A Clear Conscience

by Frances Fyfield

  ‘From other, unliberated women, you mean?’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with domestic labour. You never mind helping someone else scrub their house, you just don’t like doing your own. And if you were otherwise unemployed, you’d be glad of the going rate.’

  ‘A pittance.’

  ‘Regular employment, a mutually beneficial arrangement and clean windows.’

  She went inside for more wine and another lager for him. The cat followed, licked up the traces of butter on the kitchen floor with noisy enthusiasm. Bailey’s nonchalant figure in the garden was slightly blurred by the dust.

  He was not ornamental. He was infuriating but consistent. He was still slightly more defensive than she was. There had never been a courtship, there had just been an event. If it ain’t broke, celebrate.

  The wine gleamed light golden through a slightly smeared glass; the lager was deep amber. In the evening light after summer rain, the red walls of the living room resembled a fresh bruise. Like the inside of a velvet cave in winter, with the firelight covering all the cracks, it was dull and garish now.

  She could make it corn coloured, all over. Get some good old-fashioned, middle-class chintz. Clean up the cat; forget the blind. Start all over again. Make herself and her home both elegant and safe.

  Cath’s lampshade was yellow. A colour once parchment, a nice shade from a second-hand shop, faded even then, the fringes dark brown. A pig of a light for sewing, but Cath liked it. Not that she could sew here, anyway; she hadn’t done such a thing for months. Perhaps it was years. She just sat by the lamp and waited.

  The room around her bore traces of effort, now sustained on a less frequent basis. The walls were smudged from frequent cleaning and the patchy renewal of paint. She shuddered to think what was under there. Some of her blood, she supposed, a lot of her sweat and a bucket of tears.

  Joe had offered to cook. Ready-made, frozen pancakes with something called chicken ’n’ cheese in the middle, about as good for a man as they were for a small woman, accompanied by frozen peas, boiled to death, and the bread and butter which was better than the rest put together, her contribution. She sat listless although aware, ready to spring into an attitude of appreciation, her eyes tracking his progress in the kitchen, stage left, while her head was turned towards the TV screen. When the meal arrived, she knew she was supposed to murmur appreciation, ooh and ahh as if the man was a genius to find a plate; she was already rehearsing the lines, dreading what he might burn, unable to suggest a better method. So far, the mood augured well. Cath did not quite know the meaning of relaxation, but as far as she could, she allowed herself lethargy, listening to his movements and his voice as she slumped, forever guilty in the slumping.

  ‘Anyway, this bloke says to me, Jack, you’re a very fine chap. Know an ex-army chappie when I see one. Got discipline, knows how to mix a cocktail even better than I know how to get’em down, hah bloody hah. That’s fine, I said, but the name is Joe, sir, not that it matters, much. And then, Cath, do you know what he did? Right in front of the bar at the Spoon, the bastard downs his drink in one and falls off his chair. Could not rouse the silly old sod. He was a picture, I tell you. Gets this look of surprise on his face, grinning all the time, trying to focus, just before he slides away. Laugh? I could have died.’

  She tried to match the pitch of her own laughter to his shrill giggle, managed fairly well, encouraging him to continue. Surely, oh surely, there was a formula for managing her own tongue.

  ‘What did you give him, Joe, to make him fall down like that?’ Joe worked in the kind of pub which catered to what he called the gentry. And their ladies, haw, haw, haw. And their bloody sons, baying at one another and sticking crisps in the ear of the next person, all good clean fun with Daddy picking up the bills when they were sick or went outside to kick cars on their well-heeled way to somewhere else. Joe had a love-hate view of the officer class, mostly love, an adulation which also got a thrill from seeing them in the dust.

  Cath, tired beyond even her own belief, which marvelled constantly at how exhausted and how hurt a person could be while still remaining conscious, sometimes pretended to share his prejudice. People’s problems, she reckoned privately, were all the same, provided you liked them enough to listen.

  ‘I said, what did you give the bloke to make him fall over, Joe?’ There was a smell of burning from the kitchenette: the transformation from frozen to carbon, all too easy.

