by Rosie Thomas
It made her long for Alexander, and for what she had once possessed and stupidly rejected. The reality of what was happening now, by contrast, bit savagely back at her.
She turned her head to look at Mattie again, and saw that she had dipped over the edge into being definitely drunk. Her extravagant earrings, matching the gilt bracelets, swung lopsidedly.
‘Meanwhile,’ Mattie went on, clearly unstoppably, ‘you were in America. With Josh Flood, no less. Patience hopping off her dreary monument, at last. God, that little item has run on and on, hasn’t it? Are you going to tell us the latest? No? Well, never mind. Plenty of time. I’m sure it was all very exciting. But the point is, isn’t it, that you can’t afterwards turn up here and act all grieved and injured because your best friend and your ex-husband have warmed their creaking bones a little. Or on the other hand you can, but you should know that it makes you seem a selfish bitch. Darling.’ Mattie listened to her own words echoing, and then she laughed, without conviction. ‘Oh, Julia. Aren’t you going to say anything?’
The fact that what Mattie had said was true, Julia reflected, didn’t make her like her any more for having said it. But it was important not to let them see that she was hurt, to keep what was left of her dignity until she had escaped from Ladyhill.
‘What do you want to hear, Mattie? Haven’t you said it all, already?’
Julia stood up. Her hands rested on the carved back of her chair. ‘You’re quite right, of course, about everything. And selfishness is worse than disloyalty, I agree.’ She turned, abruptly, away from Mattie, to Alexander. ‘I’m sorry, Alexander. Lily and I will be going first thing in the morning.’
He nodded, stiffly. Clearly he had hated the scene, hated having to witness it in impotent silence. Mattie had been right about that, too. Alexander was middle class. China would never have initiated a row like this one.
Carefully, tidily, Julia pushed her chair in to the table, aligning the back of it with its unoccupied fellows. ‘I’m going to bed, now. Goodnight Mattie. Thank you for the room, Alexander.’
As she reached the door, Mattie put her hand out to her glass once more. Alexander hadn’t refilled it, and so she had taken the bottle and done it herself. But now she misjudged the distance, clumsily swept the glass over. Wine flooded over the table, and dripped between the leaves and on to the floor.
Alexander sat motionless, watching it.
‘Shit,’ Mattie said. ‘Oh, shit. Why am I so stupid?’
Julia went up to her bedroom, along the gallery at the far end, and left them there. She undressed and lay for a long time, looking up into the darkness. Later she heard Alexander and Mattie, separately, coming upstairs. Her room was too far away for her to hear, even if she had remotely wanted to, whether Mattie went to Alexander’s or to her own separate bedroom.
In the morning, unemotionally, she gathered up Lily’s clothes and belongings and packed them into the car. Lily tramped down to the paddock to say a tearful goodbye to her pony, and by nine o’clock they were ready to leave.
Alexander came out to say goodbye. Lily pillowed her puffy face against his shirt and he hugged her, assuring her that there would be other holidays, and that Ladyhill would remain exactly where it stood.
‘No holidays as good as these,’ she wailed.
‘Exactly as good,’ he told her robustly.
In silence, Julia admired the way that Alexander dealt with Lily. As Marilyn had perceptively – if unflatteringly – pointed out, Lily was lucky in her father, at least.
With Lily at last in her seat in the car, Julia said for the last time, ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t keep apologising,’ Alexander told her. ‘I haven’t said that I’m sorry, and neither has Mattie. Why should you?’
They didn’t touch each other. Julia wanted to ask, What will happen now? but she was too proud. Instead she got into the car. Alexander stood back to let her drive away.
Mattie hadn’t appeared at all.
They drove in silence for two or three miles, with Lily huddled in her place, before she asked suddenly, ‘Did you and Mattie have a quarrel or something?’
‘No,’ Julia lied, faint-heartedly. ‘Of course we didn’t.’
Drearily, they reversed the journey of the day before. Over the Stour to Blandford. Salisbury, Andover, Basingstoke, and back to London.
