by Rosie Thomas
Lily was quieter than usual, but if anyone except Julia noticed, no one mentioned it.
The light was fading when Julia went out to see the last pair of guests into their car. After they had driven off she stood for a moment under the plane tree outside the house, watching the lit-up windows of the house opposite, and her neighbours passing to and fro behind the uncurtained glass. The little tableaux made the street seem cosy. She breathed in a satisfying lungful of damp, leafy air and then went back up the five steps to their front door.
It was dim in the big living room after the brighter light outside. Julia blinked and hesitated, and then saw Lily sitting on the rug in front of the chesterfield. Her knees were drawn up to her chin and one cheek rested on one knee. Her shoulders were hunched forward as if to hide something, or protect something. A corner of the rug was pulled up underneath her. Julia was particularly fond of the rug, an old Anatolian kelim in soft, faded garnet-reds and cobalt-blues. It had long, hand-knotted, bobbled fringes, and an expert had told her that the design represented the tree of life. She was proud of the rug, too. She had bought it on one of her first trips, when she was still nervous of travelling alone, from a market in a little hill town. She had haggled and bargained with the old man who was selling it, and then had walked away because his price was too high. Then she had turned back because she knew she wanted it, and he had disarmed her by accepting her offer and rolling the rug up to press it into her arms, as if he knew it was going to a good home. There had been no question, after that, of it going into the shop. It exactly fitted the space on the sanded floor.
Julia went across and put her hand on Lily’s shoulder, intending to say something about supper, and schoolday tomorrow. Then she saw that Lily was methodically snipping off the knotted fringes, one by one, with the big pair of kitchen scissors. A pathetic pile of fraying ends lay on the floor beside her.
Julia snatched the scissors. They fell, and slithered out of sight under the chesterfield. Julia gave Lily’s hand a stinging slap. She didn’t flinch, but stared up at her mother, her face, a set, triangular mask of defiant unhappiness. Julia saw the unhappiness, but her own possessive anger was much stronger. After the instant she was ashamed of it, but then it was too late.
She held on to Lily’s hand, and shook her. ‘You stupid girl. Why have you done it? It’s a beautiful rug, and you’ve wrecked it. You’re a thoughtless, stupid vandal. Just to sit there, and cut it up. Don’t you care about people’s things? It’s not your rug to ruin. It’s mine. I …’
Coldly, Lily cut her short. ‘Everything’s yours. Your house, and your shops, and your friends. Well, I’m not yours, so there. I’m Alexander’s. I wish he was here. I hate you.’
Lily broke free and scrambled to her feet. She bent down and scooped up the severed fringes then flung them across the room.
‘It’s only a mat,’ she shouted. ‘It’s not a person.’ The coldness had gone. She was crying now, and the puckering of her face made her look as she had when she was a baby. Helplessly, Julia held her hand out to her, but Lily pushed it away from her and ran out of the room.
I’m Alexander’s, Julia thought heavily. There had been other times, many other rows, of course, when Julia had forbidden something or enforced some discipline, and Lily had wished for her father. The bond between them had always been strong, and it was strengthening all the time as Lily grew up in her devotion to Ladyhill, and the green, folded countryside around it. Lily’s pride in the rebirth of Ladyhill’s splendour, artfully aged and faded by George and Felix, was no less fierce than Alexander’s. After each visit she came back full of the details of the latest room that had been cleaned and reopened, or of some nineteenth-century oil of the house that had passed out of the family, and Alexander had managed to buy back again. Julia had accepted it all, as she had made herself promise she would at the beginning, and she had encouraged Lily to talk about her father, as well as to think of Ladyhill as home, her other home.
But this was the first time that Lily had said, I’m Alexander’s.
I hate you, Julia comforted herself, that was ordinary enough, wasn’t it? All daughters told their mothers that, sometime. But not, I’m his, not yours.
It had begun, then, as Julia had been afraid that it would. The measuring of one of them against the other, and as soon as the measuring had started there would be judging, and then choosing. She didn’t want to think of what that would mean. To push the thought away she moved, stiffly, to pick up the scattered ends of fringing from where Lily had thrown them.
