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Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in the United Kingdom in 1988 by Michael Joseph
Copyright © Rosie Thomas 1988
Rosie Thomas asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Ebook Edition © APR 2014 ISBN: 9780007560561
Version: 2018-10-25
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Twenty-two
Twenty-three
Twenty-four
Twenty-five
Twenty-six
Twenty-seven
Keep Reading
About the Author
Also by Rosie Thomas
About the Publisher
The music, very loud music, filled the corners of the old house.
In the big room where the musicians in their corner were lapped by a sea of dancers, it was as solid as a wall. Overhead, where Julia stood in the shadows at the top of the stairs, it penetrated the thick stone walls and the oak-boarded floors as an insistent bass beat. She stood for a minute to listen to it.
Beneath her was the blaze of lights and the noise of people, laughter and shouting all knitted together by the throb of the music.
Julia swayed dreamily, moving her hips inside the silky tube of her dress. She was smiling, because she loved parties and her own parties were always the best of all. She loved this particular moment, when the party was off and running on its own, and she could step back to admire it, her creation.
Somewhere behind her, in the dimness of the gallery, a door opened. A thin finger of light reached past her. Julia didn’t look round, but she heard a man’s voice and then a woman’s low laugh before the door closed again. The man walked quickly along the gallery and stopped beside her at the head of the stairs. Turning to look now, Julia saw that it was her old friend Johnny Flowers. He had arrived hours ago in one of the packed cars that had raced each other from London to Julia’s party.
She smiled, and saw the whiteness of his teeth as he smiled back at her.
‘Good time, Johnny?’ she whispered.
He leaned forward to kiss the corner of her mouth and his hand rested lightly on her waist.
‘Mmm. The very best time. The party to end all parties, this one.’
Julia murmured, ‘Good. But it’s early yet.’
Johnny’s hand slid over her hip as he passed her, and fleetingly she remembered other times. Other places, a long way from this big house beached in its dark gardens.
She tilted her head backwards at the closed bedroom door.
‘Who?’
‘Sssh.’ The white smile came again as he put his finger to his lips. ‘You haven’t seen me.’
‘I haven’t seen you.’
Julia watched him run downstairs and disappear into the brightness. A swirl of laughing people poured out into the hallway and the colours of the girls’ dresses blurred exotically against the wood panelling.
Someone called out, ‘Ju—lia!’ and the faces turned to look up at her. She stood on the top stair for a moment longer, surveying the scene, smiling with satisfaction. Then, with the tips of her fingers just touching the smooth, curving warmth of the banister rail, she floated down to join them.
In the doorway, someone shouted, ‘Be Bop A Lula!’
Out of sight, in the room where the dancers surged past the huge Christmas tree, the lead guitarist mopped the sweat out of his eyes and obligingly struck the first chord.
‘She’s my baby,’ Julia sang.
A chain of people formed and swayed in front of her, and arms came round her waist. She could feel the heat of the man, whoever he was, through her thin dress. Julia stumbled forward and steadied herself in the crush by flinging her arms around someone else. Everyone was singing now, ‘Don’t mean maybe.’
The conga line snaked around the hallway and back into the big room. Before it jerked her away Julia saw Johnny Flowers again. He was slipping back up the stairs, holding a champagne bottle by its gold foil neck. She looked away quickly, thinking, I wanted this, didn’t I? To be able to give parties in a big house for all my friends. To have everyone around me, enjoying themselves …
Happy New Year, she wished herself. But it didn’t suppress the little beat of loneliness that she had felt, in the middle of all the people.
The dancers swept her along, into the heat of the drawing room where the carpets had been rolled back and the log fire in the huge stone fireplace crackled unnecessarily. Inside her head, all around her, the music thudded on.
Julia saw a whisky bottle on a windowsill. As they swooped past she reached for it and titled it to her mouth. They circled the Christmas tree. It was so tall that the silver star on the top touched the high ceiling, and there was a real candle burning on every branch. Julia had insisted on real candles, because they were so beautiful. The blaze of them and the flames in the hearth gave the only light in the packed room now.
