by Rosie Thomas
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.’
Mattie stopped and swung round to face her. ‘I don’t like being picked up. I don’t like being gaped at, and treated like an object.’ Julia was going to say, You’re in the wrong business if you mind being looked at, but she bit her tongue. ‘Every man, every bloody one of them, wants to pull my tits and get my pants off. I deal with it all day, and some days I deal with it less well than others, that’s all. Oh, bloody hell. Half the time I think I only get the jobs I do because of my tits. Just like back at the Showbox.’ Mattie shrugged. ‘Men are fuckers. From my Dad to Tony Drake, all of them. Or most of them, anyway. With your luck, you managed to marry one of the few who aren’t, and for some inexplicable reason you’ve buggered off and left him. Well. It’s none of my business. Come on, let’s get to the place. I need another drink.’
Mattie was right, it wasn’t any of her business, Julia thought. But the words had struck home. Without proper consideration, she demanded, ‘Don’t you think you drink too much?’
Mattie’s mouth opened, showing her teeth and tongue. ‘And don’t you think you spend too much time feeling sorry for yourself?’
They stood on the kerb, staring at each other, silenced by shock.
It was Julia, in the end, who spoke first. Slowly she said, ‘Perhaps I do. I must try not to.’
Mattie rubbed her hands over her eyes, forgetting the false eyelashes. ‘Oh, shit. Look, I’m sorry. It’s just that you’ve got Lily and I wish I had a kid. And you had Bliss, and Ladyhill, and seemingly anything anybody could want. But still not enough, because you had to have your aviator as well.’
‘Don’t say anything about him,’ Julia begged. ‘Listen, Mattie. You’re famous and successful, and you’re doing what you’ve always dreamed of, and everyone wants you.’
‘Yeah.’
‘You can’t complain either. That’s all I’m saying.’
‘I don’t. I just tell men to piss off.’
They were still standing face to face, measuring up, as if they were going to hit each other. Awkwardly, Julia reached out with one hand, then put her arm around Mattie’s shoulder.
‘I didn’t know you felt like that about men. I thought you treated it all as a joke, like we always used to. Or as something boring but useful to capitalise on, like at the Showbox. And I thought you were still looking for the right person. To love.’
Mattie was crying. Her tears ran down her face, carrying her eyeliner and the little clumps of eyelash with them.
‘I am.’ Sobs squared her mouth, and she could hardly shape the words. ‘I don’t think I’ll ever find anyone.’
Julia hugged her and stroked her hair, soothing her as if she was Lily. ‘Yes you will. Of course you will. There’s all the time. Years and years and years.’ She let Mattie cry for a minute longer, and then ordered her, ‘We’re going to get something to eat now. Lots to eat. And I’ll buy you five bottles of wine, if that’s what you want.’
Mattie lifted her head and sniffed. ‘Two should be enough.’
Slowly, with their arms linked, they made their way to Goodge Street. In the restaurant they sat down facing each other across a blue tablecloth. The shock of Mattie’s sudden outburst had shaken them both. Julia saw that Mattie’s hands were trembling as she lit a cigarette.
She said, ‘I haven’t seen you cry like that for years.’ Years. Not since Fairmile Road, when Mattie had turned up with her clothes torn and her mouth bleeding.
‘Sorry.’
‘Don’t fend me off, Mat. I didn’t know you were unhappy. Talk to me about it.’
Mattie looked away, through the net curtains at the window into the street. ‘I’m sorry,’ she repeated. ‘I’m not unhappy. Everyt
hing is wonderful. I’m just weary of what happened tonight. And I suppose, therefore, that still hankering after a stale old thing like true love isn’t very rational.’
‘It isn’t stale,’ Julia said. But Mattie’s ironic smile didn’t reassure her.
‘You’re a romantic. Your obsession with your aviator is romantic. If you were practical, you’d have stayed with Bliss.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Sorry. Again. If that’s not what you want to hear.’ Mattie inhaled deeply, then blue smoke wreathed her head. In a different, lower voice, she added, ‘Seeing you with Lily this week has made me jealous. Of her dependence on you. You’re the centre of her world. No one feels that way about me.’
