Bad Girls Good Women

by Rosie Thomas

  It was Felix who had decorated the restaurant for the party. There were candles in Chianti bottles, and travel posters set at angles on the walls. With just a few touches, he had brought the Rocket back for them. Everyone was finding their places now, sitting down at tables with checked cloths to eat chilli and French bread, a meal like the ones that Felix used to cook in the flat overlooking the square.

  In the crush Julia saw Lily sit down firmly next to Josh and, at the furthest point from where she stood herself, she saw Alexander.

  She had brought Alexander to the Rocket as a test. He had passed it as he had passed every other test, except for one, and that had required him to be Josh Flood. Julia flushed at the thought of it, and felt a great rush of love for Alexander.

  Feeling her eyes on him, he looked across at her. His mouth twisted, briefly and humorously, an acknowledgement and the most private greeting to her. The old, ironic Alexander, irony masking his tenderness.

  Yes, Julia thought. Yes, now, at last.

  All the way away from her he sat down, and she saw him incline his head to listen courteously to something that Rozzie Banner was telling him.

  Julia sat down too, very suddenly, at a table with The Dandelions and some of Lily’s friends and a jazz trumpeter. Or perhaps he was a saxophonist. The memory of Jessie’s stories made her smile, and suddenly Julia felt a warm bubble of happiness swelling up inside her. It pressed against her ribcage, making her breathless and causing her heart to knock in her throat. Julia swept up her glass and drank, toasting The Dandelions and Lily’s friends and the trumpeter-saxophonist. The cheap red wine curled her tongue, and the taste of it launched its own flotilla of memories.

  She wanted to drink, to laugh and to dance and to celebrate the years that had brought them all here, back to the Rocket again. To celebrate, because tonight was not a night to mourn.

  After they had finished eating, the tables were pushed back against the walls to make room for the dancing. Julia drank the wine, and danced, and as the wine and the heat and the candlelight worked on her she felt dreamy and yet abundantly alive. The dancers’ shadows flickered on the white walls. Watching them as she danced, seeing only the bold puppet shapes blacker than the cruel faint shadows of reality, Julia could have believed that they were all young again, that she was seventeen once more, that she was Lily’s age, after all.

  Julia was jiving with the trumpeter-saxophonist. It was a long time since she had danced at all, and much longer since she had tried to recall the intricate rhythms of twenty years ago. But the jazz player was a good dancer, although not as good as Alexander, and dreamily she matched her steps to his. He swung her out in a flamboyant twirl, and as she whirled, past the dancers, beside the kinder shadows on the white wall, Julia saw Lily. Tonight Lily was a punk princess again, but even the wilfulness of her self-presentation failed to disguise her beauty.

  She was standing right against the opposite wall, turned away from the dancers, so that Julia only saw her profile. She was looking up at Josh, and Josh was listening to her, smiling. Easy, fatal Josh, Julia remembered.

  The movements and the music slowed around Julia. The moment seemed to freeze, and stretch itself, as time lost its familiar dimensions. Lily and Josh were captured in Julia’s eyes under a white light, held in a black frame that shut out everyone else.

  Lily reached up and put one hand at the back of Josh’s neck. Julia saw him hesitate, neither drawing back nor reaching forward. Then Lily laughed. She tilted her face up, and drew his down so that their mouths met.

  Then her bare arm uncoiled and she stepped back again.

  It was the briefest of kisses, but there was no mistaking it. It told Julia how much Lily knew, and the mocking, confident ease of the kiss stirred a contraction of protective jealousy in Julia that was as fierce as a birth pang. She dropped the musician’s hand and stood still, staring at them. Josh put his hand to Lily’s cheek, turning her head to look into her eyes. Lily laughed again, teasing, mistress of herself. In that instant Julia was sure that it was Lily who led and Josh who stumbled, hopeful and bewildered.

  Then the picture shuddered in its frame and began to move again, faster, catching up with reality. The frame itself dissolved and the party recomposed itself, flowing around Lily and Josh and hiding them from Julia’s gaze.

  Someone’s arm came round her shoulders, half supporting her. She thought it was the jazz player and turned, startled. It was Alexander.

