by Jane Rogers
When Gresl left, the children cried. But then the next au pair was Hélène, whom everybody loved. It was different with Hélène; she was happy to sit in the kitchen chatting to him all evening if she wasn’t going out. She took it for granted he would want to relieve her of the kids when he came in, and while he bathed them and read stories she would put on the radio and clear up the mess in the kitchen. She rarely ate, claiming she had eaten with the kids, but if she wasn’t going out and El was late home, Hélène would sit companionably with Con while he ate, regaling him with the minutiae of the children’s day and lurid tales of the other au pairs in her language class. Some were expected to work terrible hours, 6am till midnight, one even had to get up to bottle-feed a new baby in the night. Some had no days off. (Hélène had all weekend.) Some children were so spoilt you would not believe, screaming and pinching their au pairs, threatening to tell their parents bad things if they weren’t given sweets or privileges. And the fathers – dreadful, predatory men. Two girls had already left their placements after being cornered by the men of the house; one even came into her friend Natalie’s bedroom at night while his wife was sleeping.
She delighted in these scandals and Con knew perfectly well that he was being tested. She was nineteen and devastatingly pretty; he was twenty-nine with a wife who never came home. ‘I see more of Hélène than I do of you,’ he said, once.
‘Lucky you!’ laughed Eleanor. Hélène had no particular boyfriend Con could identify, but calls from her friends both male and female monopolised the phone, and her weekends were full of outings and parties. Gradually Con noticed, though, that she rarely went out on a Wednesday or Thursday, always El’s later nights at the hospital. On those nights she was almost always in with an evening to spare, helping him down a bottle of wine at the kitchen table. She wanted to be an English teacher when she went back to Marseille, and she was constantly asking him for explanations of different phrases and colloquialisms. There came the inevitable evening when they got on to the subject of sex.
‘Natalie says you have more words than us for baiser.’
‘Kissing?’
‘Fucking.’
‘I thought it meant to kiss.’
‘Both. It means both.’
‘Doesn’t that get confusing?’
She began to laugh, it was infectious. ‘Usually you know – which one you are doing.’
‘But can’t one thing lead to another?’
It did, after they had drawn up, without the aid of a dictionary, a list of more than thirty euphemisms which all needed explanation and amplification. Shag. Bonk. Bang. Screw. A spot of how’s-your-father. (This made her howl with joy.) The old in-out (plus discussion of Clockwork Orange, which she had just read). Knee trembler. To know in the Biblical sense. Fornicate. Intercourse. Have relations with. Come together (necessitating a playing of the Beatles song of that title). Lewd act (discounted, after discussion of the range of behaviours to which it could be applied). Give one to. Have it away with. Sleep with. Make the beast with two backs. Mate. Jiggy jiggy. Do the horizontal tango. (She swore he’d made this up. Con couldn’t remember where he’d got it from.) Lie with. Give a good seeing to. A quickie. A ride. A little death. To get your oats. To spend the night with. To go all the way with. To tumble in the hay. To make it with. To poke. To pork. In the sack.
When at last he said, ‘It’s bedtime,’ she giggled and pushed her chair back. He determined to sit, nursing his erection, until she had left the room but she came around the table to him and put her hand on his shoulder, and it was impossible not to reach up to her. All the time he was kissing her and running his hands over her warm body he was calculating. Not in the kitchen, one of the kids might wake up. Not in his and El’s room, that would be too… It would have to be Hélène’s little bed. He pulled away from her.
‘Hélène. I don’t want to be one of those men – you know, pawing the au pair.’
‘Non. Non. Please —’ Her fingers had found his zip.
‘OK, OK. Let’s go to your room.’ Hastily he locked the front door, leaving the key in the lock in case of a surprise return by El; followed Hélène into her room and wedged a chair against the door. He had no condom and wouldn’t risk not using one; after years of married sex it was like being a sixth-former again, frenziedly doing everything but.
