There was a long, tantalising silence.
Felix said, ‘Are we going to tell them about this evening?’
‘Why not?’
Could she really be so innocent or was she playing with him?
‘Sometimes it’s nice to have a secret,’ he said carefully.
‘All right.’
Now it felt like a bond or a pledge: they must be intending an affair or there would be no need for secrecy. He wanted to kiss her but still felt it was too soon and would make him seem like an eager schoolboy. Yet it was important to touch, to put his mark on her in some way, so he stroked her cheek and went on staring at her mouth as they said goodnight. But she looked at him with such longing that he changed his mind and kissed her lightly after all, abandoning his resolution. Her mouth was warm and uncertain; she was trembling and he felt his cock stir. She didn’t taste of the vanilla smell, rather of the wine and garlic they had both been consuming, but she felt so new that he was moved almost to tears.
‘See you soon,’ he said in his sexiest voice, and watched until she reached the house and turned to wave. She’s a child pretending to be a woman, he thought, as he drove away; eighteen is very young. He remembered how grown up he had felt at her age and how wrong he had been. No doubt she felt grown up too, and she would be equally wrong. He smiled tenderly to himself, as he tried to imagine what lie she might be telling. The first kiss, the first lie: all the other firsts stretched ahead of them. In a way it was almost a pity to begin. Though sexually impatient, emotionally he enjoyed anticipation as much as recollection. In a love affair or a new book, it was the same: while it was yet to be achieved there was the potential for perfection. And afterwards, you had to accept what you had made, with all its flaws, until enough time had passed for you to reshape it in your memory.
When he got home Elizabeth was alone, watching television and knitting. He was sorry: it would have been an extra pleasure to see Helen.
‘Poor old Richard couldn’t make it,’ he said. ‘One of his clients OD’d so I finally made a start on the new book.’
‘That’s wonderful,’ Elizabeth said without looking up.
‘Yes, I do feel rather pleased with myself.’
He poured himself a drink and sat beside her on the sofa. He felt comfortable in the warmth and security of knowing she was always there. Later on he would probably make love to her and think of Sally.
* * *
Helen hugged him and he showed her Tracey’s note: ‘Dear Richard, I’m sorry. I know you tried to help me but I don’t want to live. Please forgive me. Tracey.’ It had proved impossible to contact her parents and he had sat with her till she died. He blamed himself totally. It was his first death.
‘I knew she was depressed, of course, but I never picked up it was that bad.’
‘How could you?’ Helen said, kissing him.
‘If I can’t do that, I’m useless.’
‘But maybe something happened after you saw her. It’s not your fault, darling, believe me.’
They heard the front door slam and Sally came slowly into the room.
‘Is she all right?’
Richard shook his head.
‘Oh God, I’m sorry.’
‘I thought you were doing revision tonight,’ Helen said, looking at the pink dress.
Sally hesitated. ‘I was,’ she said, ‘but I went out with Chris instead.’
* * *
Later that week while she still had courage, she rang the bell of the flat. When Felix opened the door he held out his arms as if he had been expecting her and they kissed. She was shaking; she felt she had been waiting for him all her life. It was like coming home, that feeling of safety, of wanting to disappear into the hug, and yet it was also forbidden and dangerous, as if he were a stranger.
‘Oh, Sally,’ he said, ‘you’re so beautiful and so young.’
‘Please don’t send me away.’ She pressed her face against his shirt, breathing in the magical smell of him.
‘How can I? You don’t think I want to, do you? But you know this is crazy.’
She nodded and they kissed for a long time. She felt him harden and press against her, the way Chris had done.
‘If they ever find out,’ he said, ‘they’ll kill us.’
‘I know.’ She was very excited. ‘But you said I could just come round and you’d give me lunch.’
He smiled. ‘D’you want to go out or stay in?’
‘Stay in,’ she said. ‘Please.’
He stroked her face. ‘What have I done to deserve you? I’ll be very careful, I promise. You mustn’t worry.’
