by Rosie Thomas
Julia wanted to turn and seize Lily, fastening on to her, but she made herself go on walking, slowly up and down the Turkish kelim that Lily had once hacked the fringes off.
After that, the days went quickly. Julia went to the school play and watched Lily’s bloodcurdling Captain Hook through a glaze of tears.
‘You must be proud of her, Lady Bliss,’ the headmistress said at the noisy party afterwards. ‘I know we all are.’
‘I am,’ Julia answered.
At home, she helped Lily to clear her room. They took down the pop posters; and they opened the cupboards and ordered the fate of picture books and woolly lambs and dolls. Amongst the dolls was the flaxen-haired monster that Josh had bought for Lily so long ago. Lily had never liked it, and its simpering face was hardly marked. Julia bundled it into the jumble sale bag, not wanting to meet its empty blue eyes.
Lily dealt solemnly with the accretions of her childhood, but Julia found the rite almost unbearably painful. She found herself stealing things away, taking The Tale of Tom Kitten and a rag doll and a china pig from the discarded piles and hiding them amongst her own things. At night, with her knees drawn up and the pillow pressed into her face, she cried as if she was a child herself.
Alexander came to drive Lily away. Julia had dreaded the moment, but when it came almost the worst thing to bear was his gentleness. She felt his sympathy and understanding of her loss as sharply as she felt her own pain: her anger with him evaporated immediately.
When Lily was out of the room he came to her, taking hold of her wrists and looking down into her eyes. ‘It was Lily’s choice,’ he whispered. ‘I can’t deny her what she wants. But I’d do anything if it meant not hurting you like this.’
Julia wanted to cry, to throw herself against him and let her tears wash away the barriers between them. She felt how close he was; she didn’t feel any longer that he could afford to be generous because he had won Lily. Lily wasn’t a trophy, after all. Alexander was generous, just as he was honourable and loyal and kind. She saw him objectively now, after so many years of confusion.
Julia didn’t cry.
Instead she looked straight back at him, finding a smile within herself. It occurred to her that if she managed to be unselfish now, she would truly have achieved something.
‘I know,’ she said. ‘It’s all right. Just look after her, will you?’
‘You know I’ll do that. I wish I could do the same for you.’ Julia laughed, then. ‘I’m much too old to be looked after. Too old and too selfish.’
Alexander touched her cheek. ‘You think you’re selfish, but you aren’t. Don’t be so harsh to yourself.’
Lily came back then, and almost at once it was time for them to leave.
After they had gone, Julia felt that a piece had been cut away from her. She remembered waking up, in the clinic, after Lily’s birth. She went slowly up the stairs to Lily’s bedroom. It had always seemed empty when she went away; now it was dead. The posters and the photographs had left rectangles like mocking shadows on the faded walls. She stood on a chair and unhooked the blue and yellow curtains off the rails. At once, the room was unfurnished. Standing back, she saw that there were cobweb filaments blowing from the pelmet, and a layer of fine dust on the sill. She folded the curtains, carefully, into exactly symmetrical squares and then into smaller squares, and left them lying in the middle of the bare mattress. The estate agent’s valuer had already been to look at the house. He had surprised her with his estimate of how much it was worth.
Mattie searched for the key, then unlocked the front door with its diamond-shaped leaded lights. The hall smelt musty. Mitch followed her with the first of the suitcases, and she heard the mini-cab driver bringing the rest.
‘Welcome home,’ she said to Mitch. ‘Does it feel like home?’
‘Immediately.’ Mattie had been in Nice for a month. The filming had only lasted for four weeks, and Mitch had been with her, but even so it had seemed too long to be away. The house was waiting, and she wanted to be in it.
Mitch had bought it. Mattie had claimed to be uninterested in houses. At the beginning of their married life Mattie had been reluctant to relinquish her Bloomsbury eyrie, but then she had been forced to admit that it was too small for both of them. For the first year they had made their base in London in a characterless mansion flat, and when the West End run of the Chichester play had finally come to an end there had been several months in Hollywood, and then the film in France.
