A Sense of Guilt

by Andrea Newman

  ‘Well, if you must do it, for God’s sake don’t pay gallery prices. At least you can go round to the studio and get it cheap. Well, comparatively cheap.’

  ‘Yes, I know that’s sensible but it’s not very stylish.’

  He was torn between anger and amazement. It was not like her to be so stubborn. In all their years together they had not had such an argument in public. He was silent, thinking.

  * * *

  ‘Yessir,’ said Jerome Ellis, producing a cheque book not a credit card, and beginning to write his name and the date, ‘I really believe in this little lady and I always put my money where my mouth is.’

  ‘You’re a very good customer,’ said Magdalen, watching him write.

  Still writing and now on the name of the gallery, he jerked his thumb over his shoulder. ‘There’s a poor lost soul over there just crying out to be painted.’

  Magdalen turned her head to the window but there was no one there.

  * * *

  Helen was crying with joy. The tears she hadn’t shed for Sally tonight were in her eyes now for Sam. How white his hair was but still thick. The aquiline profile was unchanged too: how well she remembered staring at it as she waited for him to pass judgment on her work. Praise or blame, she always remembered what he said. But even at a distance she could see his gnarled hands and the joy turned to sorrow even as she wept. People drifted away, as if he had cleared a path by his arrival, and as they hugged each other she sensed that only Richard, Sally and Jamal were still around her, watching indulgently.

  She said, ‘Oh Sam, how lovely to see you. I never thought you’d make it.’

  He smiled as if she’d been silly to doubt him. ‘Helen, my dear, I wouldn’t miss one of your shows. Not till I’m in a box. Mind you, that won’t be long now the way I’m going.’

  She turned to the others. ‘You know Sam Frankel. Sam was my first teacher and he’s still a better painter than I’ll ever be. Sam, you remember Sally and Richard. And this is Jamal.’

  ‘I’m so proud of you.’ Sam embraced her in a bear-hug, fanning out to include Richard and Sally with his other arm and vaguely indicating Jamal with an ambiguous wave of his left hand. The sight of his distorted fingers stabbed Helen to the heart. At that moment she would have sacrificed the whole exhibition to give Sam back the proper use of his hands in return for all he had given her. She had never believed in sacrifice before but now she suddenly saw the point of it. Sam was a truly good person as well as being immensely talented, not commercial as it happened, but never envious of her small but evident success. She treasured that quality in him.

  ‘She was always very stubborn,’ he said, looking at her with pride. ‘Always went her own way.’

  ‘She hasn’t changed,’ said Richard, looking equally proud and fond.

  They all laughed.

  ‘She has,’ Sam said. ‘She’s got even better.’

  For a moment they all stood there together and Helen felt that her family was at last complete, that she had passed a dangerous corner, but now all was well in the best of all possible worlds and she could relax. She was safe at last and she felt they all knew it, they must; the feeling was so strong in her that she could not believe that any of them felt otherwise.

  Sally was the first to break ranks. She kissed Helen lightly on the left cheek. ‘Mum, we must be going, we’ve got to get back tonight. The paintings are great.’

  ‘Have a safe journey,’ Helen said, sad as ever to see her go but more reconciled now that she felt all was well. ‘You’ve made my evening.’

  ‘You keep working now,’ Sam said to Helen as Sally left with Jamal, his arm lightly round her. ‘Do as much as you can. Don’t postpone anything. I often wish I’d taken my own advice.’

  * * *

  Elizabeth was in a huddle with Magdalen, writing a cheque. Felix could feel the defiance burning through her back. Perhaps she knew more than he realised. It was an uncomfortable thought and made him feel very tired. Suddenly he saw Sally coming towards him with the Indian boy on her way to the door. There was no escape. His throat was dry with pain.

  ‘Hullo, Felix,’ she said in a light social voice. There was no expression in her eyes. He had not known that she could act so well.

  ‘Hullo, Sally.’

  Memories of her skin and that vanilla scent. The Indian boy put his arm round her shoulders and they left together.

