A Sense of Guilt

by Andrea Newman

  ‘Well, I’m glad you’re enjoying it,’ Elizabeth said eventually.

  ‘I’ve got to meet her,’ Richard said.

  He thought later that it was to Elizabeth’s eternal credit that she understood so quickly what had happened. But maybe it was easy to read his face. He felt quite lightheaded, as if he were short of oxygen. Perhaps he had been forgetting to breathe.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Elizabeth said. ‘We’ll just go over and say hullo, tell her how much we like her work.’

  Then he was conscious of her staring at him with a curious look of shock and compassion, as though he were ill.

  ‘Oh Richard,’ she said. ‘I didn’t realise.’

  He shook his head as if to clear it. They started walking across the room together when Elizabeth stopped. ‘I think you’d better go by yourself,’ she said. ‘I’m going to get another drink. I’ll join you later.’

  He felt betrayed yet relieved, like a child abandoned by its nurse. He found his way to the small group of people round the painter and hung about behind them, watching her. He sensed she was wary of the occasion, careful to say and do all the right things, but not believing any of it. He waited until there was some sort of a gap and then he went up to her, heart pounding like a schoolboy, and said, ‘Can I talk to you for a moment?’

  She turned to look at him: her eyes were green and pale, her body angular in the black dress. He felt she could read his thoughts, see into his soul. He shivered in the hot room.

  ‘I suppose so,’ she said. ‘Why ever not?’ But she sounded friendly.

  ‘I’m Richard Morgan,’ he said. This seemed important information.

  ‘I’m Helen Irving.’ She held out her hand and he took it, aware of thinking like a groupie, My God, am I holding the hand that did all these paintings?

  ‘Yes, I know,’ he said. ‘I love your work.’

  She said seriously, ‘Thank you. Not many people do.’

  They looked at each other for what seemed like a long time.

  ‘Is it going well?’ he asked eventually. He still seemed to find difficulty in breathing.

  She shrugged. ‘People are saying nice things, but nobody’s buying.’

  ‘I’d like to buy everything,’ he said truthfully. ‘But I haven’t got any money.’

  ‘Neither have I,’ she said. ‘It’s a common problem.’ She smiled at him, as if he wasn’t making a total fool of himself. He already had a sense of her as someone quite straightforward and uncompromising. She wore no make-up and he could see where faint lines were appearing around her eyes and mouth, although he guessed she was about thirty, his own age. She had very white teeth and rather full lips that belied the austerity of the rest of her face. The longing to kiss her was almost unbearable.

  He said urgently, ‘Look, I don’t usually behave like this, but could you possibly have dinner with me?’

  She frowned slightly. ‘I’m having dinner with Magdalen. You know, my dealer.’

  ‘Could I meet you afterwards?’

  She shook her head. ‘I have a daughter and a babysitter.’

  ‘Then another time. Any time you say. I absolutely have to see you again. Please don’t think I’m some kind of lunatic. I’m a schoolteacher and I have a wife and two sons and I’m a perfectly sober upright citizen and I’ve never done this in my life before.’

  She began to laugh, but very gently, including him in the laughter. She picked up one of the printed invitations and wrote something on it and handed it to him.

  ‘Why don’t you ring me at the studio?’ she said. ‘If you still feel the same tomorrow.’

  * * *

  After dinner they walked by the river, holding hands and watching the lights on the water. She felt voluptuously content: it was still, after all these years, a luxury to be securely loved. Presently it began to get cold, and they went and sat in the car and kissed, like a courting couple. It made her feel young again.

  ‘You know,’ she said, ‘we don’t have to go straight home. I told Sally we’d be late.’

  Richard smiled and started the car. He drove without speaking, one hand on her knee, and she changed gear for him, an old familiar game. By the time they reached the studio it was lit by bright moonlight.

  ‘Just like old times,’ he said, as they started to undress.

  ‘Yes.’ But she wished he hadn’t spoken: it seemed to break the spell, just a little.

