Faithless

by Tony Walker

  "No. She didn't come to work."

  "So how did you see the black eye?"

  "She was off work, so I rang her to see how she was."

  Karen snorted. "You ring your colleagues when they're off sick? I don't believe it. Maybe you just ring her. anyway"

  "Not now, Karen."

  She exploded in anger. "Don't fucking not now me. This is very fishy John. I don't want to believe what I'm thinking."

  "We can talk about it in the morning."

  "Ok, but you'd better have a good think about what story you're going to feed me tomorrow. Just so you can make up one I'll believe."

  They drove in silence the rest of the way. He could feel her anger as the yellow street lights reflected through the rain streaked windscreen. The girls began to cry in the back, sounding tired and fretful. He reached round and one by one held their tiny hands, their fingers curling around his. When they parked, with great weariness he got the twins from the back seat and took them one by one into the house. He realised Karen was crying. He went to hug her.

  "Don't touch me," she said. He backed off. She turned and went upstairs. He put the girls to bed in their room and switched off the light. He took off his tie and began to mount the stairs towards their bedroom.

  She stood at the door and looked down at him. "Sleep downstairs," she said.

  He was wakened in the morning by the sound of Karen in the kitchen. She was warming bottles of milk for the girls. He struggled up from under the duvet and went through.

  "You should have wakened me. I would have helped."

  "I don't need your help."

  He looked at her back as she went about getting the bottles ready.

  "I'm sorry," he said eventually.

  "What for?"

  He shrugged. "I don't know. For bringing shame to the family?"

  "Is that what you did?" she said sarcastically. "Excuse me." She pushed past him and went into the twins' bedroom. He followed. The girls were pleased to see their mummy. He didn't feel decent or clean enough to go over to them.

  "How do I make this right?" he said.

  "I don't know," she said without turning, "can you?"

  "I can try."

  "You can start by telling me exactly what you were fighting Ailsa's husband over."

  "He hit her."

  "Lots of men hit their wives and you don't go and fight them."

  There was a silence. He sighed and turned round and went back into the living room where his impromptu bed was on the sofa. He walked up to the windows and drew back the curtain. The day was brighter than the day before. It was Saturday. He went over to where his work suit was lying in a crumpled heap. He called through to Karen, "I'm going up to the bedroom to get some fresh clothes." She didn't answer.

  He pulled on jeans and a t-shirt and a pullover on top of that. He came downstairs and put on his trainers. He said, "I'll go get a newspaper. Do you want anything from the corner shop?" Again she didn't answer. He put on his jacket and went out. The leaves were lying in piles as he walked to the shop. He bought a copy of the Guardian and an Aero, which he knew was Karen's favourite chocolate bar. He started out to go home but his heart fell - thinking of the silence he would be going back to. He couldn't face it so he went and bought himself a coffee in the place he'd met Bebur. He leafed through the news - a massive earthquake had happened in Mexico. He knew he was going to have to tell Karen the truth. He could promise to end it with Ailsa. He could fall on his knees and beg Karen's forgiveness. But that wouldn't make it right. He would still love Ailsa. He was going to tell Karen he had to leave her. And so he walked back up the North London street.

  He turned his key in the lock and stopped in the doorway. Ailsa was sitting on the sofa. Karen had tidied the duvet up for her. She looked up with an empty expression. Karen wore a bitter smile. "Your friend's here," she said. "She came to see how you were."

  "Hello John," said Ailsa. "You look better than I expected."

  He nodded but didn't know what to say. He stood there.

  "Come in John," said Karen. "Let's have some tea and we can all have a chat."

  Still smiling icily she got up and walked through to the kitchen. Without taking his coat off, John sat down in the chair, looking at Ailsa wordlessly. He heard Karen boiling the kettle.

  "He's thrown me out," she said. "He was a real mess. His mother has come down to look after him."

  He didn't say anything.

  "You got what you wanted," she said. "I'm all yours now."

  Karen came back with three mugs of tea. "John hasn't told whether you have sugar Ailsa?"

