Felix said, ‘It’s no picnic being with someone who’s so very much in love with someone else. Never happened to me before. Quite a blow to my ego. All she wants is someone to prop her up till you come back.’
Richard believed him. He knew Felix was telling the truth and yet he felt unbelievably angry, as if Felix was trying to patronise him. He said furiously, ‘Tell her not to hold her breath.’
There was a tense silence. Felix said, ‘You’re not going to let this affect our friendship, are you? Because if you are, I’d rather drop the whole thing. Just think of it as the nearest I’ll ever get to social work.’
Richard forced himself to look at Felix and saw the same civilised face that he had known for twenty years. It was odd to see Felix unchanged after what he had just heard him say. He wondered if he was going slightly mad. Felix was very attractive and so was Inge. He didn’t desire either of them – how could he? – so why should they not enjoy each other and leave him free to be happy with Helen? It was a perfect arrangement, and he had sanctioned it in advance, so why did he not feel good about it?
‘It’s all right, Felix,’ he said. ‘Really it is.’
Winter
Sally sat in the lecture hall. She had been meaning to write to Felix for ages, ever since she got his letter, but every time she tried to, someone interrupted her or she started to cry. It was a hard thing to do alone: she wanted people around her but she did not want them to interfere. So she hit on the plan of writing to Felix during a lecture. She could not concentrate on the lecture anyway, so she might as well write to Felix, and she would feel safe in a clean, well-lighted place, she thought. She addressed the envelope first and even writing Felix’s name and the details of the flat unnerved her, so she was doubly grateful for the people in the lecture hall and the lecturer’s voice droning on.
‘But no assessment of Donne,’ he said, swaying slightly as he spoke, ‘would be complete without consideration of Dryden’s stricture: “He affects the metaphysics, not only in his satires but in his amorous verses where nature only should reign; and perplexes the minds of the fair sex with nice speculations of philosophy when he should engage their hearts and entertain them with the softnesses of love…”’
Dear Felix [she wrote], I’ve put off writing this letter as long as I could but now it’s nearly Christmas and I want to tell you why I won’t be coming home. I’m still too angry with Mum and I don’t want to see her. I was very angry with you too, but now I just feel sad that you didn’t love me enough, and I’m angry with myself for being so stupid as to think you did. I can’t blame you for everything because some of it was my fault. I should never have taken a risk without asking you and I should never have imagined you might leave Elizabeth and live with me and our baby. I still have nightmares about the abortion, although at the time it was as all right as they could make it and everyone was very nice to me.
She stopped and looked round the room. She didn’t believe that anyone else there had such grown-up problems.
Oh Felix, it could all have been so different. I wish I could hate you because then it might not hurt so much, but I don’t want to spoil the memory of all the wonderful times we had. It was everything I’d always imagined it would be. I can’t wish we’d never begun, I just wish it had ended differently. But I couldn’t stand up to Mum without you to help me.
I’m going to spend Christmas with my father and his new family. It may be difficult because his wife is about to have their fourth child, but perhaps that will be good for me. It’s wonderful to meet him after all this time and talk to him, when I really need someone to talk to.
I feel because it’s Christmas I ought to forgive you but I can’t, not yet. I don’t know if I ever will. I’m so confused, I can’t imagine being able to feel just one feeling at a time ever again.
Don’t be sad.
love,
Sally.
She was surprised how quick and easy it had been. She had thought about it so much that it was just there in her head, waiting to be written. She had told him the absolute truth and now she felt much lighter. But she needed to have the last word. If he answered her, it would all get messy. She scribbled at the bottom of the page:
P.S. Please don’t write back. I couldn’t bear it.
* * *
After Magdalen had gone Helen tried to work, but the paintings felt cold and heavy, like leftover porridge. There’s no urgency now, they said reproachfully; you’ve postponed us. Why should we get hot for you? Well, you wouldn’t like it if I did you in a hurry or left you unfinished, she argued with them. We might, they said, and were silent. She sat for a while in the worn-out armchair, picking at bits of horsehair and looking at the canvases, but they offered her nothing. She found she was starting to think about Sally and once that happened she knew she might as well go home. As she got in the house the phone was ringing and it was Sally to say she was going to spend Christmas with Carey and did Helen mind?
