Rosie Thomas 4-Book Collection

by Rosie Thomas

  In Alexander’s car, the same dusty estate, Julia asked, ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Lily and I have rented a flat, in Fulham,’ Alexander answered. ‘It’s rather suitable. We use it whenever either of us needs to be in London.’

  ‘Neutral territory,’ Julia murmured.

  ‘Exactly,’ he agreed. They were both thinking that Ladyhill wasn’t neutral, not yet.

  They reached the Chiswick flyover. Julia looked at the tangled buildings and the streaming cars, all bathed in thin, murky sunlight. Montebellate already seemed far behind her, but she felt no regret. She turned to look at Alexander’s profile, filled with affection for its familiarity.

  ‘Do you know what I was thinking, on the plane?’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I was thinking that we should have a party, for Mattie. Not a solemn business like her memorial service will be. But a real old noisy party, like there used to be.’

  To her delight, Alexander caught the shimmer of the idea and tossed it back to her. ‘Yes. And I know where we should have it, too. The only possible place. The Rocket. It’s been turned into a bar now, rather a louche one, and there’s a little dance-floor downstairs.’

  Lily leaned forward between them, her arms spread along the backs of their seats. ‘A party,’ she chanted. ‘A wonderful, wicked party.’

  Later, when they were alone together, Julia sat with Alexander’s arms around her and her head resting against his shoulder.

  ‘I couldn’t come back any sooner,’ Julia said. ‘Not straight after Mattie died. I didn’t see how we could start again with shadows still between us.’

  ‘I know,’ Alexander answered. ‘I understand why you went away. It’s part of your strictness. We didn’t deserve our happiness then, when Mattie was dead. That was what you thought, wasn’t it?’

  He understood more, at last. He understood Julia herself. ‘You lost her too.’

  ‘Yes, I lost her. I loved her as well.’

  To her infinite relief, Julia realised that there was no bitterness left between them.

  ‘Julia, are you here to stay?’

  ‘If you will have me.’

  He held her tighter, answering her.

  Felix was standing in his dressing gown at one of the tall windows that overlooked Eaton Square. There had been weeks of rain, but now there was the promise of an Indian summer. The angle of the sun had already declined, and it filtered through the tired trees to cast long, autumnal shadows.

  Felix was thinking of the old days, with Julia and Mattie, and the other flat with a view of London plane trees. He remembered how their female mystery had seemed to exclude him, but how the three of them had still drawn closer together, until he loved them both.

  He had kept the drawings that he had done of them, all that time ago.

  And this April, after Julia had telephoned to tell him the unthinkable news, he had gone to the dusty folder and taken them out.

  The first drawing showed the two of them sprawled on Mattie’s bed. Mattie was reading a magazine, Julia a fat novel. Mattie was all loose curves, and her bare thigh showed where her robe had fallen open. Beside her, Julia was dark and angry-looking, with sharp bones showing under her thin skin. Looking afresh at his work, Felix realised that he had unknowingly drawn her as a boy. And he also saw that they were only children, trying hard to look like bad girls.

  It was twenty-two years since he had done the drawing, but he had found that he could still remember their reaction when he showed it to them. ‘You haven’t made us very pretty,’ Julia had complained.

  And he had told them that they had more than prettiness, they had style. They had kept their style, the two of them, individually and in the convolutions of their friendship. He had taken out the second drawing and studied that. It showed the three of them, Mattie and Julia and Josh. They were listening to ‘Rock Around the Clock’. Such a long time ago, even the music seemed innocent.

  Felix had liked the second drawing. He had kept it pinned to his wall over the mantelpiece. He found, oddly, that he couldn’t remember exactly when he had realised that it was there because he liked to look at Josh.

  Since the dark day at the end of April, he had often gone back to the folder and taken out the two drawings. But on this morning, in the oblique yellow light of the beginning of autumn, he went only as far as his desk between two of the high windows. He touched the folder with the tips of his fingers, then walked on through the quiet flat. He didn’t turn his head to look at George’s Lalique glass, or at the modern pictures, or any of the juxtaposition of old and new things. But he was still conscious of the continuity, and the changes.

