Bad Girls Good Women (52 page)

He took off Julia’s cotton dress with the square of paper hidden deep in the pocket, and let it fall in a heap on the floor. His hands rested on the points of Julia’s hips, then moved slowly to the hollow of her waist, then to cover her breasts. Julia had been proud of her new, voluptuous figure while she was feeding Lily, but now that was over she had shrunk again, even smaller than before. She put her fingers up to shield the deficit, but Alexander pushed her hand away. He leaned forward to touch his mouth to the nipples, tracing a slow circle around each hard point with his tongue.

‘Julia.’ His mouth moved against her skin. ‘I love you.’

Her body had been stiff, but Alexander’s hands warmed it. She had been thinking about the guilt and resentment murkily tangled between them both, but a more intense awareness took hold of her now. Her head fell back and she exhaled a long breath. Angrily she put the other reckonings out of her head. There was this hunger, now, sharper than the others, and they shared it. The thread of it was visible through the tangle. This appetite, at least, was simple and the means of satisfying it was within their reach.

‘I want you,’ Julia whispered.

She stepped out of his grasp and half turned away, shielding herself, conscious of the lines of her body and Alexander’s eyes on them. Then with a quick movement she lay down on the bed, stretching herself out for him. He threw himself down beside her and her body arched against him. Her mouth touched his and then opened, hungry, as his hand parted her legs. His fingers slid over the moist folds and then centred, sending a bolt through her. She gave herself up to the pleasure of it for a moment and then she whispered, ‘Wait.’

Julia sat up and unbuttoned his shirt, frowning over the cufflinks, then unbuckled his belt. Her face was shadowed, intent, as she undressed him. Alexander studied her in the dim light. He had never seen her quite like this before, he thought.

When Alexander was naked she pushed him gently, her hand flat against his chest, so that he lay on his back against the sheet. Then her dark head dipped over him as she took him into her mouth. Her tongue fluttered, drawing itself along the rigid length of him, and Alexander groaned. Perhaps he had only caught brief glimpses of this insistent, imperious Julia in the past. Tonight, she had taken control. This was an older, more calculating and more mysterious woman than the girl he had married. Alexander found her almost unbearably erotic. He groaned again, twisting on the sheet, shivering at the point of losing his control. He needed to shudder and burst into her mouth, but he wanted to reassert himself by pushing upwards inside her, and feeling her legs twine around his hips. Alexander caught Julia’s wrists and rolled sideways, intending to trap her beneath him, but she was too supple and too quick for him.

She twisted with him, pinning him underneath her own body instead. And then when he lay back, giving up to her, she smiled and stretched one long, white leg over him. She lifted her body, holding herself poised over him, and then she lowered herself so that they just connected, only just.

Transfixed, Alexander looked up at her. Her dark eyes were as opaque as mirrors, but yet he thought he could see through them, right into her head.

‘Wait,’ she whispered again.

She began to move, very slowly, lifting her hips and then sinking again, dreamily at first, then with sharper thrusts. She sat upright, her back arching and her fingers stretching and curling, and then she crouched over him like a cat, her breath warm on his face and her tongue searching for his. Their eyes locked together, and Julia’s imperious expression softened. She was taking him for her own pleasure, dominating him and then withdrawing herself to suit the demands of her own body, but Alexander sensed that she was also giving herself more generously than she had ever done before.

Suddenly, they were equal. There was no domination, and there was no need to yield. They were simply together, and the ease and the intensity of it ignited them. Alexander cried out, once, and his body reared upwards. Julia’s arms spread and her head fell helplessly backwards. She forgot Lily in her cot and the image of China lying in the narrow bed in the next room. Her eyes were blind now and she cried out too, triumphant in the house’s silence. The potent waves raced through her and expanded into the soft, remote ripples of satisfaction.

They lay together, tangled in stillness, with Julia’s head heavy on Alexander’s shoulder.

That was right
, she thought.

But already she was losing her sureness of how and why it had been right. If she had imagined equality or made it materialise with their bodies’ needs, its absence was reality, and reality always returned. Confusion gathered around her as surely as consciousness itself.

