A Clear Conscience

by Frances Fyfield

  ‘Nice,’ Ryan remarked sincerely. ‘Very nice. Now, what’s up with you? You look all in, mate, you really do.’

  It was too much for Joe. Ryan’s dimly remembered identity as a copper was all but forgotten. He poured himself a drink, blew his nose on a napkin, slumped.

  ‘My wife’s left me,’ he said bleakly.

  Ryan leant forward and touched him lightly on the arm.

  ‘You and me, both,’ he said. ‘Don’t tell me about it.’

  So Joe told him.

  At five in the afternoon, wearing a pristine white blouse, perfectly fitting skirt and a fair quantity of perfume, Mary Secura had sat in front of the desk of her divisional commander and been severely admonished for discreditable conduct. There was no particular sting in the tail, bar a reference to the fact that her next career move was under review and perhaps two years of domestic violence was long enough for anyone. He was kinder than she thought he would be, inclined to accept that the blame for Mr Rix remaining inside a fortnight longer than he might have done rested with the Crown Prosecution Service, who were easy to blame for everything. Mary was not sure what she had done to effect a relatively easy escape. She supposed it might have been her immaculate record, until the commander’s over-warm handshake, almost culminating in an embrace at the end of the interview, indicated it might have been the perfume after all. She went back to the office and phoned Ryan for the celebratory drink he had promised, but he was out. So much for the return of favours. There was nothing for it but to go home. Back to the maisonette shared with Dave who would be on night shift. Great.

  She went inside and shut the door behind her. Ryan would be home with the wife. She could have phoned her mother, but she only did that when she had good news. Everyone else had someone. Not her. It was not fair. She was the only person in the world at home with nothing to do. Then she remembered Mary Catherine Boyce at the top of her tower block, hiding, and, with a tinge of guilt, felt better and angry all over again.

  Helen West’s concrete floors were spattered with paint round the edges. She supposed designers got the desired effect of minimalist mess by accident. Magazines were full of illustrations of rooms resembling a wasteland, with a piece of lacy net twisted round a curtain pole, leaves on the floor and little else but an iron chair; scenes which suggested devastation. If she left the flat as it was, most of it thinly coated with the wash of golden white, she might win a prize. The current state would appeal to Bailey, not to her, apart from the carpet samples. They were in one-foot squares, leading from the front door into the living room, scattered further up the hall like stepping-stones over a stream, so that she found herself jumping from one to another. Footsteps were trailing home up the road: she could see varieties of feet passing the basement window, and felt the absurd desire to rush out and drag them in with the question, Look, tell me, which colour do you like best? Whatever she wanted they could deliver and fit by the end of the week. Cath was right. Cash buyers were greeted like lords. Stock without customers, the trader’s nightmare. The stuff was so cheap, it could have fallen off the back of a lorry.

  Just you wait, Bailey, just you wait.

  She had insisted on a taxi, to drop Cath home and to carry the samples. Cath had not resisted. Past the leisure centre (which looked more like a prison or a warehouse), turn left, right and right again. Cath went, clutching her talisman bag. She had looked, suddenly, incredibly vulnerable. The thought of her going into that enormous block, outside of which gangs of children ran screaming, filled Helen with pity and frustration. Closing her own door behind her, spreading out her stepping-stones, she was glad to be alone. It was better than many a version of the same evil.

  Cath thought there were few evils as bad. The lift did not work; she trod up twenty floors, pausing for breath at each landing. There were no open spaces in the block, it felt like climbing up the inside of a tunnel, the air becoming rarer with each fifteen steps. She could hear murmurings behind doors, steps rushing along walkways. She looked out of the glassed-in stairwell at the first, third, fifth floor, and then did not look again as the ground receded, intensifying a sense of remoteness from all which was real. How had Damien managed here? Nicely, she thought to herself, angry with him.

  The top two floors were empty. Down a long corridor on the penultimate floor, there were the sounds of someone working, the whine of a drill and the thump of a hammer. Some of the doors were reinforced, amateur self-protection which could incarcerate as well as deter. Her feet crunched over a small quantity of broken glass as she approached the last flight and a wave of homesickness assailed her. Then she heard the echo of more feet and shuffling on the landing above. A cough, the sound of someone listening. She paused.

