A Sense of Guilt
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Spring 1985
Summer
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Spring 1986
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A Sense of Guilt
Andrea Newman
Spring 1985
It had all started so innocently, as these things do.
‘Felix is coming back,’ said Richard, looking up from his letter. ‘He says what’s the point of paying no income tax if the climate gives you writer’s block.’
‘Elizabeth says it’s because he can’t find enough women to screw,’ said Helen, putting down her letter. ‘The Irish must be more discriminating than the English after all. Good for them.’
‘Oh, never mind the reasons,’ said Richard. ‘They’re coming back, that’s the main thing.’
‘There’s no need to sound so jubilant,’ said Helen. ‘People would still like you even without your dreadful friend. You don’t need the contrast.’
Richard looked at her seriously. ‘D’you really dislike him?’
‘I despise him,’ said Helen. ‘That’s much worse. He’s like a greedy child grabbing all the cakes on the plate. I think it’s nauseating behaviour at his age.’
‘Does that mean we can’t have them to dinner?’
‘Not until the end of term. Unless you do the cooking.’
‘Of course I’ll do the cooking. Don’t want strychnine in the stew, do I? Anyway, Elizabeth would be very upset if you poisoned him. She loves him, you know.’
‘Poor cow,’ said Helen.
Sally put her head round the door. ‘What’s all the excitement?’
‘Felix and Elizabeth are coming back, that’s all.’
‘Oh, good,’ said Sally, disappearing. ‘They’re nice.’
* * *
People on the whole did not like Helen, which suited her quite well because it meant they left her alone. They sensed her impatience with them, her air of having better things to do with her time. Her painter’s eyes looked them over and assessed them and they felt themselves discarded. Helen moved on: tall and rangy, lean but large-boned, built like a cowboy, clad in denim, busy and preoccupied. Her hair was plaited or wrapped round her head; her tough square hands had short nails stained with paint. She had not worn make-up for ten years.
People who did like her, the few, liked her very much indeed. They valued her honesty, her loyalty, her integrity and her silence, which allowed them to talk.
‘You look wonderful,’ Elizabeth told her once. ‘Rather like a Valkyrie.’
Helen, who thought this was rubbish, laughed rudely. But she knew what Elizabeth meant. She did have a faintly Nordic air, with her blonde hair streaked with grey and her cold green eyes that frightened people away. When she laughed it was a surprise, gutsy and raunchy, displaying enviable teeth.
Now she sat in the smoky room with her colleagues while students brought samples of their work and the tutors commented. They were also supposed to check on the progress of theses and post-graduate plans, but the atmosphere was casual and relaxed. Tutors and students looked equally scruffy, and everyone smoked except Helen, who had given it up painfully five years ago and was still waiting to feel the benefit.
The first student brought in a triptych of blue, mauve, rust, gold and purple in big vague shapes as if hanging in space. Mike and Andy went to help him arrange them. The paintings were taller than all of them and filled a wall of the room. Helen liked them very much.
‘They look like a backdrop for Wagner,’ she said. ‘I think you could be a stage designer.’
The student looked pleased.
‘I quite like the idea of a narrative,’ said Mike. ‘You’ve achieved an effect of illusionary space. Those bands belong to either side of the line. And those edges are real.’
Andy lit a cigarette. ‘I can’t say I enjoy them,’ he said. ‘They’re very awkward. But that’s a good quality. Intriguing.’
‘The light catches them differently as you move them round,’ the student said. He struggled to prove his point and Mike went back to help him. They all studied the paintings in silence, then argued gently about which arrangement they preferred. Mike lit a cigarette.
‘What’s your thesis about?’ Helen asked.
‘Rothko,’ said the student, lighting a cigarette. ‘The interaction between his life and his work.’
Helen looked at the student, small and dark and thin, so talented but so young. How could he hope to understand depression and despair, whatever drove you to open an artery, so that when you were found, soaked in red, you resembled one of your own paintings. Sally had been three when Rothko died, drenched in his own blood, and Helen had just ended her marriage. Losing Carey, who seemed to her then the only man she would ever love, she felt that she and her daughter were emotionally huddled together in the draughty studio. It was a long time before she could forgive Rothko for deserting her when she needed him most, but she was grateful, too: the tears she shed for him released an avalanche of tears for herself.
Well, perhaps she had misjudged the student; perhaps he did understand. After all, when she had been his age, she had considered herself extremely grown-up. Aborting Carey’s baby had been the only choice open to her, left alone with Sally. It was barely possible to support one child, never mind two, and Carey was obviously going to be no help at all. But she had cried all the same for the child that would have been Sally’s brother or sister, and thought of her own blood and Rothko’s quietly flowing together, as if into the same river.
* * *
‘I didn’t think I’d get probation for this,’ said Richard’s new client, chain-smoking. ‘I thought I’d go to jail.’ She sounded almost disappointed.
Richard said, ‘Would you like to tell me about it?’
‘You know, don’t you? They’ve told you all about me.’
She was a small girl, hardly older than Sally, but without her robust strength. She had a mean, undernourished look about her, and an air of suspicion, like an animal that has learned to be wary of man. She was watchful as she smoked her cigarette, glancing sideways as if anticipating sudden attack from some unknown agent, who might leap through the door if she were not vigilant.
