What Was She Thinking?: Notes on a Scandal: A Novel

by Zoe Heller

  I hovered on the stairs for a while, uncertain of what to do. I opted, finally, for going back down to the living room, where, for the next hour or so, I sat on the sofa, flicking through back issues of The New York Review of Books. (Mrs. Taylor never reads them, according to Sheba; she’s just too vain to cancel her late husband’s subscription.) Polly and Mrs. Taylor remained upstairs. Presently, rain began to speckle the living room window. I was rather hungry by now and had started to think wistfully of Mrs. Taylor’s turkey leftovers. But I didn’t want to risk being caught helping myself, so I stayed where I was and read a very long article about the Balkans.

  By the time Sheba came back, I was ravenous. I hurried out to the hall as soon as I heard the front door click. “Where are they?” she whispered when she saw me. Her face was ruddy, and her hair was sticking to her scalp like a cloche. I pointed upwards.

  “Oh, God,” she said. “I am sorry, Barbara. I didn’t realise I was letting you in for this.”

  I shook my head. “No apology needed. Come on, let’s get you out of those wet things.”

  She sat down on the stairs, and I began pulling off her shoes. “Would you be a love, Barbara,” she said, “and call the airline for me? Find out if we can get on an earlier flight tomorrow?”

  I was just beginning to dial directory enquiries for the number when there was a loud cough from the first-floor landing. Looking up, we saw Polly, staring down at us. “I’m not going back with you, you know,” she said.

  “Oh yes you are,” Sheba replied.

  Mrs. Taylor appeared now, at her granddaughter’s side. “Perhaps,” she said, “it would be for the best, Sheba, if she stayed here a bit longer.”

  “No,” Sheba said.

  The two of them retreated murmuringly. I went ahead and called the airline, made the arrangements for an earlier flight. When I’d finished, the two of us sat listening to the faint mewlings of Polly in her grandmother’s bedroom and the thunderous rumblings of my stomach. After a while, Sheba said dully, “I don’t suppose I would ever have had children if I’d known it was going to be like this.”

  Later, after everyone had gone to bed, I got up to use the toilet and found Sheba in the hall. She was sitting in the dark, dialing a number on the phone. She quickly replaced the receiver when she saw me.

  “Is everything all right?” I asked.

  “No,” Sheba said. “Of course it isn’t. You know it isn’t.”

  “No, I meant … you were on the phone. It’s so late. I thought maybe something was wrong at home.”

  Sheba shook her head. “No.” She paused. Then she dropped her head into her hands. “I was trying to call Steven.”

  The taxi that took us to the airport arrived at six the next morning. Mrs. Taylor was still in her dressing gown when she came out onto the doorstep to bid us good-bye. As the car moved off down the driveway, Polly, who was sporting a faint red wheal on her left cheek, knelt on the backseat and waved plaintively through the rear window at Mrs. Taylor’s receding figure. Sheba, sitting up in front, stared stonily ahead.

  When we got back to Highgate, I insisted on seeing the two of them into the house. As we entered the front hall, Richard was running downstairs from his study, three steps at a time. “Polly!” he cried, hugging his daughter to him. “Darling, please don’t ever do that again. We were so scared …” He held her away from him to look at her. “What happened to your face?”

  “I hit her,” Sheba said quickly. “We were having a row.”

  Stirred by the recollection of her sufferings, Polly pressed her face against Richard’s chest and began to sob. Richard stared at Sheba with a puzzled expression.

  “What?” Sheba said to him, irritably. “Oh, for God’s sake!”

  She turned to me. “Barbara, thank you so much for everything. You must be getting home now.”

  I offered to stay awhile and help prepare supper, but she was adamant. “You’ve done more than enough,” she said, leading me to the front door.

  We kissed good-bye, and I left. Just as I got to the bottom of the front steps, she came back out again. “Barbara!” she called, “you will let me know if you hear anything more from Bangs, won’t you?”

  I nodded. “Of course.”

