Bad Girls Good Women. Rosie Thomas

Go on.

      ‘That’s all. Jessie, he’s going to take me flying tomorrow.’ Just like a little girl, promised a treat. The seaside, or a film show. Jessie looked at her face. Her mouth, and her eyes, belonged to a woman. But the way her arms wrapped round her chest, to keep the excitement in, that was what a child did. Jessie thought of the little woman in her brown coat and hat who had come to look for a child, and had found Julia.

      ‘D’you ever think about your ma?’ she demanded roughly. Julia stared at her, and then she said, ‘Yes, I think about her.’ In the silent, feverish weeks that had gone by since meeting Josh, Julia had tried to imagine her mother. Why had she made her a dirty little baby? Why hadn’t she wanted her? Perhaps she had been in trouble, not just that ordinary trouble. Or in some kind of danger, and so had given up her baby rather than let her inherit that. Perhaps she was someone special, nothing to do with the world of Fairmile Road. How much had it cost her, to give her daughter away to Betty and Vernon? Julia had let herself imagine a big house at the end of a curving avenue of trees. Even a face at one of the windows, a pale but exact replica of her own. She wondered if her mother was looking out, praying for a sight of the child she had lost.

      ‘I wonder about what she’s like. Why she had to give me away.’

      ‘I didn’t mean her,’ Jessie said.

      Julia bent her head and picked at a loose thread in the bedcover. ‘My adopted mother?’

      ‘Of course. She counts as your mother, my girl, whatever other nonsense you’re letting yourself run away with.’

      Julia flared back at her, ‘They’ve tried to turn me into someone else. Tried to turn me into themselves. A reflection of themselves. They didn’t want me. If they’d just loved what they got, it would have been different. Wouldn’t it?’

      Jessie saw the hurt then. Julia had kept it to herself, but it was there. They had rejected each other, the mother and the daughter. No one’s fault, and everyone’s fault. She felt sorry for the little brown woman with her pulled-in mouth, and she felt a different sadness for Julia, who was just beginning everything.

      The weight of Jessie’s memories heaved again beside her, pulling her down. She wanted to cry, for herself and Felix, and for the two silly, fresh, blank young women who had been washed up here with them.

      The tears felt greasy under her eyelids, and then on her cheeks.

      ‘Jessie, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.’ Julia moved quickly, putting her arm round Jessie’s big, doughy shoulders, hugging her. ‘I’ve got you. I don’t need Betty or the other one. Don’t cry, do you hear? You’ve got us two, me and Mattie, as well as Felix. What else do you need?’

      Jessie wiped her face with the corner of the sheet, an angry scrubbing movement. ‘Need? Nothing. Everything. Oh, don’t listen. I’m just an old windbag with indigestion and insomnia. And you can’t sleep because you’re too happy. Funny, isn’t it?’

      They sat and looked at each other, and then suddenly they laughed. The daytime Jessie was there again.

      ‘Look at the time,’ she said sharply. ‘If you’re going flying with that boy tomorrow, and I’m glad I’m not, you’d better go to bed for a few hours first. Go on. Do what I tell you.’

      Julia leaned over her first and kissed her cheek. Jessie’s skin was cold and dry. ‘Goodnight. Jessie …?’

      ‘What is it now?’

      ‘Thank you for letting Mattie and me, you know, do what we want.’

      ‘Go to the bad, you mean? That’s up to you. Nothing to do with me. Go on.’

      Julia went, and Jessie lay back against her flattened pillows to watch the window, where the light would begin again.

      Josh came in the morning. Julia ran down the stairs to meet him, the bag containing her overnight things bumping a tattoo against her legs. There was a little black open MG parked in the square, and Josh held the passenger door open for her with a flourish.

      They climbed in, and the car roared through the Saturday morning traffic. Julia looked up at the red buses looming over them, the pigeons strutting on ledges and the boys on Vespas trying to outpace the MG, and sank back into her leather bucket seat with a sigh of satisfaction. It was like being in an Audrey Hepburn film.

      They left London behind, and wound out through the neat suburbs that reminded Julia of Fairmile Road. It was an added satisfaction to be zipping past the identical semi-detached houses where men were sweeping the fallen leaves off the paths. Josh was beside her in his brown leather jacket with the worn sheepskin collar turned up around his chin. The wind blew his hair back off his forehead and sharpened the handsome lines of his face. He was whistling as he drove.

      ‘I’m so happy,’ Julia said.

      Josh look sideways at her. ‘I’m happy too.’ Then he glanced up into the thin autumn blueness of the sky. ‘It’s a great day for flying.’

      Happy because of me, Julia wondered, or because of the sunshine?

      They drove on through the Kentish lanes, and then at last they swung through a pair of tall gates and out on to an airfield. There was a cluster of low huts, and a row of light aircraft drawn up with the sun reflecting off their windshields. A windsock hung limp in the mild air. There were men in overalls moving between the huts, and one of them lifted his arm in a half-salute as the MG stopped. In the sudden quiet that followed Julia could hear a plane somewhere overhead. The ones on the ground looked very small and fragile.

      Josh was already out of the car, calling out greetings and shaking hands and joking with the men. Julia followed him shyly, not looking at the waiting planes.

      Josh put his arm round her shoulders. ‘… and this is Julia. Making her first flight today. I can tell she’s going to be a flier, just by looking at her.’

      Julia shook hands. Her knees were going wobbly with fear.

      ‘Welcome to the Kent Aero Club,’ a man with a handlebar moustache boomed at her.

      ‘It’s an amateur club,’ Josh explained. ‘I like this kind of flying, as well as the stuff I do for Harry. I started out on planes like these.’

      ‘Is it safe?’ Julia asked. She hadn’t meant to, but the words just escaped.

      The moustache man roared with laughter. ‘You’ll be safer in the air with Josh Flood than you are on the ground with him. She’s all ready for you, Josh.’ He laughed so much at that that his face turned crimson.

      ‘Let’s go.’ Julia could feel Josh’s eagerness crackling beside her. She turned and followed him, over the wide concreted space of the apron. Josh’s strides in his baseball boots seemed to cover yards at a time. Her own legs were leaden.

      They reached a plane parked to one side of the line. It was white with spruce red lines along the fuselage, and the letters G-AERO near the tail. Josh ducked under the wing and opened the cockpit door. The whole aeroplane looked no bigger than the MG.

      Jump in,’ he smiled at her. ‘Are you excited?’

      ‘Oh, yes.’ Julia’s voice was faint.

      She climbed into the tiny space and settled herself into her seat. Josh swung in on the other side. He leaned across her and pulled the webbing straps over Julia’s shoulders.

      ‘This is the quick-release catch, look.’ He showed her the lever on her lap-buckle.

      Julia looked at the hump of the instrument panel, and then over the plane’s tilted nose to the stationary tip of the propellor. ‘Don’t I get a parachute?’ She tried to make it sound like a joke.

      He looked at her properly then. ‘You don’t need a chute in a crate like this. Didn’t you believe what Jimbo said? You’re quite safe.’ He kissed her on the corner of her mouth and Julia thought, if I’m going to die