She is mine, she thought. I was there when she was born, out of me, even though I don’t remember it. Even though I’m a bad one, I am her mother. She looked down at the shreds of wool and silk in her hands. They smelt of dust, and there were pieces of fluff trapped with the fibres. It is only a mat. Lily’s right.
She went quickly and threw them into the dustbin. Then she retrieved the kitchen scissors and put them away in their proper place.
Suddenly a memory stirred and revived. A wonderful firework display of coloured stars, spreading across some flowered wallpaper. The gummed stars that she had brought home, as a little girl, from somebody’s birthday party. And then had stuck all over the bedroom wall. Julia remembered Betty’s boiling anger, and her accusations, and the way that she had shouted, ‘It’s our house, not yours.’ Julia realised that always, up to this moment, she had believed that she just thought the stars were pretty, that the bright colours improved the insipid wallpaper.
But now, as if she had become someone else altogether, she realised that she had wanted to deface the order of Betty’s house. She could see herself, licking and sticking the stars, knowing that they would make a mess, knowing what Betty would do. She had wanted to assert herself, and distance herself, testing Betty and rebelling against her at the same time.
Poor Betty, Julia thought. All along, I made her the villain of that story. I told it to Jessie, once, and I made myself out to be the innocent little thing who saw no further than the bright, beautiful stars. How much did Lily understand of what she had done, how much did she mean? The same? The same test, and rebellion?
Julia frowned, trying to tease out the threads of significance. Lily had no need to rebel against petty domestic tyranny. Julia wasn’t houseproud. She had been, briefly, very angry about her kelim, as surely anyone would have been? She liked and valued pretty things, and clearly remembered the days when she hadn’t been able to afford them. But the moment was past, now. It wasn’t the mat that was important.
She could talk to Lily, at least. Betty had never talked to her.
Julia went slowly upstairs. Lily was lying on her bed, stiff, looking very small. She had been crying, but her eyes were dry now. Julia sat down at the edge of the bed, looking down at her. ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked gently. ‘Can you tell me why?’
Lily turned her head away, to stare at the wall.
Julia waited, but the silence began to solidify between them. She knew from experience how stubbornly silent Lily could be, when she was angry, or sulking about something. It was quite possible that she wouldn’t speak until tomorrow morning, and Julia didn’t want to let that silence happen, not this time. To break it, she began talking herself. ‘Do you know something that happened when I was a bit younger than you? Something I did to Granny Smith? I went to a birthday party, and I was given a packet of coloured sticky stars. The kind that teachers stick in exercise books, for good work …’ She knew that Lily was listening, although she kept her face turned away. ‘Until tonight, you know, I always thought Granny Smith was wrong. But I’ve just understood that I knew what I was doing. I wanted to serve her right for something, although I didn’t know what it was. Not properly.’
Julia stopped again, and waited. Lily was quick enough and perceptive enough to make her own conclusions.
Without warning, in a little, toneless voice, she said, ‘You didn’t tell me you were going to America.’
It was so unexpected that it
left Julia breathless. ‘I …’
‘You didn’t tell me. You just said it on the phone, to Mattie, Like it didn’t matter, whether you were here or not.’
Julia peered into the windy expanse of misunderstanding that seemed suddenly to have opened between them. Lily was still frowning at the wall; her hand lay loosely, palm up, on the bedcover. Julia took hold of it and squeezed it between her own hands. ‘I’ve been away before,’ she said. ‘To Turkey, and India, and Thailand, and all the other places. I didn’t think you didn’t want me to go.’ Julia tried to recall. Lily had always let her go quite cheerfully. Seemingly cheerfully. Sometimes she had said, ‘Wish you weren’t going, Mum,’ but that was all. She had seemed happy with Marilyn and Alexander, relaxed and welcoming when she came home again. Julia had even congratulated herself on that. ‘I didn’t know,’ she said sadly. ‘I’m sorry.’ She was thinking of the cut-up rug, the vehemence of the silent protest.
