Bad Girls Good Women (85 page)

There was a pause. Then Alexander said, ‘It was always part of our agreement, wasn’t it, that Lily should choose for herself, when she was old enough?’

Oh, yes. But I never thought she wouldn’t choose me. Even I, knowing what I know, took my own daughter so much for granted
.

Julia’s anger crumbled away, and her defences with it.

‘I love her.’

‘We both love her.’

They listened to each other’s anxiety and to the distances between them, and then Alexander said, ‘I’ll come up and talk to you. Expect me by lunchtime.’

Clare was in the kitchen. He went back to the smell of coffee and toast.

‘That was Julia.’

Clare’s head jerked up, She was wearing a yellow shirt, the brightness of it making her eyes and hair look pale by comparison. She looked at Alexander, saying nothing.

‘She’s upset. Lily has told her that she wants to come and live here.’

‘Poor Julia.’

Alexander went to her, and held her against him. He was used to Clare, they had been together for a year and a half. She didn’t goad him, or reward him. She was good-humoured, and her predictability made their life tranquil. He smoothed her hair with one hand and looked over her head, out of the window. He could see a long vista of the garden, and a corner of Marco Polo’s paddock.

‘I’m going up this morning to see her. It’s important to work it all out properly. For Lily, for all of us.’ He looked away from the garden and down into Clare’s face. ‘Do you mind Lily coming here, if it’s what she really wants?’

‘Of course not. You know I don’t. I’m not her mother, but I can take care of her.’

Alexander bent his head and kissed her. Clare smiled and went to the percolator, to pour him another cup of coffee.

When he was ready to leave, she went out and walked with him to the car. He kissed her again and then drove away, waving out of the window without looking back. Clare stood still, watching him go with the sun in her eyes. The brightness made them water.

Clare wanted to marry Alexander, but he hadn’t asked her. She would like to think that he might, but she didn’t believe that accepting the responsibility for his daughter would make any difference to whether he would or not. Nor would she suggest it to him. That wasn’t Clare’s way.

As he drove, Alexander wondered irritably why he was driving two hundred miles to see Julia, when he could have stayed at Ladyhill and tried to unravel the problem by telephone.

Julia was waiting for him. When she opened the door he saw that she was white-faced, with grey patches under her eyes. Sympathy dispelled his irritation. Julia could be a harsh judge, but she judged herself most harshly of all. He thought, with a touch of sadness, how well they knew each other and to what little effect.

It was an uncomfortable meeting. In her hurt Julia was convinced that Lily and Alexander had conspired against her. Alexander accepted her hurt, knowing that he couldn’t salve it, and was gentle with her. But he couldn’t make her see the truth, which was that Lily had made her decision without reference to any of them. Soon enough, Lily wouldn’t need them at all.

‘Listen,’ he tried to persuade Julia. ‘Let’s say that she can come, just for a few months. Then if it doesn’t work she can come back again. The school’s a good one. And perhaps it will be safer for her to do her growing up at Ladyhill, rather than in London.’

Julia lifted her swollen eyes to meet his. ‘We’ve already chosen a good school for her here, remember? And I think I could have kept her safe while she was growing up. I wanted to. I was looking forward to seeing it happen.’

She wouldn’t cry, not in front of him. but Julia knew that she was defeated. They faced each other across the pine table, with the greatest distance between them that there had ever been.

By the time that Lily came home again from school, Julia had accepted that she would go to Ladyhill in the summer holidays, as she always had done, and that this time she would stay there. Lily stood at the end of the table in her striped uniform dress, meek and conciliatory now that she had achieved what she wanted. It seemed to Julia that Lily and Alexander could both afford to be gentle and gracious now that they had beaten her. It deepened her sense of exclusion and she turned away, to the kitchen, saying that she would make supper before Alexander drove back to the country. Lily perched on the arm of the chesterfield, swinging her legs in her hated white ankle socks, talking about her part in the school play. Julia couldn’t believe that everything was so ordinary when she had just lost it all. She clattered blindly with the knives and pans.

She cooked the food almost without knowing what it was, and put it on the table. They sat down to eat, the three of them, as if they were any ordinary family at the end of the day. To Julia, it seemed the bitterest moment of all.

