Julia (5 page)

“I wouldn’t call it anger,” Lily said. “He was distressed.”

“Lily,” Julia said, “you have to promise me that you won’t tell him where I am. Never mind what you think is in my best interest or Magnus’s, please don’t tell him. Promise me. Please.”

“I’ll promise you anything you like. But I’d be happier about it if you made me a promise too. I’d like you to tell me that you will consider going back to your husband.”

“Lily, I’ve bought a house,” said Julia, almost laughing. “I’ve bought
furniture
. It’s just … just impossible for me to face Magnus. I can’t make a promise like that to you. I can’t even think about Magnus.”

“On the contrary, it is my impression that you think of him all the time.” She looked interrogatively at Julia.

When Julia said nothing Lily went on. “It was no one’s fault about Kate, darling. You both very bravely did what you had to do. Magnus and you were both commended at the inquest, you know.”

“I can’t help that.”

“But it’s a pity that you were unable to hear it.” Conscious that she was too crudely leading Julia into an area she would be unable to enter for perhaps months, Lily resisted the impulse to be Magnus’s advocate in the matter of Kate’s death. The facts of her niece’s death were at least as clear in Lily’s mind as in Julia’s, and Lily knew, and could fully understand, that Julia had broken down afterward. In fact, Lily realized, she must have begun looking at houses only a day or two after she had come out of the hospital where she had been kept under sedation. Julia had left the hospital only to attend Kate’s funeral; even that had been a mistake. That pale, confused, drugged creature stalked through the rain by photographers—it was unlikely Julia had any memory of that morning. Apparently she had begun to make arrangements for bolting on her first day back at Gayton Road: Lily supposed that she had been unable even to look at Magnus straight. Of course, Kate’s death had been horrible. She had choked on a piece of meat, and Magnus and Julia, after dialing 999 and waiting minutes for an ambulance while their daughter fought uselessly for breath, had frantically decided to attempt an emergency tracheotomy. Kate had bled to death by the time
the ambulance arrived. By Magnus’s report, Julia had been very calm, very controlled throughout: only the next day did she get funny. Even now she looked flushed and breathless; and was drinking far too much gin.

“Well, tell me about this house of yours,” Lily said. “What number in Ilchester Place is it?”

“Twenty-five.”

“How odd that you should move to that street. Perhaps it is not odd at all, given that London is the sort of place in which all sorts of recurrences and coincidences occur.”

“Lily, what are you trying to say?”

“My brother used to visit a house in Ilchester Place, a long time ago. It was while he was at Cambridge. I believe he had a friend there.”

This comment fed a familiar stream of bitterness in Julia, who said, “Magnus and his friends. How boring all of that is. Maybe it comes from his having such an old, powerful soul.”

“Yes, it does,” said Lily, who seemed to be a little hurt.

“Lily, I’m sorry,” Julia quickly said. “Can’t we two be friends, without any relationship to Magnus? I want to begin a new life, I have to live on my own, I can’t stand to think of Magnus and I’m afraid to see him, so that’s done, but I want your friendship very much.”

“Why, my dear,” said Lily, “of course you have it. I want what is best for you. We
are
friends.”

Julia felt close to tears. “I’m going to have a new life,” she said, almost defiantly. “I want your help.”

“Of course,” Lily said, reaching out and taking Julia’s hand. It was cold from her icy glass, and some grains of sand still clung to it. She allowed Julia to weep for a few moments in silence.

“You need something to do, you know,” she said after
Julia’s noiseless crying had ended. “Only bores suggest their interests to other people, but how would you like to attend our next gathering? Mrs. Fludd is our new interpreter. She was a real find, the most
sensitive
sensitive I’ve met since poor dear Mr. Carmen died. Not personally, of course. She is a real old cockney, tough as a boot. But she has the gift to an astounding degree. I am very enthusiastic about her—but if you scoff at these old-fashioned performances, my feelings won’t be bruised. It would be something for you to do, however.”

Ordinarily Julia would have made some excuse, but she was touched by Lily’s kindness, and this made her feel guilty for her earlier deliberate rudeness. “Just tell me where and when,” she said. “It might be fun.” Then a troubling thought occurred to her. “They won’t … she won’t … do anything about getting in touch with … I mean …”

“There’s no question of it,” Lily said firmly. “Really, people have the most obsolete idea about what we do. I suppose you expect ectoplasm leaking from shadowy cabinets.”

