Bad Girls Good Women (100 page)

When she looked up she saw that Alexander was still watching her. There was the softness of affection around his mouth and eyes.

Julia understood that Alexander was there for her.

The revelation changed the colours and the contours of everything. It filled the bustling, crowded restaurant with light and gilded the heads of the Kensington shoppers, and it made Lily and Alexander look as beautiful and serene as Olympians.

Julia blushed. She looked away again, suddenly as shy as a girl.

‘Ahem,’ Lily said, out of mischief, seeing everything. ‘Can I have zabaglione for pudding? Does anyone care?’

‘Not a jot,’ Alexander answered. ‘Today you may have twenty zabagliones.’

Afterwards, when Lily was already sitting in the car ready for the drive back to Ladyhill, Alexander and Julia turned to face each other. It was almost the end of the afternoon and office workers were beginning to stream past them towards the tube station.

‘There have been so many times like this,’ Julia offered him. ‘Too many to count. They always did make me sad.’

‘There needn’t be any more. Don’t be sad.’

She looked straight at him, smiling. ‘I know. I won’t be.’

Alexander leaned forward and touched the corner of her mouth with his own. Then he got into the car and drove away with Lily. This time Julia knew where he was going, and she knew that he would come back. They had grown up, and they knew one another, and there was no need to hurry or to be afraid.

Julia stayed on in Felix’s flat.

She wrote to the Mother Superior and explained that she would stay in England for a little longer; she didn’t know yet how long exactly. With the letter she enclosed a lengthy list of instructions and advice for Tomaso. But she finished up by writing, ‘You don’t really need me to tell you any of this, do you? We learned it together, and you’re ready to do it yourself. Good luck, Tomaso.’

She also telephoned Nicolo Galli. His voice sounded thin and brittle, but she heard him chuckle. ‘I miss you, Julia. But you are doing what is right. I am glad of it.’

‘I think I am right. I’m happy to be here. Nicolo?’

‘What is it?’

‘I miss you too.’

Three or four more times, Julia went down to Coppins. Each time Mattie tried to fend her off, greeting her with blank silences or with angry outbursts, and then retreating into incoherence as that day’s whisky took hold.

Julia could do little more than sit with her, or try to persuade her to eat, and Mattie objected even to that. She insisted that Julia didn’t really want to be there, that she was only doing it out of a sense of duty, and that she herself didn’t need her.

‘I’m all right on my own. I need to be by myself, don’t you understand? I’m no good for anyone,’ Mattie cried. Her face was blotched and swollen.

‘You don’t need to be anything for me,’ Julia told her. ‘You don’t believe it will get better, Mattie, but I know it will. I’ll stay with you until it does. Won’t you let me come and live here, so that I can look after you?’

‘No,’ Mattie whispered. ‘No, Julia, please.’

Julia ached for her, wishing that she could take on some of her suffering. She tried to see beyond the vehemence of Mattie’s rejections, accepting the rebuffs with what she hoped was some of the sisters’ calm.

On one of the days, Mattie wouldn’t even open the door to her. Either the housekeeper was out, or Mattie had persuaded her that she didn’t want to see Julia. Julia waited on the gravel path for a long time, imagining Mattie inside the dark house, pierced with pain for what she was enduring. At last she stepped back and called up to the dead windows, ‘Mat, I’m here if you want me. It doesn’t matter if you don’t, I just want you to know that I am. I’ll be back tomorrow. And if you won’t let me in then, I’ll keep on coming back until you do.’

The next day, Mattie opened the door at once. Julia could only guess at how much she had already had to drink.

‘I’m sorry,’ Mattie whispered. ‘I’m hurting so much I don’t know what I’m doing.’

Julia put her arms around her. ‘I know. Let me help, Mattie.’

Mattie shook her head wearily. ‘You can’t.’ But that day she let Julia make them some food, and sat down with her in the kitchen to eat it. They talked about Felix and William, and Julia saw a ghost of the old Mattie. She left her that evening with a lighter heart.

To fill in the time when she couldn’t be with Mattie, Julia went shopping. She had forgotten how to buy things, even if she had had the money, but she enjoyed looking in the shop windows. Everything seemed very new, and bright and shiny. She also had dinner at Eaton Square with Felix and William, and she admired William’s paintings that hung on the freshly dragged walls in place of the old, important landscapes and sombre portraits. She liked William, and guessed that he was very good for Felix. She saw other old friends too, and remembered some of the London she had loved in the old days. Her fear of it receded, and she began to feel at home again.

