A Sense of Guilt

by Andrea Newman

  She saw Sally picking this up from her face, tried to alter it, failed. She was aware that anger was paramount, along with terror and disbelief.

  Sally said again, ‘I am sorry.’

  ‘You’d better tell me how it happened.’ Helen heard herself sounding calm, almost normal.

  ‘Oh – you know.’ Sally shrugged. ‘The usual way.’

  ‘Don’t be clever.’ God, this was awful. Could they start again? She actually wanted to go back to first base, with Sally so far from being pregnant that she was only a few days old in her cot.

  ‘Sorry, I’m feeling a bit tense.’ Sally’s head drooped, exposing the vulnerable neck that Helen used to kiss when she was a baby.

  ‘So am I,’ she said.

  ‘I know. I’ve let you down, haven’t I?’

  Helen tried to hug her then, but she could feel the tension for herself. Sally, politely tolerating her embrace, was actually straining away from her mother with all of her body. Helen knew how that felt, she had done it often enough to her own mother, but she hadn’t realised before how much it hurt. She wondered what Sally was hiding, why she wanted to be so far away.

  ‘Tell me properly,’ she said, letting Sally go and noting her relief. ‘You know I’m on your side.’

  ‘I just made a mistake, that’s all. I should have known better – I mean, I did.’ She looked distressed but sounded angry. ‘You don’t deserve this, you’ve always been so modern.’

  Helen heard an accusation. ‘Tell me what happened.’

  Sally looked away. ‘Oh – I forgot my pills. It was when I was away and I switched handbags. That’s all really. It shouldn’t have happened but it has. So there. Rotten luck for all concerned.’

  Helen nodded. To her horror, she found she wanted to cry. Now, of all times, when she was meant to be a rock, she was going to let Sally down.

  ‘Who is he?’ she asked, blinking away the useless tears.

  Sally looked evasive.

  ‘Come on, you’ll have to tell me eventually.’ Distantly, softly, fear brushed against her, like a tiny curling feather released from a pillow shaken too vigorously.

  Sally said again, ‘You’re going to hate it,’ and looked at her with much too honest eyes. The feather-pillow fear crawled up Helen’s back, terrifying her.

  ‘Tell me,’ she said.

  ‘Can’t we just – well, can’t we just talk about it without names? I mean, look, it’s just someone I met. Can’t we leave it like that?’

  ‘You know we can’t.’

  Sally shrugged again and Helen sensed a feeling of relief, a letting go of responsibility, gladly dropping it on to the parent, where it had belonged since birth or earlier. ‘Oh, all right then,’ she said. ‘It’s Felix.’

  ‘Felix?’ said Helen. ‘Felix?’

  Sally looked defiant, as if pleased to be proved right. ‘I said you wouldn’t like it.’

  It was all so much worse than Helen had expected (a schoolboy, a teacher, a passing rapist) that she could hardly speak. She felt sick. She wanted to kill. Felix.

  ‘I know you don’t like him,’ said Sally, sounding bad-tempered, ‘but he’s not—’

  ‘What?’ said Helen. ‘Dear God, what isn’t he? Tell me something good about him and I’ll try to believe you.’

  Sally started to cry. Helen hugged her. This time she didn’t resist. Then they were both crying.

  ‘Shit,’ said Sally, who didn’t swear. ‘Oh, shit.’

  ‘We need a drink,’ said Helen, kissing her. ‘Come on.’ They sat at the kitchen table with a bottle of wine and a box of tissues between them. Helen kept wishing she still smoked.

  ‘How long have we got before Richard comes back?’ Sally asked. They were already conspirators.

  ‘Who knows? He’s with Inge.’

  ‘Yes, of course. I’m sorry. You’ve got enough problems already, haven’t you, and here I am making more.’

  Helen said, hating the sound of the words, ‘How far gone d’you think you are?’

  ‘I did a test when I was two weeks late and it was positive. Then I waited two weeks and did another one. That was positive too. Then it took me another week to get up the nerve to tell you.’

  Helen thought how reluctant they both were to add up and face facts. ‘So you’re about seven weeks.’

