JULIA Chap 5/6

They all look around the houses and then say they are going to think about things. Rubbish! They just want a free trip to the country and to be on TV.’  ‘Well you don’t have to watch that now I’m here do you?’ Valerie went to turn the TV off. ‘Don’t turn it off, I’m watching’ grumbled her mother.  Valerie backed away from the controller and sat back in the small bedroom chair. Not for the first time since her mother’s illness she felt thoroughly rejected and wanted to say something, but she kept her mouth shut. 

‘So Peter and Alison, what do you think of the house?’ The presenter was sickeningly cheerful. ‘Well it isn’t quite what we were looking for is it Peter? There isn’t room for Peter’s model railway and I’m not sure the kitchen units suit our furniture.’ ‘There you are, I told you so’ said Valerie’s mother ‘they won’t buy anything.’

 Lucy appeared with the tea. ‘Oh it your favorite Mrs. ‘Move me to da Country.’ Valerie’s mother ignored Lucy but said in a very loud voice, ‘she still can’t speak English.  I don’t know how they get in.’ ‘Mother, please!’ ‘What? What’s the matter?’ Valerie wondered whether it was worth the risk of things escalating and decided that discretion was the better part of valour on this occasion.

Lucy paid no attention to what had been said. ‘Time for you pill Mrs.’ ‘I don’t want any more pills!’ shouted Valerie’s mother. Valerie intervened. ‘Lucy is only doing what she has been asked to do.  You must take your medication or you won’t get any better.’ ‘I’m not going to get any better, can’t you see that!? There’s nothing to get better for.’ Janet had a vengeful look on her face, as though her continuing illness and ultimate demise was some form of twisted punishment of Valerie, for letting Brian con her.

‘You take’ said Lucy who either had the courage of a lion or the innocence of a lamb. ‘They make me feel nauseous, they are disgusting’ said her mother shifting into her childish foot stamping mode. ‘You take, then there some chocolate.’ Lucy had obviously got the whole situation under control and Valerie was pleased she had.  Mother was obviously going to be a nightmare and without Lucy between them she wasn’t sure she would be able to cope.

Medication given, her mother reverted to television watching and was lost to conversation.  Valerie left the room saying she was going to unpack.  She took her bag to the guest room and unzipped the small case.  Enough for a weekend but not enough to stay longer, just in case her mother suggested she did.  During the last two months she had begun to realize just how much Julia had taken on the role of buffer between them all.  Her stalwart interventions in times of difficulty had largely gone unnoticed, everyone was so keen to criticize her they failed to acknowledge just how useful she had been.  ‘Useful,’ what a dreadful word for her to come up with, it made Julia sound like an artifact, a cooking utensil or a garden tool perhaps.  Valerie hadn’t been to see Julia at all since the unhappy meeting at Cove House. She knew Julia had been ill because Michael of all people had telephoned around to tell everyone.  That was how mother knew.  In retrospect it was clear Michael was trying to get the family to support her because he didn’t want to. He didn’t mention their separation which came from another source, but despite knowing Julia was on her own and in hospital, Valerie made no attempt to see her.  Her excuse was her mother’s problems but in truth she was ashamed of the whole business. The wedding in Tenerife, her siding with Brian over Julia, Geoffrey’s connection with Brian’s business deals, it all amounted to a small hill of guilt she was unready to climb.

After the rather spicy dinner that Lucy had cooked, Valerie braved the master bedroom.  Taking the roll of black bin liners, she drew back the sliding wardrobe doors and confronted the row of  Brian’s clothes that hung on the rack like those in a charity shop.  Valerie knew about charity shops. She’d worked in one for a week on behalf of the WI before deciding the smell was affecting her sinuses.  Brian’s clothes were not offensive but retained a disconcerting aroma that reminded her of him, as though part of his essence had remained intact in the house.  She didn’t want to go near the clothes but knew her mother would only complain were they not dealt with.  Taking the plunge she lifted the first jacket out of the wardrobe and speedily pushed it into the sack like a poacher might a dead Rabbit.  She wanted to wash her hands, and wished she’d thought of bringing some rubber gloves.  The second one was no easier. What was it about touching his clothes?  Was it some deep-seated memory of sorting through the possessions of the dead, of empty carcasses, of contaminated cloth?  She told herself to pull herself together.  It was nothing more than the connection between the clothes and the man, that was all.  The truth was that she didn’t want to think about Brian and hated the thought of touching any part of him. Working on the basis that the sooner she finished the sooner she could wash her hands, she gritted her teeth and got on with the job.