She telephoned Mattie every morning, and every evening, whether they had seen each other that day or not.

‘I’m all right,’ Mattie would lie. ‘I have to work my own way through it.’

‘Call me if you need me,’ Julia said on the Monday morning. She didn’t say that she was going to meet Margaret Rennyshaw, nor did she mention Alexander. There were things she felt she couldn’t say to Mattie. Not now, not yet, until she was better.

Julia was getting ready to leave for the station. This time she would go to Ilford by train. She didn’t want to take Felix’s car down to Denebank again. But even before she saw his shadow blurred by the rippled glass in the door, even before the bell rang, Julia had half guessed that Alexander would come.

She opened the door to him. He was wearing corduroys and a sweater that was unravelling at the shoulder seam, as if he had just walked in from the garden at Ladyhill. He was completely familiar, and welcome to her, and she could only stand and smile at him.

‘I thought that if you were going to meet your mother, you might like me to come with you.’

‘I would like it,’ Julia said. ‘I’d like it very much.’

On the way she told him about the short, unromantic search for Margaret Ann Hall that Lily had called their treasure hunt. She described Denebank to him, so that he wouldn’t be shocked when they reached it.

‘Do you mind?’ Alexander asked, looking ahead at the traffic and the unlovely shopfronts of the outer urban high streets.

Julia thought. ‘I mind for her, if I find that she isn’t happy. How can I mind for myself?’

He put his hand over hers, covering it where it lay in her lap, without looking at her. Julia glanced down and saw the glazed, discoloured skin of the old scars. She was overtaken by a sudden longing to make him happy, in compensation, and to wipe out all the sadness of the years.

They passed the end of Denebank and Alexander stopped the car further away, in another street. Alexander drove an unremarkable, mud-splashed estate car, but Julia felt his tact.

‘I’ll wait for you,’ he promised.

Julia got out and slowly retraced the way to Denebank. She felt conspicuous as she turned into her mother’s street, as conspicuous as she had done in Felix’s car and without the polished shelter of it. The two or three people that she passed looked blankly at her. It seemed a long way to number sixty. When she reached it she went up the path, past the broken-down metal fence, and knocked on the door. She had only a moment to stare at the splitting wood under the flakes of old paint before it opened. Margaret Rennyshaw must have been waiting in the hallway.

They looked at each other, greedy, defensive, eager and appraising all at once. No one seeing them together would have guessed at their relationship, but Julia and Margaret knew immediately that there was no mistake. Julia was Margaret’s daughter, as incontrovertibly as Lily was her own.

‘You’d best come in,’ Margaret said in her husky voice. ‘We don’t want the whole street knowing our business, do we?’

Julia followed her in and the door closed behind her.

Beyond the hallway was a front room, filled up with a three-piece suite in black leatherette with red piping and a big television set. On a low coffee table with upcurved ends two cups were laid out with chocolate biscuits arranged in a fan-shape on a chrome dish.

In this enclosed space they could look at each other. Julia saw dark hair like her own, only seamed with grey. She saw a strong face with deep lines running from nose to mouth, dark eyes that had begun to fade with age, a body that was indeterminately shaped under a colourless jumper and skirt. She had imagined herself comparing their features, cataloguing the precious similarities that would prove their relationship, finding triumphantly that their hands or their mouths were the exact same shape. She was dismayed, now, to find that there was no need to do so. Their features were different, but the underlying physical resemblance was clear. Her mother looked an older, wearier version of herself, or as she might have become already if she had been different, less lucky.

Until the last moment, Julia thought with a wry sadness, she had clung to the romantic dreams. It was only now that the rosy clouds finally drifted away.

‘Let’s get a look at you,’ Margaret said. And after a moment, ‘You look fine.’

‘And you too,’ Julia answered. ‘So do you.’

‘Sit down, then,’ Margaret ordered. ‘I’ll make a cup of coffee.’ She was formal, as if Julia had come from some authority to inspect the life that she shared with Mr Davis. She went out into the kitchen, leaving Julia to look around her, and came back very quickly. Julia sat with her cup and saucer balanced on her lap. A chocolate biscuit that she didn’t want was thick and sticky in her mouth.

