Bad Girls, Good Women

‘Wake up, dear. You’ve got a lovely baby. A beautiful little girl. Don’t you want to see her? Lady Bliss, are you awake?’

That was all right then, Julia thought. They were talking to someone else. Her name was Julia Smith, and it must be someone else’s baby …

She didn’t want to wake up, because if she did she would start hurting again. She could keep the pain at bay by clinging to sleep. But the voice was insistent. ‘Wake up, dear.’

Through her eyelids she could see the red-gold of threateningly bright light. And across her stomach she could already feel a tight, burning band. She knew that she was awake.

There was a nurse in a striped dress and a white butterfly cap, and sunshine stabbing in through the window behind her. The light hurt Julia’s eyes, and the rest of her body hurt much more. But the muzzy folds of anaesthetic were dropping away, and she remembered why. There had been all the hours of yesterday — was it yesterday? – when the contractions had gone on and on, and the pains had assaulted her until she screamed. The midwives had held her arms and sponged her face, and Alexander had stormed away to find the doctor. They had come then to tell her that, after all, her pelvis was too narrow and they would have to deliver the baby by Caesarean.

Then even Alexander had been hustled away, and faces in green masks peered down at her through the fog of pain.

After that, she remembered she had half woken, sick and exhausted, when they put her into this bed. And now, somehow, it was bright morning and there was a pretty, dark-haired nurse beaming at her.

‘Oh, he’ll be along later. New fathers need their sleep too, you know.’ Somehow, the nurse had put her hands under Julia’s arms and helped her to sit up. She straightened the pillows behind her head, and Julia found that if she closed her eyes and held her body very still, the pain slackened off a little.

‘Doctor will probably give you something later. Something mild, for baby’s sake. Now, here she is. A real beauty. Are you going to hold her?’

Julia looked to the side of the bed. A white crib had been wheeled there, and the nurse lifted a white bundle out of it. She turned down a corner of blanket and cooed, ‘There’s a girl. Here’s your mummy, waiting for you.’

Julia’s arms felt stiff and heavy, but she lifted them and stretched them out. The bundle was very light, surprisingly warm and soft. She looked down into the baby’s face. It was scarlet, and covered with fine, almost invisible down. The eyelashes were minute black spikes, and there was a lot of thick black hair. The tiny chin looked very firm.

So, after everything, there was a baby. It was hard to relate all the pain to this, the wrapped-up product.

Julia went on staring at her baby. She was waiting to feel something, wondering what it should be. The little creature was so tiny, but yet such a definite presence.

The nurse chuckled. ‘You two get to know each other. I’ll pop back in a little while with a nice cup of tea for you.’

Julia felt almost panicky when the door closed behind her, but the baby slept on without stirring. A girl; My daughter, Julia thought experimentally. She was certain that Alexander had wanted a boy, although he had never quite said so. She leaned back against the pillows, holding the baby tight, wishing that he would come.

Her first visitor turned out to be Mattie. She erupted into the quiet room, her arms full of flowers and parcels. She dumped them at the end of the bed and wrapped her arms tenderly around Julia and her white bundle. ‘I came as soon as I’d spoken to Bliss. Let me look at her.’

The little thing fitted neatly into Mattie’s arms, and she laid a finger against her cheek. She whispered, ‘Oh God, she’s beautiful. Hello, my lovely.’ Mattie held the baby as if it belonged where it lay, and there were shiny tears in her eyes. Of course, Julia thought, Mattie understood about babies. She had brought up her own little brothers and sisters. Mattie saw Julia looking at her and sniffed hard, laughing at herself. ‘Why am I crying over her? Oh, my darling, you’re so clever. Was it bad?’

‘Bliss said that you were shouting for me. And for Jessie.’ Julia remembered with shame that she had shouted for everyone, wanting them to come and rescue her from the astonishing grip of pain. ‘I think I even howled for Betty at one point. I didn’t perform very well. It bloody well hurt.’

‘Bliss says it was their fault. They let you go on and on until he wanted to kill them.’

‘But they got her out in the end, and she’s wonderful,’ Mattie comforted her.

Julia rested her head against her shoulder, suddenly feeling that everything was all right. Better than all right; softened and burnished with happiness and relief. ‘Look, Mattie, her eyes are open.’

With their heads close together, they looked down into the baby’s black, unfathomable gaze.

After a long silence Mattie repeated, ‘You’re so clever. And lucky.’ And then, sounding more like herself, she announced, ‘I’ve got a bottle of champagne. Let’s drink a toast.’