  After I went home, Sheba went straight up to her bedroom and rang Connolly’s pager. She waited for five minutes, but he did not call and, when she came downstairs again, Polly was huddled with Richard in the sitting room, recounting in a tremulous whisper Sheba’s terrible behaviour the night before. Silently, Sheba picked up her handbag and coat and left the house.

  For the next three hours, she rode aimlessly through London on her bicycle. At first she stopped every fifteen minutes or so to ring Connolly’s pager, but after a while she gave up. He must have turned the pager off, she decided, or else have left it at home. It was two days before New Year’s Eve, and London was still in its post-Christmas lull. The streets were almost empty. There was a sharp, silvery quality to the air and, when Sheba breathed in deeply, she felt as if she were inhaling splinters. Slowly, as the afternoon wore on, a freezing fog descended. The light on Sheba’s bicycle was not working, and she began to keep, where possible, to the pavements. Occasionally she would encounter pedestrians—bundled up figures looming suddenly out of the soupy grey. One woman called out, “Happy New Year” as she passed. A little while later, a man stopped and cursed at Sheba, with startling passion, for not having a light on her bicycle.

  By five o’clock, she was frozen. She rode through the deserted City, looking for a café that was open. In Clerkenwell, she found one—a cramped, overheated place filled with cooking fug and the tinny clatter of cutlery. She ordered eggs on toast and a cup of tea and then, as she peered through the café’s misted-up windows at the dark street outside, she considered what to do next. She ought to go home, she told herself—placate her peevish daughter, explain herself to her reproachful husband. She knew they would be worried about her by now. But she couldn’t. To go home without at least speaking to Connolly would be intolerable, she felt. Somewhere in the back of her head, there was the conviction that, if she didn’t manage to talk to Connolly that night, she never would again. Then an idea came to her. She would go to Connolly’s house! She could not present herself at his front door, of course. But she could call up at his window, throw pebbles if necessary. As her plan took shape, the gloom that had been hanging over her throughout the afternoon fell away. She grew exhilarated at the prospect of seeing Connolly. She paid for her meal and left the café.

  It was a long ride to Connolly’s estate and, when she got there, she spent a frustrating half hour getting lost in the maze of buildings. By the time she found his square, she was quite worn out. She went up the back alleyway, as she had done the first time with Connolly, before remembering that his bedroom was on the other side of the house. She turned and wheeled her bicycle round to the front. When she saw a light on in his window, she let out a small yelp of happiness. At last, a lucky break.

  She stood looking up for a few minutes, willing Connolly to sense her presence. After a while, she called his name quietly. She was uncertain how to pitch her voice, and at first it came out as a broken squawk. She kept on. Steeee-ven. Steee-ven. There was no sign of Connolly, but in the window of the next-door house a curtain twitched and a woman’s face briefly appeared. Sheba stopped when she saw this. It wouldn’t do to have to explain herself to a neighbour. She looked about her on the street for appropriate missiles to throw at the window. But there was nothing. Not even a bottle top.

  Then a second idea came to her. She would go to a phone box and call Connolly’s home phone. She didn’t know what the number was—she and Connolly had always chosen to rely, for safety’s sake, on his pager—but it was sure to be in the directory. If Mr. or Mrs. Connolly picked up, she would pretend to be one of his school friends. She couldn’t imagine why she hadn’t thought of this sooner.

  The first phone box she tried was out of order. She was luckier with the nex
t one, which she found outside an off licence on Albany Way. It smelled of wet cigarettes and old pee, but it was operative. Once she had located the Connollys’ number in the book, she stood for a moment or two, practising her teenager’s voice. Then she picked up the receiver and dialled.

  The receiver was clammy against her ear. When Connolly’s mother answered, Sheba was so astounded by her own temerity that, for a moment, she was unable to speak.

  “Hello?” Mrs. Connolly repeated. Sheba could hear the noise of a television in the background.

  “Yeah, hello,” Sheba said. “Is Steve there?” (I once persuaded Sheba to do a bit of her London schoolgirl for me; it’s astonishingly unconvincing.)

