Julia chap 8 contd

Julia just stutters   ‘Oh my god.’

The local news was full of the story, how the girl had jumped, how the hospital was at fault, how they couldn’t name her until her family were contacted.  Julia still couldn’t take it all in.  She was there at the time, she was no more than four feet away from Lilly and yet it still seemed so unreal.  Her own accident was insignificant, she would be debilitated for a few weeks with a plaster cast and an aching body, but Lilly was dead! Why hadn’t she been able to help her, why had life conspired to keep them apart when she had tried so hard to find her? Why, at the end, when she was so near and yet so far did she not think that it was Lilly the other side of the curtain? In her heart Julia knew that if she had been able to reach out to her friend she would still be alive, and this knowledge cut deeply into her soul. If she had ever had the slightest belief in a higher spiritual being then all was now shattered.  There was no conceivable reason why a child like Lilly should have had to have had such a sad life and then for it to end in such tragic circumstances.  No one with any modicum of compassion would have let such a thing happen.  In a moment of depressed self pity she added Lilly to the list of things she had lost.  It was as if life was stripping away everything that made her who she was.  Julia desperately wanted to paint, to express herself but she couldn’t because of the accident, her right arm was a mass of bruising and was stiff and painful, so instead she sat staring at the unfinished canvas she called ‘Lost.’  Perhaps it was for the best she couldn’t handle a brush because her inclination was to cover the work in a thick layer of black oils as the only way to express how she felt at that moment. Black, black, black…                            The doorbell rang.  Julia fumbled for her crutches and tried to assemble them to assist her getting out of the chair.  She shouted out.   ‘Just a minute, I’m on my way!’ but was not sure anyone would hear.  Several visitors had come and gone without ever seeing Julia such was her lack of skill in managing ‘the sticks’ as she called them.  This time however she did find someone at the door, two people in fact, both policemen.  They explained they'd come to interview her about the accident and at first she thought they meant Lilly’s death.  This led to an embarrassing moment of disconnection where they sat looking at Julia as though she was mad.  Due to her recent visit to the psychiatric ward this was something she was used to.   ‘We’ve come round to see if you have remembered anything new about the accident with the car?’  The policeman was young, they were all young, policemen , estate agents, doctors, her husbands new lover.  The world was staying young whilst she was growing old.  How was this happening.   ‘I told your colleagues everything at the hospital.  I don’t remember much.  I was walking in the rain and I think I tripped up and went into the road.  The car hit me and I fell over.  It stopped for a moment and then drove off.’   ‘This might sound strange but could I ask you to close your eyes for a moment and just take me through those steps again.  If you just let yourself imagine you are there that afternoon.’  The policeman seemed unsure of himself as if he had been trained to ask her to do this but wasn’t one hundred percent certain it would achieve anything. Julia did as she was asked.  She closed her eyes, exhaled and went into a meditative state.  She began recollecting the incident, nothing changed, nothing except a strange image of a wolf riding a skateboard.  It was a sticker of some sort on the boot of the car.  The policemen seemed pleased.  ‘Every little piece helps’ he assured her. ‘We'll keep in touch and let you know of any developments.  You aren’t going anywhere are you?’  He smiled, it was joke. Julia smiled back.   ‘I hadn’t been planning on it.’ She quipped.  She went to get up but the policemen told her not to bother, they would let themselves out.

‘By the way, I like your picture. Not that I know anything about art.’  With that they left the room.  ‘Not that I know anything about art’ was that a compliment or a damnation she wondered?  She'd just settled herself back into the relative comfort of the chair when the doorbell rang.  Thinking it must be the police again she sighed and began ‘pick up sticks’ once more.

‘Coming!’ she shouted out.  Whoever was at the door was impatient because they rang again before she had chance to get up.  ‘I’m coming!’ she shouted loudly. In the hall she realized it wasn’t the police.  It was two people, but not in blue uniforms. It looked like a man and a woman and for a ghastly moment she thought she had forgotten another viewing. Opening the door however it was even worse news, for there was Michael, and with him the new girlfriend.  He looked sheepish, whilst she looked immaculate.  Her hair was long and that deep brown that managed to embrace purple and gold and multitudes of colours unseen by those who did not paint. The girl’s skin was pale but warm and her perfectly formed mouth resembled Andy Warhol’s red lip couch. Julia looked her in the eye but she managed to stare back at her whilst at the same time retained their distance.  Like her hair they were the deepest dark brown.  She was young and beautiful and Julia knew she was not. 

