by Rosie Thomas
Now that Mattie was away working so much of the time, and so occupied with Mitch even when she was in London, Felix had become Julia’s closest friend. They saw each other often, and she still glanced half anxiously at him when they met. But she knew that Felix was all right.
Tonight, they sat at their corner table exchanging their small snippets of news. As if we were married, Julia sometimes thought.
Felix asked her about Garlic & Sapphires. She reached into her bag and brought out the bundle of tissue paper. She unwrapped it, and put the teapot on the table in front of Felix.
‘There now. What do you think of that?’
He stared at it expressionlessly. Then he raised one eyebrow. ‘Do I have to think anything?’
‘You certainly do. It’s funny, it’s wonderfully kitsch, it’s what people want.’
‘Then God help them. Another drink?’
While she drank hers, Julia told him about Suki, and the new stock. ‘You remember what the first shop was like. Remember Thomas’s armchairs? I promised myself that I’d never sell anything I wouldn’t have in my own house. It was all supposed to be so clever and original and daring. It was supposed to be …’ she broke off and eyed him ‘… the opposite of everything you and George were doing, but just as good. Yet now I find myself selling stuff I hate, on my buyer’s excellent advice. I’m running a chain of gift shops, aren’t I? It isn’t what I planned.’
The black cat sat on the table in front of them, its heart-shaped sugar-pink nose gleaming with apparent satisfaction. Julia made a face at it.
‘You’ve expanded,’ Felix said drily. ‘Once you employ other people, you accept their contributions. As for the teapot itself, I’m sure it will sell. This, and the ducks and all the other bits you dislike, are briefly fashionable. The fashion will pass.’
‘There will be others,’ Julia replied. ‘Felix, am I too old?’
‘Do you feel too old?’
Too something, Julia realised. What was it?
‘You’ve got three choices.’ Felix held up his fingers. ‘You can let Garlic & Sapphires go on the way it is. Getting bigger and more successful. It’ll make you rich, probably. Or you can cut it back to being what it once was. So you don’t have to sell anything you don’t personally admire. Or you can sell up, and come back into Tressider’s with me.’
Julia was amazed. At first, she was sure he was joking. And then she was afraid that he was serious. She was warmed, and flattered, but she knew she couldn’t do it. It would be going back. Stepping around George, and all kinds of other memories, and going in the wrong direction.
‘Tressider, Lemoine & Smith,’ Felix mused. ‘What do you think?’
Julia put her hands over his. ‘It sounds like an ad agency.’
‘You can choose the name.’
‘Thank you for asking me, Felix. But no. I don’t know what I should do next, but I don’t belong in Tressider’s, George knew that.’
Felix’s face changed, saddened, before he looked directly at her again. ‘Are you sure?’
‘I’m quite sure.’ Of that, at least.
Felix nodded. ‘Okay. Let’s just go and have dinner, then, shall we?’
They enjoyed the meal, and each other’s company, as they always did. At the end, Julia asked him, ‘Would Jessie be proud of us, do you think?’
Felix thought for a moment. ‘Jessie admired material success. But it was contentment that she valued.’
Julia smiled. ‘Still a little way to go, then.’
‘A little way.’
Felix kissed her goodnight, and put her into a taxi. His touch was light and his skin, brushing hers, was cool. Brother and sister. It was a long time since Julia had looked for anything different from anyone.
Sitting in her corner on the way home, looking out at the lights, Julia thought about Jessie and Felix, and about Mattie. Not about Lily at all. But when the cab drew up outside her house, Julia frowned. The downstairs lights were still on. It was eleven o’clock, and a school day tomorrow. Lily should be in bed. Unless it was Marilyn sitting there, although Marilyn always watched the television in her own rooms.
Julia paid off the taxi and ran up the steps.
Lily was sitting curled up in an armchair facing the television, but the screen was blank.
‘Lily, what are you doing? Do you know what the time is?’ Slowly Lily uncurled herself and stood up, facing her mother.
‘Hello, Mum. How’s Felix?’