  Sally nodded, looking at the table.

  ‘But you haven’t seen a doctor?’

  ‘No. But I feel funny. Sort of different. Not sick exactly but odd. And my breasts itch.’

  ‘Doctor tomorrow.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Those tests can be wrong.’

  ‘I know.’

  But there was no hope in the room and they both felt it. Helen’s mind was racing: seven weeks was early, thank God Sally had told her quickly, vacuum extraction OK up to twelve weeks, get the GP moving fast or go to PAS, even Harley Street if need be, Felix can pay, God this can’t be happening to my child and I want to kill Felix, in fact I seriously think I might when this is over.

  ‘Have you told him?’ she asked.

  Sally, suddenly looking much older, smiled a small, bitter smile. ‘Oh yes. He was shocked. He doesn’t want to know. He’s afraid of upsetting Elizabeth.’

  Until that moment Helen had not thought of Elizabeth. Then she was abruptly in the room, standing beside the absent Richard, another person to be protected. It wasn’t enough that Sally had to have an abortion and Helen had to arrange it; she must also deceive her husband and her friend. And all because of Felix.

  ‘Oh, I can see his point,’ said Sally defensively, hearing the silence. ‘She’s very nice. It’s not fair to hurt her. Only I thought – maybe there’s a way we could do it without her finding out – you know?’

  For the first time Helen realised they were not both talking about abortion. She was very frightened.

  ‘I mean,’ Sally went on, ‘from her point of view it could be anyone. Why should it be Felix? If we’re careful, if we make up a good story, she’ll believe it, won’t she?’

  Helen said carefully, ‘Are you telling me you want to have it?’

  Sally looked at her very straight. ‘I’m not sure. I want time to think.’

  ‘Right,’ said Helen. ‘Now listen. You’re eighteen, you can do what you like. But I’m telling you it would be a disaster for you to have a baby by anyone right now, especially Felix. You’re too young, he’s quite unsuitable, it will change your whole life, and Elizabeth is bound to find out.’

  ‘I could go away.’

  I don’t believe this, Helen thought. Until half an hour ago I had no problems at all. Just shortage of money, a few duff paintings and bloody Inge pulling her usual tricks. Now I have a daughter who wants to go into hiding to have a baby by Felix without upsetting his wife. I don’t believe it. And I’m not going to let it happen. At that moment she felt resolve harden within her like clay. Whatever it takes, I am going to stop this happening.

  * * *

  When he arrived Inge was not there, only the boys taking a motorbike to pieces on the carpet. They hardly glanced at him, their curiously shaved and tinted heads bent close together over the machine: they were busy, collusive. When he was away he fantasised about time alone with them, mending fences or building bridges (he noticed that the imagery of conciliation involved shared activity) but now that he was actually here he heard himself saying in a petulant tone of voice, ‘Isn’t that going to be rather messy?’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Karl said, without looking up. ‘Mum doesn’t mind.’

  ‘She said we could,’ Peter added.

  Richard wondered if this was a normal evening activity for them or whether it had been specially devised to provoke him. He knew himself to be in the right, but he wished he could talk about something more important in the little time they had.

  ‘Well, it’s going to ruin the carpet,’ he said.

  Karl unscrewed a piece of gleaming metal and laid it carefully on a cushion. ‘It’s all right. It’s not your carp
et.’

  ‘I’m only the one who has to replace it.’ Richard felt as though Karl had actually struck him.

  ‘We can always clean it,’ Peter said. ‘Anyway, Mum doesn’t care about carpet much. She has other priorities.’

  They operated as a team. It could hardly be worse if Inge had trained them to do it. He couldn’t remember when it had started but he knew it had been going on for years, filling him with impotent rage. He had never found out how to divide and rule, which he felt sure would have been a solution.

  ‘Where is she?’ he said, uncomfortable now in their presence. ‘I can’t hang about all evening.’ It was unlike Inge to be out: usually she was watching at the window or waiting behind the door, ready to extract every possible drop of emotion from his visit. Surely he couldn’t be disappointed that she was out? The thought shocked him.