  Ailsa shook her head. She and John sat in silence.

  "Well," said Karen, "does my head look painted on?"

  "Sorry?" said Ailsa.

  "I'm saying Ailsa, do you think I'm fucking stupid?"

  Ailsa looked at her. "No," she said.

  "So you and John are clearly, not sure how to put this - an item?"

  "It just happened. Nobody meant it to happen. It just did," said John.

  Karen turned to him with a vicious look and said, "Shut the fuck up. I was talking to your whore."

  Ailsa looked shaken by Karen's rage.

  "How many times have you fucked him then?"

  "I don't think this is helpful," said Ailsa.

  Karen jabbed her in the chest with two fingers. "Don't you fucking tell me what's helpful bitch. Let my put my question another way. When did you start fucking my husband?"

  "Karen," said John.

  "I told you. Sit where you are."

  Karen laughed scornfully. "I hope what you've got between your legs is worth the price he's going to pay."

  They both sat there in a desperate silence. Karen looked down as if deep in thought and then she launched herself, slapping and punching at Ailsa. Ailsa reeled under the unexpected onslaught. John leapt up and grabbed Karen pulling her off. She was shrieking trying to get at Ailsa but John held her back. When she wouldn't calm down he threw her into the chair where she attempted to get out again and past him. He held her again and as gently as he could forced her back into the chair where he held her panting. Tears were streaming down her face. "So this is how you protect your bitch. You hold down your own wife and protect her."

  "I'm just trying to stop this stupid violence."

  Ailsa stood up. She was also crying. She said, "I'll leave. I shouldn't have come."

  "He's going with you. He has no fucking choice," screamed Karen. "Get out. Get out you adulterer. You faithless pig. Get out."

  She wiped her tears with the back of her hand and said bitterly. "But go and look at your daughters for the last time, because I will make sure you never see them again."

  Black bile filled his stomach. "You can't do that."

  "Just see what I can do," she said.

  "I'll go," said Ailsa again.

  "Just a minute," he said. Ailsa went and opened the door. John went through to the girls. Eilidh smiled when she saw him. He picked her up and held her close. His tears streamed down his face. Through his sobs he said, "I love you my darling girl. I'll always be your daddy." She seemed to understand he was upset and she frowned. He went over and picked up Morag. He had both of them in his arms and he hugged them into him, shaking with sobs.

  "Time's up," said Karen venomously.

  John kissed Morag, "Bye bye my baby," and then he kissed Eilidh. One by one he placed them gently back in their cots. They both started to cry. He couldn't speak. He walked over to the front door. He went out of the door without a word. Ailsa stood for a second at the door and said to Karen, "For what it's worth, I never wanted to hurt you."

  "Fuck off out of my house," snarled Karen and slammed the door in her face.

  Outside John and Ailsa stood like strangers. He was beside himself with grief - so distraught he couldn't speak. He felt as if his heart had been cut out.

  She said, "I'm sorry. I didn't think she'd know. I just needed to see if you were hurt. She was pretending to be frien
dly until you came back."

  He stood there as if he didn't want to move away from his house.

  She said, "I've got the car. I'm staying in a flat of a friend of mine's in Chelsea by the river." She took his hand and led him.

  In the car he recovered enough to say, "I don't love her anymore. I love you. I love my daughters."

  "Love is a knife," she said.

  Ailsa drove them to Chelsea. Her friend's apartment was off a narrow side street called Justice Walk. The flat was luxurious. He commented on it. They hardly spoke on the journey and now the silence was broken by such a banality.

  "Her husband's something in the City - Forex trader? Does that make sense?"

  "I don't know," he said.

  "I'm not sure where the coffee is."

  "Don't want one really."

  "Maybe a drink?"

  "I don't know. I don't know what I want."

  "I thought you wanted me."

  "That. But what a fucking mess."

  "Very true. But this is what you wanted. Me here with you. And when I wouldn't decide, you kind of forced the issue."

