A Sense of Guilt

by Andrea Newman

  Elizabeth stared at him. ‘How do you mean exactly?’ They were in bed at the time, having made love with particular intensity and consumed a bottle of champagne. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

  ‘Well, imagine. The average couple could be married fifty or sixty years. God. Just imagine fifty or sixty years with only one person.’

  ‘That’s what I was imagining,’ Elizabeth said. She could feel the happiness draining out of her.

  ‘Well, don’t. Why put yourself in jail?’ He wrapped his arms round her; his hair felt silky against her breasts. ‘The thing is,’ he said, ‘I don’t intend to feel jealousy ever again. It’s simply too painful.’

  She imagined a beautiful woman betraying and tormenting him. Surely it was impossible: no one could do that to him. ‘What happened?’ she asked.

  ‘Let’s just say I’ve been inoculated against it.’ His face had an unfamiliar shut-down look about it, denying her information. ‘You must never leave me,’ he said. ‘If you leave me, I’ll kill you.’

  She quite liked the sound of being killed, knowing it would never happen. No one had ever threatened it before: it suggested a depth of passion that belonged appropriately in fiction.

  ‘But you can have lovers,’ he went on, ‘all the lovers you want, and I won’t be jealous, especially if you don’t tell me.’

  ‘But I don’t want lovers,’ she said. ‘Are you saying you do?’

  ‘Not yet,’ he said, ‘but eventually I will. We both will. Everyone does.’ He smiled at her, his melting smile that could make her forgive him anything. ‘And I’m only twenty-five.’

  She waited for him to remind her that she was thirty-six, but he didn’t.

  * * *

  Felix met Sally from school after her last A-level. She ran all the way to the car, despite the summer heat that always seemed to accompany exams, books and cribs spilling out of her rucksack, and they hugged and kissed. She hoped everyone saw them.

  ‘How was it?’ he asked.

  ‘Dunno. It’s just a blur.’

  ‘I remember it well. The human brain can’t play and record at the same time. But Japanese technology is probably working on it.’

  He always knew how she felt. He understood. Whatever she said, he had been there first and he remembered. He dressed carefully too, casual but smart, not trying to look young and scruffy to match her, but not too formal either. Just looking at him made her ache with love. And to have done her last exams as well. How could she contain such bliss?

  ‘Well,’ he said thoughtfully after a final kiss, ‘what are we hanging about here for? Unless you want me to rape you in the car.’

  ‘Probably better not. I wouldn’t struggle convincingly enough.’

  He roared off, accelerating hard, then had to break sharply at the lights. There was a litter bin right beside them and the temptation was irresistible: she dropped the rucksack into it with all its contents, something she had longed to do all her life.

  ‘Sacrilege,’ he said lightly.

  ‘Not really. They weren’t proper books. Just the ones that get you through exams, God willing.’

  Waiting for the lights to change, Felix reached under the seat and produced a bottle of champagne from an ice bucket. She watched, mesmerised, as he started to open it.

  ‘You think of everything.’

  ‘Glove compartment.’

  She opened it and found two glasses.

  ‘They were just notes and cribs and junk like that,’ she said, glancing from rucksack to champagne and back again. ‘Honest, guv. And I’ll never need them again. I’m free.’

  The cork popped just as the lights changed. How could it be otherwise when this was her day and they were together? He handed her the lightly foaming bottle and drove off.

  * * *

  Felix was almost asleep. There was something about making love in the afternoon that met all his requirements: he was not stupefied from a night’s sleep, with a lively cock but his brain out of gear, nor was he exhausted from a day’s eating and drinking and television. Work had been done in the morning and more might be done before dinner. Meanwhile it was perfect stolen time. Outside in the world other less fortunate people were engaged in boring routine tasks and here he was, blissful, off duty, totally relaxed. He never did really sleep at these times, or perhaps he was not sure if he did or not, but it felt like a kind of sublime doze that could refresh him magically without ever quite making him lose consciousness.

  Sally said, ‘I’d like to stay here for ever.’