  * * *

  They had dinner in their favourite restaurant. Helen was past hunger by then but the sense of being cherished with food and wine and candlelight made her feel peaceful and elated. She smiled at Richard, full of goodwill, floating on a great wave of security.

  ‘Happy?’ he said, smiling back.

  ‘Very. I never thought Sam would come all the way from Cornwall. I’m going to give him a painting. He can’t afford to buy and I’d like him to have one.’

  ‘He means a lot to you, doesn’t he?’

  ‘He’s like a father figure, I suppose. He always bullied me to go on when I got discouraged. Did you see his poor hands? God, what a terrible fate. Like Beethoven going deaf.’

  ‘And Elizabeth bought,’ Richard said. He sounded very pleased.

  ‘She’s crazy. Felix will give her hell. He’ll probably use it as a dartboard. What did you think of Jerome Ellis’s boyfriend?’

  ‘I think they deserve each other. Like Beauty and the Beast.’ He paused. ‘That boy Sally brought seemed very nice.’

  ‘I liked him. She looked happy, didn’t she?’ It was something to be vindicated, tonight of all nights, even though he didn’t know, thank God.

  ‘Yes. And the paintings are wonderful.’ He kissed her hand. ‘You’re wonderful.’

  * * *

  When they got home after the show Elizabeth felt tired without being ready for sleep. They had had a bad dinner afterwards and the food lay leadenly in her stomach along with Felix’s complaints to the waiter. In theory she approved of complaining when things weren’t up to standard, but in practice she usually found it made her feel worse, souring the whole experience. She would have preferred to make the best of it, in the British way, but Felix was continental in these matters and liked to stand up for his rights. He was foreign in his driving, too, given to sudden braking and bursts of acceleration, fond of terrorising other road users with his horn, a little light verbal abuse and the occasional obscene gesture. If she was feeling strong and well, all that could be mildly amusing; when she was at all below par it left her with shattered nerves.

  She poured herself a brandy, knowing she would regret it later but needing it more than she feared the regrets, and sank down on the sofa, glad of a chance to put her feet up. Felix seemed restless, wandering about the room, fiddling with small objects, looking out of the window. He had hated seeing Helen get so much attention; Elizabeth wondered if Helen felt equally piqued when Felix had a new book published.

  ‘I’m going to have a bath,’ he announced.

  Elizabeth reflected upon the routine intimacies of marriage: knowing how often another person washed or crapped, smelling their shit in the lavatory or pulling their slimy hair out of the plughole. It was strange that this was where love led you, along with the mortgage and the dinner parties and the conversation at breakfast; stranger yet that you could still feel romantic about the over-familiar body.

  ‘You had one this morning,’ she observed.

  ‘So I’m going to have another one. Any objection?’

  ‘There’s no need to be so tetchy just because I bought a painting. It was my money.’

  ‘So you keep reminding me.’

  ‘Well, be grateful it wasn’t yours.’

  Felix went out of the room and upstairs. She was aware of wanting to make love, to put the day to rights, and knowing he was not in the mood. Was that why she had snapped at him? She knew he was only trying to wash away the evening. She could so easily have said, All right, darling, shall I bring you up a drink? and he might have been charmed out of his sulk like a child
.

  The phone rang and she picked it up but did not speak; she usually let Felix answer it after eleven. A few obscene calls in the past had made her wary. A woman’s voice said, ‘Felix?’

  ‘He’s in the bath. Can I give him a message?’

  ‘No, it’s all right.’ The voice sounded slurred and sad and unmistakably foreign: it was also familiar.

  ‘Who is this?’

  But the person hung up.

  Elizabeth felt a great wave of anger breaking over her. She got up off the sofa, refilled her glass and marched upstairs. Felix lay peacefully in the bath, looking dreamy and vulnerable and somehow unfocused, as if he had taken off his brain along with his clothes.

  ‘Phone call for you,’ Elizabeth said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’ But at that moment she suddenly was. ‘She rang off. Somebody with a foreign accent. She sounded a bit drunk.’

