An Evil Streak

by An Evil Streak (retail) (epub)

  He turned to me. ‘She says she loves me, she says she’s going to leave him and come away with me – and now she’s going to kill my child.’ His voice cracked oddly; I wondered if he too was on the verge of tears. All this fuss, I thought, about an unborn child, a foetus, a clump of cells that may not even be there.

  ‘Gemma,’ I said with sudden hope (I had wanted them to suffer, yes, but this was ridiculously exaggerated), ‘aren’t we being a little premature? You weren’t even sure you were pregnant when you wrote to me.’

  ‘I had a test as soon as I got home.’ I could hardly hear her.

  ‘Oh yes, she moves fast all right,’ he said bitterly. ‘She’s a real expert. Apparently you can only have the super new method if you catch it early – that’s right, isn’t it?’

  Gemma blew her nose. His prolonged attack seemed to be making her pull herself together.

  ‘Up to eight weeks,’ she said.

  ‘After that it gets a bit messy and old-fashioned. You might have to suffer and that wouldn’t do, would it?’

  ‘It’s not that at all.’ She began repairing her face. ‘If you have vacuum extraction you can go home the same day. If they do a D and C they keep you in overnight. I can’t explain that to Chris again.’

  ‘You see?’ He turned back to me; he seemed set on scoring points, checking with the umpire. ‘It all comes back to bloody Chris. Mustn’t tell him lies, must we? Can’t be away overnight, he might get cold in bed. You’re going to kill my child just to keep your fucking husband happy. Christ. And you said you loved me.’

  In the middle of making up her face, Gemma started crying again. ‘I do,’ she said. ‘I do. And I want your baby. But I can’t have it. I can’t tell Chris I’m having your baby while I’m still living with him. It’s too cruel. Can’t you see that?’

  ‘Then leave him. Leave him right now. Just don’t go home.’

  I went away to make a cup of tea for us all and left them to it. From the kitchen I could hear them shouting at each other. It was strange to have so much sudden noise in my home, where voices were seldom raised. Was I perhaps getting a little too much reality? I was not altogether sure now how to proceed: I had envisaged Gemma staying with Christopher and bringing up David’s child; I had imagined her rejecting David at a later stage, not running away with him. I had never considered abortion, and while in a sense I welcomed the drama of it, it would, might one say, be short-lived. Not to be compared with the long-term interest of a cuckoo in the nest. Besides, it might make Gemma depressed, and while unhappiness can be colourful, depression is dreary for all concerned.

  By the time I went back with the tea there was a terrible silence. I poured three cups. The sound of the liquid flowing from the pot and into the china seemed unnaturally loud. The spoons chimed against the saucers. It was eerie, unnerving.

  ‘You don’t love me,’ he said as if I was not there.

  ‘I do. I do love you.’

  ‘If you loved me you couldn’t kill my child.’

  They did not seem to have made much progress. I handed round cups of tea.

  ‘Look,’ Gemma said. ‘Between us we’ve got four children already. We don’t even know what we’re going to do about them yet. How can I have another baby when—’

  He cut in. ‘The others belong to Chris and Cathy.’ He made them sound like a couple. ‘This baby’s ours. We can make a fresh start.’

  ‘And leave them all? Is that what you mean?

  ‘Why not? Don’t you see, it’s our big chance. It’s fate. You once said you wanted more kids.’

  ‘Not like this.’

  ‘Then you should have been more careful.’

  ‘So should you.’

  ‘Children, children.’ I was embarrassed: I reverted to cliche. ‘What’s done is done. It won’t help to quarrel about whose fault it is.’ Although in fact nothing could have interested me more, given my own involvement in the matter. But I did not feel it was a safe topic. ‘You’ve got to decide what to do.’

  ‘What the hell d’you think we’re doing?’

  Anxiety was making him ruder than usual.

  ‘She never meant to leave him,’ he went on in a contemptuous tone.

  ‘I never believed you really wanted me to,’ Gemma said defensively.

  ‘She’s too fond of home comforts – afraid she might have to rough it for a change. She wants the best of both worlds. A rich husband and a bit on the side.’