  ‘She won’t be long,’ Karl said. ‘She’s only gone to the off-licence. She said she couldn’t face seeing you without a drink.’

  ‘I think she wants to offer you one,’ said Peter, always a little softer. ‘You know what she’s like.’

  That seemed such an understatement that Richard couldn’t reply. In the silence he felt them gathering for a concerted attack.

  ‘She drinks too much,’ Karl said, ‘but we can’t stop her. She gets depressed. And those pills she gets from the doctor sort of make her worse. It’s like they don’t mix with the booze.’

  ‘If you could come round a bit more often she might cut down.’

  ‘I think she’s just lonely. We do our best to cheer her up but we can’t really manage it.’

  ‘And we’re out a lot,’ Peter said, as if Richard might otherwise imagine they had no lives of their own apart from Inge.

  ‘It’d be all right if she had another bloke,’ Karl said, ‘but she hasn’t. Not yet, anyway.’

  They were only telling him what he already knew, but hearing it from them made it seem more of an accusation, as if he were one of his own clients in the dock.

  * * *

  She had told Sally to get Felix to ring her, since she couldn’t ring him at home because of Elizabeth, and Sally wouldn’t give her his other number. He rang at ten the next morning and she was startled by his promptness: she had imagined him too cowardly and ashamed to pick up the phone.

  ‘Helen,’ he said, sounding subdued.

  ‘That was quick,’ she said sharply. ‘You got my message then.’

  ‘Yes. I can’t begin—’

  ‘I’d like to kill you,’ Helen said.

  ‘Yes, I believe you. D’you believe me when I say how sorry—’

  ‘You’re a shit, Felix. All you had to do was leave her alone.’

  ‘Yes, I know. But – anyway, let’s not go into all that on the phone. Where shall we meet? Just give me a time and place and I’ll be there.’

  He sounded meek and submissive, yet oddly detached and sure of himself, as if the outcome of their meeting was already decided and all he had to do was go through the motions in a sufficiently cooperative manner to placate her. She was enraged.

  ‘The Old Ship,’ she said, choosing a pub midway between their two homes. ‘As soon as they open.’

  ‘See you then,’ he said. And put the phone down.

  Helen cleaned the house from top to bottom with ferocious energy and speed. It didn’t need cleaning but she felt better for having done it. She would have liked to dig the garden as well, but there wasn’t time. She left the house at eleven fifteen and drove dangerously fast, the old clapped-out van lurching and squealing, until she remembered that if she unluckily got herself killed or incapacitated, Sally might well go ahead with the pregnancy. She slowed down at once.

  Felix was waiting for her when she arrived; he looked pensive and contrite. He had a pint of lager in front of him but he had barely touched it. The pub was half empty and smelt of last night’s beer.

  ‘Ah, Helen. What’ll you have?’

  ‘It hardly matters, does it? The same as you will do.’

  ‘Pint or half?’ he asked solicitously.

  ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, Felix.’

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘Sorry. Just a habit.’ He went to the bar and Helen stared at the back of his head that Sally must have clasped so often, watched the hands she must have held tight. Now they took money out of a wallet, passed it over and received change.

  He came back with a half and put it down in front of her. He sat down, sipped his drink, stared at the table, then, as if with a great effort of will, looked at her. She saw him quite differently: the old familiar face of Richard’s friend, her enemy, Elizabeth’s husband, was now the one that Sally had kissed, the one that had watched her climax, the one that had talked about love.

  ‘She thinks she wants to have it,’ she said, and saw alarm on his face. ‘Or rather she doesn’t know what she wants. But I’m going to make her have an abortion and I think you should pay for it.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ he said easily, as if they were talking about some minor courtesy like picking up theatre tickets. ‘That’s the least I can do.’ He looked relieved, and his relief disgusted her, although it was convenient.

  ‘I imagined we’d be in agreement,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t want to risk upsetting your cosy little marriage, would you? So I’m going to do all the dirty work and my daughter is going to bleed and risk her life and all you have to do is sign the cheque.’

