Perhaps he would be thrilled. Over the moon. So why didn’t she tell him?
How could she have been so stupid?
Only of course it wasn’t true.
On the way home from Tesco every day she passed a chemist’s shop. They had test kits in the window. Predictor, they were called, and Discover 2. Like science fiction. She ought to buy one, put her mind at rest. Only of course it was unnecessary.
She had physical symptoms and she told herself she was imagining them. It was much too soon, everyone knew that. It was psychosomatic. It was ridiculous.
Sometimes it felt wonderful, like a miracle, and she wanted to dance for joy. Sometimes she actually did, secretly, in her room.
Sometimes she knew it was all nonsense.
Always it felt insane that her body knew the truth and she didn’t.
One day on her afternoon off she was alone at home and the doorbell rang. It was Elizabeth with a bunch of flowers in her hand. For a mad moment she thought they were for her and Elizabeth knew everything. She was going to be magnanimous in defeat and Sally would always be grateful.
‘I brought these for Helen,’ Elizabeth said.
‘She’s not back yet. D’you want to come in and wait for her?’
Elizabeth smiled an ordinary smile, as if she didn’t know anything. ‘No, thanks, I must dash, we’re going to the theatre. Just tell her I said thank you for listening.’
‘OK.’
She watched Elizabeth turn away and walk towards her car. She wasn’t fat, as Helen said, just normal. And she had a nice kind face and wonderfully shiny dark hair. Sally liked her and hated feeling guilty.
‘How’s the job?’ Elizabeth asked, suddenly turning back.
Sally felt panic, wanting to confess. Please forgive me, only I love him so much. Elizabeth was like an aunt. You must understand.
‘Boring,’ she said. ‘But the money’s useful.’
‘I bet. When d’you get your A-level results?’
‘Any day now.’
Elizabeth smiled again. ‘I’ll keep my fingers crossed. I’m sure you’ve done well.’
‘Thank you. I’m not.’
Elizabeth got into her car and drove away. She thinks I’m still a child, Sally thought, closing the door. She doesn’t take me seriously. It should have been a relief.
She went back inside and rang Felix in a panic, but got the answering machine and didn’t speak.
* * *
Each year Richard and Helen celebrated four anniversaries: the day they met, the night they first made love, the day they started living together and their wedding day. They liked the first two best; the others were somehow tainted by Inge’s distress. They would go out to dinner and reminisce in almost the same words every time. It became a tradition, like going to a favourite concert over and over again to hear the same music played with slight modifications of tempo and tone. Helen loved ritual, the way it imposed some kind of order on the chaos of everyday life: it was the effect she was trying to achieve in her work. And Richard always sent flowers, which impressed Sally greatly.
‘He never forgets, does he?’ she said, watching Helen cut the cellophane. ‘And your birthday. And Christmas. That’s six times a year. And sometimes he does it for no reason at all as well. Aren’t you lucky?’ She sounded oddly envious, even sour. Not like herself.
‘Yes,’ said Helen, snipping and arranging. ‘But I deserve it as well.’
‘I hope I marry someone like Richard,’ Sally said. ‘Someone romantic.’
‘Provided you don’t do it for at least ten years,’ said Helen, ‘then so do I.’
She thought Sally looked pale and tired: her own mother would have called it peaky, a ghastly word for which there was nevertheless no precise equivalent. ‘We’ll be late back,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you have an early night? You look exhausted.’
‘It’s the job,’ Sally said, flushing, ‘It’s so boring now they’ve put me on the till.’
‘Well, it’s not for much longer. Soon you’ll be a carefree student living off the state. You can sleep all day and stay up all night, and who can ask more of life than that?’ But as a student herself she had painted all day and made love most of the night and hardly slept at all.
Sally took a letter out of her bag. ‘This came today.’ She handed it to Helen, who read it and let out a shriek.
‘God, you’re brilliant. Two Bs and an A. That’s fantastic. Why ever didn’t you tell me before? God, I’m so proud of you.’ She hugged Sally, who felt stiff and awkward in the hug.