  For a glorious moment she thought it was Damien, waiting outside his own front door for her to arrive, and it was that illusion which made her fly up the last stone stairs, her feet clattering, before, on the last step, she realised what a row she made, what a dream it was and how she had denied herself the possibility of retreat. She was suddenly afraid, but also, despising her own silliness, careless and aggressive, not bothered about who it might be. She also had the slight sensation, an instinct founded on nothing, that whoever waited there with such patience and lack of subterfuge, could mean no harm.

  Mickey Gat was looking out of the window on the landing, her huge presence blocking out the light.

  ‘That you, Cath?’ she enquired pleasantly, turning back to the view. ‘It ain’t half a long way down there. Must take you half an hour to get all the way up. Got a cup of tea, love?’ The shocking pink of the shell suit hurt Cath’s eyes.

  She did not speak or smile, merely fiddled with the locks and opened the door. There was still the numbing sense of disappointment that it was not Damien after all, and it was still too soon to wonder what Mickey Gat might want, or even feel a suspicion of her presence at all. Of course Mickey would have known all Damien’s hidey-holes; it was natural she should, but less natural she should climb all those stairs.

  ‘Not very cheerful is it, love?’ she remarked as she sat on one of the ill-matched chairs at the table. ‘I suppose you could make it nice, though. I mean, if you was planning to stay.’

  The kettle, a cheap piece of tin, boiled quickly on one of two electric rings. Enough for a single person. Cath’s packing from home, to Mary Secura’s surprise, had included little else but cleaning equipment: bleach, Jif, cloths, window polish. Plus, as a sensible afterthought, a sliced loaf of the type which would last a week, margarine, tea and powdered milk.

  She was at ease with Mickey Gat, always had been. Women were never a threat, however big. She had been used to a big brother, found a kind of gentleness which seemed to grow in proportion to human size. She had always known where she stood with Mickey Gat. Damien Flood’s sister, was where. To be treated with respect on that account, but, like all other women, fundamentally unimportant and completely dispensable. Mickey Gat would never debate the point of whether a woman had a mind or clearly defined needs. She knew she had these features herself; for the rest, she was as chauvinistic as her fellow man and even more contemptuous.

  ‘What can I do for you, Mickey? You didn’t climb all the way up here for nothing.’

  ‘And I didn’t tell Joe where you might be, either,’ Mickey said, cunningly.

  ‘You were only guessing. I could have been anywhere. I got friends too, you know.’ She thought of Helen West, the nice Secura girl, the Eliots; they gave her strength. A fragile energy, but still a help.

  ‘I’m your friend,’ said Mickey, as if injured by the prospect that she might ever need any other. ‘I was Damien’s friend. I loved that bloke, Cath. Just like you.’

  Not quite like me, Cath thought. Fierce love it had been. The love for the only person who ever really mattered. No-one had loved Damien as she had done.

  ‘So what do you want, Mickey?’

  ‘I went to see your old man this morning, doll. He tells me you’ve up and left him. Well you must have
done, mustn’t you, or you wouldn’t be here, would you?’ Mickey laughed, shaking to a standstill as Cath’s face gave no answering smile.

  ‘Well, truth is, Cath, he’s in a bit of a state. You’d be shocked, Cath, honest you would. I know he’s not much of a man, but I mean, could you, do you think, reconsider?’

  ‘What do you mean, he’s not much of a man?’ Cath retorted, stung into an immediate defence.

  ‘I mean, he’s only a man, Cath, not a saint. I wasn’t criticising him, honest. We all have our ups and downs, don’t we? You’ve got a nice home, Cath, you can’t give it up just like that. I don’t like seeing him in this state, Cath, really I don’t. There’s no telling what he might do. And he’s a good-looking fella, you know. There won’t be a shortage of takers, Cath, and I’d hate to see you left on your own. Damien wouldn’t have liked that.’

