Sally wanted to know about Elizabeth. As soon as they had finished making love – well, within half an hour or so of what Felix thought of as recovery time, a time he would have liked to prolong, when they let their breathing return to normal, gazed at each other incredulously, stroked sweaty flesh and smoothed tousled hair – Sally came up with a conscience and was asking, ‘What about Elizabeth?’
Felix had been prepared for this, of course, but not so soon. He gave his standard reply. ‘As long as she doesn’t know, she won’t be hurt.’
Sally persisted. ‘Don’t you make love any more?’ She sounded as if she expected the answer no.
Felix had not been prepared for such directness. He would not have lied to an adult woman, but he doubted if an adult woman would have asked the question. He wanted Sally both to believe his answer and to feel comfortable with it. If he said he and Elizabeth were like brother and sister, it might sound so convenient as to be implausible, and might also make Sally feel he only wanted her for sex. If he said they made love about once a week, a fair batting average for a middle-aged married couple (more often on holiday, less often when working hard) Sally might feel superfluous, the cherry on the cake of a greedy man. He had only a few seconds to decide and to make his answer sound as natural as the truth.
‘Occasionally,’ he said. ‘But it’s not important any more. We’re very close, we get on well, we’re very fond of each other.’ No point in denying what Sally had seen for herself over the last eight years. ‘But all that wild feeling we had at the beginning – that’s all gone, long ago.’
As soon as he heard his words, he started to believe them: the instantaneous conversion of fiction into truth began. What was more, the words sounded familiar. In his youth he had had a much older mistress who told him a similar story about her husband (as well as teaching him a lot about sexual technique from which he was still profiting). Now for the first time he wondered if she had been lying to him, and he smiled at the memory of his young naive self.
‘Why did you never have children?’ Sally asked.
The question startled him and he had to think fast: she was too young to understand the truth.
‘We both wanted them but Elizabeth found out she couldn’t have any. I think that was when she lost interest in making love, though we went on hoping, right up to the menopause. Now it’s too late, of course, but we’ve learned to live with it.’
Sally kissed him. ‘Poor Felix,’ she said. ‘How sad.’
‘Lucky Felix,’ said Felix. ‘Nothing’s sad now I’m here with you.’
Sally looked at him in wonder. ‘I never thought we would be,’ she said. ‘Did you?’
‘Only in my late-night fantasies,’ said Felix. ‘Only in my dreams.’
Sally laughed. ‘I wonder what Richard and Mum would say.’
Felix considered this nightmare thought. ‘Richard might understand,’ he said doubtfully, ‘but that wouldn’t be very much help since Helen would probably kill me. Nothing elaborate. Hanged, drawn and quartered. Dipped in boiling oil. Barbecued on the patio. Just a simple al fresco execution.’
Sally hugged him. He could tell that she relished these dangers from which they were luckily immune. ‘Let’s protect you,’ she said. ‘Let’s not tell her.’
They lay quietly for a while, contemplating their good fortune.
Sally asked suddenly, ‘Have you had lots of affairs before me?’
It was like being pounced on by a kitten that has been lying in wait for you round a corner. ‘A few, I suppose,’ Felix answered. ‘Over the years.’ He wasn’t sure to what extent his reputation was part of his charm for Sally.
‘Mum thinks you’ve had lots,’ Sally said. ‘That’s why she doesn’t approve of you. It’s funny because she’s ever so broad-minded about other people.’
‘Well, she’d never approve of me for you,’ said Felix, ‘not if I was a saint. I’m too old and I’m married. And she thinks I’m a bad influence on Richard.’
‘Nobody could be a bad influence on Richard,’ Sally said. ‘He’s lovely and tolerant but he only ever does what he thinks is right.’
‘It’s very easy for Richard,’ said Felix in a sudden burst of honesty. ‘He’s had two wives, two sons and a gorgeous stepdaughter. He can afford to be virtuous.’
‘You sound as if you envy him,’ Sally said. ‘Do you?’
Felix sensed that the moment was important. ‘I think perhaps I used to, but not any more. Not now. Because I’m sure he fancies you but he can never have you. And here you are with me.’
Sally laughed. ‘Oh Felix, you are silly. You’re not grown up at all, are you?’
‘Certainly not,’ said Felix.
Felix was secretive because he had learned that sharing a pleasure often dilutes it. In his youth he had succumbed to the human urge to boast, but each time he did so, some of the essence of his current love affair leaked away. He even fancied it was diminished in exact ratio to the number of people he told. The parallel with his work was very marked: the more he discussed a novel, the less he wanted to write it. And so he told no one about Sally.
He preferred not to dwell upon the more urgent but less metaphysical reasons for secrecy: the fact that anyone he knew well enough to confide in, such as Elizabeth, Richard or Helen, would disapprove violently and interfere. He did not wish to see himself as a creature ruled by caution or prudence or even common sense. Had he possessed friends who were both tolerant and discreet, he would still have chosen to hug his happiness to himself.
Sally seemed to him like a miracle. He awoke every morning and remembered her with joyous anticipation, as a child awakens on its birthday. He left the house with a sensation of thrilling unease and hidden wealth, like a man who has swallowed a diamond. The world of popular songs burst upon him again, as if he had been exhumed from the grave. With you I’m born again, they said; you make me feel brand new.
When he looked at Sally’s childish face, when he touched her unlined skin, he could believe himself young again, as if her youth were a reflection of his own. He felt he was a better person when he was with her, putting money in collecting boxes and stopping at pedestrian crossings, not just to impress Sally but to express his new-found benevolence. He would have liked the whole world to be as happy as he was, but since that was clearly impossible, he wanted at least to treat the poor, deprived world as gently as he could.
‘Why d’you have such a silly car?’ Sally asked him when he picked her up from school. ‘I practically have to lie on the pavement to get into it.’
‘You never complained before.’ He accelerated away from the kerb, trying not to run over any little creatures in uniform. The scent of Sally in the car made him slightly dizzy; her long thick straight golden-brown hair that he called an erotic accessory and she kept threatening to cut because (she said) it was old-fashioned; her freckled creamy milk-maid skin that she hated and he called her Tess of the d’Urbervilles look. ‘All those times when I hadn’t the guts to put my hand on your knee.’
In fact he hadn’t desired her then; she was too young and too near home. But it seemed only polite now to pretend. Collecting Sally after dark had been infrequent but routine, a friendly act, if Richard was working late or visiting Inge, if Helen was teaching or at the studio. After all, no one really thought of Felix as having a proper job.
‘I don’t believe you,’ Sally said, surprising him (impressing him). ‘I was fat and spotty. But I wish you had, all the same. I’d have been so pleased.’
‘But how was I to know that? Me in my silly sports car, symbol of the male menopause, flaunting my lost youth in built-up area. I thought I’d get my face slapped.’
‘I always had a crush on you,’ Sally said dreamily. ‘You dropped your handkerchief once in our garden and I kept it and wore it to school in my knickers for weeks and weeks.’
Felix smiled. ‘Good to know I got that close to you. Have you still got it?’
‘No, it fell out when I was playing hockey and someone trod on it. It wasn’t the same after that. All the magic had gone once I had to wash it.’
Sometimes they couldn’t wait until four o’clock to make love and he had to collect her from the school gate at twelve thirty; fifteen minutes to the flat, forty-five minutes in bed, fifteen minutes back to school, hot, dazed, breathless and usually late. ‘We’ll never get tired of each other, will we?’ Sally said. ‘We simply won’t have enough time.’
He took to arriving at the flat at ten thirty in time for Sally to telephone him at break to make arrangements for the day. The pile of blank A4 mocked him from his desk. ‘Call yourself a writer?’ it sneered. He didn’t care; he felt pity instead of guilt. He had better things to do than write: he was living.
He made coffee and drank it on the terrace if the weather allowed. Waiting for the phone to ring was a peculiarly acute pleasure, like postponing orgasm. The minutes of attentive concentration and the certainty of ultimate delight combined to make him aware of every sound and every sensation around him. Birdsong; the air on his skin; the texture of the chair. At this moment I am fully alive, he thought; sometimes he doubted his sanity. By the time the phone rang he was often afraid of disappointment: no mortal woman could provide the thrill he was expecting, let alone a girl of eighteen. But she never failed him. ‘Hullo,’ she would say, sounding uncertain as if expecting a wrong number, ‘Felix?’ And the magic was always there in her voice, warm and full of a sort of nervous confidence that made him feel ashamed because she was so much better than he deserved.
They talked nonsense, lovingly, until the pips went and then he rang her back. They discussed when to meet: whether at lunchtime or at four o’clock. Sometimes she had extra coaching and had to stay at school. Felix agreed to anything she suggested. He was used to fitting in with married women who had husbands and children to consider; he was adept at accommodating the school run, the au pair’s time off, a drinks party, friends for dinner or someone arriving at Heathrow. He had made love in all extremes of ideal and adverse conditions. Nothing deterred him once his heart or his cock was set on a person, so it was no problem to adapt to a schoolgirl’s routine.
‘Besides,’ Sally would tease him, ‘we don’t want me to fail my exams, do we?’ Indeed they did not, but it was more than that. Felix knew he was living on borrowed time, as the phrase went. It was Sally who was doing him a favour, although of course she did not see it like that.
‘I love you, Felix,’ she always said before she hung up.
‘Love you too, my darling. Take care.’
Then he would go to the mirror to study his face. There was no doubt he looked younger, more alert; the lines were smoothed out. His hair looked darker, or the grey was less noticeable. Even his eyes were less shrewd and watchful, more blurred with emotion. He smiled the smile that appeared on book jackets and melted the judgment of women all over the world: he didn’t even hate his crooked teeth any more. He just wanted to remember, for future use, what perfect contentment looked like. Because, of course, he never expected it to last.
Sometimes, satiated with Sally, coming home cock-sore with aching balls, he would want to have Elizabeth too, would be consumed by desire for her, excited by the pain in her eyes, the knowledge she would not admit. She never refused him and she always came several times. Often she cried. He held her very close and kissed her tenderly, but they never spoke on these occasions. Felix would feel as if he could fuck for ever: exhausted but insatiable, Sally and Elizabeth merging in his erotic imagination, jet-lagged with sensation like the only man in the world to know about sex because he had invented it, weary and rejuvenated at the same time. But eventually nature would take over, quite suddenly, and he would sleep very soundly indeed, without dreams.
‘Darling, I’m going away.’ Felix’s mother had held his face between her hands and kissed him. ‘You must understand. I love you terribly much but I love Martin too, and Daddy won’t let me have you both, so I’m going away.’
Felix understood. She loved Martin better than him and it was all Daddy’s fault. If he killed Daddy, then he and Mummy and Martin could all live together and be happy for ever. Only he was too small to kill Daddy, and even if he could think of a way, there wasn’t time, because Mummy was leaving tonight.
Then he had a brilliant idea.
‘Can’t I come with you?’ he said. It seemed so wonderfully simple. If they all loved each other and Daddy didn’t love any of them, what could be more natural? It was the solution to everything. He waited to see Mummy look pleased and relieved, but she frowned.
‘Oh, if only you could. But we’re going to be travelling. Martin’s got no money and we’re going to be roughing it.’
Felix liked the sound of that. It would be like camping. All three of them in a tent cuddled up together to keep warm. Breakfast in a blackened frying-pan over a log fire. Washing in a stream, or with a bit of luck not having to wash at all.
‘Please,’ he said.
Tears came into his mother’s eyes. ‘Oh darling,’ she said, ‘don’t break my heart.’
(‘You poor little sod,’ said Elizabeth twenty years later.)
(‘You made that up,’ said Helen.)
(‘If it’s what he remembers,’ said Richard, ‘it’s real for him.’)
Felix was no longer sure what was real or imagined or what he had reinvented. His mother had left him, that much could be confirmed by lawyers who arranged the divorce, but he had written about their parting so many times in his novels that he could not disentangle their dialogue from fiction. He had become Seriozha, and it was Anna Karenina who kissed and caressed him, who wept over him, who stole into the house with presents when he was asleep. He first read the novel with a sense of shock, as if Tolstoy had stolen his life; then later he wondered if he had appropriated the plot for himself. It certainly impressed female undergraduates and made them more eager to go to bed with him.
That part of it was all right to tell, an interesting sorrow. He never quite managed to get around to telling the later bit, when he went to live with his mother after Martin had left her. She cried all the time and he just held her, in a chair, at the table, on the bed. She cried like someone trying to wash herself empty, and Felix, who was seventeen, did not know what to do. He tried not to leave her alone too much, but he had his school work to do and his friends to see. It would not help, he told himself, if he failed his exams. His father had already refused to give him any money as long as he stayed with his mother, so he needed a scholarship or he could not go to university at all.
His mother had long hair and it clung to him. In the middle of a lesson he would find a piece of it attached to his jacket or his shirt. Her scent was on his body when he got into the bath. In later years he thought he had not had such a physical relationship with anyone else, no matter how much he had fucked them. When he listened to Sinatra singing ‘I’ve got you under my skin’ he felt sick with love and loathing and loss. He could not forgive his mother for the day he had come home to find a note: ‘My darling boy, forgive me, I have gone to Italy with Luigi.’
Obviously he had left her alone enough. The raddled woman of forty had become a radiant escapee. The family at the delicatessen were equally mystified. They had no idea that Luigi and the signora… and they shrugged to prove it.
Felix was shocked by the anger he felt. He wanted to seek his mother out and injure her, kill her slowly, repossess the body that had haunted him through school. Luigi he saw as a mere shadow, a pleasant enough youth, twenty-five maybe, with an ingratiating smile and looks no better, no worse, than the average Italian. It was melodrama, it was farce, and the worst part of it was that his mother had made a fool of him. For this he had left home and his father’s money; for this he had hurried back from school; for this he had hugged the sobbing body night after night.
His father would laugh. His father would say it was all his fault and it served him right. His father would say he had seen through his mother years ago and Felix was a fool not to have done likewise. He could not tell his father.
He went on living in the empty flat, alone. One day he took the few clothes his mother had left in the wardrobe and cut them up. Cutting up her clothes gave him an orgasm. He was very frightened.
He passed his exams and went to university without his father’s money. His mother wrote to him and said she was expecting a baby. She was very happy and Felix must be happy for her too. He must forgive her and understand. Felix felt he had been doing that all his life. He found he was behaving very badly to several girls at college, who loved him. He was ashamed of himself but he could not stop. Behaving badly excited him. It gave him a sensation of release. He wrote back to his mother that of course he was happy for her and there was nothing to forgive. Of course he understood. He would come out to Atrani in the long vac before the baby was born and be a help to her. He and Luigi would be like brothers.
In June Luigi wrote to tell him that his mother was dead.
It was cold in the studio though the sun shone outside. Helen was desperate to finish the bit of the painting she was working on before the light went, but Elizabeth showed no sign of being ready to leave. Officially only Richard and Sally were allowed in the studio, apart from Magdalen and potential buyers, but at some point in the past Elizabeth had joined the ranks of the privileged few and now she seemed in the mood to abuse her good fortune. It was hell trying to work with someone in the room and ordinarily Helen would have said so, but then ordinarily Elizabeth would have known. Now depression blinded her to everything and also stopped Helen asking her to leave, though it did not prevent her from becoming extremely bad-tempered.
‘He’s definitely got someone new,’ Elizabeth said. She was sitting in Helen’s battered armchair and watching Helen work, though Helen knew she did not really see what was going on. The painting she was staring at might as well have been television or wallpaper. Elizabeth was too far sunk in gloom to see anything but the inside of her own head. ‘I think it started soon after we came back,’ she added, ‘but I can’t be sure.’
Helen longed to be brutal and say who cares. It was of no interest to her if Felix was fucking every other woman in London provided she was left alone to get on with a painting called Lust for a mad American whose money would pay for a new second-hand van. She hated commissions at the best of times and today was the first day the painting had begun to give her anything back: she had just a glimpse of how it might be if she could keep her concentration and not let it slip. Tolerable was how it might be, no more than that, but after the despair and rage she had felt as she wrestled with it in the early stages, tolerable seemed like miraculous. At this point she would settle gladly for anything that would not cause her actual shame. At the same time she made the mental resolution never to accept another commission in the whole of her life.
‘Any idea who it is?’ she managed to ask.
‘No. Somebody’s wife, I expect. He usually goes for married women. They know the rules, I suppose.’
‘Then you’ve nothing to worry about.’ She thought misery made Elizabeth appear very heavy and lumpen; it was embarrassing to see her like this, like watching somebody ill without their permission.
‘I’m so afraid this one’s different.’
‘You always say that.’ How often she had heard the sad repetitive story; only the names were changed.
‘Do I? But this one really feels as if it might be serious. He’s so nice to me. He keeps buying me flowers and presents and taking me out to dinner.’
‘I hope you choose somewhere expensive.’ The painting was fading before Helen’s eyes, retreating into itself, shutting up shop for the day, even possibly for ever, it was so precariously balanced. Red and black, not colours she usually worked in, with a hint of jagged shark’s teeth about it that she was trying to submerge but not to lose.
‘And he won’t show me any of the book. Usually he lets me read it, bits of it anyway, just to encourage him; he’s so used to my being his editor, it’s a sort of habit. But not this time,’ she ended in a positive howl, as if parted from the Holy Grail.
‘Maybe he doesn’t need encouragement this time.’ God, this was going beyond all the reasonable bounds of friendship.
‘But he does, well, he did, he was really frightened of starting. Now he says it’s going well but he won’t let me see it.’
‘Don’t you have enough to do editing other people?’
‘Not really, I’m only working part-time since we came back. I’ve been feeling tired, but Felix says it’s the menopause, he puts everything down to that.’
If she’d been working full-time she would have been safely in her office at this hour and not in the studio. Silence. A chance to do some last-minute work perhaps? No, a foolish hope.
‘I’m so afraid he’s letting her read it instead of me. Or maybe he’s too busy and happy to work. He works best when he’s on an even keel, you see. Not ecstatic and not miserable. That’s why I’m so good for him. Well, usually. Until he gets bored.’
Next time, Helen thought, I won’t answer the door. I’ll pretend I’m not here. I’ll disconnect the bell. ‘Terrific,’ she said.
Elizabeth looked at her for the first time. ‘You despise me, don’t you?’
‘Christ, I just hate you to put yourself down, that’s all.’ Helen gave up and began to clean her brushes, longing to ram them down Elizabeth’s throat and up Felix’s arse.
‘I’m not, I’m only being realistic.’ A long silence. ‘I’m sorry, I’m interrupting and you’re really busy, aren’t you? I shouldn’t have come but I thought I’d go mad if I didn’t talk to someone.’ She got up and began to roam about the studio. ‘Are those your Seven Deadly Sins?
‘Yes. I thought I’d try and do them all together, then if I get stuck on one I can go on to the next. Maybe that’s what painting by numbers really means.’
Elizabeth actually studied them quite carefully for several minutes. ‘They’re so different from your other work.’
‘If you say you like them better, I’ll kill you.’
‘Of course I don’t, but they’re impressive in their own way.’
