Bad Girls Good Women (99 page)

She asked gently, ‘What are you doing here, all by yourself? You’ve got friends who love you. We want to look after you.’

Mattie frowned down at her hands. ‘What do I do? Try to go to sleep. Wake up again. I watch television quite a lot.’

Deliberately, wilfully, she took the question at its literal value. She knew that Julia was asking
Why? Why not come and grieve with us?
but Mattie didn’t want to give her that answer. The truth was that the performances of friendship called for more than she could give. Mattie felt that the loss of Mitch had left her with no assets, no store of emotions, even selfish ones, that she could offer as currency in return. And worse. With the sharp perceptions of grief – perceptions that stayed painfully sharp however much she tried to blunt them with whisky – she could hear the silent demands under Julia’s kindness.
Look
,
see here, I’m your friend. Don’t pull away, because I need to help you. I’ll make you feel better, and that will make me fell better. That’s how it works, isn’t it?

In her desolation Mattie couldn’t hand over anything, but she didn’t want Julia to know what she was thinking. Because that might hurt her, mightn’t it?

Mattie tried to marshal her thoughts, momentarily regretting the whisky.

Then she attempted a laugh. ‘I can’t give you anything, Julia.’

‘What?’ Julia looked stunned.

‘What did I say?’ The laugh wasn’t a good idea. But perhaps Julia would just think it was the drink.
I’m better on my own. I knew I was
. ‘Sorry. I’m not thinking very straight.’

Julia left her chair and knelt down in front of Mattie. She was too close, looking at her too hard.

‘It’s going to take a long time, I know that, Mattie. Try to be gentle with yourself.’ For her own part, Julia felt the clumsiness of her attempts at condolence. In frustration she felt that the right words, the key to the help that Mattie needed, lay close at hand, somewhere just out of her reach. But every word that did come into her mouth shouted its inadequacy at her.

‘It will get better,’ she whispered. ‘I know it will.’

Mattie stared miserably over her head. This distance from her oldest friend made the hurt worse, if that was possible. Only it couldn’t be possible, because it was already the most terrible thing in the world.

Mattie longed to be alone again.

But to be alone, she must convince Julia that she was all right. That was the token that she must hand over, wasn’t it? ‘I have been doing things other than drinking and watching the telly. I went to do the knicker commercial, for a start.’

Julia looked pleased. Her pleasure touched Mattie. ‘How did it go?’

Mattie couldn’t help the laugh this time. ‘Not all that brilliantly. I was rather pissed, actually. They were quite nice about it.’

Julia didn’t laugh with her. ‘You don’t have to work, do you?’

‘I’m reading a script just now. It’s quite good.’
And if I don’t work, what else is there? Has it come to this?
She stood up abruptly.

‘This room’s getting on my nerves, a bit. Whenever I try to mess it up, Mrs Hopper comes in and tidies. Let’s go and walk round the garden.’

They went outside. The April sun was thin but bright. They walked slowly over the uncut grass, passing between the rose bushes with their swelling red knobs. Mattie kept her face turned away from the corner of the house, from the patch of colourless gravel. ‘Talk to me about something else,’ she ordered, without much hope.

Julia began to tell her about Margaret Rennyshaw.

She described the adoption agency, and the first two Ilford streets. Mattie walked beside her, her head down and her hands pushed deep into the pockets of her woollen jacket. Julia came to the point, only the day before, when she had sat in Felix’s car in Denebank. Mattie listened, trying to imagine it. She couldn’t think what it must have been like for Julia to sit outside a stranger’s house, a stranger who was also her mother. It occurred to her that her perceptions of herself were hideously clear, those concerning other people blurred, or non-existent. She tried to care about that, and couldn’t. Her sense of isolation deepened.

Mitch. Why did you have to die? So stupid. So cruel
.

Julia was talking about the street her real mother lived in. She said it had reminded her of Mattie’s old home. Mattie tried to grasp why it seemed so significant.

‘Full circle,’ Julia said in wonderment. ‘It was as if we tried so hard to get away from it, the estate and Fairmile Road, and all the time it was lying in wait for us. You can’t run away. Perhaps that’s what we’re supposed to learn. Perhaps you haven’t ever really got away, until you know it. And afterwards, you’re free.’

