The Kiss

by Joan Lingard

  ‘Sometimes things come out of the blue and take you by surprise,’ she said. She frowned, as if she were trying to understand why they did. She would not have liked being taken by surprise.

  ‘True,’ he agreed. ‘There was my father who had an affair with Mrs Blaney at her B&B, and then he upped and left us. That took us by surprise.’

  ‘It was good, though,’ said Rachel, ‘that you saw your dad again before he died.’

  She had been ironing and listening to a Radio 4 programme one evening when she’d heard an announcement that had made her drop the iron.

  ‘Would Cormac Patrick Aherne, formerly of Belfast, and believed to be living somewhere in the United Kingdom, please get in touch with Manchester Royal Infirmary, where his father, Patrick Seamus Aherne, is dangerously ill.’

  He drove through the early hours of the morning down the M6, praying that his father would still be alive when he got there, and he was. A priest was just leaving, having administered the last rites.

  Pat Aherne recognised his son – not the forty-four-year-old man seated at his bedside, but the voice of the boy he’d known as a child. ‘I can hear you there all right, son. I’d have known you anywhere. I’ve often wondered what you were like. I wrote to you, you know, several times, oh yes, ’deed I did, but the letters came back marked “Not known here” in your mother’s hand. Ah well, who could blame her, poor woman? She didn’t get much of a deal from me but there’s nothing I can do about it now. Tell me about yourself, son. I want to know it all. Have you children of your own?’

  Cormac held his father’s hand and recounted the story of his life from aged ten to forty-four. As the minutes ticked quietly past he built up a picture of a man contented with his lot, living in a desirable house in a desirable neighbourhood, holding down a decent job, which he was at that time, an important job involving the education of the young, also gradually building a reputation as a sculptor for himself, married to a lovely woman with a good job, with two wonderful children to show for it, a girl and a boy, both blessed with brains and looks. Of course he was selective. When relating a story one had to be, and so he introduced no element into his tale that was not ideal. Pat Aherne could sleep peacefully now, reassured that by abandoning his child he had not blighted his life. His son was a success story. After a while he sank into a coma, though the nurse said to carry on talking for one never knew how much they took in when they were in an unconscious state. Cormac stayed at the bedside for the rest of the day, with Mrs Blaney. They each held a hand of the dying man and were with him at the end.

  ‘Go with God, Pat Aherne,’ said Mrs Blaney, making the sign of the cross over the soft pillow of her breast. ‘You’ve made me a happy woman and may you rest in peace.’

  Cormac wondered if anyone would do the same for him when he went. Rachel was no stronger a believer than himself though she was firmer about her disbelief than he and seemed not to have the same feeling of a void within her. She said life itself was enough for her whereas a bit of him kept hoping that there might be something else. He’d always wanted to have his cake and eat it! So his mother would have said.

  ‘He was a lovely man, your da,’ said Mrs Blaney.

  Cormac enfolded her in his arms and they shed their tears together.

  ‘It was great you made it before he went,’ said Mrs Blaney later when they sat in a pub having a Bushmills together.

  Cormac had time now to feel angry with his mother. Mrs Blaney said she’d not been too pleased with her herself.

  ‘When Pat was brought into the hospital I got her number from Directory Enquiries and phoned her. I asked her to pass the message on to you. She said she’d never heard of a Patrick Aherne. That was why I asked them to put it on the wireless.’

  After he went home Cormac had a furious row on the phone with his mother who wept and asked forgiveness. ‘But think what he did to us, son.’

  ‘Are you trying to tell me that you have given my daughter no encouragement, Mr Aherne?’ said Mrs Bain, who stood with one hand parked on her orange and purple satin hip.

