‘Well, Anna Karenina didn’t, nor Madame Bovary, and that’s good enough for me.’
‘They were women,’ she said. ‘They were stupid enough to take it seriously.’
‘So does my hero. You can’t get much more serious that suicide. He’s sensitive. He’s the new man, in touch with his feelings.’
‘Don’t tell me any more.’
‘Why not?’
Oh, she must get a grip on herself. ‘Or you may not want to write it.’
‘You know me so well.’ But he saw the tears in her eyes. ‘What’s the matter?’
She shook her head. ‘Nothing. I just… don’t want to go home. It’s been so perfect. I like having you all to myself.’
‘Silly old thing.’ He held out his arms. ‘Come here.’
* * *
Felix returning from holiday was like a child on its birthday, excited at first then complaining there wasn’t enough post. She thought he was childish too in the way that he always wanted to go away and then always wanted to come back, whereas she, all sober and grown up, usually wanted to do neither, but merely to stay where she was. His exuberance touched her.
‘It’s almost a reason for going,’ he said, ‘just to get lots of letters all at once. And one day amongst them there will be –’ he made trumpet noises – ‘the summons from Hollywood. Come and write scripts for us. Name your price. Sell your soul for a fistful of dollars. What a bargain that would be.’
‘And this time…?’ she said, playing along.
‘Guess they missed the post again. All I’ve got is a whole stack of bills. Plus an invitation to talk to a Writers’ Circle on how to write a thriller – as if I knew, and if I did, why should I tell them? An American student begging for help with her Ph.D. thesis on Crime Writing as a Meaningful Adjunct to Existential Philosophy – well, she may be pretty. And a card from the library that my compact discs are three months overdue.’
‘You’re in good form this morning.’ She served breakfast, waiting on him, thinking what a good bargain it was, that she liked doing it and he liked accepting it.
‘Oh Lizzie, I keep forgetting and then I have the pure rapture of remembering, that I’ve actually finished the book. That bastard Tony Blythe has gone for ever. I’m a free man. It’s yo ho ho and eyes down looking for the great novel again. We can make our fortunes or we can grow old together in romantic poverty. What d’you say? Double or quits?’
How could anybody not appreciate someone with such a capacity for happiness? ‘I love you,’ she said.
‘That’s just as well because I simply adore you. Or I might be the new Noel Coward. How about that? That’s better than the old Felix Cramer any day. Buy a new dressing-gown and knock out half a dozen plays over the weekend.’
She kissed him. ‘And I think you have jet lag.’
* * *
Marion let her in. Kind, understanding, old-fashioned Marion, whom Helen suddenly found she liked, said of course Helen could talk to Richard and she’d take his calls. Richard himself looked less than delighted when Helen walked into his office unannounced and told him that. He went on ostentatiously pretending to write a probation report as if she wasn’t there.
‘But what am I supposed to do?’ Helen said. ‘You hang up when I phone, I don’t know where you’re living, you look terrible… I’m worried about you. I miss you.’
He looked very tired and he had shaved badly. He had a scruffy, pathetic look, almost like someone sleeping rough. She was annoyed with him for looking like that, for doing that to himself, and she also wanted to take him home and put him to rights.
‘I find that hard to believe,’ he said without looking up, a coldly controlled voice that didn’t match his appearance. ‘I’d have thought you were so used to acting independently you’d hardly notice I’ve gone.’
‘God, you can be pompous.’ She always forgot that because they quarrelled so seldom. She wanted to kill him when he was pompous.
‘Then you’re better off without me, aren’t you?’
She tried to calm herself with breathing.
‘Inge came to see me,’ she said, thinking that might arouse a little humanity. ‘She wanted to gloat. God, she was weird. High as a kite.’
No reaction.
‘All right,’ she said, giving in, ‘I did something serious without telling you and I’m sorry.’ How many more times, for God’s sake, did he want her to say it?
‘Sorry you did it or sorry I found out?’
‘I just can’t believe that cancels out the last ten years.’
‘Try harder.’