Mattie only stayed at Ladyhill for one more day. As if to emphasise that the precarious holiday had come to an inauspicious end, the weather changed suddenly and conclusively. Huge, solid slabs of cloud mounted up and slid across the sky. A cold wind flattened the grass and then the rain came, driving from the east. Mattie took her thin dresses from the hangers, one by one, and folded them into her suitcase.
She had returned to the single bed, with its Provencal cotton cover, in the spare room she had used in the first five days. It seemed a long time ago.
‘Don’t,’ Alexander had said gently. ‘Unless you want to.’
Mattie had thought carefully. ‘We can’t always have what we want,’ she had told him. She had gone back to the spare room anyway.
On her own, doing her packing, Mattie sighed and looked out of the window at the rain. She pressed the flat of her hand to each eyesocket, in turn, and then swept a jingling heap of bangles and earrings off the dressing table and into the suitcase.
Alexander drove her to the station. She wouldn’t let him come out on to the platform with her to wait for the train. They said goodbye in the windy car park.
‘I’m sorry if I fucked things up for you with Julia,’ she said.
Alexander looked down at her, and touched the metallic-bright strands of hair where she had scraped it forbiddingly back behind her ears. There was no frivolity in Mattie today.
‘You didn’t fuck anything up. That happened long ago.’
‘Did it?’ And then, ‘What a mess we all make.’
‘What are you going to do now?’
‘Get to work,’ Mattie answered crisply. The prospect wasn’t enticing, but she didn’t want Alexander to guess that. He put his arms around her, in the car park, and held her against him.
‘I loved these weeks,’ he said. Mattie thought how much she liked him for the simplicity of the acknowledgement. She liked him, too, for not holding out any false hopes. No if it had only happened differently, or next time we see each other …
There are only two or three men in the world worth loving, she remembered.
‘I’ve got to go. The train will come before I’ve bought my ticket.’
He held on to her for a second longer. They kissed, soft-mouthed, full of regret. Then Mattie picked up her suitcase and walked away into the ticket office.
On the train, wedged on her own amongst the returning holidaymakers, Mattie stared out of the rain-washed window.
She was telling herself, I didn’t know Julia wanted to go back to him. Why didn’t I ever realise it?
Julia has been a fool, Mattie thought. And then, wearily, Why did she choose the most important thing to be stupid about?
There were three small children crammed with their parents into the compartment. Mattie looked at them, the smallest perched on its father’s knee, wondering whether to smile at them and make friends for the journey. She decided at once that she felt much too gloomy. Her thoughts turned to whether there was a bar on the train, and if there was, at what time it was likely to open.
Julia went back to work.
There was plenty of it, waiting for her in the Garlic & Sapphires office. She ploughed through the paperwork that followed her American buying trip, unpacked and inspected samples as they arrived, and drove round to the three other shops to inspire the managers and staff with enthusiasm for the new goods. Everything was the same as it always was, only duller. Business was slack, as it always was over the weeks of the summer holidays, and the autumnal surge of shoppers looking for something amusing to enliven their bedrooms or front rooms hadn’t begun yet.
Julia telephoned Felix at Tresside
r Designs.
‘Come to lunch.’
‘George is in hospital.’
‘I didn’t know. Is it bad?’
‘Not yet. But it isn’t getting any better. I don’t think it will, either.’
‘Felix, I’m sorry. Is there anything I can do?’
‘Buy me some lunch. Cheer me up.’
‘I’ll do my best,’ Julia promised, not very hopefully.
George Tressider wasn’t a good patient. He was being treated privately, in a private room, but he complained that it was the ugliest he had ever been in. The walls were painted a pale shade of shiny turquoise, and there were blue and magenta contemporary print curtains and screens.
‘Shall I bring in some Tressider chintz and rehang?’ Felix asked him, only half joking.
‘Perhaps just a blindfold would do,’ George responded, with a pale echo of his old wit.
Felix smiled at him. George was brave, for all his ill-temper.
