Bad Girls Good Women (104 page)

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 from 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.

‘A long time ago,’ Josh murmured. He smiled at Felix. ‘I’d like it, very much. I remember we were listening to Bill Haley.’

Julia imagined the picture tacked up on the bare walls of the cabin in the mountains, or in the impersonal Vail apartment. She looked down at her own drawing. A few months ago she might have folded it, and put it lovingly in her marquetry box. But she was trying to live without her talisman now. Life was to be lived, its chances seized, and not to be propitiated as she had tried to do. She had thrown away Valerie Hall’s birth certificate because she had no need of it, and she had replaced the Rapunzel book in the palazzo library. Her engagement and wedding rings were still in the box. If she was right, if she was lucky, they could be taken out again.

And then, because she had started to buy them once more, she could keep her strings of pearls and pairs of garish earrings in George’s marquetry box.

She held the, picture out to Lily. ‘You take it, Lily,’ she said. ‘When Felix made that drawing, Mattie and I were just the age that you are now. We knew that we had everything to happen to us, but we still thought that we were such clever, bad girls.’

‘You became good women,’ Alexander said. ‘Both of you did.’

They came together, all the old friends, in the white-painted cellar for Mattie’s party. Julia had searched them out, and tracing the networks of marriages and removals and remarriages made her feel at home again in London.

Ricky brought a reformed version of The Dandelions, and a little crowd of fans followed them, They were closer to Lily’s age than to Mattie and Julia’s. Rozzie’s children were amongst them, and the Banner party was completed by Rozzie herself with Marilyn and Sam. Phil had got married and gone to live in Canada. Mattie hadn’t left a will, but most of Mitch’s money and her own considerable estate had been divided between the five brothers and sisters. Marilyn put her arms around Julia. The waves of blonde hair were just like Mattie’s.

‘I’d give anything in the world to have her back again,’ Marilyn sobbed.

‘I know,’ Julia soothed her. ‘All of us would.’

She looked around the crowded cellar. The noise of talk and laughter swelled as the drink began to flow. It was comforting, and an affirmation, to be here with Mattie’s friends, enjoying themselves as Mattie once would have done.
My friends
too, Julia thought, feeling the invisible threads of familiarity, common experience, draw her close to them all. She could see Ricky talking to a group of men who had once played trad jazz in this same cellar. With Mattie, she had tried to dance to it all night. She could see Thomas Tree with his wife, in a corner with Marilyn and her husband, and she could see the two boys, husbands and fathers now, who had driven Johnny Flowers to Ladyhill for a party to celebrate a new decade. One of them had had long sideburns, Julia remembered, and she had danced the conga with him. She could see Jimmy Proffitt lounging against a wall, arguing with Chris Fredericks. Jimmy had just published his autobiography, with the story of
One More Day
and Mattie’s great success in it. Julia had picked the book up in a bookshop, and turned the pages, looking at the photographs. There was one of Mattie, in the last scene of the play. Her face stared up from the page, peering across a great distance. Julia had put the book back on the glossy pile and turned slowly away.

Julia saw Felix, sinuously moving through the crowded space. In the dim light, in his sweater, he looked hardly any older than when she had first seen him. He caught her hand in his.

‘A good party,’ Felix said. ‘Do you think Mattie would be happy?’

‘I know she would. Felix, do you remember the party we gave after Jessie’s funeral?’

A sad day. Somehow, miraculously, this day wasn’t sad.

‘I remember,’ he answered.

She saw the tilt of his head, his white teeth, and the flicker of candlelight emphasised the high planes and deep hollows of his face. Julia and Felix remembered what had happened afterwards. He lifted her hand and kissed it, then went on into the clamour of the party, looking for William.

It was Felix who had decorated the restaurant for the party. There were candles in Chianti bottles, and travel posters set at angles on the walls. With just a few touches, he had brought the Rocket back for them. Everyone was finding their places now, sitting down at tables with checked cloths to eat chilli and French bread, a meal like the ones that Felix used to cook in the flat overlooking the square.

In the crush Julia saw Lily sit down firmly next to Josh and, at the furthest point from where she stood herself, she saw Alexander.