‘They don’t know all about you,’ Richard said. ‘Nobody does, except you. I’d like you to tell me a bit, if you want to.’ She frowned, stubbed out her cigarette and lit a fresh one. ‘Well, I took him, didn’t I? He was there in his pram outside the launderette and I just took him. I knew it was wrong. I didn’t even think about his mum.’
‘Were you thinking about your own baby?’
‘Oh, yeah. Course I was. That’s what they said in court. Supposed to get me off, that was.’ She smiled faintly at such a ridiculous hope.
‘Wasn’t it true?’
‘Yeah. Didn’t make no difference though, did it? It’s still wrong, what I done. I know that.’
Richard said gently, ‘Sometimes it helps to talk about how you feel.’
‘But you can’t do nothing, can you? I mean, I’ve had him adopted and that’s it. You can’t get him back, can you? So what’s the point of talking about it?’
Her name was Tracey and she was eighteen. Her parents had persuaded her to have her baby adopted and now she blamed them. She reminded him of girls he had taught, growing up too soon, wanting something of their own to love. He longed to help her and he felt inadequate.
* * *
At the end of the long day, he went back in the office for a cup of tea.
‘Your wife rang,’ they told him.
‘Which one?’ Inge wouldn’t give her first name and just called herself Mrs Morgan. It had become a
standing joke in the office: Richard and his two wives.
‘The German one.’
Richard went back into his room and dialled. He wasn’t surprised; Helen hardly ever rang the office.
‘Inge?’
‘Oh, thank God. There’s something wrong with the stove. I can smell gas. Can you come?’
‘Ring the gas board,’ he said, ‘Inge, please.’
‘I have rung them, of course. But they won’t come till tomorrow. We could all be blown up tonight.’
‘Tell them you can smell gas,’ he said, ‘and they’ll come. They have an emergency service.’
‘They don’t believe me,’ she said tragically.
Richard was reminded of Matilda, who told such dreadful lies. ‘And every time she shouted “Fire,” They only answered “Little liar.”’ Something like that. His mother had read it to him. He had read it to his children. Perhaps that was where Inge had got the idea. The gas board were probably wise to her by now. If, in fact, she had ever rung them. If, that is, she could smell gas at all. But how could he take the risk? There was just a chance in a million that there was a gas leak and Inge and his children could all be blown up in the night. And the night he called her bluff would of course be the night it happened.
An endless chain of visits, false alarms, tears and recriminations stretched behind him like the apparitions in Macbeth, to the crack of doom, or so it seemed, and ahead as well, for the rest of his life. This must be what I think I deserve, he told himself, at some level anyway, or I would have learned to refuse by now. I deserted her, therefore I owe her a visit, unlimited visits. She was a good wife, she devoured me with her love, gave me children, cooked meals, cleaned the house, offered and demanded sex like the Kama Sutra, and I left her for Helen, because Helen didn’t need me so much, because Helen could manage without me and had proved it by doing so for many years. I ran away from Inge because I was exhausted and ashamed that I didn’t have enough left over to satisfy her at the end of the day.
‘Please, Richard,’ she said now, and he felt she had been saying it for ever. He glanced at his watch. A quarter to six. A journey from Stockwell to Camden Town in the rush hour, the time spent on talk, on tears, or just possibly on gas, even perhaps all three, then the journey back again – there was no way he could get home before eight. Helen would kill him. Today of all days. ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can,’ he said sharply, and rang off before she could thank him.
* * *
‘Oh, Richard,’ Sally said. ‘Not tonight. Not on Mum’s birthday.’ Her voice was always uncannily like Helen’s on the phone.
‘I know,’ he said, it’s a bugger but it can’t be helped, it’s an emergency. Tell her how sorry I am and explain about the gas.’ He was full of ignoble relief that Helen wasn’t home yet to receive this message in person.
Sally sighed. ‘She’ll never believe it.’
‘I know. I’m not sure I do either.’
‘Then why are you going?’
‘Because. In case.’
‘Honestly,’ Sally said. ‘You two.’
‘I know. I hope you’re learning from all this, what not to do. Have my flowers arrived?’
‘Yes, they’re lovely. But they won’t do the trick.’
‘They’re a start,’ he said. ‘Tell her I sent my love as well.’
* * *
He hated visiting the house, so he tried to avoid it, so Inge had to demand his presence. He understood this dreary cycle of events very well but was powerless to change it. Guilt made him a soft touch. He would have advised one of his clients to take a firmer line.
Everything about the house was unchanged, and visiting it made him feel that he was in a time warp, still married to Inge and having an affair with Helen. He felt alienated and yet it was also completely natural: that was what alarmed him. Because he had been making the same journey, under duress, for eight years, he could almost believe, when he was very tired, that nothing had changed and the trauma of divorce and remarriage still lay ahead.