She rummaged for glasses, and eased the cork out of the bottle with a resonant plop. She poured the silvery froth and then she looked at Julia and lifted her glass. ‘To you. Mother and daughter.’

Julia thought, as she drank, Is that me? It seemed a long time, very long, since she had thought of her own real mother, and she wondered what the unknown woman would feel if she knew she had a granddaughter.

The nurse came bustling in with a cup of tea. She clucked at the sight of the champagne and left the cup on the bedside locker. She looked very hard at Mattie before she went away again.

A few moments later, Bliss arrived. Julia couldn’t see who he was, at first, because he was a moving pyramid of flowers. They were all white, white orchids and roses and lilies. They fell around Julia and over the bedcover, and he bent down and kissed her. ‘Thank you,’ Alexander whispered, ‘for my baby.’

Julia gathered up some of the flowers and held them to her face. She smelt the spice and honey scents of them. ‘I thought you wanted a boy.’

Alexander said, ‘I wanted exactly what you’ve given me.’ He bent over the crib to look at the baby. Julia had never seen him look so soft, so unmasked, even in the times at night, in bed, their own times at the beginning, before the fire had consumed everything. When Alexander reached to turn back the white covers of the crib, the stretched, glazed pink skin of the burn scars showed on the backs of his hands. Julia breathed harder, watching him, not letting her eyes slide away.

‘I sat and held her, you know, in the night,’ Alexander was saying. ‘After they had put you to bed. You were safe, and she was alive. Breathing. It was … the most precious moment I have ever known.’

Mattie stood up abruptly. The legs of her chair squawked on the polished floor. ‘I must go. Doing a full read-through of the new play this afternoon.’

Julia and Alexander nodded, barely hearing; Mattie understood that she just had to say something to ease her exit. She made herself fix her attention on the afternoon’s work as she gathered up her bag. Work was what she had, after all.

Mattie had spent a year in One More Day, at the Angel Theatre and then in the West End transfer. She had spent the last three months recreating the role of Mary for the film version. And now she was to read another part in Jimmy’s latest work. To directors and producers and backers they were a partnership like bread and butter.

‘Oh, he’s fine.’ Only she didn’t sleep with Jimmy any more. He had coolly turned his attention elsewhere, leaving Mattie to feel hurt, and rejected, and then angry. She would have been lonely, now, if she ever had the time to think about it. She bent over and brushed Julia’s cheek with her mouth. It was amazing how Julia could still look beautiful even after eighteen hours’ labour followed by a Caesarean.

And Bliss, looking like a child who had just been given a present that was such an extravagance that he hadn’t even dared to wish for it.

They’ll be all right together, the two of them, Mattie thought, in spite of everything. She found herself praying wordlessly for it. She leaned over the crib once more and breathed in the strange, pungent, newborn smell. She remembered it from Rozzie’s babies. It tugged in her own stomach and breasts.

But she hadn’t reached the door before there was a flutter outside it and Julia’s nurse came in, followed by two others. They nudged each other.

‘For my brother, could you? His name’s Tony. He thinks you’re fabulous.’

Mattie scribbled her name, her tongue sticking out between her teeth, just as it used to do when she sat at the desk next to Julia’s at Blick Road Girls’ Grammar. Julia watched from the sea of her flowers, her hand in Alexander’s. The nurses thanked Mattie profusely and rustled away again.

The women’s eyes met. They measured each other, for an instant, like strangers.

They blew a kiss to each other. Then the door swung, and closed with a pneumatic hiss. Julia and Alexander were alone together.

Julia wrinkled her face, and then snorted with laughter. The laugh turned into a wince of pain. ‘I was awful. I was worse than a baby myself.’

He had thought of the fire when they wheeled her away, and he could do nothing but sit in a dingy little room and wait. He could hear the fire’s roar, and the stench of it filled his nostrils. Death again. He couldn’t surrender Julia to it. He would go back himself, into the greedy mouth of it, if it would save her …

And then the sister had come back. ‘You have a beautiful baby daughter. Your wife is fine.’

And now, sitting on his wife’s bed in the June sunshine, he tried to slide his hands under the mounds of flowers. Beside them, in her crib, the baby opened her eyes and gave a thin cry.

Alexander moved the flowers, heaping them on the chairs and on the floor, and lifted the baby up. With her fingers awkwardly fumbling, Julia opened the front of her nightdress. Alexander held the baby to the breast and she turned her head, nuzzling, but Julia’s fingers couldn’t connect the tiny mouth to the nipple. She felt huge, and clumsy, as if the weight of her hands alone would crush the fragile skull. The baby’s face contorted and her bare gums showed as her lips drew back and she cried louder.

