Bad Girls Good Women

by Rosie Thomas

  Felix had liked the second drawing. He had kept it pinned to his wall over the mantelpiece. He found, oddly, that he couldn’t remember exactly when he had realised that it was there because he liked to look at Josh.

  Since the dark day at the end of April, he had often gone back to the folder and taken out the two drawings. But on this morning, in the oblique yellow light of the beginning of autumn, he went only as far as his desk between two of the high windows. He touched the folder with the tips of his fingers, then walked on through the quiet flat. He didn’t turn his head to look at George’s Lalique glass, or at the modern pictures, or any of the juxtaposition of old and new things. But he was still conscious of the continuity, and the changes.

  After William had come, the faintly old-maidish order of the place had disappeared. William made lively, healthy disarray. He left open books and magazines on the marble consoles, and he lay with his feet up on the pale silk sofas. He emptied the loose change out of his pockets and dumped it in the Lalique bowls, and left a trail of coffee cups and sketches and thrown-off shoes wherever he went.

  Felix went into the kitchen and made tea. Then he carried the tray through into the bedroom.

  William blinked at him, and yawned. Felix put the tray down beside the bed and opened the curtains to the slanting sunshine. William hauled himself upright and leaned back against the bedhead. He was always a heavy sleeper, and it took him a long time to wake up in the mornings. Felix took him tea, and William was always grateful. It was one of William’s most likeable traits that he demonstrated his gratitude for even the smallest things that were done for him. It made him an attractive companion. They had lived together for almost six months, and Felix was still discovering the extent of their pleasure in it.

  Felix poured the tea, and gave William his cup. He drank it quickly, with the open appetite that he brought to everything. Then he folded his hands behind his head. Thick, dark hair curled in his armpits and across his chest. Felix put his hand over William’s breastbone. He was very warm, and the sheets of muscle pulled smoothly under Felix’s fingers. They smiled candidly at each other.

  ‘What time do we have to be there?’ William asked.

  Felix’s face changed, turning sombre. ‘Eleven o’clock. I’d better go and have my shower.’

  When he came back, he was carrying one of his dark grey suits on its padded hanger.

  ‘It’s a celebration,’ William reminded him gently, ‘not a funeral.’

  ‘I know it’s not a funeral,’ Felix answered.

  Today was the day of Mattie’s memorial service. And tonight, at the Rocket Club there would be the party that she would have wanted. The shock and despair that they had felt at her funeral had faded enough to let them celebrate her.

  He hung the dark suit up again and took out a cream one. He tucked a blue silk handkerchief into the breast pocket, and put on a shirt in the same shade of blue. Beside him, William shrugged himself into his blue and white seersucker summer jacket.

  When they were ready, they went out across the square in their light, bright clothes. Felix’s white car was parked under the trees. They got into it together, and drove across London.

  The Actors’ Church in Covent Garden was already almost full.

  Felix and William hesitated for a moment when they came inside it, letting their eyes grow accustomed to the dimness after the sunlight, breathing in the churchy air. Then they walked down the nave to their places near the front.

  A moment later, Julia slipped into the seat next to Felix. She was wearing a little hat with a veil that reminded him, for some reason that he couldn’t quite place, of Jessie. They kissed each other, then Julia stretched her hand across to touch William’s in greeting. Her fingers and thin wrist were tanned from the Italian sun. Beyond Julia was Lily. Alexander followed her, smiling over their two heads at Felix.

  Felix was glad to see that Alexander was there.

  They bowed their heads, shuffled in their decorous line and folded their hands, inexperienced churchgoers except for Alexander who was used to the rituals of Ladyhill parish. Julia was thinking that Mattie would have giggled and whispered behind her service sheet, and that when she bent her head to bring it closer there would be the old scent of Coty and cigarettes. She closed her eyes, folding the memory of her within herself. The service took the form of readings from what were supposed to be some of Mattie’s favourite books. Ricky Banner, Chris Fredericks and Tony Drake read in turn, and a film producer who had been a frustrated long-term admirer of Mattie’s gave a short address.