  My ears ached with his abuse. But there was something familiar – an echo – about the way he talked about her as if she were not there. Yes. He reminded me of Beatrice. For both of them Gemma was a child, a toy, an animal. A beautiful object to have about the house, to be abused or shown off at will. I resented the essential vulgarity he shared with Beatrice. They were coarse clay, both of them.

  ‘Gemma,’ I said soothingly. ‘What would you really like to do?’

  She said again, ‘I haven’t any choice.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake.’ He banged the table again, making my precious china jump and tinkle. I winced. ‘Be honest. You mean you want to kill it.’

  He seemed to have only one thought in his head.

  ‘Look.’ I tried to be fair. ‘All this haste, isn’t it putting you both under pressure? If you want the baby, Gemma, why don’t you have it? Stay with Chris till after it’s born. Let him think it’s his and decide what you’re going to do later when you’re not so upset. Would you agree to that, David?’

  To my surprise he said humbly, ‘I’d agree to anything to keep the baby. And make Gemma happy.’

  She put out a hand to him across the table and he took it. They hung on to each other tightly. Gemma started to cry again, just when I thought I was getting somewhere. Lovers are very unpredictable.

  ‘Chris would know,’ she said.

  ‘How would he know?’ I was baffled. ‘He hasn’t guessed so far.’

  ‘He’d know it wasn’t his.’

  I had never seen anyone cry so much.

  ‘How? He can’t be sure, even if you are.’

  ‘He can.’

  ‘Why? I don’t understand.’ Now we were both attacking her. She said with extreme reluctance, ‘He’s had a vasectomy.’

  * * *

  I would really prefer not to remember the next week. They did not make love at all: I felt a fool locked in my bedroom while they were in the kitchen crying and arguing, or while they lay on the spare-room bed and talked endlessly round in circles in the hopeless way that people do when there is no solution but they cannot bear to leave the subject alone. Between meetings they each insisted on trying to indoctrinate me with their separate points of view, David in person, Gemma on the telephone, as if once convinced, I might persuade the recalcitrant other. I was exhausted.

  Gemma appeared to consider a vasectomy a badge of shame, which was why it had taken her so long to tell us about it. She felt she was betraying Christopher by admitting something so humiliating. David, on the other hand, viewed it as comic (which for some reason enraged Gemma). To me it seemed eminently sensible of Christopher, given his views on family size and his knowledge of Gemma’s fecklessness, and her current predicament only served to prove how right he was.

  ‘He said he ought to practise what he preached,’ she said wretchedly. ‘Whatever method we used I was always forgetting or doing it wrong, I don’t know why, because I wanted another baby, I suppose, although I didn’t think it was on purpose. But Chris said as he was the one who didn’t want any more and it was such a simple operation for him, he should have it done. He said it wasn’t fair to keep recommending it to others if he wasn’t prepared to have it himself.’

  The inescapable puritan logic of that sounded so exactly like Christopher that I almost laughed. He was the sort of man who would have become a vegetarian if he felt himself unable to kill a sheep, despite the fact that the world is full of slaughterers. It was ironic and embarrassing that his good sense had rebounded on him – on all of us. But laughter would
have distressed Gemma, who saw nothing even faintly amusing in the situation. So I tried to comfort her instead, but she would not be comforted.

  I asked if she had seen her own doctor yet. I had no idea how one set about getting an abortion these days but it seemed the logical place to start. She said no, he was too close to Chris and she was afraid. I invoked the Hippocratic oath and she said of course he wouldn’t tell but he’d be carrying the burden of her secret (as she was carrying the child, I thought) and seeing Chris every day, he might let something slip. And even if he didn’t, the idea that someone so near home knew all about it threw her into a panic; it seemed to be tempting fate. She had thought about going to one of the charity places for anonymity but they were full of Christopher’s friends doing part-time work and they didn’t do the method she wanted yet. The National Health Service, yes, they would be cheaper still, but she doubted if they could move fast enough for her, they were so overworked. She made so many objections that I wondered briefly if she was trying to talk herself out of the whole thing. (But in the end it turned out that she was trying to talk herself into spending money. Mine.)