‘Well done.’
‘No, I mean it.’ Elizabeth stood in front of the black and green one, the one with the eye at its centre, the one Helen disliked most. It was banal. But then envy was banal. It was not a subject she knew much about and she had thought of Inge while she painted it, assuming that was what Inge felt, or was it jealousy; and perhaps simple loathing had made the painting even worse than it might have been, or perhaps even thinking of Inge had put a jinx on it. ‘Envy?’ Elizabeth said, on a note of enquiry.
‘Spot on. I thought I’d keep it simple for him, he’s not very bright.’ But she knew she had lost when she had to put down someone else to excuse bad work. She wondered if she would have to scrap Envy and start again, or if somehow it could yet be rescued.
Elizabeth moved on to the painting Helen disliked least, the one that reminded her of the desert. She had placed horizontal bands of colour, yellow, orange, pink, blue, purple, but very gently, so that they blurred into each other like sky and sand. It could be sentimental but if she got it right it might just work. It was meant to be very pure, both oasis and mirage.
‘Sloth?’ Elizabeth said.
‘Give the woman a prize.’
‘It reminds me of “The Lotus Eaters” – you know, the land where it seemed always afternoon.’ She was silent for a while. ‘They’re smaller than I expected.’
‘The prices he’s paying, he can supply his own magnifying glass.’
The other canvases were empty or nearly empty. On the other side of the studio was her real work, neglected, waiting for her to take it up again. Elizabeth stood in front of the red and black painting, the one she had almost ruined with her distress. Helen had to grant that she was doing her best to make amends. She was a friend and she was in pain and she cared about painting, though not as much as she cared about Felix. Helen could feel compulsory forgiveness beginning to seep out of her in Elizabeth’s direction.
‘This has to be lust,’ Elizabeth said.
‘Three out of three.’ She managed to smile.
‘It helps that I can’t remember all seven.’
‘Nobody can,’ Helen said. ‘I had to look them up myself. Lust was easy.’
‘Yes,’ Elizabeth said. ‘It always is.’
Elizabeth, adolescent in the forties, was inclined to believe her father when he said that men would not respect her if she gave in to them. After all, he was a man, so he should know. It was only later, comparing notes with her girlfriends, that it struck her as odd that he and not her mother chose to impart this information. It was not even as if she had asked him for it; she went naturally to her mother for advice on emotions and bodily functions. But her mother seemed able to deal only with menstruation and childbirth, and both in a vague and weary manner, as if the effort of remembering either completely exhausted her. If Elizabeth ventured to ask about anything else, anything less clearly linked to physical discomfort in a good cause, anything redolent of pleasure, then her mother would sigh and look honestly baffled as if these experiences had somehow passed her by, as if she had never been out in the real world at all. ‘Oh Elizabeth,’ she would say, looking not so much embarrassed as bemused, ‘you must ask your father about that.’
Elizabeth, of course, did not; but inevitably, within a few days, when her mother was out or resting, her father would come to her and say, in the manner of someone addressing a board meeting, ‘Your mother tells me there is something you want to ask me.’ The first couple of times this happened Elizabeth was dumb with embarrassment, but her father, clearly well briefed by her mother on whatever the subject was, would happily lecture her on the perils of masturbation or the mechanics of contraception (both, it seemed, were useful for men but unnecessary for women). In later life she wondered if he could possibly have meant what he said, but at the time he seemed amazingly sincere.
She gave up questioning her mother and approached her father directly; he had a knack of rendering anything to do with sex as remote as a geography lesson. She was astonished that he could hold such strong views on something so obviously distant from both of them that all embarrassment vanished. She gathered that she was expected to remain a virgin until marriage and faithful thereafter; that she would be rewarded with children; that her husband might not be entirely monogamous; that her parents would appreciate it if she looked after them in their old age. None of this was linked to any religious influence, for her father was a scientist who prided himself on his rationality, but it might as well have been: the path of duty was as clearly marked as if by some celestial spotlight. She gave up asking questions altogether, of either parent, because there seemed nothing left to ask. Her life was mapped out for her as if predestined; it appeared to have no connection with the plan to achieve a degree in English and a career in publishing, and yet that too was part of her duty, for her parents believed in education and work as they believed in cleanliness and fresh air, as self-evident benefits.
Elizabeth’s parents were old by conventional standards (forty and fifty at the time of her birth) so there was every chance of their declining years requiring her attention in the very near future. A heavy burden to place on any young man, she thought, so she lived chastely at first, thereafter as a mistress of married men, tutors at college or colleagues at work. She felt safe: none of them would be volunteering to share the parental burden, which she was sure anyone would find intolerable, so nothing could go wrong. She also discovered the depths of sexual pleasure from which her parents had tried to protect her. It was an amazing revelation, comparable to a religious experience: she had expected something difficult or dull and instead she found a source of easy transfiguring joy. Buoyed up by her discovery, she lived in one room and spent all her money on a housekeeper/nurse for her parents. It seemed cheap compared to the alternative, which was living at home. She visited her parents every day and maintained a radiant calm while her mother sulked and her father complained. She knew she was doing all she could, and they had taught her to be rational, so she refused to let guilt intrude. In later years, looking back, she was impressed by the strength of her own resolve.
‘He won’t make you happy, I’m afraid,’ her mother said when Elizabeth announced she was going to marry Felix. ‘I should so like you to be happy, Elizabeth. Your father and I have had such a happy marriage.’
Elizabeth stared at her mother. Nothing about this pale, exhausted, non-communicative person had ever suggested happiness. She did not remember the word being mentioned even by her voluble, authoritative father. She had in fact received mixed messages from her parents: study literature, where all sorts of emotional risks are taken, but lead a careful, blameless life. Vicarious thrills had been the order of the day. It was the first time she had realised they meant that was the way to achieve happiness; she had assumed it led merely to safety, and happiness was irrelevant. It had never occurred to her that for her parents safety and happiness might be the same thing.
She was then thirty-six. Meeting Felix had been a profound shock. Suddenly there was this attractive young man of twenty-five in her office, author of three well-written novels and requiring an editor’s help with his fourth. When he smiled at her, she felt all the feelings she had read about. He was amusing, sexy and frivolous: a character straight out of the fiction she had consumed like a drug all her life. He loved her but he would hurt her because he wanted to be free. Here at last was her chance to be Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary and Camille.
It was the end of the sixties. She had watched mini-skirts and free love, the drug culture and flower children. She had tried to join in as well as she could but always with a slight feeling of incongruity, like a maiden aunt getting drunk at a wedding. She was a veteran of many affairs, mostly with safe married men who would not challenge her life as dutiful daughter and efficient editor, but she had never been in love. Felix gave her feelings a violent jolt, as if she had suddenly been plugged into the mains.
Shortly before the wedding she found out that Felix didn’t believe in fidelity. She was still in her euphoric state and had made some idle remark about the magnitude of the marriage vows, expecting him to deny it with a compliment. Felix actually laughed.
‘Well, if you’re idiot enough to take them seriously,’ he said, ‘you deserve all you get. Not you, darling, other people, I mean. All that rubbish about having no one else till death. It’s enough to make you turn up your toes on the spot.’
Elizabeth stared at him. ‘How do you mean exactly?’ They were in bed at the time, having made love with particular intensity and consumed a bottle of champagne. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
‘Well, imagine. The average couple could be married fifty or sixty years. God. Just imagine fifty or sixty years with only one person.’
‘That’s what I was imagining,’ Elizabeth said. She could feel the happiness draining out of her.
‘Well, don’t. Why put yourself in jail?’ He wrapped his arms round her; his hair felt silky against her breasts. ‘The thing is,’ he said, ‘I don’t intend to feel jealousy ever again. It’s simply too painful.’
She imagined a beautiful woman betraying and tormenting him. Surely it was impossible: no one could do that to him. ‘What happened?’ she asked.
‘Let’s just say I’ve been inoculated against it.’ His face had an unfamiliar shut-down look about it, denying her information. ‘You must never leave me,’ he said. ‘If you leave me, I’ll kill you.’
She quite liked the sound of being killed, knowing it would never happen. No one had ever threatened it before: it suggested a depth of passion that belonged appropriately in fiction.
‘But you can have lovers,’ he went on, ‘all the lovers you want, and I won’t be jealous, especially if you don’t tell me.’
‘But I don’t want lovers,’ she said. ‘Are you saying you do?’
‘Not yet,’ he said, ‘but eventually I will. We both will. Everyone does.’ He smiled at her, his melting smile that could make her forgive him anything. ‘And I’m only twenty-five.’
She waited for him to remind her that she was thirty-six, but he didn’t.
Felix met Sally from school after her last A-level. She ran all the way to the car, despite the summer heat that always seemed to accompany exams, books and cribs spilling out of her rucksack, and they hugged and kissed. She hoped everyone saw them.
‘How was it?’ he asked.
‘Dunno. It’s just a blur.’
‘I remember it well. The human brain can’t play and record at the same time. But Japanese technology is probably working on it.’
He always knew how she felt. He understood. Whatever she said, he had been there first and he remembered. He dressed carefully too, casual but smart, not trying to look young and scruffy to match her, but not too formal either. Just looking at him made her ache with love. And to have done her last exams as well. How could she contain such bliss?
‘Well,’ he said thoughtfully after a final kiss, ‘what are we hanging about here for? Unless you want me to rape you in the car.’
‘Probably better not. I wouldn’t struggle convincingly enough.’
He roared off, accelerating hard, then had to break sharply at the lights. There was a litter bin right beside them and the temptation was irresistible: she dropped the rucksack into it with all its contents, something she had longed to do all her life.
‘Sacrilege,’ he said lightly.
‘Not really. They weren’t proper books. Just the ones that get you through exams, God willing.’
Waiting for the lights to change, Felix reached under the seat and produced a bottle of champagne from an ice bucket. She watched, mesmerised, as he started to open it.
‘You think of everything.’
‘Glove compartment.’
She opened it and found two glasses.
‘They were just notes and cribs and junk like that,’ she said, glancing from rucksack to champagne and back again. ‘Honest, guv. And I’ll never need them again. I’m free.’
The cork popped just as the lights changed. How could it be otherwise when this was her day and they were together? He handed her the lightly foaming bottle and drove off.
Felix was almost asleep. There was something about making love in the afternoon that met all his requirements: he was not stupefied from a night’s sleep, with a lively cock but his brain out of gear, nor was he exhausted from a day’s eating and drinking and television. Work had been done in the morning and more might be done before dinner. Meanwhile it was perfect stolen time. Outside in the world other less fortunate people were engaged in boring routine tasks and here he was, blissful, off duty, totally relaxed. He never did really sleep at these times, or perhaps he was not sure if he did or not, but it felt like a kind of sublime doze that could refresh him magically without ever quite making him lose consciousness.
Sally said, ‘I’d like to stay here for ever.’
He smiled. ‘People might talk.’ He could feel her studying him through his closed eyes.
‘Why does anyone bother with drugs when they can have this?’
‘I’d like to think I’m addictive. But not deadly, of course. Quite the reverse.’
She kissed him in various places. That took a long time. ‘It just gets better and better,’ she said with a deep sigh of satisfaction, as if worn out by so much pleasure. He was indeed impressed by her orgasmic capacity: at the beginning it had taken them a little while to find the right places because she had got into the habit of pretending with that silly young Chris, but once found they could not be lost and seemed inexhaustible. A triumph, he thought happily, for both of them, particularly considering how high their expectations had been. It would have been easy to be subtly disappointed and afraid to say so.
‘Let’s say you bring out the best in me,’ he said, and they laughed. Red afternoon light danced behind his eyelids.
‘You won’t get bored with me, will you?’ she said in an anxious voice. ‘Promise you won’t?’
‘How could I?’
‘That’s all right then.’ Now she sounded like a child, simply reassured that a beloved father would not leave her. And like a child, she was easily distracted. ‘Did we finish the champagne?’
‘There should be a couple of glasses left.’ He opened his eyes, leaning over the edge of the bed to find the bottle on the floor and pour out the remainder, predictably a little less than expected. ‘Well, nearly. They seem to be making the bottles smaller these days. It must be something to do with the Common Market.’
She didn’t smile; it was not her sort of joke. Elizabeth would have actually laughed. He supported her head with one hand and held the glass to her lips with the other. The gesture, one of his favourites, much appreciated by older, married women and often remarked upon, was simply accepted: she did not know there was any other way to drink champagne in bed. She drank greedily, treating it like lemonade. Later when she got up she would be surprised to find herself thirsty and would drink glass after glass of cold water from the kitchen tap. There was an obscure delight for him in having so many of his courtesies taken for granted. He watched her drink, studying the freckles on her champagne-wet lips, the down on her cheeks still flushed from good sex; he breathed in the vanilla smell of her skin mixed with sweat and semen and some new expensive scent he had bought her recently.
‘Have you thought any more about our weekend?’ she asked, as he took the empty glass away and drank from his own.
‘We might be able to manage it when I go to the crime writers’ conference.’
‘Oh Felix! Could we really?’ She flopped back on the bed, a big childish grin of delight spreading over her face. ‘I do so want to spend the night with you. It’s too long to wait till I go to college. I hate getting dressed and going home all the time. I want to go to sleep with you there and wake up with you there. I’ve never spent the night with anyone. Can you imagine?’
‘I may snore,’ he said reluctantly. ‘Elizabeth says I do.’ It seemed politic to slip her name into the conversation every now and then.
‘I won’t notice. I’ll be asleep. Can we pretend to be married?’
‘Why not?’ But a small inner voice whispered it would be unlucky.
‘Oh Felix, won’t it be fun? Will you get me a ring?’
‘Of course.’
‘I don’t mean an expensive one.’
He kissed her then and that took a while. ‘It’s all right, my darling. I’d love to buy you something pretty. The hotel won’t give a damn if we’re married or not, but we’ll enjoy pretending.’ He stifled the small inner voice. It was just a game. What harm could it possibly do? But it was not something he usually did. It was a concession to her youth, a romantic gesture outside his normal pattern, a daring V sign at fate. ‘Have you any idea what a miracle you are?’ he asked her. ‘No, of course you haven’t. Silly question.’
‘I just love you,’ she said, watching him with large, clear eyes. ‘That’s all.’ Sometimes the sheer simplicity of her took his breath away.
‘I must have been very good in a previous incarnation.’
Richard tried to be impartial, but found it impossible not to have favourite clients, and Ben was one of them. His offences were so petty and foolish, and he was full of good will. It was useless trying to get information out of him, though. He operated on charm, and information was incidental. Richard admitted to himself that he was susceptible to Ben’s charm but he also knew the court might well not be.
‘Why d’you do it?’ he asked.
‘I needed some money,’ Ben said simply, as if he had just cashed a cheque.
‘So you grabbed a chain round someone’s neck at the unemployment office. Didn’t you think you’d get caught?’
‘No. I thought I’d get away. But I slipped.’ He gave Richard one of his sudden big grins and Richard couldn’t help smiling back. The image of Ben, gold chain in hand, running off and skidding on the polished linoleum was too much for him.
‘How would you feel if someone did that to your girlfriend?’ he asked, trying another approach.
‘She doesn’t wear gold chains.’
‘Or to you?’
‘I’d hit back.’
The phone rang. Richard answered it and dealt with arrangements for a client who might or might not be willing to go back into a psychiatric unit.
‘Ben, you’re not helping yourself much,’ he said when he hung up, ‘and you’re certainly not helping me. I wrote a glowing report for you when you nicked that answering machine from the community relations office, which was a bloody stupid thing to do, and now you go and do this while you’re still on probation.’
Ben nodded and looked sheepish, but Richard felt it was just an act, designed to please, one of Ben’s games.
‘I mean if you go on like this,’ he said, trying to toughen up, ‘you’ll get put away, and how’s Lucille going to cope if you’re inside when she has the baby?’
‘Yeah, I know,’ Ben said, looking contrite. ‘Only we can’t manage on the money, see. We only get twenty-one quid each.’
Well, there was no answer to that. It would be simpler really to hand Ben a fiver as soon as he came in and skip the interview.
‘I know it’s very difficult. But this sort of thing makes it worse, don’t you see that?’
No answer. He felt in Ben’s silence the knowledge that he had a job and Ben didn’t.
‘Look, try your best,’ he said hopelessly, ‘and when you see your brief, tell him I said it would help if he can get your case listed for later, it’ll give you time to do more community service. And get a TV licence or they’ll do you for that.’
Another big grin. ‘Don’t need one, my telly got stole. Someone tief my telly.’
The door opened suddenly and Marion put her head round it. Richard felt his customary wave of anger that she should behave as though seniority gave her the right to dispense with knocking. ‘Oh sorry, Richard,’ she said, seeing Ben and smiling her usual cheerful, resolute smile. ‘I’ll come back another time.’
‘It’s all right,’ Richard said, ‘we’re just finishing.’
‘Oh, good.’ She came in and directed her smile at Ben, who Richard knew was not one of her favourite people. ‘Hullo, Ben. And how are you today?’
‘OK,’ said Ben happily, oblivious of likes and dislikes. ‘Cheers, Richard.’ He went out and Marion seated herself in his chair.
‘Is he in trouble again?’ she asked.
‘Just a little.’
‘Oh dear. They never learn, do they?’
‘They?’ Richard wondered if Marion was colour prejudiced. Could it be that simple?
‘You mustn’t let these trivial cases get you down, Richard. Not with the inquest coming up.’
‘I don’t see Ben as a trivial case. I don’t see anyone like that. He can’t find work, he can’t manage on the dole, so he turns to petty crime. If he gets done for burglary his girlfriend could wind up alone with the baby.’
Marion recrossed her legs, thick in tweed stockings. ‘Yes, it’s very sad, but they’ve really no business to be having a baby when they can’t support one. It’s very careless of them.’
‘It’s very much a wanted baby. I think it’s the one bright spot in their lives.’
Marion smiled her maddening smile, loaded with sweet reasonable logic. If you listen to me with an open mind, you will end up agreeing with me, said the smile. ‘Yes, but they can’t afford it, can they? Babies are a luxury, as you and I well know. And I wonder how hard they’ve tried to find work. Some of these people really seem to expect the state to do everything for them. It’s so bad for their morale.’
‘So is living in a bedsit with water running down the walls.’ Uneasily, Richard remembered having heard some of Marion’s views expressed by Helen. ‘What did you want to see me about, Marion?’
‘I was wondering if you’ve had any more thoughts about the inquest. What you’re actually going to say when they ask you why Tracey killed herself. Your professional opinion, I mean.’
Richard was profoundly irritated at the implication that they should cook up some acceptable statement between them. ‘Professional, personal, what’s the difference? She was bloody depressed about having her baby adopted, so she stole one from a pram, got probation, and I failed to pick up how desperate she felt.’
Marion pursed her lips. ‘You’re not actually going to say that, are you?’
‘Say what?’
‘The bit about failure.’
‘Why not? It’s the truth.’