The nurse swished back into the room. ‘Dear, dear. Time to try a little feed, is it? Good girl. Look, it’s like this.’ She grasped Julia’s breast and inserted the nipple neatly into the baby’s gaping mouth. The gums clamped down at once and the baby began sucking furiously. ‘She knows what she wants, all right,’ the nurse said cheerfully.

Julia looked down at the expression that had changed in an instant from fury to satisfaction. She did know what she wanted, and she was how many hours and minutes old? The bony gums were hard, and the sucking seemed to draw from deep inside Julia. Her innards contracted and she shivered a little.

‘That’s a picture,’ said the nurse. Alexander extricated his camera from amongst the flowers and asked her, ‘Will you take it?’

With Alexander’s arm around her and her baby at her breast, Julia looked into the lens and smiled obediently. The shutter clicked.

‘What shall we call her?’ Alexander asked, touching his finger to the back of the dark head. Julia was looking at the flowers. The lilies had curving pure white petals, and golden stamens thickly powdered with pollen. They were cool and sappy, and perfectly beautiful.

The baby had stopped feeding, and had fallen asleep again with her mouth drooping. Julia and Alexander watched her, and then smiled tentatively at each other.

‘I wish I could take you both home, now,’ Alexander said. ‘I want my family at Ladyhill where it belongs.’

She turned her face away, not looking at his hands now. She wondered how she could have been so stupid, in the last hazy days of her pregnancy, as to have believed they could go on in the safe suspension of waiting.

‘I don’t want to go back yet.’ Her voice sounded shrill and she softened it with an effort. ‘Can’t we stay on at the flat for a while?’

Alexander’s hand tightened on hers. ‘We must go home,’ he said. ‘It’s where we belong.’

Julia looked down again. Their hands were joined, like they were themselves, even more forcibly now by the scrap of life that was half of each of them. But she felt the distance between them all over again, as if they had been sitting on opposite sides of the room.

More softly, Alexander said, ‘There’s work to be done at home. Waiting for us.’

Julia nodded, mute. With the unimaginable rite of birth behind her at last, she realised that nothing had changed.

‘Are you hurting?’ Alexander asked. The corners of his eyes folded into creases of concern.

He put his, hand to her cheek, stroking it. Julia wanted to pitch forward into his arms, wanted him to pick her up and hold her, but neither of them moved.

‘You should try to go to sleep,’ he murmured. He did lean forward then, to kiss the corner of her mouth. ‘I’ll come in again this evening. Rest now.’ He stood looking down into the cradle for a long moment, and then he went away.

After he had gone, Julia lay with her arms resting stiffly over the folded sheet. The room’s pale blue walls, hung with innocuous pictures, couldn’t contain her imagination, although she longed for its confinement.

The high outline of the house reared over her again. There was a black hole burned through the heart of it, and although there was silence except for the rooks in the elm trees, Julia could always hear the roar of the fire.

She opened her eyes wide, staring at the blue walls and the pictures. She hated herself for her weakness but the tears came anyway. Alexander wanted to take her and the baby back to Ladyhill, where the nightmares and the guilt followed her like shadows. She shrank under the bedclothes, and she heard Lily snuffle and stir in her crib. The door clicked open again and the nurse materialised. ‘Tears? Oh, dear now, there’s no need. All new mums feel that they can’t cope, you know. And you did have a difficult time, poor love.’ Her sympathy made Julia feel her inadequacy more sharply, and the tears dripped down her face and ran on to the sheets. The nurse bustled around, finding a handkerchief and pouring a tumbler of water, clearing away the champagne bottle and glasses. Julia sniffed and scoured her face with the handkerchief, ‘You’ll see. You’ll be as good as new in a few days, and you’ll be able to go home with your husband and the baby …’

Julia looked wildly around. The little blue room was square and safe. ‘I’m all right here, really,’ she gabbled. ‘I don’t want to go yet.’

The nurse looked at her. ‘I often think it’s better,’ she mused, ‘for the mums to be all together, on the ward. They keep each other company and cheer each other up when they get weepy. I suppose you’re in here because of who you are …’

Who am I? Julia thought desperately. I’m not Julia Smith and I’m not Lady Bliss. Alexander’s wife. The baby’s – Lily’s – mother. Who am I?

The nurse patted her hand. ‘Doctor will be along now to have a little look at you.’ A woman in a white coat with metal-grey permed hair came in. Julia lay back exhaustedly against the pillows and submitted to her examination.

Julia stayed in the maternity clinic for almost two weeks. It was longer than was strictly necessary, but she told the doctor that she didn’t feel quite strong enough to go home after only ten days.