  ‘Come on, Helen, be fair. You don’t want me to upset my cosy little marriage, as you put it, you’d be appalled if I left Elizabeth and ran off with Sally and let her have the baby. And we both know it’s not like the bad old days – OK, it’s never pleasant, but abortion nowadays is just about as safe and hygienic as they can make it—’

  ‘As far as you know,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to find out, do you?’

  ‘No, but that’s not my fault, it’s biology. And I don’t believe Sally’s risking her life. You wouldn’t let her, neither would I.’

  ‘Oh really,’ she said. ‘What would you do instead?’

  ‘It’s a safe operation, Helen, you know it is, if they do it early, and this is early, isn’t it? I’m sorry about it, of course I am, bloody sorry, but she was on the pill, and if she forgot, that’s hardly my fault, is it?’

  ‘I see,’ Helen said. ‘You get my daughter pregnant and then you tell me it’s her fault.’

  ‘That’s not what I said.’ He was determinedly rational. ‘We both wanted to have an affair and she told me it was safe.’

  ‘Of course,’ Helen said. ‘That makes it all right. She talked you into it.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t rape her.’ He sipped his beer, looking quite indignant. Helen planned her exit at that moment. It wouldn’t be dignified but it would give her some small satisfaction.

  ‘I’m not telling Richard,’ she said, ‘because he’d probably want her to have it. Then she’d either have to have it adopted, which could be heartbreaking, or she’d want to keep it and I’d have to look after it, which I’m not prepared to do.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I quite see that.’ He spoke absently, as if for him the argument stopped at abortion, and the other possibilities were so theoretical they might as well not be considered. Just like me, Helen thought. Their complicity made her sick.

  ‘I suppose you realise,’ she said, ‘that if all this came out, it would be the end of your friendship with Richard as well as the end of your marriage. So I’m not just doing the best thing for Sally, I’m protecting you as well.’

  ‘I question that,’ he said, looking at her coldly. ‘It just so happens that the two things go together. But I don’t think you can assume how Richard and Elizabeth would react just because—’

  Helen threw the contents of her glass in his face. Beer splashed all over him, soaking his hair, staining his shirt and jacket. The barmaid gazed with open mouth, then giggled, then looked away. Felix, once he got over the shock, took out a handkerchief and mopped his face. He looked ridiculous, dripping. Other
drinkers stared or pretended not to notice.

  ‘I hope that made you feel better,’ he said with dignity.

  ‘I hope you get cancer, Felix,’ Helen said. ‘I hope you die very slowly, in great pain, as soon as possible.’

  ‘I’ll do my best.’ He put the sodden handkerchief back in his pocket.

  Helen walked out of the pub, got into the van and drove home shaking. Outside the front door she changed her mind, in case Richard or Sally came home unexpectedly, and drove to the studio instead, where she could be sure of being alone. But she needed to share the problem and there was one person who deserved to know. Perhaps he could even help, she thought: how ironic that would be. She telephoned, feeling there was no time to be lost, but the number was unobtainable, and that too seemed appropriate, after all these years.

  * * *

  The doctor confirmed the pregnancy, then leaned back in his chair and put his fingertips together. ‘Well, Sally, how d’you feel about it?’

  Sally could feel Helen’s eyes boring into her, and the whole force of Helen’s personality willing her to say the right thing. She hesitated.

  ‘Take your time,’ the doctor said.

  The silence stretched. Sally was terrified. She fixed her eyes on a bit of his desk where the leather was peeling away. She hadn’t really taken in the fact that she was actually pregnant. Thinking or fearing she was, she still felt different when she heard a doctor say it. Pregnant. A certainty. Felix’s child inside her. Her child. No matter how inconvenient, it was still a sort of miracle.

  ‘I don’t think we have a lot of time,’ Helen said into the extending silence.

  The doctor smiled and shook his head. Sally was impressed by his calm. Up to now, everyone had been full of panic and urgency: Felix, Helen, she herself.

  ‘That’s the mistake everyone makes,’ the doctor said pleasantly. ‘This is an important decision. If she’s going ahead, we’ve got all the time in the world. And if she isn’t, we can still take a few days, even a few weeks if need be, to make sure we’re doing the right thing. It’s important that we should.’