“Okay,” Julia said, smiling. “Just call me whenever your gang has its next meeting.”

“Fine,” Lily said, clearly pleased. “Now I think I want to give you a present. In return, I hope you will allow me to snoop enviously through your house as soon as possible. Now excuse me.”

Lily left the terrace, and Julia closed her eyes for a moment. We make a wonderful pair, Lily and I, Julia thought, we’re both out of our tiny minds. She thought of going round to see Mark, and then she ceased to think of anything at all.

Lily awakened her by stroking her shoulder. She was carrying a large yellow book under her arm, and had a pair of
scissors in her other hand. “My dear, you’ve been asleep for half an hour,” she said.

“I’ve just been thinking about Mark,” Julia said. “I’d like to see Mark.” She felt once more full of energy.

“That might not be very clever, dear,” Lily immediately said. “You’d be far wiser to leave Mark alone.”

Lily, having lost one brother to Julia, did not wish to lose the other; she had come closer to her adoptive brother over the past ten years, as Magnus had not; “poor Lily’s” defensive psychology seemed quite clear to her sister-in-law.

“Mark is so interesting,” Julia said, “and I hardly feel that I know him. Magnus scarcely let him in the house. He used to telephone me sometimes and we’d have these long, sweet conversations. He’s probably the only man I’ve flirted with since I married Magnus.”

“He would be,” said Lily. “Let me give you these presents. I’m sorry I haven’t more to welcome you into your new house, but it’s on such short notice. First, here’s a lovely big book full of pictures, and it’s all about your new neighborhood.” She held the big volume before Julia’s eyes:
The Royal Borough of Kensington
, by Eda Rolph. “Full of astonishing tales. Haven’t read the book in years. The other present is some of these flowers.” She waved her hand at the small, vibrant garden growing in boxes at the end of her terrace.

“Oh, I can’t let you cut these beautiful flowers,” said Julia, who disliked all cut flowers. “That would be a terrible crime. You can’t cut them for me.”

“But I can,” said Lily, bending down and beginning to snip off nearly a dozen flowers. “Some tulips, some of these beautiful begonias, some of my favorites here, these monstrous pinks, and a few more of everything else. Now. Take
these home and put them in water,” she said, giving Julia the double handful of bright flowers, “and they’ll stay fresh for as long as you like.”

Julia looked apprehensively at the flower boxes, but was relieved to see that the loss of her dozen scarcely affected their appearance at all: the flowers grew there in such abundance that only a few small gaps were now visible. The massed scent of the flowers in her hands made her light-headed. They were overwhelmingly sensual. One of the fleshy tulips brushed her face.

“I don’t mean to look as though I’m sending you away,” Lily said. “These flowers can always be put in water here until you leave. Why don’t you have dinner with me tonight? I’ve got … let’s see, some nice little chops. Or was this one of my vegetarian nights? There is enough food, anyhow. Afterwards we could watch a delicious new series on the television. One of those wonderful costume dramas. I’ve never read much Trollope, you know, but it means so much more all acted out. And the language is so beautiful, none of the vulgarity the younger playwrights go in for now. Will you watch it with me? It’s fascinating, and I could tell you what’s happened in the earlier five hundred episodes.”

“I’m out of the television habit,” Julia said, smiling. “Your brother wouldn’t allow one in the house. I do think I’ll go home. Thank you for everything, Lily.”

“Have you a telephone?”

“I’m not supposed to, but I do,” said Julia. “It’s still in the name of William McClintock. But I could practically shout across the park to you.”

Lily nodded, apparently satisfied.

Julia slipped the book under her arm and, still holding the flowers with both hands, turned to leave the terrace.

“Now remember your promise!” she called over her shoulder to Lily.

Later, Julia regretted that she had not accepted Lily’s offer of nut cutlets and
The Pallisers
. She had fallen asleep on the McClintocks’ enormous gray velvet couch just after lying down on it to rest her feet; she had been trying to read a novel she had bought and begun in the Knightsbridge hotel the night previous, a Penguin edition of
Herzog
, but had fallen asleep after two pages. When she awakened, the smell of Lily’s flowers pervading the large room, her mouth felt unpleasantly thick. She was very hungry, despite a dull pain just behind the frontal bone of her forehead. She marked her place in the book with a wrinkled tissue from the pocket of her dress and went through the long room to the kitchen.