  ‘My dance, next, I think?’ It was the first time he had spoken to her since the beginning of the party. Helplessly Julia looked back, to the place where the shadows leapt against the wall. Lily and Josh had gone, swallowed up into the party’s heart. Alexander drew her closer, making her turn to him again. He looked into her face and she felt his scrutiny penetrate her, keen enough to peel the flesh from her bones. The trumpeter slid past them, leaving them to one another.

  ‘I don’t think we need to dance, do we?’ Alexander murmured. ‘We don’t need to make any beginnings, you and I. Let’s go, now. Come on, come with me.’

  Julia turned her head one more time. ‘Lily,’ she whispered. ‘I saw Lily …’

  ‘Forget about Lily now,’ Alexander ordered her. ‘She is her own self.’

  His grip on her wasn’t gentle any longer. It hurt, and she almost broke away from him. She was going to say, I can’t let Lily … but the words stopped in her mouth, and Alexander saw that they did.

  ‘Yes, you can,’ he told her. ‘You must.’

  Julia stared at him, amazed, and he laughed at her.

  ‘Julia. How many years, and you haven’t learned?’

  She thought of Betty and Vernon, and Margaret Hall and China and Jessie. Parents and children.

  ‘Not with Josh,’ she begged.

  Alexander wouldn’t let her turn away, not even look away from him. ‘Are you afraid?’ he asked. ‘Or are you jealous?’

  The noise of the party seemed a long way off, even though it was all around them. Julia felt the importance of this one moment, as if all the years were being called to account. It frightened her, but it also made her brave.’ I’m not jealous. I’ve known for a long time that I don’t want anyone but you.’

  ‘Then are you afraid?’

  For Lily? But Lily wouldn’t make her mother’s mistakes. Recognising that, admiring it, Julia knew that she, in her turn, must not fail her daughter as Betty had done. She took a breath, tasting the forgotten, familiar smoke of crowded rooms.

  ‘No, I’m not afraid either.’

  Not for Lily. Not even, she realised in wonderment, for Lily with Josh. It was Lily who had the strength, after all. She must use it for herself.

  ‘Then let her be.’

  Julia looked round once more. There were dancers, shadows flickering on the white walls, no sign of her daughter, or of Josh. It was a party, the kind of party that Mattie would have loved, and Lily was somewhere in the thick of it. Suddenly, Julia smiled.

  ‘Come with me,’ Alexander repeated.

  Without turning back again Julia followed him up the narrow basement stairs.

  Outside, in the street, the air was cold. Julia stumbled and Alexander held on to her. The passing traffic dipped and hummed, at a distance.

  ‘I think I must be a bit drunk.’ Oh, Mattie.

  ‘Let’s walk a little way.’

  Arm in arm, leaning inwards as if there was a much stronger wind blowing, Julia and Alexander made their way through Soho. Over twenty years the continental grocers frequented by Felix, and the glovemakers and musical instrument shops had mostly disappeared, replaced by brasher establishments, but to Julia it seemed just the same place. The Showbox was still open, offering Girls, Girls, Girls. It was hard to believe that if they went inside they wouldn’t find Miss Matilda snapping her cane.

  They held tighter to one another and walked on, leaving Soho behind them. With no thought of where they were going, they came at last to the Strand. The north entrance of the Savoy filled its cul-de-sac, g
littering with revolving lights and polished metal. Julia and Alexander turned aside and plunged into the dark, steep alleyway that led down to the river.

  The light from the single old-fashioned street lamp was dimmed by the mist off the river, and their footsteps were loud in the close quietness.

  Opposite the doorway Julia stopped. The floor of the recess was lined with flattened cardboard, and a bundle wrapped in a sack was pushed into one corner. The space was unoccupied but it was claimed, and before long one of the old men who crouched under the bridges along the Embankment would shuffle back to his refuge for the night. Overhead, the grille in the wall puffed out the smell of stale food. Julia closed her eyes, trying to see herself and Mattie curled up together in the dingy space. Lying there, she had glimpsed Betty’s fear of the disorderly unknown, and made her own naive promises to herself. With a beat inside her that seemed almost indecently triumphant Julia realised that, more or less, she had kept those promises. What had Mattie’s promises been? Already, with sad finality, Mattie seemed to have melted away. There would be no answer now.

