 space-rocket that had, in that week, deposited Armstrong and Aldrin on the moon.
It was a wonderful week to be in America.
‘And these,’ Julia said. ‘These are brilliant. Is there anything you can’t do with that computer?’
‘Nope.’ The boy leaned back in his chair. ‘Or at least, not much.’
Julia took out her notebook and unscrewed her fountain pen. It was gold-nibbed, and filled with sepia ink. Mattie had given it to her for Christmas. ‘Biros don’t go with silk suits and leather briefcases,’ she had pronounced. Julia smiled at the memory, and held the pen poised.
‘I’d love to buy some of your work, of course,’ she murmured now. ‘But I can only think of unlimited editions for my market. I’ve got a chain of shops in England, not a gallery.’
‘Posters?’
‘That’s right.’
The boy yawned. ‘Well, I guess it’s not out of the question if the price is right. You’d have to hack all that out with my agent.’
Cheerfully, Julia clipped the cap back on to her pen. She liked dealing with agents, and enjoyed the almost formal gavotte of agreeing terms. There was always a deal to be made, and she was good at getting what she wanted. She knew that the Fifties Pontiacs and Coke bottle Apollo 11 would hang well on the walls of Garlic & Sapphires, and would sell as fast as she could see them produced.
‘Thank you for showing me your work. I’ll call your agent this afternoon. Can I take you somewhere for lunch now?’
The artist looked under his long eyelashes at Julia in her buttercup-yellow tussore silk safari suit. ‘Sure you can,’ he murmured. ‘Let’s go right away.’
They went out into the street, and Julia felt the sun striking hot on her head. She had been almost cold in the air-conditioned studio, and the noise of traffic seemed doubly loud after its humming quiet. The constant contrasts of the city stirred her blood. She had to make conscious efforts not to dash to and fro, admiring and exclaiming, as if she was Lily’s age.
‘Where shall we go?’ she asked. The heat of the sidewalk struck up insistently through the soles of her buttercup-yellow pumps.
‘I know a place.’
They went uptown, to a bar restaurant called Al’s. It was cool and dim inside, and Julia blinked at the further contrast. She blinked again, when her eyes readjusted themselves to the light. The interior was a cavern of Thirties deco, and it was impossible to tell at a glance whether it was original or a clever recreation. There were peachy-pink walls lit by fan-shaped lights, cream leather and chrome sofas and barstools, and a white piano complete with a black pianist playing Cole Porter.
It was muted, and opulent, and so modish that Julia laughed out loud. ‘Oh, joss-sticks and bean-bags and temple bells, where are you now? I should be wearing a cream crêpe-de-chine teagown with a river of pleats, and marcel waves in my hair. I feel out of place in this.’ She held out her arms in the yellow suit. Her companion laughed with her, and stuck his thumbs in the braces of his dungarees.
‘And a white tux for me. But who gives a shit? Let’s get ourselves a drink.’
He greeted ten people on the way to the bar, and they settled themselves at last on the tall chrome stools. There was a cocktail menu, with deco lettering and a silhouette of a sinuous dancing couple. Julia sighed over the White Ladies and Manhattans and Deep Seas. ‘It’s got to be a Manhattan, hasn’t it?’
The bartender mixed their cocktails in a silver shaker, and poured them into black-stemmed cocktail glasses with frosted rims.
Julia said, ‘I want everything. I want the shaker, and the glasses, and the lights and the ashtrays and the barstools, all shipped back to Garlic & Sapphires, right now. Off with the old, and on with the new. Or the retro-new.’
The painter lifted his glass in an admiring toast. ‘You Brits. You’re supposed to be cool. But when you like something, you get out and get it. Here’s to your enthusiasm.’
‘I like your graphics.’ Julia lifted her glass in return. The frosted rims touched with a faint ping. The painter’s long eyelashes lifted again.
‘And I like you.’
Oh, New York, Julia thought. You’re very good for me.
It made her feel young, and hungry again, as she hadn’t done for a very long time. They had another cocktail apiece, and Julia ate a BLT and her new friend had a hamburger, and they talked about Warhol and the men on the moon.
When they had eaten, two or three of the painter’s friends came to join them, and one of them said that there was a party that night, and why didn’t they both come along? The painter raised one of his thick, black eyebrows at Julia, and she said yes, that sounded like fun. In the evening she put on her Ossie Clark dress of flowered crêpe with ribbons and panels of silk, and wide trumpet sleeves, and took a cab to another loft. Moving between huge polished-metal sculptures she met and talked to more painters, and potters, and poets, and their friends who were television directors and copywriters and script editors. They were friendly and interesting, and she told them about her shops, and in her handbag she collected a little sheaf of cards and addresses. There were new designers, and artists, and people who other people insisted she must meet, and talk with, because their stuff was just so great, she’d be crazy not to go and see it for herself.
Julia drank her white wine, ate dolmades and shared a joint or two, and at the end of the evening her painter friend didn’t seem too perturbed when she told him that, on the whole, she thought it would probably be better if she just went quietly back to her own hotel bedroom.
‘Another time, baby,’ he said.
In the peace of her room in the Algonquin, Julia took off her dress and hung it up in the closet. She felt tired, and drunk, and thoroughly satisfied. That was how her trip had been. The few names she had armed herself with via friends in London had been the pebble dropping into the pond. The ripples had spread outwards, carrying her with them. She had seen more things that she wanted to buy than she could ever hope to ship home, and she had seen the direction she wanted Garlic & Sapphires to follow into the Seventies. It had been a thoroughly satisfactory expedition.
Julia had flown to Toronto, and out to the Coast. But in comparison with New York, Canada had seemed provincial, and San Francisco was still tangled in hippiedom. She had come back to the East Coast, with a sense of relief and renewed energy, to fix up a last two or three deals before going home. She was beginning to look forward to seeing Lily, and seeing Lily would also mean meeting Alexander. But she knew that she needn’t go yet, not quite yet. She had a little time, and enough money, and she was in the same country …
Lying back on her bed, with her eyes fixed unseeingly on the Celia Birtwell print of her dress inside the open closet,
Julia picked up the telephone beside her. She spoke to Long-distance Information, and a minute later wrote down the number on the headed pad next to the telephone. She didn’t dial the number at once. Instead she stood up, and walked to the window. She stood for a moment, looking down into West Forty-fourth street. The city’s electricity seemed to crackle up to her. She breathed in sharply, and stretched upwards, as though a line through her body drew tauter.
Then she went back to the bedside telephone and picked out the digits. She listened to the ringing tone. She was already thinking, He’s not there, when he answered.
‘Josh Flood.’
Josh, it’s Julia.’
A pause, and then laughter. The same lazy, warm laughter that she remembered. ‘Well, what d’you know? When can we see each other?’
That was like Josh, too. No How are you? or Where are you? No mention, either, of how long it had been, or how much had been missed. Just Hey, here you are. Now was what mattered to Josh, now, this minute.
And, charged with the potency of success and freedom, Julia felt, at last, that she could match him. She smiled at the empty hotel bedroom.
‘Tomorrow, if I can get a flight.’
‘From London?’
‘New York.’
‘Here I am, waiting for you. Hearing your voice is the best thing that’s happened to me for months.’
‘Oh Josh.’
‘Julia Bliss.’
‘Julia Smith. Alexander and I are divorced.’
He cut her short. ‘Don’t tell me any more now. Save it for tomorrow when I can see your face.’
‘I’ll look forward to it.’
‘Me too. Julia? I’m glad you called.’
The next day, Julia flew to Denver.