It was Mitch who had insisted that they needed a proper house, near enough to London for easy commuting, far enough away to have a real garden and countryside within reach. After a proper search, he had found the house in Surrey. It was a solid example of Thirties stockbroker Tudorbethan, with black and white timbering and tall chimneys and an extensive garden that came complete with a gardener who had tended it two days a week for seventeen years. It had wood panelling and inglenook fireplaces and luxurious bathrooms installed by the last owners. It was called Coppins.
Mitch was delighted with it. ‘I’d buy you a manor house, Mattie, but you need to devote your life to that kind of a house.’
Mattie thought of Alexander and Julia, and the imposing bulk of Ladyhill. ‘I don’t want that,’ she said quickly. ‘I don’t want anything to be more important to you than me.’
‘We need a good, solid house that’s convenient, comfortable and undemanding. Coppins is all those things. And not a bad price, either.’
Mitch was always businesslike.
‘Take me to see it, at once.’
At first glance, Mattie laughed. Coppins sat in its gardens like a picture in an old-fashioned children’s book. William, perhaps, or Greyfriars. It needed a parlourmaid in a lace cape to open the front door. It seemed so improbable that she should own anything of the kind. But as they explored it, calling out to each other up and down the stairs, she recognised its character. Coppins was enormous, but it had a doll’s-house quality. It made her want to settle down and play house, with a china tea-set and miniature sets of reproduction furniture.
From the kitchen, which had a stone-shelved larder as well as a pantry, she called out to Mitch again, ‘Let’s buy it!’
Mitch was also an excellent negotiator. Within three weeks Coppins was theirs, at a slightly reduced price. While they were in Nice the decorators had been at work, and the minimum of furniture had been delivered. Now they had come home.
Mitch stepped around the heap of luggage and held out his arms. Mattie walked into them. They went upstairs to the big bedroom overlooking the garden.
Later, Mattie said, ‘It will be a good house for children to grow up in.’
Mattie was trying to have a baby. Mitch raised himself on one elbow to look down at her. ‘Lots of children. Running up and down the stairs, round and round the garden. We’d better have a couple of sets of twins.’
She grinned at him, winding one arm around his neck. ‘How shall we do that?’
It was easy to play house in Coppins, as Mattie had guessed it would be. She was no better at the domestic details than she had ever been, but Mitch quickly found a local woman who came in every day to cook and clean. Mattie discovered that what she enjoyed was shopping, and then arranging and rearranging her purchases. She made expeditions up to Town, and came home with curtain fabric and kitchen utensils and china. Department stores’ vans began to arrive with armchairs and coffee tables. Mattie combed the local antique shops and brought her finds triumphantly back home with her.
‘I’ve never had a real house,’ she said. ‘Doesn’t it make you feel safe, owning electric blankets and pictures of water meadows?’
‘You are safe,’ Mitch answered. ‘I told you.’
‘I love you. I don’t want anything except you, but I quite love my house, as well. Look, Mitch, do you think this little chair looks nice here?’
Mitch would put his head on one side, seeming to look at the chair but really looking at Mattie’s glowing face. Then he would nod.
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‘I think it does. Yep, it’s good there.’ He put his arms round her waist, and she let her head fall back against him.
They were happy. At first, Mattie had almost been afraid to move in case the happiness broke, or disappeared as quickly as it had come. The very ordinariness, that other people took for granted, seemed a miracle. Then, with Mitch’s certainty to reassure her, she began to accept it. Mattie found that she loved routine, and at Coppins they slipped comfortably into patterns that, even half a year ago, she would have dismissed as impossible.
In the mornings, Mitch worked. He liked to have time to attend to his investments, to make telephone calls and to read the financial press. While he was busy Mattie shopped, or read scripts. She turned them all down but she did have lunch with her agent, although she had to rush away afterwards to a sale at Phillips. In the afternoons sometimes Mitch played golf, or they went for mild walks, or else pottered companionably in the big garden. It made Mattie laugh to find herself wondering which were weeds and which were plants growing in the cracks of the crazy-paved terrace. In the evenings they ate quietly at home together. Occasionally they went to the local cinema, even less frequently they went to the theatre in the West End. They saw almost no one, because they didn’t need any company beyond their own. The peace and contentment, to Mattie, seemed almost magical.