Streams of visitors came to see her, and to exclaim over Lily who rapidly lost her redness and became almost as beautiful as everyone declared. Amongst the visitors was Betty. She brought a pink-ribboned dress for the baby, and a box of chocolates for Julia. Julia put her arm awkwardly around her mother’s shoulder and kissed her cheek. ‘Thank you,’ Julia said.

‘Well, it’s not much, I know. But I didn’t know what to bring, what with everything …’

Betty sat down on the edge of her chair. Since Julia’s marriage and the death of Bliss’s father it was as if Betty had become the daughter and Julia the mother. Betty deferred to Julia’s opinions, deprecating herself and her circumstances. No one had a better appreciation of social status and its various degrees than Betty, and she made it clear that Julia had moved far beyond her own orbit. It was her evident pride in the fact that disturbed Julia. She had been happier with Betty’s approval of her job at Tressider’s. That, at least, had been her own doing. Now she was only identifiable as Alexander’s wife, and, when she thought about it, she realised that she had come uncomfortably close to being what she herself had despised Betty for.

She wanted to talk to Betty about it, to ask her if she felt that her sacrifices had been worthwhile, but their relationship was too remote for that. Betty had turned herself into a distant acquaintance, an acquaintance who wouldn’t dream of presuming.

Julia still felt more bewilderment at being asked to accept total responsibility for another human being, than pride. But she nodded, and Betty seemed satisfied.

‘She looks like you, when you were a baby. But you were bigger. We never saw you, until six weeks,’

It was the first time, since the long-ago day in the square, that either of them had mentioned Julia’s adoption.

Carefully, Julia said, ‘It must have been … strange. Like taking delivery of a package.’

Suddenly, Betty’s face cleared. Her eyes met Julia’s, all the stiffness gone.

Julia was silenced. She understood that it must have been wonderful, and the sadness that had followed it seemed suddenly almost too much to bear. She looked from Betty’s glowing face to the crib beside the bed, and she thought, Lily …

She should have left Betty to the comfort of her memories of babyhood, but the moment of intimacy seemed too valuable. She asked, ‘Do you know anything about my real mother?’

She had thought more about her, since she had been given her own daughter to hold, than she had ever done before. Does she think of me? On my birthday. At New Year. What would she feel, if she knew she had a granddaughter? She looked at Lily, sleeping. Are those her features?

‘No. Nothing at all. The adoption society was very strict. Except that you were … you know.’

Julia wondered what other words Betty and Vernon would have whispered between themselves. Betty had used some of them, that day in the square. A dirty little baby. ‘Why do you want to know?’ Betty asked fiercely. ‘I’m your mother.’

No, you aren’t. I’m sorry, but that’s the truth. It doesn’t matter any longer.

They didn’t talk about it any more. After a few minutes Betty gathered up her hat and her gloves and her square handbag and announced that she would have to rush for her train. They brushed their cheeks together, and Julia murmured again, ‘Thank you for coming.’

Felix was standing at the window of the Eaton Square apartment, looking out at the afternoon sunshine reflecting off the cars heading westwards towards the King’s Road. The view of the trees in the square gardens made him think of the old flat, and he allowed himself a moment’s enjoyable nostalgia. Jessie’s old room, with its faded photographs and his own precious collection of bric-à-brac. Felix turned away from the window and walked the length of the drawing room. The triple bay windows were hung with a lily of the valley chintz, one of Tressider Designs’ own fabrics, lined with pale gold silk. Gilt-framed French mirrors hung between the windows, and in front of them stood a Regency table with a collection of opalescent Lalique bowls arranged on it. The modern sofas were deep and comfortable, piled up with silk-covered cushions, and in the alcoves on either side of the chimney breast stood a magnificent pair of console tables with porphyry tops. With its deft mixing of periods and styles to recreate the haute English country house look in a town apartment, the room was a showpiece for George Tressider’s sought-after decorative ability. The only tiny flaw, Felix thought, the single thing that was lacking, was a touch of wit and humour. The perfection was unmarred, and so was faintly sterile.

Then he caught sight of his own reflection in one of the gilt mirrors. He was wearing his front-office clothes. The grey suit, tightly waisted, was well cut, and the collar of his white shirt was starched. By contrast with such formality his face looked very dark, and his high cheekbones and full mouth seemed almost wickedly exotic. It occurred to Felix that he provided the requisite touch of eccentricity himself. He smiled, and went on into the bedroom.