‘Fine. He sends his love. Did you hear me, Lily? Where’s Marilyn?’
‘Downstairs. She saw me into bed, then I got up again.’
‘Why?’
Lily squared her shoulders. Her T-shirt was an old one and there was a three-cornered tear in it. Her skin, brown from the summer, showed through. Her small, suntanned feet emerged from the flares of her jeans. She had painted her toenails with silvery polish, from one of Julia’s bottles.
‘I wanted to talk to you.’
Julia hesitated. ‘Well, good. But it’s late now, Lily, and you shouldn’t have waited up all this time.’
‘I want to talk to you now,’ Lily repeated.
Julia looked at her again. Lily thrust her hands into her pockets, her shoulders hunching to make deep shadows at the base of her throat. But the protective stance didn’t quite hide the beginnings of her breasts. The new roundness contradicted her bony shoulders and skinny legs. Not a child any more, Julia thought sadly. Not a woman, either.
‘What is it?’ she asked. Perhaps trouble at school, with one of her friends. Nothing else, yet, surely?
Lily looked straight into her eyes. ‘I want to go and live at Ladyhill.’
Shock made Julia stupid. ‘What?’
‘It’s a good time,’ Lily said clearly. ‘I needn’t start the new school here. I can go to the comprehensive there, instead. Elizabeth is starting too.’
Julia sat down, hard, against the corner of the scrubbed pine table. The edge of it dug savagely into her thigh with the impact. Lily had thought it out. It wasn’t an impulsive idea, blurted out to test her. ‘You live here, Lily.’
Lily put her head on one side, studying her. Julia saw determination, something else too. Pity? Sympathy? Had she looked at Betty, once, like that? It was Lily’s awareness of her strength that made Julia feel cold, and helpless, and terrified now. She remembered feeling her own strength in just the same way. She had defeated Betty with it, of course. ‘You can’t go to Ladyhill. You live here, with me.’
‘I want to. I know I couldn’t before, when Alexander was just on his own with Mrs Tovey. But Clare lives there now. She was there all last summer. She …’
Julia held up her hands, fending it off. ‘They aren’t married, Lily.’
‘They could get married.’
Julia stood up again. There would be a bruise on her thigh, where it had hit the table. Her chest, and her throat, and her eyes all hurt her.
She saw Jessie’s old room. A paisley cloth over the back of a sofa, and oranges in a blue bowl. Betty, standing up to her, but already beaten.
‘Have you talked to Alexander about this idea?’
‘He said that I would have to talk to you. Daddy is fair.’ Anger swirled up inside Julia, all of it directed against Alexander. Fair, in his house with all the acres, that Lily had loved since babyhood. Fair, with his new girlfriend comfortably installed in it, who would be glad to look after Lily and go to her sports days and applaud her in her school play, because it would cement her more firmly to Alexander himself.
Fair, to take my daughter away from me.
Julia heard and hated the childishness and the jealousy of her own response, but the recognition of her weakness only fuelled her determination to fight.
‘I won’t let you go,’ she whispered.
Lily held out her hand. Not to Julia, but to take in the room, with a single gesture. They both looked at the blank television and the empty chair, the chesterfield with its plumped cushions, the day’s newspapers, delivere
d but not unfolded.
‘You aren’t here. You’ve never been here, really. It’ll be easier for you.’
Julia stumbled to her, wrapping her arms around the knobbly shoulders. They stayed stiff, resisting her. ‘I will be here from now on. Lily, if that’s what you want, I’ll sell the shops …’ The words ran on. She was begging, now, but she knew it was too late.
Lily stepped backwards, looking at her with Alexander’s level gaze. ‘I want to go. I want to go with Daddy and Clare.’
The clear, high voice slashed into Julia, sharper than knife blades, colder than steel.
‘You have to live with me.’
‘What kind of life will it be, if you make me?’
The terrible, inexorable clarity of youth and strength. That strength, that she had once possessed herself. Experience took it away, and only gave back endurance. Lily was too old, and yet she knew nothing, and she had everything ahead of her to endure. Pity for her, and for herself, and Betty, made Julia catch her breath. The tears started, and ran down her face.