Alexander stirred and settled her head in the crook of his arm. She couldn’t see his face, but she thought she could guess what his expression would be. He had a calmness, not quite complacency but a certainty, that she was utterly lacking herself. She didn’t want to see that expression. Not now, tonight. They had been right, and the surprising satisfaction of it was still with her.

‘Alexander?’

‘Yes.’

‘What were you talking about? You and China, this evening, when you were walking back from the garden. I saw you, out of the window. You were so busy talking.’

She heard the faint murmur of laughter in his chest. ‘I don’t know. I can’t remember. Lily, perhaps. Or the house, or the garden. The ordinary things we talk about.’ His voice was blurring with drowsiness. Julia nodded, her cheek against his skin.

‘It must be nice,’ she murmured.

She watched the white curtains stirring at the dark square of the open window and listened to Lily making her tiny, satisfied noises in her sleep. Alexander’s breathing was deep and regular. After a moment or two, Julia fell asleep herself.

‘Oh shit.’ Mattie had thought that it was the alarm clock, but now she realised it was the telephone.

She couldn’t answer it. She couldn’t even open her eyes, but it still went on ringing.

‘Go away. Leave me alone.’ Even the silent words stabbed through her head, and the external noise assaulted her with renewed brutality.

Wincing, Mattie stretched out her hand. There was nothing there, only crumpled sheet. No solid, grunting flesh. She had got to bed alone, then, somehow or other. That was something.

Fortified by the discovery, she opened one eye. The room was too bright, even though the curtains were lopsidedly drawn. There were clothes all over the floor and the bed; the contents of her handbag were tipped in a heap on the table next to an open half-bottle of whisky. That was right, she remembered that much. She had wanted to smoke a last cigarette with a last drink, and then hadn’t been able to find any matches. At the thought of whisky Mattie’s stomach heaved and her mouth filled with bitter slime. And still the telephone went on ringing.

Mattie took a deep breath and sat up. Trying to move her head as little as possible she leaned over sideways and groped amongst the discarded clothes. Her fingers connected with the receiver and she struggled with the weight of it.

‘Is that you, Mat?’

‘Who else would it bloody well be?’

‘I don’t know, you sound funny. I thought you must be out.’

‘I was. Out for the count. I feel much worse now. What time is it?’

‘Mattie,’ Julia said. ‘It’s nearly eleven o’clock.’

‘So what? You’re not exactly an early bird yourself, are you?’

‘Lily woke up this morning at half past six. She wakes up every morning at half past six.’

‘Oh. Yeah. Sorry. How is she? I’m sorry I missed the birthday. Work. You know how it is.’

‘I know how it is,’ Julia said crisply. ‘What is the matter?’

Mattie sighed. With her free hand holding the front of her head in place she levered herself to sit up against the pillows. The room swung round and then settled again. She wanted tea, two pints of it, but there was no one to make it. ‘Hangover. A real peach.’

‘Wish I’d been there. What were you doing?’

‘God knows. I wish I could remember. No, I don’t. It’s probably better forgotten. Not having a show to do in the evenings, that’s the trouble. Rehearsing’s awful anyway, and there’s so much more time left over to fill with drinking.’

Julia looked over the side of the bureau. Lily was happily playing with her wooden blocks, balancing one on top of another and then pushing them down with a yodel of triumph. Alexander had gone across the garden to the half-overgrown summerhouse. He would spread his notebooks and sheets of music across a white Lloyd Loom table and work in there for hours.

‘Go easy, Mat, will you?’ Julia’s voice sounded concerned.

Mattie shrugged. If only she had a cup of tea. ‘Julia, what is this? Just a chat? Because if it is …’

‘No.’ The sharpness even made Mattie forget her headache for a minute. ‘I need to talk to you. Josh has come back. He wants to see me again.’

Mattie frowned, trying to disentangle what she thought about that. It didn’t take long, even in her debilitated condition.

‘I hope you told him to fuck off.’

There was a brief silence. Then, in a low voice, Julia said, ‘No. I didn’t. I want to see him too.’

‘What d’you expect me to say? You’re married, Bliss is a good guy. You’ve got Lily, you’re lucky.’

‘Don’t say anything.’ Julia’s voice had gone flat. ‘I’m still me, remember. We’re friends. I’m coming up to see you for a couple of days, if anyone asks. That’s all.’

