A Sense of Guilt

by Andrea Newman

  * * *

  Sally knew she would remember it for ever. The light on the water, the movement of the punt, the oncoming view perfectly framed in the arch of each bridge. How lucky he was to have spent three years here. She felt she was in a film and she could tell Felix was enjoying it too, despite pretending to be blasé. He was more relaxed after his speech; it had gone well, with a few intelligent questions afterwards, and he had finally admitted when it was over that he had been a bit nervous, or as he preferred to call it, rusty. She had been so proud of him and she had wanted to boast to everyone: he’s with me and he’s brilliant and beautiful and famous. You can look but you can’t touch. She knew it wasn’t quite true but for this weekend at least she could pretend.

  ‘What were you like as an undergraduate?’ she asked, thinking of him fondly at her own age, the young Felix whom she would never know. Not that he was old now, of course, but before he had grown his protective shell, before he had a public to satisfy.

  ‘Extremely poor. I couldn’t get my bloody father to cough up any money, he was so pissed off with me for taking my mother’s side.’

  It was difficult to imagine him being hard up: lavish spending seemed so much part of his style. ‘Did you have lots of affairs?’

  ‘One or two, I suppose.’

  ‘That means six or seven.’

  ‘Well, maybe three or four.’

  She laughed. There was no point in being jealous of the past, which had made him so glamorous and interesting; enough to worry about the future. ‘Did Richard?’

  ‘No, poor sod, he was too busy falling in love with Inge.’

  ‘Really? Here?’

  ‘Yes, didn’t you know? That was how they met. She was his tutor’s au pair.’ He put on a heavy German accent. ‘We have ways of making you fall in love. God, poor Richard, he was a lost cause once he met her. She was only nineteen but she was so powerful. He used to go round there all the time, he was really obsessed by her. She was a bit like Lady Caroline Lamb, I always think, you know, mad, bad and dangerous to know.’

  ‘I thought that was Byron.’ Too late she wondered if it was tactless to correct him.

  ‘Well spotted. She was like Byron, only minus the limp. And minus the poetry too, of course. Didn’t leave a lot. No, that’s not fair. She was very beautiful, and she must have been sexy, I suppose.’

  How protective he sounded of Richard even now, as if he should have saved him from Inge, all those years ago. Or perhaps she had got in the way, stopped them having fun together. She didn’t have any friends she felt that strongly about yet.

  ‘And once she got pregnant,’ Felix added, ‘he didn’t stand a chance.’

  Sally trailed her hand in the water, dreaming. Her panic of last night had gone with the morning light and today she was drifting on a wave of pure fatalism. How could she have told him? It would have ruined everything. She thought it was almost sure to be all right and if it wasn’t, perhaps it was destiny.

  * * *

  All the same, the image of Inge took hold, Inge as femme fatale. It was odd to think of Richard being young and in the grip of an uncontrollable passion for someone else. ‘It’s funny,’ she said when they were having tea. ‘I always thought Mum was Richard’s great love.’

  ‘Maybe she is.’

  ‘Not the way you tell it.’

  ‘Oh, these wild passionate affairs,’ Felix said carelessly, ‘they’re not the people you stay with.’

  ‘Where does that leave us?’

  ‘Oh darling, we’re different. Anyway, Richard and Inge were married a long time.’

  ‘It still sounds like a love affair.’

  ‘That’s what I mean. It burnt itself out. When he met Helen, I could almost hear him breathe a sigh of relief.’

  ‘That makes it sound dull.’

  ‘No, not at all. It was like a ship coming into safe harbour. Nothing dull about that. It’s essential.’

  It was no good, she couldn’t make sense of it. It was true what they said about the past being a foreign country. Felix had memories she could never share and they made her uneasy.

  * * *

  Then it was all right again. That evening. Their last evening. It was always all right when they were touching, and there was something about the luxury of making love night and morning that put a magic gloss on everything. She could feel herself permanently wet and aching, a new sensation of being thoroughly used. She was grown up, a woman. She tried to hang on to that feeling, to shut out the terror that time was sliding past and there was nothing she could do to make it slow down.