  Damien had not liked the idea of Cath being on her own. I can’t always be with you, he’d said. You gotta find someone nice, Cath. I’ll always be there for you, but this isn’t the way to live, Cath; you need more than me to love. A woman on her own, Cath? C’mon, it just isn’t on, is it? She could feel a great sinking of the heart. Damien had always been right. A woman on her own was an eyesore.

  ‘You mean you want me to go back to a man who knocks me around, because if I don’t he won’t do his job properly? That’s more like it, isn’t it?’

  Mickey spread her hands and the gesture seemed to fill the room. Her wedding ring winked. Honesty was always her policy when she could not get away with a lie.

  ‘Well, that’s part of it, Cath, to tell the truth. Blokes like Joe are hard to find, you know. I can’t run that pub without him. He’s the only one understands them kind of customers. And if he’s knocked you about, well, I’m sorry, but it’s better than him running off with someone else.’

  ‘I’ve got a job,’ Cath said fiercely. ‘Two jobs, and I’ll get more, see if I don’t. I got people who need me.’

  ‘Career woman, now, are we? Joe needs you, Cath. And you need Joe.’

  It was true, she knew it was true, but she was not going to admit it.

  ‘Tell you what,’ Mickey continued. ‘Give it a few days. He needs a lesson, right? You’ve got to show him who’s boss, right? Make him treat you special. Then he’s going to meet you, take you somewhere really nice for a night out, and you can talk about it. That’s all I’m asking, Cath. Do it for me and Damien, won’t you? How about next Monday? Meet him at the Spoon. I’ll tell him, give him the evening off.’

  Cath knew she had no choice. If she did not promise, Mickey would tell Joe where she was and Joe would haul her all the way down all those stairs by the scruff of the neck and no-one in this block of flats would even notice. Besides, as a compromise, it was not so bad. She liked the thought of Joe being in a state. She nodded.

  ‘There’s a good girl then.’ Mickey smiled. One large hand disappeared into the pocket of the shell suit, pulled out a wad of notes and a box. Perfume. She could see it clearly. Fake Estée Lauder. When Damien worked for Mickey he had given her perfume every month. Joe had taken it away, like all gifts from Damien.

  ‘Buy yourself a nice frock, doll.’

  The price of supremacy: one hundred pounds in cash. A man needs a wife so he can do real work: other women are merely bought and sold. Mickey Gat lumbered to her feet and went to the door. As if in response to the authority of her presence and her demand for convenience, Cath could hear the distant whining of the lift, working again.

  Emily Eliot suppressed the urge to slap her daughter. She could not bear the child whining. The need to slap a nine-year-old was not one she always withheld, although she had never administered a blow which could injure. A sharp hand was a good thing to have up your sleeve, catharsis for mother, humiliation for child, the ultimate in tame punishments, reserved for truly disgraceful behaviour. Which this was not, quite, and it did have some excuses. Children get you all ways, she had tried to explain to the few friends who were without progeny. They drive you to leave them for half a day, but cannot bear you having time to yourself; you have to make it up to them later and still they punish you.

  Alistair had gone back into his chambers but he would be home again soon. No-one coming in this evening, so maybe dinner à deux and an early night? That was before she saw the study, but after she had understood that Mark’s role in the supervision of his sibling had been to ignore her entirely. Raised voices, challenges, surly defences, accusations of ingratitude followed, also the banging of doors. On the sidelines, little Jane fumed. No-one had time for her. Not even Cath, who had become so preoccupied she put sugar in the lunchtime soup. The same Cath who had shaken her, almost slapped her and then refused to play. The insults had come thick and fast to Jane’s pride and Cath’s contribution was the worst. It was sunny, but Mark would not take her out. He said the light hurt his eyes.

  All this emerged in a whine to which her mother paid scant attention. And when Jane was dragged to witness the carnage of the study, to which she had added, once Cath had finally woken Mark to resume control and left. She had done it, despite Cath’s dire warnings, because she was fed up with Cath too, and the day’s frustrations had reached the eye of their own particular storm. Not only was she being ignored, something she resented with all her mother’s passion, but she was also going to be punished.