In the pounding silence afterwards he felt his heart sink like a stone. She was curling up for sleep: he kissed her lips, nose, eyes, gathered his clothes and went to his own room, where he lay awake all night cursing himself and vowing it wouldn’t happen again.
In the morning he busily behaved as if nothing had happened; in the evening rang from work to say goodnight to the kids and that he’d be late home. Then, blessedly, the weekend. He had caught her reproachful glance a couple of times; knew he was behaving like a shit. On Monday night when the kids were in bed and Hélène was silent in her room, he knocked on her door.
‘Oui? Entre.’
‘No, I won’t, Hélène. You come out to the kitchen, would you? We need to talk.’ It embarrassed him to offer his explanations; her age, his position as her employer, the betrayal of El’s trust on both their parts, etc., because she simply smiled.
‘It’s OK. I know all that. It’s just a bit of fun, no? I don’t think you exploit me. I don’t think you’ll leave your wife. But it feels good. You don’t think so?’
‘It feels wonderful. But it will lead to trouble, Hélène. Better not.’
‘OK.’ She raised her hands in an ‘I will leave it alone’ gesture. ‘OK. Don’t worry about it. Now I must finish getting ready, I am going out for a drink.’
He brooded for a week before buying some condoms just in case. They used them fairly quickly. But all the while he was enjoying it, he was worried sick. Despising himself for a coward, he determined to get El to ask Hélène to leave, dropping just enough of the truth into the conversation to make it plausible – Hélène was flirting with him, he said, she was making him uncomfortable. He was afraid El would laugh it off, but she agreed with surprising ease. Then it turned out she had news of her own.
She was pregnant.
‘How late are you?’
‘Well, I thought I was late because I was overtired, run down, so I just didn’t think of it for ages —’
‘How late are you?’
‘About two months.’
‘So it’s due in July?’
‘Yes.’
Con was consumed by guilt. Here was his overworked, exhausted wife, carrying his child – from a sexual encounter he couldn’t even remember (and he did, they both did, for both Paul and Megan; had pieced together backwards from the day of knowing she was pregnant, the times and ways they’d done it, and isolated the most likely, the most memorable) – while he had spent the last three months oblivious, shagging a young girl under his and Eleanor’s roof, with their children sleeping sweetly in the next room. Hélène left without a fuss. ‘It’s a shame,’ said El. ‘She was much nicer than that Austrian girl. Let’s see if we can get another French one.’
‘Please,’ said Con. ‘Can we just try for a while without?’ Astonishingly, Eleanor agreed.
Now he knows his guilt blinded him. Now he knows there was another story. When did Cara become his favourite? Maybe it began right then, when he heard of her presence in El’s womb, and thought with shame of her unnoticed conception, of her ignored and uncelebrated first two months in utero, of his distraction from her mother’s body.
Chapter 7
By 11pm El is convinced she should have gone to Munich with Cara. A policeman called in the late afternoon and took some details, then kindly explained that tracing someone who is overseas is not easy. The phone has been ringing all evening, as people pick up and respond to Paul’s messages, and as the circle of those who know of Con’s absence grows. Some make suggestions or reveal confidences; some want to help, but what is there
to do? Paul has driven over to Sheffield and brought Daniel back, and gone away again himself. There seems to be some consensus among the children that El is not to be left alone. But there’s nothing for Dan to do; she sends him out to choose some videos for the evening, and when he’s hooked into the first, excuses herself and goes to Con’s study.
Cara has not phoned. The address of her hotel is pinned to the noticeboard but they’re one hour ahead, it’s too late to phone her now. El is afraid that she has allowed Cara to enter something dangerous; a black hole, which has already swallowed Con and might easily devour Cara too. Why did she let her go alone? She forces herself to look at a map of Germany. Munich is real. It is a place on dry land, linked by roads and rails to the other cities of Germany, less dangerous probably than Manchester. Her fear is irrational. She is not an irrational person. But now she’s experiencing physical unease, looseness in the bowels, pressure in the head reminiscent of trying to solve an intellectual problem, for example pulling together all the threads in the concluding paragraph of a paper. But she knows that kind of pressure can be relieved by working on through it: it is pressure which dictates its own release. Whereas the pressure of anxiety, now, is empty – like a balloon blown up inside her head, squashing all other thoughts and knowledge to the sides, and yet containing nothing but dread. She’s reminded of something Con once said, about how he felt when he was in America. He claimed he had been slightly short of breath all the time – as if he couldn’t draw a full deep lungful of oxygen, as if he was always a little suffocated. ‘Haven’t you ever felt like that?’