One of the few people they did see was Felix. He came down at Mattie’s invitation to give some advice about the house. She showed him around it from top to bottom, and Felix listened politely to her plans. But when they came back to their armchairs in the drawing room she saw his face, and started to laugh.
‘Poor Felix. You hate it, don’t you?’
‘Of course I don’t hate it. It’s a fine house.’
‘But not your kind of house.’
‘You’ve … made it all very much of a piece. The style suits the house. You don’t need me to help.’
Mattie was still laughing. ‘I suppose not. I’ve found out that I like big, fat armchairs and lampshades with fringes and pictures that you can look at and see straight away what they’re supposed to be pictures of. I suppose I’ve had a kind of image of what a proper house should be, ever since I was a little girl. The opposite of my mum and dad’s house. I shouldn’t need your approval of that, should I? Felix, I must have wanted it because I like you so much.’
Felix crossed to Mattie’s chair, then knelt down in front of her so that their faces were level. ‘I do approve. Of the house, and everything. I’ve never seen you look so pretty. Being happy suits you.’
She smiled at him. ‘Doesn’t it? Come on, put your notebook away. Let’s go and find Mitch, and have a drink.’
Felix had noticed that when they had been apart for more than a few minutes, Mattie began to look anxiously around for Mitch. He also noticed that she poured herself a drink, and then forgot about it. It was good, he thought. All of it, even Coppins itself.
Almost the only other visitor was Julia. She came to lunch, one Sunday in early September, driving up to the house in her red car. Mattie was in the garden. There was a half-moon-shaped rosebed beyond the terrace, and Mattie was snipping the dead heads off the Blue Moon and the Wendy Cussons with a pair of secateurs. Her face and arms were faintly freckled with the sun and her hair was tied up in a damp, heavy knot at the nape of her neck. She saw that the car was Julia’s, and came running to meet her. They hugged each other, and over Mattie’s shoulder Julia saw Mitch come out of the house. He was wearing a golf pullover and checked trousers, and he lifted his arm to wave to her.
Mattie and Julia had met, when they could, after Mattie’s marriage. But there was a constraint between them. They had never talked about Alexander, and it seemed unlikely now that they ever would. The omission left treacherous openings at the end of every avenue of talk.
Today Julia knew that it was Mattie who seized her hand and led her in a tour of the house, and then presided proudly over drinks and lunch, but it was a different Mattie, almost a stranger. They talked, and Mitch joined in, but the old understanding between the two of them that had never needed any words seemed to have gone for good. It was as if Mattie had grown slightly deaf, and Julia wondered if she had lost her own hearing too. It was hard not to feel that her oldest friend had gone away somewhere, and that Mitch Howorth had taken her.
There was just one flash of the old Mattie. The meal was very good, a chicken dish with lemon followed by apple charlotte.
‘Did you make this, Mat?’ Julia asked.
Mattie shrugged airily. ‘It’s very simple.’ Her face stayed perfectly straight for a second, then melted. ‘Nah, of course not. Mrs Hopper does it. I knew you wouldn’t believe me even if I tried to pretend.’
‘I might well have done,’ Julia said faintly. ‘Thank God you didn’t.’
After they had eaten, Mitch announced that he was going upstairs to read the papers for an hour.
‘Go on then, my love.’ Mattie reached up to touch his hand as he passed. She winked at Julia. ‘Have a sleep, he means.’ Julia had the impression she was longing to go with him. They went outside, and lay in the sun on canvas loungers. There was a sheen on Mattie’s skin, and her figure looked full and ripe. She sighed and let her head fall back, giving herself up to the sun. Julia knew the resonance and sweetness of physical satisfaction. She was glad for Mattie, but her contentment made Julia sharply aware of her own loneliness.
Mattie opened her eyes again. ‘Talk to me. Tell me the news. Is Lily at Ladyhill?’ Carefully, Julia said, ‘Yes. She’s not coming back. She’s chosen to go and live with Alexander and Clare.’