Helen sat for a long time at the kitchen table after she put down the phone. She held her head in her hands to prop herself up. She thought she was close to despair: if she couldn’t work and she had lost Sally, then she might as well be dead, and if she also couldn’t talk to Richard about how she felt, she had outmanoeuvred herself totally. She didn’t feel suicidal, more that she had already stopped living: the job had been done for her while she had been looking in another direction. Someone had cut off her supply of life.
She wasn’t aware of time passing so she didn’t know how long she sat there, but eventually she heard Richard come in. She sprang up, poured two glasses of wine.
‘Sorry I’m a bit late,’ he said, ‘I had a drink with Felix.’
‘Doesn’t matter, it’s only macaroni cheese and salad.’
‘Wonderful.’ He kissed the back of her neck as she stood at the sink. ‘I thought it was my turn to cook.’ They had always divided household chores scrupulously.
‘Oh well, I got home early. I couldn’t work properly so I thought I might as well cook. Not that I’ve actually started, but I meant to.’
She couldn’t fool him entirely, of course. He looked at her with sympathy and said, ‘Isn’t it going any better? I thought maybe once you’d told Magdalen about postponing you’d feel easier about it.’
She shook her head. She was angry to find herself close to tears. ‘I’m bloody useless.’
‘It’ll come right. It always does.’
‘You have such faith in me. I wish I did.’
‘You’re not standing where I am.’ He put his arms round her and hugged her very tight. She let herself relax into the hug as far as she could and they kissed. She thought how lucky she was: he had pulled her back from the brink of something dangerous.
‘Nice,’ she said, thinking how inadequate and yet appropriate the word was. ‘Oh, what the hell. Sod the lot of them.’
‘That’s the spirit.’ They laughed. ‘Which brings me to Christmas.’
‘Oh God, don’t ruin everything. You’ve just got me in a good mood.’
‘I only wanted to ask you which day we should ask Felix and Elizabeth round.’
Why now? Why was this suddenly important? ‘Do we really have to?’
‘Well, we always used to.’
‘That’s no answer.’
‘And it is their first Christmas back.’
Helen extricated herself from the hug and went back to chopping vegetables. She found the feel of the knife in her hand quite comforting. ‘Maybe now’s the time to break with tradition.’
‘But they’ll be hurt. And they’ll think it’s very odd.’
‘Let’s wait till they ask us round and then I can be ill.’
He looked concerned. ‘Oh darling, it’s not as bad as that, is it?’
‘It’s worse. Look, why don’t you and Felix go out somewhere and be all macho and festive, and I’ll see Elizabeth on her own? It works much better that way. That’s what we’ve been doing lately.’
‘Yes, I’ve
noticed.’
Now he had a slight edge to his voice, which made her aggressive. ‘Well, it’s sensible. We’re not Siamese twins, after all. Elizabeth wants to moan about Felix and he wants to boast to you, so really having a foursome is counterproductive. We only have to meet again separately.’
‘But it’s Christmas.’
‘Yes, I do know that. But it’s such a waste of time and energy, not to mention the booze. They both drink like fishes, I don’t think we can afford them.’ Surely this was an argument that would appeal to him.
‘Well, that’s the point really.’ He looked embarrassed. ‘We can’t afford to drop them, even if we want to.’
‘What d’you mean?’ Helen said, feeling a sudden chill. ‘I can afford to drop anyone.’
Richard drank his wine. Without moving he almost seemed to be shuffling his feet on the kitchen floor and she had a sudden vision of him as a schoolboy.
‘Weil, Felix is doing me a sort of favour with Inge, and if we don’t have a normal Christmas with them he’ll only think I’m being… well, like a dog in the manger.’
‘A sort of favour?’ Helen repeated.
‘Yes, they’re having an affair.’
‘God, he doesn’t waste much time.’ The words slipped out before she realised how revealing they were.
‘What?’
Now she had to think fast. ‘Oh, Elizabeth said she thought he’d broken up with someone back in the summer.’