She had come to make peace and instead he was making her angry. Out it all came. ‘All right, you wish I’d told you, but what if I had? Abortion’s out. Adoption’s out. So what do we do? Bring up Felix’s child? Have Felix drop in to pat it on the head? Have Elizabeth as a sort of auntie? Have Sally playing at motherhood in the long vac? Make up a tale about some missing boyfriend? You tell me, Richard, what would you have done?’
Now he looked up. ‘I wouldn’t have forced my daughter to kill her baby.’
Like a politician he still hadn’t answered her question. She said, ‘If Sally’d really wanted that baby she could’ve told you she was pregnant.’
‘Sally does whatever you tell her, we both know that.’
‘She came to me for help and I helped her.’
‘You made her have an abortion because you hate Felix, and bringing up a baby might have stopped you doing a few paintings. Sally’s baby or my baby. Nothing must be allowed to get in the way of your work.’
So that was it. She should have known, of course; and perhaps on some level she had known. ‘Ah, that’s what it’s about. You’ve never forgiven me for not getting pregnant by you. This isn’t about Sally at all.’
‘It’s about all of us.’ He was looking at her now but not really seeing her, she felt, as if his anger created a fog between them, or as if she had developed a stranger’s face. ‘Don’t you understand anything? How can you and I be married if you go on behaving as if you were still single? No, not even that, still married to Carey. You can tell him what’s going on but you can’t tell me.’
‘Have you been talking to Sally?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘You didn’t upset her, did you?’ She didn’t like to think of him going to Sally in this mood.
‘Oh, I shouted a bit and made a fool of myself. She was in bed with that Indian boy at the time so maybe she’ll get pregnant again. It wouldn’t surprise me if she does it just to rebel against you.’
‘That’s sick.’
‘No, it makes perfect sense, you’ve got her so brainwashed. That’s probably why she chose Felix, just to annoy you.’
‘I don’t want any more of your half-baked psychology.’ She found she was actually tempted to hit him. It was all escalating dreadfully, a real slanging match, just what she had meant to avoid.
‘Then get out of my office.’
‘God, I came here to ask you to come home and all we do is have another row. Why is all this my fault? Isn’t Felix to blame for anything?’
‘I’m not married to him.’
‘You might as well be.’ Now it all came spewing out. She was shouting; screaming almost. Everyone in the office would hear but she didn’t care. ‘As long as I’ve known you I’ve heard nothing but how wonderful Felix is, how splendidly romantic, such a free spirit, screwing everything that moves and making his wife put up with it, isn’t he clever, isn’t he lucky, doing all the things you maybe wish you could but you haven’t the guts, and now this happens and it’s all my fault. Well, just you try thinking that maybe some of it’s his fault and maybe some of it’s your fault, bringing him into my home…’ She was shaking with rage but she wanted to cry and she wanted him to put his arms round her.
'Yes, it is your home, isn’t it?’ he said. He looked stricken: she had managed to hurt him. ‘I left my wife and children for you, I wanted a child with you, I thought of Sally as m
y own daughter, but really I’ve just been a lodger all these years. Not even a very good lodger. I couldn’t pay enough rent.’
* * *
Felix was meeting Natasha for lunch and his mood lasted through the morning spent at the flat putting new pages on disk. When he arrived at the Groucho Club he was still feeling like Tigger, full of bounce. The elation that came from finishing the book and the sense of well-being that a suntan always gave him combined to make the events of last year recede like a distant bad dream. Now all he needed was a new woman and his happiness would be complete.
Natasha was sitting in a deep armchair in a corner near the bar. He embraced her and they kissed the air beside each other’s cheeks. She smelt deliciously expensive. ‘That’s quite a colour,’ she said, looking him over appreciatively.
Felix sat down beside her. 'We do our best. Slaving over a hot typewriter in the broiling sun. Is there no limit to the sacrifice this man will make for his art?’ A waitress arrived and he ordered a dry Martini because it always felt decadent at lunchtime. Natasha’s glass looked disgustingly healthy, full of ice and lemon and fizzy water. ‘I see you’re still knocking back the Perrier,’ he said. ‘Can’t you do better than that on ten per cent of me?’