Mattie’s eyes opened wide now, and she sat up. ‘Bloody hell, Julia. I’m sorry.’
It was hard to talk about it without talking about Alexander. Mattie knew about Clare, of course, but only in the most general way. Now she asked directly, ‘What’s she like?’ Julia could have opened up, then. She might have told Mattie that she felt alone, with no sense of direction or purpose. But Mattie looked so radiant that she couldn’t expose her own desolation. Afterwards she regretted the weakness.
‘She’s my age, or a bit younger. Quite pretty, in an insipid way. A good committee woman. Sensible and responsible, not very clever.’
‘Gawd,’ Mattie said.
‘She’ll be good at looking after Lily’s school uniform, I suppose. And Alexander says that it will be safer for Lily to do her growing up at Ladyhill, anyway. No dope or acid in Ladyhill village, is there?’
‘More’s the pity,’ Mattie drawled. ‘Shh. Don’t let Mitch hear that. So what will you do, Julia?’
‘I thought I might sell the house. It’s too big for me, and it’s worth a shocking amount of money. Oh, don’t worry about Marilyn. I’ll fix her up with another flat, and she’s such a good nanny she could get a job anywhere.’
‘I wasn’t worrying about Marilyn. I don’t worry about Ricky, or Sam and Phil, either. Do you remember that night in the doorway, and the two of us huddled there in the dark worrying about what would happen to them? We should have been saving all our worrying for ourselves. And so should you, Julia.’
Julia smiled, but somehow in the Coppins garden even the memory of the Savoy doorway didn’t draw them close together again.
‘What about your business?’
Julia told her about Suki. Mattie put her head back and laughed. ‘I love the sound of the teapot, and the toilet ashtrays as well. I’ll take six of each.’
‘I think I’m going to take a break from it,’ Julia said abruptly.
Mattie stared. ‘And do what?’
‘I don’t know. Felix asked me not long ago if I felt too old for Garlic & Sapphires. What I do feel is tired. I’m tired of myself, most of all.’
‘That doesn’t sound like you.’
They looked at each other, separated by sun-warmed stones.
‘No,’ Julia said quietly. ‘I think it’s time I wasn’t like myself any more.’
Mattie sat up, wrapping her arms round her knees. �
��Are we still friends?’ she asked.
With the big house looming above her, and the suburban scents of mown grass and roses thickening the air, Julia said, ‘Of course we are,’ and the reassurance denied itself. Mitch came out again, and drew up his deckchair to make a circle. They wouldn’t talk now. Julia knew that. A sense of her own smallness oppressed her.
Mattie and Mitch pressed her to stay to dinner, or at least to have some tea before driving back, but Julia said she must get home. Before she climbed into the car they both kissed her, and then they waved, standing shoulder to shoulder in their gravelled driveway, until she had gone.
Julia had no reason to hurry back to the house by the canal, but it was a relief to be alone again.
Perhaps I’m learning, she thought. Not to depend, after all. Bloody freedom takes a lot of earning. Or does it only come when you know that you don’t want it?
The exhausted irony seemed too stale to bear thinking about.
The first thing that Julia did the next morning was to put the house by the canal on the market. Within four days she had a buyer who offered a higher price than the agent’s recommendation. The speed disconcerted her briefly, but the momentum pushed her on. Very quickly, hardly even bothering to view it properly, Julia made an offer for a flat in Camden Town. It had two bedrooms; she would need somewhere for Lily’s visits. Julia described it to her on the telephone.
‘It sounds fine,’ Lily said.
‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes, Mum. I’m fine. Are you?’
‘Oh, yes. Busy, that’s all.’
Arranging to have her business taken care of proved to be no more difficult. Julia took the most senior of her shop managers out to lunch, and suggested to her that she might like to try her hand at managing the entire business for an unspecified period of time.
‘I’d like it very much,’ the woman said promptly. ‘I know I can do it.’
Julia nodded. She had deputised for her successfully in the past.
The manageress was looking curiously at her. ‘But why do you want me to do it?’