Marion looked at him indulgently, as if he were a well-meaning child who had got things slightly wrong. ‘We’re not always objective about ourselves though, are we, Richard? I’m sure you did your best. And the press are so quick to throw stones, we really don’t need to help them. How will it look if you rush into court so eager to take the blame? For all we know, poor Tracey may have been very unstable. She might have killed herself anyway, no matter what you said or didn’t say.’
‘She was eighteen,’ Richard said, outraged, thinking of Sally.
‘Yes, it’s a very unstable age. Didn’t we all play with the idea of suicide then? What I’m anxious to avoid, Richard, is the sort of thing the gutter press loves: “Yet Another Social Worker Gets It Wrong.”’
In meetings Marion was fond of saying they were a team, that a chain was only as strong as its weakest link. Richard gazed at her without replying.
Eventually, reluctantly, they dragged themselves up and began to turn the bed back into a sofa. It was, Felix thought, the nearest they would ever get to domesticity together and was oddly touching.
‘You know, I’m actually going to miss school,’ Sally said.
‘What?’
‘Oh, not like that. Just the way it fitted in with us. Sitting there in class and knowing I had a secret. Ringing you up at break and arranging when to meet. Showing off to everyone when you picked me up in the car. It’s been such fun.’
‘Waiting for you to phone was quite amazing too. I actually didn’t want you to ring sometimes, so I could go on looking forward to it, and yet I couldn’t bear to wait another minute, in case I exploded. A bit like wanting to come and wanting to put it off a bit longer.’
They smiled at each other across the sofa bed, two people secure in the knowledge that they had invented sex. He caught her looking uncannily like Helen, an extra pleasure for him. Helen whom he would never have.
‘Sometimes I feel so happy I think I might burst,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘Aren’t you amazed they haven’t noticed?’
‘Thank God they haven’t.’ Surely that wasn’t disappointment he heard in her voice.
‘But it’s so obvious, how can they miss it? I feel I’m all lit up like a Christmas tree when I go in the door. Are they blind? But Mum only thinks there’s some boy at school and Richard’s too busy to notice anything.’
‘Hiding something in plain view, that’s the secret,’ Felix said firmly. ‘Put your precious object in an obvious place and nobody spots it. Like concealing the stolen diamonds in the chandelier.’
‘I do worry about Elizabeth though.’ The name fell between them like a gauntlet. It sounded different when Sally used it. More of a challenge. ‘She’s so nice and I’d hate her to be hurt.’
‘As long as she doesn’t know, she can’t be hurt,’ Felix said, uneasy. ‘Don’t worry, my love.’
‘But she’ll have to know some time. Won’t she?’
Now what was all this? ‘Don’t think about it now. You’ve got three years at college first.’
‘You won’t find someone else, will you?’
‘How could I? You’re the one. You’ll meet someone your own age and forget about me.’
‘Don’t say that, you know I won’t. They’re all so boring compared to you. Please, Felix, don’t ever say that again. It really hurts.’
He promised.
She tried to explain to Maria about the holiday, but Maria was angry and didn’t understand. ‘God, Sally, it’s only a month and I was looking forward to it.’
‘I know. So was I. I’m sorry.’
‘Forget it.’
‘You know I’d like to come, I always love it, but—’
‘It’s all right,’ Maria said.
‘It’s not though, is it?’
They stood with their noses against the wire fence watching Jackie play tennis with two boys and another girl. Wimbledon always inspired her.
‘Just don’t let him hurt you, that’s all,’ Maria said angrily.
‘He won’t,’ Sally said, surprised. ‘He loves me.’
‘Oh, Sal.’ A sudden fierce hug. ‘Be careful.’
‘I am. You know I am.’
‘I don’t mean that.’
Later in the pub she had to sweet-talk Jackie.
‘But you always go to Cyprus.’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘She must be awfully disappointed.’
‘She is and I’m sorry, but I can’t help it. Don’t you give me a hard time as well.’
‘God, he’s really turned your head,’ Jackie said, looking at her as if she were a freak.
‘What d’you mean? I just want to be with him, that’s all. What’s so terrible about that? You want to be with Pete, don’t you?’
‘It’s a bit different.’
‘Why? Just because he’s older, is that what you mean?’
‘Oh Sal, leave it out.’
‘That is what you mean, isn’t it?’
Jackie lit a fresh cigarette and blew smoke over Sally. ‘I don’t know why you need the aggravation, his wife and all that, when you could have a holiday instead. He’ll still be here when you get back. Probably do him good if you go off somewhere. Make him keener.’
‘I don’t want to be apart from him for a single day,’ Sally said. She thought the simple truth might reach Jackie somehow. But she only stared.
‘Blimey, you’ve got it bad.’
Well, there was nothing for it but the direct approach. ‘Jackie, can I come to Aldeburgh with you?’
Jackie looked thoroughly amazed. ‘But I’m going with Pete.’
‘I know, I’m sorry, but I’ve got to have a weekend with Felix and we can’t both get back at the same time. If I tell Mum I’m staying with you for a week she won’t worry.’ Silence from Jackie. The whole trip hung in the balance. ‘I’ll go out a lot,’ Sally said urgently. ‘I’ll wear ear plugs. I’ll keep my eyes shut.’
Felix had to admit that Richard was the better squash player. He had to use quite a lot of guile to beat him these days. He supposed Richard’s lifestyle was healthier, less hedonistic; or else it was sheer adrenalin from the Marion conflict that raised his game. Afterwards they went for a drink in the bar and Richard told him the story again. He half-listened, reflecting that he had had a near perfect day and there was still dinner with Elizabeth to come.
‘She’s a miserable cow, that Marion,’ he said when Richard paused. ‘Probably needs servicing.’
Richard smiled. ‘She’s got a perfectly nice husband, oddly enough.’
‘Well, he won’t be giving her one, will he? Not if he’s got any sense.’
‘And two perfectly adjusted children. Not a hint of rebellion there. It’s sickening.’ They both laughed. ‘Oh, she means well, of course. She’s one of the old school. The poor should be grateful and deserving. The rich should be kind but firm. And the state shouldn’t interfere too much. Country going to the dogs. Bring back national service. All that.’
It didn’t sound too unreasonable to Felix. Why else did he pay tax? But it wouldn’t be tactful to say so. Not now. ‘Maybe they’ll promote her out of your area,’ he said. ‘Too much to hope she might get the sack, I suppose?’
‘Oh, she’s very efficient. I just wish she didn’t make me feel eleven again, waiting to see Matron for castor oil.’
‘That bad, eh?’
Richard said with enthusiasm, ‘I have fantasies about cutting her up into very small pieces but I think I’m probably over-reacting.’
‘Sounds to me as if you need a holiday.’ He didn’t know how Richard stood it, the case load, the long hours, the problems, endlessly fighting the system for ungrateful moronic clients with a death wish. ‘But I like this violent streak smouldering away under your calm exterior. It’s good stuff. You’re a bit like a dormant volcano, aren’t you, Richard? Who knows when you might erupt? Play your cards right and I might slip you into my next Tony Blythe.’
Richard warmed to his attention. ‘Surely you’ve noticed before that I have homicidal tendencies?’
‘Now and then. There were a few times I thought Inge mightn’t live to reach the divorce courts and you might end up in one of your own jails. Quite a good twist that would have been. Bit rough on Helen though.’
‘She’d have masterminded my escape,’ said Richard, enjoying the fantasy. ‘The file in the cake. The getaway car behind the wall. Hey’ – and he paused, the idea clearly visible in his open face – ‘I suppose we couldn’t get away together – just a short break? I might be able to manage a few days when you go to Cambridge on your crime trip. Be nice to see the old place again.’
Felix felt a beast to refuse, yet he also noted the negative way Richard put the suggestion, as if his whole life was geared to refusals. Really, his expectations must be very low. ‘Sorry. It’s a great idea but—’
‘You have other plans.’ He sounded disappointed but not surprised.
‘Well, I do have a little friend there and I promised I’d look her up. You know how it is.’
‘I do indeed.’ Richard looked admiring and stoical. ‘Never mind. I can’t really spare the time anyway. And I’m probably only chasing my lost youth.’
Felix had always been a magic person for him, arriving at Cambridge with a secret sorrow, something to do with death and divorce and his mother, a story no one ever got quite clear, a tragedy with strong sexual overtones. Felix had drifted around in voluminous Byronic shirts, affecting a Byronic limp, seducing every woman who crossed his path if he considered her beautiful enough, drinking too much, failing to work, sleeping all day and screwing all night, yet still now and then turning out brilliant essays. Felix embodied all the romantic chaos Richard had read about and dreamed about: Felix could break all the rules and get away with it while he, Richard, had to go on being responsible because he was set that way, like cement. He could hardly believe that this careless, glamorous person was to be his friend; he feared that every invitation would be his last, yet knew that too much humility and gratitude would be fatal. Felix needed him: his solid values were like firm earth in which Felix could plant his rockets before lighting the blue touch paper and failing to retire.
Felix’s friendship seemed to Richard a vindication of his own character, a sense of self esteem painfully maintained in the face of his mother’s clearly expressed preference for his younger brother. Whatever his brother did wrong was excused or transposed into virtue, while Richard’s achievements were ignored or taken for granted. It made sense: his brother was better looking and more fun, rather like Felix, in fact, but he did not have a friend like Felix. That privilege belonged to Richard, and it proved that he was not as dull as his mother thought. Or possibly it proved that she was right to prefer her other son. Once Richard had Felix as a friend, he understood his mother’s partiality for his brother and ceased to blame her for it. He even became quite fond of his brother.
His mother had hardly appeared to notice the death of his father, which left Richard the unwilling head of the household, but she never recovered when his brother emigrated to New Zealand, unable to bear the burning heat of her affection at first hand any more. She seemed to blame Richard for his departure and she went into the kind of mourning that Richard associated with Queen Victoria when she lost Albert. It made another bond with Felix, the lone mother and the lone father, parents bereaved by death and divorce, parents at odds with their sons, parents who needed comforting, parents who had never grown up. It made Felix more than ever his opposite and his twin, a mirror image of himself. They were light and dark, yin and yang, good and evil: put together, Felix said, laughing, they would make up a whole person.
When Inge came into his life, Richard discovered sexual obsession. Even though it was the sixties, allegedly an ideal time to be young and free, he had never been much good at casual sex because he worried about hurting other people’s feelings and, to a lesser extent, his own. All that dangerous activity was better left to Felix, who either managed to stay friends with women whose hearts he had broken or simply didn’t care if they were left bitter and wounded. Richard didn’t really approve of Felix’s behaviour, but he admired the way Felix seemed to raise irresponsibility to the level of an art form. Never having managed to be irresponsible himself, Richard found it a thrilling quality to observe in his friend. He worried sometimes that the vicarious pleasure he took in Felix’s affairs was positively unhealthy, but there wasn’t much he could do about it: it seemed to be addictive, like a drug. Felix claimed to find the same fascination in Richard’s moral rectitude, though Richard privately doubted this. He thought it more likely that Felix enjoyed having an adoring audience and he was content to provide one. He found Felix so attractive and charismatic himself that it seemed only natural that vast numbers of other people should fall in love with him, that he should operate under a special dispensation, that the ordinary rules of conduct should not apply to him.
Richard was engulfed by Inge’s passion for him: he was amazed that anyone could feel so strongly about him because it had never happened before. If this was how love affairs felt, no wonder Felix liked having so many of them. The foreignness of Inge was an added attraction, making her mysterious and dark. They would never speak the same language, no matter how fluent they each became in the other’s: they would have no common ground. Their childhoods would forever contain different points of reference and their memories would be alien. It excited him uncontrollably to merge himself with this strange, exotic person and it seemed appropriate that much too soon their half-hearted attempts at contraception resulted in a pregnancy. Such violent feelings were meant to bring forth life. When Felix suggested abortion, Richard quarrelled with him, briefly, for the first time. And yet he knew at some level that he and Inge were much too young to marry, that they were bound to change, that they would wear each other out. He had been deeply flattered that she loved him so much because no one else had done so and it seemed to validate his existence, but gradually he became afraid of the way she sank deeply into him and seemed to suck out his very soul. There was no refuge from her: wherever he went to retreat, she would find him out. She had an inexhaustible appetite for sex, conversation, affection and companionship that left him searching desperately for hidden reserves where he might find something more to give her, yet he knew it would never be enough.
Sally waited until she was helping Helen with supper. It was easier to talk while scraping a carrot, her head bent over the sink. ‘I thought I’d go and stay with Jackie when we break up,’ she said casually. ‘Just for a week.’
‘Well, if that’s what you want.’ Helen sounded surprised. ‘Beats me how anyone could prefer a week in Aldeburgh to a month in Cyprus.’
‘Oh… there’s a job going at Tesco. I could do with some money for clothes when I go to college.’ She paused, looking for a more clinching argument. ‘You should be glad I won’t be asking you for the air ticket.’
‘You deserve a nice holiday,’ Helen said warmly. ‘You’ve worked hard. Much harder than I thought you would.’
‘I want to do well. You know. Get the right grades. Make you proud of me and all that.’ Was she overdoing it?
‘I’d rather you wanted to do it for yourself.’
There was no pleasing her. ‘Well, both.’
Silence. Then: ‘Sally, I don’t want to pry, but if there’s some boy you’re keen on and he’s going to be in Aldeburgh too – you won’t forget about contraception, will you?’
Sally felt herself squirming. It was such an intrusion on her time with Felix. She was still wet with him, could still smell him on her skin, feel him touching her, reverberating inside her, and Helen was trespassing on sacred things. ‘Oh Mum, you’re always going on about that.’
‘Not so. I’ve mentioned it maybe twice a year since you were fifteen. Be criminal not to mention it at all, even if I do embarrass you. I know it’s very private but it still has to be said.’
‘Well, you’ve said it. I know all about it, thanks.’
‘And there’s also VD and—’
‘I’m not an idiot.’
‘All right, I’ll shut up. Just promise me you’ll go to the clinic if you haven’t already, and I’ll never mention it again.’
‘It’s a deal.’ She chopped the carrot savagely, overjoyed to hear the sound of a key in the front door. ‘There’s Richard.’
‘For this relief much thanks,’ said Helen drily.
Richard came in. He smiled at Sally and kissed Helen. ‘Sorry I’m late. I had a couple of drinks with Felix.’
Sally was careful not to react.
‘How was he?’ Helen asked without interest.
‘Oh, he seemed in pretty good form. How was your day? How are the Seven Deadly Sins coming along?’
‘Rather slowly. I had Elizabeth crying on my shoulder. She thinks Felix is playing around again. I do feel sorry for her but hell, it’s monotonous, she’s such a victim, and I really wanted to work.’
Sally didn’t want to hear about Elizabeth’s pain. Felix would be home with her now, having supper, being nice. Not telling her the truth. How angry Mum and Richard would be if they knew. What a monumental crisis she could make with just one careless word. The knowledge made her feel dizzy, powerful and helpless at the same time. She held the key to all their futures and she dared not use it. Not yet, anyway. Instead she hung on to the thought of Cambridge, like a talisman.
‘I’ll lay the table,’ she said. She was sick of being good and helpful, but that was what they both expected of her, for ever more, it seemed. That was how it had always been.
Helen was nearly asleep, but Richard was still talking about Tracey.
‘She’d still be alive if she’d been allowed to keep the baby. If we’d all given her more support. We should have helped her keep it, helped her look after it.’
Helen usually listened when he wanted to talk about work, but she also encouraged him to switch off, for his own sake as much as hers, feeling it was not always good for him to bring the problems of the day home with him. Tonight was difficult. Lust and Envy swam in her head to the sound of Elizabeth’s sad voice mixed with Sally’s peculiar plans for a summer holiday. It was hard to focus on Richard’s words, hard to believe that he was seriously suggesting a girl of eighteen should have been encouraged to have and keep a baby. Eighteen was hardly more than a child.
‘Or helped her get an abortion,’ she said, yawning.
‘No. I don’t believe that’s the answer.’
Oh well. It was an old familiar argument, a bit of pointless idealism left over from Richard’s youth. She attributed it to his Catholic upbringing, although he always insisted he had left all that behind at university. Helen thought it went too deep ever to be totally discarded, but she generally tried to keep off the subject.
‘I do. I’ve been a single parent. I know what it’s like.’
Felix and Elizabeth lay back to back. Felix wanted to get to sleep before he had to admit to himself that he had had one brandy too many and might be in for a restless night, but Elizabeth wanted to talk. He could feel her thinking: the tension in her back betrayed her. He braced himself for a conversation. It was essential to maintain a sleepy voice to keep it short.
‘Shall I come with you to Cambridge?’ she finally said.
‘Oh darling… I’ll be working all the time. You’d be bored. And I want to do some research.’
‘Yes, of course,’ she said, heavy with disappointment. ‘It was just an idea.’
‘It was a lovely idea. But I’ve got a better one. Let’s go back to Venice in the autumn. Would you like that?’
‘I’d love it.’
‘Good. That’s settled then.’
He always bribed her with Venice when things got sticky. It hardly seemed to matter if they actually went or not. It was just a convenient way of reaffirming love. But tonight it didn’t quite work. He could feel the slight tremor in her body that meant she was starting to cry. But since she had chosen to do it silently, he felt entitled to pretend he hadn’t noticed.
On the morning of the holiday Richard insisted on taking her to the station. She thought she had talked him out of it the night before, saying she wouldn’t be ready in time, but after breakfast he shouted up the stairs to her, ‘Come on, Sally, if you want a lift.’
She shouted back, ‘It’s OK, I’ll get the tube.’ She felt extremely harassed by his solicitude. Why couldn’t he leave her alone? She had finished packing but she was still sorting the contents of her big everyday handbag into a smaller, smarter one and she found it very distracting to be shouted at. Felix was right: it would be a relief to get away from home and all this interference. Now that escape grew closer she could afford to admit how much she longed for it. To be left in peace. Not to be nagged about tidying her room or playing music too loud. Not to be asked where she was going or what time she’d be back.
But he wouldn’t give up. ‘Don’t be daft,’ he yelled up the stairs. ‘I’m going right past the station.’
She gave up. He was obviously determined to do her a good turn and it wasn’t worth making a fuss. She longed to swear at him, to shriek abuse, thinking how surprised he’d be, but instead she grabbed the suitcase and bag and set off obediently down the stairs.
‘Have fun, take care,’ said Helen, giving her a hug and looking critically at her clothes.
God, why did they all have to treat her like a child? She got in the car beside Richard in a foul temper and sulked determinedly for most of the journey. Fortunately he never talked much in the mornings and she had to admit to herself that a lift was convenient, but it wasn’t worth having to leave in a hurry and all the anxiety that somehow he would stop in the wrong place and run straight into Felix and his car. It spoiled the trip before it had even begun, and she wanted everything to be perfect.
By the time they reached the station she was very tense, almost looking over her shoulder, as Richard got her suitcase out of the boot.
‘Have a good time,’ he said, kissing her goodbye. ‘Don’t forget to phone.’
‘Don’t fuss.’