  ‘We were so desperate to be free,’ Julia said. ‘And so dismayed to find that it could mean sleeping in a doorway.’

  ‘You told me about it,’ Alexander answered. ‘The first time we met. Do you remember?’

  ‘I exaggerated everything.’

  They had walked down to the river then, too, and looked over the Embankment wall into the olive-green water.

  Julia glanced again at the doorway, at the shreds of a nest that announced someone’s claim on it. Her own claims on a wider world seemed as ephemeral, as easily swept away, and of equal importance. No more, no less. The chances of happiness remained with her, intact as they had been on the night when she and Mattie had sheltered here. That was her good fortune. Mattie’s was gone.

  ‘I miss her so much. I wish she would come back,’ Julia said.

  ‘Mattie’s dead. She won’t come back. Do you think I don’t miss her too?’

  Abruptly, Julia turned to face Alexander. ‘I know you do. I’m sorry, I was selfish. It was selfish to shut myself in at Coppins after she died, and then to run off back to Italy. I’m here now, if it isn’t too late. If you want me. I’m afraid to ask, Alexander, but I must, mustn’t I?’

  In the dim light, Julia tried to read his face. But he took her arm, leading her away. ‘I don’t want to talk here.’

  They walked on, out of the alleyway and up some stone steps, to a point overlooking the river. It smelt, as always at low tide, of alluvial mud thatched with decaying weed. Side by side, they leaned on the cold, smooth stone wall and looked over into the Thames. The depths beneath them seemed very black, but in midstream and on the opposite side the surface was braceleted with chains of reflected light, like a silent fairground. And then a riverboat, itself a layer cake of lights, ploughed through and scattered the reflections as it carried a noisy party on up the river towards Kew.

  Alexander said, ‘I was wrong too, years ago.’ It was time to make certain of her now. Josh Flood had made him aware of that. ‘I tried to tell you before, do you remember? The night we were together, the night Mattie died.’

  ‘There was no need,’ Julia murmured. ‘It was enough to find each other, after all.’

  ‘I was wrong at Ladyhill, before the fire, as well as afterwards. I shouldn’t have expected you to adopt my life in place of your own.’

  Julia listened intently to the calling to account. If their debts couldn’t be settled now, beside the dark river, then truly she and Alexander had nowhere to go on to together.

  ‘I shouldn’t have been disappointed in you because you didn’t want to. And I might justifiably have been angry, but I shouldn’t have been so amazed when you left me for Joshua Flood. Felix understood you better than I did.’

  Julia nodded, surprised. ‘Felix did, and Mattie didn’t. Not then.’

  ‘Mattie wanted what you rejected. I don’t mean me, although Mattie and I loved each other in a way. She wanted a house, and a family. A place to belong.’

  Alexander and Mattie, sitting with Lily under the apple trees in the Ladyhill orchard. Mattie’s gold sandal, discarded, and her underclothes dropped on the bedroom chair. Mattie had found what she wanted, with Mitch at Coppins, and then she had lost it all. It was cruel, but there was no place for guilt amongst those who were left. Julia lifted her head. ‘Wait,’ Alexander said. ‘Something else. I shouldn’t have expected you to marry a house. Or to live with my passion for rebuilding it. I spent years, after you’d gone, trying to make love to roof beams and oak boards and plaster mouldings. Then I tried to find a substitute for you. I worked quite hard at it, Lily knows that. But I couldn’t replace you. Least of all with Ladyhill.’

  Alexander took Julia in his arms. He looked at each of her features in turn, as if he wanted to relearn them. The generosity of his admission, and the importance of it, caught Julia’s breath in her throat. She held out her own painful contribution, her breathlessness chopping the words.

  ‘I was helpless, as far as Josh was concerned. I needn’t have been, but I half wanted it. I convinced myself that I would follow him anywhere, if he would only let me. I was in love with the very idea of my infatuation. It was only quite lately that I found I could see Josh clearly enough. I saw, and I came running back to Ladyhill. That’s when I found Mattie there with you.’

  ‘Yes. And now it’s Lily’s turn to see, do you think?’ The old, ironic twist when Alexander smiled. He had seen that kiss in the Rocket too, of course.

