The Kiss

by Joan Lingard

  She might be on call, he tells himself, at the bedside of a sick child. She might be at the French Institute making conversation about holidays spent in converted farmhouses in the valleys of the Lot and the Dordogne. She might be at the cinema watching a French film. But Sophie is not at home either and she should be, doing her homework. Her Standard Grade exams are coming up. Is she doing any work for them? He asked Rachel the last time they talked – there was no point in asking Sophie – and she confessed, not an awful lot. But how do you make someone who doesn’t want to work work? How do you keep a fifteen-year-old in the house unless you tie her up or lock her in her room and if you were to do that she would probably climb down the drainpipe. And then she might run away from home. She might go on the streets, fall in with a crowd of druggies. His imagination is running away with itself, as his mother used to tell him when he exaggerated. Just like your da, she’d tell him. Pat Aherne was known for his stories. A little embroidery here and there doesn’t do a pick of harm, he’d say; it adds a bit of spice. Cormac is sorry Sophie hasn’t had the chance to know her grandfather; he thinks she would have enjoyed his crack.

  Rachel thinks Sophie might need to learn a lesson. If she fails her exams, so be it. Sophie doesn’t like to fail; she has always been competitive, so that might bring her to her senses. On the other hand, her father thinks that if she does miserably badly at her Standards she might leave school and get work chopping vegetables in Henderson’s kitchen and describe it as honest toil, which it may be, but he wants his daughter to live up to herself, to realise her potential, though he knows he would be on rocky ground, given his own situation, if he were to make much of that.

  It would help if her mother was in the house, encouraging her, listening to her French verbs. What is Rachel up to? She has absolutely refused to tell him with whom she was having an affair. Was? Is she still? She finds it easy to keep secrets, whereas he does not. He suspects an old boyfriend of hers who reappeared in Edinburgh after years spent in the steamy jungles of Guatemala; one of the doctors in the practice who is a bachelor; the man who used to live next door to them and who always referred to her as ‘your charming wife’ whenever Cormac talked to him. No, he thinks he can rule the last one out; she can’t be that gormless. And maybe the unmarried doctor might not be interested in women at all. There don’t seem to be too many choices left and the one from the jungle went back there, he seems to recall. He wishes he had paid more attention when Rachel talked about him.

  After she’d told him about her affair he found it difficult to touch her and when he did he thought of the other, unknown man touching her. And perhaps she thought of him too. He became obsessed by thoughts of that other man, all the more so, he did not doubt, because he had so little else to fill his imagination, apart from his own predicament. It was the waiting that got to him most of all, wakening each morning to wonder if they would come for him today. He almost welcomed this further obsession, in that it crowded out the other for periods of time. His mind bounced between Clarinda Bain and his wife’s ex-lover. Ex? Whenever the phone rang he would run halfway down the stairs and listen but he never heard anything of significance. Suspicions, though, continued to buzz in his head like an angry posse of flies, and still do. The unspoken suspicions on both sides added to the tension in the house. They were both as taut as piano wire. They snapped at each other over trivialities and then apologised too quickly, like strangers who have collided in the street.

  Rachel, though, did her best to see him through this terrible time. A kindly woman, she cared about her patients, and him, too. That was one thing he did not doubt. She said, ‘It will all pass, Cormac, you’ll see, and then everything will settle down again. I’ll always stand by you. And don’t mention Tammy Wynette!’ She smiled, trying to lighten the moment.

  He had little faith in the idea of everything settling down. After a cyclone passed there was bound to be debris left behind.

  ‘I believe in you,’ she said, but could he believe that she did? He was racked by disbelief.

