Rosie Thomas 4-Book Collection: Strangers, Bad Girls Good Women, A Woman of Our Times, All My Sins Remembered
Felix’s shoulder and said, ‘I’m glad you told me. It explains a lot of things, doesn’t it?’ She looked past Betty as if she had stopped existing and repeated, ‘Some silly girl.’
Jessie leaned forward to Betty. ‘You shouldn’t have told her like that,’ she said sharply. ‘Don’t you know better than that?’ Betty ignored her. Her eyes were fixed on Julia, held in Felix’s arms. With her last shot gone, Betty was defenceless. Felix thought painfully that she looked like a dismembered creature, ‘We did our best for you,’ she whispered. ‘We loved you.’
‘Love?’ The word sounded like an intricate puzzle to Julia, turning inwards on itself until it was finally empty, without meaning. ‘Yes, it doesn’t make any difference, you know. I won’t come home.’
She was more brutally certain now’. Her own strength surprised her. Betty made a last effort. ‘We’re still your parents. Your mother and father. Legal guardians. And you’re only sixteen. We can make you come back if we have to.’
Jessie’s big, grey head lifted, but she said nothing.
Julia laughed again, just recognisably now.
‘You could, but what difference will it make in the end? I will be twenty-one one day, you can’t stop that, and even before then you don’t own me. You can’t change what you’ve just told me.’ Carefully but deliberately she detached herself from Felix. She went across to the sofa and sat down, her back against the warm paisley shawl. ‘I’m all right,’ she said to Felix and Jessie. She was smiling when she turned to Betty again.
‘It’s funny, in a way, isn’t it? Ironic, I think that’s the word. I wanted to be free, and you’ve set me free by telling me the truth.’
There was a moment of silence. Felix thought, It isn’t as simple as that.
Then Betty stood up. Her coat seemed bigger, too loose for her frame inside it, and her handbag looked like a dead weight over her arm.
‘You won’t come?’ she asked childishly.
‘No,’ Julia repeated. ‘I live here now.’
There was no more talk of guardianship, no suggestion of ownership. Betty’s head nodded stiffly, just once.
Watching her, Jessie tried to promise, ‘We’ll look after her for you. I’ll see she’s all right.’
Betty swung round to her, bitterness only heightened by defeat.
‘You? You and him?’ She jerked her head at Felix. ‘My Julia might just as well be on the streets.’
No one said anything then, not even Julia, even though her fists clenched in her lap. She watched her mother plod slowly to the door, fumble with the catch. There was still an instant when she could have said, Wait. Yet she didn’t, and afterwards she believed that she was right.
They heard Betty’s footsteps going away down the stairs.
Julia had stopped shivering. To Jessie and Felix she said almost triumphantly, ‘I told you, didn’t I? You’re my family now. You and Mattie.’
Mattie was at the front door when Betty passed her. She caught a glimpse of her face and automatically put her hand out, but Betty never wavered. Mattie watched her go, away under the plane trees with her brown hat held upright. She seemed to carry the smell of Fairmile Road with her, Air-Wick and polish and ironing.
Betty sat quite still, all the way back on the train to the local station. She crossed the High Street, quite blind, although she nodded to the people who greeted her. Everything inside her was focused on her longing to reach home. Outside the front door she groped for her key, not even noticing that the panels of the door were coated with street dust. But when the door swung open there was none of the relief of sanctuary. She saw Vernon’s mackintosh hanging from its pegs on the hallstand, and his black briefcase on the floor beside it.
Of course, it was past the time for Vernon to be at home. It was strange, she realised now, that she hadn’t thought about him all the way back.
He appeared in the living room doorway, at first only a dark shadow seen out of the corner of her eye, and then she looked full at him. He was wearing his navy-blue office suit, shiny at the cuffs and turn-ups.
‘Betty? Where have you been?’
She always had his tea on the table by half past five, always. Her eyes met his.
‘I went up to Town. To look for Julia.’
His stiff face, frowning, measuring her.
‘And did you find her?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where?’
She told him, awkwardly, stumbling over the words while he frowned. ‘She won’t come back to us, Vernon. She says she won’t come home.’ She wanted to go to him and have him put his arms around her, as that black boy had done with Julia, but neither of them moved. That wasn’t part of what happened between them.
Vernon said at last, ‘Well. If she won’t, she won’t.’ He turned back into the sitting room.
Betty’s hand reached out to the pretty, orange-skirted lady who covered the telephone. Her fingers caressed the layers of net skirt, searching for comfort.
‘I’ll put the tea on,’ she whispered.
It was an evening like any of the others, except Julia’s room upstairs was empty. There was not even the expectation of her key in the lock. Vernon listened to the play on the Home Service and Betty sat in the armchair opposite him with her knitting coiled in her lap.
At ten o’clock exactly she asked him, ‘Shall I make the cocoa?’
He nodded, not even looking at her over his reading glasses. She was heating the milk, in the special pan she always used, when he came in behind her. His presence seemed incongruous in the tidy kitchen. Betty looked down into the still, white circle of milk.
‘I told her,’ she said roughly. ‘I told her about the adoption.’
He almost bumped against her, but then he stepped back again.
‘I wish you hadn’t. She’s too young yet.’
‘Vernon, she’s grown up. She’s grown up, in that place.’
‘What did she say? How did she take it?’
The milk rose swiftly, and Betty lifted it off the heat.
‘I think she laughed. She said … she said it set her free.’
She couldn’t understand that. Perhaps Vernon would understand it. But all he said, after a long pause, and so quietly that she could hardly hear him, was ‘Perhaps it’s for the best. In the end.’
Betty carried the cups back into the living room and they drank their cocoa in silence. When her cup was empty she said, ‘I’ll go on up.’
Vernon usually followed her, after locking the doors and winding the clock on the mantelpiece. But tonight he sat for a long time in his armchair in the quiet house, staring ahead of him at the lavender and yellow flowers that ran in garlands down the wallpaper.
Betty lay under the eiderdown upstairs with the tears wet and stinging on her cheeks.
It was Jessie who told Mattie what had happened. Julia listened with her head bent, picking at the fringe of the shawl. At the end she broke in, saying fiercely, ‘I’m sorry about what my … about what she said to you and Felix. That’s the way she is. Anyone who doesn’t live like she does is condemned. She did it to Mattie …’
Jessie said gently, ‘There’s no need to be sorry, my duck. And she is your mother. She raised you all those years, whoever had the birth of you.’
Mattie didn’t say much. She was shocked, but a part of her wasn’t even surprised. She put her arms round Julia’s shoulders and hugged her,