  * * *

  Beatrice rang up and I felt a pang of guilty terror. Gemma wasn’t looking well, she remarked conversationally, as if I should know why. Yes, she’d had a lovely holiday and yes, she was very brown, but the fact remained that she didn’t look at all well. Wasn’t that odd? I took a deep breath and said I had noticed the very same thing and I couldn’t understand it. In fact I had been going to mention it to her myself.

  * * *

  Every time I spoke to Gemma I felt we were sitting on a time-bomb ticking relentlessly away. If only I could persuade David, she said. She hated to do it without his approval; well, she hated to do it at all but it seemed much worse that way. Besides, she needed his support, his comfort. She had already wasted a week trying to persuade him: couldn’t I try?

  I had already tried; I tried again. David proved inflexible, using the word ‘murder’ as if he had invented it. If Gemma was prepared to kill his child, it meant she did not love him. There was nothing to discuss. I tried to argue that it was the immediacy of the decision that presented the problem, rather than intrinsic morality. Gemma within another week or two must either abort and stay with Christopher, or remain pregnant and run away with David. I winced a little at the words ‘run away’; they sounded so melodramatic. I pictured Gemma with a suitcase scuttling down the garden path while David waited in a car with the engine running. But he saw nothing incongruous. To him it was the ideal opportunity: a reason to do sooner what they had planned to do later. Unless of course Gemma had never intended to do it at all, he added accusingly. For my own satisfaction I tried to get out of him if he had ever really wanted her to, since she obviously didn’t believe him and it seemed to me a most unlikely plan (why on earth couldn’t they simply go on as they were?), but he insisted it was what he had always meant.

  * * *

  ‘Well, of course he’s lying,’ Catherine said, ‘if you mean not telling the truth. But he probably does believe what he says, for what it’s worth.’

  I was still amazed to find myself in her living-room. But the children were sick and she could not find a sitter. I looked round greedily, sure that this was my first and last visit to such intimate territory, anxious to absorb as much as I could. The flat was incredibly cluttered, toys and books and bits of suede and leather all over the place. A cottage industry, David had called it sneeringly in those far-off days before we began. Now, when I looked at Catherine, I felt I had known her all my life.

  She didn’t apologise for the mess, merely sat down in it and began stitching something.

  I said, ‘I’m flattered to be here. I didn’t think you’d risk it.’

  She smiled. ‘Why, in case one of the children said to David, Mummy had a funny man here? Don’t worry, they’re used to Mummy’s funny men. They wouldn’t think it worth mentioning.’

  Not quite the answer I wanted but I had to make the best of it. I sat down opposite her and studied her pale angular face. I felt I wanted to save her from something but I was not sure what it was.

  I said inadequately, ‘I’m so glad to see you.’

  She smiled and went on stitching. Presently she said, ‘If she has an abortion, he’ll leave her. If that’s what she’s afraid of, she’s absolutely right.’

  I said, ‘But you had one and he didn’t leave you.’

  ‘I had two, but he doesn’t know about the second. Of course he didn’t leave me, I’m his wife.’ A look of extraordinary self-satisfaction passed across her face.

  I wanted to question her but I did not dare. Why did she seem so pleased? Not for the first time I wondered what I had blundered into; what went on between them; was nothing as it seemed?

  She said in an amused, artificial tone of voice, as if she knew my thoughts, ‘He’s stuck with me, you see. But girlfriends have to prove themselves. Very keen on grand gestures, David is. Self-sacrifice and the world well lost for love. All that. I lost track of it years ago but I think that’s what he wants. To him, you see, getting rid of his child is a personal insult. He’s very insecure. But I told you all that, didn’t I? He wants people to prove they love him, all the time. It gets very exhausting.’

  I said, ‘But I don’t see what Gemma can do. She’s obviously afraid to leave her husband for him.’

  Catherine said gently, ‘She’s right to be afraid. It wouldn’t last.’