  They sang the twenty-third psalm, and finally the hymn. ‘He Who Would Valiant Be’. The hymn had been Julia’s choice. She and Mattie had sung it at Blick Road together, two little girls nudging each other behind their hymn books.

  To be a pilgrim. As they sang, Julia was aware of the people all around her. She had seen John Douglas, and villainous old Francis Willoughby, Jimmy Proffitt and other faces that were familiar from films and the theatre. She remembered some of the women from Mattie’s feminist theatre group, and amongst the others she didn’t know were Lenny, and Doris and Ada, and one or two unplaceable middle-aged women who had once worked Monty’s strip club circuit alongside Mattie.

  They had all come here to remember Mattie. Except that there was no real memory of her here, in these tasteful, sanitised proceedings. Julia couldn’t remember Mattie ever having expressed admiration for the Shakespeare sonnet that Chris Fredericks read so movingly. All of this was to make this gathering of Mattie’s friends feel that they had done the right thing for her, only none of them had been able to do it at the right time. They had all loved Mattie. It was one of her special talents to command love, and yet in the end none of it had been enough for her.

  Painfully, Julia turned her head, trying to shift the weight of her guilt. Guilt was futile and destructive, Julia knew that after the summer that had just gone. But still she couldn’t escape the knowledge that of all these people Mattie had loved her best, and yet she hadn’t been there when she was needed.

  If she had gone to Coppins that night, instead of sleeping in Alexander’s arms.

  If. There was no comfort or validity in If.

  Standing in the crowded church, with their schoolgirls’ hymn rolling around her, Julia suffered her loss once more. Mattie was gone, and no amount of respectful celebration could bring even an echo of her back.

  They started on the last verse. People were thinking of cups of coffee, early drinks and lunch and the promise of the living day outside the church. Their voices rose cheerfully. Julia could hear Alexander’s firm, musician’s tenor and Lily’s soprano. On her other side Felix’s head was bent but William was singing with his chin well up, showing a well-bred public schoolboy’s familiarity with the words.

  And then, looking away in the opposite direction across the nave, to where a shaft of light struck through one of the windows, she saw Josh’s blond head.

  He was singing, isolated in the midst of a contingent from the agency that had used Mattie in its deodorant ads.

  Julia shook her head slightly, turned her eyes down to her service sheet, then lifted them to where she had last seen Josh. He was still there.

  After the first shock of surprise, Julia recognised the inevitability of it. It had always been Josh’s ability to appear and disappear with theatrical suddenness. It had hurt her, long ago.

  Josh had loved Mattie too, in his way. He had materialised here to celebrate what passed for her memory, along with everyone else. There was nothing particularly startling in that. But Julia felt her heart thumping unpleasantly.

  Lily glanced at her mother. Then she followed the direction of her gaze, across the nave. The memorial service was over. They knelt, with a rustling of paper and skirts, for the priest’s final blessing. Then, with the triumphal burst of an organ fugue dismissing them, they stood up and began to crowd into the aisle. There were greetings, and handshakes, and as they streamed out into the sunlight of the piazza there w
ere kisses and discreet ripples of laughter. They were like the congregation at a rather sombre wedding, suddenly released to the prospect of champagne and gossip. They felt alive, each one of them, straightening their shoulders and peering ahead into the brightness. Julia’s mourning for Mattie wasn’t complete, even after the summer she had spent alone at Montebellate with her memories of her. She guessed that the sense of loss would always stay with her. But now, coming out of the Actors’ Church in the press of Mattie’s friends and colleagues, Julia knew that she was alive too. Mattie and Mitch were dead, but her own choices and discoveries lay ahead of her.

  Julia smiled, uncertainly, her eyes stinging behind her veil.

  Someone stepped in front of her, isolating her from the crowd. She looked up at Josh. Julia lifted the wisp of net away from her face and he kissed her, small, light kisses on either side of her mouth.

  ‘What are you doing here, Josh?’

  His face was still the same, only there was more silver than gold about Josh now. She remembered just what it was about him that she had loved, and why it had been so helplessly.