  ‘How weird.’

  Elizabeth closed the lid of the loo and sat on it. She could see Felix being alarmed and trying to bluff it out; she felt she had him at her mercy but that was not a comfortable place for her to be.

  ‘Yes, it was.’

  ‘Must be a wrong number,’ he said without much conviction.

  ‘She knew your name. So it must be someone we know. Or used to know. The weirdest thing is, it sounded like Inge.’

  He echoed her feebly. ‘Inge?’

  ‘That’s what I said.’

  ‘It can’t have been. After all these years? Why would she ring us now?’

  She was aware of wanting him to confess, or else come up with a convincing lie. Anything rather than this messy no-man’s-land in between.

  ‘She wanted to speak to you.’

  ‘Then she’d have hung on. Otherwise what would be the point?’

  ‘Maybe she panicked.’

  ‘What the hell’s that supposed to mean?’

  She did not like seeing him frightened; she did not like having the upper hand.

  ‘Felix, we both know you’re not perfect, but I’ve never had strange women phoning me at midnight before and I don’t like it. I did think you had at least enough elementary common sense to remember what they say about shitting on your own doorstep. If I ever find out you’ve been messing around with Inge, or Helen come to that, only she wouldn’t have you, you’re going to wish you’d never been born. Have I made myself clear?’

  Even as she spoke she wondered if she meant it.

  * * *

  It was Felix ringing her bell. Her head was pounding so much she could hardly stand up, hardly tie the belt of her bathrobe, and there he was on her doorstep, rested and well-dressed and very very angry.

  ‘Oh, Felix,’ she said, conscious of looking her worst but feeling too ill to care. ‘You woke me up.’

  He pushed past her into the house.

  ‘And what the fuck d’you think you were playing at last night?’ he asked with a sort of triumph, as if he had caught her out.

  ‘Oh, God.’

  ‘Is that all you can say?’

  Horribly, bits of the evening began seeping through to her brain.

  ‘I rang up, didn’t I?’

  ‘And landed me right in it.’

  She fought hard against the fear that she might be sick, right there at his feet, perhaps over his shoes.

  ‘I was hoping it was a dream,’ she said. ‘Come in the kitchen, Felix, I must have some coffee, I have a terrible headache.’

  In the kitchen he stood over her while she took aspirin and Alka-Seltzer and made coffee. He was so angry that, ill as she was, she almost wanted to laugh. She was reminded of illustrations in children’s books when the boys were young, of dragons breathing fire and smoke.

  ‘Christ, Inge, don’t you have any sense at all? First you hang around Helen’s show like little orphan Annie, then you ring up my wife at midnight and ask for me.’

  It was usually serious when men said my wife instead of using the name. She had noticed that before.

  ‘I wanted Richard,’ she said, ‘but he was out. I was lonely.’

  ‘Don’t you mean drunk?’ he said severely, as if he had never been drunk himself.

  ‘Drunk and lonely. You were all having such a good time.’ She thought of her last-night self with pity, standing outside the window, gazing in at them enjoying themselves.

  ‘Helen may have been having a good time with everyone slobbering over her, but I had a perfectly dreadful evening if you really want to know and you put the lid on it. Elizabeth knows your voice, for God’s sake. You can’t just hang up like any old wrong number. If you ring up at all, which is bloody stupid, then you have to speak. “Hullo, Elizabeth, this is Inge. I thought I’d give you a call after eight years, see how you are.” Something casual like that. Just the thing at midnight. The way you did it, you might as well send her a telegram: Dear Elizabeth, I am screwing your husband. Just thought you’d like to know. Lots of love, Inge. God Almighty.’

  Halfway through, she tuned out and stopped listening. He didn’t remind her of a dragon any more. He was just an angry man who enjoyed the sound of his own voice.

  ‘I lost my nerve,’ she said when there was silence. ‘D’you want some coffee?’

  ‘No. Look, Inge, I’m sorry you’re depressed but I can’t go on with this. We’re going away on holiday next week and when I get back I don’t think we should see each other any more.’