  ‘If I’m afraid for anyone, it’s Josh. I don’t think Lily’s heart will break.’

  ‘Neither do I.’

  They laughed, and just as quickly as it had come the laughter died away. Alexander’s mouth was close to hers but she held him away, as long as she could.

  ‘Listen. I did everything wrong. I know I did. To you, and to Lily. I was jealous of Ladyhill and Lily, even of China. And then after the fire, when I’d ruined it all and run away, I had a feast of guilt.’ She tried again to read his expression, but his face was too close to hers. She found herself laughing again. She didn’t know how appropriate her happiness was, but she couldn’t suppress it. ‘Guilt and jealousy,’ she managed to murmur. ‘Two essentials I’m trying to live without.’

  ‘That’s good.’ Their mouths did find each other then, and another riverboat carried its noisy cargo past them unnoticed.

  Julia and Alexander knew that they had simplified their confessions, that the years couldn’t be scraped away so easily and that there were layers, accretions of misunderstanding and failure and obstinacy that they would have to penetrate. But they knew also that there was still time. Miraculously, there was still time left to them.

  Alexander put his hands up to her face, holding her so that he could fix his eyes on hers. ‘Will you come back to Ladyhill?’

  He remembered Josh outside the Actors’ Church. It seemed much longer ago than only this morning. He had known then that he must make certain of her.

  Urgently, he said, ‘Come with me now. We can drive down, and be there when the sun comes up.’

  Julia was going to say again, ‘But Lily …’ Lily was still at the Rocket, with Josh. Alexander had said She’s her own self. Instead of the protest she said simply, ‘Yes, I’ll come with you. I’d like to see Ladyhill in the dawn.’

  A river patrol boat swept past, the beam from its searchlight slicing a path ahead of it over the black ripples. On either side of them the traffic rolled over the bridges, the bright red of the buses and the orange of the street lights incongruous over the water’s impenetrable depths. Julia and Alexander didn’t look back. They walked quickly, retracing their steps, back to where Alexander’s dusty car was waiting.

  Light came before the sun. Julia watched the sky as Alexander drove, and she saw the dark turning to washy grey in the east. The shadows rolled away behind them as they drove westwards. The light strengthened, and colour crept back into the fields. The trees were raggedly y
ellow and brown, spiky branches showing, and there were drifts of russet leaves over the grass verges. Beyond the hedges the bare fields were winter-furrowed. Julia wound down her window. There was a frosty savour in the air that she had never encountered in Italy. She watched the countryside, thinking that it was more beautiful now with the bones showing than it ever was in its summer opulence.

  They reached the old signpost. Ladyhill, 3. The sun was up behind them, and the tops of the hedges were spangled with sudden brightness. Alexander put his hand over Julia’s. They drove between the Ladyhill stone gateposts and along the curve of the drive. The trees laced overhead were losing their leaves, and the tunnel they formed seemed no longer threatening. When they turned the corner Julia faced the house. It looked mild and unemphatic in its fold of land, soft pink and grey against grey-green.

  She kept her eyes fixed watchfully on it as they came closer, but she could see nothing more. It was a manor house of English brick and stone, unpretentious but beautifully proportioned, carefully preserved and comfortable in its wide gardens, neither threatening nor demanding anything more than a due acknowledgement of its history.

  There was no flicker of flame behind the windows, no taint of smoke.

  The fire had been put out and Julia knew that the guilt and fear that had blazed as damagingly for much longer had also been extinguished. Johnny Flowers was dead, but Sandy had divorced and remarried and her children were growing up. Mattie and Mitch were dead, but Julia was alive, and Alexander and Felix and Josh, and Lily was growing up. Ladyhill was just a house, a particularly beautiful house, and it was only a home if they could make it one.

  Alexander stopped the car. They climbed out, stiff with the long drive and blinking in the strengthening light. Julia looked at the yew trees enclosed in the courtyard, and at the stone portico with its carved motto, Aeternitas. They made no move to go inside. Instead they walked away, across the wet grass and into the garden. In the sunken centre they came to the sundial, and they stood looking down at the long shadow cast by the uplifted metal finger.