George was sitting on the bed, talking on the telephone. ‘Yes. Yes. Of course the silk must match exactly. If it proves to be necessary, we’ll start again and re-dye a fresh batch for you.’ He raised his eyebrows at Felix. ‘Mrs Lindsay, it will match. You have my assurance. Yes. Yes. As soon as the contractors have finished.’ Felix could hear the client’s high, yipping voice at the other end of the line. He leaned over and massaged the back of George’s neck. The telephone conversation took its predictable course, and Mrs Lindsay rang off at last, mollified.

George looked up, then reached out and caught him by the wrist. ‘Don’t loom over me.’ Felix sat down beside him, conscious of the inviting expanse of the Chinese red bedcover. He had slept with George for the first time in this bed, one abandoned afternoon after a particularly stiff lunch with a dowager duchess. They had undressed very slowly, and hung up their clothes, like tidy schoolboys, in the walnut armoire. Then they had explored each other with a greedy intensity that Felix hadn’t experienced since the twilit barn and David Mander.

And since then, the plain grey walls of the bedroom had witnessed enough exotic interludes. George Tressider had imaginative sexual preferences, and Felix had learned them as quickly as he learned everything else. They had been lovers for more than a year, and they had lived together for the last six months, but there were still frequent occasions when they came together with importunate urgency.

‘What is it?’ The professional George had replaced the private one. He was busy packing design sketches into the little Vuitton bag that he carried instead of an attaché case. ‘Who wants to look like an invoice clerk?’ he had once asked Felix.

‘I thought I’d call in to see Julia again for half an hour before I go to the Boltons. Is that all right?’

Even though they slept in the same bed, Felix was careful always to remember that George was his employer.

The response was no cooler than he had expected. Felix had stopped hoping that Julia and George would ever love each other.

George went to keep his appointment, and Felix washed and dried the plates and glasses that they had used for their Brie and salad lunch. They didn’t often manage to meet at home in the middle of the day, even though they worked in close proximity. When they did, Felix liked to make an occasion of it by setting a pretty table. When the kitchen was tidy he put a bottle of Pouilly Fumé in the fridge for later and then followed George into the sunshine. He was thinking about him as he made his way to Julia’s clinic.

He hadn’t expected to like George Tressider when Julia had made the first introduction. George had offered him a job and he had accepted it at once, but he had categorised the decorator as a predatory old queen. In the years since his National Service Felix had met enough of those. But in the weeks that followed, Felix discovered that George wasn’t predatory at all. He was professionally successful and financially secure, he lived in a whirl of parties and dearest acquaintances, but in private he was surprisingly vulnerable. And he was lonely. George was still fit and slim, and he was good-looking in a silky, feline way, but he was fifty-two years old. Too many of his lovers in the recent past had wanted what George could buy, rather than George himself. And he was too clearly aware that nothing was going to get any better for him.

Over and over again, he said to Felix, ‘With your looks and your talents, you could have anyone you wanted. What are you doing with an old faggot like me?’

‘I want you,’ Felix answered. It was the truth. Everything about George, including their fidelity to each other, suited Felix better than a succession of the doe-eyed boys who hung around the King’s Road antique shops. And then, there was George Tressider Designs. Felix was learning the business from George. He was learning so much, all the time, that he hummed and vibrated with the energy of it. He didn’t want anything to change, only to go on getting better. In time, he would be able to add the little, extra, indefinable twists and touches to their work that George was a shade too conventional to introduce. And it would make them the best team there was. Felix was certain of that.

Julia was sitting in the armchair in her room, reading Vogue. ‘Felix, my love. You look very pleased with yourself.’

Felix studied her for a moment, then turned aside. There was a bowl of pinks and lavender spikes on the table and he picked out the faded blooms before rearranging the rest.

Felix finished the flowers to his satisfaction, and then sat down facing her. ‘You know I love you, don’t you?’

Julia looked startled, but she answered, ‘Yes, I know you do.’ Very softly, Felix said, ‘Listen to me, then. Go back home with Alexander and Lily. You can’t separate Alexander from Ladyhill, and you shouldn’t try to stand in the way of the restoration …’

‘You know it was under-insured,’ Julia broke in. ‘There isn’t the money to restore it the way Bliss wants.’

‘I think you can assume that if there is a way, he will find it. And that isn’t as important as that you should go home with him, take Lily home. Be glad you’re all alive, even though poor Flowers died. That Sandy survived, at least. Take the happiness you’ve got. It’s enough, Julia, isn’t it? Don’t destroy anything else.’

It was a very long speech, for Felix. Julia shook her head, staring at him. ‘I … I can’t forget the fire.’