‘I got kinda used to it on that diet,’ she said in her soft mid-Atlantic accent that she had kept or cultivated. He liked the fact that she was steely inside but soft-spoken, like Jackie Kennedy or Nancy Reagan; he trusted her to get her own way and therefore the best for him. In all their years together he had never attempted to make love to her. It would have been trespassing on their professional relationship, like importuning a doctor or a hairdresser or an accountant, all of whom could be difficult to replace. Besides, he had always had the feeling that he might bruise himself on her bones.
‘But I don’t want the thinnest agent in London.’ He knew she liked to be teased about this, seeing it as an achievement. As a little girl (not that he could imagine she had ever been a little girl unless she had run a protection racket in the playground) she had probably idolised Wallis Simpson. ‘Give me women about me that are fat. Well, decently voluptuous anyway.’
‘No need to ask,’ she said, smiling at him and displaying the alarmingly perfect teeth that all Americans seemed to regard as mandatory.
‘Finished.’
‘Thank God for that.’
‘Maybe this time we could have an auction.’
‘Why not? Have some fun.’
They talked shop for a while, moving on from the last of Tony Blythe to the new novel.
‘I’d like to find out what I’m worth.’
‘But you don’t really want to move?’
‘No, but it wouldn’t hurt to frighten them a little. This could be the big one.’
‘It might be worth moving in the States,’ Natasha said. ‘They haven’t promoted you too well lately and you could do with a hard sell. If they think they’re getting another Heartbreak Merchant.'
‘Oh, bigger than that.’ God, he hoped he was right.
She looked pleased. ‘How long will you need?’
‘Well, it’s been cooking for a while, so I might have a first draft ready in six months, and the final version, well, maybe by Christmas. If I’m lucky. With a following wind.’ He even caught himself crossing his fingers like a schoolboy.
‘That’d be great. Then it could come out next autumn. Do you have a title or is that still under wraps?’
‘I’m not sure. At first I called it And Then There was Lisa. But now that feels a bit soft. Now I’m thinking more of Anatomy of a Love Affair.’ Elation made him want to be indiscreet but even as he spoke he wondered if it was unlucky to reveal so much.
‘I like it,’ Natasha said. ‘I like it very much.’
* * *
Helen looked wary, uneasy, as if now she was here in Elizabeth’s office she wished she hadn’t come. Elizabeth thought she was thinner than ever, pale and tired; she wondered what was wrong. ‘It’s lovely to see you,’ she said, giving Helen a hug.
‘I’m sure I’m interrupting something important,’ Helen said, accepting the hug but not returning it.
‘Rubbish, I’m just catching up after the holiday.’
‘Oh yes, was it wonderful?’ She sounded as though her mind were elsewhere, almost as if she had forgotten Elizabeth had been away.
‘Yes, it was,’ Elizabeth said rather emphatically. ‘Felix is always blissful on holiday. Food and wine, sun and sex, work and talk. All the things he likes best. And I have him all to myself. It was a real treat.’
‘You’re very brown,’ Helen said, sounding sour and distracted.
‘Yes, I don’t believe all this stuff about skin cancer, it’s like dieting. Doctors trying to take away our few remaining pleasures.’ She smiled at her small joke but Helen didn’t respond. ‘Are you all right? You sounded very odd on the phone.’
Helen went and stood by the window, looking out for a moment, then turned to face Elizabeth again. ‘Richard’s left me,’ she said almost defiantly.
Elizabeth could feel herself looking shocked and disbelieving. It seemed impossible to accept, like news of sudden death.
‘I know,’ Helen said ironically. ‘We were such a happy couple. Right.’
‘God, what a shock,’ said Elizabeth, feeling inadequate and foolish.
‘Yes.’ Helen looked vaguely round the room as if searching for something. ‘I do wish I hadn’t given up smoking.’
‘Have a drink?’
‘Yes please.’
‘White wine be all right?’
‘Anything. Turps. Meths, anything.’ She didn’t smile.