  ‘I was in England. I knew that Mattie was dead, of course. I’m sorry.’ Formally, he offered his condolences to her and Julia nodded. ‘I saw the notice of the memorial in the paper. I wanted to be here. Harry Gilbert wanted to come too, you know. But he’s in hospital. He’s not very well. He saw all Mattie’s films, although I don’t think he ever told Joyce why. He even came to see her in the West End, once or twice.’

  Julia nodded again, absorbing the idea of Harry Gilbert’s making an icon out of Mattie. Nothing could seem odd or incongruous today.

  Josh said, ‘I didn’t know where to find you. I knew you would be here this morning.’

  She lifted her eyes to Josh’s. ‘Did you still want to find me, after everything?’

  ‘I did.’

  She remembered the loneliness that she had seen in the mountain cabin, the threads she had glimpsed of a life that hadn’t changed in twenty years. Josh didn’t change, or grow. But he had the same, compelling effect. Lightly, Julia rested her hand on his arm. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘Here’s Lily. Would you have guessed?’

  Lily delighted in her chameleon changes. Today her hair was a black, glossy cap. The hem of her raspberry-pink linen dress fell below her knees, and she was wearing a pair of her mother’s pearl studs in her ears, like any debutante.

  ‘I wouldn’t have guessed,’ Josh answered. ‘But now I see.’ He studied her candidly. He held out his hand, and Lily shook it. ‘You’re the aviator,’ she breathed, her eyes widening.

  ‘Your mother and Mattie called me that, long ago.’

  Your comic-book hero. Those were Alexander’s words.

  ‘Josh, here’s Felix. And this is Felix’s friend William Paget.’

  There was more handshaking, followed by the good-humoured greetings of friends who were silently conscious of their fortune in being here, and of the absences.

  Julia shielded her eyes with her hand. The day’s beaten brilliance seemed suddenly too bright for her.

  ‘And this is Alexander Bliss. Alexander, this is Josh Flood.’ Alexander saw a lean, suntanned man with an open, good-humoured expression. He looked pleasant, but Alexander would never have picked him out of a crowd as a comic-book hero. How odd it is, he thought, when legends finally take shape. Yet Julia had left him for this man, the wilful tenacity of her love for him had been hurtful and baffling. Once, Alexander might have wanted to hit him. Now he felt nothing but curiosity.

  Julia was watching them. He sensed her anxiety and it touched him. He loved her now, and he was almost sure of her. The appearance of Josh did no more than convince him that he must make certain of her, at once.

  He held out his hand. ‘Hello, Josh.’

  Josh took it in both of his, shook it warmly. ‘Alexander. Good to see you.’

  They stood, the six of them, in the wide space outside the church while the pigeons hopped and pecked between their feet. They talked lightly about the ceremony, but not about Mattie’s absence from it. And then the conversation faltered. They began to glance around them, wondering what it was proper to do next.

  Felix said, ‘Would it be a good idea if we all went back to have lunch at Eaton Square? It would be our own, private party before this evening.’

  Julia smiled at him. ‘Mattie would have liked to be with us.’

  ‘I know she would,’ Felix said softly. Julia knew that they were both remembering how Mattie had loved smoky rooms, refilled glasses, and the laughter and conspiracies of friendship.

  Alexander’s fingers touched Julia’s wrist.

  They drove back across London in their cars, and sat down amongst the pale cushions in Felix’s drawing room. William poured glasses of wine, and Julia lifted hers.

  ‘To Mattie,’ she said proudly.

  ‘To Mattie,’ they echoed her.

  They drank wine, and they talked, like any group of old friends. Josh and Alexander talked about skiing and Concorde. Julia and William talked about painting, and Felix described Paris to Lily. Lily was going to Paris in the autumn, to live for a year, to work and to learn French. At her insistence, Alexander had allowed her to leave school.

  Lily’s brightness shone and crackled in the muted elegance of the room. She laughed, and she made the rest of them laugh with her. Julia saw the flicker of Josh’s admiration from the moment that it kindled, and she also saw Alexander’s frank pride in his daughter.

  The angle of the sun declined further still. It struck through the windows in long, gilded bars and then the bars narrowed and disappeared altogether as the sun slid behind the roofs across the square. Soon it would be time for their little group to move on to the big party at the Rocket.

