Rosie Thomas 4-Book Collection

by Rosie Thomas

  Alexander prepared to leave.

  ‘I’m opening the shop in two weeks’ time,’ Julia told him. ‘There’s a party to celebrate it.’

  He nodded politely. ‘Good luck. I’m sorry I won’t be here. But this job will pay for the panelling.’

  ‘Of course.’ She would have liked him to be there to see it, but she wouldn’t let him know as much. Even then, the pettiness of her motives dismayed her.

  After Alexander had gone Lily said, ‘Let’s play now.’

  Julia peered around the flat and saw the limitations of the walls and windows looking out on the murky street. For the last weeks, it had been no more than a place to sleep. Now it would have to be home to both of them again. She tried to smile reassuringly. She had a pile of paperwork to do and half a dozen telephone calls to make. ‘Tell you what. Why don’t you do a painting?’

  And with Lily installed at the other end of the table with her paintbox and a beaker of water, Julia did her best to work. Irritation at the constant interruptions gave way to a mild panic. She could do her accounts at night, all night if necessary, but suppliers wouldn’t welcome midnight telephone calls.

  ‘Lily, I’m busy.’

  ‘Daddy doesn’t be busy.’

  Julia’s head jerked up. Staring across the table into the child’s clear eyes Julia read the signs of a new, strong will, and the beginnings of defiance. She looked like her father. ‘Daddy isn’t here, is he?’ Dismay made her voice sharp. In her own ears she sounded as childish as Lily herself.

  Lily’s stare didn’t waver. ‘I want to play. Not paint.’

  Julia’s patience deserted her. She snapped, ‘We can’t always do what we want to do. Whatever you and Daddy think.’ There. Now I’ve put them both on one side, and ranged myself against them. All in the space of an hour.

  She dropped her pen with a clatter and went round the table. She lifted Lily from her chair and held her. ‘I love you,’ she whispered. The violence of it made Lily stare harder and Julia knew that she was only confusing her.

  Out of nowhere, the thought came to her: If I had a real mother, would I be a better mother myself?

  The riddle seemed unanswerable. Wearily, Julia focused on the present battle. ‘Tomorrow you can go to Forgum’s.’ Forgum was Lily’s name for the childminder. ‘And play with Warren and all the toys.’

  ‘Don’t want to,’ Lily wailed. ‘She’s horrid.’ She knew that she had the advantage, and she was pressing it home. Like a full-grown adversary. If she hadn’t been caught so badly off-balance, Julia might have laughed.

  ‘No, she isn’t. She’s your friend, and Warren is too. Come on, let’s go to the park now, if you want to play.’

  And Lily, all smiles again, beamed up at her through her wet black eyelashes.

  In the morning, at Mrs Forgan’s, she cried and hid behind Julia’s skirt. The woman pursed her lips.

  ‘It’s disruptive, Mrs Bliss. Taking her away for weeks. No wonder.’

  Cowardly, Julia said, ‘I’m sorry. It’s the only way.’ She disentangled her hand from Lily’s and ran away, trying not to hear the screams from the other side of the door. She raced to the shop and worked with all the concentration she could muster until it was time to go back to Mrs Forgan’s again.

  The last two weeks of preparation before the opening of Garlic & Sapphires were a whirlwind. Lily quickly realised that the shop was her rival for her mother’s attention, and she marshalled all her resources to divert Julia from it. She tried everything, from saccharine charm to temper tantrums, and then alarming, convincing illness. She’s only three years old, Julia told herself. She needs me, and she needs to be shown that she can’t win.

  She dismissed the images of Betty that came back to her, and did her best to be consistent and gentle. She gave Lily medicine for her complaints, waited patiently until the tantrums burned themselves out in gales of sobbing, and lived every day with the guilt that Lily’s sweetness brewed in her.

  But the effort cost her, and she knew that sometimes she hated her own child, and felt the weight of her like a stone round her neck. Love and guilt seemed ugly, inseparable partners.

  Then, one afternoon, Julia came home with the worries of the business aching in her head and the prospect of an evening poring over some figures ahead of her. Lily, dragging her sandalled feet beside her, suddenly wound her arm through the iron railings of the basement steps and refused to let go.

  ‘Come on, Lily, I’m tired,’ Julia begged her.