El thought he was neurotic. ‘No. I’ve felt scared – when I hitched a ride with the guy who child-locked me in, for example, but that’s different, it’s the flight response, isn’t it – speeded-up heartbeat, increased rate of breathing —’
‘Yes, I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about continuous low-grade anxiety, the kind that dogs you like a smell, so you get used to it, apart from when you’re trying to sleep.’
‘But what was it about?’
‘The kids. I can’t believe you’ve never felt that. When you go away to a conference or something – when you’re on a plane heading away from the children – you’ve never had that awful nagging anxiety about them?’
‘Of course not. I’m always leaving them in safe hands.’
‘I don’t doubt that your hands are safe. It’s not about me thinking you won’t look after them well – it’s not rational, it’s just anxiety engendered by being far away from them. It’s not uncommon. Other people feel it too.’
Eleanor loves going away: strapping herself into her plane seat and waiting for it to lift her from the earth; breaking through clouds and looking down on their rolling whiteness; the sensation of soaring, held back by nothing – she loves that. Her thoughts run ahead to her paper, the city she is visiting, the colleagues she will meet, the excitement and energy of it drawing her like a magnet. It is rare for her to think of the children at all until she is on her way home again.
‘Is this symptomatic of my inadequacy as a mother?’
‘No, my dear. The opposite, I should think. You’ve read as much cod psychology as me. Don’t a parent’s fears transmit themselves to the child and become internalised threats to its confidence?’
‘So selfishness is OK?’
‘Couldn’t needless anxiety be construed as just as selfish as forgetfulness?’ She remembers laughing at him then, and both of them laughing together; they could make anything mean anything else, they were not restricted to the petty definitions everyone else was trammelled by.
But now she recognises that she is anxious in the way he described. It wouldn’t be irrational if it was about Con, because something must have happened to him. But it is irrational about Cara, and the surprising point is that being able to identify it as irrational does not in any way help to diminish it. Con began using sleeping tablets while he was in America. El saw it as evidence of weakness. Now she goes to the bathroom cupboard to find them. There is a full new packet; he’s got them on prescription and the date of issue is only two weeks ago. If you were planning to run away, wouldn’t you take your new sleeping tablets? She pops one through the silver foil and gulps at some water. She doesn’t know any longer whether it is better or worse if he hasn’t planned it. It opens the door to more dangerous and dramatic scenarios – injury, kidnap, act of God – but it does remove perhaps the worst, that he might have cold-bloodedly planned and engineered this disappearance as the culmination of a whole history of lies and double-dealings.
The woman, Mad, Con has had a relationship with her. That much is obvious. But it is also obvious that he had finished with her. And he was alarmed by the nastiness of her threats, that’s why he’s kept the emails. As evidence. So the last thing he would do is to walk into a situation of danger with her. He has not run away with her, El can’t believe that. And the woman – hateful though she seems – is hardly likely to have murdered him. El is mentally filing the MAD emails under ‘Red Herring’. She has emailed [email protected] from her own computer, not wanting to leave any traces on Con’s. She settled on a simple Do you know where Conrad is? But the email bounced back within minutes, address unknown. She does not believe Mad is anything to do with Con’s disappearance. But what it does show is that he has had at least one other relationship, while El has been sailing happily and obliviously along. Having an affair of her own, to be sure. But not suspecting him. And the feeling it gives her is of grief and panic. How could she have drifted so far from him?