  Felix stood up and went over to his desk between the windows. He undid the ribbon that tied it, and opened the blue folder. He lifted a drawing in each hand and held them out, the one of Julia and Mattie to Julia, the other one to Josh.

  They took them. Felix said, ‘I’ve held on to these for a long time. I think I’d like you to take them now. As a different memorial.’

  Josh took his, then held it out for Lily to see. Her glance went from the face in the picture to the one in front of her.

  ‘A long time ago,’ Josh murmured. He smiled at Felix. ‘I’d like it, very much. I remember we were listening to Bill Haley.’

  Julia imagined the picture tacked up on the bare walls of the cabin in the mountains, or in the impersonal Vail apartment. She looked down at her own drawing. A few months ago she might have folded it, and put it lovingly in her marquetry box. But she was trying to live without her talisman now. Life was to be lived, its chances seized, and not to be propitiated as she had tried to do. She had thrown away Valerie Hall’s birth certificate because she had no need of it, and she had replaced the Rapunzel book in the palazzo library. Her engagement and wedding rings were still in the box. If she was right, if she was lucky, they could be taken out again.

  And then, because she had started to buy them once more, she could keep her strings of pearls and pairs of garish earrings in George’s marquetry box.

  She held the, picture out to Lily. ‘You take it, Lily,’ she said. ‘When Felix made that drawing, Mattie and I were just the age that you are now. We knew that we had everything to happen to us, but we still thought that we were such clever, bad girls.’

  ‘You became good women,’ Alexander said. ‘Both of you did.’

  They came together, all the old friends, in the white-painted cellar for Mattie’s party. Julia had searched them out, and tracing the networks of marriages and removals and remarriages made her feel at home again in London.

  Ricky brought a reformed version of The Dandelions, and a little crowd of fans followed them, They were closer to Lily’s age than to Mattie and Julia’s. Rozzie’s children were amongst them, and the Banner party was completed by Rozzie herself with Marilyn and Sam. Phil had got married and gone to live in Canada. Mattie hadn’t left a wil
l, but most of Mitch’s money and her own considerable estate had been divided between the five brothers and sisters. Marilyn put her arms around Julia. The waves of blonde hair were just like Mattie’s.

  ‘I’d give anything in the world to have her back again,’ Marilyn sobbed.

  ‘I know,’ Julia soothed her. ‘All of us would.’

  She looked around the crowded cellar. The noise of talk and laughter swelled as the drink began to flow. It was comforting, and an affirmation, to be here with Mattie’s friends, enjoying themselves as Mattie once would have done. My friends too, Julia thought, feeling the invisible threads of familiarity, common experience, draw her close to them all. She could see Ricky talking to a group of men who had once played trad jazz in this same cellar. With Mattie, she had tried to dance to it all night. She could see Thomas Tree with his wife, in a corner with Marilyn and her husband, and she could see the two boys, husbands and fathers now, who had driven Johnny Flowers to Ladyhill for a party to celebrate a new decade. One of them had had long sideburns, Julia remembered, and she had danced the conga with him. She could see Jimmy Proffitt lounging against a wall, arguing with Chris Fredericks. Jimmy had just published his autobiography, with the story of One More Day and Mattie’s great success in it. Julia had picked the book up in a bookshop, and turned the pages, looking at the photographs. There was one of Mattie, in the last scene of the play. Her face stared up from the page, peering across a great distance. Julia had put the book back on the glossy pile and turned slowly away.

  Julia saw Felix, sinuously moving through the crowded space. In the dim light, in his sweater, he looked hardly any older than when she had first seen him. He caught her hand in his.

  ‘A good party,’ Felix said. ‘Do you think Mattie would be happy?’

  ‘I know she would. Felix, do you remember the party we gave after Jessie’s funeral?’

  A sad day. Somehow, miraculously, this day wasn’t sad.

  ‘I remember,’ he answered.

  She saw the tilt of his head, his white teeth, and the flicker of candlelight emphasised the high planes and deep hollows of his face. Julia and Felix remembered what had happened afterwards. He lifted her hand and kissed it, then went on into the clamour of the party, looking for William.