Bad Girls Good Women (73 page)

Alexander
, she thought.
Lily. If I can come home. Just to see you there, at Ladyhill
.

Josh settled her head more comfortably against him, drawing the covers around their shoulders. ‘You’re safe in my cabin in the woods,’ he said. ‘Safer than you would be in London, or in New York.’

‘I know,’ Julia said, turning her face to him and closing her eyes. ‘I’m not afraid of the wolves.’

Waiting to go to sleep, she listened to the noises of the trees beyond the wooden walls. There was no resemblance, and there were thousands of miles separating them, but the eddies of wind and the scraping branches and the sudden, mystifying animal cries reminded her of Ladyhill. She had been afraid of Ladyhill, of course. Even before the flames and smoke came. She had imagined that she was mistress of it, playing with the furniture and curtains and dressing it up for her fantasy Christmas, but in reality it had mastered her. She had been too young, and too silly, and too impatient for it.

‘I’m not afraid now,’ she repeated.

Julia stayed with Josh in his forest cabin for three days.

In the Honey Creek store Julia bought Levis and a pair of boots, and they went walking. ‘Scrambling,’ Julia gasped, following Josh up the steep wooded slopes. ‘I’m getting old.’

Josh held out his hand to help her. ‘I don’t think so.’

For all her mild, citified protesting Julia enjoyed the blue, empty days. It occurred to her that she had never spent so many hours at a time out of the shelter of roofs and rooms. Her cheeks and arms flushed in the sunshine, then turned pale gold. She tied her hair back with a piece of string, and wore Josh’s frayed shirts with her Levis.

‘You look about seventeen,’ he told her.

‘I’m glad I’m not,’ Julia said soberly.

In the pale evenings, when the sun’s glare had faded, Josh went fishing. The streams and waterfalls that netted the mountainside ran down into a wide, mirror-faced lake. Julia sat on the bank beside Josh, watching the ripples that spread lazily from his casts. She was surprised by his absorption, and by his ability to sit still for so long.

Her images of him, well defined by re-examination over the years, were all active. She remembered Josh racing in the Inferno, his face briefly turned towards the watchers as he skimmed past, and Josh at the controls of the Auster Autocrat over the green and brown patchwork of English fields. She had no recollections of times like this. Josh had always been a coiled spring; it was his energy that she had fallen in love with. She loved it still, but it was as if the clarity of the mountain air was allowing her to see more clearly what was missing.

Sitting beside the reflecting water, with her chin resting on her knees, Julia tried to unravel the threads. They had been knotted together for so long that they were difficult to unpick, but she made herself do it, dispassionately following the strands.

Of course she loved Josh. She always had done. From the beginning, from the first night. She had fallen in love with the dash and sparkle, but she had wanted to do it. Had almost determined to do it.

It was the day that Betty had come to the flat in the square. Julia could see her hands nervously folded over the clasp of her old handbag, the brown felt hat pulled tightly down over her colourless hair.

A dirty little baby
, those were the words.

Julia had lifted her chin and pretended not to care. Pretended relief, even. And that night she had gone out, with Jessie’s five pounds, to dinner with her best friends. Hungry, and defiant, she thought now.

And there Josh had been.

She had transferred all the weight of her love and need to a bright-haired American pilot. He had bought her a bottle of pink champagne, and taken her to a nightclub, and he had been kind to her. He had always been kind to her, Julia reflected, within his own definition of kindness.

She turned her head on her knees so that she could look at him.

Josh was watching the motionless tip of his rod, then glancing away to the black arc of line. His face was half hidden by the peak of his cap, but she knew every line of it. Fifteen years had blurred the sharp angles a little, that was all.

Julia sighed, thinking of her own sixteen-year-old naivety. She had fallen in love in an hour, and she had made Josh carry the weight of it for all the years because the love had seemed too big and deep-rooted to dislodge.

She turned her head sharply again, and stared out over the water. It made her feel guilty to think of the responsibility she had thrust on him. Josh wasn’t made for responsibility. He had told her that, over and over, but she had been deaf.