  ‘Do you realise, you little horror,’ Emily was saying, keeping her fists bunched against her sides and her voice ominously calm, ‘just how long it will take your father to sort this lot out? Did you think of that, you selfish little …? Do you know how hard Daddy works, and do we have to lock doors to keep you out? I feel like locking you in.’

  The recitation stopped at that. Emily was gazing at the open drawers of the desk, making a mental inventory. Presents lurked in there, wrapping paper, surprises, Alistair’s own cache of things to be dispensed. By an unwritten rule, she was not supposed to raid this desk either, but she was, of course, familiar with the contents. Her eyes were riveted: Jane could see her mother deciding, perhaps a little too late to put it into effect, that this might be an occasion for a clip round the ear, after all. She saw the direction of her mother’s gaze and a self-righteous cunning froze her expression for an unseen instant.

  ‘What’s the matter, Mummy? What did I do? Why are you shouting at me?’

  ‘Because you …’ The disingenuity of Jane’s limpid gaze made her pause. ‘You’ve made a mess,’ she finished lamely.

  ‘Mummy, I didn’t, not really. I came in to get some paper, that was all, Mummy, I promise it was. Oh and I took some pens,’ she added with convincing sheepishness, nodding towards the top drawer where Alistair kept the lurid marker pens vital for annotating papers. Emily remembered him saying he did not know how his profession would live without such pens.

  ‘Cath told me off,’ she added in hushed tones, scuffing the carpet with her sandal, ‘because I’d been in before and she’d tidied up once already, she said. She chased me out, but then she stayed in here a long time, reading, I think. She told me to go and fix my own room, and I did, Mummy, I did. She was horrid today, Mummy; she smells of bleach. Shall I bring back the pens?’

  ‘Get out of here. Go down and watch TV. Don’t move.’

  Emily stood in the centre of the room, somehow overwhelmed with disgust. She had an intense feeling of losing control. It could have been Jane’s mention of that lingering, cheap-soap, clean-but-not-entirely-pleasant smell which so typified Cath, and which Emily had told herself explained her own aversion to being within inches of the woman in any closed space. A snobbish aversion, as slight as her turning away from the sight of Cath eating bread and butter open mouthed, but one which created a frisson of revulsion if she thought of Cath poking around among her things. The same reaction applied, only in intensified form, to the idea of Cath touching things personal to her husband. Emily could share her privacy if she chose; in his absence, Alistair had no choice, no-one to defend his domain except his family. Cath had n
o business putting her stubby fingers and her ever-so-humble body in this small and exclusive room, however messy it had been.

  And besides, everyone in Emily’s house had to be subject to Emily’s control. They could be perfectIy good or perfectly bad, but they had to accept rules. And they had to be nice to her children, who were the very stars of her existence. Emily allowed herself to seethe, aware that she was being a bit of a control freak, fanning herself into indignation because she should never have been out of her domain long enough to let anyone take charge of it. Her command of them all, her single-minded mission to find them the best people in the world, brooked no renegades and took no captives. Poor Alistair. Poor Jane, treated with such unfairness, even though she was being honest enough to admit minor theft and trespass; that was brave, wasn’t it? Emily the mother ignored the fleeting glimpse of guile she had seen in her shamefully neglected child, cut out the sound of her whingeing, instead she concentrated on the empty drawers of Alistair’s desk, and in her search for a culprit, allowed a horrible suspicion to develop.

  It grew as she made a comprehensive search of the corners of Jane’s room. The child would not have the imagination to hide perfume anywhere else, since no-one in this most open of households would condone deceit. Jane’s ground-floor bedroom contained no secrets. The marker pens were scattered on her bed in a litter of scrunched-up listing paper, and Emily’s fury curdled into more guilt. How could it have occurred to her to blame her darling child for emptying the perfume drawer and interfering in the privacy of the study, how could she? The sad logic pointed to Cath, left with responsibility, taking the chance to pry and steal, and, even worse, leaving darling Jane to carry the can. That is what people did when they were poor, acted poor, smelled poor, but it did not excuse such conduct or mitigate the betrayal. The anger rose, swelling against the new target. No-one crossed the boundaries of Mrs Eliot’s house rules without dire consequences.