  The moonlight touched the half-finished Seven Deadly Sins. It was months since she had allowed him in the studio, in fact not since she began work on them. Suddenly, while they were still kissing and undressing, he said, ‘Oh, darling, I must talk to Inge. You shouldn’t have to do stuff like that for money just because she’s so lazy.’

  ‘What?’ Desire vanished and a murderous cold rage took its place. She loathed them anyway but she was doing her best and she knew they weren’t that bad. From a long way off she heard him desperately trying to wipe out his mistake.

  ‘No, no, I didn’t mean it like that, you’re doing it brilliantly, it’s just I know you hate it and I feel it’s all my fault. If I could only get Inge off her backside, you could get on with your real work.’

  There was a can of paint beside her ready mixed and thinned. She seized it and hurled it at one of the empty canvases. Thin red colour splashed all over the canvas, the walls, the floor.

  ‘Well, fuck you,’ she shouted. ‘That’s Anger, in case you can’t tell, and don’t flatter your tiny self anything to do with my work could be your fault. It’s my own bloody fault for marrying such an arsehole as you.’

  She was shaking with rage. They both stood and looked in amazement at the mess of red paint, then back at each other half naked, and down at their clothes on the floor. It had all happened so quickly, it seemed like a natural disaster, an earthquake, a flood, almost nothing to do with them and therefore beyond their control. Then, by some miracle, at the same moment, the incongruity of it all struck them both and they started to laugh. They hugged each other, still laughing, almost hysterical by now, and collapsed on the floor, pulling off their remaining clothes.

  * * *

  Felix thought at first he could never have enough of Sally. He loved everything about her: the mixture of child and woman in her conversation, her adoring glances, the scent of her skin, the feel of her hair, the warmth of her body against his own, the sound of her cries when she came, the look of pained surprise in her face when he introduced her to some new refinement of pleasure she had never imagined, and above all the intoxication of her youth, making him feel half his age and omnipotent. But in spite of all that, after a few months the day came when he was actually working well, when after all the usual procrastination and displacement activity he had finally got into the wretched thing and got it moving.

  He was even tempted not to answer the entry phone, but not tempted enough. It could only be Sally, because only Sally and Richard (apart from past loves) knew this address, and only Sally had permission to drop in without phoning. Of course he wanted to see her, although not at that precise moment, not with Tony Blythe just coming out of the sauna and seeing all that blood on the steps leading down to the pool.

  ‘Hullo, darling,’ he said. ‘What a lovely surprise.’

  ‘I’m disturbing you, aren’t I?’ she said. He was annoyed to be so transparent but at the same time he thought it might do her good to know she was not always welcome.

  ‘Not at all, only I’ve just got a fresh corpse in the jacuzzi and you know how distracting that is.’

  ‘Well, no. But I can imagine.’

  He kissed her then and realised he should have kissed her before.

  ‘Darling, you do feel tense. Are you all right?’

  Tony Blythe was receding, but Sally was not yet in sharp focus. Felix hated this stage, when he could neither work nor be nice to his guest.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ she said.

  He could feel the rest of the paragraph slipping away, like Elizabeth’s knitting when she wrenche
d it off the needles. He should have asked Sally to wait till he had finished and trusted her not to feel he was being unromantic.

  ‘I’ve got my A-level results.’

  ‘Then we’re celebrating. Come and have a drink.’ He poured two glasses of wine, knowing that really was the end of work for the day.

  ‘You don’t know what they are yet. I might have failed.’

  She sounded uncharacteristically gloomy. In fact now that he was beginning to be able to give her his full attention, he noticed that she looked gloomy too.

  ‘Don’t be absurd,’ he said. ‘I have the utmost confidence in you.’

  ‘Two Bs and an A.’

  ‘There you are. I’d have got champagne if I’d known. Well done, my love, I’m proud of you.’

  She took a large gulp of her drink as if gathering courage for some ordeal and said rapidly, ‘Felix, I’ve got to talk to you. I think – please don’t be cross, only my period’s late, I mean I haven’t had one since we went to Cambridge and I’m a bit worried.’