  They were both standing. She had invited him in. She had said, ‘I think you should come in off that draughty landing and we will discuss this in a civilised manner. We don’t want an argy-bargy, do we?’ That had given him hope and encouraged him to think that she would not simply rail against him but would try to see his point of view. As soon as he had stepped over her threshold, however, and entered her boudoir – it was the word that came straight into his mind – he began to feel apprehensive. Come into my parlour … The walls were hung with Eastern prayer mats; various tinkling baubles hung from the ceiling; the orange and pink lamps gave the room a warm if rather hectic glow; and there was a smell of joss sticks. The only furniture was a white piano and several large satin floor cushions spangled with tiny mirrors that flashed and winked and confused the eye. On top of the piano stood Robert Burns gazing steadily out of his frame into this cave of Eastern promise.

  ‘Do you think, Mrs Bain,’ said Cormac, struggling to stay calm, ‘that I would actively encourage your daughter to look on me as anything other than her teacher? What do you take me for?’

  ‘A man.’ She seemed pleased with her response.

  ‘Apart from anything else, I am forty-three.’

  ‘A dangerous age for a man. Especially an attractive one.’ She smiled now, making him wonder if he did not prefer her anger. ‘You must be aware that you are attractive to women?’ She was saying ‘women’ now, not ‘girls’. Did she fancy him herself? Was she going to offer herself to him in place of her daughter? This was entering the realm of the bizarre. He had obviously made a mistake by coming here and trying to engage in any kind of rational dialogue with this fool of a woman. She was still looking at him with that cat-that-got-the cream-like smile. Their cat had looked like that yesterday after it had devoured a mouse and left its innards on the kitchen floor. But Clarinda’s mother had not eaten him yet; his innards were intact. He rallied himself and took refuge in a little pomposity.

  ‘I am married, Mrs Bain, and happily so, and I am nearly thirty years older than your daughter. She is only a year older than my own daughter.’

  ‘That never stopped a man. My husband was twenty-two years older than me and he was married to someone else at the time. It didn’t stop him seducing me.’

  ‘I have not seduced your daughter.’

  ‘That is not what she tells me.’

  ‘She is suffering from an over-excited imagination, stimulated, I fear, by you, Mrs Bain.’

  ‘What do you mean, Mr Aherne?’

  ‘I think perhaps you tend towards the romantic and the dramatic—’ He waved his hand vaguely at the room. He shouldn’t have started on this tack; she could only take umbrage.

  ‘You use that word “romantic” as a slur, I rather think, to put me down. Oh yes, you do! I know your type. What is wrong with romance, tell me! Why should people not enjoy it? This ugly world could do with more of it. All this harping on the sordid does nothing for the soul. In Scotland we are bombarded with the underbelly of life as if nothing else was relevant. It can’t be true unless we are rubbing our noses in the gutter! Drugs, gang rapes, degradation. How boring it all is. The Russians give proper recognition to the soul; their great writers acknowledge it, as well as the ordinary people. Why do we not? We don’t want to look at our souls. We don’t want to admit to having such things. We’re afraid to feel too much. We’re afraid to allow tenderness and romance into our lives. But the poetry of our great Bard is romantic, is it not? What about the novels of Jane Austen? Are they not romances, in the best sense of the word? Can you say otherwise?’ He was not being given the chance to say anything even though he had made a couple of attempts to put a word in, but there was no way in which he would be able to staunch her flow, short of smacking his hands together and shouting ‘Enough!’ in her face. Her indignation showed no sign of cooling. ‘I am a keen supporter of the arts, Mr Aherne, let me tell you. I am a Friend of the Edin
burgh Festival. I paint. I go to exhibitions. I take Clarinda to the opera and the ballet when I can afford it, which may not be often since prices are high, and I am a single parent. I love literature. I go to the Book Festival and listen to writers talking about themselves and their works. I go to the theatre. Is all of that a crime?’

  ‘Yes, all right, Mrs Bain, I take your point, I might even agree with you to a certain degree, but let’s get back to Clarinda.’

  ‘I did not think you would answer any of my points and you have not.’ She was wearing her smile again. He wanted to strangle her. ‘But, yes, do let us get back to Clarinda. Her happiness is the most important thing in my life. More important than my own life.’

  ‘And her wellbeing, as a student, is important to me, but purely as a student.’

