A Family Affair

by Janet Tanner

  And yet the impression remained. Throughout the meal Helen continued to feel uncomfortable and slightly resentful. She was not, she admitted to herself, enjoying it one bit.

  ‘I don’t think I should be too late,’ she said as they drank coffee from tiny bone-china cups – Paul would irreverently compare them to eggcups, she thought.

  ‘You’re coming back to the flat.’ It was a statement, not a question.

  ‘No, actually, I don’t think I am. I’ll be having another busy day tomorrow and I really need a good night’s sleep.’

  ‘Oh!’ He looked surprised – and hurt – that vulnerability that lurked beneath his suave confidence and which could usually make her heart turn over, showing itself. ‘I thought …’

  ‘Another time, Guy.’

  ‘Helen …’ The dark, gold-flecked eyes sought hers and again she glimpsed the vulnerability. ‘You’re not trying to tell me something, are you? Because if you were I couldn’t bear it.’

  ‘Guy.’ She glanced round, slightly embarrassed, but the tables were set at a discreet distance apart and no-one appeared to be even remotely interested in their conversation. ‘It’s nothing I haven’t said before.’

  ‘Helen – I’m free now. Things are different.’

  ‘And so am I.’

  ‘I love you, Helen. I won’t let you do this. I’m warning you …’

  ‘Pay the bill, Guy. Let’s go.’

  ‘It’s a terrible night, sir,’ the maître d’said as he escorted them to the door. ‘You haven’t too far to go, I hope. The fog is very thick.’

  ‘Not far,’ Guy said shortly.

  The maître d’was quite right – whilst they had been inside the fog had thickened to a dense blanket punctuated only by the faint blurred glow of the lamps which lined the drive. They floated, disembodied, in the opaque night, and there was a bite to the clammy wetness which suggested that if not already freezing, it was not far off.

  ‘You can’t drive home in this,’ Guy said. ‘You’ll have to stay, Helen.’

  ‘I have a surgery in the morning.’

  ‘You can leave early. At least it would be daylight. This is lethal stuff.’

  Reluctant as she was, Helen had to agree. Driving all the way home to Hillsbridge in this would not only be stressful and unpleasant, it would actually be quite dangerous. Again she found herself wishing she had never agreed to come tonight. But it was a little late now for that.

  ‘I think you might be right,’ she said.

  ‘I know I am. Do you want to leave your car here and I’ll bring you back to collect it in the morning?’

  ‘No, I’ll follow you.’

  ‘If you’re sure you can cope …’

  ‘Of course I can cope! Where is your car, anyway?’

  He showed her, a dark shape she was unable to recognise until she was almost right on top of it.

  There was little traffic about; Helen managed to stay on Guy’s tail lights through town. Though she had been to his new flat before, she thought that in this murk she might have had difficulty identifying it if she lost sight of him. The tall old houses – even the streets – looked almost identical.

  She managed to park, followed him up the path and into the hallway – all elegant tiles and stained glass. His flat was up two flights of carpeted stairs where the walls were hung with framed prints. Inside, however, it was curiously bare; it had been let as partially furnished and he had not bothered to add to the decor. The omission Helen found vaguely surprising – Guy was a man who liked his comforts. She could only assume he had left all but his most personal possessions in the marital home and not got around to buying more, but the fact that he had not stamped his personality on the flat in any way gave it an odd feeling of impermanence.

  He went around switching on lights – standard and table lamps whose shades had once been elegant silks but which now were faded and sad – and put a record on the radiogram, a classical piece she recognised but could not put a name to, though she thought it might be Mozart.

  ‘Drink?’

  ‘No, thanks. I’ve had enough. I’d really like to go to bed. I have to be up early in the morning to be back in time for my surgery. Where am I going to be sleeping?’

  ‘You’d better have my room. I’m not sure if the bed in the spare room is aired. I don’t think it’s even made up.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘Don’t worry about me.’

  ‘But I am worried! You don’t want to sleep in a damp bed either.’

  ‘I was hoping …’ he said, looking at her slyly, ‘that perhaps you’d be prepared to share.’