  The worst news in the world. He had heard it several times before but only from married women who said, ‘Oh shit, I swore I’d never have another abortion,’ and played with the idea of passing it off as their husband’s but ended up accepting Felix’s cheque. Never anyone so young. She actually bit her lip as she spoke, a gesture he used to love, making her look younger than ever. Now he felt she had kicked him in the balls and he was so angry he wanted to hit her. He simply wasn’t equipped for dealing with problems and he had never pretended he was. He was equipped for happiness, for giving pleasure to himself and other people, a rare talent, he thought, and it was unfair of anyone to expect more of him than that.

  ‘Please say something.’ She was watching him anxiously.

  ‘I can’t believe it.’

  ‘It’s probably all right, I mean it’s only a slight chance. You can miss them on the pill without being…’ She paused. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I know it’s an awful shock, it was for me too, only I’ve had more time to—’

  He said, ‘Look, right at the beginning, we talked about this. I said were you on the pill or should I use a sheath? We talked about it.’ God, what more could he have done? It wasn’t as if he’d been irresponsible.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You said it was safe. I trusted you. You weren’t a virgin, you knew the score.’

  ‘Felix…’ She drooped her head, looking miserable, like a beaten dog.

  ‘I can’t believe this is happening. What did you do, for God’s sake? Throw up? The bloody thing’s meant to be 100 per cent, isn’t it? Don’t tell me you just forgot, I’m not buying that.’

  Sally started to cry. He went to her and put his arms round her, realising he should have done it sooner. He had never felt less like doing it. He stroked her hair, noticing it wasn’t as clean as usual, and she sobbed.

  ‘Darling, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. It’s just the shock. It’s all right. Poor little one. Don’t worry. We’ll think of something.’ He thought he sounded like a parody of himself at his most benign.

  He poured more drinks and sat with her on the sofa, holding her hand.

  ‘Now then, let’s think. Have you seen a doctor?’

  ‘Not yet.’ She sniffed most unattractively and he passed her a box of tissues. ‘I couldn’t face it. But I’ve done two of those kits you get from the chemist and it was positive both times.’

  ‘Dear God.’ It was worse than he thought: it was total nightmare. Absolute panic took over and he wanted to run away.

  ‘I think positive can mean negative though, sometimes, but negative can’t mean positive. I think that’s right.’

  Hopeless. He knew the sound of despair when he heard it. ‘Poor darling,’ he said absently. ‘What rotten luck.’ His mind was racing: how soon could he decently mention abortion?

  Sally blew her nose and said clearly, even with a touch of bravado, ‘It’s my fault really. That weekend I left my pills in my other handbag.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Richard was giving me a lift to the station and I was so rushed.’

  He hadn’t thought it could get worse but clearly it could. Not only were they in this appalling mess but now she was admitting it could have been avoided. ‘Why the hell didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘I don’t know. I couldn’t.’ Her head drooped still further. ‘I felt so silly and it would have spoilt everything.’

  He got up, really fearing he might strike her now. He took deep breaths to calm himself and it didn’t work. ‘And this? Now? Isn’t this spoiling everything?’

  ‘I know.’ A small, sad voice. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Christ, I’d have gone to the all-night bloody chemist. Or given the whole thing up. We could have wanked, for God’s sake. I didn’t have to fuck you.’ He saw her flinch at the words and he was glad he’d shocked her. They’d always called it making love before. ‘Jesus, what goes on in your head?’

  ‘It was our special weekend. It was supposed to be romantic.’

  Felix sat down with his face in his hands. Presently she said, sounding older, ‘I didn’t know you’d be so angry. When you talked about Elizabeth not being able to have children, you sounded sad.’

  He sat up with a jerk. ‘Now look. You’re not saying you did this bloody fucking stupid thing on purpose, are you? Because if you are—’

  ‘No, of course I’m not,’ Sally said, looking frightened. ‘I didn’t.’