‘I hate it when you’re not here,’ Lily burst out. ‘You shouldn’t have to go away.’
‘Lily, I’ve had to earn a living, to support us both.’ That was the truth, she reflected, but only the partial truth. Lily ignored it.
‘You’re my mother. You should be here.’
The selfishness made Julia ache for both of them. Lily’s needs and her own, Betty’s and her own. Colliding head on. Poor mothers, she thought. Can’t ever get it right. And poor daughters, too. We want things from each other, and we want to give them, but the gestures are so clumsy that they knock themselves awry. Gently, she let go of Lily’s hand and stroked her hair. As she seemed to do more and more often, she wondered about her own natural mother. Where was she, and what would she say? ‘I won’t go to America,’ she promised.
She felt the stiffness of Lily’s neck and shoulders, knew that she was trying not to jerk her head out of reach of her mother’s hand.
‘Oh, go,’ Lily said, dismissing her. ‘Just tell me properly. I don’t like hearing about it when you’re having a chat with Mattie.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Julia said again, humbly. ‘The idea just came to me there and then, and it seemed a good one, so I said it.’
My own selfishness, equal and opposite.
Lily had picked up a book and was staring at the jacket picture. Julia knew that she wouldn’t say any more. She stood up, saying something about supper, and went to the door. As she reached it, Lily mumbled, ‘I’m sorry about your rug.’
Julia was surprised, and grateful.
‘You were right, it’s only a thing, not a person. Anyway, it’s our rug.’
‘Not mine. I don’t care about stuff like that.’
Julia half smiled. ‘You do if it belongs to Ladyhill.’
The answer came back without a second’s hesitation. ‘Ladyhill’s different.’
Julia nodded. She waited for a second or two, but neither of them said any more. She closed Lily’s door and went downstairs, moving as if her limbs hurt. The light had faded, and the big room seemed gloomy and cold. Julia wrapped her arms around herself and walked to the window, staring out without seeing anything. She wanted to talk to Alexander. She wanted to pick up the telephone and say, ‘This is happening. What can we do?’
She wasn’t surprised, any more, to recognise the importance that Alexander still held for her. She had told herself that he was still her friend, even after all that had happened, and much more than that, he was Lily’s father. But it was only recently that Julia had understood that she needed the reassurance, however remote, of his influence on her own life, as well as on Lily’s. Alexander had become a kind of measuring scale, a mark of permanence and stability. She would judge, Alexander would like this, or believe in that, or enjoy the other. The link with him was comforting, and strengthening for Lily’s sake. She thought it was harmless, after so long. They saw each other rarely, in London. Julia had never been back to Ladyhill. She avoided it, out of a kind of superstition, although there had been times when she might have gone, to see Lily compete in a gymkhana, or to Faye’s sixtieth birthday party. But she had never gone, and they met when Lily was on her way to Ladyhill or coming back again, or when Alexander happened to be working in Town.
Julia valued the loose, unspoken but continuing ties. She wondered if perhaps Alexander did too. He had met Thomas Tree but he had never spoken of him, and he must have noticed his disappearance, but he had never commented on that, either.
It never could have worked, with Thomas, Julia thought wearily. There were too many ghosts.
And now, when she wanted to share tonight’s particular fears with Alexander, it was impossible. Because Julia was certain that the truth of this evening was nothing to do with the Anatolian kelim, nothing, even, to do with America or her own absences from home. The truth was, I’m not yours, so there. I’m Alexander’s.
Everything else, whatever Lily might protest, because she didn’t yet understand it herself, was just a symptom of that.
Lily had begun to compare, and to judge, just because she was old enough. Her parents were separate, unconnected, and so represented different choices. And if a choice offered itself, wasn’t the childish instinct to make it? Children didn’t equivocate, or conciliate, Julia remembered, thinking of herself and what she had done to Betty. The thought of Lily with her fierce, childish allegiances, choosing between herself and Alexander, was unbearably painful. But it seemed, equally unbearably, quite inevitable. Julia felt cold, swung away from the window, and walked the length of the chilly room.
