by Rosie Thomas
Julia lifted her head. ‘I’m glad we came today,’ she whispered. ‘I’m glad to be here. It looks more beautiful than it ever did.’
‘Julia,’ he said abruptly, ‘we don’t have to stay here. If you don’t want to live at Ladyhill, I’ll sell it and we can find somewhere else. Wherever you would like.’
She took that, that went beyond generosity, to hoard for the future as if it was solid gold. ‘I want to stay at Ladyhill. If you will have me.’
Alexander drew her closer, his hand at the hollow of her back, holding her against him. ‘I’m getting an old man. I’m nearly fifty …’ Julia put her hand over his mouth, an impulsive gesture that made her seem almost a girl again. He took her wrist and drew it away. ‘… and if you don’t stay with me now, I don’t know what I can do.’
Very slowly, Julia let her head fall against his shoulder.
‘Are you afraid?’ he asked her again. She had been afraid of Ladyhill, even before the fire had devoured it and their love together. She wasn’t afraid any more, but she knew that he was asking her something else too, much more important now. He was asking her if she was afraid to try again, after all they had done to one another.
‘No,’ Julia told him. She felt the last, cold touch of fear, and the need to dispel it.
‘Are you afraid, Alexander?’
He smiled. ‘I love you,’ he told her.
‘I love you too.’
Her head was still against his shoulder. It was the greatest luxury she had ever known to let it rest there. Now that it was lifted, the weight of hoping seemed too heavy to bear. Looking back, the threads between them looked much too fragile to hold, too thin to draw them back together again. But they had held, and the drawing was done. Alexander lifted his hand and smoothed her hair.
The sundial shadow seemed to point away to the long border. The dead arms of the summer plants were tangled with bindweed, and spiders’ webs stretched between dry brown spikes that had once been flowers. Julia saw that there was work to be done, and the simplicity and satisfaction of it, turning with the seasons, filled her with pleasure. The earth was rich, and she enjoyed the fruits of it.
Alexander’s arms were still around her. ‘I never saw your Italian garden,’ he said.
‘It’s very different from this one. And it’s Tomaso’s garden now.’ Julia spoke of it fondly, without regret. ‘We could go to see it one day.’
‘One day,’ Alexander agreed. ‘Do you know what I would like now?’
Thinking that he was going to say, some breakfast, or, a cup of hot coffee, she smiled at him and asked, ‘What would you like?’
‘I’d like a son. For Ladyhill.’
Julia stood very still. Alexander’s hand moved to rest over her stomach, as gently as if there was already a son inside it. She thought, I’m not forty yet. It’s possible. She had believed that she was empty and dry, like the old leaves, but suddenly she understood that if she wanted it, she could be as rich as the earth itself.
‘A baby. Is that what you really want?’
‘I do.’
Julia laughed, amazed and delighted. She let the idea carry her. ‘Sir Felix Bliss,’ she murmured, joking.
Alexander went one better. ‘Sir Joshua Bliss. No, perhaps not. And I’m afraid that at least one of his names must be Percy.’
‘Sir Percy Alexander Bliss,’ Julia echoed. ‘And what if it’s a girl?’
‘You know that Lily has given me more happiness than almost anything else in my life. I can’t imagine loving any other child as much as I love Lily, but I know that other fathers succeed.’
Julia looked into his face. There were lines, and the corners of his eyelids had begun to droop, intensifying his sardonic air. His hair was grey at the temples, and thinning, but Alexander wasn’t an old man. She felt that he was still young, that they both were, and that she loved him unreservedly. She wanted to give him happiness, and to set the sadness of the years behind them. That was in her power. It had always been in her power, if only she had known it. The muted, English gardens would grow green again, and they would make the lovely, silent house alive once more.
If Alexander wanted a son to run through the rooms, and out under the trees, then she wanted the same with all her heart.
She looked beyond him, at the sweep of the garden and at the tall chimneys and pointed eaves of the house.
Ladyhill. Home.
‘Well,’ Julia said, composed in her delight. ‘Well. We’ll have to see what we can do, won’t we?’
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About the Author
Rosie Thomas is the author of a number of celebrated novels, including the bestselling The Kashmir Shawl. A keen adventurer, she has climbed in the Alps and the Himalayas, competed in the Peking to Paris car rally, trekked in the footsteps of Shackleton in South Georgia, and travelled in Ladakh and Kashmir. She lives in London.
Also by Rosie Thomas
Celebration
Follies
Sunrise
The White Dove
Strangers
Bad Girls, Good Women
A Woman of Our Times
All My Sins Remembered
Other People’s Marriages
A Simple Life
Every Woman Knows a Secret
Moon Island
White
The Potter’s House
If My Father Loved Me
Sun At Midnight
Iris and Ruby
Constance
Lovers and Newcomers
The Kashmir Shawl
The Illusionists
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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First published in the United Kingdom in 1988 by Michael Joseph
Copyright © Rosie Thomas 1988
Rosie Thomas asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is av
ailable from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Ebook Edition © APR 2014 ISBN: 9780007560561
Version: 2014-05-13
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