A Sense of Guilt

by Andrea Newman

  ‘Good, that’s settled then. Just give me a ring any time and I’ll take you out, OK?’

  Now he was worried that he had made it sound too innocuous and she wouldn’t want to come, or worse, she would announce their plans as soon as they went in, because they were so innocent.

  ‘Won’t I be disturbing you?’ she said.

  ‘I hope so,’ he said, trying to sound as suggestive as possible, and then adding, to cover himself: ‘I’ll be only too relieved to get away from the blank sheet of paper.’

  * * *

  When Richard finally got up to go, Inge put her arms round him as she always did. ‘Richard, can’t you stay? Please. I don’t want to be alone.’

  ‘You know I can’t.’ It was awful to be asked, over and over again. ‘And the boys will be home soon, surely.’

  She shook her head. ‘They won’t. They’ve gone to an all-night party.’

  Defeated at every turn. ‘Oh Inge, they’re a bit young for that, aren’t they?’

  ‘I think so, but how can I stop them? They are big boys now, I can’t lock them up. If you were here, they would listen to you.’

  He said, ‘Inge, this simply isn’t fair,’ and she took her arms away.

  ‘I know, but it’s true. They don’t want to stay in on a Saturday night and look at their mother crying. It’s a bore. They want to go out and have fun. I don’t blame them.’

  ‘I’ll talk to them,’ he said briskly, making for the door. ‘But now I do have to go.’

  She followed him into the hall. ‘Couldn’t you ring her up and say you’re taking me to hospital? Or tell her the car has broken down?’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’ His shoulders and the back of his neck ached with tension.

  ‘It’s not so silly. Think of all the lies you told me when you were seeing her. All the times you pretended you had to work late. Can’t you tell her one lie for me?’

  Rage mounted inside him with alarming force. He found he wanted to hit her as the unknown man had hit her, only harder and more often. He wanted in that moment to batter her swiftly to death and be done with all the suffering, hers and his. That must be how some of his clients often felt, though they could not always express it.

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t behave like this,’ he said. ‘It makes me feel very guilty and very angry. Is that what you want?’

  ‘I just want you.’ She seemed to be much calmer than he was. ‘But I’ll settle for making you guilty and angry if that’s all I can have right now.’

  ‘I’m going home,’ he said, opening the front door, I’ll ring you tomorrow.’

  ‘Promise?’

  The urge to kill her now was almost irresistible. Terrifying. Although he knew he would resist it.

  ‘God, Inge, I’ve had enough for one night. Why do you always have to say things other people wouldn’t say?’

  ‘I’m honest,’ she said. ‘Don’t you tell your clients to be honest?’

  He started to walk down the path to the car. ‘Take one of your pills now and go to sleep, OK?’

  She called after him, in a conversational tone – as one might say, ‘Drive carefully’ or ‘See you soon’ – ‘I’m going to wait for you, Richard. No matter how long it takes.’

  * * *

  Helen saw them out. She was tired now and angry at being an object of pity because Richard wasn’t home yet. When she went back into the living-room, Sally was clearing the table. ‘Poor Mum,’ she said. ‘What a rotten shame.’

  ‘Yes,’ Helen said briskly, ‘I could have done without it.’ They worked in silence, side by side, piling the dirty dishes on to trays. Helen thought how sordid it all looked, now the fun was over and only the debris was left.

  Sally said, ‘I wonder what would happen if Richard just said no to her.’

  A wonderful, farcical thought. Pure fantasy. But it was strange to hear it from Sally and not inside her own head. It was an old thought for Sally to have.

  ‘With any luck she might try to kill herself again. And if she has enough practice she may just get it right.’

  Sally hugged her, but Helen could see the shock on her face, quickly converted into amusement. They carried their full trays into the kitchen and Helen began loading the dishwasher. She remembered that she hadn’t asked about Sally’s evening. ‘Did you have a good time?’