She was thinking that everything, this pretty house and its careful contents, Garlic & Sapphires, four shops with their window displays and managers and staff, the warehouse full of stock and the office and filing cabinets, even the Triumph Vitesse parked in the street outside, had been assembled for Lily’s sake. She had been a bad mother, she thought, in her efforts to be a good mother. Without Lily, nothing mattered, and yet everything else had been made to matter.
And none of it made any difference. She couldn’t tie Lily to her, or insist on her love and loyalty, or stop them flowing away elsewhere. Nor could she confide any of these terrors to Alexander because, in this, he was her enemy.
Julia was lonely, and loneliness made her helpless. Then her arms dropped to her sides. If the room was cold, then she should turn the heating on. Lily would need supper, and to be reminded to find the contents of her gym-bag, ready for school in the morning. Julia turned the lights on and drew the curtains to close out the street, then deliberately fixed her attention on the little, domestic jobs that would fill the spaces for this evening, for a while longer. She made boiled eggs and toast, and called Lily down from her room. She came jumping down the stairs and then sat in her place at the table, her feet folded under her, munching toast and watching the television.
Looking at her, Julia thought that she was as oblivious as she had been herself, blithely sticking the stars on Betty’s wallpaper. Nor had she recognised the little truth under the layers until the great age of thirty-one. Why should Lily be any different?
Julia reached across the table to clear the plates.
It took a long time to grow up, she told herself. A bloody long, painful time.
‘I’ll send you a postcard of the Empire State Building.’
‘And the Statue of Liberty. And I want some proper American T-shirts, that everyone will know you can’t buy here.’
‘Status snob,’ Julia teased.
‘Why not? What’s wrong with wanting groovy gear no one else has got?’
Lily faced her, wide-eyed, perfectly serious. Remembering the expeditions to Brick Lane market, the rummaging in Jessie’s old finery and the inexpert dressmaking of years ago, Julia had to smile. ‘Nothing at all. I used to be just like you.’
‘Really, Mum? Even in your day?’
Alexander was sitting on the chesterfield, with his long, thin legs stretched out in front of him. Alexander’s wardrobe seemed to have changed very little since 1959. He still wore corduroys, sweaters and Tattersall-
check shirts, and in winter a tweed coat that had belonged to his father. ‘I’m so out I’m in,’ he used to proclaim, with clear satisfaction.
Julia appealed to him. ‘That’s true, isn’t it, Alexander? Even in my day. Distant though that is.’
He lifted his head, looking at her. ‘Quite true. When I first saw your mother, Lily, she was like some exotic butterfly. She always had extraordinary clothes. Either very complicated, or perfectly simple, but always completely different from what the other girls were wearing, and about fifty times more glamorous. And she had wonderful legs, which she still has.’
‘This is Mummy?’
‘Of course.’
Julia had already turned away, hiding her face from Alexander’s scrutiny. The floor was heaped with Lily’s bags and possessions, ready for the trip to Ladyhill, and she rummaged gratefully amongst them, wondering what she was pretending to look for. ‘Yes, well. Thank you. A hundred years ago now, Lily darling.’
She knew that Alexander was still looking at her. She felt awkward, disconcerted, and separated by much more than a hundred years from the exotic butterfly that Alexander remembered. She glossed the moment over with unnecessary fuss over Lily’s belongings as they were stowed into Alexander’s car.
But then, when that was done and Lily’s bicycle was safely roped to the roof-rack, they had to go back into the house to fill the empty moments before saying goodbye. Lily ran down the basement steps to look for Marilyn, and Julia and Alexander stood by the window looking into the garden. It was full of roses, and lavender, and honeysuckle, and the wash from pleasure boats on the canal slapped and rippled against the towpath.
‘Your garden looks pretty,’ Alexander said.
‘Thank you. It’s funny, I enjoy it now. Who’d have thought I’d turn into a gardener?’ She laughed. ‘It must be old age.’
‘You talk too much about getting old. You’re still young, Julia. Everything could happen.’