  ‘And you expect me to believe that? Come, come, Mr Aherne, let us be honest with each other. She told me you spent time alone in Paris together. Can you deny that?’

  ‘It was by accident, not design.’

  ‘Accident? But more than once? And late at night? Really, you must think I am very naive.’

  ‘She ran off. I had to go after her. She was going crazy.’

  ‘Why, I wonder? She is normally a very calm girl. Something must have upset her.’

  ‘She’d allowed herself to become obsessed with the relationship between Gwen John and Rodin, that’s why. You must know that. She’s bound to have talked to you about it.’

  ‘We are very close. We share our interests, so naturally she did. We’re more like sisters than mother and daughter.’

  He had thought he would hear that at some point or other. He hoped she was not waiting for a compliment for none would be forthcoming. It might be politic for him to hand her one but he could not bend his pride to do it.

  ‘I don’t think we can lay all the blame on Gwen John,’ she went on, ‘do you? Why was it you who went after Clarinda and not the other teacher? Did you feel personally responsible for her?’

  ‘As a matter of fact I did. I would be expected to. Since she is a pupil of mine—’

  ‘Indeed.’

  They paused.

  ‘My daughter tells me everything,’ said Clarinda’s mother.

  ‘You are not foolish enough to believe that, are you, Mrs Bain? Or to believe everything she tells you?’

  It was a mistake, of course, yet another, for him to have spoken to Mrs Bain in such a contemptuous fashion – not that he had actually intended his remark to convey contempt, but she certainly took it as such. She dropped her hand from her shiny hip to face him more squarely.

  ‘You are not suggesting that my daughter is a liar, are you, Mr Aherne?’

  ‘I’m not suggesting anything. It is for you to decide whether your daughter speaks the truth or not.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Now she folded her arms under her billowing bosom. That was how he saw her, billowing, floating in orange and purple satin, like an over-coloured, gaudy witch. He noticed that the motifs adorning her were dragons. They shimmered as her body moved with indignation beneath them. ‘I think,’ she said, ‘that I am the person best equipped to decide whether my daughter can be trusted to tell the truth or not.’

  Even then he did not think she would go to the police.

  ‘If you’ll excuse me, Mrs Bain, I must go home.’

  ‘I won’t excuse you anything, Mr Aherne,’ said Clarinda’s mother.

  Next afternoon, he was summoned to the headmaster’s office.

  Rachel and Archie Gibson.

  Come to think of it, they might have been better suited from the start. They had both gone to similar, independent, fee-paying schools and lived in similar leafy suburban roads with walled gardens, and Archie’s father had been a lawyer while Rachel’s plied his merchant banking trade. Their families would have been better pleased had they chosen each other than with the choices that they did make. Archie’s mother was never able to abide his wife Sheila; she found her loud. So did Cormac, in fact, though he feels more sympathetic towards her now than he ever has. He wonders if Archie might not have fancied Rachel in the very beginning but he, Cormac, saw her first and asked her out and Archie was too honourable a man to cut in on a friend’s woman. He remembers once saying jokingly to Rachel, ‘I don’t know why you didn’t marry Archie. He’d have been a better bet. He’s a steady chap, he earns a regular wage, and he comes from a good home.’

  ‘I didn’t want Archie,’ she replied. ‘It was you I wanted.’

  Rachel rings after Davy is in bed and says she was thinking she might pop round for a chat, would that be all right? Fine, he replies, he’s not doing anything in particular. He seldom is these evenings now that he no longer has essays to mark or his studio to retreat to. Did he use it too much as a retreat when they were together? Once when they were having a row she accused him of cutting himself off from the family when it suited him, especially if there was a problem in the offing. See you shortly, she says before ringing off. They agreed before they separated to remain friends so why should she not pop round when she feels like it? This is the first time that she has.

  Hurriedly he removes the dirty cups from the sitting room and punches the cushions. He is dusting the mantelpiece when he hears her step on the outside stair. He shoves the duster behind a cushion.