  Sally looked evasive. ‘It was all right.’

  ‘Was Chris there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He whinged a bit.’ Sally kissed her. ‘Don’t be nasty to Richard. I’m sure he feels bad enough already.’

  How well she knows me, Helen thought. It was lovely to be with someone totally on her side even when she was wrong. She would have liked to talk to Sally, but Sally had heard it all before and she already looked white with fatigue.

  ‘Let’s do the marriage guidance another time,’ Helen said, kissing her goodnight, and they both laughed. Sally went up to bed and Helen finished loading the dishwasher. She was about to close the door and set the controls when she changed her mind and carefully removed a plate, which she hurled across the room. It smashed satisfyingly against the wall and she left the pieces where they fell, already feeling much better.

  * * *

  She didn’t speak when Richard finally came in, but let him undress in the dark. She half expected him to put on the light: he must have known from her breathing that she was not asleep. She had been thinking how she would feel if he had really been making love to Inge, as Felix had somehow contrived to suggest he might be, and she allowed her resentment at the imaginary offence to spill over into the silence. It was oppressive, like fog; it choked her and made her eyes sting.

  He got into bed and lay apart from her. She sensed his exhaustion and longed to comfort him. But the urge to punish was stronger.

  ‘Will she live?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Pity.’

  The silence extended. How was it possible to treat someone you loved so badly?

  ‘Did she ask you to stay?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why didn’t you?’

  If only he were not so unfailingly patient. If only he would lose his temper with Inge, about Inge. Then she wouldn’t have to get so angry with him, for him. She could be reasonable, play the whole thing down, put it in perspective. If only he would get angry with her too, call her a bitch. She was resenting all the things she loved him for. She had married a good, kind man because she was sick of bastards, and now she was blaming him for not being one.

  ‘Sorry, sorry,’ she said, turning over abruptly and hugging him. If they quarrelled, then Inge had won.

  He put his arm round her. ‘It’s all right. Sometimes I just want to kill her.’

  The words were what she had longed to hear but the tone was too calm. She wasn’t sure she believed him. ‘Oh please,’ she said with feeling, ‘let me.’ They both laughed and the tension was gone.

  * * *

  Helen was twelve when her father defected. That was how she thought of it, as a political gesture, or a bid for artistic freedom, like one of the Russian ballet dancers in the newspapers. Life with her mother was suffocating him, she could see that. It was having the same effect on her, too, but he didn’t offer to take her with him. She thought at first he might send for her later, when he had got himself settled; she told herself it couldn’t be easy for him finding somewhere to live with Mrs Watson and her three children. Her Auntie Maureen, she had been, living three doors along, but her mother made it clear she wasn’t to be called that any more. In fact she became known as ‘that woman’, only Helen felt silly calling her that just to please her mother. She had eaten jam doughnuts too often in her kitchen to be formal now.

  Uncle Jim came round a lot at first. He was very tall and thin and had to stand with his neck slightly bent to fit under the ceiling. Her mother didn’t ask him to sit down. He wanted to talk about Auntie Maureen and sometimes he cried, which was very embarrassing. He kept saying if only
she hadn’t taken the children, and Helen could see his point; she wanted to say if only they had taken me instead, but she knew it would upset her mother, who kept telling her they would manage, they had each other, and they didn’t need anyone else.

  After a while Uncle Jim stopped coming round; even he could tell that he wasn’t welcome. Real aunts and cousins fell by the wayside, too, as they implied that some of what had happened might be Mother’s fault. Aunt Gloria, Dad’s sister, was banned from the house after she told Mother she had always been cold. Aunt Gloria was divorced, but she had remarried and she didn’t have children. Helen had always liked her because she looked like Dad and she smelt nice, but Mother said she was fast and it was typical of her to stick up for her brother no matter what he did: she had the morals of an alley cat.