  They had a bottle of champagne on the terrace after Sunday lunch and sat silently for a while holding hands, watching the river. It was very peaceful. She kept telling herself not to waste precious moments, not to hasten the ending by fretting about it, but it was hard to take her own advice.

  ‘It’s been the most perfect weekend of my life,’ she said finally, aware of sounding solemn but wanting him to know how she felt.

  ‘It’s not over yet.’

  ‘Nearly.’

  ‘And it’s only the first of many.’

  Now did he mean that or was it just something cheering to say? He hadn’t said when the next one would be. She had noticed before how he shied away from unpleasant facts. Perhaps he had suffered so much in the past that he had resolved never to be unhappy again. But life wasn’t like that. She knew that already. Even the thought of saying goodbye to their room, where they had been so happy, made her want to cry.

  * * *

  In the afternoon he took her to the railway station and bought her a first class ticket. He settled her into her seat and gave her flowers and magazines. There was an awful feeling of goodbye in the air; they were both so determinedly cheerful.

  ‘I’ve never travelled first class before,’ she said.

  ‘It’s always worth it. I learned that when I was quite poor. It really costs very little extra compared with what it does for your morale. In fact it’s quite an art, knowing when to be extravagant.’

  ‘I thought you always were,’ she said, surprised.

  ‘Oh no, I have my petty economies like everyone else. I turn the thermostat down two degrees and wear an extra pullover. That kind of thing.’

  ‘There’s so much I don’t know about you.’

  ‘You’re better off not knowing boring stuff like that. It ruins my image.’

  They both smiled and she shook her head. More minutes ticked by. ‘I hate railway stations,’ she said suddenly, violently. Part of her wanted to ask why he wasn’t driving her back to London and letting her get a train from there, why he didn’t want to be with her till the last available moment. But she didn’t want to spoil things by complaining and anyway, it was too late now, she was here on the train with her first class ticket, and she had taken such risks and he didn’t even know.

  ‘I always feel they should play Rachmaninov’s second piano concerto over the tannoy,’ he said.

  She had to smile.

  ‘Oh good,’ he said. ‘I was afraid you were too young to remember.’

  ‘I love old films. I used to watch them all the time on the box when I should have been revising.’

  ‘See? That’s something I didn’t know about you.’

  The train was about to leave.

  ‘Oh, Felix.’

  They kissed and it was all right again, just for a moment.

  ‘Take care, my love. See you soon.’

  She started to cry as the train started to move. She saw him already disappearing back into his other life. He stood on the platform and they waved until they couldn’t see each other any more.

  * * *

  Felix sat in the car for a few moments before starting the engine. He was trying to relax completely. He wished he had studied meditation. He had the slightly sick feeling of a child who has been to a party and had just a little too much of everything. A wonderful weekend. It had all gone perfectly. So why did he feel exhausted?

  It w
as the emotion, he decided. Why did she have to create drama where there was none? They had enjoyed forty-eight hours together and now it was over. But they would be meeting again in a matter of days. No one had died or even gone away. How could she make a tragedy out of that? Tears on a railway station, for God’s sake. Or was it his fault for mentioning Brief Encounter? It was hard to get everything right, but he had tried his best and it had certainly cost enough.

  Gradually he began to calm down, to level out. Time alone, that was what he needed to recharge his batteries; he knew that from experience. The drive home would soothe him. If he left his brain in neutral, it would rearrange the weekend into unalloyed pleasure. By the time he got home he would be himself again. Right now he was suffering from giving out too much; he was emotionally bankrupt. He simply didn’t have the energy to respond to another human being twenty-four hours a day without time off for good behaviour. That, apart from his talent, was why he was a writer.

  He started the car. Even driving had a calming effect. The simple mechanics of changing gear. He would switch off his mind completely. Stress. It was very stressful to be open to someone else’s needs all the time. He had to think of himself again and relax.