Julia’s oldest friend Mattie was lying along the back of a sofa, her head propped on one hand and the other waving a cigarette in a long holder. The cigarette holder was a recent affection, adopted since Mattie had begun to be famous. The cluster of men around her was nothing new, because Mattie had attracted men effortlessly ever since Julia had known her. She waved the cigarette holder at Julia now, and closed one eye in a slow wink.
‘Seen Bliss?’ Julia mouthed at her, and Mattie pointed the holder.
Julia’s husband was on the far side of the room. He was bending over the radiogram in its cabinet, twiddling the knobs. Although his back was turned to her, Julia could imagine his mildly preoccupied frown, like a small boy’s intent on a puzzle. Alexander Bliss was a tall, spare, elegant man. He was ten years older than his wife, and he had chosen to wear a dinner jacket for her party. Most of his country neighbours had dressed too, but the influx of London guests wore sharp Italian suits, studded leather, evening dresses that were hardly dresses at all.
The contrast wouldn’t have struck Alexander. He had seen it often enough before. If he had bothered to make any comment, he would have shrugged amiably. ‘Anything goes, nowadays.’
Julia wriggled out of the grasp of the conga man. She didn’t know him but she thought that he had arrived with Johnny. There were lots of strange faces tonight, mixed with the familiar ones, and she liked that because it meant that anything could happen. Julia still believed that’s what parties were for.
She thought back, in an instant of painful, irresistible nostalgia. Parties in bedsitters and parties in cellars. Crowded parties with hot jazz, and warm booze drunk out of chipped cups, and an endless, wonderful parade of new faces. It was at the time of those parties that Julia had met the aviator. Mattie had nicknamed him your aviator. Where was he now?
I’m twenty-one years old, she thought suddenly, and I’m looking back like an old woman. Julia tipped the whisky bottle again. Happy New Year.
‘C’mon baby. What about a dance?’ Johnny’s friend, if he was Johnny’s friend, had a nice face enlivened by louche sideburns. She grinned at him. ‘Later,’ she shouted over the music. ‘Promise.’
Then she threaded her way through the dancers to Alexander, crouched beside the radiogram. He looked up when she touched his shoulder and smiled at her, the corners of his eyes creasing. ‘It’s nearly twelve. Listen.’
He pressed his ear to the speaker and then leapt up, turning the volume control sharply. ‘It’s midnight!’
The guitarists finished the number with a deafening chord and the drummer brandished his sticks in a drum roll. In the sudden silence that followed, Big Ben struck the quarters and then the hour. Twelve booming peals, and Julia imagined them echoing through the house and rolling over the trees and lawns beyond the windows. At the twelfth stroke the room erupted into shouts and cheers, kissing and clapping.
It was 1960.
Alexander turned Julia’s face up to his, and kissed her. ‘Don’t look so sad. It’s a new decade. Happy New Decade.’
With the warmth of Alexander’s kiss still on her mouth, Julia said, ‘I liked the old decade.’
He touched her cheek, lifting the curl that lay against it. ‘You’ll like this one too.’ He took her hand, and drew her into the huge, smiling circle to sing ‘Auld Lang Syne’. Julia sang with everyone else, and when the hugging and shouting was over the music started to pound again.
‘Dance with your husband?’ he asked her. Alexander was a very good dancer. It was one of the first things she had noticed about him, long ago. She had been surprised, to begin with, that someone like Alexander Bliss should like rock and roll.
‘Delighted.’
When the number finished, so quietly that she could hardly hear him, Alexander asked her, ‘Are you happy?’
And Julia faced him squarely, looking straight into his eyes. ‘Of course I am.’
Alexander turned her to face the room. ‘Go on then. Enjoy your party.’