  He was taken into the police station again for questioning and then released. But came the day that the Procurator Fiscal decided he had a case to answer. He was summoned back to the police station where he was formally charged with sexual harassment of a minor and warned that anything he might say could be taken down and given in evidence against him. He had no wish to say anything, once he had acknowledged that he was Cormac Patrick Aherne and that he lived at a certain address. He felt no surprise as he stood stiffly there, listening to the wooden police voice. All was going as he had imagined. It was Rachel who had been optimistic, or had purported to be, who had said, ‘They’ll drop it, you’ll see. They haven’t a leg to stand on.’ But they obviously thought that the ground was firm beneath their feet, though they appeared not to regard him as a menace to the community at large for they allowed him bail. Rachel, who had accompanied him to the station, prepared to leave to raise the bail money from her father.

  ‘Is there no other way?’ he muttered. It seemed that his humiliation would be without limit.

  ‘None. You know we haven’t anything to speak of in the bank.’ They lived, like most people, up to the limits of their earning power, sometimes running just a little into the red.

  ‘I won’t be long,’ said Rachel and left.

  What if they wouldn’t give it to her? But they would; for her sake, not his.

  His lawyer was a pal of her father, reputed to be one of Edinburgh’s best. He said, ‘Don’t worry, Cormac, old chap. We’ll squash Miss Clarinda Bain’s testimony in court. Is there anything you know about her – or could you suggest anyone who might know anything – that would help?’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Well, to be blunt – and in a situation like this one can only be blunt – something that would cast aspersions on her character. Sexual, preferably.’

  ‘You mean, throw dirt at her? Make her out to be some sort of trollop?’ That was a word from his mother’s vocabulary! It had slipped out from the recesses of his mind.

  ‘And what do you think she’s making you out to be? A seducer of young girls! Look, Cormac, it’s either you or her the court is going to believe. If you’re found not guilty all that will happen to her is that she’ll go away with her tail between her legs and think twice before making allegations in future. But if you are found guilty you will go to prison. And what do you think that would do to Rachel and the children? Lovely woman, Rachel. Bright, too. Head girl at her school and all that. Did brilliantly at university. She could have become a consultant instead of a GP but having children did rather scupper that, didn’t it? You’re a lucky man, Cormac.’ Cormac had always been aware that Rachel’s parents and their friends had thought she could have done better for herself.

  Afterwards, Rachel drove him home and they stayed for a few moments in the car before going into the house.

  ‘I take it that you never touched her?’ she said. ‘Or gave her any encouragement?’

  He paused before he answered. ‘Not consciously, at any rate.’ It was the best that he could do.

  She pursed her lips then swung open her door and stepped out onto the pavement.

  ‘Did she say I could come?’ Davy puts his head round the door.

  ‘She’s not in, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Not in?’ Davy’s voice begins to waver again.

  ‘Come on, lad, let’s go out and paint the town pink!’

  They go to Henderson’s Salad Bar where a man is tinkling on the piano and no one is listening. How demoralising, thinks Cormac, whose own morale sags when a customer eats but a couple of bites out of one of his sandwiches and trashes the rest in the outside bin. But perhaps the pianist does not care about approbation; his only need might be to play. Davy eats trifle and Cormac drinks red wine and broods. Rachel is entitled to go out with whom she pleases, he tells himself. He has no rights over her. They have separated. Parted. He feels far apart from her yet he cannot let her go.

  �
�Hello, Cormac.’

  He feels a shadow over him and looks up to see Clarinda Bain looking down at him. Can she be following him? She is with another girl tonight, one that he vaguely recognises, and they are carrying trays of salad aloft.

  She rests her tray on the corner of his table. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She looks at Davy. ‘Is this your son?’

  He has to acknowledge Davy to her. Davy gives her a blank stare – he mercifully has never heard of Clarinda Bain – and asks if he can get himself another glass of orange juice. Cormac automatically gives him the money and he goes off to the counter.

  ‘I’m sorry about everything, you know,’ says Clarinda.

  ‘You’re spilling your salad.’ Coleslaw is running over from the edge of her plate into the tray.

  ‘Are you coming, Clarrie?’ her friend calls over.

  ‘Better go,’ he says.