  She is carrying a bottle of Burgundy. It looks a good one, he remarks as he takes it from her. It’s just what she happened to have in the house, she says. He takes it through to the kitchen to open it and fetch wine glasses. Archie is a keen wine buff, buys all his wine through a club. When they used to go to dinner with him and Sheila he would give them a little spiel about it, which vineyard it came from and all that. Cormac wonders if this bottle came from Archie’s stock. He puts it on a tray with the glasses and carries it through.

  Rachel is on her feet with her back to the room looking out of the window though there is nothing unusual to see, only a mirror-image house across the way.

  ‘Here we are,’ he says brightly.

  She turns, gives him a half-smile and sits on the settee. She’s nervous, which is not like her. She takes a large swallow of wine and then says, ‘I’ve come to talk to you.’

  ‘I didn’t expect you to stay silent!’

  ‘No, seriously talk, I mean.’

  ‘Sophie?’

  ‘No, me.’

  ‘You’re not ill?’ He is alarmed.

  She shakes her head. ‘You’re not going to like this,’ she says and he knows he is not so he gulps down the rest of his wine and refills his glass from Archie’s bottle.

  ‘The affair that I had,’ she begins and stops. ‘Well, I would never tell you who the man was because it would have upset you too much. But I think you’ve guessed. I’m very sorry, Cormac.’

  They drink in silence for a few minutes. A wind has sprung up outside and the window is rattling. He must do something about the frame. All the windows need attention, he ought to be getting on with it now that he has time. When he was still sculpting he wasn’t much use in the house as a do-it-yourself man. Rachel used to do the decorating herself, said she’d rather than wait for him to get round to it.

  ‘I guess I wasn’t all that great as a husband.’

  ‘That’s not true. You mustn’t think that. Anyway, it’s not that simple. It never could be.’

  ‘Artists are pretty self-centred though, aren’t they?’

  ‘Well, Rodin was, anyway. I don’t suppose he ever did any washing up.’

  That makes them laugh and they relax a little. He then asks, ‘Was it really over when you said it was, your affair?’

  She nods. ‘And that was the way it stayed until we separated. I hadn’t intended it to start up all over again. He came round to see me …’ She shrugs. ‘And, well, we realised that we were still strongly attracted to each other.’

  She is free to do whatever she wants now, without excuse or apology, or need for concealment. As he is. But he does not know what he wants to do: that is the rub. He does not know how
to begin again. He is less sure now than he was at seventeen; then, he was single-minded, on stream to do amazing things.

  ‘Were you not attracted at all to Clarinda?’ asks Rachel. ‘You always said you weren’t.’

  And she never quite believed him. That had caused another little crack in their marriage. Their trust in each other had gradually begun to erode. In bed they had stayed more and more often on their own sides, with their backs turned, tucked away inside their own private thoughts, whereas, before, they had always liked to chat before sleeping.

  ‘I don’t know.’ He is trying to think back to how he felt then. ‘I could see that she was attractive but she was so young.’

  ‘That was what you always said. You were flattered though?’

  ‘I suppose I was.’

  ‘You accepted her flattery? You didn’t try to squash it?’

  ‘Not soon enough.’ Not until she had become obsessed, and by then it was too late. That was his first mistake.

  ‘But you never laid a finger on her?’

  He pauses, then says, ‘I kissed her.’ It is the first time he has admitted it to anyone other than himself.

  Mr Aherne, the girl in question maintains that you first kissed her outside the railway station at Montparnasse. Do you deny that?

  He did deny it, since the implication, he told himself, in an effort to justify his lie, was that he had gone on to kiss her on other occasions. He knew that it was going to be his word against hers. And he had more at stake than she had. To try to save himself he had to lie. But while telling the lie he could feel himself beginning to sweat. He had been brought up to regard the telling of a falsehood as a sin, and he still did. It was deeply embedded in him, this early teaching. He remembered that the French philosopher Henri Hude said that the first sin is to have no sense of sin. At least he did not have to plead guilty to that one! He wanted to take out his handkerchief and mop his forehead but feared that if he did his interrogators would take it as an admission of guilt.