  ‘Vermouth, gin, mostly gin. Oh, a touch of Campari to give it colour; a smidgeon of fruit juice. Mostly gin and French. He downed it in one. For the third time, would you believe?’

  The smell of burning increased, a waft of smoke drifted in from the oven, bringing with it an end to relaxation.

  ‘Can I help you, Joe?’

  ‘No.’

  Anger stirred. Because he would not let her salvage the food. Because of the vision of some poor, lonely old man, buoyed up to spend his money until he fell off his stool, poisoned by a barman he trusted.

  ‘Joe, you shouldn’t have done that …’

  ‘Done what?’

  He was struggling in the kitchen, couldn’t find the thing to strain the peas: it made him mad. Cath could see the end result of all this; she should not carp at his cruel jokes on drunken customers, could not stop, either.

  ‘Done that. What you did. Encouraged that bloke to drink that poison. He relied on you, didn’t he? Poor old sod. Poor old Colonel Fogey. Shame.’

  There was silence. She turned her head away towards the inanities on the TV screen, wondering too late if there was time to move. Then the food arrived in her lap. Without plate or tray. A heap of hot, burnt pancake and soft peas which burned through the fabric of her skirt into her thighs. She braced herself, with her hair hiding her face while he hit her in the ribs and bosom, finished his flurry with a punch towards the abdomen exposed by the futile defence of her arms across her chest. They were hard blows, repeated for emphasis, making the peas bounce and flutter among the folds of her skirt. The sound from her mouth was simply a grunt as he stopped.

  ‘Pig,’ he said, dismissively. ‘That’s what you are. You even sound like one.’

  He retrieved his plate, sat back and ate with his eyes fixed on the screen. For a while she was quite still, then she got up and carried her skirt in front of her, like an apron, her movements silent and unsteady. He did not take his eyes off the television and she did not speak. On her return, five minutes later, she was carrying a plate of bread and butter. Cath ate more bread and butter than anything else.

  ‘What did you do,’ he demanded, ‘with that food I cooked for you?’

  ‘I ate it, of course. What did you think I would do?’ she whispered.

  ‘You might have thrown it away, or something.’

  ‘No, it was lovely. Thanks.’ She began to cough, stopped herself because it hurt and would annoy him. Coughing lead to vomiting and that annoyed him more. She had learned to control nausea, to use it as a last resort, since there was an element of fastidiousness about the man. He would not go on hitting while she was being sick, but the downside of that was the knowledge that the presence of regurgitated food always stopped him feeling sorry afterwards.

  ‘They don’t feed you,’ he grumbled, still not taking his eyes off the screen.

  ‘No they don’t, Joe, you’re right.’

  She nibbled at the bread and margarine spread. Not the stuff of genteel sandwiches, nor the stuff of doorsteps. The sight of it sickened her: pallid dough, golden fat. At work she had another kind of sustenance: bread with nuts, rich brown stuff with real butter layered on with a trowel.

  She could have eaten anything out of their fridge if she wanted. She could have told them she was in trouble, but then she was not really in trouble. As long as she was clever and he did not hit too hard or scar her face, and she was able to pretend that the cleaning job was as hateful as the gentry who employed her.

  ‘Joe?’ she asked, pleadingly. ‘Joe, would you get me a drin
k? Tea, I mean?’

  Joe only drank tea at home. He drank alcohol behind the bar where he worked, noon and evening, not that it showed until he came home, unless anyone could call the odd snarling a symptom. She could imagine what he was like, wondered why they put up with him, hoped that they always would since the thought of Joe without work was tantamount to a nightmare. If he did not work, he would stop her working, but as long as he stayed where he was and she pretended her job never involved any conversation, that was all right. Drinking alcohol at home was not. Together, they preserved the pretence that he never touched a drop; she acted now as if she believed he could not bear the stuff, which, in his way, he could not. His body could not. On a bad day, which meant a day when he had trouble crossing the road, an argument with a customer, or suffered any kind of assault on his pride, the alcohol combined with disillusion to make a poisonous cocktail. It was only the booze which turned him from saint to sinner. He was staring at the screen, his plate empty, his belly unsatisfied.

  ‘Joe? Please? I hurt all over, Joe?’