He raised his eyebrows slightly, which meant he was annoyed. ‘Thanks a lot. I should have let you get the tube.’
Yes, you bloody should, she thought. ‘I’m sorry. Of course I’ll phone. I always do.’
She watched him drive off, just to be sure, before she ran through the station and out again into the side street where Felix had said he would park. Her heart was pounding with tension and rage and at first she couldn’t see the car. What if something had happened and he couldn’t get away? What would she do? Then she saw him waving at her.
‘Darling, you’re shaking,’ he said as she got in and they had a long embrace.
‘Richard gave me a lift.’
‘What a good thing we arranged to meet here, not closer to home.’
‘Yes. And I thought you were crazy suggesting it.’
‘The practised criminal always sticks as close to the truth as he can.’
She didn’t altogether like his flippant tone but it did calm her down. ‘It was awful. I was so afraid he’d see your car. I actually snapped at him and he snapped right back.’
‘Richard’s a very angry person,’ said Felix, sounding pleased.
‘But he hardly ever loses his temper.’
‘That’s what I mean.’
Gradually she began to relax. Once they were out of London the flat open country with its peculiar light soothed her. After a while Felix stopped and took a small box out of his pocket.
‘Knew I’d forgotten something.’
She opened it and found a narrow wedding ring of twisted gold. He put it on for her and it fitted perfectly. How did he manage to get these details right? She nearly cried, and they kissed until he said they had better drive on or they’d have to make love in the car. For the rest of the journey she watched the sun glinting on the gold, narrowing her eyes and moving her fingers to make it flash. She’d never had anything gold before. It looked so delicate. It was exactly what she would have chosen. She thought how carefully she would have to hide it until she went away and could wear it all the time.
The beauty of Cambridge startled her as they drove in. She had only seen it in films before. The hotel was breathtaking, too, right on the river. He hadn’t prepared her for that, but she could see how her pleasure delighted him. She was never sure if she preferred looking forward to things or being surprised, and somehow he always managed to give her both, as if he understood the dilemma.
She felt conspicuous at the reception desk and hung back rather, admiring the calm way he dealt with everything, though it did make her think briefly of how often he must have done it before. Never here, she hoped, but decided it would be better not to ask, just in case she didn’t like what she heard.
Their room was large with a big double bed, TV, en suite bathroom and a terrace overlooking the river. She went around opening doors and exclaiming, then they spent some time kissing and hugging and admiring the view. It felt very wicked and grown up.
‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ she said. ‘I do love hotels.’
He asked how many she had stayed in, knowing the answer.
‘None. We always rented cottages or barges, it was cheaper. So I’m a real expert.’
He said seriously, ‘Yes. It’s just the way it ought to be,’ and she knew they were going to have a wonderful time. They shared a sense of occasion. The place was magic and they both knew it.
Having the whole weekend ahead of them was such an extraordinary treat that it even took away the normal urgency to make love at once. Instead they decided on lunch and sightseeing. Time would stand still until they got to bed. Like the school holidays, the first night of a weekend like this could be postponed or prolonged almost indefinitely. If they didn’t begin it, then it couldn’t be over. They were waiting to unwrap a parcel and they could put it off as long as they liked.
Somehow over lunch she found herself talking about Helen.
‘I know it sounds funny but I always felt sort of responsible for her, as far back as I can remember. As if she couldn’t cope and I had to look after her.’
‘How very uncomfortable.’
‘Yes, it was.’
He poured some more wine. ‘I felt a bit like that about my mother too.’
‘Oh, Felix.’ She was always amazed how he understood everything she said from first-hand experience. It was still a shock that he was every bit as wonderful as she had thought he would be. ‘We do have a lot in common, don’t we? The mother in The Heartbreak Merchant – was it all true?’
He nodded and she saw the pain in his face. She held his hand across the table. ‘I thought so. What a shame.’
‘Oh, I survived.’
Now he was being brave, pretending it wasn’t as bad as it was. She knew that one too. She kissed his hand.
‘I felt with Mum that she was trying so hard to be strong, I mustn’t add to her troubles. It was odd. As if I had to be good all the time.’
‘Have you ever told her that?’
‘Oh no, I couldn’t. It would sound like whingeing. She did her best. It was really hard for her trying to support herself and me by painting and teaching – well, nearly impossible. I don’t know how she did it.’ She thought back for a moment. ‘God, it was cold in the studio. We lived there for years. We had paraffin heaters and we had to wrap blankets round our legs. She actually had to paint in gloves sometimes.’
Felix said, ‘You love her very much, don’t you?’
‘Yes, of course. She’s funny, she kind of makes you love her. But I get very angry with her sometimes.’
In the afternoon they roamed round the colleges like tourists.
‘It’s so beautiful,’ she said, marvelling at it all, feeling actual tears in her eyes. ‘It’s even better than I imagined.’
Felix looked pleased, as if he were personally responsible. ‘Yes, it is pretty good. It’s nice there are still places that live up to their reputations. Venice is another.’
‘I wish we could go there together,’ she said quickly, excited by the idea.
‘Maybe we will some day.’ But he didn’t elaborate. ‘Byron was an undergraduate here, I think.’
‘You’re a bit like Byron, aren’t you?’
‘Minus the limp.’ He laughed. ‘Maybe I should try it. Might get a bit more attention.’
‘You’re getting quite enough, I think.’
They strolled on, arms round each other, enjoying the sunshine.
‘Oh, this is so lovely,’ Sally said rapturously, wondering at the same time if she was being too enthusiastic. Did it make her seem gauche and silly? ‘I want to do all the traditional things, like going in a punt and having tea at Grantchester. Can we?’
‘Whatever you like, my darling. Provided someone else does the actual punting. I’m a bit out of practice and I don’t fancy getting stuck on the end of a pole.’
It was a lovely mental picture. ‘If you fell in, I could save you. I’m a good swimmer.’
‘Yes, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?’
‘Or I could hold your head underwater till you promised to love me for ever.’
‘You don’t need threats to make me do that.’
They kissed and suddenly it was all very serious.
‘Felix. What’s going to happen if I go to Sussex?’
‘Well… you’re going to have a wonderful time with lots of young men chasing you and I’m going to be very jealous.’
‘No, I’m serious.’
‘So am I.’ He held her face in his hands.
‘I mean how often are we going to be able to meet?’
‘Well, not as often as now, obviously. But I’ll drive down for the day whenever I can, and you’ll be coming home for the weekend now and then, won’t you?’
It didn’t sound anything like enough. It sounded vague and unstructured.
‘It’s going to be very different,’ she said, thinking about it.
‘But all that freedom. No more Richard and Helen breathing down your neck.’
She tried to smile, wondering where all her elation had suddenly gone. ‘I suppose I’ll have to ring them tonight. Pretend I’m in Aldeburgh.’
‘Ring from a callbox and tell them the cottage doesn’t have a phone.’ He kissed her again, but lightly this time, on the forehead. ‘Come on, darling, cheer up. We’re going to have a lovely time.’
Felix noted with satisfaction that the other hotel was decidedly inferior, the sort given over to conferences or even designed with them in mind. It had that dreadfully functional air about it. Other crime writers were milling around, signing in, greeting each other, having drinks at the bar. He only intended to stay long enough to check the programme for any last-minute alterations and confirm the time of his speech, but someone he remembered slightly came charging up to him looking pleased, rather like an eager Labrador.
‘John. Good to see you,’ he managed, the first lie of the day.
‘Hullo, Felix. How’s the world treating you?’
‘Not so bad. And you?’
‘Mustn’t grumble. Things have really looked up since I changed agents.’
God, surely he didn’t write as badly as he talked? Who was the poor sod getting ten per cent of all those clichés?
‘Who are you with now?’
‘Natasha Blor. You put me on to her, don’t you remember?’
Oh dear. ‘I put so many people on to Natasha, she ought to reduce her commission.’
‘Mind you, I need every penny I can get. Running two families comes expensive.’
‘Well, if you will make these romantic gestures.’ He remembered now. John was one of those who after years of miserable monogamy suddenly ran off with a much younger woman, leaving hordes of screaming children in his wake and embarking on a new breeding programme as if he thought mankind was in danger of extinction. Extraordinary.
‘Is Elizabeth with you?’
‘No, she couldn’t get away.’ What the hell was the name of the new young breeder?
‘Lorna’s here. Why don’t you join us for dinner?’
‘Actually, I’m staying somewhere else, so I won’t be around much. Just dashing in tomorrow to do my spiel and that’s about it. Thanks all the same.’
John looked at him admiringly, reading between the lines as Felix had hoped he would. ‘Same old Felix. I don’t know how you keep it up.’
‘I sometimes wonder about that myself.’
By the time he got back to his hotel he was aware of feeling tired. The stress of travel, a heavy lunch, all that unaccustomed fresh air and sightseeing, then inane dialogue with John – they had all taken their toll. Most of all he was conscious of not having his usual allowance of time alone. His normal day was so differently structured and he was used to it, he needed it. Now yet another elaborate meal awaited him and then a peak performance in bed would be expected. A quickie before lunch would have been much more relaxing. He didn’t like all this postponement: it had the heavy aura of a wedding night about it. Had he been foolish to buy Sally a ring? But she had wanted one so much and it had seemed, at the time, like a harmless fantasy.
He mellowed when he saw her. She looked so young, sitting there in her underwear, carefully painting her face as if she could improve on nature. He wanted to laugh and hug her. At the same time he feared her relentless energy. Would she expect him to stay awake half the night? Perform over and over again? Weekends away were something he normally avoided, except with Elizabeth. To be onstage without a break for forty-eight hours with an unfamiliar partner could be overtaxing, and he was too old to see anything intrinsically romantic about sharing a bed or a bath. But she had somehow made him feel he owed it to her before she went away to college, almost as if there were something sacramental about sleep.
He said, ‘Did you make your phone call?’ remembering she had been worried about it.
‘They asked about the weather. I said it was a bit mixed.’
‘Well, that should cover everything.’
‘I’m so bad at lying. I hate it.’
‘Just think of it as a game.’
‘Pig. You’re so practised.’
He kissed the top of her head. ‘Isn’t that part of my charm?’
‘What charm?’
‘Now you sound like your mother.’
‘You beast.’
‘I’m only teasing.’
They wrestled playfully and ended up embracing.
‘God, you’re so strong,’ he said. ‘I’m putty in your hands.’
She laughed and kissed him. The scent of her skin made him want her all over again, as if she were new. He held great handfuls of her hair like heavy silk between his fingers. What it was to be eighteen.
‘Did you bring my clothes from the flat?’ she asked. ‘I love the stuff you buy me and I hardly ever get a chance to wear it.’
‘No. I got you something new.’
‘Oh, Felix.’
He was warmed by her childish excitement. That was how it should be. Presents were fun. ‘Hang on. Just let me out of your vice-like grip and I’ll find it for you.’
She let go and he produced a smart carrier bag from his suitcase. She sighed with joy and opened it to find a very slinky black dress in silk jersey, really one of his best choices and in a sale, too; he had been lucky. She said, ‘Oh, Felix,’ in tones of positively sexual rapture. She said that often but he never tired of it and it always turned him on, making him feel he was magic. ‘God, it’s wonderful. It’s exactly the sort of dress I’ve always wanted.’
‘I was hoping it might be.’
She kissed him several times. ‘You’re absolutely brilliant.’
He was and he knew it. He had turned buying women’s clothes into a fine art and he was justifiably proud of himself.
‘I do my best.’ He watched appreciatively while she put on the dress, watched with confidence, without anxiety, knowing it would fit and suit her. It was slightly too old for her, of course, but that was part of its charm and what they both wanted. It made her look ever so slightly sluttish.
‘God, it’s fantastic,’ she said, admiring herself in the mirror with just a touch of awe, as if she could not quite believe how beautiful she was. She had great legs. When he could drag his eyes away from her tits, it was her legs he looked at, every time, and he had trained her to wear stockings and suspenders. He wondered if Richard lusted after her. It must be almost impossible not to, but no doubt he would never admit it.
‘Now it’s got you inside it, yes, it is. And the sooner I get inside you the better.’
They kissed again. The kiss went on and on.
‘Come on,’ he said, knowing her adolescent appetite. ‘Or we won’t get any dinner.’
‘You’re so practical.’
‘Got to keep up my strength. Don’t want any complaints, do I?’
‘Fat chance,’ she said lovingly.
They went downstairs. He was proud to be seen with her; he could feel the lust and envy in other men’s eyes. At the same time he was careful not to look at other women when they were together, although as luck would have it there was a French woman of about thirty-five in the bar whom in other circumstances…
Champagne, he thought. It would have to be champagne tonight.
Like most women he knew, Sally took ages in the bathroom, so Felix put in a quick call to Elizabeth while he was waiting. She sounded resolutely cheerful yet somehow plaintive, her usual tone when he went away without her. They talked about the weather and the hotel and she asked who was at the conference.
‘Oh, the usual crowd, you know. It’s a bit dull really. No wonder we all turn to crime.’
She laughed obediently. ‘Missing you,’ she said.
‘Are you? Me too. Well, must go, darling, I promised to have a drink with John and Lorna before I turn in.’
‘Give them my love,’ she said. She probably remembered more about them than he did.
‘I will.’
‘How are they? Happy?’
‘As far as I can tell. They seem OK.’
‘All those children,’ she said thoughtfully.
Not a subject to get into now. ‘Night night, love. See you Sunday.’
He fell back on the bed, inspecting his body for signs of middle age. So far it was holding up pretty well but no doubt he should take more exercise, cut down on booze. The media were always droning on about it. Some day perhaps.
Sally came at last out of the bathroom wearing a négligé he had given her, her face beautiful but oddly serious, her hair brushed out loose the way he liked it. She walked slowly to the bed and stood looking down at him.
‘Hullo, my lovely. You look very solemn.’
‘I was thinking how much I love you.’
She got into bed. A faint sense of duty intervened for a moment: now he was obliged to take pleasure in what had been pointlessly postponed all day. Then the smell of her skin and the abundance of her hair worked its usual magic: simple lust took over, fuelled by a curious, slight, almost virginal reluctance about her which he found exciting. Sucking her, fucking her, playing with violence in a sort of rape fantasy game that they both enjoyed sometimes, all gave him a feeling of mastery, as if she were a new conquest. In the end it turned out to be one of their best, and she even cried a little after they had both come. He cuddled her till she fell asleep, then turned over carefully (he could never sleep facing anyone) hoping he would wake with a hard-on, hoping he wouldn’t snore.
Sally knew she would remember it for ever. The light on the water, the movement of the punt, the oncoming view perfectly framed in the arch of each bridge. How lucky he was to have spent three years here. She felt she was in a film and she could tell Felix was enjoying it too, despite pretending to be blasé. He was more relaxed after his speech; it had gone well, with a few intelligent questions afterwards, and he had finally admitted when it was over that he had been a bit nervous, or as he preferred to call it, rusty. She had been so proud of him and she had wanted to boast to everyone: he’s with me and he’s brilliant and beautiful and famous. You can look but you can’t touch. She knew it wasn’t quite true but for this weekend at least she could pretend.
‘What were you like as an undergraduate?’ she asked, thinking of him fondly at her own age, the young Felix whom she would never know. Not that he was old now, of course, but before he had grown his protective shell, before he had a public to satisfy.
‘Extremely poor. I couldn’t get my bloody father to cough up any money, he was so pissed off with me for taking my mother’s side.’
It was difficult to imagine him being hard up: lavish spending seemed so much part of his style. ‘Did you have lots of affairs?’
‘One or two, I suppose.’
‘That means six or seven.’
‘Well, maybe three or four.’
She laughed. There was no point in being jealous of the past, which had made him so glamorous and interesting; enough to worry about the future. ‘Did Richard?’
‘No, poor sod, he was too busy falling in love with Inge.’
‘Really? Here?’
‘Yes, didn’t you know? That was how they met. She was his tutor’s au pair.’ He put on a heavy German accent. ‘We have ways of making you fall in love. God, poor Richard, he was a lost cause once he met her. She was only nineteen but she was so powerful. He used to go round there all the time, he was really obsessed by her. She was a bit like Lady Caroline Lamb, I always think, you know, mad, bad and dangerous to know.’
‘I thought that was Byron.’ Too late she wondered if it was tactless to correct him.
‘Well spotted. She was like Byron, only minus the limp. And minus the poetry too, of course. Didn’t leave a lot. No, that’s not fair. She was very beautiful, and she must have been sexy, I suppose.’
How protective he sounded of Richard even now, as if he should have saved him from Inge, all those years ago. Or perhaps she had got in the way, stopped them having fun together. She didn’t have any friends she felt that strongly about yet.
‘And once she got pregnant,’ Felix added, ‘he didn’t stand a chance.’
Sally trailed her hand in the water, dreaming. Her panic of last night had gone with the morning light and today she was drifting on a wave of pure fatalism. How could she have told him? It would have ruined everything. She thought it was almost sure to be all right and if it wasn’t, perhaps it was destiny.
All the same, the image of Inge took hold, Inge as femme fatale. It was odd to think of Richard being young and in the grip of an uncontrollable passion for someone else. ‘It’s funny,’ she said when they were having tea. ‘I always thought Mum was Richard’s great love.’
‘Maybe she is.’
‘Not the way you tell it.’
‘Oh, these wild passionate affairs,’ Felix said carelessly, ‘they’re not the people you stay with.’
‘Where does that leave us?’
‘Oh darling, we’re different. Anyway, Richard and Inge were married a long time.’
‘It still sounds like a love affair.’
‘That’s what I mean. It burnt itself out. When he met Helen, I could almost hear him breathe a sigh of relief.’
‘That makes it sound dull.’
‘No, not at all. It was like a ship coming into safe harbour. Nothing dull about that. It’s essential.’
It was no good, she couldn’t make sense of it. It was true what they said about the past being a foreign country. Felix had memories she could never share and they made her uneasy.
Then it was all right again. That evening. Their last evening. It was always all right when they were touching, and there was something about the luxury of making love night and morning that put a magic gloss on everything. She could feel herself permanently wet and aching, a new sensation of being thoroughly used. She was grown up, a woman. She tried to hang on to that feeling, to shut out the terror that time was sliding past and there was nothing she could do to make it slow down.
They had a bottle of champagne on the terrace after Sunday lunch and sat silently for a while holding hands, watching the river. It was very peaceful. She kept telling herself not to waste precious moments, not to hasten the ending by fretting about it, but it was hard to take her own advice.
‘It’s been the most perfect weekend of my life,’ she said finally, aware of sounding solemn but wanting him to know how she felt.
‘It’s not over yet.’
‘Nearly.’
‘And it’s only the first of many.’
Now did he mean that or was it just something cheering to say? He hadn’t said when the next one would be. She had noticed before how he shied away from unpleasant facts. Perhaps he had suffered so much in the past that he had resolved never to be unhappy again. But life wasn’t like that. She knew that already. Even the thought of saying goodbye to their room, where they had been so happy, made her want to cry.