She thought of the little shock of recognition that she had experienced in his Mercedes, racing up towards Honey Creek. Josh was a boy, showing off his car to impress his girl. He had always been the same, with his aeroplanes and his skis. Not quite grown-up.
Your comic-book hero
. Alexander’s words.

Josh was the perfect hero for a girl of sixteen. No wonder she had loved him then; the sadness was that she had made the love into a totem.

And now she was thirty-one, too old for heroes.

Julia contemplated the threads that she had untangled, without pleasure and without liking for the images of herself that were revealed.

She had clung to the romantic ideal of loving Josh, with a schoolgirl’s fervour. She had been sure that it would last for ever, at whatever cost. She had allowed herself to feel tragic. Luxuriating in her own passion.

What it had cost her, she understood, was her marriage.

And because of that, what had Lily lost?

Julia wrapped her arms more tightly around her knees, containing herself. She couldn’t jump up and run to Ladyhill, not yet. The threads must be set straight, finally, so that they could never tangle again.

Alexander had always been too grown-up, that was the difference. He was simply himself, not a hero, except when heroism was necessary. Alexander had run back under the stone arch at Ladyhill, into the smoke and heat. She closed her eyes on the image of that. When she opened them again she saw that the last light had gone. The lake had turned from a mirror into a sheet of cold, black glass.

Has it taken until now, she wondered, all this time, for me to grow up enough myself? The thought shamed her, but it was also an encouragement.

She had needed the struggle, for her own independence and for the success of Garlic & Sapphires. The old restlessness had gone, at least. Only it was Lily who had suffered. Thinking of her, Julia smiled a little. Lily was resilient, almost in the same way as Josh himself.

Perhaps even the flare of sexual energy that had overtaken her in New York had been necessary. It had meant that she had stopped dreaming of Josh, and waiting for him like Patience on her monument – clever, sharp Mattie – and had come to find him instead. And it was coming here, to the cabin under the trees, that had made her see the way that she should go.

If she could follow it, all the way back to Ladyhill, and find Alexander and Lily there, then that would be enough. She didn’t know how much she could hope for beyond that. Slowly, Julia uncoiled her arms. She stood up, stiff with sitting still for so long, and touched her hand to Josh’s shoulder.

‘It’s gone dark,’ she said.

Josh must have been as absorbed in his own thoughts. He started, and then squeezed her cold fingers.

‘Time to pack up.’ He began reeling in his line, the rapid
ticktick
of the mechanism very loud in the stillness. He seemed more like a boy than ever, frowning intently over his task. Watching him, Julia felt the draught of guilt again.

Don’t be guilty
, she warned herself. Josh’s self-protective mechanisms must be well enough developed by now.

She bent to help him to pack the scatter of equipment into the fishing basket. Josh lifted it, and held out his hand. She took it and they turned to walk together, along the rutted track to where the white nose of the Mercedes glimmered in the dimness.

Even in the late evenings, they sat outside on the porch. Josh put away the fishing tackle and came out with two tumblers of Jack Daniels. Julia took hers and wrapped her fingers round it, looking away into the infinity under the trees. The noises that had seemed threatening on the first night were familiar now. She felt that she had been here a long time, and had reached a crossroads. The way that she had glimpsed beside the lake seemed clearer still, beckoning her.

‘Josh, I’ve got to go home soon.’

He didn’t answer for a moment. He stood up and went to lean on the porch rail, staring intently out, as if he could see something that Julia couldn’t. When he turned back again, she could see his face lit by the glow from inside the cabin.

‘Won’t you stay a while longer?’ he asked softly.

Was that what he had asked her, when they were lying with their arms around each other on the first night?
Stay
?

‘I don’t mean here,’ Josh said, the movement of his hand taking in the cabin and the heights rising behind it. ‘Come to Vail with me, perhaps. You’ve got managers for your shops, haven’t you? Lily could come out. We could teach her to ski, before she gets too old to be a champ …’

‘Josh,’ she interrupted him. ‘What are you asking me?’

‘Well.’ Another movement of his hand. This time it was just for the cabin, the bare shell of it enclosing bareness. Julia knew that the same gesture was for his apartment, where he had told her that there were no pictures on the walls and no ornaments on the mantel.