  Helen kept waiting, but Dad didn’t write or phone and he didn’t send for her. Her mother said it was because he was too ashamed. He must have sent money, though, because their standard of living didn’t change much. Helen wondered how long she would have to wait. She couldn’t believe that she would never see Dad again. She imagined him writing and Mother intercepting the letters. She tried getting up early so this couldn’t happen but there was never a letter when she looked and some mornings she overslept, so she couldn’t be sure. She wanted to write to him but Mother said she didn’t have an address.

  She tried to think what it meant. She knew Dad had loved her because he had hugged her a lot, tickling her with his moustache, and told her she was his favourite girl, although she doubted that now that he had gone off with Mrs Watson and her three little girls. Of course they were much younger. Perhaps he didn’t like little girls so much once they started to grow up. Or perhaps she had done something to annoy him. It was hard to tell because they had not really spent much time together. He was a commercial traveller and often away. And he didn’t really talk, he just made jokes. If he had to run off with someone, Helen would have expected it to be someone he met on his travels: he had scarcely been at home enough to get to know Mrs Watson that well. It just went to show how wrong you could be.

  She was so preoccupied with her own feelings that it was a long time before she realised that her mother was very unhappy. She had always been thin but she got thinner; her mouth made a longer, tighter line and she moved slowly, as if everything was a big effort. But she didn’t talk, either, except about everyday things like meals and laundry. In the evenings Helen did her homework and Mother sat in the other room, watching television. When she could put it off no longer, if she wasn’t going out with her friends, Helen would join her, and they would both sit in silence, side by side in separate chairs, staring at the screen. No one sat on the sofa where Dad used to sprawl with his feet up, ridiculing the TV programmes and drinking beer from a can. When she thought about it, her parents were so different it was extraordinary that they had ever married and she could think of no explanation other than sex, which made it all a great deal worse. They had no interests in common and they didn’t talk, so it must have been a grand passion and now it was over. That was what happened to grand passions: they didn’t last.

  Eventually, with infinite daily pain, Helen admitted to herself the obvious truth that her father was not only not going to come back or send for her, he was not going to write or phone either. It was almost beyond belief but it was a fact. Or if he did get in touch one day, it would be too late to do any good. It took her years to accept this; every birthday and Christmas was a fresh trial of hope. She painted more and more, finding that was the only thing that could take her mind off the pain, the disbelief. She remained astonished that something so important could happen without warning and without aftermath, an event complete in itself, like sudden death in wartime, far away in a foreign land. A part of her had been amputated and there was nothing to be done about it.

  Just before she went to art school, her mother showed her a letter from a lawyer saying that her father was actually dead. He had left enough money for her to finish her training, but still no message. She said nothing and it was months before she could cry. At art school she resolved to have lots of affairs but never to fall in love. When she met Carey she forgot her resolve. Her mother said Carey was just like her father and it would never work. When Helen got divorced, her mother said I told you so. They did not talk much after that. When Helen thought of her youth, it was the silence she remembered most.

  * * *

  Felix has invited me to lunch. It’s incredible. He says I can just ring him up at the flat where he works and he’ll take me out. God, will I ever have the courage?

  Tonight was amazing. I heard them arrive and went into Mum’s room to borrow her earrings, so I could look out of the window. My heart gave such a thump when I saw him, I thought Mum would notice, but she didn’t, just went on about Elizabeth having put on a lot of weight. She’s always very intolerant of people who get fat, just because she doesn’t, although she doesn’t have to make any effort at all to stay thin and maybe they do.

  It’s funny when you’ve had a thing about someone for years and they go away – you don’t know if you’ll still fancy them when they come back. They might have changed or you might have grown out of them. I was almost afraid to look but it was all right, Felix hasn’t changed a bit, in fact he looks better than ever, and I still fancy him rotten, I even think I might be in love with him.