‘Tell a few lies for you, is that it?’

‘Will you?’

Mattie closed her eyes. Then she laughed, even though it hurt. ‘You know I will. It won’t be the first time, will it?’

The memories linked them, all the way back to the days of playing truant from Blick Road. The bond seemed indissoluble, even though everything separated them now. They would always have each other, they thought, whatever external circumstances kept them apart.

‘Thanks, Mattie.’

‘I’ll just have to hope that you’re not really being as bloody stupid as I think you are, won’t I? When are you coming?’

‘Tomorrow. I’m going to have dinner with him.’

Mattie could hear the same old happiness and incredulity and intoxication in her voice. Julia had always been the same about her aviator, from the moment she had set eyes on him in Leoni’s. Mattie felt a dull premonition of the hurt that would inevitably come, and also a much keener pang of envy. She wanted to say,
Don’t do it
, both to save Julia the pain and to spare herself something too. She could countenance her best friend’s marriage, and motherhood, and her possession of Ladyhill, however scarred by the fire, but it was harder to witness passion and ecstasy, even if they were short-lived.
I am a bitch
, Mattie thought wearily. Julia was right. It was better to say nothing at all.

‘See you tomorrow, then. You can come here to doll yourself up first, if you want. I’ll be back from rehearsal by six. Are you bringing Lily?’

‘Don’t be daft. Faye’s going to help to look after her. She doesn’t like doing it because it interferes with her jam-making or choir practice or whatever it is that keeps everyone so furiously busy down here. But I told her I had to see my gynaecologist and that guaranteed acceptance and silence. Doctors are sacred and we don’t talk about down there, do we?’

Mattie grinned. ‘Heaven forbid. I’ll see you tomorrow, you adventuress. Ciao.’

After Julia had rung off, Mattie lay still and tried to gather some shreds of strength. Now that she was wide awake there was no point in staying in bed, she knew that from experience. The best thing to do was to get up and pretend that everything was all right, and usually after an hour or two it did turn out to be all right and she could get on with what she was supposed to be doing. There were some days that didn’t turn out well, but those were still infrequent enough not to be worth worrying about. Today she was due at rehearsal at two o’clock, so there was plenty of time to discover which sort of day it was going to be.

Very carefully, Mattie sat up and lowered her feet on to the floor. Her head and stomach protested, but not enough to prevent her from standing up. Once upright, she shuffled over to the window and pulled back the curtain. Squinting in the bright light she rested her face against the cool glass and looked down. There was the usual handful of purposeful-looking people striding past the little row of shops opposite. The second-hand bookseller had lowered his faded blue awning to keep the sunlight off his stock, and the jeweller next to him was standing in his shop doorway watching the passers-by. Beneath Mattie’s flat there was a dairy, and when she craned forward she could see the empty milk crates stacked up on the black and white tiled frontage, waiting to be returned to the depot. If she looked up again, to the end of the street, she could see a slice of the railings and the pedimented front of the British Museum.

Mattie liked living in Bloomsbury. It was an unfashionable and untheatrical enclave of small booksellers and shabby publishers’ offices, conveniently furnished with corner shops and dowdy cafés. She had learned to be at home in the jumbled streets, and felt that they offered a safe retreat. The familiar scene below was pleasing and soothing, and she felt better at once. Mattie hitched her nightdress around her and went across to her kitchen. Her cooking facilities consisted of a Baby Belling and an electric kettle perched side by side on a narrow shelf beside the sink, but Mattie hardly ever used the Belling. She ate biscuits and drank tea, and when she needed to or remembered to she went out to a café and ordered poached eggs or beans on toast. Unlike Julia, she had never acquired Felix’s taste for fancy foreign food. After she had eaten her meal she liked to sit in the café, smoking and listening to the conversations around her.

That was in her own, private, Bloomsbury existence.

In the other half of her life, she was taken to restaurants before or after parties, usually by someone who wanted to go to bed with her afterwards. Usually she prodded at the ornate food, and gave her attention to whatever there was to drink with it. She was as good at resisting the subsequent advances as she always had been, except when she was too weary to bother or too drunk to care. She had certainly been drunk last night, but she had clearly escaped somehow.