In the afternoon he took her to the railway station and bought her a first class ticket. He settled her into her seat and gave her flowers and magazines. There was an awful feeling of goodbye in the air; they were both so determinedly cheerful.
‘I’ve never travelled first class before,’ she said.
‘It’s always worth it. I learned that when I was quite poor. It really costs very little extra compared with what it does for your morale. In fact it’s quite an art, knowing when to be extravagant.’
‘I thought you always were,’ she said, surprised.
‘Oh no, I have my petty economies like everyone else. I turn the thermostat down two degrees and wear an extra pullover. That kind of thing.’
‘There’s so much I don’t know about you.’
‘You’re better off not knowing boring stuff like that. It ruins my image.’
They both smiled and she shook her head. More minutes ticked by. ‘I hate railway stations,’ she said suddenly, violently. Part of her wanted to ask why he wasn’t driving her back to London and letting her get a train from there, why he didn’t want to be with her till the last available moment. But she didn’t want to spoil things by complaining and anyway, it was too late now, she was here on the train with her first class ticket, and she had taken such risks and he didn’t even know.
‘I always feel they should play Rachmaninov’s second piano concerto over the tannoy,’ he said.
She had to smile.
‘Oh good,’ he said. ‘I was afraid you were too young to remember.’
‘I love old films. I used to watch them all the time on the box when I should have been revising.’
‘See? That’s something I didn’t know about you.’
The train was about to leave.
‘Oh, Felix.’
They kissed and it was all right again, just for a moment.
‘Take care, my love. See you soon.’
She started to cry as the train started to move. She saw him already disappearing back into his other life. He stood on the platform and they waved until they couldn’t see each other any more.
Felix sat in the car for a few moments before starting the engine. He was trying to relax completely. He wished he had studied meditation. He had the slightly sick feeling of a child who has been to a party and had just a little too much of everything. A wonderful weekend. It had all gone perfectly. So why did he feel exhausted?
It was the emotion, he decided. Why did she have to create drama where there was none? They had enjoyed forty-eight hours together and now it was over. But they would be meeting again in a matter of days. No one had died or even gone away. How could she make a tragedy out of that? Tears on a railway station, for God’s sake. Or was it his fault for mentioning Brief Encounter? It was hard to get everything right, but he had tried his best and it had certainly cost enough.
Gradually he began to calm down, to level out. Time alone, that was what he needed to recharge his batteries; he knew that from experience. The drive home would soothe him. If he left his brain in neutral, it would rearrange the weekend into unalloyed pleasure. By the time he got home he would be himself again. Right now he was suffering from giving out too much; he was emotionally bankrupt. He simply didn’t have the energy to respond to another human being twenty-four hours a day without time off for good behaviour. That, apart from his talent, was why he was a writer.
He started the car. Even driving had a calming effect. The simple mechanics of changing gear. He would switch off his mind completely. Stress. It was very stressful to be open to someone else’s needs all the time. He had to think of himself again and relax.
After a while he started to feel better, indulging in a little mild speeding on the motorway and slipping a cassette into the car stereo: it was Mozart’s Don Giovanni, which always lifted his spirits.
He stopped on the way to get flowers for Elizabeth and was home by early evening. She was in the kitchen preparing supper when he arrived and she made more fuss of the flowers than of him. Home seemed particularly attractive, as it always did after an adventure: a refuge, a haven, a safe place where no unreasonable demands would be made. He hoped she was not about to give him a hard time for being away.
‘Hullo, darling,’ he said, kissing the back of her neck. ‘Missed you.’
‘How did it go?’ she said, arranging the flowers, not looking at him.
‘Oh, quite well, I think. Bit exhausting.’
‘Didn’t you get off on all the adrenalin?’
A shade of sharpness in her tone, or was he imagining it? Best to ignore it, anyway. God, he was tired.
‘For a while. Then I wished I was home.’ Perhaps a straight appeal to her better nature. ‘I think I’m getting too old for these larks.’
Silence. She stopped fiddling with the flowers and placed them on the table. Felix poured himself a large drink.
‘Supper’s nearly ready,’ she said gently.
The coroner wanted to know how often Richard had seen the deceased. He asked him to describe her state of mind.
‘She was very depressed,’ Richard said. ‘She couldn’t see the point of the probation order because I couldn’t get her baby back for her. She seemed to feel everything was hopeless.’
‘In your opinion, was there any indication that she might take her own life?’
‘No, but she did, so I must have failed to pick it up.’ He paused, feeling Marion’s eyes on him. He deeply resented her presence; it proved that she didn’t trust him and she ought to have been too busy. And Inge was at the back of the court: he didn’t even remember mentioning the case to her. It was as if he himself was on trial. ‘I do feel,’ he went on, looking at the coroner, ‘that her family and social services made an error of judgment in persuading her to have her baby adopted and I blame myself for not realising how desperate she felt.’
Outside the court he brushed off local reporters. Marion shook her head at him. ‘I despair of you, Richard,’ she said, ‘I really do.’
‘You were wonderful,’ Inge said. ‘I was proud of you.’ The two women looked critically at each other.
‘You shouldn’t be here,’ he said to Inge, feeling it applied to them both. Marion drifted away with a look that said he hadn’t heard the last of it.
Inge asked, ‘Why didn’t she come?’
‘Who?’ he said, knowing.
‘Your wife.’ She made it sound like a dirty word.
‘She’s working and I didn’t want anyone to come. Go away, Inge, please. How did you even know about this?’
‘You told me weeks ago, don’t you remember? You were dreading it. I wanted to give you moral support. It’s important you should have someone on your side.’ She put her hand on his arm. ‘Let’s go for a drink, you look exhausted.’
‘I have to get back to the office.’
He walked to his car, hearing one of the reporters say to her, ‘Not very grateful, was he?’
‘He is living with a bad woman,’ she said sorrowfully, in a loud voice.
He saw them go off together. Well, it was not his business.
But the reporter did not ask Inge for a date and she went home feeling lonelier than ever with disappointment at the missed opportunity. It was a relief to find the boys already there. Sometimes she felt she had invaded their youth by making them so aware of her as a heavy responsibility. But they accepted their burden willingly, responding to her need. They were practical, too, not merely self-sacrificial, bringing the motorbike indoors and taking it to bits on the carpet so that they could still talk to her, be with her, while they enjoyed themselves playing with their favourite toy. Or they would arrange their hair in spikes with gel in front of the living-room mirror instead of away upstairs in their own bedrooms. They were generous, children. Sometimes she wondered how she had produced them when she herself was so selfish. They took after Richard, she supposed. But Richard had left her. That had not been very generous. Not unselfish at all. So perhaps they were their own people and just naturally good-hearted.
She read aloud to them from a contact magazine, drawing them into her shadowy world to make it safe. ‘How about this one? “Sensual man, forties, clean, discreet, well-endowed, seeks mature lady for mutual pleasure.”’ She liked the word pleasure very much.
‘Sounds like a wally,’ said Karl, looking up from the motorbike on the floor.
‘Does Dad know you’re doing this?’ Peter peered at her anxiously in the mirror from behind the spikes.
‘He wouldn’t care.’ It hurt her, it infuriated her, that she could not make Richard show jealousy. ‘But I shall tell him.’
‘Anyway, you’re not mature,’ said Karl, ‘you’re in your prime.’
Inge blew him a kiss. His loyalty brought tears to her eyes. ‘“Sexy young man, twenty-five,”’ she read, ‘“adventurous and virile, seeks older woman for experimental relationship.”’
‘Mum,’ Peter protested. He was only fourteen after all, and easily embarrassed. Too young to understand much about life.
‘I’m lonely,’ she said, thinking what an understatement it was.
‘Why don’t you do an ad of your own?’ Karl suggested. ‘We could help you. Then when the guys show up we can vet them for you.’
‘What shall I say?’ She was enchanted with the idea, whether she used the ad or not. She scrabbled through a pile of rubbish and newspapers on the coffee table to find the back of an old envelope and dredged up a leaking biro from the chaos of her handbag. The boys took turns like a well-rehearsed double act; she was proud of them.
‘Beautiful woman,’ Karl began romantically.
‘Thirty-eight,’ said Peter, facing facts.
‘Thirties, you wally. Beautiful woman, thirties, two gorgeous sons…’
They all fell about laughing. Inge scribbled.
‘Terrific cook, unconventional dress…’
‘Relaxed attitude to housework…’
‘Warm, intelligent…’
‘Lazy, desperate,’ said Inge with her passion for the truth.
‘Seeks…’ said Karl firmly, pressing on. ‘What are you seeking, Mum?’
‘Seeks original husband back again.’
‘Oh Mum,’ said Peter.
‘It’s true.’
‘I know,’ said Karl, ever practical, ‘but he’s not coming back, is he? He’s got that woman and her kid, he doesn’t care about us.’
‘He cares about you two,’ Inge said. She thought it was important they should understand that. ‘It’s just me he wanted to leave. I got on his nerves.’
‘Come on, Mum,’ said Karl. ‘Do your ad. You might meet a millionaire. None of us need ever work again.’
‘I haven’t noticed you doing much,’ Peter said.
‘I’m a thinker,’ Karl said loftily. ‘We thinkers have to rest up a lot. Thinking takes it out of you.’
‘Only if it was there in the first place.’
She loved their affectionate bickering: it made her feel warm and cherished. It was like being wrapped in a fur blanket by someone who cared about her.
‘Juliet seeks Romeo,’ said Karl. ‘No. Cleopatra seeks Antony. How about that?’
‘Tristan seeks Isolde,’ said Peter. ‘Has own love potion.’
‘Hey, not bad.’
‘Well, you’re keen on Wagner, aren’t you, Mum?’
‘Lonely morose frustrated German woman seeks own true love.’ She was sorry she couldn’t cheer up to please them.
‘Come on, Mum.’ Karl sounded bracing: perhaps he would become a doctor in later life.
She shook her head. ‘It’s the truth.’
Sally didn’t really believe it and yet in a sense she had known all the time. The weeks dragged by and nothing happened. She told Felix she was worried about her A-level results and he believed her. There was no point in alarming him unnecessarily, but she needed his support so desperately that she was tempted to tell him anyway and the hell with it. But something always stopped her.
She told herself it was normal to miss periods on the pill, although she never had; they were artificial, anyway, and didn’t mean anything, she knew all that.
She had brought this on herself.
Perhaps he would be thrilled. Over the moon. So why didn’t she tell him?
How could she have been so stupid?
Only of course it wasn’t true.
On the way home from Tesco every day she passed a chemist’s shop. They had test kits in the window. Predictor, they were called, and Discover 2. Like science fiction. She ought to buy one, put her mind at rest. Only of course it was unnecessary.
She had physical symptoms and she told herself she was imagining them. It was much too soon, everyone knew that. It was psychosomatic. It was ridiculous.
Sometimes it felt wonderful, like a miracle, and she wanted to dance for joy. Sometimes she actually did, secretly, in her room.
Sometimes she knew it was all nonsense.
Always it felt insane that her body knew the truth and she didn’t.
One day on her afternoon off she was alone at home and the doorbell rang. It was Elizabeth with a bunch of flowers in her hand. For a mad moment she thought they were for her and Elizabeth knew everything. She was going to be magnanimous in defeat and Sally would always be grateful.
‘I brought these for Helen,’ Elizabeth said.
‘She’s not back yet. D’you want to come in and wait for her?’
Elizabeth smiled an ordinary smile, as if she didn’t know anything. ‘No, thanks, I must dash, we’re going to the theatre. Just tell her I said thank you for listening.’
‘OK.’
She watched Elizabeth turn away and walk towards her car. She wasn’t fat, as Helen said, just normal. And she had a nice kind face and wonderfully shiny dark hair. Sally liked her and hated feeling guilty.
‘How’s the job?’ Elizabeth asked, suddenly turning back.
Sally felt panic, wanting to confess. Please forgive me, only I love him so much. Elizabeth was like an aunt. You must understand.
‘Boring,’ she said. ‘But the money’s useful.’
‘I bet. When d’you get your A-level results?’
‘Any day now.’
Elizabeth smiled again. ‘I’ll keep my fingers crossed. I’m sure you’ve done well.’
‘Thank you. I’m not.’
Elizabeth got into her car and drove away. She thinks I’m still a child, Sally thought, closing the door. She doesn’t take me seriously. It should have been a relief.
She went back inside and rang Felix in a panic, but got the answering machine and didn’t speak.
Each year Richard and Helen celebrated four anniversaries: the day they met, the night they first made love, the day they started living together and their wedding day. They liked the first two best; the others were somehow tainted by Inge’s distress. They would go out to dinner and reminisce in almost the same words every time. It became a tradition, like going to a favourite concert over and over again to hear the same music played with slight modifications of tempo and tone. Helen loved ritual, the way it imposed some kind of order on the chaos of everyday life: it was the effect she was trying to achieve in her work. And Richard always sent flowers, which impressed Sally greatly.
‘He never forgets, does he?’ she said, watching Helen cut the cellophane. ‘And your birthday. And Christmas. That’s six times a year. And sometimes he does it for no reason at all as well. Aren’t you lucky?’ She sounded oddly envious, even sour. Not like herself.
‘Yes,’ said Helen, snipping and arranging. ‘But I deserve it as well.’
‘I hope I marry someone like Richard,’ Sally said. ‘Someone romantic.’
‘Provided you don’t do it for at least ten years,’ said Helen, ‘then so do I.’
She thought Sally looked pale and tired: her own mother would have called it peaky, a ghastly word for which there was nevertheless no precise equivalent. ‘We’ll be late back,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you have an early night? You look exhausted.’
‘It’s the job,’ Sally said, flushing, ‘It’s so boring now they’ve put me on the till.’
‘Well, it’s not for much longer. Soon you’ll be a carefree student living off the state. You can sleep all day and stay up all night, and who can ask more of life than that?’ But as a student herself she had painted all day and made love most of the night and hardly slept at all.
Sally took a letter out of her bag. ‘This came today.’ She handed it to Helen, who read it and let out a shriek.
‘God, you’re brilliant. Two Bs and an A. That’s fantastic. Why ever didn’t you tell me before? God, I’m so proud of you.’ She hugged Sally, who felt stiff and awkward in the hug.
‘It’s good, isn’t it?’ she said soberly.
‘Aren’t you thrilled?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘You could have fooled me.’
‘Oh, I’ve waited so long for it,’ Sally said. ‘And I’d have liked two As and a B.’
‘Come off it.’ It was late in the day to get that ambitious. ‘At least you know for sure they’ll take you now. That’s all that matters. Isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
She sounded so unenthusiastic that Helen felt bound to ask, ‘Well, you do want to go there, don’t you?’
‘Yes, of course,’ Sally said.
The roses stood up stiff and straight in the vase. Helen hoped they wouldn’t droop before they were fully open.
In the restaurant they drank a toast to Sally, but her mood stayed with Helen, in spite of the champagne. ‘She was very odd about it,’ she said. ‘As if it didn’t really matter.’
‘Probably anti-climax.’ Richard seemed unperturbed, which made her relax a little.
‘Yes, that’s what she said, more or less.’
‘Well, there you are. Or maybe she’s just nervous about leaving home. It’s going to be very odd when she’s gone.’
‘Alone at last,’ said Helen, teasing. ‘Is there life after Sally?’ But she had often thought how strange it would be. They had never been alone together.
‘Poor Sally,’ Richard said. ‘She’s not even allowed to be moody like other teenagers. We’re so used to her being amenable that we expect it to last for ever. No drugs, no drink, no unsuitable boyfriends. We’re spoilt really, aren’t we? She’s probably working up to a great big rebellion at Sussex.’
‘God, I hope not.’ The prospect terrified her, although she knew it was inevitable, even natural and right.
‘OK then, a little one. She’s entitled to that. Oh, darling, we’re going to miss her, but think of all that freedom. We can run naked through the house. Scream and shout, have blazing rows, make love in broad daylight on the living-room floor…’
‘In the bathroom. In the garden. On the roof.’ Helen tried to enter into the spirit of the fantasy. Anything to blot out the picture of Sally having a rebellion, great or small, away from home. She knew letting your children go was the essence of parenthood, but as long as she lived she would never think of Sally as grown up.
‘I love you.’ Richard held her hand.
‘I don’t know why.’ She could never say it back to him when he said it, although she wanted to: it sounded like an echo and insincere. She had told Sally she deserved him, but she did not believe it. Long ago, when he first moved in, her mother had quoted Shakespeare at her, saying she should thank Heaven fasting for a good man’s love, and it was one of the few times she thought her mother was right. But it went along with her mother’s low opinion of her and that didn’t feel so good. ‘I think I’m very lucky,’ she said, kissing his hand. It was always easier to say it with touch, like painting.
‘You know, it’s not too late,’ he said. ‘We could still have one of our own.’
She hadn’t expected that, not tonight. They had discussed it several times over the years but never on an anniversary, when it was certain to ruin the atmosphere. It must have something to do with Sally going away.
‘Oh, darling,’ she said, ‘don’t spoil everything.’
‘No, listen. The boys are growing up and Sally’s nearly gone. We’ll soon have a bit more spare cash. And if I could persuade Inge to get a job, even part-time, I could pay her less. We’d manage somehow. I’d help you a lot. You know I would.’
She nodded, saddened by the eager, hopeful look on his face. Why did saying no always feel so wrong, when no was the right thing to say? ‘I’m sorry it still means so much to you,’ she said. ‘I was hoping you’d gone off the idea. You haven’t mentioned it for a while.’
‘It could be wonderful. Just think what we could make between us, you and I.’
Now she could say it. ‘But I love you more than that. The people you love most aren’t always the ones you have children with. I love feeling we aren’t tied together with children, like string. We’re just lovers.’ She meant it, but some watchful, scrupulous part of her mind pounced on her words and examined them for lies. Was she also finding a nice way of telling him she disliked the mess, the upheaval, the responsibility of children; that her work came first, or Sally came first, or that as long as he put Inge first this would always be his punishment, to do without what he wanted most? She wished she didn’t question herself like this when the issue was in fact so clear. They were forty and exhausted and broke. Anyone walking in and looking at them now would say that they needed a holiday or a legacy or even just a good night’s sleep. No sane person would prescribe a baby. Yet it still felt insulting to say she didn’t want his child, as if it must mean she didn’t love him enough. If they had been young and rich and rested, she knew she would still have said no.
‘Not lovers very often,’ he said.
‘We get tired. We work too hard.’
‘We could change that.’
‘Yes, we could. Why don’t we?’ She felt the comfortable stirrings of lust, now the dangerous corner was turned. ‘D’you remember?’
‘Yes.’
‘On the floor of the studio, the first time.’
‘Yes.’
‘When I came, you had to put your hand over my mouth in case I woke Sally.’
He was watching her steadily. ‘I remember.’
They smiled tenderly at each other. Talking about it excited them both. Their younger selves could be summoned at any time to evoke desire.
‘When Elizabeth took me to your show,’ Richard said, starting their litany, ‘I felt I recognised you. You were the woman I’d been looking for all my life. The woman who didn’t really need me.’