Whilst loading the sacks it occurred to her that Brian hadn’t just upped and left.  He hadn’t walked away leaving her mother in the lurch.  If he had ‘done a runner’ then why would he have left all of his possessions? His clothes weren’t exactly rubbish. They were not the sort of thing one would discard without good reason.  Perhaps the Police were too close for comfort and that was why he had skipped off? Valerie convinced herself this had to be the case. The jackets alone filled three sacks. Then there were the shirts, followed by the shoes. Finally she had to deal with the socks and pants. Oh god, his underwear! She hadn’t thought about that.  There was no way she could physically handle his pants.  In a moment of brilliance she decided she could use two coat hangers one in each hand and with a pincer movement lift them into the sacks.  Looking like some mad puppeteer she manipulated the white ‘Y’ fronts. It was time consuming but worked reasonably well. 

The job was almost done and she was about to tie the sacks up and go to the bathroom when a large manilla envelope slid to the floor. It had been tucked under the neatly stacked underwear on the shelf.  Overcome by curiosity she stooped down to pick it up. Feeling uncomfortable at her desire to open it she non the less pulled back the flap and pulled out the contents.  What she saw stopped her in her tracks.  Her hands began to tremble and her heart palpitate.  What she read could not possibly be true…..  

Chapter 6            ‘What am I going to do now?’

Julia looked across the table at the photograph in the frame.  It was a black and white picture of her father taken for the cover of a book, one of many he’d written.   Colin Sampson had been an intellectual, an author, and a gentle man who’d had the decency to stay married until the children had flown the nest, and then, when he could not take his wife’s unreasonable demands anymore, found himself a quiet woman with whom he could end his days.  Throughout Julia’s troubled childhood he’d stood by her side.  When she went off to Marrakech with Archie Kendal, he sent out search parties and even boarded a plane himself, a major achievement for a man petrified of flying.  In adult life when she manned the barricades at Greenham Common and attacked the American Embassy he said nothing that disrespected her right to be who she was, and she knew all along that he was having to take on board the vitriol of her mother and possibly the ire of his overwhelmingly conservative colleagues in order to protect her right to be who she was.  In the end of course their relationship suffered as a consequence of Julia’s continuing need to fight authority, but she always felt he would be there if the chips were down.  But he died.   One evening he was there, the next morning he was gone.  She traveled to see him but could not relate to the man in the box, the motionless mannequin with closed eyes and powdered face.  She wished she hadn’t gone to pay her respects because he was not there to receive them.  Photographs were much easier to handle, and she had one or two but she particularly liked this one in the frame. 

He was smiling, smoking a pipe and he was young, probably younger than she was now, and that made her think.  Why am I asking you what I should do, when you are younger than me?  The reason, she finally decided, was that she needed someone else to answer a question she could not possibly begin to consider.  Since her breakdown she spent her days walking on ice, trying to avoid the cracks, always wondering whether it would be too thin to support her weight and if so whether she would plummet down into the depths again. 

It was ridiculous of course.  One part of her mind told her everything was alright whilst the other shouted ‘watch out!’  Answering a question such as ‘what shall I do now?’ needed someone stable to answer it, not someone in fear of their life.  She took a sip of coffee and waited for the caffeine to kick in.  Mornings were like that now, laying in bed telling herself she was a lazy cow, threatening herself until she was shamed into getting upright, easing downstairs clinging to the banisters and deciding what not to eat for breakfast before brewing some strong coffee. Life was like walking waist deep in water carrying a heavy child on her back.  At least the child had come closer she told herself in a moment of optimism.  She was doing her best but it didn’t feel like it. 

She needed someone to tell her, someone to say ‘come on Julia take my hand and I will pull you up the hill.’  Instead there was silence and those mind sapping walls.  The coffee was too strong. It needed milk. She went to the fridge to get some. Her eyes loitered on the paper that curled up under the fridge magnet.  ‘List of viewings’ it said. She glanced at it ‘Thursday 5^th Mr. and Mrs. Hedges 9.30.’  Thursday the 5^th.  ‘I am sure today is Thursday’ she thought. She picked up her phone ‘Shit!’ The phone confirmed her worse fears, and that it was already 9.20.  The place was a disaster zone, and she was still in her week old pyjamas.  A gulp of coffee later and she was up in the bedroom heart pounding kicking off her pyjama trousers spraying her armpits and then gathering clothes like corn to stack in a heap for disposal. Perhaps she could explain the bed by saying she was going through a Tracy Emin moment.

On second thoughts perhaps not.  Within ten minutes she had done the best she could with the place.  The washing up was dumped in the dishwasher, her clothes were stuffed into the washing machine and the door forced too by her backside, loose papers were thrown in the bin and general bric a brac was consigned to the downstairs cupboard. Her final act was to pick up the post which she didn’t bother to look at. It was the usual collection of flyers and charity begging letters wrapped in a red elastic band which she dumped in the black plastic sack in the kitchen cupboard.  The doorbell rang.  Sweating profusely she opened the front door.  Mr. and Mrs. Hedges were younger than she had expected.  They had a small child that Mrs. Hedges carried on one hip.  She welcomed them in, noticing their eyes that wandered like a tax inspectors examining a suspect return. ‘Have you lived here long?’ asked Mr. Hedges.  She had become accustomed to the question, it was a standard, designed to weed out those people who had bought into a bad property and were seeking to leave it as soon as they could. 