‘Lily … I’m sorry. For all the things I’ve done to you, and the rest I’ve failed to do. I didn’t mean any of it, because I meant it to be different. I should have known how to make it different.’
‘I’m sorry, Julia. It’ll be better, I know it will.’ And Lily turned away from her. She was part-acting, Julia knew that. She was making moves that she had rehearsed. She even had that advantage, while Julia still gasped with the shock of it.
Julia wanted to run after her, to pick her up and smother her with hugs, now that she was too big to be lifted. She wanted to love her differently, now it was too late to change anything.
The door closed. Julia was left, staring unseeingly at the familiar room, seeing the other room overlooking the square, helpless in the face of the inevitable. She poured herself a whisky that she didn’t want, drank it looking down into the darkness of the garden, then went upstairs. Lily’s light was off and her door was closed, and although she waited outside it, Julia could hear nothing.
She went to bed, but not to sleep. The mistakes that she knew she had made with Lily came back to her, magnified by the darkness and the silence. Her impatience stalked her as cruelty, her preoccupation as neglect. In the wash of guilt Julia clung to the single comforting truth – the evidence that Lily herself was all right. She was strong and determined, and she knew what she wanted. She would get it, just as Julia had done herself.
It was only much later, Julia told herself, when the truths became blurred and the hard-edged certainties melted, that life became difficult, and painful, and seemingly unchangeable.
In the morning, Lily’s resilience showed clearly. It was like any other day. Lily gulped her breakfast, gathered up her belongings and kissed Julia as she rushed past, then departed for school. After she had gone the house seemed dry and stale. Julia flung open the windows, but the weight in the rooms seemed immobile. She went to telephone Alexander. Her anger and bitterness focused itself on him. Alexander must have encouraged Lily with her idea.
‘I did nothing of the kind,’ Alexander said. ‘It was Lily’s own suggestion.’
‘You must have worked on her. You and Clare.’
‘Clare wouldn’t presume to do anything of the kind, either.’
No, of course not. She’s too good, too nice. But I know what she wants. She wants you, and Lily’s a part of you. She’s not as stupid as she seems, Clare isn’t.
‘I won’t let her go, Alexander.’
There was a pause. Then Alexander said, ‘It was always part of our agreement, wasn’t it, that Lily should choose for herself, when she was old enough?’
Oh, yes. But I never thought she wouldn’t choose me. Even I, knowing what I know, took my own daughter so much for granted.
Julia’s anger crumbled away, and her defences with it.
‘I love her.’
‘We both love her.’
They listened to each other’s anxiety and to the distances between them, and then Alexander said, ‘I’ll come up and talk to you. Expect me by lunchtime.’
Clare was in the kitchen. He went back to the smell of coffee and toast.
‘That was Julia.’
Clare’s head jerked up, She was wearing a yellow shirt, the brightness of it making her eyes and hair look pale by comparison. She looked at Alexander, saying nothing.
‘She’s upset. Lily has told her that she wants to come and live here.’
‘Poor Julia.’
Alexander went to her, and held her against him. He was used to Clare, they had been together for a year and a half. She didn’t goad him, or reward him. She was good-humoured, and her predictability made their life tranquil. He smoothed her hair with one hand and looked over her head, out of the window. He could see a long vista of the garden, and a corner of Marco Polo’s paddock.
‘I’m going up this morning to see her. It’s important to work it all out properly. For Lily, for all of us.’ He looked away from the garden and down into Clare’s face. ‘Do you mind Lily coming here, if it’s what she really wants?’
‘Of course not. You know I don’t. I’m not her mother, but I can take care of her.’
Alexander bent his head and kissed her. Clare smiled and went to the percolator, to pour him another cup of coffee.
When he was ready to leave, she went out and walked with him to the car. He kissed her again and then drove away, waving out of the window without looking back. Clare stood still, watching him go with the sun in her eyes. The brightness made them water.