Josh said, ‘I always told you. If there was ever going to be anyone, it would be you.’ Julia might almost have laughed. The irony was so complete, and so unexpected. But sadness touched her too quickly, and the tiny splutter died in her throat.

She didn’t want to contemplate Josh’s solitude, not now, because she knew that she couldn’t dispel it. Whatever he was hoping for, asking for. The quiet, reflective Josh that she had glimpsed here in the mountains wasn’t hers, not her aviator.

Hastily, she pushed the net of questions aside. Selfish. Her mouth tasted bitter.

‘Josh,’ she repeated, ‘I’ve got to go home.’

She stood up, facing him, and put her hands on his arms.

‘To London?’

She lifted her head, looking at him through the dim yellow light.

‘To Ladyhill.’

At last, he nodded. Julia’s eyes were stinging and she blinked, angry with herself.

‘Lily will like that,’ he said. ‘Did you … did you know what you were going to do when you came here?’

‘No. I didn’t know anything. I know a little bit more, now.’

He put his hands up, cupping her cheeks. ‘Thank you for coming.’

‘Thank you for asking me. I’m glad I came.’

He kissed the corners of her mouth, very gently, and she let her head fall forward to rest against his shoulder. She felt the stolid reality of affection, and the impotence of love.

All the infinite gradations of it
, she thought.
How long it takes to recognise them
. Then Josh kissed her again. She knew, as she had always known, how sharply she wanted him too.

‘Come to bed,’ Josh ordered her. ‘I’ll drive you to Denver tomorrow.’ The old Josh.

‘I’m coming,’ Julia answered him.

In the morning Julia lifted the few clothes she had worn off the hooks behind the door of the cabin’s bedroom and folded them into her suitcase. Their removal emphasised the bareness of the small rooms as she looked round them for the last time. Josh stood watching her, his hands seeming empty and awkward by his sides. She knelt down to snap the locks, then stood up again. Now that the time had come, she felt herself pulled two ways, the clarity that she thought she had achieved deserting her again.

I don’t know
, she thought angrily.
Why don’t I know, after so long
?

She wondered if Josh had felt like this, at their separations in the past, while she had clung to him.

No, she decided. Not like this. Josh’s instincts for self-preservation had been too well developed then. She was less sure about now, and the irony of the reversal touched her again. She might have held out her hand, taking his awkward one, but she didn’t. Instead she gripped the handle of her suitcase, testing its weight.

The means of hurting each other are within such easy reach, she thought. Not just for Josh and me, but for all of us. For a moment, sadness seemed heavier than the real weight in her arms.

Josh looked at his watch. Uncharacteristically, he said, ‘We should go now, if we’re going to make your plane.’ In the past, Josh had never worried about times or days. When he was ready to do what he wanted to do, he did it. Julia knew that he was filling the silence with conventional words, but she still noticed the change, disliking it.

‘I’m ready,’ she said quietly.

He took her suitcase from her and carried it out to the Mercedes. The car rolled smoothly down the track, and the cabin was swallowed up by its curtain of trees. Julia didn’t look back at it. She didn’t want to think of its emptiness. Instead she fixed her attention on the road as it unfolded, in reverse, through the new familiarity of Honey Creek, down again, and at last out on to the freeway. She thought of the distance ahead of her, beyond Denver, and New York, to the village in the hollow of green English countryside.

It was only when they had reached the airport, and found the New York flight already boarding, that Josh said, ‘I’m glad you came. I told you that already.’ And then, abruptly, ‘I shouldn’t have asked you to stay on. Or hoped that you could have. That wasn’t part of the contract, was it?’

‘No, I suppose it wasn’t,’ Julia said.

‘And I think I set the terms of the contract.’ Josh was smiling, making her want to reach out and hold on to him.

‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘We kept to it, more or less, didn’t we?’

And the other contracts?
she wondered.
With Alexander, and Lily. Betty and Vernon, even. Those were harder to keep. Because they were real. What I imagined with Josh never was real. Gilt, instead of guilt. That was what I was chasing
. The recognition made her smile, a small, thin smile.