  After William had come, the faintly old-maidish order of the place had disappeared. William made lively, healthy disarray. He left open books and magazines on the marble consoles, and he lay with his feet up on the pale silk sofas. He emptied the loose change out of his pockets and dumped it in the Lalique bowls, and left a trail of coffee cups and sketches and thrown-off shoes wherever he went.

  Felix went into the kitchen and made tea. Then he carried the tray through into the bedroom.

  William blinked at him, and yawned. Felix put the tray down beside the bed and opened the curtains to the slanting sunshine. William hauled himself upright and leaned back against the bedhead. He was always a heavy sleeper, and it took him a long time to wake up in the mornings. Felix took him tea, and William was always grateful. It was one of William’s most likeable traits that he demonstrated his gratitude for even the smallest things that were done for him. It made him an attractive companion. They had lived together for almost six months, and Felix was still discovering the extent of their pleasure in it.

  Felix poured the tea, and gave William his cup. He drank it quickly, with the open appetite that he brought to everything. Then he folded his hands behind his head. Thick, dark hair curled in his armpits and across his chest. Felix put his hand over William’s breastbone. He was very warm, and the sheets of muscle pulled smoothly under Felix’s fingers. They smiled candidly at each other.

  ‘What time do we have to be there?’ William asked.

  Felix’s face changed, turning sombre. ‘Eleven o’clock. I’d better go and have my shower.’

  When he came back, he was carrying one of his dark grey suits on its padded hanger.

  ‘It’s a celebration,’ William reminded him gently, ‘not a funeral.’

  ‘I know it’s not a funeral,’ Felix answered.

  Today was the day of Mattie’s memorial service. And tonight, at the Rocket Club there would be the party that she would have wanted. The shock and despair that they had felt at her funeral had faded enough to let them celebrate her.

  He hung the dark suit up again and took out a cream one. He tucked a blue silk handkerchief into the breast pocket, and put on a shirt in the same shade of blue. Beside him, William shrugged himself into his blue and white seersucker summer jacket.

  When they were ready, they went out across the square in their light, bright clothes. Felix’s white car was parked under the trees. They got into it together, and drove across London.

  The Actors’ Church in Covent Garden was already almost full.

  Felix and William hesitated for a moment when they came inside it, letting their eyes grow accustomed to the dimness after the sunlight, breathing in the churchy air. Then they walked down the nave to their places near the front.

  A moment later, Julia slipped into the seat next to Felix. She was wearing a little hat with a veil that reminded him, for some reason that he couldn’t quite place, of Jessie. They kissed each other, then Julia stretched her hand across to touch William’s in greeting. Her fingers and thin wrist were tanned from the Italian sun. Beyond Julia was Lily. Alexander followed her, smiling over their two heads at Felix.

  Felix was glad to see that Alexander was there.

  They bowed their heads, shuffled in their decorous line and folded their hands, inexperienced churchgoers except for Alexander who was
used to the rituals of Ladyhill parish. Julia was thinking that Mattie would have giggled and whispered behind her service sheet, and that when she bent her head to bring it closer there would be the old scent of Coty and cigarettes. She closed her eyes, folding the memory of her within herself. The service took the form of readings from what were supposed to be some of Mattie’s favourite books. Ricky Banner, Chris Fredericks and Tony Drake read in turn, and a film producer who had been a frustrated long-term admirer of Mattie’s gave a short address.

  They sang the twenty-third psalm, and finally the hymn. ‘He Who Would Valiant Be’. The hymn had been Julia’s choice. She and Mattie had sung it at Blick Road together, two little girls nudging each other behind their hymn books.

  To be a pilgrim. As they sang, Julia was aware of the people all around her. She had seen John Douglas, and villainous old Francis Willoughby, Jimmy Proffitt and other faces that were familiar from films and the theatre. She remembered some of the women from Mattie’s feminist theatre group, and amongst the others she didn’t know were Lenny, and Doris and Ada, and one or two unplaceable middle-aged women who had once worked Monty’s strip club circuit alongside Mattie.