  ‘I’m stuck,’ Lily announced with pleasure.

  The anger that suddenly flashed through Julia’s body was as powerful as lightning. In that instant she had enough wild strength to tear the railings out of the stone steps. But what she did was grasp Lily’s hand and pull her. The small arm twisted through the rails and then came free. Julia dragged Lily down the last steps behind her. Violent. She wanted to hurt her.

  Julia felt her own strength, boiling and bursting inside the package of her flesh, overwhelming Lily’s irritant frailty. She felt mad, and wicked, and triumphant. Then Julia’s heel caught on the bottom step, and she tripped. They fell together in a heap on their own doorstep. Julia lay, panting like an animal, and the power drained out of her limbs. She opened her eyes to look at Lily, beginning to struggle upright, and she saw the child flinch. Her face was stiff. She was too shocked and frightened even to cry.

  Julia looked down at her arm. The skin was crimson, except for the long white rake of a fresh graze. Three tiny red beads of blood stood out of it. ‘Oh God, Lily. Look what I’ve done. I’m sorry. Mummy’s sorry.’

  She began to tremble violently. Her teeth chattered and her hand shook as she fumbled in her handbag for the door key. Somehow she wrenched the door open and scooped Lily up. She glanced up the steps like a criminal. Nobody there. Nobody had seen the terrible thing. Julia kicked their scattered possessions through the open door and tottered into the hallway with Lily in her arms. With the familiarity of home around her, Lily found her voice. She opened her mouth, took one breath and began to scream. Julia sank down to the floor and rocked her, trying to soothe her and to control her own scalding tears.

  As soon as she could think again, and Lily had quietened a little, Julia carried her to the telephone. With their wet faces still pressed together, she dialled Mattie’s number. Miraculously, Mattie was at home.

  ‘Please come,’ Julia said. ‘Please. I need some help.’

  Mattie sat with Lily on her lap. Nowadays Mattie wore her spectacular hair bundled up and tied with a brown bootlace, but Lily had managed to undo the knot and she was playing with the shiny gold coils. Mattie examined the bare arm, and the graze that had turned angry red.

  ‘Nothing broken,’ she said cheerfully.

  She hadn’t suggested a drink, the usual remedy for all ills. Instead she had made Julia a cup of tea, ladling sugar into it. Julia drank it without tasting it.

  ‘I wanted her to be hurt,’ she whispered, driven by the need to confess. Disgust filled her mouth, hotter and stronger than the tea.

  Mattie eyed her. ‘The thing you mustn’t do,’ she told her, ‘is make a great fuss about it. Everyone does it, or nearly does it. You’re not a monster, or unique. I’ve seen Rozzie with hers, my ma with us, when we were little, before she gave up on us. Myself, with Phil or Marilyn or one of the others. Just sometimes, everything drives you too far.’

  ‘I might have hurt her badly. Even worse …’

  ‘Doubt it,’ Mattie interrupted. ‘Drink your bloody tea. But that doesn’t say you don’t need some help.’

  ‘Oh, Mattie.’

  ‘What about an au pair girl, or whatever they’re called?’

  Julia waved at the three rooms. ‘Here? And I can only just afford the Forgum.’

  Mattie reached out and patted her shoulder. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘We’ll think of something.’

  Soon, much too quickly, the day of the opening came. Julia felt like a walking assembly of lists. She had lists of st
ock, a list of people who had promised to come to the opening, lists of vital tasks, probably, somewhere, a list of the lists. She was high with anticipation, and as keyed up as if she was opening a department store instead of a little shop off the King’s Road.

  With Lily, she had established an uneasy truce. Lily allowed herself to be taken to Mrs Forgan’s, but she misbehaved there and the childminder’s limited supply of patience was clearly wearing out. Her lips pursed tighter every day and Warren, clinging to her skirts, looked more deflated.

  ‘It’s a bit hard, at the moment,’ Julia conciliated. ‘After the shop’s open, we’ll both be better.’

  ‘I hope so,’ Mrs Forgan said thinly.