They looked at each other then, for a long moment, gauging how much, and how little, they knew.
‘Let’s not be jealous of one another,’ Julia said at last.
‘Let’s try not to be,’ Mattie amended. Her fingers touched Julia’s, briefly, before she picked up the menu with a flourish. ‘What’s that wine that tastes of cleaning fluid?’
‘Retsina.’
‘Let’s not have that, then.’ A waiter had materialised beside her. ‘A large carafe of house red. To begin with.’ And Mattie smiled at him through the smudges of her make-up.
The man melted, visibly. ‘At once, madame.’
When he had gone, almost running to do Mattie’s bidding, Julia laughed. ‘You’re a paradox, Mattie.’
‘And you’ve had your nose buried in too many books with long words in them.’
They did their best to be lively.
They reminisced about safe subjects, although there didn’t seem to be very many of those. They gossiped about friends, especially Felix and George.
‘Tell me again about staying at Eaton Square,’ Mattie begged.
‘It was awful. They were trying hard to be kind, and Lily and I were so wrong. Everything she touched got Marmite on it, or broke. There was different china and napkins and linen cloths for every meal, and I was always trying to help and getting them wrong. Colours clashing, disasters like that. And giving Lily her cereal in George’s own special Provencal bowl that he needed for his café au lait. George winced but pretended he didn’t mind at all drinking his coffee out of one of the green and gold French bistro ones that they’d brought back from Paris. I was so glad when you got home.’
‘So was I.’
The opportunity for Julia to enquire more closely into Mattie’s latest failed affair hadn’t presented itself, although she had tried hard enough to find one. Mattie was more secretive than she had once been.
‘Not even worth discussing,’ she had said. All Julia knew was that he was a singer with a group, and that he had been born not far from Blick Road itself. Julia reflected wryly that for all Betty’s pride in it, her own marriage had been a move in utterly the wrong direction. Seemingly everyone, nowadays, was a working-class hero. At least, everyone who mattered in the restless, kaleidoscopic London world that Mattie was part of, and that Julia thought she had missed so sharply.
Mattie abandoned her pork kebab half eaten, and leaned back with her glass in her hand. ‘Are you looking forward to Tressider Designs?’
‘Not much, to tell the truth. But it’ll do for now.’
‘And after that?’
‘I’ll have a brainwave. Don’t ask me what, I haven’t had it yet.’
‘Here’s to it, when it does come.’
Julia tried to fill and empty her glass to keep pace with Mattie, but she soon fell behind. Mattie drained the first carafe and ordered another, but the wine didn’t help them to recapture any of the old conviviality. As the evening went on all Julia felt was a kind of increasing desperation, and she suspected that Mattie felt it too. It wasn’t a comfortable feeling, after the first optimism.
Mattie’s collapse into drunkenness, when it came, was as sudden as it usually was, but Julia was ready for it. As soon as Mattie’s head descended to the blue tablecloth and she gave a comfortable sigh, like a little girl preparing to go to sleep, Julia signalled to the still-admiring waiter.
‘My friend is very tired. The bill, and a taxi, please.’
Julia paid the bill, but she extracted the money for the taxi from Mattie’s purse. Left to herself, she reasoned, she would have been able to walk.
Back at home, Julia hauled the unprotesting Mattie into bed, and the babysitter fled. But in the morning Mattie was up ready for work, even before Lily woke up. Her face was puffy and pale, but she grinned at Julia. ‘What’s the make-up team for, if not to work miracles? Bye, my love. On Saturday we’ll go and clean up your new home.’
But when the weekend came Mattie was called for some extra takes, and in the end Julia took Lily and the buckets and the scrubbing brushes to Gordon Mansions on her own. She installed Lily with her toys and books in what seemed to be the least filthy corner, and set to work.
She had brought Mattie’s little red transistor radio with her, and she hummed as she washed the floors, ‘With Love, From Me to You’.
Lily was only content to play on her own for five minutes at a time. After exploring the rooms, leaving her possessions scattered behind her, she came back and insisted on helping. Before Julia could stop her she plunged her arms into the bucket of water, and then cried bitterly because it was hot. But she had no sooner stopped crying than she was dipping a cloth into the water and then trailing it over the floor and the walls, soaking herself and the clean dusters.