She shook her head. ‘It’s all right. I’ve had one lover already and I’m on the pill.’ She was afraid it sounded crude, and describing Chris as a lover seemed like an exaggeration, although it was true. ‘But if I’d known you were coming back I’d have waited for you.’
‘In that case,’ said Felix, understanding perfectly, and starting to undress her, ‘he doesn’t count.’
Summer
SUMMER
Sally wanted to know about Elizabeth. As soon as they had finished making love – well, within half an hour or so of what Felix thought of as recovery time, a time he would have liked to prolong, when they let their breathing return to normal, gazed at each other incredulously, stroked sweaty flesh and smoothed tousled hair – Sally came up with a conscience and was asking, ‘What about Elizabeth?’
Felix had been prepared for this, of course, but not so soon. He gave his standard reply. ‘As long as she doesn’t know, she won’t be hurt.’
Sally persisted. ‘Don’t you make love any more?’ She sounded as if she expected the answer no.
Felix had not been prepared for such directness. He would not have lied to an adult woman, but he doubted if an adult woman would have asked the question. He wanted Sally both to believe his answer and to feel comfortable with it. If he said he and Elizabeth were like brother and sister, it might sound so convenient as to be implausible, and might also make Sally feel he only wanted her for sex. If he said they made love about once a week, a fair batting average for a middle-aged married couple (more often on holiday, less often when working hard) Sally might feel superfluous, the cherry on the cake of a greedy man. He had only a few seconds to decide and to make his answer sound as natural as the truth.
‘Occasionally,’ he said. ‘But it’s not important any more. We’re very close, we get on well, we’re very fond of each other.’ No point in denying what Sally had seen for herself over the last eight years. ‘But all that wild feeling we had at the beginning – that’s all gone, long ago.’
As soon as he heard his words, he started to believe them: the instantaneous conversion of fiction into truth began. What was more, the words sounded familiar. In his youth he had had a much older mistress who told him a similar story about her husband (as well as teaching him a lot about sexual technique from which he was still profiting). Now for the first time he wondered if she had been lying to him, and he smiled at the memory of his young naive self.
‘Why did you never have children?’ Sally asked.
The question startled him and he had to think fast: she was too young to understand the truth.
‘We both wanted them but Elizabeth found out she couldn’t have any. I think that was when she lost interest in making love, though we went on hoping, right up to the menopause. Now it’s too late, of course, but we’ve learned to live with it.’
Sally kissed him. ‘Poor Felix,’ she said. ‘How sad.’
‘Lucky Felix,’ said Felix. ‘Nothing’s sad now I’m here with you.’
Sally looked at him in wonder. ‘I never thought we would be,’ she said. ‘Did you?’
‘Only in my late-night fantasies,’ said Felix. ‘Only in my dreams.’
Sally laughed. ‘I wonder what Richard and Mum would say.’
Felix considered this nightmare thought. ‘Richard might understand,’ he said doubtfully, ‘but that wouldn’t be very much hel
p since Helen would probably kill me. Nothing elaborate. Hanged, drawn and quartered. Dipped in boiling oil. Barbecued on the patio. Just a simple al fresco execution.’
Sally hugged him. He could tell that she relished these dangers from which they were luckily immune. ‘Let’s protect you,’ she said. ‘Let’s not tell her.’
They lay quietly for a while, contemplating their good fortune.
Sally asked suddenly, ‘Have you had lots of affairs before me?’
It was like being pounced on by a kitten that has been lying in wait for you round a corner. ‘A few, I suppose,’ Felix answered. ‘Over the years.’ He wasn’t sure to what extent his reputation was part of his charm for Sally.
‘Mum thinks you’ve had lots,’ Sally said. ‘That’s why she doesn’t approve of you. It’s funny because she’s ever so broad-minded about other people.’
‘Well, she’d never approve of me for you,’ said Felix, ‘not if I was a saint. I’m too old and I’m married. And she thinks I’m a bad influence on Richard.’