‘But I needed you desperately,’ Helen said.
‘The woman who could manage without me then. I had to have you. I’d have died without you.’
‘I never thought you’d leave Inge,’ Helen said. ‘I thought you were too good and I wanted somebody good. I thought I’d be lonely for ever.’
It had been a shock, breaking up with Carey and finding she wasn’t self-sufficient. She had hoped that her work and her child would be enough, that she could live like a man, celibate or having occasional sex with people who were not important, so that no one would have the power to hurt her again. To need love was a human weakness that made you vulnerable for ever. Learning to love someone she could trust had been a revelation, and if she could not offer him the all-consuming passion she had felt for Carey, well, that had been a kind of sickness that passed with youth. Some part of her had been broken in that struggle, but she told herself that what was left was more important and more real. If he loved her the way she had loved Carey, perhaps that was also the way Inge loved him. It was the luck of the draw and there was nothing any of them could do about it.
They would never have met without Elizabeth. ‘Oh, do come with me, Richard,’ she had said. ‘Or I’ll have to go on my own and that’s no fun.’
‘Why can’t you go with Felix?’ The pile of mock O-level scripts beside him made it quite clear that he wasn’t supposed to go anywhere. From upstairs he could hear squeals and splashes as Inge bathed the children. “When Macbeth first meets the witches,” wrote Shirley Baker in 5B, “they put ideas in his head because they say what he has been thinking about already and talking to his wife about.”
‘He won’t come. He says when you’ve seen one rectangle, you’ve seen them all. I think she’s wonderful but then I’m crazy about Ben Nicholson and she’s a bit like him. Come on, Richard, I won’t enjoy it half as much by myself. Bring Inge if you like and we’ll all have dinner afterwards. Felix says he wants to work late but I’m sure he’ll join us for dinner.’
It sounded to Richard as if Felix was having a new affair. He envied Felix and pitied Elizabeth. He said, ‘All right. I ought to be marking but I’d love to play truant. I’ll talk to Inge and I’ll ring you back.’
‘Ring me back if you can’t,’ Elizabeth said. ‘I’m sure that’s easier. Otherwise I’ll pick you up tomorrow about six.’
He had forgotten how bossy she could be and almost rang her back to cancel. But when Inge came downstairs she looked so bedraggled that he thought the prospect of an outing might uplift her.
‘Elizabeth wants us to go to a private view tomorrow,’ he said. ‘And dinner afterwards with Felix. Would you like to? Shall we get a sitter?’
Inge looked sulky. She poured herself the last of the Scotch and sat down heavily in the chair opposite him.
‘You know I don’t like to leave the boys with a stranger,’ she said. ‘And it’s very expensive.’
He stared at her. Sometimes he tried so hard to see the desperate beauty that had enraptured him when they were both nineteen. He knew it was still there, because other people, including Felix, the connoisseur, admired her extravagantly; but it was a beauty that could no longer reach his eyes, except on rare occasions when he was very tired or very drunk. It had been shrouded by all kinds of domestic emotions such as responsibility, affection, boredom and guilt. He was exhausted. Sometimes just looking at her and knowing how much of him she needed made him feel he was being sucked dry.
‘But you’re always saying you want to go out more often,’ he said. ‘How we never go anywhere or do anything.’
‘I want to go out with you,’ Inge said. ‘The two of us alone.’
The word struck his heart like a stone.
‘Anyway,’ she added, ‘if Felix isn’t going, then she only wants you as an escort. I’d be in the way. I know she doesn’t like me.’
‘She does like you, Inge,’ he said. ‘Whatever makes you think she doesn’t?’
‘Oh, you English, you’re so polite. So hypocritical. Everything has to be so nice. And you don’t mean any of it. Of course she doesn’t like me. She’s a silly fat woman and her husband fucks other women and now she wants my husband to take her out to a gallery because she is afraid to go by herself.’
He got up. ‘I’m going to say goodnight to the boys.’
‘And there will be silly people there who don’t know about painting but they want to drink free wine and pretend to be clever.’
He said, ‘Yes, I know. But it’s harmless.’
He had reached the top of the stairs when she said, ‘And the boys want you to read them a story.’
He said, ‘But I always do.’ He was suddenly inexpressibly irritated by the reminder. He closed his eyes, but even in the darkness and on another level, he could see her shrug, and the foreignness of her alienated him yet again, and the love he still felt rose up in his throat to choke him. He read to the boys about Pooh, the bear of very little brain who did not have these problems, occasionally getting a word wrong on purpose for the sheer pleasure of having them correct him. The blend of himself and Inge in their faces moved him as it always did, and he knew they were bound together for ever no matter how unhappy it might make them.
In the night she woke him wanting to make love, and when he couldn’t or wouldn’t, for he was no longer sure which it was, she turned away in anger and then she cried. He tried to hold her, to comfort her, but she swore at him and shook him off. Yet she fell asleep before he did, exhausted by her own emotions, while he lay awake stricken by the amount of energy he consumed in making sure that she did not devour him entirely.
The gallery was already crowded when they arrived because Elizabeth had been slightly late to pick him up and then had had difficulty parking. She was wearing the mink coat that Felix had bought her to celebrate the film rights of The Heartbreak Merchant. As an animal lover, Richard resented the coat, and yet he knew that Elizabeth loved animals too. He also thought, on an aesthetic level, that the coat was too heavy for her and made her look older than she was. But he knew she was proud of it and it made her happy, perhaps as a confirmation of Felix’s love. He could not say anything to her about it and had to remind himself that he was not as yet a vegetarian. The most selfish part of him hoped that she would not become too hot and expect him to hold the coat.
It was a small gallery, with stark white walls. Elizabeth fussed about getting drinks and he had to fight his way to the bar on her behalf. Then he saw the paintings. There were perhaps a dozen of them, in various sizes: solid delicate rectangles of beige and grey, white and cream, overlapping each other, some flat, some in relief. They had a luminous quality, although the paint did not gleam: it seemed to him that they glowed from within.
He felt instantly at peace, as if all the noise in his head had stopped, as well as the noise in the gallery. There was suddenly no sound at all. Everywhere he looked was cool reflective peace with firm edges.
‘She’s good, isn’t she?’ Elizabeth said, whenever he next heard her.
He said yes. His throat felt dry and his voice sounded odd to himself.
Some time later he heard Elizabeth say carelessly, ‘That must be her over there.’
He looked and saw a woman with pale hair caught up in a knot behind her head from which it fell heavy and straight. She was dressed all in black. People were talking to her and she smiled at them and shook hands.
A man behind him, looking at the paintings, said to his companion, ‘Bit monotonous, aren’t they?’ and Richard wanted to hit him.
It was then that he realised he had fallen in love.
‘Well, I’m glad you’re enjoying it,’ Elizabeth said eventually.
‘I’ve got to meet her,’ Richard said.
He thought later that it was to Elizabeth’s eternal credit that she understood so quickly what had happened. But maybe it was easy to read his face. He felt quite lightheaded, as if he were short of oxygen. Perhaps he had been forgetting to breathe.
‘Yes, of course,’ Elizabeth said. ‘We’ll just go over and say hullo, tell her how much we like her work.’
Then he was conscious of her staring at him with a curious look of shock and compassion, as though he were ill.
‘Oh Richard,’ she said. ‘I didn’t realise.’
He shook his head as if to clear it. They started walking across the room together when Elizabeth stopped. ‘I think you’d better go by yourself,’ she said. ‘I’m going to get another drink. I’ll join you later.’
He felt betrayed yet relieved, like a child abandoned by its nurse. He found his way to the small group of people round the painter and hung about behind them, watching her. He sensed she was wary of the occasion, careful to say and do all the right things, but not believing any of it. He waited until there was some sort of a gap and then he went up to her, heart pounding like a schoolboy, and said, ‘Can I talk to you for a moment?’
She turned to look at him: her eyes were green and pale, her body angular in the black dress. He felt she could read his thoughts, see into his soul. He shivered in the hot room.
‘I suppose so,’ she said. ‘Why ever not?’ But she sounded friendly.
‘I’m Richard Morgan,’ he said. This seemed important information.
‘I’m Helen Irving.’ She held out her hand and he took it, aware of thinking like a groupie, My God, am I holding the hand that did all these paintings?
‘Yes, I know,’ he said. ‘I love your work.’
She said seriously, ‘Thank you. Not many people do.’
They looked at each other for what seemed like a long time.
‘Is it going well?’ he asked eventually. He still seemed to find difficulty in breathing.
She shrugged. ‘People are saying nice things, but nobody’s buying.’
‘I’d like to buy everything,’ he said truthfully. ‘But I haven’t got any money.’
‘Neither have I,’ she said. ‘It’s a common problem.’ She smiled at him, as if he wasn’t making a total fool of himself. He already had a sense of her as someone quite straightforward and uncompromising. She wore no make-up and he could see where faint lines were appearing around her eyes and mouth, although he guessed she was about thirty, his own age. She had very white teeth and rather full lips that belied the austerity of the rest of her face. The longing to kiss her was almost unbearable.
He said urgently, ‘Look, I don’t usually behave like this, but could you possibly have dinner with me?’
She frowned slightly. ‘I’m having dinner with Magdalen. You know, my dealer.’
‘Could I meet you afterwards?’
She shook her head. ‘I have a daughter and a babysitter.’
‘Then another time. Any time you say. I absolutely have to see you again. Please don’t think I’m some kind of lunatic. I’m a schoolteacher and I have a wife and two sons and I’m a perfectly sober upright citizen and I’ve never done this in my life before.’
She began to laugh, but very gently, including him in the laughter. She picked up one of the printed invitations and wrote something on it and handed it to him.
‘Why don’t you ring me at the studio?’ she said. ‘If you still feel the same tomorrow.’
After dinner they walked by the river, holding hands and watching the lights on the water. She felt voluptuously content: it was still, after all these years, a luxury to be securely loved. Presently it began to get cold, and they went and sat in the car and kissed, like a courting couple. It made her feel young again.
‘You know,’ she said, ‘we don’t have to go straight home. I told Sally we’d be late.’
Richard smiled and started the car. He drove without speaking, one hand on her knee, and she changed gear for him, an old familiar game. By the time they reached the studio it was lit by bright moonlight.
‘Just like old times,’ he said, as they started to undress.
‘Yes.’ But she wished he hadn’t spoken: it seemed to break the spell, just a little.
The moonlight touched the half-finished Seven Deadly Sins. It was months since she had allowed him in the studio, in fact not since she began work on them. Suddenly, while they were still kissing and undressing, he said, ‘Oh, darling, I must talk to Inge. You shouldn’t have to do stuff like that for money just because she’s so lazy.’
‘What?’ Desire vanished and a murderous cold rage took its place. She loathed them anyway but she was doing her best and she knew they weren’t that bad. From a long way off she heard him desperately trying to wipe out his mistake.
‘No, no, I didn’t mean it like that, you’re doing it brilliantly, it’s just I know you hate it and I feel it’s all my fault. If I could only get Inge off her backside, you could get on with your real work.’
There was a can of paint beside her ready mixed and thinned. She seized it and hurled it at one of the empty canvases. Thin red colour splashed all over the canvas, the walls, the floor.
‘Well, fuck you,’ she shouted. ‘That’s Anger, in case you can’t tell, and don’t flatter your tiny self anything to do with my work could be your fault. It’s my own bloody fault for marrying such an arsehole as you.’
She was shaking with rage. They both stood and looked in amazement at the mess of red paint, then back at each other half naked, and down at their clothes on the floor. It had all happened so quickly, it seemed like a natural disaster, an earthquake, a flood, almost nothing to do with them and therefore beyond their control. Then, by some miracle, at the same moment, the incongruity of it all struck them both and they started to laugh. They hugged each other, still laughing, almost hysterical by now, and collapsed on the floor, pulling off their remaining clothes.
Felix thought at first he could never have enough of Sally. He loved everything about her: the mixture of child and woman in her conversation, her adoring glances, the scent of her skin, the feel of her hair, the warmth of her body against his own, the sound of her cries when she came, the look of pained surprise in her face when he introduced her to some new refinement of pleasure she had never imagined, and above all the intoxication of her youth, making him feel half his age and omnipotent. But in spite of all that, after a few months the day came when he was actually working well, when after all the usual procrastination and displacement activity he had finally got into the wretched thing and got it moving.
He was even tempted not to answer the entry phone, but not tempted enough. It could only be Sally, because only Sally and Richard (apart from past loves) knew this address, and only Sally had permission to drop in without phoning. Of course he wanted to see her, although not at that precise moment, not with Tony Blythe just coming out of the sauna and seeing all that blood on the steps leading down to the pool.
‘Hullo, darling,’ he said. ‘What a lovely surprise.’
‘I’m disturbing you, aren’t I?’ she said. He was annoyed to be so transparent but at the same time he thought it might do her good to know she was not always welcome.
‘Not at all, only I’ve just got a fresh corpse in the jacuzzi and you know how distracting that is.’
‘Well, no. But I can imagine.’
He kissed her then and realised he should have kissed her before.
‘Darling, you do feel tense. Are you all right?’
Tony Blythe was receding, but Sally was not yet in sharp focus. Felix hated this stage, when he could neither work nor be nice to his guest.
‘Yes, of course,’ she said.
He could feel the rest of the paragraph slipping away, like Elizabeth’s knitting when she wrenched it off the needles. He should have asked Sally to wait till he had finished and trusted her not to feel he was being unromantic.
‘I’ve got my A-level results.’
‘Then we’re celebrating. Come and have a drink.’ He poured two glasses of wine, knowing that really was the end of work for the day.
‘You don’t know what they are yet. I might have failed.’
She sounded uncharacteristically gloomy. In fact now that he was beginning to be able to give her his full attention, he noticed that she looked gloomy too.
‘Don’t be absurd,’ he said. ‘I have the utmost confidence in you.’
‘Two Bs and an A.’
‘There you are. I’d have got champagne if I’d known. Well done, my love, I’m proud of you.’
She took a large gulp of her drink as if gathering courage for some ordeal and said rapidly, ‘Felix, I’ve got to talk to you. I think – please don’t be cross, only my period’s late, I mean I haven’t had one since we went to Cambridge and I’m a bit worried.’
The worst news in the world. He had heard it several times before but only from married women who said, ‘Oh shit, I swore I’d never have another abortion,’ and played with the idea of passing it off as their husband’s but ended up accepting Felix’s cheque. Never anyone so young. She actually bit her lip as she spoke, a gesture he used to love, making her look younger than ever. Now he felt she had kicked him in the balls and he was so angry he wanted to hit her. He simply wasn’t equipped for dealing with problems and he had never pretended he was. He was equipped for happiness, for giving pleasure to himself and other people, a rare talent, he thought, and it was unfair of anyone to expect more of him than that.
‘Please say something.’ She was watching him anxiously.
‘I can’t believe it.’
‘It’s probably all right, I mean it’s only a slight chance. You can miss them on the pill without being…’ She paused. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Sorry?’
‘I know it’s an awful shock, it was for me too, only I’ve had more time to—’
He said, ‘Look, right at the beginning, we talked about this. I said were you on the pill or should I use a sheath? We talked about it.’ God, what more could he have done? It wasn’t as if he’d been irresponsible.
‘I know.’
‘You said it was safe. I trusted you. You weren’t a virgin, you knew the score.’
‘Felix…’ She drooped her head, looking miserable, like a beaten dog.
‘I can’t believe this is happening. What did you do, for God’s sake? Throw up? The bloody thing’s meant to be 100 per cent, isn’t it? Don’t tell me you just forgot, I’m not buying that.’
Sally started to cry. He went to her and put his arms round her, realising he should have done it sooner. He had never felt less like doing it. He stroked her hair, noticing it wasn’t as clean as usual, and she sobbed.
‘Darling, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. It’s just the shock. It’s all right. Poor little one. Don’t worry. We’ll think of something.’ He thought he sounded like a parody of himself at his most benign.
He poured more drinks and sat with her on the sofa, holding her hand.
‘Now then, let’s think. Have you seen a doctor?’
‘Not yet.’ She sniffed most unattractively and he passed her a box of tissues. ‘I couldn’t face it. But I’ve done two of those kits you get from the chemist and it was positive both times.’
‘Dear God.’ It was worse than he thought: it was total nightmare. Absolute panic took over and he wanted to run away.
‘I think positive can mean negative though, sometimes, but negative can’t mean positive. I think that’s right.’
Hopeless. He knew the sound of despair when he heard it. ‘Poor darling,’ he said absently. ‘What rotten luck.’ His mind was racing: how soon could he decently mention abortion?
Sally blew her nose and said clearly, even with a touch of bravado, ‘It’s my fault really. That weekend I left my pills in my other handbag.’
‘What?’
‘Richard was giving me a lift to the station and I was so rushed.’
He hadn’t thought it could get worse but clearly it could. Not only were they in this appalling mess but now she was admitting it could have been avoided. ‘Why the hell didn’t you tell me?’
‘I don’t know. I couldn’t.’ Her head drooped still further. ‘I felt so silly and it would have spoilt everything.’
He got up, really fearing he might strike her now. He took deep breaths to calm himself and it didn’t work. ‘And this? Now? Isn’t this spoiling everything?’
‘I know.’ A small, sad voice. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Christ, I’d have gone to the all-night bloody chemist. Or given the whole thing up. We could have wanked, for God’s sake. I didn’t have to fuck you.’ He saw her flinch at the words and he was glad he’d shocked her. They’d always called it making love before. ‘Jesus, what goes on in your head?’
‘It was our special weekend. It was supposed to be romantic.’
Felix sat down with his face in his hands. Presently she said, sounding older, ‘I didn’t know you’d be so angry. When you talked about Elizabeth not being able to have children, you sounded sad.’
He sat up with a jerk. ‘Now look. You’re not saying you did this bloody fucking stupid thing on purpose, are you? Because if you are—’
‘No, of course I’m not,’ Sally said, looking frightened. ‘I didn’t.’
Then there was a very long silence that neither of them seemed to know how to break. All Felix could think of was how to plant the idea of abortion without actually using the word. Eventually he said, ‘Look, Sally. You know I love you and of course it’s like a miracle, if you’re pregnant, when I always wanted children, but look, you’ve just got into Sussex, haven’t you, and, well, you know Elizabeth’s having a rotten time with the menopause.’ She didn’t answer and he went on, rather more energetically, ‘I mean, for God’s sake, we just can’t do this. Think what it would mean. Richard and Helen would go berserk. We’d ruin everyone’s lives.’ There was something unnerving about hearing his own voice run on and on, the words dropping away into space, with no response from her. She wouldn’t even look at him; she sat staring at the floor, her hands tight together in her lap. ‘I mean, you must see that,’ he finally said. ‘I’m thinking of you. What’s best for you.’
Richard tried to be compassionate, practical and detached. Some of his clients needed more than anything to be listened to, often a new experience; others required help to find their way through the maze of benefits they might be entitled to claim, or simply encouragement to stay out of trouble. Those inside needed a link with the outside world. He was no use to any of them if he got too involved: their friends or their families could do that. But sometimes the sense of identification was overpowering, though he kept it to himself.