‘It’s good, isn’t it?’ she said soberly.
‘Aren’t you thrilled?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘You could have fooled me.’
‘Oh, I’ve waited so long for it,’ Sally said. ‘And I’d have liked two As and a B.’
‘Come off it.’ It was late in the day to get that ambitious. ‘At least you know for sure they’ll take you now. That’s all that matters. Isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
She sounded so unenthusiastic that Helen felt bound to ask, ‘Well, you do want to go there, don’t you?’
‘Yes, of course,’ Sally said.
The roses stood up stiff and straight in the vase. Helen hoped they wouldn’t droop before they were fully open.
* * *
In the restaurant they drank a toast to Sally, but her mood stayed with Helen, in spite of the champagne. ‘She was very odd about it,’ she said. ‘As if it didn’t really matter.’
‘Probably anti-climax.’ Richard seemed unperturbed, which made her relax a little.
‘Yes, that’s what she said, more or less.’
‘Well, there you are. Or maybe she’s just nervous about leaving home. It’s going to be very odd when she’s gone.’
‘Alone at last,’ said Helen, teasing. ‘Is there life after Sally?’ But she had often thought how strange it would be. They had never been alone together.
‘Poor Sally,’ Richard said. ‘She’s not even allowed to be moody like other teenagers. We’re so used to her being amenable that we expect it to last for ever. No drugs, no drink, no unsuitable boyfriends. We’re spoilt really, aren’t we? She’s probably working up to a great big rebellion at Sussex.’
‘God, I hope not.’ The prospect terrified her, although she knew it was inevitable, even natural and right.
‘OK then, a little one. She’s entitled to that. Oh, darling, we’re going to miss her, but think of all that freedom. We can run naked through the house. Scream and shout, have blazing rows, make love in broad daylight on the living-room floor…’
‘In the bathroom. In the garden. On the roof.’ Helen tried to enter into the spirit of the fantasy. Anything to blot out the picture of Sally having a rebellion, great or small, away from home. She knew letting your children go was the essence of parenthood, but as long as she lived she would never think of Sally as grown up.
‘I love you.’ Richard held her hand.
‘I don’t know why.’ She could never say it back to him when he said it, although she wanted to: it sounded like an echo and insincere. She had told Sally she deserved him, but she did not believe it. Long ago, when he first moved in, her mother had quoted Shakespeare at her, saying she should thank Heaven fasting for a good man’s love, and it was one of the few times she thought her mother was right. But it went along with her mother’s low opinion of her and that didn’t feel so good. ‘I think I’m very lucky,’ she said, kissing his hand. It was always easier to say it with touch, like painting.
‘You know, it’s not too late,’ he said. ‘We could still have one of our own.’
She hadn’t expected that, not tonight. They had discussed it several times over the years but never on an anniversary, when it was certain to ruin the atmosphere. It must have something to do with Sally going away.
‘Oh, darling,’ she said, ‘don’t spoil everything.’
‘No, listen. The boys are growing up and Sally’s nearly gone. We’ll
soon have a bit more spare cash. And if I could persuade Inge to get a job, even part-time, I could pay her less. We’d manage somehow. I’d help you a lot. You know I would.’
She nodded, saddened by the eager, hopeful look on his face. Why did saying no always feel so wrong, when no was the right thing to say? ‘I’m sorry it still means so much to you,’ she said. ‘I was hoping you’d gone off the idea. You haven’t mentioned it for a while.’
‘It could be wonderful. Just think what we could make between us, you and I.’
Now she could say it. ‘But I love you more than that. The people you love most aren’t always the ones you have children with. I love feeling we aren’t tied together with children, like string. We’re just lovers.’ She meant it, but some watchful, scrupulous part of her mind pounced on her words and examined them for lies. Was she also finding a nice way of telling him she disliked the mess, the upheaval, the responsibility of children; that her work came first, or Sally came first, or that as long as he put Inge first this would always be his punishment, to do without what he wanted most? She wished she didn’t question herself like this when the issue was in fact so clear. They were forty and exhausted and broke. Anyone walking in and looking at them now would say that they needed a holiday or a legacy or even just a good night’s sleep. No sane person would prescribe a baby. Yet it still felt insulting to say she didn’t want his child, as if it must mean she didn’t love him enough. If they had been young and rich and rested, she knew she would still have said no.
