Bad Girls Good Women (59 page)

When he had gone Julia lowered Lily on to a spindly scarlet stool. Then she felt her way around the immaculate kitchen, between the bottles of champagne, finding a saucepan and a pint of milk and a clean tea towel. With the tea towel she wiped the train dirt and the tears off Lily’s cheeks and kissed her.

‘There,’ she said. ‘We’ll be all right. Because we’ve got friends, you see. We’re lucky. Very, very lucky.’

When Felix and the maid came back, simultaneously, they found Julia sipping a mug of hot milk and Lily fast asleep with her head against her mother’s shoulder.

‘She was so tired,’ Julia said softly, ‘she couldn’t even stay awake long enough to drink her milk.’

Seventeen

It was even darker inside the flat than at the bottom of the basement stairwell outside. The three of them bumped against Lily’s pushchair and peered ahead into the gloom.

‘There must be a light switch somewhere,’ Felix muttered. A second later he found it, and they blinked in the light of the bare overhead bulb.

‘Power’s still on, that’s good,’ Felix said.

They were in a small, irregularly shaped hallway with four closed doors leading off it. The walls were painted an uncompromising shade of dark, shiny green. Julia marched forward and threw the doors open, one after another. They revealed a medium-sized room and a smaller one, both with grime-coated windows looking into the well of the building. They were empty, except for some crumpled newspapers on the floor. On the other side there was a bathroom with an Ascot water heater and a deep, old-fashioned bath stained blue-green in runnels beneath the brass taps. And next to the bathroom was a surprisingly large, almost square room with two windows on to the front basement area. The street railings were visible through the top half, and the legs and feet of passers-by beyond the railings. The room was as empty as the others but it was dominated by a Thirties deco fireplace in tile and polished metal.

Through another door at the opposite side of the room Julia discovered a cupboard of a kitchen.

She turned in the kitchen doorway and smiled at Felix and Mattie who were hovering on either side of the monstrous fireplace. ‘It’s perfect,’ she said. ‘We’ll take it, of course. What do you think, Lily?’

Lily scrambled out of her pushchair and wiped her hands along the tiled hearth. She held them up again, the palms black.

‘Dirty,’ she announced superfluously.

‘That doesn’t matter,’ Julia told her. ‘I can soon clean it up, can’t I? I must start doing things for myself, now. If Lily and I are going to survive I must, mustn’t I? This seems a good place to start. Here and now.’ Her gesture took in the room, and the hallway beyond it, and the other rooms under their layers of dust.

The necessity not only to survive, but to do so alone, without Alexander, without even Mattie and Felix, had become Julia’s obsession. She had brought Lily here, after the confusion of the days in Eaton Square and then Mattie’s Bloomsbury flat, and she determined that somehow, whatever it cost, she would make a proper life for her. She looked down at Lily. She was rolling her pushchair to and fro, crooning to her doll ensconced in her own place. Within herself, Julia didn’t doubt that they could, and would, survive. But she wanted more than that bare achievement. She wanted success, and part of that was to make Lily as happy and comfortable as she would have been if she had stayed at Ladyhill.

It was important that Alexander should recognise that she could do it.

Julia wanted to make a success of the future for herself and Lily more fervently than she had ever coveted the old freedom. She wanted it so much that she shivered, and her teeth chattered.

‘C’mon, let’s go home now. We can come back at the weekend with the floorcloths and Vim.’

‘Mattie, you don’t have to spend your days off doing the scrubbing here. We can move into one room easily enough, and I’ll clean up bit by bit.’

Mattie turned round, squinting at Julia through the cigarette smoke. ‘Don’t be so bloody stupid,’ she said. It was an order that didn’t allow contradiction.

Outside, in the raw January chill that was being whipped by a wind laden with city grit, Julia buckled Lily back into her pushchair and prepared to walk. The new flat, home, she reminded herself, was at the bottom of a gloomy red-brick mansion block to the north of Oxford Street. It lay exactly midway between the old flat in the square and Mattie’s Bloomsbury retreat. The geographical symmetry gave Julia a secure sense of place; Bloomsbury was well within walking distance, although a brisk walk. But without hesitation Mattie waved for a cab.