  Mrs. Connolly didn’t reply. Sheba thought for a moment that she had put the phone down. But then she heard her shouting. “Steven! The phone!”

  After a few moments, another phone was picked up, and Connolly came on the line. “Hello?”

  “Steven? It’s me, Sheba. I’ve been trying to get through to you all day but you’ve had your pager off or something.”

  “Oh.” She could tell by the nylon crackle in the background that he was lying in his bedroom on his Grand Prix bedspread.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah. Fine.” His voice was blank.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “I pretended to be one of your friends. Listen, I’m nearby. On Albany Way. Can you come out for a bit and meet me?”

  There was a long silence. “Steven?” she said.

  “Nah, not really,” he replied. “It’s a bit difficult.”

  “Please. I’ve been dying to see you. I need a hug.”

  “Nah, I can’t make it.”

  “Polly ran away,” she said. “I had to go and get her from Scotland.”

  “Right.”

  “Steven?”

  “All righty then.”

  “Steven.” Sheba was struggling now, she recalls, to keep the anger from her voice. “I’ve got important things to talk to you about, Steven,” she said.

  “Well ta for phoning,” Connolly said. “See you around. Ta ra.” He put down the phone.

  Sheba stood staring at the phone box wall for a full minute, she says. Then she replaced the receiver and stepped back out into the street. She wheeled her bike across the street back into the estate.

  She had almost crossed the square and was about to start down one of the little alleys that led back to Hampstead Road when she heard voices across the way. She looked around to see two young people—a boy and a girl—leaving Connolly’s house. Behind them, standing on the doorstep, was Connolly. “Take care,” she heard him say. There was more conversation that she couldn’t quite make out. And then Connolly came down the steps and kissed the girl. Sheba gripped her bicycle. She felt dizzy. She hadn’t been able to see whether the kiss was on the girl’s lips or her cheek. The other boy said something now that she could not make out, and the three of them laughed. “Fuck off, yer only jealous,” Connolly said in a jovial tone.

  The boy and the girl turned and began to walk down the street towards where she was standing. Sheba scurried on. “Oh Jesus, oh Jesus,” she remembers moaning to herself, as she broke into a trot. “Please, God, don’t let him be in love with someone else.”

  When Sheba got home that night, Richard was waiting for her. She found him in the living room, perched primly on the leather armchair.

  “For God’s sake, Sheba,” he said when she came in. “This is the limit. It was bloody irresponsible of you not to phone. I already have one teenager to deal with. I don’t need two.”

  “Please …,” Sheba said. She was still in her coat. Her hands were prickling in the sudden warmth.

  “Please, what?” Richard demanded.

  “Just … please.” She leaned wearily against the door.

  “I’m so sorry to bother you,” Richard said. “Of course you’re much too busy to be bothered with trifling family matters. Let’s just cut the talk from now on and deal with our daughter by slapping her about …”

  “Oh!” Sheba said. She walked across the room and sat down on the sofa. “I knew you’d punish me for that.”

  Richard folded his arms. “Actually, I’ve been very careful to avoid expressing any opinion until I could hear your account.”

  Sheba lay back on the sofa and looked at the ceiling. “Wise judge!” she said.

  Richard and Sheba did not attend any parties on New Year’s Eve. They had talked of having people round for a small supper. But they both agreed now that neither of them was feeling up to playing host. Polly went out to a concert in Brixton, and the remainder of the family had a quiet dinner at home.

  I had no celebrations to go to myself, but that was as expected. Over the years, I have created my own traditions for the high days and holy days. This New Year’s, as on every New Year’s for the last decade, I brought in a bottle of sherry and spent the evening getting slightly sozzled while rereading Jane Austen’s Persuasion.

  Sheba and I spoke a few times on the phone in the first week of the new year. On each occasion, she seemed to me to be borderline hysterical. Connolly was still not returning her calls, and she was finally confronting the possibility that she had been dumped. She speculated obsessively about the possible reasons for Connolly’s loss of interest. Had she become repulsive to him? Or was there a new girlfriend? Did that little tart she had seen outside his house have anything to do with it? Since I had no useful contribution to make to these rambling enquiries, I mostly kept quiet.