The muscular disease had progressed to the stage when George could no longer walk without assistance. When he was out of bed he sat in a wheelchair, with a rug folded over his knees. He looked like an old man. Aware of it, he lifted his hands and held them out to Felix. Felix came, stooping down to his level, and held the knotted fingers. The rich colour of his own skin made George’s look even greyer.
‘I don’t like this,’ George said.
‘I know.’
Felix held his head, cradling it against his shoulder. He looked down at George’s grey hair, and saw the scalp showing beneath the thin strands.
It was after this visit that Felix and Julia met for lunch.
‘How is he?’ Julia asked.
‘They say they can let him come home, soon.’
‘Does that mean he’s better?’
Felix couldn’t answer the question. ‘I’d rather look after him at home. He hates the hospital so much.’
Julia looked at him gravely. She understood what was happening. She had never been fond of George Tressider, but the prospect of his death seemed monstrous, a terrible injustice. She tried to imagine what it would mean to Felix. Across the table, staring blankly at his menu, he was as handsome as he had ever been but there were lines of anxiety at the corners of his mouth, and the first signs of grey were showing in his black, springy hair.
‘May I go and visit him?’ Julia asked.
‘Of course.’ He gave her the details, and Julia wrote them down and put the piece of folded paper into her handbag. ‘It’s aged him,’ Felix said abruptly. He was warning her what to expect. ‘He’s only sixty-two. He looks ten years older than that.’
‘Poor George,’ Julia said, ashamed of the inadequacy of her sympathy.
‘We’ve been married for eleven years. That’s a long time.’
‘Has it been a happy marriage?’ Julia asked softly.
‘I haven’t been a faithful wife.’ He smiled at her, an acknowledgement that they understood each other. ‘But yes, we have been very happy. We are a good partnership.’
A partnership, Julia thought. Of course, that’s what pairing was. After so long, after the passion. She knew what it was to be without it, and the sadness for Felix washed through her.
‘Hey.’ Felix touched the back of her hand. ‘This is a cheerful lunch, remember?’ He discarded the menu in favour of the wine list. ‘Let’s order some wine,’ he said. ‘A lot of wine.’
‘You sound like Mattie.’
He looked sharply at her. ‘And are we going to talk about Mattie?’
‘You know about it?’
Felix remembered Alexander playing the piano, and Mattie dancing, with her dress swirling around her. ‘I guessed.’
He would have warned, Be careful, but he knew that it was too late for that.
‘No,’ Julia said briskly. ‘We aren’t going to talk about Mattie or Alexander. Not today.’ It seemed too small, for all the hurt of it, compared with what was happening to Felix and George.
So they talked about Tressider Designs instead, and about Garlic & Sapphires and the American art market and the latest decorators’ gossip. They drank two bottles of wine and turned giggly, then serious again when it was time to leave. Julia insisted on paying the bill.
‘I’m an independent woman,’ she said, presenting her credit card with a flourish. ‘I’ve fought hard enough to be. Too hard, do you think, Felix?’
‘Only if you feel that it has cost you too much.’
She didn’t look at him now. She bent her head, folding her purse away. ‘Perhaps it has,’ she whispered. ‘Perhaps after all I should have stayed at home and had babies and made jam for the WI.’
‘I don’t think it would have worked,’ Felix said, truthfully. ‘But you look tired, Julia. Why don’t you take a holiday?’
‘I’ve just had one. New York, San Francisco, Toronto, Colorado.’
‘I thought that was work.’
And so it mostly had been, except for seeing Josh. And if she did go on holiday, where should she go, and with whom? ‘It’s an idea,’ she said, dismissing it.
They parted on the pavement outside the restaurant. Felix kissed her, and she held on to him for a moment.
‘You’re a good friend, Felix.’
‘As good as you are.’
She watched him as he walked away. But I’m not good, or much of a friend, she was thinking. She looked at her watch. Half past three. She should have been back at work long ago. Over the next weeks, she thought two or three times about Felix’s suggestion.