‘Yes, he had. Someone in Cambridge, I think. So he was at a loose end and Inge met him by chance in a bookshop. Well, you know what she’s like. I just thought if he could make her happy, I mean a bit less lonely and frustrated, then you and I might actually benefit. She might ease up on all the pressure, maybe even get a job, I could pay her less money. I’ve never been able to pull my weight here, I’m very conscious of that. If Felix can take care of Inge, then I can do more for you and Sally.’
So many words. He was trying so hard to make it sound all right. She couldn’t think what to say.
‘He did sort of ask my permission first.’
‘How frightfully gallant of him.’
‘It’s not an easy situation.’
The truth was so awful, it took her a while to face it. ‘You’re jealous, aren’t you?’
‘I don’t know what I feel. I’m very confused.’
‘God, Felix and Inge,’ she said, still in shock. She could see the logic behind it but it felt incestuous and disgusting, even dangerous.
He said, ‘Yes, but it could work to our advantage,’ sounding eager to believe his own words. She thought how quickly the balance could shift: that was the trouble with marriage. Just when you were in need of a bit of help and comfort yourself, you had to dispense it instead.
‘It’s going to be a funny Christmas,’ she said. ‘Sally’s not coming home. She’s going to stay with her lovely new father.’ He could see the distress on her face, hear it in her voice. He put his arms round her again and she let the tears come.
‘Have to make the best of each other then, won’t we?’ he said.
* * *
‘Tell you what,’ Felix said. ‘Let’s go away for Christmas.’
They were curled up at opposite ends of the sofa watching La Boheme on television, within touching distance of each other. It was the sort of evening they both enjoyed: supper on a tray and shoes off and music and closeness. But Felix couldn’t relax enough to enjoy it as much as usual. He felt uneasy: Sally’s letter had unnerved him, as well as Richard’s obvious jealousy about Inge, and Inge’s own tiresome habit of prowling around the flat and opening wardrobes and asking tactless questions. None of these factors was in itself a disaster, but taken together they made him feel emotionally over-extended, particularly now that Natasha was chasing him for the book. He was conscious of wanting to run away and hide, like a child before an exam. It was all too much. He couldn’t cope; he simply didn’t have the resources. He needed help.
‘Can we afford it?’ Elizabeth said. ‘We’re living off our hump as it is.’
‘I know, but it’s so cold, and it’s going to be boring, Richard and Helen are bound to want us to go round there and I’d like a change. Let’s go away somewhere warm. Just the two of us. I want to be alone with you.’
‘I thought that was just what we came home to avoid,’ she said rather sharply.
Perhaps she was feeling neglected. He knew he had been rather preoccupied lately. If flattery couldn’t divert her, maybe pathos would do the trick.
‘Darling, don’t be grumpy. I’ve had a very hard day. Natasha’s nagging me to get the book finished.’
‘Didn’t you tell her you’d torn it up?’
‘No.’ Shit, he had forgotten that stupid lie he had told when he was late for La Traviata, the day Sally announced she was pregnant. ‘Well, yes, I did, but now I’ve looked at it again, I think I might be able to salvage some of it.’
On the screen Rodolfo and Mimi were singing some of the most romantic music ever written. Being cold, poor, ill and heartbroken didn’t faze them at all; they were coping much better than he was, with all his advantages.
‘That’s no surprise,’ Elizabeth said comfortably. ‘It’s always better than you think, when you really get down to it.’
‘Well, even if it is,’ said Felix, hoping to God she was right, ‘there’s no way I can get it done as fast as she wants it. Oh, come on, Lizzie, let’s go off and lie in the sun and make love every night and I’ll do a thousand words a day. I want to be a lizard on a rock.’
‘Maybe after Christmas. Right now I want to stay at home and see our friends and have a trad English Christmas. I’m tired of travelling.’
‘God, you’re a hard woman.’ He put out his hand to her and when she took it he held on tight. He actually felt panic and he wasn’t sure what the panic was about. Just a feeling that the whole complicated edifice of his life could be crumbling, but that seemed excessive. ‘You’re not cross with me, are you?’ he said.
‘No more than usual.’