  Then there was a very long silence that neither of them seemed to know how to break. All Felix could think of was how to plant the idea of abortion without actually using the word. Eventually he said, ‘Look, Sally. You know I love you and of course it’s like a miracle, if you’re pregnant, when I always wanted children, but look, you’ve just got into Sussex, haven’t you, and, well, you know Elizabeth’s having a rotten time with the menopause.’ She didn’t answer and he went on, rather more energetically, ‘I mean, for God’s sake, we just can’t do this. Think what it would mean. Richard and Helen would go berserk. We’d ruin everyone’s lives.’ There was something unnerving about hearing his own voice run on and on, the words dropping away into space, with no response from her. She wouldn’t even look at him; she sat staring at the floor, her hands tight together in her lap. ‘I mean, you must see that,’ he finally said. ‘I’m thinking of you. What’s best for you.’

  * * *

  Richard tried to be compassionate, practical and detached. Some of his clients needed more than anything to be listened to, often a new experience; others required help to find their way through the maze of benefits they might be entitled to claim, or simply encouragement to stay out of trouble. Those inside needed a link with the outside world. He was no use to any of them if he got too involved: their friends or their families could do that. But sometimes the sense of identification was overpowering, though he kept it to himself.

  ‘It’s not as if I meant to hit her,’ Fred would say, frowning with effort as he tried to understand his own behaviour. ‘I mean I didn’t go round there with the deliberate intention of beating her up.’ He looked Richard straight in the eye, as if to prove he was telling the truth. ‘It was nothing like that. I just wanted to talk to her.’

  Richard knew quite well what he meant. Sometimes the longing to hit Inge, to drive into her with violence what could not be driven in with words, was so powerful that he would never understand what made him resist it. ‘D’you find her very difficult to talk to?’

  ‘I always seem to end up losing my temper, yeah,’ said Fred, quick to take the point. ‘I mean I only went round there to try and talk her out of getting a divorce and I end up hitting her. It don’t make sense.’

  It certainly didn’t make sense that you fell in love and had children and time passed, then one day you were apart with bitter memories, pain and rage and never enough money to go round, that this person you had once loved more than life was now someone you wanted to kill, who had the
power to torment you for ever, because you had injured them. ‘So you weren’t really taking the injunction seriously,’ he said, feeling obliged to remind Fred of the legal reality.

  ‘I knew I wasn’t supposed to go round there and, what do they call it, molest her.’ A faint, bitter smile crossed his face. ‘That’s a laugh. But I thought if I just wanted to talk…’ He looked honestly baffled now. ‘I mean I can’t believe they can stop me going round my own house. I’m still paying the mortgage, for God’s sake. She’s been off on holiday, I haven’t seen the kids for a month. I can’t afford to run two bleeding homes, can I?’

  ‘Nobody can,’ Richard said with feeling. ‘Not really.’

  ‘And now I’ve got to come and see you. Mind you, I don’t mind that. I thought I would when they said I had to, but I don’t. It’s all right. Funny, that.’

  Richard savoured the small, puzzled compliment. ‘D’you think there’s a chance she might drop the divorce? If you play your cards right?’ He wanted Fred to look at the possibilities, to see if he had any choice in the matter. If Fred could behave differently, might he be rewarded? And if not, could he accept his loss without further violence?

  There was a long silence between them. Phones rang in other rooms. Richard prayed his own phone would not ring. He could feel the painful effort Fred was putting into his thinking, facing what he did not want to face. He could see the effort in the frown, the clenched hands.

  ‘Not really,’ Fred said after a very long time, perhaps only a minute. ‘Oh, I try and fool myself there is, but she’s got this other bloke and…’ He looked up at Richard, very straight. ‘No, she means it all right.’

  ‘Is that why you want to hit her?’

  ‘It’s the kids, I think.’ Fred sounded surprised, as if he had really thought it was his wife he wanted back. ‘I mean, we tried everything, marriage guidance, the lot, you name it. But at the end of the day she’s got the kids and she’s got the house and that bloke’s going to move in with her. I’m paying the mortgage and I’m in a bedsit. She’s got it all her own way and there’s nothing I can do about it.’ He paused for a moment, then added in a very matter-of-fact tone, ‘I’d like to kill her.’