Afterwards, Lily let Alexander go without any of the fuss she habitually made. She came back from seeing him off and sat beside Julia on the chesterfield. Julia sat with her hands lying heavily in her lap and her head bent. Seeing her, Lily realised that she had never known her mother at a loss before. That had always been part of her otherness, that set her apart from other people’s mothers. Julia had so much power. It was startling to realise that her power could desert her. Lily leaned forward and put her cheek against her mother’s, trying for the right words.

‘It won’t be any different, will it? Not really? Just the other way round. I’ll be coming to you for the holidays. If I can. If you want me to.’

Julia looked at her. ‘I want to see you as often as we can arrange it, whenever you want to. I also want you to know, Lily, that I love you very much. Granny Smith never told me that she loved me, and I never realised she did until I was grown up. It was too late, then.’

Lily understood that her mother was talking to her like a person, not like a little girl or a daughter. The change seemed to mark an important stage in her life. She nodded, her face solemn.

‘I understand. I love you too, only in a complicated way. At Ladyhill nothing’s complicated, and I like that.’

‘I think I understand,’ Julia said slowly, in her turn. She stood up and walked to and fro, while Lily watched her. At last she sighed, a big gusty sigh that seemed hopeless. ‘Lily, will you mind very much if I sell this house? I don’t think I can bear to live here without you.’

Lily did mind, because the house by the canal meant home as much as Ladyhill did. But she shook her head, understanding that it was important for the altered dealings between them. ‘You ought to do what makes you happy. It’s only a house, isn’t it?’

Julia wanted to turn and seize Lily, fastening on to her, but she made herself go on walking, slowly up and down the Turkish kelim that Lily had once hacked the fringes off.

After that, the days went quickly. Julia went to the school play and watched Lily’s bloodcurdling Captain Hook through a glaze of tears.

‘You must be proud of her, Lady Bliss,’ the headmistress said at the noisy party afterwards. ‘I know we all are.’

‘I am,’ Julia answered.

At home, she helped Lily to clear her room. They took down the pop posters; and they opened the cupboards and ordered the fate of picture books and woolly lambs and dolls. Amongst the dolls was the flaxen-haired monster that Josh had bought for Lily so long ago. Lily had never liked it, and its simpering face was hardly marked. Julia bundled it into the jumble sale bag, not wanting to meet its empty blue eyes.

Lily dealt solemnly with the accretions of her childhood, but Julia found the rite almost unbearably painful. She found herself stealing things away, taking
The Tale of Tom Kitten
and a rag doll and a china pig from the discarded piles and hiding them amongst her own things. At night, with her knees drawn up and the pillow pressed into her face, she cried as if she was a child herself.

Alexander came to drive Lily away. Julia had dreaded the moment, but when it came almost the worst thing to bear was his gentleness. She felt his sympathy and understanding of her loss as sharply as she felt her own pain: her anger with him evaporated immediately.

When Lily was out of the room he came to her, taking hold of her wrists and looking down into her eyes. ‘It was Lily’s choice,’ he whispered. ‘I can’t deny her what she wants. But I’d do anything if it meant not hurting you like this.’

Julia wanted to cry, to throw herself against him and let her tears wash away the barriers between them. She felt how close he was; she didn’t feel any longer that he could afford to be generous because he had won Lily. Lily wasn’t a trophy, after all. Alexander was generous, just as he was honourable and loyal and kind. She saw him objectively now, after so many years of confusion.

Julia didn’t cry.

Instead she looked straight back at him, finding a smile within herself. It occurred to her that if she managed to be unselfish now, she would truly have achieved something.

‘I know,’ she said. ‘It’s all right. Just look after her, will you?’

‘You know I’ll do that. I wish I could do the same for you.’ Julia laughed, then. ‘I’m much too old to be looked after. Too old and too selfish.’

Alexander touched her cheek. ‘You think you’re selfish, but you aren’t. Don’t be so harsh to yourself.’

Lily came back then, and almost at once it was time for them to leave.