  After a while he started to feel better, indulging in a little mild speeding on the motorway and slipping a cassette into the car stereo: it was Mozart’s Don Giovanni, which always lifted his spirits.

  He stopped on the way to get flowers for Elizabeth and was home by early evening. She was in the kitchen preparing supper when he arrived and she made more fuss of the flowers than of him. Home seemed particularly attractive, as it always did after an adventure: a refuge, a haven, a safe place where no unreasonable demands would be made. He hoped she was not about to give him a hard time for being away.

  ‘Hullo, darling,’ he said, kissing the back of her neck. ‘Missed you.’

  ‘How did it go?’ she said, arranging the flowers, not looking at him.

  ‘Oh, quite well, I think. Bit exhausting.’

  ‘Didn’t you get off on all the adrenalin?’

  A shade of sharpness in her tone, or was he imagining it? Best to ignore it, anyway. God, he was tired.

  ‘For a while. Then I wished I was home.’ Perhaps a straight appeal to her better nature. ‘I think I’m getting too old for these larks.’

  Silence. She stopped fiddling with the flowers and placed them on the table. Felix poured himself a large drink.

  ‘Supper’s nearly ready,’ she said gently.

  * * *

  The coroner wanted to know how often Richard had seen the deceased. He asked him to describe her state of mind.

  ‘She was very depressed,’ Richard said. ‘She couldn’t see the point of the probation order because I couldn’t get her baby back for her. She seemed to feel everything was hopeless.’

  ‘In your opinion, was there any indication that she might take her own life?’

  ‘No, but she did, so I must have failed to pick it up.’ He paused, feeling Marion’s eyes on him. He deeply resented her presence; it proved that she didn’t trust him and she ought to have been too busy. And Inge was at the back of the court: he didn’t even remember mentioning the case to her. It was as if he himself was on trial. ‘I do feel,’ he went on, looking at the coroner, ‘that her family and social services made an error of judgment in persuading her to have her baby adopted and I blame myself for not realising how desperate she felt.’

  * * *

  Outside the court he brushed off local reporters. Marion shook her head at him. ‘I despair of you, Richard,’ she said, ‘I really do.’

  ‘You were wonderful,’ Inge said. ‘I was proud of you.’ The two women looked critically at each other.

  ‘You shouldn’t be here,’ he said to Inge, feeling it applied to them both. Marion drifted away with a look that said he hadn’t heard the last of it.

  Inge asked, ‘Why didn’t she come?’

  ‘Who?’ he said, knowing.

  ‘Your wife.’ She made it sound like a dirty word.

  ‘She’s working and I didn’t want anyone to come. Go away, Inge, please. How did you even know about this?’

  ‘You told me weeks ago, don’t you remember? You were dreading it. I wanted to give you moral support. It’s important you should have someone on your side.’ She put her hand on his arm. ‘Let’s go for a drink, you look exhausted.’

  ‘I have to get back to the office.’

  He walked to his car, hearing one of the reporters say to her, ‘Not very grateful, was he?’

  ‘He is living with a bad woman,’ she said sorrowfully, in a loud voice.

  He saw them go off together. Well, it was not his business.

  * * *

  But the reporter did not ask Inge for a date and she went home feeling lonelier than ever with disappointment at the missed opportunity. It was a relief to find the boys already there. Sometimes she felt she had invaded their youth by making them so aware of her as a heavy responsibility. But they accepted their burden willingly, responding to her need. They were practical, too, not merely self-sacrificial, bringing the motorbike indoors and taking it to bits on the carpet so that they could still talk to her, be with her, while they enjoyed themselves playing with their favourite toy. Or they would arrange their hair in spikes with gel in front of the living-room mirror instead of away upstairs in their own bedrooms. They were generous, children. Sometimes she wondered how she had produced them when she herself was so selfish. They took after Richard, she supposed. But Richard had left her. That had not been very generous. Not unselfish at all. So perhaps they were their own people and just naturally good-hearted.