  ‘But she can’t stay with her husband if she’s pregnant. He’s had a vasectomy. And if she has an abortion you say David will leave her.’

  ‘That’s right.’ Her tone was utterly calm.

  ‘I think she knows that.’

  ‘She’d be a fool if she didn’t.’

  The minutes ticked by. She put aside her stitching and poured us two drinks. She resumed her seat and told me that presently we could eat a salad lunch and some home-made soup.

  I said with a touch of desperation,‘So she doesn’t know what to do for the best.’

  ‘No. She’s really in a mess.’

  Her cool rational callousness was beyond anything I had ever encountered. I was thrilled and disgusted. I did not know how to deal with her. I wanted to run away and yet I felt I had a lot to learn.

  I said, ‘You don’t seem very upset.’

  She shrugged. ‘No. If you remember, I did try to stop all this happening, right at the beginning. But you wouldn’t help me.’ She said it very gently, logically. Without reproach. She was stating a fact. ‘So there’s no point in my getting upset now. It’s not my problem any more.’

  * * *

  Gemma said, ‘I want to see Peter. He’s the only person I trust.’

  ‘Peter?’ For a mad moment I imagined she meant Peter Hughes; that she must be having a fit of nostalgia for her first love. I pictured him ineptly trying to abort her with a bicycle pump borrowed from his father’s shop.

  ‘Peter Grayson. My baby doctor.’

  It was suddenly clear. ‘A first-rate chap,’ I said, my total-recall memory bringing Christopher’s words back to me.

  She didn’t notice the allusion. ‘He’s marvellous. He’ll understand.’ I felt she was casting me out along with David. ‘And if he doesn’t want to do it himself, he’ll refer me to someone he knows.’

  ‘Gemma,’ I said uneasily, ‘are you sure all this is legal?’

  ‘Of course it is.’ She sounded quite cross.

  ‘But do you really have grounds for abortion?’

  ‘Yes. Don’t be stupid.’ She quoted something about the risk to the physical and mental health of the pregnant woman and her children being greater if the pregnancy continued than if it was terminated, but she quoted it so fast I lost track of her. When I remarked that she was very well-informed she shrieked at me that I was just like David, and how could she help knowing all about it, being married to Christopher? After that there was a long silence and I felt I had failed her.

  ‘All I want from you is
money,’ she said hurtfully. ‘Can you lend me some money? Chris will notice if I’m overdrawn and Peter isn’t cheap but he’s the best. I’ll be safe with him.’

  I was reminded of Beatrice’s words on Gemma’s wedding day and I was close to tears.

  ‘Of course I’ll lend you money,’ I said. ‘As much as you like. I’ll do anything you want, you know that.’

  ‘That’s all I want,’ she said, started to cry and hung up. I hovered, but she didn’t ring back.

  Something was bothering me; I spent the rest of the evening in a kind of daze. I had a problem to solve. If Catherine had been there, I could have worked it out sooner. But hours later, in bed, it came to me; I saw where I had blundered. I had got the roles confused; I had cast the wrong actors. None of this trouble would have arisen if I had realised fully what I was about. I was even surprised that Catherine had not pointed out my mistake; it was so simple. Christopher wasn’t Criseyde’s dead husband after all: he was Troilus, in all his fidelity and tears. So David wasn’t Troilus, as I had fantasised: he was the glamorous, the unreliable, the threat: he was Diomedes. I had got it all wrong, from the very beginning.

  Book 5

  ‘What should I say to you? I hate Criseyde; / God knows that I shall hate her evermore!’

  You are going to blame me: I can feel it. Despite the fact that I only gave them what they wanted. That it also happened to be what I wanted is incidental. Thanks to me, they have lived more fully than I, but nevertheless you are going to blame me, because it turned out badly. As if endings were all that mattered.

  * * *

  On the day of Gemma’s abortion, David abandoned all pretence of working and sat about my flat consuming martinis by the pint. I envied him for being able to find such an easy relief for tension, and at someone else’s expense. We were both very anxious and reproached one another like parents.