‘Free,’ Mattie echoed. She had no sense of circularity. She imagined that it would be comforting to recognise such a definite pattern. For herself, the estate, and Ted Banner, and everything else lay dimly, a long way off, reduced to irrelevance. Life seemed like a long, dull thread, perilously thin, easily severed.

She couldn’t see that it would make much difference, now, whether Betty Smith or Mrs Rennyshaw was Julia’s real mother. Not after almost forty years. And it mattered even less than that a street on a council estate in Ilford looked like another street, on another estate, from almost as long ago. After all, everything, all of it, came to this. And this was what? As little as nothing?

‘So will you go and see this Mrs Rennyshaw?’

‘Oh, yes. I’m afraid of doing it, but I must.’

Mattie nodded. ‘Of course. Yes, of course.’ They made another circuit of the lawns before Mattie shivered. ‘It’s cold out here. Let’s go inside again.’

In the dusted and polished drawing room she made straight for the whisky bottle, ‘Don’t frown, Julia. It keeps out the cold. Cheers.’

Mattie didn’t remember much about the rest of the day. She dimly recalled Julia and Mrs Hopper fussing in the kitchen, and then sitting down at the kitchen table with Julia for more food. She might even have eaten some of it, because she wanted Julia to know that she was all right.

And then it must have been the end of the day, at last, because Julia had helped her upstairs. She found herself lying on the bed, but she sat up at once. Her head had cleared for a moment. Treacherous. She didn’t like these clear intervals, and she didn’t like waking up after being sleep. The hurt swung in harder, then.

‘I don’t need to be put to bed like Lily, you know.’

‘Lily doesn’t need to be put to bed nowadays either.’

‘God. Isn’t it weird?’

Julia came and sat down on the bed beside her. ‘Will you go to sleep now?’

‘Sure.’

She looked sceptical. ‘Do you have anything to help you sleep?’

‘Brown bottle in the bathroom. Half a tablet only.’

Julia went, and came back with a halved tablet and a glass of water. ‘Here, Mattie,’ she begged. ‘Won’t you let me stay?’ Lily needed her less, she was sure of that.

Mattie gulped, swallowed the pill. Her eyes met Julia’s and Julia was relieved to see her smile, the old Mattie.

‘I’m all right, I promise. I just need to work through it in my own way.’

Julia hesitated. ‘All right, Mat. If that’s what you want.’ She picked up the pad from the bedside table, wrote her number, left it beside the cream telephone. ‘I’m going to ring in the mornings and in the evenings. And any other time, you’re to ring me.’

‘I will,’ Mattie murmured.

‘Mrs Hopper knows where I am. I’ve talked to her.’

‘Good.’

Their hands met, Julia’s squeezed. ‘Go to sleep, then.’

Mattie lay down. They smiled at each other, then Mattie obediently closed her eyes. Julia crept out of the room, closed the door behind her.

As soon as she had gone, Mattie’s eyes snapped open again. Sleep didn’t come as easily as that. No matter how she stalked it and tempted it. And when she did fall asleep there were the dreams, and after that there was the waking up again.

Julia made her morning call to Mattie. Mattie told her that she was still in bed, reading the newspapers.

‘Fine. I’ll talk to you tonight.’

Julia put the receiver down, picked it up again at once. She dialled Directory Enquiries. The number they gave her was the same as the one Lily had written down in the Town Hall. Margaret Rennyshaw did live at sixty Denebank. There was no question about that. Julia dialled the number. She didn’t wait, or think about it again, in case her courage deserted her.

‘Hello?’

It was her, she knew it was. It was a thick, rather husky voice.

‘May I speak to Mrs Rennyshaw, please?’

‘This is Mrs Rennyshaw.’ She had a strong London accent. She sounded suspicious, and defensive.

‘Mrs Rennyshaw, I’d like to talk to you about a personal matter. A very private, personal matter.’

There was a long silence. Julia wondered if she had even heard her, or if she had heard her and gone away.

Then she said, ‘You’re Valerie, aren’t you?’

‘Yes,’ Julia whispered. ‘Yes, I’m Valerie.’ To her dismay tears began to roll out of her eyes. They ran down her cheeks and she scrubbed them away with her wrist.

‘I knew it was you. I knew, as soon as my neighbour told me you were asking. A woman in a posh white car, talking about a Mrs Rennyshaw. They call me Mrs Davis round here.’

‘I know. Do you mind? Do you mind me finding you?’

