A Sense of Guilt

by Andrea Newman

  ‘Well, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. It would be a terrible waste of public money.’ He tried his charming smile on them. ‘Can I have a rest now?’

  ‘We’ve nearly finished, sir. Mr Morgan says you had a quarrel about a woman.’

  ‘Wasn’t that what I just said? Look, I’m very tired and I think I’ve answered enough questions for one day.’

  ‘But he didn’t say she was his wife or even his ex-wife. In fact he refused to name her.’

  It was all getting much too close to home. ‘Well, there you are. He’s a perfect gentleman.’

  ‘And he didn’t mention acting out a scene from your new book.’

  ‘I told you, his memory’s probably not so hot. He’s got a lot of problems at the moment.’

  Surely that was enough? He was exhausted.

  ‘Mr Cramer, what’s your latest book about?’

  Suddenly this seemed like a very sinister question. But it was absurd. Why should he let them disturb him?

  ‘A homosexual murder.’

  * * *

  Sally didn’t want to be there. ‘He’ll be out in a few days, what’s the point?’ she kept saying, but Helen had bullied her into it, making her feel guilty if she refused, implying that it was a matter of life and death, as if Richard were being hung up by his thumbs and Sally could save him. In the end Sally agreed furiously: she knew she was going as Helen’s deputy and she resented it. She couldn’t feel the same about Richard any more, knowing what he had done to Felix: it altered her whole perception of him and made him seem like a stranger, hostile and slightly crazed. Most of all she didn’t want to go inside a prison but she couldn’t say that to Helen, who was longing to go and be reconciled.

  Everything about it dismayed her: the formality, the smell, the other people. It made her feel like a criminal herself. She thought it was unfair that she was expected to visit him under such conditions when he had got himself into this mess. He looked suitably grateful, though, somehow cowed and subdued.

  ‘It was good of you to come,’ he said.

  She had meant to say she wanted to see him, one good honest lie to cheer him up, but when it came to it, she couldn’t get the words out.

  ‘I know,’ he said, reminding her against her will of the old Richard who had understood things, ‘it’s awful, isn’t it?’

  She attacked at once on sure ground, before she could get snarled up in feeling sorry for him. ‘Richard, what about Mum? She’s so upset. Why won’t you see her?’

  All the warmth went out of his face: he must have put it on just for her. ‘I’ve nothing to say to her. We’ve said it all.’

  ‘But she’s in a terrible state and I have to cope with it.’

  ‘I’m sorry. You’re having a rotten time, aren’t you?’

  But what use was that, sounding compassionate if he wasn’t prepared to do anything? What did she say when she went home to Helen?

  ‘How could you hurt Felix?’ she said. ‘How could you? It was between me and him. It was nothing to do with you.’

  He looked at her as if seeing the child she used to be. ‘Oh, Sally. Don’t you understand anything?’

  ‘But it was none of your business. It was all over. God, it was six months ago.’ She wished she could stop thinking about dates. ‘It was private. How could you go round there and hit him? How could you leave him like that? He might have died.’ And next month it would have been born, she thought. Would anyone else remember that?

  Richard didn’t appear to be listening. He said, ‘Sally, I want to ask you something very important. Will you tell me the truth? It’s not easy to ask, but I’ve done a lot of thinking in here and… I’m very embarrassed, so please bear with me.’

  God, this was awful. He was going to ask her something terribly intimate about Felix, about sex, something he had no right to ask. She couldn’t imagine what it was but she wanted to run away.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said.

  He clasped his hands together as if he were praying. ‘I know you’re very angry with me and you’ve every right, but will you please think back and give me an honest answer. Have you ever felt I wasn’t like a proper father to you? I mean, have I ever made you feel uncomfortable or… well, have you ever felt I was, what can I say, lusting after you?’ She was appalled. It was such a horrible idea. It had never entered her head and now it was fixed there for ever. Was he telling her that was how he had felt?

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but I really need to know. I’ve never been aware of it but maybe I’ve suppressed it.’

