A Sense of Guilt

by Andrea Newman

He drained his glass. Surely he couldn’t be thinking of leaving already? He seldom had more than one drink but he usually made it last about an hour. ‘Well, I’m sure they’d like to be friendly if only you’d let them.’

  ‘If I can’t be with you, I’d rather be alone.’

  ‘Well, that’s your choice. I’m here now, so can’t we be pleasant to each other? Every time I come to see you I hope it’s going to be better and it never is.’

  ‘How can it be?’ Didn’t he understand anything? She had made it as clear as she could. ‘I want you back. I’m in pain.’

  He stood up. ‘Inge, you just have to let go. I’m sorry but I mean it. You really do.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  There was a long silence and she saw him actually start to move towards the door.

  She said, ‘Did your step-daughter come home for Christmas?’

  ‘No, she’s staying with her father and his family.’

  ‘Perhaps she has a secret.’ Now she was right on the edge, tempted and terrified. ‘Not everyone is reliable like me. Some people cheat.’

  ‘What on earth d’you mean?’

  But she couldn’t do it. ‘Oh Richard, I love you so much.’

  * * *

  Helen, left alone, put on the Ravel F major String Quartet. It reminded her of Carey, and for that reason she no longer listened to it often: she had discovered it with him, first on records, then in performance, others’ and his own. Its cool intensity and disciplined emotion, the plaintive feeling in the structured framework, seemed to her, then and now, to evoke in music what she was trying to achieve in paint.

  It brought him back to her, and that was what she needed today, when he was with Sally and she was not: a moment of fantasy that they were still a couple, still parents together with their daughter. Otherwise she would feel he had stolen Sally from her after all her years of care. Or that Sally had defected, a much more alarming thought.

  Remembering the passion she had felt for him was like remembering another lifetime, or an old film in black and white at the NFT, or herself as a mad person. She had imagined killing the women he loved, but never imagined killing him, though after their final parting she had stabbed his shoes with a kitchen knife many times until she was exhausted. When they met, when they married, she would have staked her life that nothing could ever go wrong, though now of course she knew how foolish that was. But there they had been, making love and telling jokes and admiring each other’s talent: how could they have known that all that would not be enough?

  Her mother had known. Her mother had warned her but Helen would not listen; and after the event her mother had said, ‘He was always unstable. Just like your father.’

  It seemed late in the day to ask her mother why she had married that unstable person, unless she too had been, like Helen, a prey to the boundless optimism of youth. It made a bond between them, a sudden, unwelcome bond: two abandoned women who should have known better and now had only each other to trust. Helen ran away from this knowledge; she preferred to be alone with Sally, to turn to friends for help, or do without.

  When she thought it through, she had to admit the trouble had begun with Sally’s birth. They had both wanted Sally and so Sally was conceived, though perhaps, to be scrupulously honest, a little sooner than Carey would have liked. Helen herself had been surprised by the strength of her longing for a child. It was the sixties, a time of equality, and so they had agreed to share everything: they would both cook and clean and work and care for Sally and it would last for ever. That was the deal.

  Neither of them had realised how exhausting it would all be: that to be poor and earning a living by painting and playing the viola freelance and also looking after a baby would tax them to the limit of their resources. That Carey would drink too much and forget to pay bills and go to bed with the odd violinist or cellist between rehearsals to remind himself that life could still be fun. That Helen would be at first too tired and later too angry to make love. How obvious it all seemed now and how stupid they must have been not to see it at the time; and yet there they had been, walking around with their eyes shut, blind with hope.

  Sometimes she thought that all might have been well if they could just have got enough sleep.