  "That isn't why I hit him."

  "Well now you have me, for better or for worse. I hope it's not worse. At least not in the long run." She smiled. "Ah, found the coffee. It looks like they use a machine. No instant for my posh friends. Best Arabica beans too."

  He was standing by her. He stroked her cheek. "You're pretty today."

  "I know, and you look very manly with the bruises."

  He laughed."I must get into fights more often."

  "Please don't. I'll put some music on," she said.

  "Multitasking."

  "What you'd give to be a woman." She set the coffee percolator going and walked over to the HiFi. She selected a CD and popped it in the black tray that greedily sucked it in. Shortly luscious sounds began to emerge from the top quality sound system that was discreetly installed to fit in with the decor and had speakers in hidden corners. The slinky saxophone erupted onto the grey Chelsea afternoon and Sade began singing Your Love is King. Ailsa came up to him and put her hands out. "Dance?"

  He wrapped his arms around her and they danced, moving from sadness to tentative happiness - laughing with the delight of each other. They danced from the kitchen into the living room where they circled between the leather sofa and seats, round and round on Persian carpets. She said, "It's funny. I was so scared of leaving Duncan and now it's happened. I was frightened witless and now I'm glad to be here with you."

  "I'm glad to be with you too. But I have to keep the guilt of betraying Karen in a place in my mind apart from you so it doesn't poison us."

  "I'm sure you're an expert at keeping things in different compartments of your brain."

  He wondered if she'd guessed. He wondered if he should tell her. "What do you mean?" he said tentatively.

  "I mean all the secrets in your life - us, when we were secret - the things at work that you aren't supposed to know. The people we pretend to be. The fact that we induce people to betray their country. They risk everything and we pretend it's in their best interests."

  "I always try to do the right thing."

  "Adultery?"

  "Loving you felt like fate."

  She shook her head. "You sound like the hero in a Greek tragedy. Or a fool."

  "A fool to believe in something bigger than me?"

  "Believers ruin the world. If everyone just minded their business there would be no wars. No religious persecution. There would be dancing on Sundays."

  "There is."

  "But where I come from there are still people who would stop it because of their beliefs."

  "If no one acted on their beliefs there would still be slavery and child labour and women wouldn't vote. We can either serve an ideal, or serve power and those who have it."

  "Shut up silly," she said. She put her hand behind his head and drew his mouth to hers in a kiss. When they broke the kiss, she said, "You're such a damaged man. I think you use your romanticism as a shield to keep you from seeing the purposelessness of life. But really, except what we have right now, nothing means anything. This second is all there is."

  "I don't know. My father put his beliefs first - even before my mother and me."

  "You shouldn't put people before ideas. He was wrong."

  "Don't say that."

  She put her finger to his mouth and said, "Wheesht, man."

  She could see the tears in his eyes. She took his hand. "Let's go to bed."

  They lived from that day like lovers. After they had made frantic, desperate love, they showered together and then aroused by each other's presence made love again. Eventually they dressed. She gave him her friend's husband's shirt and trousers to wear. They went to the brasserie on Cheyne Walk and ate quails eggs on focaccia toast. They walked along the Thames and looked at the houseboats bobbing on the river and she made up stories about them living there when everything was over and they were free of the world's condemnation. That night they ate a ready meal with best quality ingredients from the top of the range freezer and watched a movie on the luxurious TV. It was about working class Liverpool women meeting Soviet sailors and dreaming of a life far away. Ailsa snuggled into him and he smelled her hair and watched her when she wasn't aware of it. He wondered whether things would ever be mended on the other side of the shipwreck he'd made of their life.

  They went to work as usual. As John's colleagues watched him, he appeared to them to be troubled with a grief. They thought it was because he'd lost his wife but in fact it was because he'd lost his children. And then when Ailsa was there he appeared joyful and delighted. So he was both winter and summer; two incompatible seasons lodged unknown to each other in the same man.