‘It’s not as if I meant to hit her,’ Fred would say, frowning with effort as he tried to understand his own behaviour. ‘I mean I didn’t go round there with the deliberate intention of beating her up.’ He looked Richard straight in the eye, as if to prove he was telling the truth. ‘It was nothing like that. I just wanted to talk to her.’
Richard knew quite well what he meant. Sometimes the longing to hit Inge, to drive into her with violence what could not be driven in with words, was so powerful that he would never understand what made him resist it. ‘D’you find her very difficult to talk to?’
‘I always seem to end up losing my temper, yeah,’ said Fred, quick to take the point. ‘I mean I only went round there to try and talk her out of getting a divorce and I end up hitting her. It don’t make sense.’
It certainly didn’t make sense that you fell in love and had children and time passed, then one day you were apart with bitter memories, pain and rage and never enough money to go round, that this person you had once loved more than life was now someone you wanted to kill, who had the power to torment you for ever, because you had injured them. ‘So you weren’t really taking the injunction seriously,’ he said, feeling obliged to remind Fred of the legal reality.
‘I knew I wasn’t supposed to go round there and, what do they call it, molest her.’ A faint, bitter smile crossed his face. ‘That’s a laugh. But I thought if I just wanted to talk…’ He looked honestly baffled now. ‘I mean I can’t believe they can stop me going round my own house. I’m still paying the mortgage, for God’s sake. She’s been off on holiday, I haven’t seen the kids for a month. I can’t afford to run two bleeding homes, can I?’
‘Nobody can,’ Richard said with feeling. ‘Not really.’
‘And now I’ve got to come and see you. Mind you, I don’t mind that. I thought I would when they said I had to, but I don’t. It’s all right. Funny, that.’
Richard savoured the small, puzzled compliment. ‘D’you think there’s a chance she might drop the divorce? If you play your cards right?’ He wanted Fred to look at the possibilities, to see if he had any choice in the matter. If Fred could behave differently, might he be rewarded? And if not, could he accept his loss without further violence?
There was a long silence between them. Phones rang in other rooms. Richard prayed his own phone would not ring. He could feel the painful effort Fred was putting into his thinking, facing what he did not want to face. He could see the effort in the frown, the clenched hands.
‘Not really,’ Fred said after a very long time, perhaps only a minute. ‘Oh, I try and fool myself there is, but she’s got this other bloke and…’ He looked up at Richard, very straight. ‘No, she means it all right.’
‘Is that why you want to hit her?’
‘It’s the kids, I think.’ Fred sounded surprised, as if he had really thought it was his wife he wanted back. ‘I mean, we tried everything, marriage guidance, the lot, you name it. But at the end of the day she’s got the kids and she’s got the house and that bloke’s going to move in with her. I’m paying the mortgage and I’m in a bedsit. She’s got it all her own way and there’s nothing I can do about it.’ He paused for a moment, then added in a very matter-of-fact tone, ‘I’d like to kill her.’
Elizabeth had tried to make her office as homelike as possible, with plants and armchairs and a fridge. Often she felt more of a therapist or a nanny than an editor: authors wanted drinks and encouragement and a listening ear. Some, like Suzy, became insecure and aggressive at the very mention of alterations, and had to be pacified.
Suzy’s first novel had done pretty well. Respectable hardcover sales, encouraging reviews, a good paperback deal. Her third novel would probably do even better. Meanwhile, they were stuck with her second. Suzy, humble and grateful at first, now had the bit between her teeth: she was flushed with success and had acquired an agent and an inflated sense of her own value. About her potential, Elizabeth thought, she was probably correct, but about this particular novel she was definitely wrong: it was at once too derivative in style and too personal in content and it had been written too fast. It should be put in a drawer for two or three years and then reworked, not thrown away, because there were some good things in it. But if they didn’t publish it, Suzy and her agent would take it elsewhere. It would do badly wherever they took it, but Elizabeth would have lost Suzy for ever.
A familiar dilemma, long ago resolved. She had tried suggesting tactfully to Suzy that she might like to publish her third, as yet unfinished, novel before this second one because it would give her more time to make vital cuts and tighten the whole thing up, but Suzy had been outraged and Elizabeth had needed all her diplomacy and several lunches to retrieve the situation. Now she had settled for getting Suzy to make the minimal changes that she would accept as fast as possible.
‘I think you’ve done a fantastic job,’ she said.
Suzy stared at her with suspicion. ‘You don’t like it.’
‘Come on, Suzy, you know me better than that. I’m really pleased. You’ve made it much tighter. All those cuts we discussed have really worked.’
This was true, up to a point. Elizabeth’s suggestions, in so far as Suzy would accept them, had improved the novel greatly.
‘There’s a “but” coming,’ said Suzy, who though stubborn was not insensitive.
‘Only a tiny one,’ said Elizabeth, trying to think how she would proceed if she were dealing with Felix. He was her yardstick, beloved and familiar, the person she knew and loved best in the world, and she was also his editor. She knew it was possible to be involved and detached at the same time.
‘You see?’ said Suzy with grim satisfaction. ‘I knew it.’
‘Now don’t get excited. It’s really very small.’ Elizabeth put her finger and thumb almost together. ‘Maybe about that big.’
Suzy closed her eyes defensively. Elizabeth seized the moment.
‘It’s just when she’s in hospital having the baby and she finds out her husband’s been screwing her best friend. Don’t you think maybe – just maybe – she ought to have a scene with him about it?’
Suzy opened her eyes wide. ‘But she’s so afraid of losing him,’ she said very fast, looking at Elizabeth as if she were an idiot.
‘Yes, I know. Only—’
‘And it was the sixties. You weren’t supposed to get jealous in the sixties.’
‘Yes, I do remember that,’ Elizabeth said. ‘But even so, it’s such a big thing—’ She thought if it were Helen, knowing that Helen would never do such a thing, knowing that she was safe.
‘And she’s feeling very vulnerable. Having just given birth and all that.’
‘Quite. All the same, we don’t want the reader to think she’s a wimp.’
Suzy looked shocked. Elizabeth wondered how far the novel was autobiographical. As far as she knew Suzy had a perfectly nice husband and two teenage sons and lived in Woking, but she had been married twenty years and the husband might be finding her sudden success hard to take. When Suzy came up to town to see Elizabeth she wore peculiar make-up and tied her hair on top of her head with what looked like, but could not possibly be, a pair of black fishnet tights.
Elizabeth said, ‘Suzy, we did talk about this and you said you’d look at it.’
‘I did, but…’ She paused and Elizabeth could see her thinking so hard she almost put her thumb in her mouth. She suddenly saw Suzy as an endearing child. ‘Maybe she could have a scene with her best friend.’
‘It’s her husband she needs to have a scene with.’ Perhaps Helen was not her best friend, but what else could she be? Elizabeth knew many women, but Helen was the one she liked and trusted most. She didn’t think she was Helen’s best friend, however, and maybe it had to be mutual. She didn’t think Helen needed friends at all, never mind best ones.
‘You don’t think it would make her too assertive?’ Suzy said.
‘I think it would make her very human.’
Suzy considered. Elizabeth felt like a paediatrician trying to get a mother’s consent to a vital operation. ‘You’re not saying you won’t publish it, are you? If I don’t change it.’ Please don’t tell me my child is going to die. Don’t make me go to another hospital.
‘Heavens no. We all love it. This is a tiny change. I’d just like it to be as good as it possibly can. If she has a scene with her husband, it would make it that much stronger.’ And yet why should Suzy’s heroine be stronger than she was herself?
Was she trying to get things done that she couldn’t do? ‘Don’t you feel she should express some of her anger? Even if it doesn’t work.’
‘Ah, it doesn’t have to work,’ said Suzy. ‘That’s something.’
‘Just a short scene,’ Elizabeth pleaded. ‘Just a little burst of anger to make her human.’
‘Maybe she could write him a letter,’ said Suzy. ‘And then not send it.’
Elizabeth sank back into her chair and lit a cigarette. She was beginning to wonder anxiously how angry she really was with Felix. Perhaps her professional judgment was impaired.
‘She’s your character, Suzy,’ she said.
Suzy’s eyes narrowed under the shiny black bow. ‘You don’t like her, do you?’
At first Elizabeth didn’t entirely believe Felix meant what he said, or else she thought he would change his mind. After all, other people did. She had friends who had sworn they would never have children and after a few years had them, some on purpose, some by mistake. Most of them seemed delighted. In the same way she hoped that he might turn out to be faithful, despite his declared intention not to be.
At first, too, she was so enraptured by his physical presence, the luxury of having him all to herself, to fall asleep with and wake up with, to look at and touch at random, to cook for, to chat to, to make love with whenever they felt like it, which was often in those early days, that it was easy to push the longing for children to the back of her mind. But time was against her: if she were to do it at all, it would be wise to start before she was forty.
Casual references did not do the trick, nor did pregnant friends. Hints resolutely dropped were not picked up. She had to raise the subject directly, by which time she was tense and anxious and perhaps did not choose the right moment, or perhaps there could never be a right moment for something he did not want to discuss at all.
‘But darling,’ he said, sounding merely surprised, not annoyed or put out, ‘I thought we settled all that.’
‘You really meant it?’ she said, feeling sad and angry and foolish.
‘Yes, of course. I wouldn’t have said it otherwise. It was an important conversation.’
He was planning a Tony Blythe novel at the time and she had the feeling that his attention was wandering.
‘I suppose I thought you might change your mind,’ she said.
‘I don’t want to share you with anyone,’ he said.
She supposed that was meant to be flattering. ‘Not even your own child?’
‘Certainly not. Just think how jealous I’d be.’
‘But I’m not supposed to be jealous if you have other women.’
‘When, darling,’ he said gently. ‘And I said you weren’t supposed to know. I’ll always be discreet but I can’t control what you feel.’
Now she felt like the boy in Kidnapped, suddenly seeing the broken staircase lit by jagged lightning. ‘You mean it’s already happened?’
‘Are you really asking me that? Because I’m not going to lie to you.’
She thought about it and went away, screamed and broke things. He waited until she was calm with exhaustion, then he came after her and held her while she cried.
‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘If you can have other women, why can’t I have children?’
‘Because that was the deal,’ he explained gently. ‘And you agreed to it. I don’t like children but I do like sex with other women.’
So it was her fault for making a dishonest bargain. ‘And you don’t care how much you hurt me?’
‘Don’t be silly. I love you. But I’m a very selfish person and you knew that before you married me. Why d’you expect me to change?’
He kissed her. He seemed excited by her tears and to her own surprise she found that she was too. They made love. Life went on the same.
They had been married then about three years. Contraception was left to her and she had tried everything. It would be easy for her to forget the cap, or come off the pill, or have the coil removed. But what if he refused to accept it? What if he made her have an abortion, or if she wouldn’t, what if he left her? No more Felix smelling warm and furry in bed. No more Felix making her laugh at breakfast or holding her hand in the street. How could a baby make up for losing Felix? She could see all around her how hard it was for women of her age to find new men. Unthinkable to be a single parent, an object of pity.
Friends said he would probably come round if it happened, get used to the idea, even be pleased, if not with the pregnancy then with the reality of the baby, and if not at first then as it grew up and learned to talk, became interesting. Each time they spoke about it, they made it sound as if Felix would need more and more time to adapt. Perhaps never, said the voice in her head. They didn’t know him as she did, however often they had sat at his dining-table. Some of them even said he was a monster, though charming, of course. She stopped talking to those friends.
Once she was over forty she tried to tell herself that a baby now might be deformed. She didn’t really believe it but it helped a bit. The longing faded slowly as she grew older, though it also flared up with sudden spurts of panic. Each period became a chance missed, and eventually one would be her last. She found herself looking curiously at the blood that might have been a child. Then she developed fibroids, as if her womb were determined to grow something, and realised the decision had been made for her. She tested the words ‘too late’ when she was alone and found them bitter.
Felix’s women came and went. She never had any actual proof but she felt their stealthy presence on the edges of her life. Occasionally she wondered if they ever got pregnant. It hurt to share him with others, but she told herself they were fewer than she imagined. She tried to think of them as a pastime, a diversion, like a game of bridge or squash, a visit to a health club. Gradually she began to believe he would never leave her, because he never did. When the pain became too great to bear she hit upon the theory that he didn’t want her to have a baby in case she died in childbirth, like his mother. Her life was too precious to risk. Felix said he had no idea if there was any truth in this, but it made her feel a little better. Nothing made her love him any less, at all events, and that, she thought, was the main thing, when all was said and done.
Told F. today. It was awful – not a bit the way I’d imagined. He looked really scared and angry and sort of cornered, as if I'd done it on purpose to trap him. I’ve never seen him look like that before. It changed his face completely. I felt terrible, very cold and sick. It was ages before he hugged me – too late, really. I’m so afraid. I think I’m going to be alone with the whole thing. It’s my problem, not ours. God. What am I going to do ?
He didn’t believe me at first. Went on about the pill being 100 per cent safe and how could I have made a mistake? I explained about switching handbags but he looked at me as if I was stupid and he really despised me. Then he got up and walked round the room a bit, saying Christ and shit and was I sure because those tests could be wrong and I ought to see a doctor. I said of course I would but I knew I was right because I’d missed two periods and done the test twice and anyway I felt peculiar so I just knew.
Then he sat down rather suddenly and put his head in his hands. He looked old and tired – quite different. Haggard almost. It was a shock. I got us both drinks. I felt sorry for him but more sorry for me. I could see him making a big effort. He said of course it would be wonderful, too good to be true after all these years, but had I thought how it would change my life, my whole future was at stake, and besides we couldn’t do it in secret, Mum and Richard would have to know, and had I thought about Elizabeth. How could we do a thing like that to her, it would hurt her so much, particularly at her age, menopausal women are so vulnerable.
I just listened. I don’t think I’d ever realised before how fond he is of Elizabeth. He hugged me again and said didn’t I agree, when we really thought about it, we simply couldn’t go ahead, there were too many reasons not to, although of course it was terribly tempting, like a gift from the gods. Only we had to be rational.
I don’t want to be rational. I’m not sure I can be. I’m frightened. I want Felix to put his arms round me and say he loves me and I can have the baby and he’ll leave Elizabeth and we’ll be together. I didn’t know I felt like that till this happened. I was just happy and living a day at a time, not really thinking at all, certainly not making plans. And he never talked about the future either. I should have realised that was a bad sign.
Now I think he’s saying I ought to have an abortion, though he hasn’t used the word yet. I’m not sure I can do that. I want to talk to Mum but I’m scared. She’ll be so angry. She’ll know what to do all right, but once I tell her she’ll take over and whatever she wants will happen and she’ll convince me she’s right. If Felix was on my side he could stand up to her for me. But all he seems to care about is Elizabeth not finding out. Of course I don’t want to hurt her, she’s so nice, but I don’t see it would be the end of the world.
When he got home Elizabeth was in evening dress – yet another joke that fate had up its sleeve. He said, ‘Oh, God, I’m sorry,’ as he remembered, and thought for at least a few seconds that life would really be much simpler if he could just drop dead on the spot. Then everyone would be sorry and he wouldn’t have to deal with anything.
‘Oh, what the hell,’ she said, clearly having had more than one drink. ‘I don’t care if I never see Traviata again. You were the one who couldn’t live without going to see that fat cow shrieking her head off. I’m only the one who got the tickets and they cost an arm and a leg.’
Felix suddenly understood why children had tantrums. He wanted to scream and cry and stamp his feet. It was all too much: just when he most needed Elizabeth to comfort him in the worst crisis of his life, not only could he not tell her about it, but he would have to comfort her for something as trivial as being late for the opera.
‘I’ll go and change now,’ he said, glancing at his watch. ‘I’ll be very quick. We can still make it.’
‘Christ, what does it matter?’ she yelled, as if she knew everything. ‘I’ll put up with anything, won’t I?’ And she hurled her empty glass against the wall.
Felix was startled, admiring the extravagance of the gesture and envying her freedom to make it, while he was obliged to behave well. His brain was racing: useless to regret the fact that home could not be a refuge tonight. Perhaps there was yet a way that the situation might be turned to his advantage. At least at Covent Garden he would be able to sit quietly and think and let the music wash over him. It might be easier than an evening at home, being asked if he was all right, being told he was rather quiet. But he still needed an excuse to cover both his lateness and whatever mood he might be in over dinner.
He went over to Elizabeth and put his arm round her; that usually worked. She pushed him away angrily, but he persisted and after a while she gave in: he could feel her body relax into a kind of grateful passivity. It was too soon for a more positive response.
He said, ‘Darling, I’m sorry I forgot but I’ve had a perfectly awful day.’
‘Well, so have I.’ She sounded sulky. ‘You might think about me for a change. It wouldn’t kill you.’
Now he had to come up with something good.
‘I’ve been sitting in the office for hours just trying to decide what to do. I lost all sense of time. The fact is…’ and he paused for a moment. ‘I don’t know how to tell you this but I think the book is so bad I’ll have to scrap it and start again.’
Elizabeth looked suitably shocked at the magnitude of this disaster. Nothing less would have done; he only hoped it would not jinx his work. He kissed her and she kissed him back and hugged him tight. She felt very different from Sally.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s go and hear that fat cow sing.’
Sally said finally, ‘Look, Mum, you’re going to hate this and I’m sorry – only the thing is, I think I’m pregnant.’
Helen couldn’t have been more shocked if Sally had suddenly stuck a knife in her. This was the impossible and it was happening. She had taken out elaborate insurance against this moment since the day Sally was born: bringing her up frankly, openly; telling her everything but waiting for her to ask; giving her love and information, security and freedom. She had been the classic liberal enlightened parent and this was her reward. She simply couldn’t believe that they had been overtaken by something so carelessly primitive, so curiously old-fashioned, so fatally stupid.
She saw Sally picking this up from her face, tried to alter it, failed. She was aware that anger was paramount, along with terror and disbelief.
Sally said again, ‘I am sorry.’
‘You’d better tell me how it happened.’ Helen heard herself sounding calm, almost normal.
‘Oh – you know.’ Sally shrugged. ‘The usual way.’
‘Don’t be clever.’ God, this was awful. Could they start again? She actually wanted to go back to first base, with Sally so far from being pregnant that she was only a few days old in her cot.
‘Sorry, I’m feeling a bit tense.’ Sally’s head drooped, exposing the vulnerable neck that Helen used to kiss when she was a baby.
‘So am I,’ she said.
‘I know. I’ve let you down, haven’t I?’
Helen tried to hug her then, but she could feel the tension for herself. Sally, politely tolerating her embrace, was actually straining away from her mother with all of her body. Helen knew how that felt, she had done it often enough to her own mother, but she hadn’t realised before how much it hurt. She wondered what Sally was hiding, why she wanted to be so far away.
‘Tell me properly,’ she said, letting Sally go and noting her relief. ‘You know I’m on your side.’