  The party was to be in the evening. More people would come then, of course, Felix had said. Julia spent the day tidying the immaculate shop and looking nervously at the rows of polished glasses waiting for her guests. She took Lily home early and gave her her tea, and she was just zipping up her own red silk tunic ready to dash away as soon as the babysitter arrived, when the girl telephoned. She said that she was ill and couldn’t come. Julia knew the truth was more probably that she had a date, but there was nothing to be done about it.

  Lily blinked angelically over a well-sucked banana.

  ‘Lily, you’re going to come to Mummy’s party. Will you be good?’

  ‘Can I wear my party dress?’

  Julia found it and buttoned her into it and they raced to the shop together.

  Thomas Tree was already there, humming and uncorking bottles of wine. Julia was so glad to see him, she put her arms round him and hugged him. She had almost forgotten that she had a partner, even a non-active one. The jokes about sleeping partners had already been made, not quite as easily and naturally as Julia might have hoped.

  ‘I had to bring Lily. The bloody babysitter let me down.’

  Thomas grinned down at Lily in her frilly dress. ‘The more the merrier. You’re only small, so you need a special seat, where you can see everyone. What about this one?’

  He hoisted her into a transparent inflatable chair. One of Julia’s kaleidoscope of memories of the evening was of Lily seemingly floating in the white and silver cavern, her feet sticking straight out in front of her, watching wide-eyed with her thumb in her mouth.

  Felix arrived, with George. George announced that it all looked very amusing.

  Mattie came, with Chris Fredericks, but she also brought Tony Drake and the luminous fashion model who was his latest girl.

  Mattie winked. ‘Bumped into each other, just like that. Didn’t we, Tone?’ And in a sibilant whisper, ‘I thought he’d add a bit of colour. Don’t ask him to say anything.’

  The film star and the model lounged decoratively amongst Thomas’s palm trees, and within seconds, it seemed, the shop was full of people. There were photographers with flash bulbs, and gossip columnists as well as the trade writers and fashion commentators that Julia and Felix had invited.

  The news of something new and exciting going on travelled faster than a forest fire. Chelsea was still a village, and for an evening the party at Garlic & Sapphires was the hub of it.

  ‘Everyone is here, darling,’ Felix said.

  In the melee, Julia shook hands, kissed cheeks and took orders.

  ‘I love it. We’ll feature it.’

  ‘Can we bring some girls, do some fashion shots?’

  ‘Has Tony seen it?’

  ‘I want a dozen chairs.’

  Suddenly, people were buying. Julia retreated behind her till and took money, real money. Her hands, were shaking. Tony Drake loomed over her with a portfolio of glossy photographs. The furniture illustrated was much too expensive for Julia to stock – the portfolio and a promise were all she could manage. But Tony Drake’s beefy, tanned fingers prodded the page. ‘I want this table.’

  It was an octagonal dining table, carved out of perspex and mounted on a perspex column.

  ‘It’s three hundred pounds.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Up to ten weeks to deliver.’

  ‘Yeah. You in the selling line, or not?’

  Julia laughed. Tony Drake was right. If she was going to sell, she would have to sell hard. ‘Yes sir. And as it’s for you, I’ll see if I can make them produce it in ten days.’ Everything was selling. Best of all were the little things, the witty candles and cushions and china … not a big margin, but with a big enough volume turnover … here I am, I’m in business. Joyfully, in the midst of the hubbub, Julia looked up and saw another familiar face. It was Ricky Banner, Mattie’s little brother. Except that he wasn’t little any more, he was six foot two and wore his hair brushed forward in a fringe just like the Beatles. Ricky was the bass guitarist in a group called The Dandelions who were playing the pub and club circuit. Mattie had bought him his first guitar with money earned from One More Day. Like all the Banners, Ricky attracted children as infallibly as a jar of sweets. Lily was perched on his shoulders, her head brushing the ceiling.

  ‘Long time, Julia,’ Ricky said.

  ‘A very long time.’ She remembered Mattie’s kitchen on the estate, the first time, with Rozzie frying onions and children tumbling everywhere.

  ‘Mat said you wouldn’t mind.’

  ‘Of course I don’t. And if you’re looking after Lily, you’re more welcome than Drake and the editor of the Sunday Times mag put together.’

  Mattie materialised beside her brother. She put her arm around his waist, proud and pleased. ‘We’ve got an idea, me and Rick. It came to us, just like that. It’s called Marilyn.’

