by Rosie Thomas
‘I’m just tired,’ Julia told her, unable to find a better answer.
After that there was a transition period during which she worked side by side with her deputy, handing Garlic & Sapphires over to her. Julia went through the motions of ordinary life, but she felt as if she was watching herself from some way off. She looked like a stiff little marionette.
Some things pierced her detachment. There was the day when Lily should have come back from Ladyhill. There was another day too, when she happened to pass the school that should have been Lily’s new one. The street outside it was flooded with girls in bottle-green uniforms. Julia sat in her car, watching them as they passed. Twice, she thought she saw Lily amongst them. She had to rub her eyes savagely so that she could see to drive on.
Compared with that, leaving the house by the canal seemed easy. She kept just enough of her furniture to furnish the new flat sparsely, and sold everything else. She almost sold the mutilated kelim, but in the end she rolled it up and took it with her. When she closed the door on the empty house for the last time, she walked away without looking back. She felt lighter as she did it.
She kept the white walls of her new home completely bare. It was easier to look at clean, empty spaces.
By the middle of December, at the height of the Christmas rush, Julia knew that the shops no longer needed her, and that she was only getting in the way of her replacement. At the end of one afternoon she cleared her desk, and said the briefest goodbyes. She walked out of her offices into the icy wind. A Salvation Army silver band was playing carols at the end of the street. Julia stopped to listen, and then emptied her purse into the collecting bag. She walked home to Camden Town, and the feeling of lightness grew stronger. Watching herself, Julia thought how small she looked as she threaded her way through the jostling shoppers.
Julia spent Christmas Day with Felix, at Eaton Square.
He had decorated the high drawing room with dark ivy and branches of blue spruce, frosted with silver, as George had always done. The tree was the same too, hung with silver and sparkling with white light. It made her see again how much Felix missed him.
They were deliberately light-hearted. They exchanged their small, well-chosen presents and drank champagne. They ate Felix’s wonderful Christmas dinner off the gold-rimmed Meissen china, and filled George’s crystal glasses with Chateau Latour. It was a long time since Julia had had so much to drink. She kicked off her shoes and sank back into the sofa cushions, holding out her brandy glass for a refill.
‘Perhaps we should get married, Felix. D’you think we’d make each other happy?’ Julia laughed, but she meant it.
He came to sit beside her, lacing his fingers through hers. Julia rested her head against his shoulder but the movement made her spill her brandy.
‘Whoops.’
‘Would we make each other happy?’ he repeated. ‘I don’t think so. Not in the way that counts.’
She laughed at that, but then he put his hand up to stroke her hair, and the unexpected tenderness made the laughter dissolve into tears.
‘Oh dear. I’m sorry, Felix. I’m not crying because you don’t want to marry me.’
‘I know that.’
He gave her a silk handkerchief, too beautiful for Julia even to contemplate blowing her nose on it. She sniffed firmly instead. ‘I’m going back to Italy,’ she said. ‘For good, I think. I don’t really want to live here any more. And there doesn’t seem to be any point, without Lily.’
‘I’ll miss you very much,’ Felix told her.
They held on to each other tightly. After a few minutes, Julia fell asleep. Much later, when she woke up again, she found that Felix had covered her with a blanket. He used to look after her in just the same way, years ago, when she and Mattie collapsed after their sorties into Soho.
‘I can’t drink like I used to,’ she moaned, putting her hand to her head.
Felix was prim. ‘I’m relieved to hear it.’
Lily came for two weeks of the Christmas holidays.
She seemed to be delighted with the spare, compact Camden Town flat. ‘It’s like a ship,’ she announced. ‘Sailing over the street. My room’s like a cabin on a liner.’
Before she came, Julia was nervous. She didn’t have work to go to, any more, and she wondered how they would fill in their time together. She worried that they might not have enough to say to each other, that Lily might have edged even further away from her, even become like Clare.
But Lily was just the same. She unpacked, and scattered her own room and the living room with clothes and records, and seized the telephone to call her friends. Julia loved her for her ability to make easy what she herself had looked forward to with apprehension.