The noise from Dan’s TV niggles in the background, but better to leave it; nothing is worse than Dan’s awkward silence and slightly belligerent confusion over how to behave. She wishes the children would leave her alone, just leave her to get on with it. At least Megan has a life she can’t leave, performances every night, at least there is one who won’t come mithering.
El picks up a pen and starts a list:
1. tel Cara.
And stops, pen poised. What should she do tomorrow? Louis has offered to look after the visiting American, Michael, and she’s agreed. Which means she can’t go into work, she’d have to spend the whole day avoiding them. She can’t go into work anyway because everyone will be asking about Con… but what can she do at home? Work on the stem cell book? Try to find Con? But how? She should go to bed, she’s stupefied by lack of sleep.
The ring of her mobile makes her jump. Louis. ‘Can you talk?’
‘Yes – yes, I’m in Con’s office.’
‘Any news?’
‘No. I told you Cara’s gone to Munich?’
‘On her own?’
‘Yes. I’m thinking I should have gone with her —’
‘If there’s any news it’ll come to you at home.’
‘I guess so.’
‘What do you think has…?’
‘I don’t know. Louis, I can’t imagine.’
He is silent.
‘You’re sure you’re OK about Michael tomorrow?’
‘Of course. Are the kids there?’
‘Dan. Paul was, he’s coming back tomorrow morning.’
‘Anything you want me to do?’
‘I —’ There is something in his tone that checks her. A formality, a politeness. He would ask a distant colleague or friend in that way, to exhibit necessary human decency. But what can she ask him to do anyway? She has enough trouble finding something for herself to do. There’s a pause. He clears his throat.
‘D’you want to meet?’ He doesn’t sound enthusiastic.
‘I don’t know. Won’t you be busy with Michael?’
‘Tomorrow, after work. I’ll ring you as I’m leaving.’
‘Is that OK? Meet at the Hind?’
‘Sure. I’ll have to get home for dinner, though. Susan —’
‘Yeh. It’s OK. See you then.’ She disconnects before she can hear how h
e signs off, vividly and physically conscious of his mood, his wariness. He will have rung her from the park opposite his house; he takes the dog out for a pee last thing.
Why should she mind? Wariness is built into the thing, on both sides. It has only ever worked because they are both equally wary. Never making the impetuous phone call, never asking too much, she thinks. Clearly she is in danger now, of asking too much.
She hears the sitting room door open and Dan emerge. She goes out to him. ‘Good film?’
‘OK.’
‘You going to bed now, Dan?’
He looks at her and blinks. ‘Are you going to bed?’
‘Yes, it’s nearly midnight. Want a milky drink?’
He shakes his head and sets off up the stairs, stopping at the fourth. ‘Dad —’
‘No news yet. I’ll tell you when there is.’
He stands there a bit longer, computing, then moves on up without acknowledging her further. El switches off the lights and follows him; her head is aching and her eyes are heavy. Of course: she took that sleeping tablet, must be more than an hour ago now, no wonder she’s fuzzy.
El wakes at 6.30, clear and sharp after a deep sleep. She has a quick shower and takes a cup of tea straight to her office, mentally flicking through the items clamouring for her attention. She has a hunch Con may turn up today, and be rather irritated by all the fuss. But even if he doesn’t – nothing to be done there beyond ringing Cara. The April conference: there are enough speakers committed now for her to arrange them in some sort of order and consider where the gaps are; and people must be invited for those gaps as soon as possible – it’s only two months away. She must pursue funding for the Africans. Cape Town is the only African university willing to pay their delegates’ fares. She can find a way of fudging accommodation costs at this end, but fares from Lusaka, Nairobi and Lagos – who can she get to sponsor them? Might the British Council? There must be no drug company connections. Think laterally, move outside medicine, what charities promote exchange of knowledge and understanding between First and Third Worlds? She could do with £15,000, or a bit more, realistically, then it would cover accommodation as well. Who stands to gain from this? She jots down her publishers, and makes a note to list all the main speakers’ publishers.