  ‘Guy …’

  ‘It wouldn’t be the first time, after all.’

  ‘That was when we … it was different.’

  ‘I find your attitude really odd, Helen. You were quite happy to sleep with me when I was with Marian. Yet now I’m free …’

  She hesitated. Put like that it did sound rather ridiculous. She felt guilty, too, consigning him to either a damp, unmade-up bed or the rather cramped overstuffed sofa in his own home.

  ‘There’s sleeping with and sharing a bed with,’ she said after a moment. ‘If we share a bed, I want you to be quite clear it is just that.’

  ‘I would have thought you knew me well enough to know I have never, and would never, force myself on someone who doesn’t want me,’ he said smoothly, but she sensed the slight smugness of triumph and experienced another qualm of misgiving.

  He wouldn’t force himself on her. Quite right. It wasn’t his style. But when he was lying beside her, when she felt the warmth of his body as she had used to feel it, smelled the intimate blend of cologne and skin odour, heard him breathing in unison with her as always seemed to happen when they lay close, heads sharing the same pillow – how could she be sure that she would not invite him to be with her as once they had been?

  She pushed the thought aside, angry with herself. Was she really so weak that after being irritated by him all evening she could now even contemplate being tempted to make love? And became even angrier as she realised the answer was yes. The physical attraction between them had always been strong. It had been the instigator of their affair, now it was not beyond the bounds of possibility that it was still potent enough to rekindle a spark from the ashes.

  ‘You realise I didn’t come prepared to spend the night,’ she said. ‘I haven’t got a toothbrush, much less a change of underwear.’

  He smiled briefly.

  ‘I think there’s a new toothbrush in the bathroom cabinet. And you can borrow a pyjama jacket to wear to bed. I’m afraid I can’t do anything about the underwear.’

  ‘Do you mind if I go and find the toothbrush and use it right away?’

  ‘Be my guest.’

  She went through to the bathroom. Avocado green with matching chenille bath mats. Helen smiled to herself. Hardly Guy’s style. She opened the small mirrored cabinet and the sight of his shaving brush and razor twisted more bitter-sweet chords of memory. She averted her eyes from them. There was indeed a new toothbrush, still in its plastic wrapping, on the top shelf. She pulled it and something rolled out and landed at her feet. A small black tube embossed with gold. A lipstick.

  She bent automatically to pick it up but it was only when it was in the palm of her hand that the significance of it occurred to her. A lipstick. In the bathroom cabinet of Guy’s bachelor flat. She slid off the cover. The lipstick was a bright shade of pink – shocking pink, the fashion columns called it. It was hollowed from use beneath its chiselled tip, but smooth and creamy still. She sniffed it. It smelled fresh and slightly perfumed, in no way stale.

  She replaced it on the shelf where it had been. Her hand was trembling slightly. She tore the wrapping from the toothbrush, half expecting to find the bristles moist from recent use though she knew that was a ridiculous notion. She cleaned her teeth using Guy’s toothpaste and thought that her face, reflected in the mirror, looked pale and drawn. After a moment’s thought she opene
d the cabinet again and palmed the lipstick.

  Guy was flipping through a stack of records in the storage cupboard of the radiogram. A glass of golden liquid stood on top. Brandy – his favourite nightcap, though not in one of his elegant balloon glasses now, just a cheap-looking tumbler.

  ‘Has Marian been here?’ she asked.

  ‘Marian?’ He looked at her blankly.

  ‘Marian. Your wife.’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘No, I didn’t think so.’ She’d known, the moment she’d seen it, that the lipstick wasn’t Marian’s. She couldn’t imagine Marian wearing that shade in a million years.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Guy asked.

  ‘This.’ She opened her hand. The black and gold case lay in her palm, accusing him. ‘Who does this belong to, Guy?’

  She saw the flicker of guilt in his eyes before the shutters came down and it confirmed what she already knew.

  ‘I’ve never seen it before,’ Guy said. ‘Where did you find it?’

  ‘In the bathroom cabinet.’

  ‘It must have been left there by the previous tenant.’