  They had all come here to remember Mattie. Except that there was no real memory of her here, in these tasteful, sanitised proceedings. Julia couldn’t remember Mattie ever having expressed admiration for the Shakespeare sonnet that Chris Fredericks read so movingly. All of this was to make this gathering of Mattie’s friends feel that they had done the right thing for her, only none of them had been able to do it at the right time. They had all loved Mattie. It was one of her special talents to command love, and yet in the end none of it had been enough for her.

  Painfully, Julia turned her head, trying to shift the weight of her guilt. Guilt was futile and destructive, Julia knew that after the summer that had just gone. But still she couldn’t escape the knowledge that of all these people Mattie had loved her best, and yet she hadn’t been there when she was needed.

  If she had gone to Coppins that night, instead of sleeping in Alexander’s arms.

  If. There was no comfort or validity in If.

  Standing in the crowded church, with their schoolgirls’ hymn rolling around her, Julia suffered her loss once more. Mattie was gone, and no amount of respectful celebration could bring even an echo of her back.

  They started on the last verse. People were thinking of cups of coffee, early drinks and lunch and the promise of the living day outside the church. Their voices rose cheerfully. Julia could hear Alexander’s firm, musician’s tenor and Lily’s soprano. On her other side Felix’s head was bent but William was singing with his chin well up, showing a well-bred public schoolboy’s familiarity with the words.

  And then, looking away in the opposite direction across the nave, to where a shaft of light struck through one of the windows, she saw Josh’s blond head.

  He was singing, isolated in the midst of a contingent from the agency that had used Mattie in its deodorant ads.

  Julia shook her head slightly, turned her eyes down to her service sheet, then lifted them to where she had last seen Josh. He was still there.

  After the first shock of surprise, Julia recognised the inevitability of it. It had always been Josh’s ability to appear and disappear with theatrical suddenness. It had hurt her, long ago.

  Josh had loved Mattie too, in his way. He had materialised here to celebrate what passed for her memory, along with everyone else. There was nothing particularly startling in that. But Julia felt her heart thumping unpleasantly.

  Lily glanced at her mother. Then she followed the direction of her gaze, across the nave. The memorial service was over. They knelt, with a rustling of paper and skirts, for the priest’s final blessing. Then, with the triumphal burst of an organ fugue dismissing them, they stood up and began to crowd into the aisle. There were greetings, and handshakes, and as they streamed out into the sunlight of the piazza there were kisses and discreet ripples of laughter. They were like the congregation at a rather sombre wedding, suddenly released to the prospect of champagne and gossip. They felt alive, each one of them, straightening their shoulders and peering ahead into the brightness. Julia’s mourning for Mattie wasn’t complete, even after the summer she had spent alone at Montebellate with her memories of her. She guessed that the sense of loss would always stay with her. But now, coming out of the Actors’ Church in the press of Mattie’s friends and colleagues, Julia knew that she was alive too. Mattie and Mitch were dead, but her own choices and discoveries lay ahead of her.

  Julia smiled, uncertainly, her eyes stinging behind her veil.

  Someone stepped in front of her, isolating her from the crowd. She looked up at Josh. Julia lifted the wisp of net away from her face and he kissed her, small, light kisses on either side of her mouth.

  ‘What are you doing here, Josh?’

  His face was still the same, only there was more silver than gold about Josh now. She remembered just what it was about him that she had loved, and why it had been so helplessly.

  ‘I was in England. I knew that Mattie was dead, of course. I’m sorry.’ Formally, he offered his condolences to her and Julia nodded. ‘I saw the notice of the memorial in the paper. I wanted to be here. Harry Gilbert wanted to come too, you know. But he’s in hospital. He’s not very well. He saw all Mattie’s films, although I don’t think he ever told Joyce why. He even came to see her in the West End, once or twice.’

  Julia nodded again, absorbing the idea of Harry Gilbert’s making an icon out of Mattie. Nothing could seem odd or incongruous today.

  Josh said, ‘I didn’t know where to find you. I knew you would be here this morning.’