Clare wanted to marry Alexander, but he hadn’t asked her. She would like to think that he might, but she didn’t believe that accepting the responsibility for his daughter would make any difference to whether he would or not. Nor would she suggest it to him. That wasn’t Clare’s way.
As he drove, Alexander wondered irritably why he was driving two hundred miles to see Julia, when he could have stayed at Ladyhill and tried to unravel the problem by telephone.
Julia was waiting for him. When she opened the door he saw that she was white-faced, with grey patches under her eyes. Sympathy dispelled his irritation. Julia could be a harsh judge, but she judged herself most harshly of all. He thought, with a touch of sadness, how well they knew each other and to what little effect.
It was an uncomfortable meeting. In her hurt Julia was convinced that Lily and Alexander had conspired against her. Alexander accepted her hurt, knowing that he couldn’t salve it, and was gentle with her. But he couldn’t make her see the truth, which was that Lily had made her decision without reference to any of them. Soon enough, Lily wouldn’t need them at all.
‘Listen,’ he tried to persuade Julia. ‘Let’s say that she can come, just for a few months. Then if it doesn’t work she can come back again. The school’s a good one. And perhaps it will be safer for her to do her growing up at Ladyhill, rather than in London.’
Julia lifted her swollen eyes to meet his. ‘We’ve already chosen a good school for her here, remember? And I think I could have kept her safe while she was growing up. I wanted to. I was looking forward to seeing it happen.’
She wouldn’t cry, not in front of him. but Julia knew that she was defeated. They faced each other across the pine table, with the greatest distance between them that there had ever been.
By the time that Lily came home again from school, Julia had accepted that she would go to Ladyhill in the summer holidays, as she always had done, and that this time she would stay there. Lily stood at the end of the table in her striped uniform dress, meek and conciliatory now that she had achieved what she wanted. It seemed to Julia that Lily and Alexander could both afford to be gentle and gracious now that they had beaten her. It deepened her sense of exclusion and she turned away, to the kitchen, saying that she would make supper before Alexander drove back to the country. Lily perched on the arm of the chesterfield, swinging her legs in her hated white ankle socks, talking about her part in the school play. Julia couldn’t believe tha
t everything was so ordinary when she had just lost it all. She clattered blindly with the knives and pans.
She cooked the food almost without knowing what it was, and put it on the table. They sat down to eat, the three of them, as if they were any ordinary family at the end of the day. To Julia, it seemed the bitterest moment of all.
Afterwards, Lily let Alexander go without any of the fuss she habitually made. She came back from seeing him off and sat beside Julia on the chesterfield. Julia sat with her hands lying heavily in her lap and her head bent. Seeing her, Lily realised that she had never known her mother at a loss before. That had always been part of her otherness, that set her apart from other people’s mothers. Julia had so much power. It was startling to realise that her power could desert her. Lily leaned forward and put her cheek against her mother’s, trying for the right words.
‘It won’t be any different, will it? Not really? Just the other way round. I’ll be coming to you for the holidays. If I can. If you want me to.’
Julia looked at her. ‘I want to see you as often as we can arrange it, whenever you want to. I also want you to know, Lily, that I love you very much. Granny Smith never told me that she loved me, and I never realised she did until I was grown up. It was too late, then.’
Lily understood that her mother was talking to her like a person, not like a little girl or a daughter. The change seemed to mark an important stage in her life. She nodded, her face solemn.
‘I understand. I love you too, only in a complicated way. At Ladyhill nothing’s complicated, and I like that.’
‘I think I understand,’ Julia said slowly, in her turn. She stood up and walked to and fro, while Lily watched her. At last she sighed, a big gusty sigh that seemed hopeless. ‘Lily, will you mind very much if I sell this house? I don’t think I can bear to live here without you.’
Lily did mind, because the house by the canal meant home as much as Ladyhill did. But she shook her head, understanding that it was important for the altered dealings between them. ‘You ought to do what makes you happy. It’s only a house, isn’t it?’