As she unbuckled Lily again and wrestled with the folding pushchair, Julia wondered whether Mattie had also noticed the way that their separate decisions marked the difference between them. She supposed that Mattie, who had lately grown used to the studio sending a car and a driver to take her to work, took taxis without thinking about it. Whereas for herself, taxis were just one of the luxuries that were no longer affordable.

Julia climbed in beside Mattie and settled Lily on her lap.

That didn’t matter, she told herself. So long as she recognised and avoided what she couldn’t afford. Walking never hurt anyone.

Rain spattered against the cab window. Julia leaned back, her arms around Lily, and sighed with relief. They had a home. The second urgent objective had been gained. The first had been to find a job, and George Tressider had provided that, after Felix’s coercion.

Julia’s solicitors had warned her that unless she had a permanent source of income and somewhere secure for the two of them to live, the chances were that Alexander would be able to win custody of Lily. Equally, Alexander’s solicitors had advised him that Julia was Lily’s mother, and that the courts preferred children of divorced parents to remain with the mother.

Unless, of course, she should happen to be homeless, feckless, or otherwise provably unfit.

Julia and Alexander had talked on the telephone. To Julia, perched on Mattie’s bed or eyeing her own puffy face in the gilt mirror over George’s telephone table, the conversations had been almost unbearably painful.

‘I can’t come back to Ladyhill,’ she had said.

‘I’m not asking you to,’ Alexander responded stiffly. ‘I told you that, before you left. It’s Lily I want. I’m prepared to take you to court for her custody.’

‘Alexander, don’t do that,’ Julia had whispered. ‘It’ll cost all the money you can raise and you won’t win. I’ll see you don’t win. Use the money for your beloved Ladyhill. Don’t waste it.’ She wondered as she spoke,
How can we be saying these terrible things to each other?
She could see Alexander clearly, sitting at the little bureau, the shell of Ladyhill enclosing him. She said, ‘I don’t want to steal Lily from you. We can make an agreement. She can come to you, stay at Ladyhill, whenever you want her to. You’re her father. But her home must be with me. There must never be any question of that.’

I can’t give her away, even to you. My mother gave me away. How could I do the same to Lily?

At last, reluctantly, Alexander had agreed.

‘Very well. But I want a legal and binding agreement made as to the amount of time she will spend with me at Ladyhill. I expect it to be at least one-third of every year, more if Lily herself wishes it. I don’t want anything to be subject to your whims. I don’t trust you, Julia.’

Why should you?
Julia thought.
I could have trusted you, but I didn’t
.

Alexander was still talking, using his new, lawyer-like expressions. ‘If you agree to my access requirements, I will pay you for her maintenance during the rest of the year.’

‘I don’t want your money.’

‘I don’t give a fuck what you want. The money is for Lily.’

Alexander’s voice was cold, but Julia knew how hurt he was.

‘All right,’ she said sadly. ‘All right. For Lily.’

The settlement hadn’t been completed yet. Julia knew that even her pride was misplaced. She would need whatever Alexander offered her, to feed and clothe Lily. George was not a generous payer.

As the taxi jolted through the streets and she hung on to Lily’s Fruit Gum-sticky fingers, Julia was thinking about her own mother. In the last months her imaginings of her had changed. She had stopped dreaming of her patrician forebears and of the series of romantic misunderstandings that might have forced her mother to part with her. Now Julia imagined that her mother might have been very young and vulnerable, and alone in the world. Her arms tightened around Lily until the child wriggled and turned round to pat her face. Julia felt the links, stretching backwards, drawing her closer to the unknown woman. As she always did, whenever she thought of her, she wondered where she was and if she ever thought of the daughter she had lost.

Mattie looked sideways at her. ‘Tell you what. Why don’t we go out and have a meal tonight? Like old times.’

‘It can’t be like old times. There’s Lily.’

Julia’s retort was sharper than it might have been. But in the week that she had been staying with Mattie she had felt the difference. Mattie was playing the central role in a film called
Girl at the Window
. It was a big screen part for her, and it promised to bring her some real fame. The theatre was what mattered, but it was still a very small world, Mattie reasoned. The film itself was a glossy, contemporary romp and Mattie affected to disparage it. But in reality she was as committed to her work as she had been since the days with John Douglas, and she was putting real effort into investing the wide-eyed dolly of the director’s vision with some genuine emotional force. She worked long hours, and when she did come home she was exhausted but still vibrating with the day’s takes. Or else she stayed out, going to the newest clubs and laughing and drinking, and stumbling home when Julia had been asleep for hours.