‘Still my daughter,’ Julia said.
Lily grinned up at her. ‘What did you expect, Mum?’
They enjoyed their time together. Looking back on it, Julia thought it was the happiest they had ever known. She took Lily shopping, and to the ballet, and to see Felix. They visited Marilyn in her new flat, and admired the newborn baby she was looking after. ‘You were exactly like that,’ Julia told Lily. ‘You’re much nicer now.’
Lily looked amazed, and pleased. ‘Am I really?’
Julia invited friends to the flat, and cooked meals for them. She thought she had forgotten how to cook. If Lily was surprised that none of them seemed to have visited Camden Town before, she kept her surprise to herself.
The times when they were on their own together, with no particular distractions, were the best of all. It was as if, without responsibilities, they were able to see each other more clearly. They talked to each other, and listened. Julia’s detachment left her. She was Lily’s mother, after all. There was simplicity in the bare fact. Perhaps she could use it as a foundation block.
Lily was good at listening. Julia explained why she had extricated herself from Garlic & Sapphires as well as selling the old house.
‘I don’t care enough about the business, just now.’ Lily nodded wisely. ‘It was a good thing to realise. I’ve cared about it too much. You told me that.’
‘Only because I was angry. I was always really proud about it when I was little. You had all those people working for you, and fabulous things in the shops. All the other mothers just made cakes.’
Julia thought, our perspectives change all the time. Where’s the truth? Where should I stow my guilt, now, and you your resentment? But she only said, ‘I never was any good at baking. And I’m glad the shops are off my hands for a while.’ She took a breath. ‘Lily, I want to ask you something. Are you happy at Ladyhill with Daddy and Clare?’
Lily stared levelly back at her. Julia remembered the old, wary look. ‘Yes, I am.’
‘Will you mind, then, if I go to live in Italy?’
‘To where you were before?’
‘Yes. To Montebellate.’
‘It’s a long way. I’ll miss you.’
Julia took her hand, It was small and warm, with dirty fingernails. She wanted to crush it against herself, but she made herself let go of it again.
‘You can come out there to me whenever you want. Or I’ll come home, any time you need me. I can be home in a day. But I do want to go.’
‘Were you happy there?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then you should go,’ Lily said. ‘I’ll be all right.’
‘I know you will.’
And so they arranged it between them. Julia let herself think of the palazzo with its iron-framed beds in the shade of the loggia, and the neglected gardens stepping down the side of the hill towards the sea.
At the end of Lily’s visit, gathering her courage, Julia took her back to Ladyhill. The house looked stark in its winter-bare setting as they approached it. Julia felt Lily’s warm breath on her face as she leaned forward, smiling at the sight of it.
Alexander and Clare were waiting for them.
They were very polite to each other, all of them. They drank a glass of sherry, then sat down to lunch like r
emote relatives gathered for some uncomfortable family ritual. Julia felt suddenly impatient with it all. She was anxious, now, to get on her way.
Clare was wearing riding clothes, with her hair pulled back in a pony-tail. Julia thought it made her look like a hamster. She longed for Mattie, and then remembered that Mattie was at Coppins with Mitch. After lunch, Clare announced that she would have to go. Julia imagined her pulling on her hard hat and trotting away. Clare shook her hand without looking at her.
Women as rivals, Julia thought, with a flicker of amusement. Even Mattie and me. Except I’m no one’s rival any longer. I’m non-combatant. The feeling of lightness came back to her, pleasurable now. She was cut loose, ready to float away. She caught sight of Alexander, watching her.
When Clare and Lily had gone, they went into the drawing room with their coffee. There was a pewter jug filled with wands of winter jasmine on the table in the window. Julia imagined Clare going out into the garden to cut them.
She told Alexander, ‘I’m going back to Italy.’
Alexander didn’t say anything. He put his cup down and stood looking out into the garden over the golden spikes of the jasmine. Then he turned round and came to Julia. He stood close to her, and she saw the indentations of fine wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, and the minute fading of fair hair into silver stubble at his cheekbones and over his ears. The collar points of his open-necked shirt were frayed.