  She said violently, ‘God, I never thought about it.’

  ‘Then he was wrong.’ He looked extraordinarily relieved. ‘Only that’s why I hit him. That’s what Felix said, that I was jealous.’

  Sally got up. All she could think was that she didn’t want to hear all this.

  ‘Don’t go yet,’ he said. ‘I had to ask you.’

  ‘You’re just trying to put me off Felix, aren’t you?’

  He looked very serious and yet as if he thought he was entitled to behave like this, ‘I need to feel I’ve got something right and I’d like it to be our relationship.’

  She couldn’t stand the weight of it. It was bad enough having to cope with Helen, who at least was her mother. And she had problems of her own. Nobody was helping her.

  ‘I don’t want to listen to this,’ she said. ‘You’re trying to make out it was my fault you hurt Felix and it isn’t.’

  * * *

  She cried tears of anger on the way home and felt better. Helen wasn’t there, so she went to the studio and found her sitting on the floor, hugging her knees, head bent. A dramatic attitude but she knew it wasn’t a pose and all her anger melted. Perhaps she had used it up on Richard. The smell of the studio reassured her too. She hadn’t realised how much she’d missed it since she’d been away. Helen had had the studio longer than the house. It had been their earliest home alone together; she didn’t remember the flat. The studio had a reality like nowhere else. The smell of paint and turps was the smell of creativity that went on no matter what else happened. Helen had survived Carey. She could survive Richard. She would go on painting. Sally just had to be patient and loving. It would be an effort but it was worth it. Helen was solid and real.

  ‘I knew you’d be here,’ she said, thinking poor Mum, loving Richard more than I knew and he’s let her down, what a mess.

  ‘I can’t work,’ Helen said. ‘Can’t do anything.’

  ‘You will. Give yourself a chance. It’s a bit soon.’ She sat down on the dusty floor beside her.

  ‘How was Richard?’

  What to say? ‘A bit weird. Very wrapped up in himself.’

  ‘Any message?’

  ‘No. Sorry.’

  Helen rested her head on her knees, put her hands round her face. Sally thought she looked very beautiful, not old at all. Just tired and sad.

  ‘Come on, Mum. You’ve still got me. And all this. Remember there was only the two of us for years and years and we managed.’

  Helen produced a sort of smile. ‘I wish I could cry a bit more.’

  ‘Keep trying.’

  Silence. She held one of Helen’s hands. She liked the feel of it, the knobbly knuckles, knowing what it could do.

  ‘Magdalen wants me to go to the oast house tomorrow,’ Helen said presently. ‘See Jerome Ellis and those ghastly paintings I did for him.’

  ‘They weren’t ghastly. They were OK.’

  ‘If you like that kind of thing.’

  They both managed a small giggle. Helen put her arm round Sally.

  ‘You should go,’ Sally said. ‘Do you good. Take your mind off things.’

  ‘Come with me?’

  But that was going too far. ‘No. I want to see Jackie and Maria.’

  * * *

  What she in fact did was get her hair cut. She had been thinking about it for a while and now was a good time. But she didn’t want to tell anyone. It se
emed such a large gesture. She remembered Felix telling her never to do it and she felt rebellious. Maria was a hairdresser now and Jackie worked in a bank, so she could have a chat, cash a cheque and get her hair cut all in one afternoon.

  She wanted it very short but Maria wouldn’t do it. ‘It’s too much all at once. It’s halfway down your back. You can’t have it up round your ears all at once, you’ll hate it and you’ll blame me.’

  ‘It’ll be like culture shock,’ said Jackie and they both laughed.

  ‘It’s my hair,’ Sally said, ‘and I want to look different. Really different.’

  ‘You could always have it permed. Have an afro.’

  ‘Or dye it red or something.’

  ‘Or both.’

  ‘No, that’ll make it fall out.’

  ‘Well, bald would be different.’