‘Lily, you can’t help. Stop it,’ Julia shouted. She grabbed her wet hand and steered her back into her corner. ‘Now stay there.’
Five minutes later, the process started all over again.
Julia was sweaty, and her hair clung in itchy strands to her damp face. The surfaces were all so grimy that the water and the cloths were filthy again almost as soon as she changed them. Lily upset the detergent packet, and trod the spilled powder into blue, gluey trails.
‘Stop it!’ Julia yelled at her.
She was discovering the impossibility of tackling any major task with a toddler in tow. It wasn’t a discovery that she had been forced to make at Ladyhill, because no one had expected her to do anything more major than care for Lily.
When Julia dragged her away from the bucket for the tenth time, Lily began to cry. When she had been comforted she asked, sweetly, ‘Go swings now?’
‘We can’t, not today. We’ve got to make our new house look nice. Tomorrow we’ll go.’
When the kitchen and the bathroom were passably clean, Julia unpacked the picnic lunch she had brought with them. They sat on the floor and ate bread and cheese and bananas. ‘Our first meal in our new house.’ Julia smiled at Lily. ‘Is it nice?’
‘Nice,’ Lily repeated obediently.
Julia had resolved to clean all the living room before going back to Bloomsbury. The room didn’t look so big, but as soon as she had swept it and they were both coughing and choking in the swirls of dust, she knew that it was too big to finish. But she kept on doggedly, scrubbing and rinsing and wiping dry, straightening up now and then to ease her back and push the hair off her face. The flat seemed empty and isolated, as well as dirty, with only the two of them to occupy it.
Lily was bored and irritable now. She pulled at Julia’s hand, shouting, ‘Lily want swings!’
Julia tried to explain again, as patiently as she could. ‘Not today. Tomorrow, I promise we’ll go tomorrow.’
It was late, and getting dark outside, when Lily knocked the bucket of water over. Dirty water flooded over the clean, dry floor. Julia’s patience evaporated. Pure, hot, irrational anger flowed through her. With one hand she grabbed Lily’s arm, and with the other she delivered a stinging slap across her fat, bare legs. ‘You’re very naughty. Naughty. Look what you’ve done.’
Lily’s face showed shock, then disbelief. Her mouth opened and her eyes screwed themselves shut and she began to howl. Shaking, Julia sat her down on the floor with a bump and crossed her arms across her own chest, digg
ing her fingernails into her flesh to stop herself lashing out again. She tried to say, ‘I’m sorry,’ but Lily’s eyes opened first.
‘I want Daddy,’ she yelled.
Julia dropped to her knees then, so that they were face to face. She uncrossed her arms and took hold of Lily and shook her. The child’s head wobbled. There wasn’t shock or outrage in her face now. There was fear.
Julia breathed in, gasping for air. ‘Daddy isn’t here. He isn’t going to be here. That’s why we’ve done all this. Don’t you understand?’
Lily was two and a half years old, Julia told herself, through the anger and panic. She didn’t understand anything, except that Alexander wasn’t there. And that her mother had hurt her.
‘Oh, Lily.’ Julia started to cry with shame and bewilderment. If she was doing all this for Lily’s sake, then why must she hurt her at the same time?
Lily put her head on one side, studying her. ‘Mummy crying.’ Her face crumpled again, in sympathy, and she held out her arms. ‘Carry you,’ she implored.
Julia snatched her up and rocked her, holding her head against her cheek. ‘Carry me,’ she whispered. ‘You mean carry me. I will. Of course I will, if you still want me to.’
When they had mopped up the water together, Julia pushed Lily back through the streets to Bloomsbury. When they reached Mattie’s Julia made her her tea and bathed her, and then they sat on the sofa and drank a cup of hot milk each and Julia read the favourite stories. She knew that she was overcompensating with her calmness and motherliness. Lily seemed to have forgotten everything, but Julia was feeling the first stirrings of doubt. Doubt that they would be able to survive, after all.
We will, she vowed. I’ll see that we do.