‘Oh’ said Michael looking at the crutches.  ‘Well you must have known’ she said, reading his thoughts, ‘otherwise you wouldn’t have sent me the flowers.’  The girlfriend shot a look at Michael that could have killed.  ‘Yes, I guess I should, but somehow the crutches and the cast, I wasn’t expecting them.’  Julia nodded.  ‘He wouldn’t’ she thought.

‘We’d like to come in and talk to you’ said Michael.  Julia reluctantly stepped back indicating that they should go through to the sitting room.  In the room they sat themselves down perching on the edge of the sofa waiting for her to make her clunky way to the heavily cushioned chair.  The girlfriend’s eyes were all over the room but ended up resting on her painting with a non-committal look. ‘I suppose I should introduce Trudy’ said Michael.  ‘Yes I suppose you should’ said Julia. ‘Well, Trudy this is Julia…. Julia, Trudy.’ It was all rather awkward so Julia being Julia got straight down to the point.  ‘What is it you want to talk about?’ she asked. Michael looked embarrassed and was about to speak when Trudy said, ‘It’s about the house.’   ‘The house?’  Julia’s immediate reaction was ‘what’s that got to do with you?’ but she held back.  ‘Yes, the house. Michael and I are surprised that it hasn’t sold.’  ‘You are?’ said Julia.

‘After all it has been on the market for six months now and things are selling.’  ‘Are they?’  Michael piped up.  ‘Trudy is in the property world so she does know.’  Julia felt like throwing one of her crutches them.  ‘So what are you saying, I've stopped the sales?  I've told you so many times Michael, the estate agents are responsible for viewings, not me.  If they aren’t sorting it out then get someone new.’  ‘Well we’ve had a chat about things’ said Michael, and something’s got to change.  ‘Like what?’ asked Julia.  ‘Like you moving out Julia’ said Trudy forcefully.  At this moment it was Michael’s turn to shoot a killing look at his partner.  ‘Oh I see, as simple as that?’  ‘I know this isn’t a good time for you’ said Michael, ‘but the fact is we could rent the house if it isn’t going to sell and get some income from it. At the moment you're living here and Trudy and I are paying rent.  I think I’ve been fair about it all so far.’ Trudy begins to fidget as she hears Michael’s voice waver slightly.   ‘So where do I go?’ asked Julia.   ‘Well you would have half the rent money minus maintenance bills and that sort of thing, and then when it is sold you get your share of the capital.’   ‘After all the expenses involved it won’t be enough to rent somewhere else and keep me, you know that.’   ‘I’m sorry Julia, that’s not my problem anymore.’ Julia sees Trudy give Michael’s hand an approving squeeze.

‘No, well I’m sure that is true.’  Tired of continually fighting everything Julia feels a small landslip develop, a shelf of resistance collapses and drops into a vast sea of the nothingness.  ‘Well….I suppose that’s it then’ she says.  ‘We need a date’ interjects Trudy.  ‘A date?’ says Julia whose impulse is to push her crutch down Trudy’s throat. Instead she simply says ‘how about next Wednesday?’ Her visitors look at one another with surprised and just agree.   ‘I’ll come around for the keys Wednesday morning then?’ says Michael.  ‘If you like’ replies Julia with disinterest.