  They stood round peering at her and she felt the centre of attention. It was strange to be back with them, like a time warp, before anything had happened to her. Like a space capsule re-entering her childhood. They didn’t envy her Sussex, or if they did, one look at her reading list cured them. She was really pleased to see them again and yet she felt they had nothing to say to each other, she felt a million years old.

  In the end Maria cut it so it rested on her shoulders, and she was quite right, it was enough of a shock.

  ‘You should keep the piece, you could wear it as a plait.’

  But Sally said no, she wanted it thrown away.

  * * *

  Once the euphoria of not being dead wore off, and the relief of getting a private room, Felix began to feel rather bad-tempered. His back ached and he wanted to go home. He imagined Richard might well feel the same about jail, in fact it was quite amusing that they should both be incarcerated at the same time. It would give them a lot to talk about when they eventually met again.

  He wondered what would happen to the friendship. Did an attempted murder make for greater or lesser intimacy? Was forgiveness a bond or a deterrent? He liked to imagine a sort of camaraderie of the trenches in World War One would result, a blend of Owen and Sassoon, but he might be entirely wrong.

  Elizabeth seemed unduly interested in his visit from the police. He told her what he had told them but she didn’t look any more convinced than they had.

  ‘Dirty little minds they’ve got, the fuzz,’ he said, trying to make light of it. ‘I wonder if the job attracts people like that or if they develop these tendencies on the job, as it were. Gives a whole new meaning to the boys in blue.’

  She wanted to know what they had said to him.

  ‘D’you know, I could have sworn they didn’t believe my story. They more or less implied old Richard and I had a lovers’ quarrel. Imagine that.’

  ‘What d’you mean, story?’ she said.

  ‘My statement. About the accident.’

  ‘Story sounds like fiction.’

  ‘Well, I may have tarted it up a bit to put poor old Richard in a better light.’ He liked his new big-hearted image.

  ‘Helen once said you were like David and Jonathan.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘“And David and Jonathan made a covenant, for he loved him as his own soul.”’

  ‘Fancy you knowing that. I really like being married to a dictionary of quotations. Saves me looking them up.’

  ‘Would it be dirty if it was a lovers’ quarrel?’

  ‘No, of course not, just inaccurate.’ Was she also accusing him of being gay? What a joke. ‘Mind you, there is a pleasing symmetry about it. Tony Blythe gets murdered by goldeneyed Sebastian, and I get punched on the jaw by Richard. Serves me right for borrowing his eyes.’

  ‘Yes, that’s curious,’ she said.

  ‘Only life imitating art. Happens all the time.’

  * * *

  Helen enjoyed the drive into Kent. Magdalen drove fast and well and entertained her with scandal about people in the art world whom they both knew. Although she hadn’t wanted to go and had ridiculed the idea, she had to admit now that Sally and Magdalen were right: she did feel taken out of herself and it was doing her good. Even the scenery was reassuring: there really was a world out there with trees and fields, houses and other people. Her world had narrowed down recently to home, studio and prison. It was good to know not everyone was locked up.

  The oast house was beautiful, set in lovely countryside, and Jerome had obviously spent a great deal of money doing it up. He was touchingly pleased to see her and she felt humbled that the time had come when she was actually pleased to see him.

  ‘You see, Helen,’ he said, waving his arm round the circular room. ‘What did I tell you? Don’t they look great?’

  It was a shock to see the paintings again. She could feel Magdalen willing her to be tactful. Actually they did not look as bad as she had feared. She thought now she saw them together in situ that they were too small for the space, but away from the studio they had a surprising cohesion that they had lacked while competing with her other work. And they looked so unlike anything else she had ever done that she could almost dissociate herself from them. She could hardly believe these colours, these shapes were hers. She had signed them on the back. Perhaps in a little while she could forget she had ever done them. And perhaps also they were not altogether shaming.

  ‘I’m glad you’re pleased with them,’ she said.

  ‘Wait till you see your painting in the john.’ He was wearing another brilliant jacket that hurt her eyes. ‘Reckon that makes it the classiest john in the whole of Kent.’