  ‘You are a liar, Guy,’ she said.

  She was angry now, as much with herself as with him. A few short minutes ago she had been contemplating sleeping with him, the man who had supposedly left his wife for her, the man she had given five years of her life to, whom she had loved so much. And all the time …

  ‘You didn’t leave Marian because of me, did you?’ she said. ‘She didn’t throw you out because of me. I couldn’t understand it. It didn’t add up. I mean – a couple of years ago, yes. When we were … but not now. Not when we hadn’t seen one another for months. There’s been someone else, hasn’t there? Someone who uses shocking-pink lipstick. Who is she?’

  ‘Helen, I …’ For once Guy seemed totally lost for words.

  ‘I’ll bet that hotel receipt Marian found didn’t have anything to do with me either. I thought it was odd, after all this time. You send your suits to the cleaners every few weeks. You can’t tell me you hadn’t had that particular one cleaned since we went away together. I don’t believe it. There’s been someone else, someone you went away with, someone who’s been here.’

  ‘And what if there has? You can’t expect me to live like a monk, Helen. If you …’

  ‘Come off it, Guy! It’s got nothing to do with me and everything to do with you. You deceived Marian to have an affair with me, and if we were together, I’d get the same treatment. You’d have to have someone else to butter your ego.’

  ‘That’s rubbish!’

  ‘Is it? You like a bit on the side to make life exciting, Guy. Only this time it got out of hand. Marian found out and threw you out. You didn’t leave her for me. You didn’t leave her at all. She just decided she’d had enough.’

  ‘If that’s what you think of me,’ Guy said, cold suddenly, ‘you’d better go.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’m going.’ She picked up her coat from where it lay across the back of a chair, shrugged into it, feeling in the pockets for her keys. ‘Don’t bother to see me out. I’ll find my own way.’

  ‘Helen.’ He followed her to the door. ‘You can’t drive home in this fog.’

  ‘I’ll be all right.’

  ‘If anything happened to you …’

  ‘You’d never forgive yourself. I know. Don’t worry, I won’t lay that on your conscience, too.’

  Outside the fog was as thick as ever. She got into her car, sat there for a moment, trembling. She thought she could see him silhouetted in the doorway but she couldn’t be sure, didn’t even want to know. God alone knew, he could probably make her change her mind and stay even now. Then the light in the hall, time controlled for three minutes after it had been switched on, went out and the house – the lower floors anyway – was in darkness.

  Helen started the car and drove. She drove slowly, with all the immense concentration the appalling conditions demanded and afterwards she was never sure whether the visibility was really the same for everyone that night or whether, for her, it was made worse because she was looking through a haze of tears.

  The result of Jenny’s tests was back on Helen’s desk within forty-eight hours. As she had expected, it was positive. Heather rang during evening surgery. Helen heard the deathly silence at the other end when she passed on the news.

  ‘Get her to come and see me as soon as possible,’ she said. ‘There’s no point delaying things and I shall want to advise her about diet and so forth, and her entitlements.

  But brisk and cheery though she forced herself to sound, Helen was in no doubt. However she decided to play it, Jenny was in for a rough passage.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Jenny was living a nightmare she couldn’t wake up from. A horrible all-pervading nightmare that hung around her like a shroud. At least she wasn’t alone in it any more. At least she had Heather’s support. But Heather couldn’t work miracles. She couldn’t make the nightmare end.

  It could have been so different if only Bryn was with her. It wouldn’t be ideal, of course. No-one actually wanted to start their life together this way – there would still be all manner of practical problems to overcome. Life would still change for ever and not necessarily for the better, Carrie would still have to be told and her disappointment and anger faced, but at least they would be together. As it was, Jenny was betwixt the devil and the deep blue sea – responsibility for deciding the future of an innocent baby on the one hand, grief at Bryn’s apparent faithlessness on the other. Wherever she looked, she saw nothing but blackness; the blackness of a dark night with no hint of the promise of dawn.

  Heather waylaid her on her way home that evening and Jenny could tell from the look on Heather’s face that the news was bad. But didn’t she know that already?