Inge preserved the house and garden in a state of ritual disorder that began the day he left her. Prior to that, she had been everyone’s idea of a model hausfrau. He knew that the change was intended to shock but he still found it shocking. Clothes lay where they fell. There was grime in the bath and sink. The boys wrote messages in the dust on the furniture. The grass grew waist-high unless he cut it himself, although he had bought a motor-mower to make it easier for Inge, and the boys were big enough now to help. But they colluded with her. They liked the messy house and the unkempt garden; they felt comfortable not having any appearances to keep up. When they had nothing left to wear they went to the launderette with all their clothes stuffed into black dustbin liners; sometimes they took the sheets and towels as well. Inge cooked, and that was all. He never found out what she did with the rest of her time. The boys said she stayed in bed a lot, reading library books, drinking wine and taking pills her doctor had given her for depression, but how could they know when they were at school? Perhaps she only did that when they were there to see, so they could tell him about it.
He knew she was unhappy, even desperate, but he also knew she was doing it to punish him. He marvelled that she could be so persevering in self-destruction, that it could be rewarding enough, that she could find the energy to keep all this pain alive. On particularly crowded days when he was trying to fit in one more client, one more report, one more phone call, he even found himself envying Inge her free time. Miserable she might be, but at least she was miserable at her leisure.
In the early days of their separation he had implored her to get a job, but she told him she had no skills. Useless to point out that she could cook, drive, type and speak three languages: she countered with the indisputable fact that she was liable to burst into tears at any time and this made her unfit for employment. Now, of course, she could blame the recession and did not have to cry so often.
When he first moved out he had to visit her in order to see the boys, since she would not allow them under Helen’s roof. Now they were big enough to meet him at the office or a cinema or McDonald’s, but they still would not visit the house. He respected their loyalty to Inge but found it irksome and vaguely insulting. He took it to mean that they had not forgiven him for leaving them when they were little, but they denied this. ‘We sort of promised Mum,’ Karl said, ‘and you know what she’s like.’
Sometimes he thought the arrangement suited Helen very well. She resented his visits to Inge but she did not have to accommodate his sons, although she had always declared herself willing to do so. Her life was unchanged by their marriage: she lived in the same house with her daughter, taught at the same college, painted in the same studio. Richard was an addition to all this activity: from being a visitor, he had become a resident. Whereas he had to relate to two wives, support two homes, consider the needs of three children, as well as doing the same very demanding job. His life was transformed. Yet how could he complain about this when it was what he wanted, what he had chosen? He complained.
‘You don’t support two homes,’ Helen said calmly. ‘You support yourself and Inge and the boys. I support myself and Sally. That’s perfectly fair and reasonable. Of course it would be nice if Carey supported Sally too, but he doesn’t, what with Marsha and their brood, so there we are. You’re a luxury, my love. An optional extra.’ She kissed him, to take the sting out of the words. Teasing him was, he knew, her way of defusing her resentment of Inge’s demands.
‘I don’t think you’d like Carey to support Sally,’ he said. ‘You prefer to have her all to yourself.’
‘But I share her with you,’ Helen said. ‘You’re more of a father to her than Carey ever was. What does it matter who pays the bills?’
But it did matter and they both knew it. Money was power: the hand that held the cheque book ruled the world. Helen earned less than he did, roughly half his salary, in fact, plus occasional sales of paintings, but it was enough for herself and Sally, just a
bout, whereas he was trying to do right by six people, which was impossible.
* * *
Sally stayed in his mind as he drove through the heavy traffic. He had always thought of her as an anxious child, watchful and eager to please. When they first met her eyes darted from him to Helen and back again, gauging their moods; a smile seemed to hover near her mouth ready to be switched on or suppressed, whichever the situation might require. It did not make her false: he never thought of her as less than genuine. But it meant that she had a curious lack of self and he found himself wondering who she was inside. It seemed unnatural for a child to think so much of others and modify her behaviour to suit them.
‘Sally’s too good to be true,’ he said to Helen one day on one of his visits.
‘Yes, I know. Aren’t I lucky?’ She smiled, ‘I expect she’ll rebel in her teens like everyone else.’
In a way he would have liked her to be more perturbed by her good fortune. One day he arrived early at the studio and called her name as he mounted the stairs, only to be met by Sally at the door with her fingers on her lips.
‘Ssh,’ she said, managing to sound both friendly and disapproving. ‘Mummy’s working.’
He sensed an alliance between them from which he might be excluded or in which he might be invited to participate. Sally, having observed the chaos of her mother’s life with her father, had appointed herself as Helen’s guardian or minder, even a sort of juvenile business manager, whose primary function was to smooth Helen’s path. They were two against the world, and in that sense he found the alliance very touching. But he also felt it was dangerous. He was conscious of desperately wanting Sally’s approval, yet he knew that she would feel for him whatever Helen wanted her to feel and it would be real. He saw an adult beauty and gravity in her face, but there were also glimpses of the child Helen had been before experience marked her. Helen, he felt, relaxed only when making love: lost in an orgasm, she let him into her private world, even opening her eyes at the last moment to admit him so that he could drown. Sally, he discovered, was delightfully ticklish and would giggle and shriek to the point of hysteria. She also liked to be picked up and carried high on his shoulders, trusting he would not drop her; then he felt she was able to shed her responsibilities. These were exhilarating times for both of them.
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