The man with the sideburns was waiting. Mattie had left her sofa to dance, her long diamond earrings swinging. The house was full of friends. It was a good party. My party, Julia thought. Alexander wouldn’t say our party. Nor would he invite all these people of his own accord, but he would never stop his wife from doing whatever she wanted to do.
Julia 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 this 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.
‘Get everyone outside,’ someone shouted. ‘Then for Christ’s sake shut the doors.’ Julia’s guests began to stream out into the darkness. She saw Mattie, her fact blackened with smoke.
‘Come on,’ Mattie yelled at her. ‘Get out.’
‘I’ve got to ring for help.
Julia tried to push past her, to Bliss’s little office on the right of the stairs, and the nearest telephone.
‘No,’ Mattie screamed. ‘Julia!’
Then at last she saw Bliss. He ran towards her from the stone archway that led through to the back of the house. His face was the colour of ice.
Julia stumbled towards him. ‘The fire brigade,’ she shouted helplessly.
‘They’re coming.’
Alexander was methodically throwing open every door to check that the room beyond was empty. He slammed the doors shut again and the roar of the fire devoured the sound. Another obliterating blanket of smoke rolled around them and he caught at her arm.
‘Is everyone out of there?’
She nodded, and at once he was pulling her over the stone flags to the big door. She tripped in her tight dress and the thin fabric ripped, freeing her to run. The arched portico framed the night beyond, then it was overhead, and then with Alexander’s arm supporting her they escaped into the darkness. The cold hit them and Julia saw ahead of her the dark, glossy’ ovals of the clipped yews reflecting an ugly red glow. The crowd of people milled at the foot of the shallow flight of steps, their faces turned upwards to the house. Julia and Alexander looked the same way, and understood how quickly and how terribly the fire had taken hold.
The windows of what had been the drawing room, where only a few minutes ago they had been dancing in the flow of candlelight, were now blind eyes from which the smoke coiled in the thick ropes. The flames had reached the first floor, and came darting lasciviously from the windows. The crash of breaking glass and falling timber was just audible through the voice of the fire itself.
‘Is everyone out?’ Bliss shouted hoarsely. ‘Is anyone missing?’
The panic had subsided. The guests were numb with shock, and silent in awe of the fire’s horrible vitality. They muttered to one another, and shook their heads. It seemed that everyone was accounted for.
Julia stood motionless, watching. Bliss’s fingers were like iron hooks digging into the flesh of her arm. Looking upwards at the windows in the gable end of the near wing, she thought of the magnificent beams that supported the roof of the Long Gallery, and the floor of broad oak boards that separated the gallery from the burning bedrooms beneath.
She shivered violently in the city air. And then she remembered.
The words stuck in her throat at first. Bliss looked at her, then gripped her other arm and pulled her closer.
‘What is it?’
‘Flowers. Flowers was upstairs, with a girl.’
They whirled apart and went blundering through the silent huddles of people. ‘Has anyone seen Flowers?’
No one had seen him. There were only white, shocked faces, and none of them was Johnny Flowers.
Julia remembered, with a beat of horror, what he had said in the shadows at the top of the stairs. The party to end all parties. She dared not look up at the lurid windows.
Fear crystallised into certainty within her. She finished her desperate circuit and collided with Bliss again.
‘Not here.’
Alexander turned his face to the house. Julia saw the reflected light of the fire in his eyes.
‘They must still be inside.’
He was already running towards the steps. Two or three other men left the shelter of the crowd and ran with him.
‘No.’ Her scream tore Julia’s throat.
‘No. Don’t go back in there.’
Without stopping to think she began to run too, gathering up the ruined tail of her dress. She had only gone half a dozen steps when more people caught up with her and pulled at her arms, dragging her backwards. She struggled to break free, swearing blindly at them. They held her too tightly, and she was reduced to impotent kicking and writhing.
Her last glimpse of Bliss was as he ran back under the portico, one arm held crooked against his face in a vain attempt to shield it from the fire’s fierce heat.
‘Stop him,’ she whispered to the people holding her. ‘Don’t let him go in there.’
But he had already gone.