Julia nodded, almost imperceptibly. The animosity had faded. Alexander put his hands on her shoulders, looking into her face. She met his eyes, and she felt the lightness that lifted her up also sharpening her sight. She knew that she was seeing Alexander clearly. And she knew that she still loved him. Anger and bitterness had been her own smokescreens. She hoped that she had learned enough, at last, not to let them obscure her sight any longer. There was that self-awareness, at least; an achievement of a kind. She had lost Alexander first to Ladyhill and then to Clare – not to Mattie, because of course Mattie had never really betrayed her, even though her own anger and jealousy had convinced her of it – but it occurred to Julia that she could finally accept her loss, so long as Alexander himself was happy.
‘Are we still friends?’ he asked her. The question was half ironic, because Alexander had always deflected the truth with irony. The echo of Mattie, unconscious, twisted the knot of it tighter in Julia.
Not less than friends, she thought. Not more than that, not now.
‘Of course.’
His arms came round her. His hand stroked her hair, holding her head against his shoulder, and she let it rest there. He held her differently from Felix.
With her eyes closed, without moving, she recited the instructions about how to reach her in Montebellate if Lily should need her. And then, when there was no reason to stay there any longer, she stepped back again.
‘Lily’s all right, you know,’ Alexander said.
‘Yes. Thank you. It will be good for her to come to Italy to see me,’ she added. ‘She’ll be able to learn the language.’ They smiled at each other, acknowledging their mutual pride in her.
I am her mother, and Alexander is her father. Simplicity in the bare fact.
Then, all over again, it was time for her to go. Alexander stood with his arm round Lily’s shoulders, then Lily ran forward to Julia. Julia held her, then let her go. The wrench was like a pain in her chest. She thought of her own mother and the vaguest intention crystallised, in that moment, into determination.
‘When do you leave?’ Alexander asked.
‘Almost straight away. I just have to go and see Betty about something.’
She was on her way again, turning away from the square face of Ladyhill. ‘Be happy, all of you,’ she ordered them.
‘See you soon,’ Lily called after her. ‘Bon voyage.’
Julia smiled as she turned the corner under the bare trees. Bon voyage. She must have read that in a book.
Alexander and Lily stood watching until the car was out of sight, then went back into the house under the stone arch.
‘Do you miss her?’ Lily asked abruptly.
‘I always miss her,’ Alexander answered. ‘I expect I always shall. There’s no one like your mother, Lily. No one at all.’
Vernon was in his usual chair, drawn up in front of the television. He smiled vaguely at Julia, then returned his attention to Top of the Pops. She wondered if he remembered who she was.
The only place for Betty and Julia to talk was in the kitchen. Julia sat at the blue Formica-topped table with the cup of tea that Betty had handed to her. Betty was wiping the draining board. Every worn surface gleamed.
‘Won’t you mind living with all those foreigners?’ Betty asked her.
‘I’ll be the foreigner,’ Julia said.
‘I’ll miss seeing our Lily.’
Julia felt guilty. They had only managed a brief visit to Fairmile Road during Lily’s holiday. But there was no resentment in Betty’s voice. She went on rhythmically wiping, looking out over the net half-curtain at the backs of the houses in the next road.
‘I’ll tell Alexander to bring her to see you as often as he can.’
‘It’s funny, for a man to be bringing up a young girl.’
‘He has Clare there with him.’
But Betty shook her head, as if she couldn’t be expected even to try to understand such oddity.
‘There’s something I want to ask you,’ Julia began. ‘I’ve wanted to for a long time. I want to try to find my mother.’
Betty didn’t turn round. Julia wasn’t even sure that she had heard, except that the wiping stopped. ‘Every time I part with Lily, I think about her,’ Julia went on, knowing what she must do, now that she had begun. ‘I wonder what she felt, when she gave me up. I try to imagine what she feels now. I told you that, didn’t I? I just want to know. I’ve felt the need of it ever since … ever since Lily went to live with her father. It isn’t that I don’t think of you as my proper mother. I do. I always will.’