  He smiled. ‘People might talk.’ He could feel her studying him through his closed eyes.

  ‘Why does anyone bother with drugs when they can have this?’

  ‘I’d like to think I’m addictive. But not deadly, of course. Quite the reverse.’

  She kissed him in various places. That took a long time. ‘It just gets better and better,’ she said with a deep sigh of satisfaction, as if worn out by so much pleasure. He was indeed impressed by her orgasmic capacity: at the beginning it had taken them a little while to find the right places because she had got into the habit of pretending with that silly young Chris, but once found they could not be lost and seemed inexhaustible. A triumph, he thought happily, for both of them, particularly considering how high their expectations had been. It would have been easy to be subtly disappointed and afraid to say so.

  ‘Let’s say you bring out the best in me,’ he said, and they laughed. Red afternoon light danced behind his eyelids.

  ‘You won’t get bored with me, will you?’ she said in an anxious voice. ‘Promise you won’t?’

  ‘How could I?’

  ‘That’s all right then.’ Now she sounded like a child, simply reassured that a beloved father would not leave her. And like a child, she was easily distracted. ‘Did we finish the champagne?’

  ‘There should be a couple of glasses left.’ He opened his eyes, leaning over the edge of the bed to find the bottle on the floor and pour out the remainder, predictably a little less than expected. ‘Well, nearly. They seem to be making the bottles smaller these days. It must be something to do with the Common Market.’

  She didn’t smile; it was not her sort of joke. Elizabeth would have actually laughed. He supported her head with one hand and held the glass to her lips with the other. The gesture, one of his favourites, much appreciated by older, married women and often remarked upon, was simply accepted: she did not know there was any other way to drink champagne in bed. She drank greedily, treating it like lemonade. Later when she got up she would be surprised to find herself thirsty and would drink glass after glass of cold water from the kitchen tap. There was an obscure delight for him in having so many of his courtesies taken for granted. He watched her drink, studying the freckles on her champagne-wet lips, the down on her cheeks still flushed from good sex; he breathed in the vanilla smell of her skin mixed with sweat and semen and some new expensive scent he had bought her recently.

  ‘Have you thought any more about our weekend?’ she asked, as he took the empty glass away and drank from his own.

  ‘We might be able to manage it when I go to the crime writers’ conference.’

  ‘Oh Felix! Could we really?’ She flopped back on the bed, a big childish grin of delight spreading over her face. ‘I do so want to spend the night with you. It’s too long to wait till I go to college. I hate getting dressed and going home all the time. I want to go to sleep with you there and wake up with you there. I’ve never spent the night with anyone. Can you imagine?’

  ‘I may snore,’ he said reluctantly. ‘Elizabeth says I do.’ It seemed politic to slip her name into the conversation every now and then.

  ‘I won’t notice. I’ll be asleep. Can we pretend to be married?’

  ‘Why not?’ But a small inner voice whispered it would be unlucky.

  ‘Oh Felix, won’t it be fun? Will you get me a ring?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I don’t mean an expensive one.’


  He kissed her then and that took a while. ‘It’s all right, my darling. I’d love to buy you something pretty. The hotel won’t give a damn if we’re married or not, but we’ll enjoy pretending.’ He stifled the small inner voice. It was just a game. What harm could it possibly do? But it was not something he usually did. It was a concession to her youth, a romantic gesture outside his normal pattern, a daring V sign at fate. ‘Have you any idea what a miracle you are?’ he asked her. ‘No, of course you haven’t. Silly question.’

  ‘I just love you,’ she said, watching him with large, clear eyes. ‘That’s all.’ Sometimes the sheer simplicity of her took his breath away.

  ‘I must have been very good in a previous incarnation.’

  * * *

  Richard tried to be impartial, but found it impossible not to have favourite clients, and Ben was one of them. His offences were so petty and foolish, and he was full of good will. It was useless trying to get information out of him, though. He operated on charm, and information was incidental. Richard admitted to himself that he was susceptible to Ben’s charm but he also knew the court might well not be.