  The thing about Felix is he really looks at you and pays attention as if you’re important and he’s really interested in what you’re saying. Lots of parents’ friends don’t do that, they just say polite things but really they’re hoping you’ll go away soon so they can get on with their conversation, and that’s fine because usually you can’t wait to go off and do something more interesting and leave them to it. But Felix makes you feel you really matter. He’s got a sort of lived-in face that even looks a bit sad, but when he smiles it really lights up and you feel you’re the only person in the world. It’s a lovely feeling.

  He kissed me on the cheek and said well done about Sussex. I know I blushed, I could feel it, I just hope he didn’t notice. I couldn’t think about anything except him at the disco and I was horrible to Chris but I couldn’t help it, he got on my nerves. I wish I hadn’t told Jackie and Maria about Felix because they keep teasing me.

  Richard had made his usual fuss about fetching me at one o’clock but Felix turned up instead. I got such a shock and Jackie and Maria were really impressed, which was lovely. It was fantastic walking out of there with Felix and getting into his car, as if we were a couple. I was so excited I couldn’t think of what to say. Poor old Richard had to go and see Inge because some man beat her up. I felt a bit guilty that I was having such a treat only because they were having a rotten time.

  Felix took me to a coffee bar and we talked. He complained about the music being too loud, which was a bit embarrassing but didn’t really matter. We talked about college but he kept staring at me as if he fancied me, which was fantastic. I felt he was really seeing me for the first time as somebody grown up. Then he told me he was scared of writing novels again instead of thrillers. I magine that – Felix being scared. I wanted to touch him but I didn’t dare. When we got home I thought he might kiss me, but he didn’t. He gave me his phone number instead, which is better really, because it means he wants to see me again and take me out. A kiss might have been just goodnight or goodbye. I do wish he’d kissed me though. When we went in together I felt as if he had, as if we had something to hide. I thought Mum might notice, I was in such a state, but she was in a filthy mood about Inge and Richard and that was all she could think about.

  God, I hope Felix meant what he said about lunch. I’ll have to ring him up soon before I lose my nerve. It’s weird when you dream about something for years and suddenly it may be about to happen.

  * * *

  All week Richard had been looking forward to this evening. Felix was going to come round to the house for drinks and they were going out for dinner, a real chance to catch up afte
r all this time. He was just leaving his office when the phone rang and they were telling him Tracey had taken an overdose and left him a note. He felt weak with shock; he said he’d go to the hospital at once. She was unconscious, so there was still a chance. He rang Felix at the flat, but got the machine. He rang Helen at home, but got Sally: Helen had already left for supper with Elizabeth. He gave Sally the message for Felix and left in a rush for the hospital, feeling a terrible sense of failure, praying that he would not be too late.

  * * *

  When Felix got to the house there was no Richard, only Sally in a pink dress, looking very pretty and very young, wearing hardly any make-up and playing Mozart. He felt as though he had walked on to a stage set, specially primed for his arrival. Suddenly he was very conscious that they were alone in the house and upstairs there were bedrooms full of beds. In an ideal world, he thought, in a fantasy, they would have been able to take full advantage of this, to go upstairs and get into one of the beds and make love instantly, without speaking another word. Instead, of course, he had to go into the living-room and make polite conversation.

  ‘Richard asked me to tell you he can’t make it,’ Sally said. ‘One of his clients has taken an overdose and he’s had to go to the hospital. He’s very sorry.’

  Felix contemplated the chaos of Richard’s life and was thankful it did not resemble his own. ‘Poor old Richard,’ he said inadequately.

  ‘He said he tried to ring you,’ Sally went on, ‘but he got your machine. Does that mean you didn’t get my message either?’

  ‘What message?’ He was alarmed how much he wanted her, uncertain how far his desire depended upon her dangerous status as Helen’s daughter, Richard’s step-daughter. In a lifetime of adventuring, this was the most risky affair he had ever considered, emotional incest, potentially fatal, violating taboos of friendship normally regarded as sacred. It gave him a terrific adrenalin charge just to think about it. Perhaps she felt the same.