There was another pause, a shorter one. ‘No, my love. I don’t mind, if you don’t.’ Julia thought she wasn’t going to say anything else. She was about to start talking, wildly, to fill the silence, when Margaret added slowly, ‘I thought you’d come some day. After they changed that law. I didn’t give you up, you know. Not in my head. I thought about you. Wondering what you were like and what you were doing, all that.’

‘I know. I know you did. I was thinking about you, too. More and more, as the time went. I needed to find you so badly. I can’t believe it, now I have. Now that we’re talking.’ It was so strange, Julia thought. To talk like this, and to cry, with a woman she had never known. Never even seen.

‘How have you been?’ Margaret asked. She sounded awkward now, embarrassed by Julia’s tears. Just as suddenly, Julia wanted to laugh.
What has your life been like, for almost forty years?

‘Fine. Lucky, I think.’ Too late, Julia caught herself. ‘I didn’t mean lucky that you had to give me up. Lucky in what came after. Only I didn’t realise it at the time.’ That was her acknowledgement to Betty. She owed her that.

‘I know what you meant.’ The husky voice had gone flat. Julia thought her mother sounded as resigned as the rest of Denebank.

‘Can I come to see you?’ she asked. ‘It’s hard to talk on the telephone.’

‘You know where I am,’ Margaret answered, neither encouraging nor forbidding her.

‘Would you like me to come?’ Julia persisted.

There was another of Margaret’s silences, then she said, brusquely, ‘Yes, I would. Don’t come this week. Eddie’s on evenings and he’s in the house all day. Eddie’s the man I live with. He’s on the buses.’

‘I think I saw him.’

‘Yes. Well, come next week. Monday if you like. Twelve o’clock, he’ll be out by then. He … doesn’t know about you, Valerie.’

‘I’ll be there,’ Julia said. ‘My name’s Julia now.’ She hadn’t yet called her mother anything.

Margaret tried it out. ‘Julia?’ Then she gave a wheezy laugh. ‘Better class of name than Valerie, isn’t it? Well then, Julia, I’ll see you on Monday.’

After she had talked to her mother, Julia sat for a long time in the window of the flat. Looking out, she could see the ordinary comings and goings of the quiet street. A woman went by pushing a pram, and a builder’s van stopped to unload bags of plaster. Two girls of Lily’s age passed, arm in arm, and the builders whistled after them. Julia liked the ordinariness. Life was ordinary, after all. The discovery of Margaret confirmed that. Julia was still watching the street when Alexander’s car drew up, and Lily and Alexander got out. She knew that he had been working in London, but she hadn’t seen him since the day of Mitch’s funeral. He was going to drive Lily back to Ladyhill, and the new school term.

It was almost May. Soon it would be summer. Julia thought of Montebellate, telling herself that she should go back. It drew her, but less strongly than before.

‘I talked to her. I just dialled her number and spoke to her,’ Julia said, when they came in. Lily had told Alexander about the hunt, she knew that. They looked at her, expectant. Lily gave a little snort of excitement. ‘What did she say? Was she amazed?’

‘Not exactly. She sounded … resigned, I suppose. Curious about what I might be like.’

Lily ran across the room to her. Over her shoulder, Julia looked at Alexander. She saw that they were concerned for her, and the concern made her feel warm, and strong. Life was ordinary like the street outside, but it was precious too.

‘It’s all right. I wanted to find her, and now I have. I’m going to see her on Monday. I’m glad I’ve done it,’ Julia reassured them.

‘I think we should go out to lunch,’ Alexander said. There was to be a celebration, but nobody tried to explain what they were celebrating.

They went to an Italian restaurant, because Lily loved Italian food.

‘It’s not as good as real Italian food,’ Julia insisted, and Lily groaned.

‘Mum, you always say that.’

Round the table, Julia thought, they were a family. Enough of a family for anyone.
More than she deserved
, she told herself. Whatever she discovered at Denebank, and whatever came after that. Her eyes met Alexander’s and she felt her luck, the luck that she had clumsily tried to explain to Margaret, and a strengthening pulse of happiness.

Alexander lifted his glass to her and they drank, without pledging anything.

‘I wish Mattie was here with us,’ Julia said. It was hard to think of being happy without Mattie’s happiness.

‘Is she all right?’

She shook her head. ‘She did her best to convince me that she is. All she did make me believe is that she wants to be left alone. I ring her in the morning, and at night. I don’t know what else to do, except to let her know that we’re here for her.’