At night, when Lily had fallen asleep in her makeshift bed, Julia read furiously, history and poetry as well as fiction, relishing the escape and the stimulation that it gave her.

But Mattie’s casual mention of old times gave her a sudden, sharp pang of regret.

‘I hadn’t forgotten Lily,’ Mattie said. ‘There’s a kid who lives next door, over the baker’s. She must be fifteen or so. We could offer her ten bob to come and babysit, and you and I could go for a kebab at the Blue Dolphin.’

Not the Rocket or even Markham Square
, Julia thought.
But tempting enough
.

‘Okay,’ she grinned. ‘Friday we take possession of the new flat. Monday I start work full-time again for Tressider Designs. Let’s celebrate.’

‘That’s my girl.’

The teenage neighbour agreed to come and babysit. Julia put Lily to bed and Mattie read her a story, with the full range of funny faces and voices that Lily loved. She roared with laughter and clapped her hands, demanding ‘More!’

‘Tomorrow,’ Mattie said firmly. The small rooms were very crowded with the three of them there. Mattie and Julia squeezed into the bathroom to make up their faces while Lily dropped off to sleep. Mattie stuck on two layers of false eyelashes, applying them in tiny clumps with a practised hand, then fluttered them at Julia. They made her eyes look enormous under the thick fringe of her hair. Suddenly, in the cramped space, Julia realised that Mattie seemed just a little bit larger than life. As if there was really such a commodity as star quality.

‘You look fantastic,’ she murmured.

‘You don’t look too bad yourself.’

‘Me? I’m a mother and an ex-wife. I’m twenty-four. I feel as old as Methuselah.’

‘Well, I’m twenty-five. For God’s sake, let’s go and get a few drinks before we’re confined to our wheelchairs.’

But although they set out in determinedly high spirits, the evening wasn’t a great success.

They went to a pub first. In the beery, agreeably raffish atmosphere Julia tried to work out how long it was since she had last perched on a barstool with Mattie, and was disconcerted that she couldn’t even remember.

Mattie was wearing her new knee-boots in shiny, conker-brown leather. She crossed her legs, showing her thighs in patterned tights, and lit a French cigarette. She began a story about her co-star in
Girl at the Window
. He was an electrically handsome exbrickie from south London, whose first film, in which he played an electrically handsome maverick photographer from east London, had made him famous.

‘There was a poll in one of the film mags. Apparently more people know Drake’s name than Harold Macmillan’s.’ Mattie rolled her eyes.

‘What’s he like?’

‘Macmillan? Oh, Drake. As thick as this.’ And she rapped her knuckles on the bar. ‘Anyway, they’d drawn this chalk line for him to walk along …’

Julia had seen the two men, or boys, perhaps. They were wearing flared jeans and suede jackets, and they had been watching the two of them, or Mattie at least, since she had come in. Men always looked at Mattie. Julia had been aware of that for almost fourteen years. Now, out of the corner of her eye, she saw them shouldering their way across the bar.

‘Why don’t you two chicks let us buy you a drink?’ one of them asked.

Julia saw that they weren’t bad-looking. She had an instant of feeling almost flattered, a forgotten sensation, and a brief memory of the days before Alexander, before Ladyhill, when she and Mattie had cut a reckless swathe through the parties and the jazz-clubs.

And then, through her rose-pink reverie, she heard Mattie say coldly, ‘Why don’t you two pricks just piss off?’ It was so far from repartee that Julia just stared.

They recoiled, trying to laugh, one of them mumbling, ‘Aw, there’s no need to be like that …’

Mattie drained her glass of gin and stubbed out her cigarette. ‘Let’s go,’ she said.

Julia had no choice but to follow her.

One of the men called after Mattie, ‘Here, I know you, don’t I? Snooty cow.’

Outside Mattie began walking, too fast, westwards, towards Goodge Street and the Greek restaurant. There were bright red spots showing on her cheekbones.

‘Why did you do that?’ Julia panted, trying to keep up. ‘You could have said no without being rude.’