Her chin jerked up. ‘You think I’m selfish, don’t you? Well. Perhaps I am. But I look at those black walls, and I hear the roar of the flames. I look up at the sky, and I can’t see it for smoke. You weren’t there, Felix. You don’t know what it was like. And I have to accept, every day, that it was my fault. My fault that Flowers is dead, and Sandy’s face is all … is all … melted. That the house Alexander loves is in ruins, and that his burned fingers are too stiff for him to play the trumpet. That’s what I live with, living at Ladyhill. How can I take the happiness, as you call it, being there and knowing all that?’

She pressed her hands over her eyes, but Felix drew them away and held them between his own.

‘Is it your fault that Flowers and Sandy were doing what they were doing? That the house was old and dry, and burned like kindling? Or that Alexander was brave enough to do what he did?’

‘No. But it will be your fault if you don’t go back and try to repair what was no one’s fault. I don’t just mean the bricks and mortar.’

He saw that there were faint vertical lines at the corners of Julia’s mouth. He had never seen them before, and they made him feel sad. He remembered the innocent girls he had first seen, trying to be louche at the Rocket.

Suddenly he said, ‘Were you happy at Ladyhill with Alexander before the fire?’

The glance that Julia darted at him was no more than a flicker of her eyes, but Felix intercepted it. Then her eyelids dropped again, and she studied their linked hands. ‘Yes, I was.’

At length, in a different voice, Julia said, ‘You’re right, of course. We’ll go back, and I’ll try to make it all right. I promise I will.’

The conversation seemed to be at an end. Julia drew her hands away and stood up. She walked around the room, touching the fading flowers and fingering the books and magazines on the bed table. Then, half turned away from Felix, she said, ‘We had this ideal, Mattie and me. When we ran away from home. We were going to be free. We weren’t going to let anything tie us down, not us.’ The words spilled out so quickly that they tangled together and she shook her head with impatience. ‘No conventions, no stereotypes. We were going to make our own rules. The gospel of freedom, according to Mattie Banner and Julia Smith.’ She laughed, without a note of amusement. ‘Well, Mattie’s free, isn’t she? She’s an actress, just like she always wanted. She’s famous. Even the nurses in this place come to ask for her autograph. And, you see, I’m Alexander’s wife.’ She broke off, and paced across the room. Six steps brought her up against the crib at the side of the bed. Lily was awake; Felix could hear the tiny sounds she made. ‘And now there’s a baby. My baby, Felix. I didn’t see her born, but I’ve got the scar to prove it.’ She laughed again, the same harsh sound. ‘I’d just like to know how it all happened so quickly. So quickly …’

‘Well. We’re not talking about Mattie now. But you made a choice, Julia. And there are worse losses of freedom than you’ve suffered. Alexander loves you. Anyone who looks at him can see he loves you.’

She held up the palms of her hands as if to ward something off, but her face crumpled. ‘I know. That’s why I’m going back to Ladyhill. I told you. I love him, and I’m going to be a good mother to Lily, and we’ll rebuild the house, and I won’t put any more candles on the Christmas tree. Oh, hell. I’m not bloody well going to cry again, either.’

Felix stood behind her, folding his arms around her waist and resting his chin on the top of her head. ‘I’m glad. You’re doing the right thing. And the fire will pass, you know. Julia?’

She nodded. Her head was smooth and warm under his chin. ‘Thank you. I’ll remember.’

In her crib, Lily spluttered and began to cry. Julia put her hand to the front of her blouse. ‘It’s time for me to feed her. Not with a bottle, you know. Breasts. Like a real mother. Do you want to stay and watch?’

Felix grinned. ‘I’d like to draw you, if you’ll let me. But not today. I’ve got to go and measure a house.’ Julia was lifting Lily, cupping the round black head in one hand. ‘I’ll be coming to see you at Ladyhill. You know that Alexander has asked George and me if we’ll help with restoring the interior, when the time comes?’ Julia settled herself in her chair again. She undid her bra and Felix saw the faint blue veins on the distended breast, and the enlarged nipple. Lily’s cries stopped, and there was a faint grunt of satisfaction. In the quiet Julia lifted her head, and her eyes were clear. ‘Good. Come as often as you like. It’s very quiet, down there.’

Outside the sun was still shining, but Felix didn’t notice it. He was preoccupied with the image of Julia feeding her baby. He had a sudden, awed understanding of the change that had overtaken her, the magnitude of it and the irrevocability. The old Julia, the Julia of Soho and the square, was gone and she wouldn’t come back, however much Julia herself might long for her.