‘Nobody could be a bad influence on Richard,’ Sally said. ‘He’s lovely and tolerant but he only ever does what he thinks is right.’
‘It’s very easy for Richard,’ said Felix in a sudden burst of honesty. ‘He’s had two wives, two sons and a gorgeous stepdaughter. He can afford to be virtuous.’
‘You sound as if you envy him,’ Sally said. ‘Do you?’
Felix sensed that the moment was important. ‘I think perhaps I used to, but not any more. Not now. Because I’m sure he fancies you but he can never have you. And here you are with me.’
Sally laughed. ‘Oh Felix, you are silly. You’re not grown up at all, are you?’
‘Certainly not,’ said Felix.
* * *
Felix was secretive because he had learned that sharing a pleasure often dilutes it. In his youth he had succumbed to the human urge to boast, but each time he did so, some of the essence of his current love affair leaked away. He even fancied it was diminished in exact ratio to the number of people he told. The parallel with his work was very marked: the more he discussed a novel, the less he wanted to write it. And so he told no one about Sally.
He preferred not to dwell upon the more urgent but less metaphysical reasons for secrecy: the fact that anyone he knew well enough to confide in, such as Elizabeth, Richard or Helen, would disapprove violently and interfere. He did not wish to see himself as a creature ruled by caution or prudence or even common sense. Had he possessed friends who were both tolerant and discreet, he would still have chosen to hug his happiness to himself.
Sally seemed to him like a miracle. He awoke every morning and remembered her with joyous anticipation, as a child awakens on its birthday. He left the house with a sensation of thrilling unease and hidden wealth, like a man who has swallowed a diamond. The world of popular songs burst upon him again, as if he had been exhumed from the grave. With you I’m born again, they said; you make me feel brand new.
* * *
When he looked at Sally’s childish face, when he touched her unlined skin, he could believe himself young again, as if her youth were a reflection of his own. He felt he was a better person when he was with her, putting money in collecting boxes and stopping at pedestrian crossings, not just to impress Sally but to express his new-found benevolence. He would have liked the whole world to be as happy as he was, but since that was clearly impossible, he wanted at least to treat the poor, deprived world as gently as he could.
‘Why d’you have such a silly car?’ Sally asked him when he picked her up from school. ‘I practically have to lie on the pavement to get into it.’
‘You never complained before.’ He accelerated away from the kerb, trying not to run over any little creatures in uniform. The scent of Sally in the car made him slightly dizzy; her long thick straight golden-brown hair that he called an erotic accessory and she kept threatening to cut because (she said) it was old-fashioned; her freckled creamy milk-maid skin that she hated and he called her Tess of the d’Urbervilles look. ‘All those times when I hadn’t the guts to put my hand on your knee.’
In fact he hadn’t desired her then; she was too young and too near home. But it seemed only polite now to pretend. Collecting Sally after dark had been infrequent but routine, a friendly act, if Richard was working late or visiting Inge, if Helen was teaching or at the studio. After all, no one really thought of Felix as having a proper job.
‘I don’t believe you,’ Sally said, surprising him (impressing him). ‘I was fat and spotty. But I wish you had, all the same. I’d have been so pleased.’
‘But how was I to know that? Me in my silly sports car, symbol of the male menopause, flaunting my lost youth in built-up area. I thought I’d get my face slapped.’
‘I always had a crush on you,’ Sally said dreamily. ‘You dropped your handkerchief once in our garden and I kept it and wore it to school in my knickers for weeks and weeks.’
Felix smiled. ‘Good to know I got that close to you. Have you still got it?’
‘No, it fell out when I was playing hockey and someone trod on it. It wasn’t the same after that. All the magic had gone once I had to wash it.’
Sometimes they couldn’t wait until four o’clock to make love and he had to collect her from the school gate at twelve thirty; fifteen minutes to the flat, forty-five minutes in bed, fifteen minutes back to school, hot, dazed, breathless and usually late. ‘We’ll never get tired of each other, will we?’ Sally said. ‘We simply won’t have enough time.’