‘I’m sorry about the state of the place,’ Margaret began. Julia glanced around her, noticing for the first time that the embossed wallpaper was stained, and ripped away in places. The orange and brown patterned carpet was threadbare, and from the worn patches in it it appeared that it had come from another, bigger room. ‘Only Eddie’s had some money problems over the years. We haven’t got ourselves straight, yet.’

Julia felt the exhaustion and the hopelessness of the street outside creeping in, and lying heavy in her mother’s house.

‘It’s a nice room,’ she lied. Margaret didn’t waste her energy in contradiction. She lit a cigarette, inhaled, then tapped the non-existent ash in her saucer. She looked at Julia under lowered eyelids through the smoke. Then she smiled. The smile made her seem warmer, and suddenly familiar, then Julia realised that it was because it was like her own. There would be other similarities that would catch at her too. This was what it meant. This was what she had come looking for. A confirmation of where and what she had sprung from.

The sense of circularity came back to her.

‘Funny, isn’t it?’ Margaret said slowly. ‘We don’t know each other. Don’t know anything. Where do you start, after you’ve said you’re sorry?’

Julia moved closer to her. The damp palms of her hands stuck to the black sofa.

‘Don’t be sorry. Don’t let either of us be sorry, right from now.’

Margaret nodded. ‘But I was sorry, then. Didn’t you think I was? I didn’t want to let you go. I cried, more than I’ve ever cried for anything since. They left you with me for a day after you were born. I held you, and looked at you. Then they came and took you away. I could have stopped them, couldn’t I? I often thought, after, that I could have.’

‘No,’ Julia said firmly. You were too young.’

Margaret looked older than her real age now. Julia felt sad that she had never known her when she was still young, still hopeful. There was a small, lonely silence.

‘Tell me about yourself,’ Margaret said. ‘Go on. Everything, all about it.’

Julia did her best. But as she talked, she knew that she wasn’t doing it right. A divorcee, with one daughter who lived in the country with her father, wasn’t what Margaret wanted. Nor did she much want to hear about a remote job in Italy, with sick people and nuns and an unimaginable garden. Margaret sat listening, and smoking, without comment. Julia saw her glance at her earth-ingrained fingers, and her plain, faintly dated clothes. She seemed not very interested in Lily, or in Julia’s present life.
If I had still owned Garlic & Sapphires
, Julia thought,
it would have been quite different
.

‘I used to have a business, a chain of shops. But I sold them. I’ve been much happier since then.’

‘Hmm. I suppose that’s the main thing. What about your nice car?’

‘I haven’t got a car. I borrowed that one, from a friend.’ If she had still had the scarlet Vitesse, even, it would have helped. She tried to tell her some more about Montebellate, and the triumph of her gardens.

‘Well,’ Margaret said at last. ‘You’ve had the advantages, haven’t you?’

Have I?
Julia thought.
And wasted them?
Her mother looked baffled, and disappointed. Julia almost told her that she had once been Lady Bliss, mistress of Ladyhill. Margaret would have been proud of that, as Betty had briefly been. She might be impressed too if she talked about Mattie. But Julia didn’t want to bring Mattie back here, to the estate with her, even in words.

‘It’s your turn,’ she said at last. ‘Tell me about you, now.’

Margaret turned down the corners of her mouth, gestured around the room. ‘You can see for yourself. Haven’t had much luck, have I?’

Julia felt suddenly, hotly impatient with her. ‘Why not? Tell me what got you here. Tell me about my father. Your other children.’

Her flash of irritation seemed, oddly, to enliven Margaret. She tossed her head with a touch of coquetry and lit another cigarette. ‘Your father, now. He was clever. Been to college. He was a teacher. Keen on me, he was.’ She chuckled with pleasure at the memory. ‘Dirty devil.’

Margaret must have been attractive once, Julia saw. Not pretty, any more than she was herself. But magnetic. Perhaps even beautiful. Margaret wouldn’t ever have been short of a man to keep her company, Julia guessed.

‘Why didn’t he help you?’

Margaret glanced at her. ‘Why do you think? He was married, wasn’t he?’