  ‘It’s positive,’ she said flatly.

  ‘I’m afraid so.’ Heather’s voice was equally expressionless. ‘Come in for a minute, Jenny. Gran’s next door again, and we need to talk.’

  Glad seemed to be making a habit of having tea with Mrs Freak. The two women – both widowed – were becoming very friendly and when they weren’t having tea together they were gossiping or playing cards – two-handed whist and sevens.

  Jenny followed Heather in.

  ‘She’s taken Vanessa with her,’ Heather said, and Jenny guessed that Heather had wangled it so that they could be alone.

  ‘What am I going to do?’ she asked wretchedly.

  ‘Sit down, for a start.’ Heather moved a pile of gloving, packed up and ready to go back to the factory, from the sofa. ‘You look awful. You’re going to have to start taking care of yourself, Jenny.’

  She perched on the sofa and Jenny sat beside her, hunched and miserable.

  ‘You still haven’t heard from that boy, I suppose?’ Jenny shook her head. ‘No, I thought not. Well, you’re going to have to have this baby adopted, Jenny.’

  She saw Jenny wince.

  ‘I know … I know. You don’t like the thought of it. But you’ve got to be sensible. You’re sixteen years old with your whole life in front of you. You can’t let this mess you up for ever.’

  ‘I’ll have finished my course before it’s born,’ Jenny said, grasping at straws. ‘I’ll be qualified as a secretary. I can get a job and …’

  ‘Don’t talk silly!’ Heather said fiercely. ‘Do you really think they’ll let you sit in class when you start to show? And even if they did, even if you managed to pass your exams with all this on your mind, what then? You won’t earn enough for ages to support yourself, let alone a baby too. You’d even have trouble getting a decent job, I shouldn’t be surprised.’

  Jenny stared at the floor. Heather was probably right; she’d thought the same thing herself, going over it and over it when she should have been practising her short forms. No employer was going to want to take on an unmarried mother with all that it implied. Certainly not the sort of employer she’d hoped for. She’d no longer be able to offer th
e sort of commitment they would demand, even supposing they were prepared to overlook the fact that she was a moral outcast, which they probably wouldn’t. Whatever qualifications and qualities she had to offer they wouldn’t be enough to make up for the stigma.

  ‘You’re sixteen years old,’ Heather said again, emphasising each word. ‘There’s no way you can bring up a baby on your own. It wouldn’t be fair on either of you. And I know Mum will say the same when you tell her.’

  Again Jenny cringed.

  ‘You know what she’s going to want, don’t you? She’s going to want this kept quiet. She won’t want anyone to know you’ve let yourself down.’

  ‘You mean she’s going to want me to go away to one of those homes the doctor talked about,’ Jenny said.

  She didn’t need to be told that, either. It was something else she’d thought about – forced herself to think about – Carrie’s reaction. She couldn’t hope for any support from Carrie, she knew. She could remember all too clearly the fuss there had been when Heather had had to get married in a hurry – and she had been grown-up, with a steady boyfriend prepared to stand by her.

  ‘I know all that,’ Jenny said wretchedly. ‘But I just don’t know if I can do it, Heather. My baby – mine and Bryn’s.’

  ‘Never mind him!’ Heather said, and there was something of Carrie in the harshness of her tone. ‘It’s you we’re talking about – your future – your whole life! You can’t throw it all away. You’re going to be a journalist, remember?’

  ‘That was before …’

  ‘And it will be again.’

  ‘No,’ Jenny said. ‘All I want now is to marry Bryn and keep the baby.’

  ‘Oh, Jenny, that isn’t going to happen.’

  ‘But to give my baby up! Never see it again!’

  ‘Look – I’ve been thinking.’ Heather twisted on the sofa so that she was directly facing Jenny. ‘There is a way.’

  Jenny’s eyes, full of hope, met hers.

  ‘What?’

  ‘If I pretended it was mine.’

  ‘You!’

  ‘It could work,’ Heather rushed on. ‘If I started telling people I was pregnant, made myself fatter – you know, padded myself out …’