She had brought Alexander to the Rocket as a test. He had passed it as he had passed every other test, except for one, and that had required him to be Josh Flood. Julia flushed at the thought of it, and felt a great rush of love for Alexander.

Feeling her eyes on him, he looked across at her. His mouth twisted, briefly and humorously, an acknowledgement and the most private greeting to her. The old, ironic Alexander, irony masking his tenderness.

Yes
, Julia thought.
Yes, now, at last
.

All the way away from her he sat down, and she saw him incline his head to listen courteously to something that Rozzie Banner was telling him.

Julia sat down too, very suddenly, at a table with The Dandelions and some of Lily’s friends and a jazz trumpeter. Or perhaps he was a saxophonist. The memory of Jessie’s stories made her smile, and suddenly Julia felt a warm bubble of happiness swelling up inside her. It pressed against her ribcage, making her breathless and causing her heart to knock in her throat. Julia swept up her glass and drank, toasting The Dandelions and Lily’s friends and the trumpeter-saxophonist. The cheap red wine curled her tongue, and the taste of it launched its own flotilla of memories.

She wanted to drink, to laugh and to dance and to celebrate the years that had brought them all here, back to the Rocket again. To celebrate, because tonight was not a night to mourn.

After they had finished eating, the tables were pushed back against the walls to make room for the dancing. Julia drank the wine, and danced, and as the wine and the heat and the candlelight worked on her she felt dreamy and yet abundantly alive. The dancers’ shadows flickered on the white walls. Watching them as she danced, seeing only the bold puppet shapes blacker than the cruel faint shadows of reality, Julia could have believed that they were all young again, that she was seventeen once more, that she was Lily’s age, after all.

Julia was jiving with the trumpeter-saxophonist. It was a long time since she had danced at all, and much longer since she had tried to recall the intricate rhythms of twenty years ago. But the jazz player was a good dancer, although not as good as Alexander, and dreamily she matched her steps to his. He swung her out in a flamboyant twirl, and as she whirled, past the dancers, beside the kinder shadows on the white wall, Julia saw Lily. Tonight Lily was a punk princess again, but even the wilfulness of her self-presentation failed to disguise her beauty.

She was standing right against the opposite wall, turned away from the dancers, so that Julia only saw her profile. She was looking up at Josh, and Josh was listening to her, smiling. Easy, fatal Josh, Julia remembered.

The movements and the music slowed around Julia. The moment seemed to freeze, and stretch itself, as time lost its familiar dimensions. Lily and Josh were captured in Julia’s eyes under a white light, held in a black frame that shut out everyone else.

Lily reached up and put one hand at the back of Josh’s neck. Julia saw him hesitate, neither drawing back nor reaching forward. Then Lily laughed. She tilted her face up, and drew his down so that their mouths met.

Then her bare arm uncoiled and she stepped back again.

It was the briefest of kisses, but there was no mistaking it. It told Julia how much Lily knew, and the mocking, confident ease of the kiss stirred a contraction of protective jealousy in Julia that was as fierce as a birth pang. She dropped the musician’s hand and stood still, staring at them. Josh put his hand to Lily’s cheek, turning her head to look into her eyes. Lily laughed again, teasing, mistress of herself. In that instant Julia was sure that it was Lily who led and Josh who stumbled, hopeful and bewildered.

Then the picture shuddered in its frame and began to move again, faster, catching up with reality. The frame itself dissolved and the party recomposed itself, flowing around Lily and Josh and hiding them from Julia’s gaze.

Someone’s arm came round her shoulders, half supporting her. She thought it was the jazz player and turned, startled. It was Alexander.

‘My dance, next, I think?’ It was the first time he had spoken to her since the beginning of the party. Helplessly Julia looked back, to the place where the shadows leapt against the wall. Lily and Josh had gone, swallowed up into the party’s heart. Alexander drew her closer, making her turn to him again. He looked into her face and she felt his scrutiny penetrate her, keen enough to peel the flesh from her bones. The trumpeter slid past them, leaving them to one another.

‘I don’t think we need to dance, do we?’ Alexander murmured. ‘We don’t need to make any beginnings, you and I. Let’s go, now. Come on, come with me.’

Julia turned her head one more time. ‘Lily,’ she whispered. ‘I saw Lily …’