Elizabeth got a bottle out of her office fridge. Authors always wanted a drink. If there was such a thing as a teetotal author, she had never met one. ‘What happened?’
‘I’m sorry, I can’t really talk about it. We just had an incredible row and he walked out.’
‘I can’t take it in.’
‘Neither can I really, only I’ve had more time than you.’
Elizabeth could feel her straining to leave. She was drinking fast and watching the door, like an animal that fears it may be trapped if it stays too long. This made her long to keep Helen there, to get her to talk. It was a chance to be helpful, a rare chance, after all the times she had been the one with problems and Helen the sympathetic, faintly impatient listener. She wanted to redress the balance, to make the friendship more equal.
‘I must go,’ said Helen, putting down her glass.
‘But you’ve only just got here. Look, I have to see an author later on but that won’t take long. We could have supper together.’
Helen was shaking her head before Elizabeth had stopped speaking. Elizabeth felt resentful at being dismissed without being heard but she understood Helen’s pride and how she must hate being in trouble.
‘No, really,’ Helen said. ‘Thanks all the same. I’m not good company and I’d rather get home. I keep thinking Richard might turn up and I’d like to be there.’ But she still hovered, undecided, in the middle of the room. ‘He came round one day when I was at the studio and took some clothes. I might as well have been at home, I can’t work. I can’t do anything.’
‘I’m just worried about you. I’d like to help.’ Elizabeth tried not to sound too pressing.
‘I know, I’m hard to help. That’s what Magdalen always says.’
‘If you’d only tell me what’s happened…’
‘I just did something unforgivable, that’s all, and he won’t forgive me.’ She shrugged as if it wasn’t important. ‘You’ve been very good.’
‘But I haven’t done anything,’ Elizabeth said, frustrated. She had felt so well after the holiday, brown and relaxed and filled up with Felix, and now it was as if Helen was draining the well-being out of her.
‘It was nice to see you. Nice to talk. I don’t know where he’s living or anything. I never thought this could happen.’ She shook her head distractedly. ‘I didn’t know I’d miss him so much. I
used to be good at living alone. Only I suppose I wasn’t alone really, I had Sally.’
Suddenly it came to Elizabeth what must have happened. ‘Have you been having an affair?’
Helen looked surprised. ‘No. Nothing like that.’
‘Then I can only think you’ve had an abortion or been sterilised or both. Richard’s always wanted more children, hasn’t he?’
‘Please don’t keep guessing,’ Helen said, sounding cross. ‘It’s very embarrassing.’
‘Sorry. I just can’t help being curious. And I thought maybe I could help if I knew a bit more.’
‘Nobody can help.’ Helen moved nearer the door. ‘The details aren’t important anyway but they’re very personal. I took a decision without consulting Richard. I think I was right and he thinks I was wrong. That’s all there is to it.’ Elizabeth felt excluded. How could she help if Helen wouldn’t tell her any more, and why was Helen here in her office if she didn’t want to talk? ‘But he’ll come round,’ she said. ‘He must. He’ll have to forgive you eventually.’
‘Will he? That’s what I keep telling myself but I wonder. I’m seeing another side of him now. Or maybe I always knew it was there and that’s why I didn’t tell him the truth. It’s not easy living with a good person. They’re implacable.’ Elizabeth had never thought of Richard like that. She wondered how far Helen’s troubles were of her own making. What could possibly be serious enough to make Richard leave her and why didn’t she want to talk about it?
‘I wouldn’t know,’ she said. ‘Felix is pretty easy going. So long as he gets his own way, I mean. He’s self-indulgent but he indulges me too.’
‘I never thought I’d envy you but right now I do.’
‘Oh?’ Elizabeth wasn’t sure how to take that.
‘Yes. Going home to someone who’ll never leave you, never condemn you, no matter what you do, because they haven’t a leg to stand on. That must be very nice. Very comfortable.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t put it quite like that,’ Elizabeth said, offended, suddenly wishing she hadn’t told Helen quite so much about Felix. ‘We do love each other.’
A Sense of Guilt Page 32