  ‘Why d’you do it?’ he asked.

  ‘I needed some money,’ Ben said simply, as if he had just cashed a cheque.

  ‘So you grabbed a chain round someone’s neck at the unemployment office. Didn’t you think you’d get caught?’

  ‘No. I thought I’d get away. But I slipped.’ He gave Richard one of his sudden big grins and Richard couldn’t help smiling back. The image of Ben, gold chain in hand, running off and skidding on the polished linoleum was too much for him.

  ‘How would you feel if someone did that to your girlfriend?’ he asked, trying another approach.

  ‘She doesn’t wear gold chains.’

  ‘Or to you?’

  ‘I’d hit back.’

  The phone rang. Richard answered it and dealt with arrangements for a client who might or might not be willing to go back into a psychiatric unit.

  ‘Ben, you’re not helping yourself much,’ he said when he hung up, ‘and you’re certainly not helping me. I wrote a glowing report for you when you nicked that answering machine from the community relations office, which was a bloody stupid thing to do, and now you go and do this while you’re still on probation.’

  Ben nodded and looked sheepish, but Richard felt it was just an act, designed to please, one of Ben’s games.

  ‘I mean if you go on like this,’ he said, trying to toughen up, ‘you’ll get put away, and how’s Lucille going to cope if you’re inside when she has the baby?’

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ Ben said, looking contrite. ‘Only we can’t manage on the money, see. We only get twenty-one quid each.’

  Well, there was no answer to that. It would be simpler really to hand Ben a fiver as soon as he came in and skip the interview.

  ‘I know it’s very difficult. But this sort of thing makes it worse, don’t you see that?’

  No answer. He felt in Ben’s silence the knowledge that he had a job and Ben didn’t.

  ‘Look, try your best,’ he said hopelessly, ‘and when you see your brief, tell him I said it would help if he can get your case listed for later, it’ll give you time to do more community service. And get a TV licence or they’ll do you for that.’

  Another big grin. ‘Don’t need one, my telly got stole. Someone tief my telly.’

  The door opened suddenly and Marion put her head round it. Richard felt his customary wave of anger that she should behave as though seniority gave her the right to dispense with knocking. ‘Oh sorry, Richard,’ she said, seeing Ben and smiling her usual cheerful, resolute smile. ‘I’ll come back another time.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Richard said, ‘we’re just finishing.’

  ‘Oh, good.’ She came in and directed her smile at Ben, who Richard knew was not one of her favourite people. ‘Hullo, Ben. And how are you today?’

  ‘OK,’ said Ben happily, oblivious of likes and dislikes. ‘Cheers, Richard.’ He went out and Marion seated herself in his chair.

  ‘Is he in trouble again?’ she asked.

  ‘Just a little.’

  ‘Oh dear. They never learn, do they?’

  ‘They?’ Richard wondered if Marion was colour prejudiced. Could it be that simple?

  ‘You mustn’t let these trivial cases get you down, Richard. Not with the inquest coming up.’

  ‘I don’t see Ben as a trivial case. I don’t see anyone like that. He can’t find work, he can’t manage on the dole, so he turns to petty crime. If he gets done for burglary his girlfriend could wind up alone with the baby.’

  Marion recrossed her legs, thick in tweed stockings. ‘Yes, it’s very sad, but they’ve really no business to be having a baby when they can’t support one. It’s very careless of them.’

  ‘It’s very much a wanted baby. I think it’s the one bright spot in their lives.’

  Marion smiled her maddening smile, loaded with sweet reasonable logic. If you listen to me with an open mind, you will end up agreeing with me, said the smile. ‘Yes, but they can’t afford it, can they? Babies are a luxury, as you and I well know. And I wonder how hard they’ve tried to find work. Some of these people really seem to expect the state to do everything for them. It’s so bad for their morale.’

  ‘So is living in a bedsit with water running down the walls.’ Uneasily, Richard remembered having heard some of Marion’s views expressed by Helen. ‘What did you want to see me about, Marion?’