They leave. Julia hobbles to the kitchen, sits at the table and howls.  No one cuddles her, no one is there to stroke her back, no one whispers ‘it’s going to be alright’ and she wonders just how bad she has been to deserve the things that are happening to her.  It has to be a punishment for something.  Tears, warm with passion creep down her face.  She takes a sheet of kitchen paper and tries to wipe them away but only manages to spread them wider.  In times of trouble you find out who your friends are, but more to the point you also learn that they have lives and troubles of their own.  So it was that Julia, address book and phone in hand, discovered to her cost she was not alone in her dire circumstances.  Carol whom she had known since school and who was first on her list of potential saviors was out of the country.  Her son Nathan had had a snowboarding accident in New Zealand and was in hospital with a broken neck.  She only learned towards the end of the call that she was speaking across the time barrier and at considerable expense, Carol having had her calls diverted in the emergency.  She commiserated and wished them both well.  Next on the list was Diane, part time activist, part time Reiki healer, who would have liked to have helped out but had moved in with a new partner and ‘didn’t want to disturb the energy.’ Francis, third choice but none the less a good bet regretted that she couldn’t put Julia up because Frank her husband had converted the spare room into an exact replica of the Bluebell line railway.  She was sincerely apologetic.  Who else was on the list?  No one.  Julia had realized too late that a busy life had taken her away from old friends, relegated them to the Christmas Card list, and in so doing had taken away her right to expect help in hard times.  She had never been a bad friend, just an absent one. It was at the end of the hopeful list that the awful truth dawned on her that she had nowhere to go.  Somehow in the space of a few months everything had slipped away and she began to understand the words of those who found themselves on the street. She remembered a man on TV once saying ‘everyone is just one pay cheque from where I am, living in this box.’  At the time she thought she understood what he was saying and increased her subscription to Shelter but it hadn’t really hit her how true his words were.  Everyone, even the wealthy could hit a patch of bad luck and suddenly fall like a deposed dictator rejected, disempowered, hunted, and at the mercy of chance. Like the truth of old age and death it was ‘a given’ but it was shelved in the far recesses of the mind too frightening to bring out and examine in the cold light of day.      It was the next morning when the ultimate truth hit her and it was almost as hard a blow as the thought of Lilly’s passing.  The only place left was Cove House.  There was no other choice.  Every avenue had been explored, every possibility examined, she would have to face the worst of all outcomes, seek temporary lodgings with her mother.  Would her mother have her there? Of course…and the reason she would have Julia back was simple, Julia was her sport, and in recent months there would have been slim pickings with only Valerie to goad. The old woman would revel in her return, use her ‘failure’ as a stick with which to beat her. Like a slave master in the deep south she would use biblical references to reinforce her right to demand every ounce of Julia’s tolerance, and Julia would have to bear it.  It would only be until the ankle was healed of course. Then she would take off like a bird released from a trap.  Now that she was going to be out of the equation the house would probably sell and that meant she would have her half of the proceeds with which she could go anywhere…for a while.  The promise of such freedom was all she could hang on to when facing such a dire decision. 

The removal men came and went, Julia supervised as best she could but at the end of the day everything was going into crates and then to a storage depot on the outskirts of town so it didn’t really matter.  Her life was packed up in two hours and shipped out, every last piece and when it was gone she felt an unexpected strange sense of peace and a lightness.  Had she needed all of those possessions? Did they enhance her life to a point where it was reduced without them, or wasn’t the truth that they actually placed demands upon her? She would no doubt find out in due course when she went to look for something in the coming weeks.  The hardest things to let go of even for a short space of time were her paintings.  It was like bubble wrapping her emotions and consigning them to thin wooden coffins.  The removal men were respectful when loading them but she worried about the way they would be treated at the storage depot.  Another thing she had to let go of.

The house was no longer hers or anyone else’s.  It contained nothing of any consequence and had that shabby look of a recently departed property.  The shadow marks where pictures had been, the ripped wallpaper, the grey dust on the edges of the carpets like the outlines on a child’s picture, and of course the chipped paint.  The hidden damage and neglected places revealed themselves in full and somehow made the house seem dingy and unloved.  It had not felt that way whilst being lived in.  Take away the distractions and what was left?  In a self pitying moment Julia felt that her life reflected the house, now that she herself had been emptied out, what was left was everything needing repair. 

The moment came when the taxi driver called. She limped to the door where her suitcase sat and took one last look at the shell of the last ten years.  Was that all that it had meant?