  ‘What?’ Noise was pounding off the white walls and another popping flash intensified the white and silver light. The party was in full swing.

  ‘Our little sister. She’s seventeen now. She wants a job in London, she loves kids, and she doesn’t expect gracious living. What d’you think?’

  How long ago, when Mattie and Julia had huddled together in the Savoy doorway? To comfort Mattie in her anxiety for Marilyn and the rest, Julia had promised her, They can all come and live with us. When we’ve made it. Now, with Garlic & Sapphires reverberating around her, she thought that she hadn’t made it yet, but there was a chance. And there wasn’t room at Gordon Mansions for all the Banners but somehow, by squeezing herself, she knew she should make room for Marilyn. A slow, delighted smile spread over Julia’s face.

  ‘What do I think? I think you might have saved our lives.’ And she looked up at Lily. Her face was flushed with over-excitement and there were dark rings around her eyes, but her expression was unreadable. She gazed unblinkingly back at her mother. The graze on her arm had disappeared long ago, there were no other marks to see. None to see, but Julia knew how badly she still needed help. She reached up to stroke Lily’s bare knee.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said inaudibly. ‘I may not be very good, but I’m doing my best. I think we’ll be all right, the two of us.’

  Someone twitched at her sleeve. ‘Julia, Julia. There’s someone here you must meet.’

  She gave Mattie and Ricky a quick hug. ‘Tell Marilyn to come and see us as soon as she wants.’

  At last, the crowd began to thin out. The celebrities and the hangers-on and the paparazzi filtered out into the street, most of them carrying their purchases in Julia’s special sapphire-blue wrapping paper. George had gone much earlier, eventually Felix followed him. Ricky had left with another boy from his group, Mattie and Chris had disappeared, perhaps with Tony Drake. In the end, Julia and Thomas were left alone. Lily had fallen asleep, and had been put to bed on two chairs in the back of the shop. Julia let out a long breath and stared around at the debris. The girls who had prepared the food and poured the wine had gone too. She was almost surprised to see that the stock was still there. She had been afraid, halfway through the evening, that there would be none left. But there was enough, still on the silver shelves and plinths, for tomorrow. The first real day, opening to real customers at ten o’clock.

  ‘Was it worth it?’ Thomas asked. ‘Is it w
orth it?’

  She bent down to pick up a glass lying at her feet, and straightened up again. ‘Yes,’ she smiled at him. ‘It was worth it. It is worth it.’

  Her eyes went to Lily, asleep under their two coats.

  ‘Come on,’ Thomas said. ‘We’ll clear half of this lot now, and come in early in the morning to do the rest before opening up time.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Julia said gratefully.

  They did as much as they could find the energy for and then, without warning, Julia found herself in one corner of the shop with Thomas in front of her. She tried to slip around him, but he moved to block the way. She noticed, seemingly for the first time, how tall he was. He put his hand out, and touched her fingers. ‘May I come home with you tonight?’

  Oh no, Thomas.

  The words sprang up automatically, but she didn’t say them. Thomas’s old car must be parked outside; without him Julia would have to carry Lily off in search of a taxi. Suddenly, desperately, Julia longed for some help. Just ordinary, simple help and support. The efforts of the last weeks felt too much, an unscalable height rising in retrospect. If she went home with Thomas he would put his arms around her, after Lily had been put safely in her own bed. Thomas had shared tonight with her. She didn’t want to go home from this party alone.

  Julia knew that it was shameful to say yes to him for comfort’s sake, but she was lonely and tired, and she knew that Thomas was kind. She saw his wrists, protruding from the cuffs of his best shirt, and she also saw the hungry way that he looked at her.

  She bent her head. ‘Yes,’ she whispered, not quite willingly, thinking, Sleeping partner. ‘But Lily mustn’t know anything. She must think you stayed in the living room.’

  With one finger, Thomas touched the angle of her jaw. ‘You mustn’t let Lily be the law you govern yourself by. You have a life of your own to lead.’

  ‘I’ll work it out with Lily without your help.’ Julia’s voice was very sharp. And then, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound like that.’

  He kissed her, awkwardly, like a boy. Julia stood still. Something had made her think of Alexander. Loneliness swooped around her again. Thomas let her go, and went to pick Lily up out of her nest of coats.