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