  He wavered, then hooked his right thumb inside his ear and used his whole large hand to cover his face. She watched him, hardening her heart without great success, even while her own fingers moved cautiously across her aching ribs. He always covered his face when he was ashamed.

  She went to make tea, bending in the middle to ease the pain, wanting nothing more than her bed. He spoke in a small voice, at odds with his well-muscled frame, in keeping with his height.

  ‘I love you, Cath. I’m sorry.’

  She felt his left hand clutch at her skirt as she passed, feigned anger. Inside the kitchen, she tidied with long, slow, regretful movements, coughing, spewing into the sink. Carefully, she chose his favourite mug, put a tea bag inside, poured on the boiling water from the new kettle without a cord. The kitchen gleamed. After a deep breath, which caused as much pain as effort, she took the tea in to him.

  He was asleep in the chair, his face wet with tears. She brought the duvet from the bedroom, covered him and left him.

  Their own bed was new, with drawers in the base, from which she withdrew a spare duvet, as pristine as the one over his knees. There were other rooms, all of them bursting with goods.

  Cath worked hard to achieve this daily promise of oblivion. In the bathroom, postponing the real bath until morning the way they both did unless there was blood, she forced herself to slosh cold water over her warm body and face, recognising the nature and degree of this kind of pain and doing her best to ignore it. She averted her eyes from the puckered scar on her abdomen, washed carefully and estimated the size of tomorrow’s bruises. He never hit her face. Never.

  Nothing broken: nothing which quite needed fixing.

  ‘Can anyone remember Cath’s phone number? Oh, Christ, where have I put it?’

  ‘Darling, why do you want to know? You don’t need to phone her, surely? She’ll be here in the morning; besides, she doesn’t like being phoned at home, certainly not this late.’

  ‘Late? Time for bed, then,’ said Emily Eliot, roguishly, ruffling his hair, winking in the mirror which hung over his desk. He looked up from the papers across the surface in orderly confusion, caught her eye and smiled.

  ‘Not tonight, Josephine. I need another hour on this. What on earth were you doing downstairs? Bit of a row.’

  ‘Oh, sorry, playing Scrabble. Mark was winning, he crows when he’s winning, frightful child. Have you really got to work?’ By this time, her arms were draped round his neck, smiles meeting in the mirror.

  ‘Yup. You know how it is.’

  ‘Dreadful,’ she said mockingly, the kiss placed on his cheek denying even the slightest hint of resentment. ‘A wife refused her connubial rights in the interests of paying the mortgage. OK, I know my place, I’ll simply warm the bed. Now, where’s that number?’

  ‘For the second time of asking, why?’

  ‘Oh, Helen rang. Can you believe, she said she was asking me because we’re such an organised household, little she knows.’ Emily’s laugh was loud, clear and genuine. ‘Only she was looking for a cleaning lady. Our Cath was saying she wouldn’t mind a bit extra, and knowing Helen, she’ll pay the earth, so I wanted Cath’s number.’

  ‘At this time of night?’

  ‘Oh, yes, it is, isn’t it? Bedtime.’

  She stood slightly perplexed, as if she had totally forgotten the urgency. Emily’s hectic sense of priorities, her need to fulfil each task as soon as it was suggested, fuelled this house and made it work, with the effect of a huge and elegant boiler. The occasional irritation this caused a hard-working barrister on the up was more than compensated for by the very sight of her and every single one of their children. Emily shared their high energy and that sand-washed look which was pale, interesting, and fiery; a big-boned woman, dressed in an old dressing-gown patterned with dragons cavorting on a purple background. Her hair stood on end: her face was scrubbed and shiny. Alistair pulled her into his lap:

  ‘Give me a hug. You smell gorgeous.’

  She plumped herself down while he pretended to groan at the weight and, with her arms round his neck, she squeezed the breath out of him. Then she looked at the papers on the desk. There were bundles of them, loosely undone, with the red tape which had bound them pushed to one side.

  ‘What have you got here, my love? Murder and mayhem?’