Julia’s eye for a witty or original piece of merchandise had never deserted her, and over the years of running her shops she had developed into an efficient administrator as well. The Garlic & Sapphires operation ran smoothly, but for Julia most of the uncertainty and so most of the excitement had gone. She knew what pieces would sell, and she knew how to price them and how to display them. Sitting at her desk she remembered the anxiety, and the thrills, of the very early days, when she had done everything herself, and had snatched bites of sandwich for her lunch in the little cubicle behind the first shop.
She didn’t often, nowadays, experience the charge of excitement that she had felt in New York. It occurred to her that perhaps Felix was right, in a sense. Perhaps she needed not so much a holiday as a change of scene, and the different perspectives that a change would bring.
It was a long time, too, since she had been away for any reason not connected directly with the shops. Lily never wanted to go anywhere on holiday except to Ladyhill, and Julia had taken the opportunity provided by her absences to work harder, for longer hours.
For what? she thought now, with sudden bitterness.
She would go away, she decided. For a proper holiday, some time soon.
In the end, it was George Tressider who provided the final impetus.
Julia had been to see him in the hospital. She had taken him a huge bunch of extravagant, creamy lilies, and a big, plain white cylindrical vase from the shop to display them in. George was touchingly grateful for the offering. It was the vase, even more than the flowers, that pleased him. Julia arranged the lilies in it and set it on his bedside table.
He lay back, gazing at them. ‘You’ve no idea,’ he said. Even his voice sounded thinner, drained of all the fluting emphases. ‘People bring exquisite flowers, and the nurses take them and dump them in Woolworths’ green cut glass, or a bulbous purple pot. I would rather not have flowers at all, than see them made hideous. You have given me much pleasure, by bringing the right container. It is all a question of balance, and proportion, isn’t it? In the big things, as well as the small ones. It’s the search for the right balance that has made my work so pleasurable.’
The next time she saw him, he was much happier. Felix had taken him home, to the old flat in Eaton Square. It was a relief to see him once more ensconced amongst the Lalique bowls and the Regency furniture, the French marble mantels and the billowing Tressider chintzes. There were flowers everywhere, perfectly arranged, and bowls of pot
pourri on the tables contributing to the scented atmosphere. George was sitting in an armchair. He was wearing one of his immaculate, waisted, lavender-grey suits, and a high-collared pale pink shirt, His hair had been cut and brushed back, and he looked almost himself again. Almost well, Julia thought, until his hand held hers. His flesh felt dry and papery, as if it would flake off the bones.
‘My dear. Here we are again,’ George said. ‘Restored to grace.’
They had tea together, the three of them. Felix brought in a tray, laid with the full works. Georgian silver teapot, sugar bowl and cream jug, although they all took their tea with lemon. Silver tongs, and a little spirit lamp to keep the water hot. Meissen china, white and gold, practically transparent in its thinness, and lawn and lace fragments too delicate to be called napkins.
‘Pretty,’ Julia murmured, accepting a tiny triangle of cucumber sandwich.
George and Felix treated each other with a kind of watchful tenderness. Julia was moved, but she felt like an intruder. She stared at the tiny plate on her lap, while her eyes burned.
George drank his tea, but he ate nothing.
Afterwards Julia helped Felix to carry the precious paraphernalia back into the kitchen. ‘He likes beautiful things,’ Felix said. ‘He has collected all these, over the years. It would be a pity not to use them, now, wouldn’t it?’
‘Of course,’ Julia reassured him.
George wanted to talk. She listened, while he described the early days of Tressider Designs, after the War, when there had been no money and even fewer materials. ‘Make do and mend. The best training of all, having to make something from nothing.’ He looked round his glowing room with clear satisfaction. ‘That, and never missing an opportunity. The only trouble with getting old, you know, is that you regret the opportunities that you did miss.’
He didn’t talk about being ill, only about getting old. Julia didn’t know if he understood that he wouldn’t live very much longer. His eyes settled on Felix. ‘I didn’t miss all that many,’ he said. Felix smiled at him, Julia saw that they were happy, and understood that it wasn’t the amount of time left that was important, only the quality of it. And she saw clearly that the quality of her own time, however much of it remained, was about as precious as the green glass hospital vases. At the same time the opportunities, unrecognised and unreached-for, were slipping past her.