  It was inevitable that she would end up with an unfair amount of childcare because she was, quite simply, there. In the flat or in the studio, there she was; and the more she worked, the more she was there. If Carey was working or looking for work, he was out, and he could not take Sally with him. Who had ever seen a viola player with carrycot, interrupting rehearsals for a feed or a nappy change? Even in the sixties equality was not that far advanced. Suppose the whole orchestra had followed suit? He came home drunk or exhausted, full of the excitement or frustration of his exterior day; Helen was still at home where he had left her and very, very angry. Why should he choose to come home to this angry person? He did so less and less. It cost money to hire a child minder and money was what they did not have, whereas Helen’s time was free. In theory Sally could sleep while Helen painted, or Helen could paint while Sally slept. Helen even changed back to oil from acrylic to accommodate Sally’s schedule with a more flexible medium. But in practice Sally was unpredictable, wanting feeding and changing and cuddling at odd hours, and even when she didn’t, just being with her all the time meant that Helen could never give her whole attention to work. She was always trying to do two things at once.

  She wanted monogamy, much to her own surprise, as well as equality, but it became clear that neither was going to be possible. They tried to negotiate. He would stop confessing casual flings and she would stop asking about them, but if she asked him he would tell her the truth. This worked for a while in a muddy sort of way, avoiding rows but generating an atmosphere of constant tension, making them both very silent but unsure how to interpret the silence. Was he guilty or innocent? Was she suspicious or trusting? They did not negotiate for serious affairs, because neither wanted to admit that serious affairs were possible. So when a woman rang up claiming to have Carey’s child, Helen’s shock was total. She listened almost in silence as the woman explained in quite a calm, friendly way that she needed an affiliation order for child support and would go through with a blood test to prove paternity if she had to, but she would much rather keep it all informal if she could for the sake of the child, only now Carey was refusing to return her phone calls. She was divorced with a child of the marriage at school and a part-time job, but she couldn’t possibly cope with the new baby without Carey’s help. Helen identified with her situation so completely that she found herself almost wanting to suggest reciprocal babysitting. She even admired the woman’s reasonable tone, so unlike the shrill hysteria she had often heard coming from herself. In other circumstances she thought they might have been friends. The woman’s name was Lola. An unlikely name, but Helen believed her, and she believed the story too. It had the unmistakable ring of truth. She recognised the sound of complete exhaustion in the woman’s voice.

  It seemed to make the whole thing worse that she actually liked Lola. Another thing that made it worse was fearing she herself might be pregnant. It was a time when doctors were still advising women on the pill to come off it for a rest, and Helen had obediently done this and gone back to a cap for six months. Now her period was nine days late. She was hard put not to mention this to Lola on the phone. They seemed to have so much in common.

  Lola rang about ten in the morning. Helen sat at the kitchen table for a long time after the call, letting the facts sink in, like water into dry earth. Some of them bounced off and she had to make space for them with a sharp stick, a common problem with repotting. For a child to be alive and in need of an affiliation order, Carey had to have met Lola at least nine months ago. She had not thought to ask Lola how long the affair had lasted; her shock had been so complete that she had in fact spoken very little. But she knew Lola must be telling the truth because such an accusation could be disproved and there was no point in telling such a
tale without evidence to back it up. Yes, it could be revenge, a disappointed mistress, a rejected lover; but it seemed to her that she felt the weight of years had just fallen on her, that Lola and her child summed up the whole unequal struggle of the marriage. A blood test could not prove Carey was the father, but it could prove he wasn’t; she had read all about this in The Guardian Woman’s Page many times before summoning up the energy to take Sally to the studio. Why should Lola be prepared to risk that if she wasn’t sure? And even if she was wrong, or malicious, she had not plucked Carey’s phone number out of thin air or at random from the directory. They had met, they had spoken, they had certainly made love and they probably now had a little boy who needed Carey as a father.

  Sally played around her feet as she thought. Sally now three and more amenable, ready for nursery school if they could find her a place. Sally glad perhaps not to be going to the studio today, imagining that a mother at the kitchen table was an off-duty mother. Helen allowed herself to think of how hard these three years had been for Sally, absorbing all the frustration and anger of her parents: no wonder she had not been an easy child to raise. And how hard it would be for the little boy, whose years were still to come.