  ‘Bit of both. I told you about it.’ He did; he told her all about his cases, including the most tedious ones, and, even in the middle of the night, she listened. ‘Murder, of course. What else can you call it when you have a fight in a pub, one side loses, goes away, arm themselves and come back? One youth stabbed, but only one man caught. Someone else is getting off scot free.’

  ‘Won’t he say who?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Is this one of Helen’s briefs?’

  ‘No, Bailey’s. These are Helen’s.’ He waved his hand towards the white-taped bundles. ‘Even worse. Domestic violence. Wife-bashers. She seems stuck on wife-bashers at the moment. I wonder if that’s connected to wanting a cleaner?’

  Emily rose and kissed the top of his head.

  ‘You wouldn’t ever bash me, would you? However aggravating I am?’ He slapped her large behind gently as she moved away. His hand made a clapping sound against the fabric of the dressing-gown; she felt the caress without irritation. It had the sound of shy applause.

  ‘Bash you? I couldn’t, even if you begged. Perhaps, if it was strictly consensual. A long, slow collision. No-one’s injured by a meeting of true minds.’

  ‘Certainly they are, if the meeting of minds also involves skulls. And I think,’ she added demurely, holding out her calloused hand, ‘you could finish that work in the morning.’

  They got as far as the door, leaning against each other lightly, the old familiar relief flooding through him. What did men do, if they did not have a partner like this who bullied, cajoled, seduced and led them to bed with the stealth of a courtesan? A chameleon she was, a sometime tigress, tolerant, fierce; she kept them safe.

  It was an impractical house, full of nooks, crannies and the assembled possessions of five individuals of varying ages. On the first-floor landing stood Jane, the youngest child, with snot congealed on her nightdress. A plump nine-year-old, moist with sweat and tears, her face framed against her brother’s surfboard which rested against the wall, her skin pale and pink in patches. Older brother Mark was dark and handsome at fifteen, her twelve-year-old sister, serenely fair and sophisticated, but Jane’s carroty hair grew in twisted, uneven curls about her face, the longest locks sticky with saliva from being sucked into her mouth. Jane was not lovely, although in the eyes of her parents and in the words of their constant praise, she was beauty incarnate.

  ‘It’s that thing in my room, again,’ she said, trembling. ‘That thing, Mummy. He’s been there again.’

  She flung herself into Emily’s arms. Father had his arms round mother’s waist; they stretched from there to tickle Jane’s
damp and curly head.

  ‘Well, what a nerve he’s got, coming back after all this while. You’d have thought once was enough,’ Emily said indignantly. ‘Some people have no consideration. Come on, we’d better go and fumigate the beast. You know he loves warm weather. Funny how he never visited when it was really cold.’

  Jane snuffled, mollified.

  ‘Cath cleaned my room today. I thought if it was clean, he wouldn’t come back.’

  ‘But Cath doesn’t know about the perfume, and anyway, he’s gone now. We’ll just make sure, shall we? And then leave all the lights on, so you know to run upstairs to find Mark or us, OK?’

  Emily’s voice denied the right to winge. The child nodded, made a sound like a hiccup and then turned away from their tableau of hugging and set off downstairs, confident they would follow. Alistair marvelled, and occasionally worried, how it was that Jane had acquired her mother’s authority and graceful, plodding tread. They pounded downstairs with maximum thumping of feet. One of these days they could get the kind of carpet which softened sound: school fees came first. Jane had detoured, with a swiftness which belied her weight, into their own bathroom, where children were forbidden most of the time. She was after her mother’s cologne. There was plenty of perfume in this house. Alistair brought it from duty-free shops on those visits abroad which left him sick with longing for home. Then he would buy more whenever he saw it. Nothing extravagant, but always the largest size, a habit of his. The end result was a wife who always smelled sweet, even when knee deep in household dirt, and a daughter with such a passion for eau-de-parfum sprays, she used them to control her own childish demons.

  The ghost who Jane insisted haunted her room on an intermittent basis – usually as the aftermath of either bad behaviour or greed on her part, her father noted wryly – only did so when the room was a mess. Tidiness and cleanliness deterred him. Perfume killed him off completely. Emily sprayed the room, liberally. It had the same effect as a charmed circle. Alistair laughed and supposed it was cheap at the price.