  She read aloud to them from a contact magazine, drawing them into her shadowy world to make it safe. ‘How about this one? “Sensual man, forties, clean, discreet, well-endowed, seeks mature lady for mutual pleasure.”’ She liked the word pleasure very much.

  ‘Sounds like a wally,’ said Karl, looking up from the motorbike on the floor.

  ‘Does Dad know you’re doing this?’ Peter peered at her anxiously in the mirror from behind the spikes.

  ‘He wouldn’t care.’ It hurt her, it infuriated her, that she could not make Richard show jealousy. ‘But I shall tell him.’

  ‘Anyway, you’re not mature,’ said Karl, ‘you’re in your prime.’

  Inge blew him a kiss. His loyalty brought tears to her eyes. ‘“Sexy young man, twenty-five,”’ she read, ‘“adventurous and virile, seeks older woman for experimental relationship.”’

  ‘Mum,’ Peter protested. He was only fourteen after all, and easily embarrassed. Too young to understand much about life.

  ‘I’m lonely,’ she said, thinking what an understatement it was.

  ‘Why don’t you do an ad of your own?’ Karl suggested. ‘We could help you. Then when the guys show up we can vet them for you.’

  ‘What shall I say?’ She was enchanted with the idea, whether she used the ad or not. She scrabbled through a pile of rubbish and newspapers on the coffee table to find the back of an old envelope and dredged up a leaking biro from the chaos of her handbag. The boys took turns like a well-rehearsed double act; she was proud of them.

  ‘Beautiful woman,’ Karl began romantically.

  ‘Thirty-eight,’ said Peter, facing facts.

  ‘Thirties, you wally. Beautiful woman, thirties, two gorgeous sons…’

  They all fell about laughing. Inge scribbled.

  ‘Terrific cook, unconventional dress…’

  ‘Relaxed attitude to housework…’

  ‘Warm, intelligent…’

  ‘Lazy, desperate,’ said Inge with her passion for the truth.

  ‘Seeks…’ said Karl firmly, pressing on. ‘What are you seeking, Mum?’

  ‘Seeks original husband back again.’

  ‘Oh Mum,’ said Peter.

  ‘It’s true.’

  ‘I know,’ said Karl, ever practical, ‘but he’s not coming back, is he? He’s got that woman and her kid, he do
esn’t care about us.’

  ‘He cares about you two,’ Inge said. She thought it was important they should understand that. ‘It’s just me he wanted to leave. I got on his nerves.’

  ‘Come on, Mum,’ said Karl. ‘Do your ad. You might meet a millionaire. None of us need ever work again.’

  ‘I haven’t noticed you doing much,’ Peter said.

  ‘I’m a thinker,’ Karl said loftily. ‘We thinkers have to rest up a lot. Thinking takes it out of you.’

  ‘Only if it was there in the first place.’

  She loved their affectionate bickering: it made her feel warm and cherished. It was like being wrapped in a fur blanket by someone who cared about her.

  ‘Juliet seeks Romeo,’ said Karl. ‘No. Cleopatra seeks Antony. How about that?’

  ‘Tristan seeks Isolde,’ said Peter. ‘Has own love potion.’

  ‘Hey, not bad.’

  ‘Well, you’re keen on Wagner, aren’t you, Mum?’

  ‘Lonely morose frustrated German woman seeks own true love.’ She was sorry she couldn’t cheer up to please them.

  ‘Come on, Mum.’ Karl sounded bracing: perhaps he would become a doctor in later life.

  She shook her head. ‘It’s the truth.’

  * * *

  Sally didn’t really believe it and yet in a sense she had known all the time. The weeks dragged by and nothing happened. She told Felix she was worried about her A-level results and he believed her. There was no point in alarming him unnecessarily, but she needed his support so desperately that she was tempted to tell him anyway and the hell with it. But something always stopped her.

  She told herself it was normal to miss periods on the pill, although she never had; they were artificial, anyway, and didn’t mean anything, she knew all that.

  She had brought this on herself.