Felix made his way towards the new house in the Boltons, but the cheerfulness of the early afternoon had deserted him.

Julia blinked once in the dappled shade of the trees, and then again as they came out into the brightness once more. Alexander stopped the car, leaving it at an angle just as he had done when he first brought Julia to Ladyhill. As if he couldn’t wait to jump out and run into the house.

The Albertine on the red-brick wall that enclosed the garden on two sides was a cascade of coppery pink. Pale gold and grey-green spikes of verbascum reared against the backdrop of roses. It was in her autumn walks around the gardens that Julia had learned it was called verbascum. At the far end of the long border a fine copper beech tree was like a full stop. The leaves had lost the greenish sheen of early summer, and were turning through polished copper to the mahogany brown of maturity.

There was a blackbird singing somewhere close at hand. She turned deliberately and looked at the house.

There was scaffolding enclosing the badly damaged wing now, and masking the whole centre front of the house. But it still didn’t hide the smoke-blackened brick, and the charred roof beams soaring above it. She shook her head imperceptibly, telling herself that she couldn’t smell smoke. She mustn’t smell it. And there was silence, except for the birdsong.

As Julia watched, a length of new timber was winched upwards. A workman at the top of the scaffolding unfastened it and hoisted it away. Now that she looked more closely, she saw that two or three of the huge beams had already been replaced. The raw wood gleamed yellow in contrast with the stark black of the others. Alexander had been staring intently, and now he nodded. ‘They’re making good progress. We must get the roof on before another winter comes.’

He bent down and reached into the car. Lily had been asleep in her carrycot on the back seat, but now Alexander lifted her out, swathed in her white shawl. He held her up and her heavy head rolled against his shoulder. ‘Look,’ he whispered. ‘Look, Lily. We’re home.’

Then Alexander took Julia’s hand and, still holding the baby, he drew her arm through his. With Alexander setting the pace they walked briskly towards the gaping mouth of the front door.

There were no flames, of course. No terrible face, turning to her. Johnny was gone, but Alexander was fit and well, beside her. Julia made herself breathe evenly, remembering what Felix had said. The fire will pass. She looked at Lily, in the crook of Alexander’s arm. Her eyes were wide open.

The hall was as derelict as when they had left it for Markham Square, seemingly more so since the builders had taken possession of the house. There were tarpaulins spread over the floor, a concrete mixer in the corner, piles of tools. Julia could hear whistling, and sawing somewhere overhead. A man in an overall came through from the back of the house. Alexander shook hands with him, introducing him as the site foreman.

Alexander’s expression didn’t change. He was quickly absorbed in conversation with the foreman. Julia listened vaguely to the phrases as they drifted around her. Estimates … weakened structure … new joists. The language was utterly foreign. She took Lily out of Alexander’s arms and held her up, like a shield against her own resentment. She rested her cheek against the baby’s knitted bonnet and thought, You’re on my side. I know you are. What are floorboards to you? People are what matter, Lily. Remember that. Julia was surprised by the sudden intensity of her feelings. This … house. This house is a tomb, for me and Alexander as well as Johnny. Or just for me, now. She half turned, shivering, wanting to run.

Alexander saw it, and caught her arm. ‘I’ll come and see you later, Mr Minns.’

Behind a hanging tarpaulin there was a well-sealed door, and on the other side was the relatively undamaged wing of the house where Alexander and Julia had set up home. The little room on the ground floor had been Sir Percy’s den, and now it had become their sitting room. They had assembled two old sofas and a pair of armchairs, a bureau and a gate-legged table, and a Turkish carpet that was much too large and had to be folded against the walls. Pictures and books and ornaments salvaged from the further corners of the house were crammed in wherever there was space.

Further along the corridor a kitchen had been created in what was once the gun-room, and above, reached by a back staircase, there were two bedrooms and a sort of bathroom.

‘There isn’t much space,’ Alexander had said when they returned to the house from his stepmother’s cottage.

‘More than we had when I lived with Mattie and Felix and Jessie,’ Julia had said dully.

Alexander had read it as stoical determination, and he had kissed her delightedly. ‘That’s my girl. We’ll be thoroughly comfortable here, the two of us. And the baby, when he comes.’

Julia hoisted Lily on her shoulder and looked around the room. It had been repainted in a fresh clear yellow and the pictures and ornaments had been attractively arranged. There were flowers in bowls, roses and scabious and stocks from the garden, in big, fragrant bunches. It looked much better than it had done before they left, but Julia regarded it without affection.