  Helen knew all the fight had gone out of her. She was defeated; she had given up. A terrible clarity invaded her brain. If it wasn’t Lola it would be someone else, and an endless chain of children. All that trying again had failed. All those rows and reconciliations had not worked. She was dealing with something she couldn’t change and couldn’t accept and it seemed in a way irrelevant that she had to discuss it with Carey. She would accuse him and he would prevaricate and then he would confess and expect her to forgive him, and it was all too late. She was dealing with a corpse. Two corpses, in fact, because she also had to have an abortion.

  She wasn’t sure how long she sat there but eventually she realised that big tears were falling on the kitchen table and Sally was trying to comfort her.

  * * *

  She must have played the Ravel several times because it was still playing when Richard came back. He actually paused in the doorway and gave her a look of such love that she came out of her reverie with quite a shock. He also looked very tired. He said, ‘What a relief to be home.’

  Helen said, ‘Was it awful?’ She felt she had to drag herself back from a great distance.

  ‘I think she’s worse than ever. She’s relentless. I don’t know where she gets the energy to keep going, it’s very self-destructive. And she’s so bitter and envious – d’you know, she actually tried to make out there was some sinister reason for Sally not coming home for Christmas.’

  Helen froze with terror. God, wasn’t she even safe in her own home? ‘Like what?’

  ‘Oh, God knows what she meant – that she was off with some boyfriend, I suppose. She’s just got a wild imagination. She can’t bear it that we don’t have any problems so she wants to invent some. Drink?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ Helen said.

  He poured two drinks and pointed at the music centre. ‘This is very soothing. Just what I need. You’ve no idea how nice it is to be back. It’s so peaceful here. It’s such a haven.’ He went behind the sofa and leaned over her to put the glass in her hand. He kissed the top of her head. ‘Well, it’s you really. I love you so much.’

  She was quite overcome. It was rare for either of them to say it just like that, so suddenly and directly. She said, ‘Oh Richard. I thought I was hell to live with at the moment. I’m not really here half the time.’

  ‘You’re always like that before a show. Doesn’t matter.’ He came round the sofa and sat beside her. ‘Listen. I’m going to stop seeing her. I couldn’t tell her today but next time I will. No more visits. I mean it. A clean break for the New Year.’ She was astonished but she could see from his face that he meant it. She didn’t know what to say, so she just kissed him.

  They went to bed and made love. He said, ‘Even if you aren’t really here, you still feel pretty good.’

  ‘Oh, I think you can always get through to me… one way or another.’

  She came. She always came with Richard and she remembered that she had not always come with Carey. Sometimes the love had been too great and had got in the way.

  * * *

  Felix, easing the cork from a bottle of champagne, said, ‘Well, how was the dreaded Christmas?’ before he remembered that Inge might not be a Goon Show fan.

  ‘Lonely,’ she said, sounding heavily German and reproachful. ‘And yours?’

  ‘Boring,’ said Felix, ‘but never mind. It’s all over now.’ And then as he felt the cork begin its inevitable movement: ‘Hey, it’s coming. How very erotic champagne is. The point of no return.’

  He hoped the reference to sex might cheer her up, but she merely held out her glass and did not smile or speak.

  ‘Happy New Year,’ he said, thinking how inappropriate it sounded.

  ‘How can it be?’

  ‘With a little effort,’ said Felix, admiring his own determined cheerfulness, which he considered largely responsible for the pleasant life he led. ‘I certainly intend to be as happy as possible. I shall have a holiday in the sun and finish my book and make love whenever I can.’

  ‘So nothing has changed,’ she said bitterly.

  Felix was puzzled by the bitterness: was it because he could only include her in one of the three activities he had mentioned? Or because he could not spend the whole of New Year’s Eve with her? He did not care to analyse the shortcomings of any relationship, having found that pretending all was well often made it so, or nearly so, which was good enough for him. In any case it was pointless discussing things you could not alter.