  ‘I was wondering if you’ve had any more thoughts about the inquest. What you’re actually going to say when they ask you why Tracey killed herself. Your professional opinion, I mean.’

  Richard was profoundly irritated at the implication that they should cook up some acceptable statement between them. ‘Professional, personal, what’s the difference? She was bloody depressed about having her baby adopted, so she stole one from a pram, got probation, and I failed to pick up how desperate she felt.’

  Marion pursed her lips. ‘You’re not actually going to say that, are you?’

  ‘Say what?’

  ‘The bit about failure.’

  ‘Why not? It’s the truth.’

  Marion looked at him indulgently, as if he were a well-meaning child who had got things slightly wrong. ‘We’re not always objective about ourselves though, are we, Richard? I’m sure you did your best. And the press are so quick to throw stones, we really don’t need to help them. How will it look if you rush into court so eager to take the blame? For all we know, poor Tracey may have been very unstable. She might have killed herself anyway, no matter what you said or didn’t say.’

  ‘She was eighteen,’ Richard said, outraged, thinking of Sally.

  ‘Yes, it’s a very unstable age. Didn’t we all play with the idea of suicide then? What I’m anxious to avoid, Richard, is the sort of thing the gutter press loves: “Yet Another Social Worker Gets It Wrong.”’

  In meetings Marion was fond of saying they were a team, that a chain was only as strong as its weakest link. Richard gazed at her without replying.

  * * *

  Eventually, reluctantly, they dragged themselves up and began to turn the bed back into a sofa. It was, Felix thought, the nearest they would ever get to domesticity together and was oddly touching.

  ‘You know, I’m actually going to miss school,’ Sally said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh, not like that. Just the way it fitted in with us. Sitting there in class and knowing I had a secret. Ringing you up at break and arranging when to meet. Showing off to everyone when you picked me up in the car. It’s been such fun.’

  ‘Waiting for you to phone was quite amazing too. I actually didn’t want you to ring sometimes, so I could go on looking forward to it, and yet I couldn’t bear to wait another minute, in case I exploded. A bit like wanting to come and wanting to put it off a bit longer.’

  They smiled at each other across the sofa bed, two people secure in the knowledge that they had
invented sex. He caught her looking uncannily like Helen, an extra pleasure for him. Helen whom he would never have.

  ‘Sometimes I feel so happy I think I might burst,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘Aren’t you amazed they haven’t noticed?’

  ‘Thank God they haven’t.’ Surely that wasn’t disappointment he heard in her voice.

  ‘But it’s so obvious, how can they miss it? I feel I’m all lit up like a Christmas tree when I go in the door. Are they blind? But Mum only thinks there’s some boy at school and Richard’s too busy to notice anything.’

  ‘Hiding something in plain view, that’s the secret,’ Felix said firmly. ‘Put your precious object in an obvious place and nobody spots it. Like concealing the stolen diamonds in the chandelier.’

  ‘I do worry about Elizabeth though.’ The name fell between them like a gauntlet. It sounded different when Sally used it. More of a challenge. ‘She’s so nice and I’d hate her to be hurt.’

  ‘As long as she doesn’t know, she can’t be hurt,’ Felix said, uneasy. ‘Don’t worry, my love.’

  ‘But she’ll have to know some time. Won’t she?’

  Now what was all this? ‘Don’t think about it now. You’ve got three years at college first.’

  ‘You won’t find someone else, will you?’

  ‘How could I? You’re the one. You’ll meet someone your own age and forget about me.’

  ‘Don’t say that, you know I won’t. They’re all so boring compared to you. Please, Felix, don’t ever say that again. It really hurts.’

  He promised.

  * * *

  She tried to explain to Maria about the holiday, but Maria was angry and didn’t understand. ‘God, Sally, it’s only a month and I was looking forward to it.’

  ‘I know. So was I. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Forget it.’

  ‘You know I’d like to come, I always love it, but—’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Maria said.

  ‘It’s not though, is it?’