  The only other subject that Sheba showed interest in discussing during this period was Bangs—whether or not he had proof of her affair, whether or not he was going to report her. By this stage, I was feeling more sanguine about Bangs. With each day that passed, the threat he posed seemed to me to grow less credible. I began to suspect that I had exaggerated my indiscretion in his flat. I hadn’t said that much, after all. And what I did say he may well not have believed. “Bangs is not a boat rocker,” I told Sheba over and over. “Bangs wouldn’t say boo to a goose.” To which Sheba would always reply with pathetic eagerness, “Oh, do you think so, Barbara? Do you really think so?”

  15

  On the Sunday evening before school term began, I came back from the launderette to find the light blinking on my answering machine. Most unusually, there had been three calls while I’d been out. On the first two, Sheba repeated my name a couple of times in a rather sepulchral whisper and then hung up. On her third try, she left a longer message: “Barbara? Where are you? Barbara? Pabblem called me this evening. He knows. I think he knows. He wants me in at eight o’clock tomorrow morning. He said a serious charge had been made against me regarding inappropriate conduct with a pupil. Please, please, Barbara, call me as soon as you get this.”

  She picked up straightaway when I rang back. She had been keeping the portable phone by her side. “I’m having a meltdown,” she said. She was in the middle of making the evening meal, and the children were near, so she spoke quietly. “Bangs must have said something, the bastard. What am I going to do? Tell me what to do.”

  “You don’t know it was Bangs,” I said. “It could have been anyone. It could have been Polly—”

  “Oh, who bloody cares! The point is, what am I going to do?”

  “Listen to me,” I said, trying not to sound too anxious. “You have to get your story straight. Have you said anything to Richard?”

  “No, he’s not back yet. What on earth would I say in any case?”

  “No, well don’t. Don’t say anything. This is all going to blow over. When you see Pabblem tomorrow, you’ll tell him that you are friendly with Connolly, that you’ve given the boy help with his artwork from time to time, that you have had no physical contact with him whatsoever. You must be adamant about that. Be outraged.”

  “But what if Bangs has seen us together somewhere?” Sheba objected. “What if he has proof?”

  “I don’t think he has,” I said carefully. “I think he would have told me
that. And even if he did see you two somewhere, it’s still his word against yours. Tell Pabblem that Bangs has a thing for you—that this is his revenge for being rejected by you.”

  In spite of herself, Sheba laughed. “I can’t believe this is happening, Barbara,” she said when her laughter trailed off.

  “Neither can I,” I said. “But it’s all right. It’s going to be all right.”

  I didn’t really believe that. I knew well enough that trouble was on its way. But I could never have predicted quite how rapidly the trouble would arrive. A little less than an hour and a half after Sheba got off the phone with me, her doorbell rang. She was up on the top floor at the time, giving Ben his bath. Richard shouted out from his study for Polly to answer the door and then, when Polly did not reply, Sheba heard him swearing lightly as he stomped down the stairs himself. She didn’t hear anything else for a while after that, and she assumed that the caller had been a Girl Guide or a Jehovah’s Witness. Then, she became aware of raised voices downstairs. She left Ben in the bath and went out onto the landing. She could hear a woman’s voice below and the bass rumble of Richard.

  She walked down the flight of stairs to the next landing and leaned over the balustrade to see what was going on. The front door was still open and, in the entrance hall, a short blond woman in a thick coat and woolly hat was standing, wagging her finger at Richard. “Don’t you talk to me like that,” Sheba heard her say. “I’ve got proof. It’s your wife that’s the liar.”

  Here it is, Sheba thought. The calamity has come. Her impulse was to flee—to dash across the landing into her bedroom and lock herself in the bathroom. She was actually turning to retreat when the woman looked up and saw her. “You!” she shouted. “Are you her? Come down here.”

  Polly came out into the hall now, from the living room. “What the hell is going on?” she asked her father indignantly.