Rosie Thomas 4-Book Collection: Strangers, Bad Girls Good Women, A Woman of Our Times, All My Sins Remembered
went to bed with him, because he seemed to expect it of her and because she didn’t know what else to do. He did it very thoroughly but without the tenderness that had touched her at the beginning. It occurred to her that it was just something else that she did for him now, like bringing him whisky when he did the money on Friday afternoons.
But he gave her a part.
It was ten lines as a daffy debutante in Welcome Home. The actress who had been doubling it made a fuss, but to Mattie’s relief John Douglas stood firm.
‘Give her a chance, or she’ll go on nagging the balls off everyone.’
She learned the lines, and worked for hours on what she imagined was a cut-glass accent.
In Blackpool, a week later, she went on for the first time.
When she came off she was shaking and the palms of her hands were hot and wet.
Fergus and Alan kissed her and congratulated her, but it was John’s approval she wanted. By a great effort of will she stopped herself from searching him out there and then, but when she saw him leaning against the bar in the pub afterwards, she couldn’t help herself. She pushed through the crowd to him and blurted out, ‘John? Did you see me? Was I all right?’
His grey eyes appraised her. ‘You were just that. All right.’
Mattie flushed. What more had she expected? She nodded, and went back to her place. But she had done it. She had made her professional debut, and she could live without praise if she had to.
The February rain fell like a thin, cold veil. Julia stepped outside reluctantly with a group of other homeward-bound typists who giggled and turned up their collars and skittered away towards the bus-stop. The gutters were grey, pock-marked lakes and the traffic ploughed through them to send plumes of water over the crowded pavement. The rain immediately pasted Julia’s fringe flat to her forehead and poked intrusively into her face. She had no umbrella and she turned sharply away from the streaming, dun-coloured mess of Oxford Street and began the walk home.
The little streets along her route were already taking on the closed-up, sullen air of winter nights. As she passed the corner greengrocer’s where she sometimes bought vegetables the green wooden shutters rolled down with a clatter. The shopkeeper ducked out to lock them and the rain made dark spots on the shoulder of his overalls. He rushed back into the shop without glancing at Julia. Her shoes were filling with water and she walked faster, trying to dodge the biggest puddles.
The shop on the next corner was still open, and in the steamy neon brightness inside she bought milk and bread and cheese, and felt her spirits lifting. She thought of reaching home and putting on dry clothes, making a pot of tea and taking a cup in to Jessie. Perhaps Felix would be home, and she would lean against the kitchen cupboard to watch him prepare a meal. Julia came out with her bag of shopping and saw that the off-licence opposite was just opening for the evening. It seemed to contradict the soaking, shrinking mood of the night so positively that she marched across and bought a bottle of red wine for Felix. She chose at random from the shelves and paid over her shillings cheerfully. She hurried the length of the last streets and into the square, humming to defy the cold and the rain.
She thought of Josh as she passed under the dripping trees, but all her longings were fixed on being warm and dry and the yearning slipped away again.
On the dingy stairs she met the last office-worker on the way out. She was an anxious-looking middle-aged woman, always the last to go. Julia brushed past her, nodding, and heard her locking doors on her way down.
The black door of the flat loomed on the lauding above her. With a grateful rush she took the last stairs two at a time and reached it, panting, raindrops rolling from her hair and coat and spattering unseen on the dusty floor.
Julia unlocked the door and pushed it open.
It was dark and quiet inside. Jessie didn’t usually sleep in the early evening. Julia wasn’t afraid of disturbing her.
She called out, ‘I’m home. Hello, I’m home.’
Jessie’s room was in darkness, and the street light from the square seeped into a dull, orange glow on the cracked ceiling. As she turned in the doorway Julia heard water running. Jessie was in the bathroom. A line of light showed under the door. Julia went into the kitchen and unpacked her shopping, then crossed to her own room and stripped off her wet clothes. She turned on the electric fire and warmed her feet, then leaned forward to rub her hair dry. It steamed as she combed her fingers through it, and the brittle heat from the red bar made her cheeks smart. When she was warm all through Julia pulled on slacks and a jumper, and stuck her feet into her slippers.
The flat was still quiet except for the sound of running water.
She had almost reached the kitchen when it struck her that it had been running for a long time.
If Jessie was taking a bath, it would be full by now. Julia turned back and put her hand out to the bathroom door. She felt the grainy wood of the panels under her fingertips. The bathwater was running, but it had a peculiar double resonance. It took Julia a second to realise that it was splashing, too. Spilling over the side of something.
‘Jessie?’
The water noise seemed to have grown louder. It drowned her voice.
‘Jessie, are you all right?’
Julia thumped on the door. There was no answer, except the water.
‘Jessie.’
Julia went on shouting, but her shoulder was already against the door. Inside her head she could see the other side of it. The door was white-painted, Felix must have done that. There was a little chrome-plated bolt screwed to it. Only four tiny screws holding it in place. Nothing substantial. The door creaked under her weight, protesting, but the lock didn’t give. Why had Jessie locked it, alone in the flat? Julia rattled the knob, turning it to and fro. Then she looked down. She saw the dark finger run out beneath the door, then spread into a fist-shape. The water was reaching out to her. The sight of it gave her terrified strength. She leaned away from the door and then flung all her weight against it. There was a shudder as the screws were torn out of the wooden frame and the door collapsed inwards. Julia fell into the bathroom where the water was running from the taps, spilling over the side of the bath and washing over the floor.
Jessie was in the bath. Julia saw mountainous, veined flesh and floating sparse grey hair. Her face was grey and purple, and it was under the moving skin of water. The noise of the water was deafening, like a terrible waterfall, thundering in the wet white space.
Julia had stumbled backwards, a single step. Her eyes had clenched themselves shut and her knuckles were crammed against her teeth, stifling a scream. It was no more than a second before she opened her eyes again and Jessie was still lying there, under the water, her hair moving tranquilly around her head like seaweed fronds.
Julia began to move at last through the waves of shock. She stooped to the taps and turned them off. Water still slopped over the side of the bath, soaking her legs. She plunged her arms into the bath, locking her hands behind Jessie’s shoulders, straining to lift her up. Julia grunted and her feet slid on the slippery floor. She could hear herself whispering, ‘Come on, Jessie. Sit up, Jessie. Sit up, please, won’t you?’
The huge weight shifted a little with her efforts and the bath plug on its chain was wrenched out of the plughole. The water gurgled and drained quickly away, and Jessie was left supported in Julia’s arms. Julia heaved at her, imagining that she would lift her out of the bath and lay her on the floor so that she could tend to her. But Jessie’s wet skin only sucked against hers, and the weight of her didn’t move again.
Gasping and sobbing with fear and panic and exertion, Julia let her fall backwards again against the slope of the bath. Jessie’s face turned upwards with tendrils of hair stuck to her cheeks. Her mouth hung open