‘Fifteen years.’  She replied. ‘Oh that’s a long time’ said Mrs. Hedges. ‘Yes, we really like it here, but my husband’s job has taken him away from the area.’ She had lived there fifteen years, but technically the rest was a lie.         

‘What does he do?’ asked Mr. Hedges.  ‘He’s a counselor.’  They looked puzzled. ‘He listens to people with personal problems’ she added. ‘Oh I see’ replied Mr. Hedges. ‘This is the kitchen.’  It seemed such a pointless thing to say that the room with the cooker, the sink, and the wall cupboards was a kitchen, but it always came out that way.  Julia was not a natural as an estate agent.

‘It’s smaller than the photographs on the website’ said Mr. Hedges.  Julia felt like saying that was an impossibility as the photographs were four or five centimeters square, whilst the room in which they were standing was fifteen feet by twenty. ‘We were hoping to find somewhere where we could fit an island’ continued Mr. Hedges.

‘Perhaps Trinidad or something more modest like Jersey’ thought Julia. ‘Nice view of the garden Steven’ said Mrs. Hedges. ‘Hooray!’ thought Julia something positive at last. ‘That tree is a bit close’ said her husband straightaway.  The viewing took longer than a catholic wedding, and by the end Julia was exhausted.  The highlights were of the small child throwing up on the wallpaper on the stairs closely followed by the sighting of a pair of Julia’s knickers that were destined for the washing machine but had been dropped on the way. Unfortunately they were inside out, leading to a muted ‘oh’ from Mrs. Hedges who nearly trod on them.

Julia had just sat down when Michael called. ‘How did it go?’ Michael always called after every viewing.  His enthusiasm for viewing feedback was unquenchable. ‘Well, I think they liked the garden, but they weren’t so keen on my crunchy knickers.’ 

‘I beg your pardon?’  ‘I don’t think they will be making an offer.’ ‘Why not?’  Michael sounded annoyed. ‘Because they didn’t like it! Why do you think.’ ‘You’re not trying to sell it are you’ snapped Michael. ‘What do you mean?’ ‘You’d be quite happy if the house doesn’t sell.’  Julia felt her temper rise but it soon fell back again like a blood pressure gauge when the air is released.  The tablets didn’t allow her to experience any strong feelings for long, but she did find just enough energy to respond. ‘Look Michael if you want the house to sell then sell it yourself.  I’m doing my best, if people don’t like it then sod them.  If you think I’m deliberately trying to sabotage the whole thing then get the estate agents to sell it, after all what are we paying them for?’

‘I don’t know whether you’re aware of it but you are using a lot of bad language lately Julia. 'I don’t know whether you are aware of it but I had a fucking breakdown and you aren’t helping.’ ‘Alright if that’s how you want to be, I can’t help anymore. I’ve been as supportive as I can under the circumstances.’ ‘What circumstances?’  ‘Well I was going to leave it a while to tell you, but as the house isn’t selling you need to know that I’ve met someone. I want to move on Julia.  I have to have the money from the sale to do that.’  ‘I see’ said Julia flattened by his revelation. ‘There’s nothing I can do Michael, I can’t force viewers to buy the place.  I try my best. Maybe it’s overpriced.’ 

For a moment Michael said nothing. Julia knew he was thinking about the money and she also knew that he always thought that what he owned was worth more than it actually was.  It was his Achilles heel.  Cars, houses, golf clubs, even second-hand kitchen units were always worth more in his mind than their actual value.  He always ended up prolonging the agony of offloading unwanted goods by sticking out for a price he would never get. It was a pity she thought that he didn’t take the same stance with people, whom he always undervalued.  ‘I’ll speak to the agent’ was all he said before ending the call.  So Michael has someone else. What do you reckon to that Dad? She was speaking to the photograph as if it could reply, but in her confusion her mother’s voice  replied instead. ‘I always told you Michael was too good for you.’ The ice was always there under her feet, ready to crack and dip beneath her weight.  She hadn’t heard from her mother since her mother went into hospital with the heart attack but she was ever present in the psychiatric ward telling her she knew Julia would end up there.  The one plus sign was that Julia knew she would not be in touch because Julia was now ‘mad’ and mad people were demanding and could not do anything for you. She would be putting the weight of her problems on Valerie instead, making sure she took the blame for the Brian fiasco and the loss of the money