Rosie Thomas 4-Book Collection: Strangers, Bad Girls Good Women, A Woman of Our Times, All My Sins Remembered
wound her way back across the room to Johnny Flowers’s friend. She picked up a full glass on her way and drank the contents, not stopping to notice what they were. The man was still waiting for her, and she accepted his admiring glance. Julia was tall, with pale, perfect skin and a mass of dark hair. Her evening dress, a satin tube cut high at the front and into a deep V at the back, showed off her figure. She smoothed the fabric over her hips, satisfied that her stomach was still flat.
‘You promised me a dance,’ the man said.
‘So here I am.’ When Julia smiled her face melted.
The man took her in his arms, his cheek against hers. Julia smelt cologne, whisky, and warm skin. She closed her eyes, and danced.
The house was made for parties. She had seen it as soon as Alexander had brought her to visit it, before they were engaged. She couldn’t remember whether that was when she had begun to take him seriously. Bliss had begun by being a bit of a joke, to Mattie and Julia. After the aviator Julia hadn’t cared what she did or with whom, and if it hadn’t been Bliss it would have been someone else. Then, almost without her noticing it, he had begun to be important to her.
In London, Bliss lived in a chaotic flat in Markham Square, not noticeably different from anyone else’s. But then, one weekend, he had driven her to Ladyhill. Even Julia, to whom houses were just places for sleeping in, set out in rows in city streets, even Julia could see that Ladyhill was beautiful. They rounded a curve in the drive and it faced them, a Jacobean manor house in warm brick faced with stone, the sun reflected in fiery sheets from the tall windows. Two short wings projected on either side of the arched stone doorway, and in their paved shelter were two huge yew trees, clipped into perfect ovals. It was late March, the first day of spring weather, and Julia looked at the pale blue washed sky behind the high chimneys.
‘Who lives here?’ she asked.
‘My father.’
‘And who’s your father, when he’s at home?’
‘Sir Percy Bliss, Bart.’
‘Hot dog,’ Julia had said.
Alexander left his car slewed at an angle in the driveway and they went inside. They walked through the rooms together. Sir Percy was away, and there was no one at Ladyhill. Julia was impressed in spite of herself. It wasn’t so much by the dim rooms with their panelled walls hung with English pictures, or by the Long Gallery with views over the gardens beyond the house, or even by the great half-tester bed with its yellow brocade hangings that Alexander called the Queen’s Bed, but by the difference in Alexander himself. In London he was vague, almost diffident.
Julia had seen him once or twice glancing uneasily around Markham Square, or the Rocket, as if he was wondering what he was doing there. But as he showed her around Ladyhill he seemed more solid, as if the place and his love for it defined him. He did love it, she could see it in his face, and in his hands as they rested on a carved newel or measured the depth of a window embrasure.
Suddenly, startling, Julia liked Alexander Bliss. She liked him, and envied him. She felt that she was adrift, not anchored like Alexander to his old house and its gardens. At Ladyhill, the freedom that she had set such store by seemed no more than rootlessness.
She shivered in the silent house.
‘It needs people,’ she announced. ‘Lots and lots of people. Mad parties.’
Alexander smiled. ‘Perhaps it does.’ He put his arms around her, and kissed her demandingly. Lots of people, Julia remembered.
After her dance with the sideburns man someone else had claimed her, and then one of Mattie’s retinue of men. She drank some more whisky and then some champagne, and reached the elusive stage of being drunk when everything seemed warm, and simple, and deliciously funny. The crowd began to thin out a little as the staider guests left. Alexander stood at the foot of the sweep of stairs, saying goodbye. When he looked back at the dancers he realised that the stayers were going to stay all night. The music was coming from the radiogram now, and the group had put down their guitars to join the dancers. One of them took off his shirt to dance bare-chested, with the sweat shining on his shoulder blades. Mattie reached our reflective to touch the muscles in his back with her fingertips, and Julia laughed. At that moment everyone was her friend, but she loved Mattie for all the years that had just slipped out of her reach with the strokes of Big Ben. It was just New Year’s Eve that was troubling her. She didn’t want to celebrate the death of a year, let alone a decade.
She looked for Bliss, wanting to put her arms around him, but she couldn’t see him anywhere. She turned instead, smiling back at the laugher around her, ready to plunge into the party once more.
She never knew how the next thing happened. The crush was much less than it had been at midnight, and she couldn’t remember afterwards who had been at that side of the room. Someone must have stumbled, or swung an arm too wildly and reached out to steady themselves. Julia saw her Christmas tree shiver as if it was alive, and then it titled, slowly at first, and then it fell in an arc of fire. The candle flames licked through the dark branches, and the branches crackled fragrantly as the scarlet tongues devoured them.
For an instant, still in the grip of euphoria, Julia thought how beautiful it was. The blazing tree hit the floor, with its glass balls splintering around it. The dancers scattered backwards and a girl screamed. The record was still playing but it seemed that there was a long moment’s silence. And then the heavy velvet curtains caught fire. A sheet of flame sprang upwards from the floor, blindingly bright in the dim room. A second later the dusty velvet drapes and braided tassels were blazing like the demolished tree.
There was another scream, but this one was caught and stifled by a belching pall of smoke. The horrified stillness in the room broke into a panicky scramble of bodies. Julia was carried towards the door, almost falling and then clawing her way upright again. The smoke billowed out, as acrid as her sudden terror, and she choked on it. There was a babble of shouts and screams now and a man’s voice rising over them commanding, ‘Don’t push. Don’t panic.’
The joyous crackle of leaping flames was louder than anything else, drowning out the music and the shouting.
The first dancers to escape stumbled out into the hallway.
Julia saw that the man with the sideburns had wrapped himself in one of the rolled-back rugs. Under is protection he was trying to tear down the flaming curtains. They fell in a shower of vicious sparks, and the heavy wooden cornice pole crashed with them. It was already alight and before Julia’s eyes the whole of the panelled wall beside the dark gape of the window flowered into bright tendrils of flame.
She heard herself scream too. ‘Bliss!’ The roar of the fire grew deafening as it took hold. ‘Bliss. Where are you?’
She couldn’t see him anywhere. The room was thick with smoke now, and she coughed and gasped as it filled her lungs. The door seemed so far away. She was sure that she would never reach it and fear spread through her as fast as the fire itself. A hand grabbed her wrist and pulled her forward. Her tight dress hobbled her and she almost fell again, but the surge of people pushed her forward. Half carried and half dragged there, she lurched through the doorway into the hall. Cold, fresh air bit into her lungs and she gulped at it, her eyes steaming. She rubbed the palms of her hands into her eyes and turned to look where she had come from.
The last of the dancers tumbled out after her, retching, and blinded by the smoke. A great black cloud of it licked after them. Julia could see nothing beyond it, but she could hear the fire as it leapt upwards and onwards. Water. She must get water to quench it. She imagined ducking through the smoke to pour water where the Christmas tree had collapsed into flame, and half turned to run for the kitchens.
The heavy main door banged open and she smelt the frosty purity of the night air rushing past her as the fire sucked it inwards. Julia felt it like a living thing now. It gave a great roar of satisfaction as the air fed it. Through the smoke she glimpsed its red heart, and sparks that cascaded downwards in a mocking torrent. No one could get into that room now.
Telephone. She must telephone for help instead.