  The blow took her by surprise. It was painful. She could feel it in her stomach, churning around with the hot coffee and last night’s whisky and wine that she longed to throw up. Perhaps the surprise and the pain showed on her face, because his tone suddenly softened.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  ‘I told you I always spoil everything.’

  Then she saw to her amazement that in spite of her messy woebegone state, or perhaps because of it, he still desired her. There was pure lust in his face; she was never wrong about that. He glanced at his watch.

  ‘How about one more for luck, for auld lang syne? Might be good for your hangover.’

  She said with scorn, ‘Is that what they call a mercy fuck?’ And yet she was seriously tempted. It would be powerful magic and could heal greater wounds than hers.

  * * *

  Sally didn’t see much of Jamal for the next few days. Then he got insistent about making her a curry. In the end she went along just to make him stop and also because she was hungry. ‘It smells wonderful,’ she said. ‘How long did it take you?’

  ‘Oh, only two or three days.’

  ‘You’re sending me up.’

  ‘Oh, all right. Three or four days.’ Then he asked straight out, ‘How did I do the other night?’

  ‘You were wonderful,’ she said truthfully. ‘I couldn’t have faced it without you.’

  ‘He was good-looking.’

  ‘Yes.’ What else was there to say?

  He busied himself with the curry for a moment. ‘I think he looked sad and jealous. Is that what you wanted?’

  ‘Yes.’ But she hadn’t known how painful it would be, like having layers of skin peeled off. She’d thought she was past all that. He had looked just the same. She hadn’t been prepared for that either. He should have looked like a stranger after all she’d been through. Or older. Ugly, alien. Something to make it easier. And not sad. It was unbearable that he’d actually looked sad, as if she’d hurt him. She’d never thought she had the power. Had her face betrayed her? She couldn’t tell.

  ‘Did you love him very much?’ Jamal asked.

  ‘I thought I did at the time.’

  Spring 1986

  When Richard got back to his office he found Inge waiting for him. He couldn’t blame his secretary for letting her in, although she apologised; if he didn’t know how to deal with Inge, why should anyone else? But the sight of her reminded him that months had gone by since he had promised himself to break with her, and promised Helen too, and told Felix and Elizabeth. He had made a vow in front of witnesses, l
ike someone who knew there was no other way he could give up drinks or drugs or go on a diet, who needed to be shamed into it so there was no going back. And still he had been avoiding her so that he wouldn’t have to keep his word. He was angry with her for being there, reminding him of his own weakness, and angry with himself for being weak.

  ‘You might pretend to be pleased,’ she said, almost in a flirtatious way, as if they were really on good terms. She came over to him and hugged him, and he endured the hug without responding until she let go. He couldn’t quite bring himself to push her away. All human affection was valuable when so many went without it; he was reminded of his mother making him eat up his greens because of the starving millions.

  ‘It’s so long since I’ve seen you,’ she said. ‘I thought we could have a drink together. I’ve been shopping and I’m so tired.’

  But he didn’t see any bags. ‘Shopping?’

  ‘Oh, I didn’t buy anything. I couldn’t afford to. But I walked and I looked and now my feet hurt.’ She sat down again and smiled at him. She looked somehow young and vulnerable and mischievous. He remembered how much she had enjoyed shopping, even for the smallest thing, when they were together, how it had always been a treat. Her enthusiasm for the trivial things of life had been very attractive, far exceeding his own, and seeming like a source of vitality.

  ‘Maybe if you got a job you could afford to buy things and you wouldn’t be so bored and lonely.’

  ‘I think there’s something called unemployment. Haven’t you heard of it?’ She gave a big grin, like a naughty child.

  ‘But you haven’t even tried. You speak three languages. You can cook and drive and type and look after children. There must be someone who’d employ you.’ He heard his own voice speaking the dreary litany and it gave him a strange, mad feeling in his head that they had had this conversation so many times, always without effect, yet he still felt compelled to try again. It was like endlessly rerunning a cassette that was meant to change your life.