After they had gone, Julia felt that a piece had been cut away from her. She remembered waking up, in the clinic, after Lily’s birth. She went slowly up the stairs to Lily’s bedroom. It had always seemed empty when she went away; now it was dead. The posters and the photographs had left rectangles like mocking shadows on the faded walls. She stood on a chair and unhooked the blue and yellow curtains off the rails. At once, the room was unfurnished. Standing back, she saw that there were cobweb filaments blowing from the pelmet, and a layer of fine dust on the sill. She folded the curtains, carefully, into exactly symmetrical squares and then into smaller squares, and left them lying in the middle of the bare mattress. The estate agent’s valuer had already been to look at the house. He had surprised her with his estimate of how much it was worth.

Mattie searched for the key, then unlocked the front door with its diamond-shaped leaded lights. The hall smelt musty. Mitch followed her with the first of the suitcases, and she heard the mini-cab driver bringing the rest.

‘Welcome home,’ she said to Mitch. ‘Does it feel like home?’

‘Immediately.’ Mattie had been in Nice for a month. The filming had only lasted for four weeks, and Mitch had been with her, but even so it had seemed too long to be away. The house was waiting, and she wanted to be in it.

Mitch had bought it. Mattie had claimed to be uninterested in houses. At the beginning of their married life Mattie had been reluctant to relinquish her Bloomsbury eyrie, but then she had been forced to admit that it was too small for both of them. For the first year they had made their base in London in a characterless mansion flat, and when the West End run of the Chichester play had finally come to an end there had been several months in Hollywood, and then the film in France.

It was Mitch who had insisted that they needed a proper house, near enough to London for easy commuting, far enough away to have a real garden and countryside within reach. After a proper search, he had found the house in Surrey. It was a solid example of Thirties stockbroker Tudorbethan, with black and white timbering and tall chimneys and an extensive garden that came complete with a gardener who had tended it two days a week for seventeen years. It had wood panelling and inglenook fireplaces and luxurious bathrooms installed by the last owners. It was called Coppins.

Mitch was delighted with it. ‘I’d buy you a manor house, Mattie, but you need to devote your life to that kind of a house.’

Mattie thought of Alexander and Julia, and the imposing bulk of Ladyhill. ‘I don’t want that,’ she said quickly. ‘I don’t want anything to be more important to you than me.’

‘We need a good, solid house that’s convenient, comfortable and undemanding. Coppins is all those things. And not a bad price, either.’

Mitch was always businesslike.

‘Take me to see it, at once.’

At first glance, Mattie laughed. Coppins sat in its gardens like a picture in an old-fashioned children’s book.
William
, perhaps, or
Greyfriars
. It needed a parlourmaid in a lace cape to open the front door. It seemed so improbable that she should own anything of the kind. But as they explored it, calling out to each other up and down the stairs, she recognised its character. Coppins was enormous, but it had a doll’s-house quality. It made her want to settle down and play house, with a china tea-set and miniature sets of reproduction furniture.

From the kitchen, which had a stone-shelved larder as well as a pantry, she called out to Mitch again, ‘Let’s buy it!’

Mitch was also an excellent negotiator. Within three weeks Coppins was theirs, at a slightly reduced price. While they were in Nice the decorators had been at work, and the minimum of furniture had been delivered. Now they had come home.

Mitch stepped around the heap of luggage and held out his arms. Mattie walked into them. They went upstairs to the big bedroom overlooking the garden.

Later, Mattie said, ‘It will be a good house for children to grow up in.’

Mattie was trying to have a baby. Mitch raised himself on one elbow to look down at her. ‘Lots of children. Running up and down the stairs, round and round the garden. We’d better have a couple of sets of twins.’

She grinned at him, winding one arm around his neck. ‘How shall we do that?’

It was easy to play house in Coppins, as Mattie had guessed it would be. She was no better at the domestic details than she had ever been, but Mitch quickly found a local woman who came in every day to cook and clean. Mattie discovered that what she enjoyed was shopping, and then arranging and rearranging her purchases. She made expeditions up to Town, and came home with curtain fabric and kitchen utensils and china. Department stores’ vans began to arrive with armchairs and coffee tables. Mattie combed the local antique shops and brought her finds triumphantly back home with her.