He took to arriving at the flat at ten thirty in time for Sally to telephone him at break to make arrangements for the day. The pile of blank A4 mocked him from his desk. ‘Call yourself a writer?’ it sneered. He didn’t care; he felt pity instead of guilt. He had better things to do than write: he was living.
He made coffee and drank it on the terrace if the weather allowed. Waiting for the phone to ring was a peculiarly acute pleasure, like postponing orgasm. The minutes of attentive concentration and the certainty of ultimate delight combined to make him aware of every sound and every sensation around him. Birdsong; the air on his skin; the texture of the chair. At this moment I am fully alive, he thought; sometimes he doubted his sanity. By the time the phone rang he was often afraid of disappointment: no mortal woman could provide the thrill he was expecting, let alone a girl of eighteen. But she never failed him. ‘Hullo,’ she would say, sounding uncertain as if expecting a wrong number, ‘Felix?’ And the magic was always there in her voice, warm and full of a sort of nervous confidence that made him feel ashamed because she was so much better than he deserved.
They talked nonsense, lovingly, until the pips went and then he rang her back. They discussed when to meet: whether at lunchtime or at four o’clock. Sometimes she had extra coaching and had to stay at school. Felix agreed to anything she suggested. He was used to fitting in with married women who had husbands and children to consider; he was adept at accommodating the school run, the au pair’s time off, a drinks party, friends for dinner or someone arriving at Heathrow. He had made love in all extremes of ideal and adverse conditions. Nothing deterred him once his heart or his cock was set on a person, so it was no problem to adapt to a schoolgirl’s routine.
‘Besides,’ Sally would tease him, ‘we don’t want me to fail my exams, do we?’ Indeed they did not, but it was more than that. Felix knew he was living on borrowed time, as the phrase went. It was Sally who was doing him a favour, although of course she did not see it like that.
‘I love you, Felix,’ she always said before she hung up.
‘Love you too, my darling. Take care.’
Then he would go to the mirror to study his face. There was no doubt he looked younger, more alert; the lines were smoothed out. His hair looked darker, or the grey was less noticeable. Even his eyes were less shrewd and watchful, more blurred with emotion. He smiled the smile that appeared on book jackets and melted the judgment of women all over the world: he didn’t even hate his c
rooked teeth any more. He just wanted to remember, for future use, what perfect contentment looked like. Because, of course, he never expected it to last.
* * *
Sometimes, satiated with Sally, coming home cock-sore with aching balls, he would want to have Elizabeth too, would be consumed by desire for her, excited by the pain in her eyes, the knowledge she would not admit. She never refused him and she always came several times. Often she cried. He held her very close and kissed her tenderly, but they never spoke on these occasions. Felix would feel as if he could fuck for ever: exhausted but insatiable, Sally and Elizabeth merging in his erotic imagination, jet-lagged with sensation like the only man in the world to know about sex because he had invented it, weary and rejuvenated at the same time. But eventually nature would take over, quite suddenly, and he would sleep very soundly indeed, without dreams.
* * *
‘Darling, I’m going away.’ Felix’s mother had held his face between her hands and kissed him. ‘You must understand. I love you terribly much but I love Martin too, and Daddy won’t let me have you both, so I’m going away.’
Felix understood. She loved Martin better than him and it was all Daddy’s fault. If he killed Daddy, then he and Mummy and Martin could all live together and be happy for ever. Only he was too small to kill Daddy, and even if he could think of a way, there wasn’t time, because Mummy was leaving tonight.
Then he had a brilliant idea.
‘Can’t I come with you?’ he said. It seemed so wonderfully simple. If they all loved each other and Daddy didn’t love any of them, what could be more natural? It was the solution to everything. He waited to see Mummy look pleased and relieved, but she frowned.
‘Oh, if only you could. But we’re going to be travelling. Martin’s got no money and we’re going to be roughing it.’
A Sense of Guilt Page 7