She didn’t mention the adolescent dreams she had had, of tragedy and aristocracy, and Victorian family Christmases with one empty place kept in memory of a lost baby girl. Those were over, but the intense, visceral pull that she felt towards an unknown woman was not. It grew stronger every day.
Betty hadn’t moved. Julia got up and went to her, put her hand on her wrist. ‘Please,’ she said softly. ‘You must know something.’
Betty turned sharply and left the room. Julia waited, wondering what to do. From the next room Vernon’s programme blared out cacophonous music. Then she heard Betty coming back.
‘It’s too loud, Dad,’ she said. The din softened a little. Betty came back into the kitchen with a tin box like an old-fashioned deed box. Julia had never seen it before. It must have lived for years in the recesses of Betty’s cupboard, between the folded woollens or under the knickers and old-fashioned brassieres. Betty unlocked it, and handed her a piece of paper, neatly folded.
‘This is all there is. You came to us from the adoption agency when you were six weeks old. I told you that. We never knew your real mother. We didn’t want to, either. You were ours, from the day you were handed to us.’
Julia unfolded the thin sheet. It was a birth certificate. She had seen her own birth certificate, of course. It gave her date of birth and her name as Julia Smith, adopted daughter of Elizabeth and Vernon Smith. This certificate was for a child born on the same day as herself. Her name was Valerie Hall, and her mother’s name was given as Margaret Ann Hall. The space for the father’s details was left blank, and the registrar’s office was in Colchester, Essex.
‘We called you Julia,’ Betty said. ‘We thought Valerie was a bit … well, you know.’
Julia’s hands were shaking. The yellowed paper crinkled faintly as she held it. Valerie Hall was no one, but she had her mother’s name in front of her. Margaret Ann Hall, of Colchester, Essex. Or of Colchester thirty-three years ago.
Betty intercepted her thoughts. ‘It’s not very l
ikely that she’ll still be there. She might not even have come from there in the first place. Girls who got themselves into trouble in those days went to homes to have their babies. Quite often somewhere away from where they lived. Because of what people said.’
A dirty little baby. Had Margaret thought that?
‘It’s a common name,’ Julia said. How many Halls in the country? How many Margaret Anns who had given birth to an illegitimate daughter in a home in Colchester?
Very carefully, she folded up the certificate again. ‘May I keep it?’ she asked.
Betty nodded and picked up her cloth once more. Julia recognised that the chances of her ever finding Margaret Ann Hall were impossibly slim. But she had her name, at least. It was a link, and the pull inside her seemed to slacken a little.
She put the slip of paper into the innermost recesses of her handbag. She went to Betty at the sink and kissed her. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘It makes it more imaginable, just knowing this much.’
Her mother felt very thin and small. Julia was aware of the contrast of her own height, and the size and shape of her bones. They were so different. Was Margaret Hall tall and dark-haired too?
Julia stayed for sandwiches and tea in front of the television. Before she left, she tried to persuade Betty, ‘When I’ve found a proper house out there, will you and Vernon come for a holiday?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Betty said, without considering it. ‘I don’t think your dad would like it.’
A week later, Julia came back to the Palazzo Montebellate.
Another ramshackle Fiat taxi deposited her at the gates, and she walked through into the courtyard. It was cold, and there were no chairs or beds in the shelter of the arches, but it was still just the same.
Julia had written to the Madre Superiore, and Sister Mary of the Angels and all the others greeted her warmly, but without surprise. Julia thought that they would have been equally unsurprised if she had arrived unannounced. The sisters were too tranquil for surprise, and too busy for speculation.
She had told the Mother Superior that she would find her own house, if she could, in Montebellate. But they assured her gracefully that she was welcome to the old white room for as long as she needed it. Julia went up the hollowed stone steps and down the long corridor past the Holy Family in its lighted niche. Different children, but with the same wide eyes, sidled past her and then ran away.