  She lifted her eyes to Josh’s. ‘Did you still want to find me, after everything?’

  ‘I did.’

  She remembered the loneliness that she had seen in the mountain cabin, the threads she had glimpsed of a life that hadn’t changed in twenty years. Josh didn’t change, or grow. But he had the same, compelling effect. Lightly, Julia rested her hand on his arm. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘Here’s Lily. Would you have guessed?’

  Lily delighted in her chameleon changes. Today her hair was a black, glossy cap. The hem of her raspberry-pink linen dress fell below her knees, and she was wearing a pair of her mother’s pearl studs in her ears, like any debutante.

  ‘I wouldn’t have guessed,’ Josh answered. ‘But now I see.’ He studied her candidly. He held out his hand, and Lily shook it. ‘You’re the aviator,’ she breathed, her eyes widening.

  ‘Your mother and Mattie called me that, long ago.’

  Your comic-book hero. Those were Alexander’s words.

  ‘Josh, here’s Felix. And this is Felix’s friend William Paget.’

  There was more handshaking, followed by the good-humoured greetings of friends who were silently conscious of their fortune in being here, and of the absences.

  Julia shielded her eyes with her hand. The day’s beaten brilliance seemed suddenly too bright for her.

  ‘And this is Alexander Bliss. Alexander, this is Josh Flood.’ Alexander saw a lean, suntanned man with an open, good-humoured expression. He looked pleasant, but Alexander would never have picked him out of a crowd as a comic-book hero. How odd it is, he thought, when legends finally take shape. Yet Julia had left him for this man, the wilful tenacity of her love for him had been hurtful and baffling. Once, Alexander might have wanted to hit him. Now he felt nothing but curiosity.

  Julia was watching them. He sensed her anxiety and it touched him. He loved her now, and he was almost sure of her. The appearance of Josh did no more than convince him that he must make certain of her, at once.

  He held out his hand. ‘Hello, Josh.’

  Josh took it in both of his, shook it warmly. ‘Alexander. Good to see you.’

  They stood, the six of them, in the wide space outside the church while the pigeons hopped and pecked between their feet. They talked lightly about the ceremony, but not about Mattie’s absence fro
m it. And then the conversation faltered. They began to glance around them, wondering what it was proper to do next.

  Felix said, ‘Would it be a good idea if we all went back to have lunch at Eaton Square? It would be our own, private party before this evening.’

  Julia smiled at him. ‘Mattie would have liked to be with us.’

  ‘I know she would,’ Felix said softly. Julia knew that they were both remembering how Mattie had loved smoky rooms, refilled glasses, and the laughter and conspiracies of friendship.

  Alexander’s fingers touched Julia’s wrist.

  They drove back across London in their cars, and sat down amongst the pale cushions in Felix’s drawing room. William poured glasses of wine, and Julia lifted hers.

  ‘To Mattie,’ she said proudly.

  ‘To Mattie,’ they echoed her.

  They drank wine, and they talked, like any group of old friends. Josh and Alexander talked about skiing and Concorde. Julia and William talked about painting, and Felix described Paris to Lily. Lily was going to Paris in the autumn, to live for a year, to work and to learn French. At her insistence, Alexander had allowed her to leave school.

  Lily’s brightness shone and crackled in the muted elegance of the room. She laughed, and she made the rest of them laugh with her. Julia saw the flicker of Josh’s admiration from the moment that it kindled, and she also saw Alexander’s frank pride in his daughter.

  The angle of the sun declined further still. It struck through the windows in long, gilded bars and then the bars narrowed and disappeared altogether as the sun slid behind the roofs across the square. Soon it would be time for their little group to move on to the big party at the Rocket.

  Felix stood up and went over to his desk between the windows. He undid the ribbon that tied it, and opened the blue folder. He lifted a drawing in each hand and held them out, the one of Julia and Mattie to Julia, the other one to Josh.

  They took them. Felix said, ‘I’ve held on to these for a long time. I think I’d like you to take them now. As a different memorial.’

  Josh took his, then held it out for Lily to see. Her glance went from the face in the picture to the one in front of her.