  His hand shakes as he raises his glass to his mouth. He would have liked to have thrown the wine over her but he would not have been able to summon the energy had he tried.

  Next day, when he is clearing up in the shop, before going to fetch Davy, she comes in. He goes on washing the floor.

  ‘Won’t you talk to me, Cormac?’

  ‘Get lost, Clarinda, please!’

  ‘What does it all matter now?’

  ‘Now that I’m no longer a teacher and you’re no longer my pupil? And now that I’m no longer married.’

  ‘I heard you’d left your wife.’

  ‘I didn’t leave her. We left each other, by mutual consent. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ll get on with my work.’ He rinses the mop in the bucket and squeezes out the water as tightly as he can. The muscles in his upper arm bulge. ‘I’m trying to wash the mayonnaise and mustard off the floor so that my customers won’t slip and fall on their rear ends when they come in the door tomorrow.’

  ‘It’s terrible that someone like you should be making sandwiches!’

  ‘I’d rather do it than stand on a corner and sell The Big Issue.’ He makes a wide sweep near her feet and she has to jump back.

  ‘Cormac, why don’t you go back to your sculpting?’

  ‘Do you think that would feed me and my son? Anyway, it’s finished. It’s gone dead on me. Objects look dead. I’m opting for the living now. That’s why I’m into feeding them, seeing them go out the door and return the next day smacking their lips, satisfied, repeat customers. When you’re an artist you don’t have as many satisfied customers, certainly not on a daily basis. You spend days, weeks, months, soldiering on, alone, wondering if you’re mental to carry on.’

  ‘It’s not to do with customers,’ she cries and he thinks she might be about to stamp her foot. ‘It’s not a business proposition.’

  She has listened well to his lectures, too well, for now she can throw his words back in his face. She was a good student, one of the best he ever had.

  ‘Look,’ he says, ‘I’m running late. I have to be at my son’s school on time so, for God’s sake, Clarinda, get out of my bloody way!’

  On the Saturday of their stay in Paris they went to the Marché aux Puces. Today, art was out, commerce was in. The pupils were excited on the long Métro ride out to Clignancourt and were counting their money and talking about bargains.

  ‘Be careful you don’t get taken for a ride,’ warned Cormac. ‘The place is full of chancers, as well as pickpockets.’

  He sat beside one of the boys and they talked football. He thought he might have been pushing art too much; now was the time for a little leavening. He knew himself that there was only so much one could look at at a time; after that point was passed nothing much was retained. He had yet to visit the Louvre successfully. But the Rodin Museum now, that was different. He could go back time after time, and on this trip had gone three times. Not all the pupils had come with him. Clarinda Bain was the only one who had come every time.

  The flea market was thronged with touts and tourists as well as natives.

  ‘It won’t be possible for us all to stay together in this crush,’ said Alec. He split them into small groups of three and four, appointing the most responsible in each as leader, and told them to return to the starting point afterwards. He was an excellent organiser.

  Cormac took his small squad into the heart of the market. They trawled through rails of leather coats and cheap jeans and T-shirts and poked in boxes of old postcards and sepia-coloured photographs and tangled jewellery and ceramic door knobs and moth-eaten feather boas. They bought a few odds and ends, not much. They didn’t have much money left by this stage; there was only one more day to go after this, a fact they were bemoaning already. Cormac had been amazed how much money some of the students had had at the start. Clarinda had had less than most; he got the impression that she and her mother were quite hard up. Mrs Bain worked part-time in an antique shop and helped out a friend who ran a second-hand clothes shop that sold ‘designer labels’. Cormac presumed that most of Mrs Bain’s dramatic wardrobe came from this source.