  Inge turned her back on him and put the Liebestod from Tristan and Isolde on the music centre, much too loud. Gloomy erotic music filled the room.

  ‘D’you have to play that now?’ he said irritably.

  ‘Don’t you like it?’

  ‘I love it, but it’s not exactly festive, is it? Doesn’t quite get you in the party mood.’

  ‘I should have thought it was just the thing for you,’ she said in a voice loaded with meaning. ‘Love and death.’

  Fie stared at her and decided to be flippant: it was all getting much too heavy, time was short and his boredom threshold was low. ‘Have you been smoking one of your strange cigarettes?’

  ‘Not yet. Why? D’you want one?’

  ‘Certainly not. But I’ve noticed before they seem to bring on these Gnomic utterances.’

  She laughed, but he thought she seemed close to tears. ‘Oh Felix, you don’t understand anything, do you?’

  But he was too old and wise to be lured into a debate on the meaning of life on New Year’s Eve. He glanced at his watch.

  ‘I understand that I have to be out of here by seven thirty at the latest and so do you. Now, d’you want to waste time being miserable or shall we go to bed?’

  * * *

  Helen was checking the progress of a casserole which she hoped would be ready in time for Richard’s return from playing squash with Felix. The excesses of Christmas had finally made them have one of their rare evenings actually taking exercise instead of talking about how beneficial it would be. When she heard the front door open she called out, ‘You’re early. Well done.’

  But it was Sally who came into the kitchen. Sally with luggage. Sally slowly returning as if from the dead, from the depths of the underworld, the past. ‘I thought I was a bit late,’ she said as if unsure of her welcome, and Helen realised she was talking about Christmas. Then they were both crying. They hugged each other and Helen felt the healing power of touch.

  ‘You were right,’ Sally said. ‘I couldn’t have coped.’

  ‘Hush. That’s all over now.’ Sally’s generosity overwhelmed her.

  ‘Oh, it’s nice to be home. They were all lovely but it got a bit heavy. She had it on Boxing Day. There wasn’t a peaceful minute. It was kids and animals all over the place and the viola going…’

 
; Helen realised painfully, again and as if for the first time, that nothing else mattered as much as Sally. Not Richard, not painting, not her own life. Sally was the ultimate reality and she found the knowledge both joyous and oppressive. She said, ‘I’ve missed you so much.’

  * * *

  ‘She seems very wobbly,’ Felix said irritably. ‘I really don’t think now’s the time to pull the rug out from under her.’ He was smarting from his unexpected defeat and thinking that he must really play squash more often or else give it up.

  ‘I’ve put it off too long,’ Richard said.

  ‘Yes, well, that’s something else. Maybe you should have done it years ago. But if you do it now you’re going to land me in the shit for a start.’ He was still resentful that Richard had announced his decision at Christmas in front of Elizabeth: he felt Inge was a shared problem that Richard should first have discussed privately with him. ‘She’s leaning pretty heavily already. If you disappear, I’m not sure I can pick up the pieces.’

  ‘You must be really worried,’ Richard said with a smile. ‘Your metaphors are all over the place.’

  Felix wondered if he was being sarcastic. ‘She’s a big responsibility,’ he said.

  ‘God, d’you think I don’t know that?’

  ‘Honestly, Richard, I got into this in a very light-hearted way – well, I always do, you know me – but I’m not sure how much more I can take. There’s a lot of pressure. She’s so depressed you can feel it weighing on you. And she gets very aggressive. I mean, what if I want to get out? We can’t both dump her at the same time. She might crack up. And I can’t play Big Daddy indefinitely.’

  Richard gazed into his empty glass and did not reply. To Felix it felt like a long moment. Then Richard got up. ‘Same again?’ he asked.

  * * *

  After the seminar Sally and Jamal strolled back together in the direction of the cafeteria. They had got into the habit of doing this and she felt comfortable with him. ‘Why do they call you Jak?’ she asked idly.