She looked at him in surprise and his shoulders lifted, awkwardly. He was neither stern nor ironic. The lines in his face had melted and he looked like an apologetic boy. ‘I shouldn’t have kept you standing there while I talked to Minns. I was just excited to see the work, I wanted to hear what they were doing. It seems months since we were here.’ He hesitated, searching her face, and then his shoulders dropped and he walked away to the window. He put his hands flat against the glass, staring out through the small, square panes. ‘I love this house,’ he said. His voice was so low that Julia had to strain to catch the words. ‘I want to see it, to make it come alive again for the three of us.’ He swung around again, coming to her, putting his hands on her shoulders while Julia wrapped her arms protectively around the baby. ‘Do you understand?’ he asked.

‘I will. I’m trying to,’ she answered him. No, her own voice insisted. How could I?

Alexander kissed her. ‘I’ll go and make us a cup of tea. Do you like the new paint?’

Alexander went away into the kitchen. She could hear water running and the rattle of the kettle under the tap. Julia settled Lily on her spread-out shawl in a corner of the sofa, then wandered across the room. She touched the furled petals of the roses, and looked out of the window as Alexander had done. The lawns needed mowing, but the borders were at the peak of their midsummer brilliance. Julia’s mouth had lost some of its tautness as she moved on to the walnut bureau. There were neat piles of post arranged on it; a stack for Alexander, a handful of letters addressed to both of them, perhaps a dozen for herself. She flipped through them. Julia saw the thin blue envelope at once, and the US stamp. She didn’t need to look at the handwriting; even though she hadn’t seen it for more than two years it was as recognisable as her own. She held the envelope in dry fingers, hearing the faint, infinitely promising crackle of the paper inside it.

Alexander came back with a teapot and cups on a tray. ‘Anything interesting in the post?’

They drank their tea together, and they talked about the house and the progress that Mr Minns was making with the huge task of rebuilding. Now that Julia was out of hospital, restored to real life, Alexander was anxious to draw her into his great project.

‘The assessors have caused very little trouble. Beyond the original facts, and no one can change those. When the insurance company does pay out, the money should cover the structural minimum. The outer fabric, the new roof. I’ve taken out a short-term mortgage on the land, to see us through until it does come. There won’t be anything left for the interior, or for replacing the pictures and furniture. The old man’s fault, and mine, for not revaluing. But when the time comes, we might think about selling a parcel of land, to raise another slice of capital.’

With the blue envelope hidden in her lap, Julia nodded her head. She was trying to listen. ‘What land?’

‘Well. Perhaps the lower four acres. It’s convenient for the village. Good building land …’

Julia nodded again, dimly imagining bungalows spreading between the house and the village. And the money from that, paying for George Tressider to hang his chintzes and arrange his English oak furniture. Julia laughed, an abrupt bubble of it, then covered her mouth with her hand. ‘I’m sorry, Bliss. I suddenly thought about George.’

He smiled at her. ‘Go on laughing. I like it. There hasn’t been enough, for a long time.’

‘I’m going to feed Lily. If I laugh now it’ll give her hiccups.’ Alexander stood up and stretched comfortably. ‘In that case I’ll go and see Minns, and leave you in peace.’

When she heard the further door shut, Julia tore open the blue envelope. She unfolded the thin sheet of airmail paper and began to read.

Dearest Julia, Josh had written. Harry Gilbert saw the birth announcement in The Times. I can’t imagine you married, and married to a Sir, no less. But somehow I can see you with a baby, especially a daughter. Has she got black hair, and eyes like yours? I wish I could see her. And her mother, too, if she would let me. It seems a long time, doesn’t it? And yet no time at all. I think of you often, you know.

There were more paragraphs, describing Vail and the new ski-lodges, skipping on to some flying work that Josh had done in Brazil. Greedily, Julia devoured the words. Josh had no great skill as a letter writer but she could hear his voice framing the sentences. He seemed so close that his shape was silhouetted against the light from the window. His vibrancy seemed to spring out at her, a bolt of pure energy. She reached the last paragraph.

I guess Sir Alexander must be Sophia’s brother. I told you all that time ago that you should get to like those Wengen girls, didn’t I? And now you’re one of them. What would you say, that serves me right? I hope you’re happy. I’m sure you are. If you will let me, I’d like to come and make certain, and to see your baby and your English manor house in the green country. Do you remember the cottage in the corner of the wood?

Julia, Julia.

I hope you think, once in a while between the garden parties and the summer balls, about your aviator.

Julia looked up, and there was nothing standing between her and the light streaming in through the window. The room was empty, except for Lily on her shawl.

She began to cry then, desperate and furious tears that didn’t assuage the loss or the loneliness.

Fourteen