  Clarinda, who was part of his group, bought herself a long string of blue beads that were the colour of gentians. She wore them when they were having lunch out there at Clignancourt, at a café concert called Chez Louisette and billed as La dernière guinguette de Paris. ‘What do you think, Cormac?’ she asked him, twirling the strand of beads round her long slender fingers. The pupils had started to call Alec and himself by their Christian names after the first day. They were mostly seventeen years old, and in their last year at school, so it did seem daft for them to have to go on referring to them as Mr This and Mr That. The relationship between teacher and pupil was becoming more casual by the day, the dividing line more blurred. He had noticed her hands before. How could he not? He noticed the hands of all his students. They were of interest to him. He watched them as they worked and learnt from watching.

  Clarinda was sharing his table, along with another girl and boy, a couple, who were having a problem keeping their hands off each other. Cormac suspected they were spending their nights together. He and Alec had discussed the matter but had decided to ignore it since the pair had been a couple long before they ever came to Paris. After seeing The Kiss, Robbie had dubbed them Paolo and Francesca, which had embarrassed them but had not stopped them from locking themselves into tight embraces whenever possible.

  ‘The beads match your eyes,’ Cormac told Clarinda, which pleased her.

  They were in the upstairs gallery of the restaurant, occupying several tables. The place was packed and the atmosphere hectic. People were queuing in the narrow alleyway outside while perspiring waitresses ran to and fro slapping down plates of food and whipping the white paper covers off the yellow under-cloths the instant a table was vacated. When the concert got into full swing they had to scream their orders to be heard above the deafening sound system. Meanwhile, the proprietors, Armand and Richard, looking like twins with similar glasses and moustaches, stood below, perfectly composed; or so they appeared.

  The first singer was a woman who was going to chante Piaf. She stepped up to the dais wearing a grey trouser suit and stilettos, looking much more vigorous than Piaf had ever been. This woman would be able to take care of herself; there was nothing waif-like about her. Her short hair was grey and her orange make-up had been lavishly applied. Her voice, when she began to sing, had the harsher notes of Piaf’s voice, though not its pathos, but she knew how to give the audience what it wanted. Je ne regrette rien … She rolled her rs well. Cheers rang out, feet pumped on the floor. ‘This is great!’ Clarinda’s eyes were shining. She had drunk two or three glasses of cheap red wine, as had all the students. Cormac was enjoying himself too. He liked when things went over the top and entered the realm of camp. It was fun. Piaf’s stand-in reeled off all her best-known numbers and received rapturous applause, after which she came round with her little basket looking for offerings.

  They were then treated to a rather paunchy man taking up
the baton to chante ‘Paris’. Sous les ponts de Paris … The audience swayed in time with him and some sang along, the women in the audience mostly, smiling to themselves, remembering past moments. Following him came a guitarist, gypsyish, with wild dark locks and a gyrating belly, aping Elvis. After he had come round with his basket and the restaurant had subsided a little Cormac noticed they had finished their litre carafe of wine and ordered another.

  ‘I have definitely made up my mind,’ said Clarinda, ‘I am going to come to Paris after I finish at art college.’

  ‘Every day won’t be like this.’

  ‘I wouldn’t expect it to. But I could come here and sketch some of the people.’ She had a talent for catching the essence of a person in her drawing.

  The other two at their table were so totally absorbed that he and Clarinda had no option but to converse together, as he said to Alec later, when they were discussing the day and Alec said, ‘You and Miss Bain seemed to be having a real tête-à-tête. Heads together, eh!’ ‘No other way to be heard in that madhouse,’ Cormac retorted. That was what he would say when he came to be investigated, using slightly different words, expanding a little so that they, his interrogators, would get the picture.

  We were told, Mr Aherne, that on that visit to the flea market at Clignancourt you appeared to be talking intimately with the girl in question. Tête-à-tête, would that describe it?

  It must have been Alec McCaffy who so described it, but if he were to ask they would not reveal their sources. It didn’t take much to work it out, however. He might have said, though did not, that he had seen Mr McCaffy tête-à-tête with a girl called Effie who was going to university next year to do geography, so that Mr McCaffy had a special interest in her, just as he had in Clarinda Bain, who was going to study art. But all that was yet to come.