  She had to get used to the fact that a serious painting of hers called Self now hung in Jerome’s lavatory and he was proud of it. She had to remember that he had embarrassed Felix for her at her show and therefore he was a person who deserved gratitude and respect. Perhaps he really didn’t see any difference in quality between the different paintings. It was a curious thought.

  ‘If we don’t eat soon,’ Mario said, ‘everything will be spoilt.’ He was in charge of the cooking and kept darting out to the kitchen and coming back with an anxious expression.

  ‘OK, Mario, don’t panic,’ Jerome said. He seemed unconcerned about food. Helen thought how much she would hate to cook for him. ‘Have another dry Martini and relax. You know I want to sell Helen on the idea of doing a gigantic mural in the bedroom. A complete bacchanalia. Helen, how about that? Pan, Dionysus, the whole shebang. How does that grab you?’

  Helen smiled. She thought the idea, though unsuitable for her, had a certain lurid charm, and she could think of several painters who might take to it very well. ‘I think you need a representational painter for that.’

  ‘Sounds like a big job,’ Magdalen said. ‘Maybe Helen needs time to think about it.’

  Jerome lit a cigar. ‘Nonsense, it’s more subtle if it’s abstract. Half the people who come in here can’t tell which deadly sin is which, and I like that, it makes a good talking point.’

  ‘Don’t listen to him, Helen,’ Mario said. ‘He just likes making people do things they don’t want to do.’

  ‘Mario, don’t you have something to do in the kitchen right now?’

  Mario refilled his glass and went out.

  ‘I think it’s a very challenging idea,’ Magdalen said.

  ‘Take your time, Helen,’ said Jerome. ‘There’s no one else I’m gonna ask. I want a total look for this place.’

  A yell from Mario. ‘We have a soufflé and we eat it now.’

  ‘That sounds urgent,’ Magdalen said. ‘I’ll go and give him a hand.’

  As soon as they were alone Jerome leaned forward and touched Helen’s arm. ‘Helen, I’m really sorry to hear about your family trouble.’

  Helen was startled. How much had Magdalen told him? She felt betrayed but she was also touched by his genuine concern. And the Martinis were strong. She could feel a sensation like mist gathering inside her head, a fear that after struggling to cry safely with Sally she might burst into easy tears in front of Jerome. She felt tired a
nd hungry and drunk, unfit to be out, yet glad to be away from home. It was very confusing.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah, I can really empathise with you. Mario got himself locked up once and I had one hell of a job getting him out.’

  He knew too much and yet she was relieved. It made her troubles seem more ordinary, something that could happen to anyone, inconvenient but normal, like needing a plumber in the middle of the night, and therefore more capable of solution. She began to feel hope again.

  Mario yelled from the kitchen, ‘Don’t bother, it’s ruined,’ and Magdalen returned, smiling like a hostess determined to save the day. ‘Don’t believe him, it looks wonderful.’

  ‘And I’m not sure it was worth it,’ Jerome said.

  Suddenly she envied them just for being a couple, able to have fights because they were still together.

  * * *

  Felix, resting with closed eyes, let his thoughts drift. The new book, how to deal with Richard when they both got out, whether Elizabeth really suspected the truth, all these fragments whirled about in his head like snowflakes in a paperweight, important and decorative but insubstantial. Until he was home, he felt, none of these issues would have much reality. Hospital was time out, like floating on his back in a hotel pool. There was not much he could do about anything while he was here.

  He heard someone knock and come in, felt them stand there watching him. Not a nurse; it was a different quality of watching. He opened his eyes and saw Sally, a new Sally with shoulder-length hair. He was instantly very alert, aware of the dramatic possibilities of the situation. At last something was actually happening in this place.

  ‘Hullo,’ he said. ‘My God, you’ve cut your hair.’ It made her look older and smarter; he remembered telling her not to do it. And yet it had a certain streetwise charm. The untidy romantic child had gone. No more Tess of the d’Urbervilles.

  Well, at least no one else would have her hair cascading over them, stroking their body, playing Mary Magdalen, the way he had.