‘Not lovers very often,’ he said.
‘We get tired. We work too hard.’
‘We could change that.’
‘Yes, we could. Why don’t we?’ She felt the comfortable stirrings of lust, now the dangerous corner was turned. ‘D’you remember?’
‘Yes.’
‘On the floor of the studio, the first time.’
‘Yes.’
‘When I came, you had to put your hand over my mouth in case I woke Sally.’
He was watching her steadily. ‘I remember.’
They smiled tenderly at each other. Talking about it excited them both. Their younger selves could be summoned at any time to evoke desire.
‘When Elizabeth took me to your show,’ Richard said, starting their litany, ‘I felt I recognised you. You were the woman I’d been looking for all my life. The woman who didn’t really need me.’
‘But I needed you desperately,’ Helen said.
‘The woman who could manage without me then. I had to have you. I’d have died without you.’
‘I never thought you’d leave Inge,’ Helen said. ‘I thought you were too good and I wanted somebody good. I thought I’d be lonely for ever.’
It had been a shock, breaking up with Carey and finding she wasn’t self-sufficient. She had hoped that her work and her child would be enough, that she could live like a man, celibate or having occasional sex with people who were not important, so that no one would have the power to hurt her again. To need love was a human weakness that made you vulnerable for ever. Learning to love someone she could trust had been a revelation, and if she could not offer him the all-consuming passion she had felt for Carey, well, that had been a kind of sickness that passed with youth. Some part of her had been broken in that struggle, but she told herself that what was left was more important and more real. If he loved her the way she had loved Carey, perhaps that was also the way Inge loved him. It was the luck of the draw and there was nothing any of them could do about it.
* * *
They would never have met without Elizabeth. ‘Oh, do come with me, Richard,’ she had said. ‘Or I’ll have to go on my own and that’s no fun.’
‘Why can’t you go with Felix?’ The pile of mock O-level scripts beside him made it quite clear that he wasn’t supposed to go anywhere. From upstairs he could hear squeals and splashes as Inge bathed the children. “When Macbeth first meets the witches,” wrote Shirley Baker in 5B, “they put ideas in his head because they say what he has been thinking about already and talking to his wife about.”
‘He won’t come. He says when you’ve seen one rectangle, you’ve seen them all. I think she’s wonderful but then I’m crazy about Ben Nicholson and she’s a bit like him. Come on, Richard, I won’t enjoy it half as much by myself. Bring Inge if you like and we’ll all have dinner afterwards. Felix says he wants to work late but I’m sure he’ll join us for dinner.’
It sounded to Richard as if Felix was having a new affair. He envied Felix and pitied Elizabeth. He said, ‘All right. I ought to be marking but I’d love to play truant. I’ll talk to Inge and I’ll ring you back.’
‘Ring me back if you can’t,’ Elizabeth said. ‘I’m sure that’s easier. Otherwise I’ll pick you up tomorrow about six.’
He had forgotten how bossy she could be and almost rang her back to cancel. But when Inge came downstairs she looked so bedraggled that he thought the prospect of an outing might uplift her.
‘Elizabeth wants us to go to a private view tomorrow,’ he said. ‘And dinner afterwards with Felix. Would you like to? Shall we get a sitter?’
Inge looked sulky. She poured herself the last of the Scotch and sat down heavily in the chair opposite him.
‘You know I don’t like to leave the boys with a stranger,’ she said. ‘And it’s very expensive.’