The light bounced, harshly white, from the gleaming surfaces of the oven and refrigerator. Julia looked in the cupboard for a glass, but realized despairingly that the McClintocks had taken all of the kitchen and dining things with them, as well as all the linen. The kitchen held no food, no drink. And now it was hours past closing time for shops. Julia turned on the cold water from the taps over the sink and applied some of it to her face; then she cupped her hands and tried to drink from them, but she could not hold enough water in her palms. Eventually she reduced the flow of water from the tap and bent her head so that she could drink directly from it. The water tasted metallic and brackish: she let it run for a minute, and tried it again. Now it was slightly better, but it still tasted as though it were full of metal particles. She supposed she would have to buy bottled water; but maybe she would get used to the taste.

Julia dried her hands and mouth on the long reddish
drapes over the outsize hall window. While doing this, she remembered the bloodstain from the morning and looked down at the side seam of her dress. The light-blue seersucker showed a stiff brownish crescent an inch long. The stain seemed larger than it had that afternoon. What an odd scene that was, reflected Julia; surely she had found those things in the sand by some bizarre accident, she had probably been nowhere near the place where the girl had been playing. No child would do a thing like that—well, a boy might. She could imagine Magnus cutting up live turtles as a boy.

Did hot or cold water remove bloodstains? She had been told a hundred times, but could never remember. It was the one you didn’t think it was, so she decided to try cold water. Julia went back through the hall to the big ground-floor bathroom, the one the McClintocks had lined with rose-tinted mirrors. (The McClintocks, in most ways utterly conventional and even a shade stuffy in their tastes, had revealed a secret decadence in their bathrooms. The tubs and sinks were marble, the upstairs tub shaped like a huge sunken shell; the taps were swans’ necks, gold. Most surprising were the walls, lined with tinted mirrors. Julia’s bathroom upstairs had black mirrors, against which the gold faucets dully gleamed.) Julia took off her dress and draped it over the edge of the sink, so the stained portion would soak, and then filled the sink with water. Cold was right, she thought.

She turned away from the sink and caught sight of herself in the wall mirrors. Funny to see yourself front and back, half nude. Julia wore only underpants and tights.
My shell
, she thought. She was beginning to get a little fat: she would have to be careful about pants. But, she told herself, you don’t look so bad, considering: if no Playmate, no matron either. The rose tint made her skin look darker and healthier than it was;
Julia decided to get more sun this summer. It was a vision of Magnus-free peace—to be able to sprawl in the sun in the park outside her home.

Leaving the bathroom, she sprinted up the stairs to the bedroom she had chosen that morning. Though it was still not dark, she turned on the lights in the hall and bedroom. This gave the house a cavernous, echoing aspect which made Julia realize how little she knew her new dwelling. She crossed to the windows of the bedroom, pulled the drapes together, and began to dress. In a few minutes, buttoning on a floppy blue blouse she had always liked, Julia realized that it had become very warm in her bedroom; she was perspiring as she had outside. The rest of the house had not seemed so warm. She drew apart the drapes and opened the window by pulling it up from the bottom. The air which streamed in seemed magically cooler than the air within the room. It could have been because the house had been empty for a month; or could it have been something else?

Julia went to the storage heater set against the wall and touched it with the flat of her hand. She snatched it back in pain. The heater had been turned up to the full. The real-estate agent must have turned it on, Julia thought, so that he would not be showing customers a chilly house. Perhaps some of the downstairs heaters were on as well. She switched off the bedroom heater at the wall and went into the black-mirrored bathroom to comb her hair. The small heater in this room, she discovered, was also on. She flicked it off at the wall, and straightened up to look at herself. In these bathrooms it was impossible
not
to look at oneself. Julia wondered what sybaritic tricks the McClintocks had got up to before these sinister black mirrors. Yet her hair shone in them: and she supposed that she looked good enough for a restaurant.
There was a decent-looking French restaurant, she remembered, just off Kensington High Street on Abingdon Road. And hadn’t she seen a Chinese restaurant too? Now, she was embarrassed that she had cried, however briefly, before Lily; Lily had, though, demonstrated an almost otherworldly kindness. It seemed to Julia that she had very little to weep about—the sensation of debating between restaurants was one she had not had since her wedding, and it was charged with a nostalgic, delicious liberty. Still drowsy, hungry as she had not been in years, Julia felt for the moment young and capable of anything.