  At home they entered a strange honeymoon like period. John walked to work from a house more luxurious than any he'd known. He walked past exotic delicatessens with difficult to identify foods and scents he couldn't place. He stopped outside charming interior decoration stores with quirky and intriguing items that were supposed to tempt you in if you had enough money to waste on them. All of life was there in Chelsea. And Ailsa was there too. He delighted in her: the way she walked with such purpose for no reason he could see, the way her hair hung in when she was reading, the way she shielded her eyes when the day was bright and how she struggled once on the doorstep with her umbrella when it decided to rain.

  4th November, 1985: In the middle of the week, John left Ailsa at home, and went up to Finchley. He didn't tell Ailsa where he was going in case she told him he was being stupid, though in fact she would have merely watched him with the sadness we reserve those we love when they seem set on hurting themselves. He caught the tube and walked, the way he had done countless times, to the house that had been his and his family's home. But his home was irrevocably gone - as much as if a fire had burned it to ashes. He knocked on the door and Karen answered. She was wearing a t-shirt he had bought her and sweat pants. Radio 4 was on and she was listening to Woman's Hour. He thought she looked pretty.

  "What do you want?" She said.

  "I wondered if I could see the girls."

  She looked at him as if he were an idiot. "We're moving back to Scotland," she said.

  "What?" He was stunned. "When?"

  "This weekend. It'll help me to be near my ma. I've spoken to your mother too. She agrees. She's disgusted with you."

  John had telephoned his mother to tell her that he had left Karen and that he was in love with someone else. She had not understood. Very few women sympathise with a man who walks out on his wife and children. "But when will I see the girls?" he said.

  "You should have thought about that John."

  "Can I see them now?"

  "No." She closed the door in his face.

  He went back every evening that week. Ailsa found out where he was going and tried to reason with him but he wouldn't listen. "Karen's very hurt," she said, "and very bitter, but she will soften. She will realise that you're the childre
n's father and they need to see you. And if she doesn't you can go to court."

  "But she'll be in Scotland," he said. "So even if I get the legal right; how often will I see them? Once a month? Less?"

  The next night was bonfire night and he went up again. Fireworks exploded in the sky as he got off the Tube at Finchley. He stood on the kerb looking at the lights behind the curtains. And then the front door opened. He watched as Karen pushed the twins out in their double buggy on the way to the convenience store. They didn't look over at him. He was just another stranger on the street. Karen noticed him but didn't speak. When she came back she went straight into the house. And he lingered there, watching his old front door in the light rain that started. It seemed futile. Then he turned to catch the train back to Chelsea but out of the corner of his eye he saw the door open and he stopped. Karen came out in an anorak. She walked over to him and he waited, - caught by the thought that she'd seen reason and was going to let him see his daughters before they went to sleep. He even had the ghost of a smile on his face as she approached but she said, "I've phoned the police. I've told them you're harassing me, so I would leave now before they come and arrest you again."

  "But Karen..."

  "Don't 'but Karen' me. Don't even use my first name."

  "I just want to see them."

  "You can't."

  "Are you still going to Scotland?"

  She nodded. "You'll hear from my solicitor. I hope I don't meet you again." She turned and walked away.

  He became suddenly angry and shouted after her, "You can't stop me seeing them. I have rights."

  She paused and looked round. With terrible venom she said, "You'll never see your daughters again if I have anything to do with it; I'll tell them you're dead."

  6th November, 1985, London: The FLUENCY committee met at its regular time in C/SOV's office in Century House. Assembled again were C/SOV, playing host with his Arab coffee set, Philip Neilson, Sue O'Hanlon and Toby Ewing. They assembled themselves, sat down, poured coffee, drank it politely - or with relish in the case of Philip. He and C/SOV knew each other well and they exchanged unkind glances as they observed Sue's sour face as she sipped the thick, dark brew. The Yucca and the Mother in Law's Tongue on the top of the green filing cabinet flourished; the basil plant, that C/SOV had introduced to add to his lunchtime mozzarella salad, had died. But he hadn't noticed.