He stared at her. Sometimes he tried so hard to see the desperate beauty that had enraptured him when they were both nineteen. He knew it was still there, because other people, including Felix, the connoisseur, admired her extravagantly; but it was a beauty that could no longer reach his eyes, except on rare occasions when he was very tired or very drunk. It had been shrouded by all kinds of domestic emotions such as responsibility, affection, boredom and guilt. He was exhausted. Sometimes just looking at her and knowing how much of him she needed made him feel he was being sucked dry.
‘But you’re always saying you want to go out more often,’ he said. ‘How we never go anywhere or do anything.’
‘I want to go out with you,’ Inge said. ‘The two of us alone.’
The word struck his heart like a stone.
‘Anyway,’ she added, ‘if Felix isn’t going, then she only wants you as an escort. I’d be in the way. I know she doesn’t like me.’
‘She does like you, Inge,’ he said. ‘Whatever makes you think she doesn’t?’
‘Oh, you English, you’re so polite. So hypocritical. Everything has to be so nice. And you don’t mean any of it. Of course she doesn’t like me. She’s a silly fat woman and her husband fucks other women and now she wants my husband to take her out to a gallery because she is afraid to go by herself.’
He got up. ‘I’m going to say goodnight to the boys.’
‘And there will be silly people there who don’t know about painting but they want to drink free wine and pretend to be clever.’
He said, ‘Yes, I know. But it’s harmless.’
He had reached the top of the stairs when she said, ‘And the boys want you to read them a story.’
He said, ‘But I always do.’ He was suddenly inexpressibly irritated by the reminder. He closed his eyes, but even in the darkness and on another level, he could see her shrug, and the foreignness of her alienated him yet again, and the love he still felt rose up in his throat to choke him. He read to the boys about Pooh, the bear of very little brain who did not have these problems, occasionally getting a word wrong on purpose for the sheer pleasure of having them correct him. The blend of himself and Inge in their faces moved him as it always did, and he knew they were bound together for ever no matter how unhappy it might make them.
In the night she woke him wanting to make love, and when he couldn’t or wouldn’t, for he was no longer sure which it was, she turned away in anger and then she cried. He tried to hold her, to comfort her, but she swore at him and shook him off. Yet she fell asleep before he did, exhausted by her own emotions, while he lay awake stricken by the amount of energy he consumed in makin
g sure that she did not devour him entirely.
* * *
The gallery was already crowded when they arrived because Elizabeth had been slightly late to pick him up and then had had difficulty parking. She was wearing the mink coat that Felix had bought her to celebrate the film rights of The Heartbreak Merchant. As an animal lover, Richard resented the coat, and yet he knew that Elizabeth loved animals too. He also thought, on an aesthetic level, that the coat was too heavy for her and made her look older than she was. But he knew she was proud of it and it made her happy, perhaps as a confirmation of Felix’s love. He could not say anything to her about it and had to remind himself that he was not as yet a vegetarian. The most selfish part of him hoped that she would not become too hot and expect him to hold the coat.
It was a small gallery, with stark white walls. Elizabeth fussed about getting drinks and he had to fight his way to the bar on her behalf. Then he saw the paintings. There were perhaps a dozen of them, in various sizes: solid delicate rectangles of beige and grey, white and cream, overlapping each other, some flat, some in relief. They had a luminous quality, although the paint did not gleam: it seemed to him that they glowed from within.
He felt instantly at peace, as if all the noise in his head had stopped, as well as the noise in the gallery. There was suddenly no sound at all. Everywhere he looked was cool reflective peace with firm edges.
‘She’s good, isn’t she?’ Elizabeth said, whenever he next heard her.
He said yes. His throat felt dry and his voice sounded odd to himself.
Some time later he heard Elizabeth say carelessly, ‘That must be her over there.’
He looked and saw a woman with pale hair caught up in a knot behind her head from which it fell heavy and straight. She was dressed all in black. People were talking to her and she smiled at them and shook hands.
A man behind him, looking at the paintings, said to his companion, ‘Bit monotonous, aren’t they?’ and Richard wanted to hit him.
It was then that he realised he had fallen in love.
A Sense of Guilt Page 13