‘Don’t tease me.’ He turned his head to look at her but she was staring at the screen.
‘Who’s teasing?’ she said.
‘You know I love you. And all the rest’s a fantasy.’ Still no answer. ‘Lizzie?’ Now she turned her face to him but it didn’t reveal anything. ‘You know I couldn’t manage without you. You wouldn’t ever leave me, would you?’
‘I ought to.’
Perhaps it was all about nothing, just one of their games, shifting the balance of power to and fro. Sally and Inge were much too close to home, he had been reckless there, but she couldn’t really know. Could she? ‘I’d kill you,’ he said, to reassure her, squeezing her hand and banging it on the sofa.
‘Oh well, in that case,’ she said, smiling for the first time, ‘maybe I’ll stay.’
At last he felt safe. He allowed himself to relax, sinking back into the music, letting it envelop him like warm treacle.
* * *
All the way here in the car I was panicking. I talked non-stop for a while, the way I always do when I’m nervous, then I shut up completely and couldn’t say anything. He didn’t seem to notice. It was funny being with him in the car on a long journey, so dark outside and the two of us very close but not talking. I thought of all the years we didn’t know each other, how he was a stranger till quite recently, still is really, and here we were together in this small space. I got pre-Xmas blues thinking about Mum and how I’m punishing her by not going home, only I’m punishing myself as well, and how awful it would be if Richard gets suspicious because I’m staying away. Then I started worrying about presents, how nobody’d like what I’d bought them and I’d done it in a hurry and done it badly because I didn’t have any money. God, I was a real misery. It was a good thing I did stop talking. I got so depressed I actually wanted to jump out of the car. I’m not sure if I wanted to be killed, quickly and painlessly of course, or just slightly injured so I could spend Xmas in hospital. Then I got
into a fantasy about a gorgeous doctor falling in love with me and me telling him there was no hope because I’d given up men. That was fun. He was frantic and couldn’t do his work properly. The only trouble was, he looked rather like Felix. I bet his life is going on quite unchanged.
I suppose really I was just very very nervous about meeting Marsha.
Then C said it was all going to be a bit chaotic. I said that would be a nice change from home, with Mum keeping everything so orderly so she could get on with her work. Then I thought how silly for me to be telling him what Mum’s like at home when he must remember and I bet she hasn’t changed very much except get more bossy probably. I got quite a shock when he said, ‘You mustn’t hate her, you know, she loves you very much.’ I was surprised he knew so much, or cared enough to say it, but instead of being grateful I said very rudely, ‘Oh God, you’re not going to lecture me, are you?’ I thought I might have upset him but he just said quite calmly, ‘I might. But you can always tell me to shut up.’ He was really good about it but I still couldn’t thank him, I just sat there thinking about what he’d said and I suddenly felt awfully tired of all of them, Mum and Richard, and Felix, and C, the whole lot. I felt I’d been considering other people’s feelings all my life and nobody’d ever considered mine. I was really fed up of fitting in with everybody and being endlessly tactful and cheerful.
I said, ‘Are you sure Marsha doesn’t mind me coming?’
He said of course she didn’t, she was pleased, only a lot of the time she was half asleep, which was hardly surprising, he said. I didn’t know if I was meant to laugh or what. Quite suddenly I said, ‘I’m so afraid of seeing her,’ and it seemed the only really true thing I’d said all day. He didn’t answer and I wondered if he understood what I meant, then we were there, drawing up outside the house. It was very dark, that special sort of dark you get in the country and even more so at Christmas, very dense, with only the lighted windows in the distance like beacons, and suddenly the children opened the door and spilled out of the house, running to meet him. He got out of the car and scooped them up in his arms. I just sat there watching, I was sort of frozen. I thought about how he’d never done that for me, or if he had, not for long and I didn’t remember anyway – they were already older than I’d been when he left us. And I thought how Felix would never do that for our baby because it was dead. And then Marsha came into the doorway and waved. She was silhouetted against the light, it couldn’t have been more perfect if she’d planned it, though of course I know she didn’t, but there she was simply hugely, enormously pregnant, just as I got out of the car. And I started to cry.
A Sense of Guilt Page 23