‘I just made a mistake, that’s all. I should have known better – I mean, I did.’ She looked distressed but sounded angry. ‘You don’t deserve this, you’ve always been so modern.’
Helen heard an accusation. ‘Tell me what happened.’
Sally looked away. ‘Oh – I forgot my pills. It was when I was away and I switched handbags. That’s all really. It shouldn’t have happened but it has. So there. Rotten luck for all concerned.’
Helen nodded. To her horror, she found she wanted to cry. Now, of all times, when she was meant to be a rock, she was going to let Sally down.
‘Who is he?’ she asked, blinking away the useless tears.
Sally looked evasive.
‘Come on, you’ll have to tell me eventually.’ Distantly, softly, fear brushed against her, like a tiny curling feather released from a pillow shaken too vigorously.
Sally said again, ‘You’re going to hate it,’ and looked at her with much too honest eyes. The feather-pillow fear crawled up Helen’s back, terrifying her.
‘Tell me,’ she said.
‘Can’t we just – well, can’t we just talk about it without names? I mean, look, it’s just someone I met. Can’t we leave it like that?’
‘You know we can’t.’
Sally shrugged again and Helen sensed a feeling of relief, a letting go of responsibility, gladly dropping it on to the parent, where it had belonged since birth or earlier. ‘Oh, all right then,’ she said. ‘It’s Felix.’
‘Felix?’ said Helen. ‘Felix?’
Sally looked defiant, as if pleased to be proved right. ‘I said you wouldn’t like it.’
It was all so much worse than Helen had expected (a schoolboy, a teacher, a passing rapist) that she could hardly speak. She felt sick. She wanted to kill. Felix.
‘I know you don’t like him,’ said Sally, sounding bad-tempered, ‘but he’s not—’
‘What?’ said Helen. ‘Dear God, what isn’t he? Tell me something good about him and I’ll try to believe you.’
Sally started to cry. Helen hugged her. This time she didn’t resist. Then they were both crying.
‘Shit,’ said Sally, who didn’t swear. ‘Oh, shit.’
‘We need a drink,’ said Helen, kissing her. ‘Come on.’ They sat at the kitchen table with a bottle of wine and a box of tissues between them. Helen kept wishing she still smoked.
‘How long have we got before Richard comes back?’ Sally asked. They were already conspirators.
‘Who knows? He’s with Inge.’
‘Yes, of course. I’m sorry. You’ve got enough problems already, haven’t you, and here I am making more.’
Helen said, hating the sound of the words, ‘How far gone d’you think you are?’
‘I did a test when I was two weeks late and it was positive. Then I waited two weeks and did another one. That was positive too. Then it took me another week to get up the nerve to tell you.’
Helen thought how reluctant they both were to add up and face facts. ‘So you’re about seven weeks.’
Sally nodded, looking at the table.
‘But you haven’t seen a doctor?’
‘No. But I feel funny. Sort of different. Not sick exactly but odd. And my breasts itch.’
‘Doctor tomorrow.’
‘OK.’
‘Those tests can be wrong.’
‘I know.’
But there was no hope in the room and they both felt it. Helen’s mind was racing: seven weeks was early, thank God Sally had told her quickly, vacuum extraction OK up to twelve weeks, get the GP moving fast or go to PAS, even Harley Street if need be, Felix can pay, God this can’t be happening to my child and I want to kill Felix, in fact I seriously think I might when this is over.
‘Have you told him?’ she asked.
Sally, suddenly looking much older, smiled a small, bitter smile. ‘Oh yes. He was shocked. He doesn’t want to know. He’s afraid of upsetting Elizabeth.’
Until that moment Helen had not thought of Elizabeth. Then she was abruptly in the room, standing beside the absent Richard, another person to be protected. It wasn’t enough that Sally had to have an abortion and Helen had to arrange it; she must also deceive her husband and her friend. And all because of Felix.
‘Oh, I can see his point,’ said Sally defensively, hearing the silence. ‘She’s very nice. It’s not fair to hurt her. Only I thought – maybe there’s a way we could do it without her finding out – you know?’
For the first time Helen realised they were not both talking about abortion. She was very frightened.
‘I mean,’ Sally went on, ‘from her point of view it could be anyone. Why should it be Felix? If we’re careful, if we make up a good story, she’ll believe it, won’t she?’
Helen said carefully, ‘Are you telling me you want to have it?’
Sally looked at her very straight. ‘I’m not sure. I want time to think.’
‘Right,’ said Helen. ‘Now listen. You’re eighteen, you can do what you like. But I’m telling you it would be a disaster for you to have a baby by anyone right now, especially Felix. You’re too young, he’s quite unsuitable, it will change your whole life, and Elizabeth is bound to find out.’
‘I could go away.’
I don’t believe this, Helen thought. Until half an hour ago I had no problems at all. Just shortage of money, a few duff paintings and bloody Inge pulling her usual tricks. Now I have a daughter who wants to go into hiding to have a baby by Felix without upsetting his wife. I don’t believe it. And I’m not going to let it happen. At that moment she felt resolve harden within her like clay. Whatever it takes, I am going to stop this happening.
When he arrived Inge was not there, only the boys taking a motorbike to pieces on the carpet. They hardly glanced at him, their curiously shaved and tinted heads bent close together over the machine: they were busy, collusive. When he was away he fantasised about time alone with them, mending fences or building bridges (he noticed that the imagery of conciliation involved shared activity) but now that he was actually here he heard himself saying in a petulant tone of voice, ‘Isn’t that going to be rather messy?’
‘It’s all right,’ Karl said, without looking up. ‘Mum doesn’t mind.’
‘She said we could,’ Peter added.
Richard wondered if this was a normal evening activity for them or whether it had been specially devised to provoke him. He knew himself to be in the right, but he wished he could talk about something more important in the little time they had.
‘Well, it’s going to ruin the carpet,’ he said.
Karl unscrewed a piece of gleaming metal and laid it carefully on a cushion. ‘It’s all right. It’s not your carpet.’
‘I’m only the one who has to replace it.’ Richard felt as though Karl had actually struck him.
‘We can always clean it,’ Peter said. ‘Anyway, Mum doesn’t care about carpet much. She has other priorities.’
They operated as a team. It could hardly be worse if Inge had trained them to do it. He couldn’t remember when it had started but he knew it had been going on for years, filling him with impotent rage. He had never found out how to divide and rule, which he felt sure would have been a solution.
‘Where is she?’ he said, uncomfortable now in their presence. ‘I can’t hang about all evening.’ It was unlike Inge to be out: usually she was watching at the window or waiting behind the door, ready to extract every possible drop of emotion from his visit. Surely he couldn’t be disappointed that she was out? The thought shocked him.
‘She won’t be long,’ Karl said. ‘She’s only gone to the off-licence. She said she couldn’t face seeing you without a drink.’
‘I think she wants to offer you one,’ said Peter, always a little softer. ‘You know what she’s like.’
That seemed such an understatement that Richard couldn’t reply. In the silence he felt them gathering for a concerted attack.
‘She drinks too much,’ Karl said, ‘but we can’t stop her. She gets depressed. And those pills she gets from the doctor sort of make her worse. It’s like they don’t mix with the booze.’
‘If you could come round a bit more often she might cut down.’
‘I think she’s just lonely. We do our best to cheer her up but we can’t really manage it.’
‘And we’re out a lot,’ Peter said, as if Richard might otherwise imagine they had no lives of their own apart from Inge.
‘It’d be all right if she had another bloke,’ Karl said, ‘but she hasn’t. Not yet, anyway.’
They were only telling him what he already knew, but hearing it from them made it seem more of an accusation, as if he were one of his own clients in the dock.
She had told Sally to get Felix to ring her, since she couldn’t ring him at home because of Elizabeth, and Sally wouldn’t give her his other number. He rang at ten the next morning and she was startled by his promptness: she had imagined him too cowardly and ashamed to pick up the phone.
‘Helen,’ he said, sounding subdued.
‘That was quick,’ she said sharply. ‘You got my message then.’
‘Yes. I can’t begin—’
‘I’d like to kill you,’ Helen said.
‘Yes, I believe you. D’you believe me when I say how sorry—’
‘You’re a shit, Felix. All you had to do was leave her alone.’
‘Yes, I know. But – anyway, let’s not go into all that on the phone. Where shall we meet? Just give me a time and place and I’ll be there.’
He sounded meek and submissive, yet oddly detached and sure of himself, as if the outcome of their meeting was already decided and all he had to do was go through the motions in a sufficiently cooperative manner to placate her. She was enraged.
‘The Old Ship,’ she said, choosing a pub midway between their two homes. ‘As soon as they open.’
‘See you then,’ he said. And put the phone down.
Helen cleaned the house from top to bottom with ferocious energy and speed. It didn’t need cleaning but she felt better for having done it. She would have liked to dig the garden as well, but there wasn’t time. She left the house at eleven fifteen and drove dangerously fast, the old clapped-out van lurching and squealing, until she remembered that if she unluckily got herself killed or incapacitated, Sally might well go ahead with the pregnancy. She slowed down at once.
Felix was waiting for her when she arrived; he looked pensive and contrite. He had a pint of lager in front of him but he had barely touched it. The pub was half empty and smelt of last night’s beer.
‘Ah, Helen. What’ll you have?’
‘It hardly matters, does it? The same as you will do.’
‘Pint or half?’ he asked solicitously.
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, Felix.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘Sorry. Just a habit.’ He went to the bar and Helen stared at the back of his head that Sally must have clasped so often, watched the hands she must have held tight. Now they took money out of a wallet, passed it over and received change.
He came back with a half and put it down in front of her. He sat down, sipped his drink, stared at the table, then, as if with a great effort of will, looked at her. She saw him quite differently: the old familiar face of Richard’s friend, her enemy, Elizabeth’s husband, was now the one that Sally had kissed, the one that had watched her climax, the one that had talked about love.
‘She thinks she wants to have it,’ she said, and saw alarm on his face. ‘Or rather she doesn’t know what she wants. But I’m going to make her have an abortion and I think you should pay for it.’
‘Yes, of course,’ he said easily, as if they were talking about some minor courtesy like picking up theatre tickets. ‘That’s the least I can do.’ He looked relieved, and his relief disgusted her, although it was convenient.
‘I imagined we’d be in agreement,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t want to risk upsetting your cosy little marriage, would you? So I’m going to do all the dirty work and my daughter is going to bleed and risk her life and all you have to do is sign the cheque.’
‘Come on, Helen, be fair. You don’t want me to upset my cosy little marriage, as you put it, you’d be appalled if I left Elizabeth and ran off with Sally and let her have the baby. And we both know it’s not like the bad old days – OK, it’s never pleasant, but abortion nowadays is just about as safe and hygienic as they can make it—’
‘As far as you know,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to find out, do you?’
‘No, but that’s not my fault, it’s biology. And I don’t believe Sally’s risking her life. You wouldn’t let her, neither would I.’
‘Oh really,’ she said. ‘What would you do instead?’
‘It’s a safe operation, Helen, you know it is, if they do it early, and this is early, isn’t it? I’m sorry about it, of course I am, bloody sorry, but she was on the pill, and if she forgot, that’s hardly my fault, is it?’
‘I see,’ Helen said. ‘You get my daughter pregnant and then you tell me it’s her fault.’
‘That’s not what I said.’ He was determinedly rational. ‘We both wanted to have an affair and she told me it was safe.’
‘Of course,’ Helen said. ‘That makes it all right. She talked you into it.’
‘Well, I didn’t rape her.’ He sipped his beer, looking quite indignant. Helen planned her exit at that moment. It wouldn’t be dignified but it would give her some small satisfaction.
‘I’m not telling Richard,’ she said, ‘because he’d probably want her to have it. Then she’d either have to have it adopted, which could be heartbreaking, or she’d want to keep it and I’d have to look after it, which I’m not prepared to do.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I quite see that.’ He spoke absently, as if for him the argument stopped at abortion, and the other possibilities were so theoretical they might as well not be considered. Just like me, Helen thought. Their complicity made her sick.
‘I suppose you realise,’ she said, ‘that if all this came out, it would be the end of your friendship with Richard as well as the end of your marriage. So I’m not just doing the best thing for Sally, I’m protecting you as well.’
‘I question that,’ he said, looking at her coldly. ‘It just so happens that the two things go together. But I don’t think you can assume how Richard and Elizabeth would react just because—’
Helen threw the contents of her glass in his face. Beer splashed all over him, soaking his hair, staining his shirt and jacket. The barmaid gazed with open mouth, then giggled, then looked away. Felix, once he got over the shock, took out a handkerchief and mopped his face. He looked ridiculous, dripping. Other drinkers stared or pretended not to notice.
‘I hope that made you feel better,’ he said with dignity.
‘I hope you get cancer, Felix,’ Helen said. ‘I hope you die very slowly, in great pain, as soon as possible.’
‘I’ll do my best.’ He put the sodden handkerchief back in his pocket.
Helen walked out of the pub, got into the van and drove home shaking. Outside the front door she changed her mind, in case Richard or Sally came home unexpectedly, and drove to the studio instead, where she could be sure of being alone. But she needed to share the problem and there was one person who deserved to know. Perhaps he could even help, she thought: how ironic that would be. She telephoned, feeling there was no time to be lost, but the number was unobtainable, and that too seemed appropriate, after all these years.
The doctor confirmed the pregnancy, then leaned back in his chair and put his fingertips together. ‘Well, Sally, how d’you feel about it?’
Sally could feel Helen’s eyes boring into her, and the whole force of Helen’s personality willing her to say the right thing. She hesitated.
‘Take your time,’ the doctor said.
The silence stretched. Sally was terrified. She fixed her eyes on a bit of his desk where the leather was peeling away. She hadn’t really taken in the fact that she was actually pregnant. Thinking or fearing she was, she still felt different when she heard a doctor say it. Pregnant. A certainty. Felix’s child inside her. Her child. No matter how inconvenient, it was still a sort of miracle.
‘I don’t think we have a lot of time,’ Helen said into the extending silence.
The doctor smiled and shook his head. Sally was impressed by his calm. Up to now, everyone had been full of panic and urgency: Felix, Helen, she herself.
‘That’s the mistake everyone makes,’ the doctor said pleasantly. ‘This is an important decision. If she’s going ahead, we’ve got all the time in the world. And if she isn’t, we can still take a few days, even a few weeks if need be, to make sure we’re doing the right thing. It’s important that we should.’
It sounded wonderful. Sally imagined going away with the pressure taken off her, getting into bed and hiding under the duvet for days or even weeks. She might wake up and find the problem solved: a miscarriage, or someone saying it was too late for an abortion now. Or even a baby. Could she sleep for seven months? She would certainly like to; she could visualise nothing more enticing.
The doctor smiled at her. ‘Sally, why don’t you go home and think about it? Come back next week and we’ll have another chat.’
‘Could I?’ She was so grateful. Time to think. Choices. And she loved the way the doctor seemed to find it all routine, something that happened all the time. She wasn’t the only idiot around. She wasn’t unique. Helen had made her feel that she had been monstrously stupid.
Helen said, ‘Look, the father’s a married man, a family friend. He’s middle-aged. He’s got a childless menopausal wife who adores him. She’ll have a fit if she finds out. And Sally’s going to university in October. This could ruin her life.’
‘I know it’s very difficult,’ the doctor said. ‘These things always are. But it’s still Sally’s decision. You and I might think she’d be crazy to have a baby now, but it’s still up to her. And there’s always adoption. There’s a great shortage of babies, thanks to the 1967 Abortion Act. It would be very easy to arrange.’
‘Are you anti-abortion?’ Helen asked. ‘Because if you are, just tell me and we’ll go somewhere else. I have a right to do that.’
‘Of course you do. And I’m not anti-abortion at all. I recommend lots of my patients to have terminations. Often it’s the best solution. But only if that’s what they really want. And I’m not sure Sally’s made up her mind yet. Have you, Sally?’
‘I think I ought to have an abortion really,’ said Sally, just to please Helen, now that she felt sure the doctor would not believe her.
The doctor looked perfectly calm and contented. ‘Why?’ he said.
Sally didn’t know what to say. ‘Well, it’s the sensible thing. I can’t look after a baby and I’m going to college and it’ll make all sorts of problems…’
The doctor smiled. ‘D’you want the baby?’
Helen said, ‘For God’s sake…’
Sally said, ‘I don’t know.’
The doctor sat back in his chair. ‘Come back next week. I’ve got to be sure you really want a termination, not just to please your mother. As the law stands, in theory we don’t have abortion on demand, but in practice we do. Don’t quote me on that, I’ll deny it. But the situation is this: if you truly want an abortion, I can arrange it. If you want an adoption, I can arrange that too. And if you want to keep your baby, then that’s up to you. It really is your decision.’
Helen said, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t think Sally’s old enough to know what this decision means. A baby is a lifetime commitment.’
The doctor said, ‘Yes, of course, I appreciate your anxiety. I even happen to agree with you.’
‘I wouldn’t have guessed,’ Helen said.
‘I’m sorry. Perhaps I’m going too far the other way. But Sally’s got to feel happy about her decision or you and I will have a lot of problems in the future, much worse than this one.’
They sat in the van and didn’t speak for a while. Then Helen said, ‘Well, that’s that.’
‘We can go back next week. He said so.’
‘Whatever for?’
‘To say I want an abortion.’
Helen sighed. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. He’ll never believe you now. He’ll just think I’m pushing you into it.’
Sally said, greatly daring, ‘Well, aren’t you?’
Helen started the van. ‘If you want this baby, all you have to do is tell Richard. He’ll make sure you have it.’
This was so true that Sally was silent.
‘In fact,’ Helen said, ‘I don’t really understand why you didn’t tell Richard instead of me.’
‘I don’t know either,’ Sally said. ‘Except I didn’t want him to be angry with Felix.’
‘Or just possibly you don’t want to have the baby,’ said Helen, ‘but you’d rather blame me for making the decision.’
‘I just want time to think,’ Sally said. ‘The doctor said I could have a week.’
‘It’s no good,’ said Helen, parking, ‘I’m not fit to drive.’
Sally started to cry. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I messed it up, didn’t I? I couldn’t think fast enough, I didn’t know what to say.’
Helen put her arms round her. ‘I don’t mind if you do blame me,’ she said. ‘That’s what I’m here for.’
Driving into the country reminded Helen how much she would hate to live there. She felt homesick for buildings, threatened by a lack of structure when surrounded by fields and trees. No amount of beauty could make up for feeling unsafe. She still wasn’t sure why she had come: whether Carey simply had a right to know that his daughter was pregnant or whether she was actually hoping against the odds that he might even now come up with the help and support he had never been able to give her before. The triumph of hope over experience: she seemed to remember that as a definition of second marriage.
She knew without checking the address that she had found the right house. Discarded furniture lay rusting and rotting in the garden, alongside rabbit hutches and a goat in a pen, morosely cropping grass and staring at her with a challenging look. As she walked up the path she could hear children screaming. God knows how Barbara Hepworth managed with triplets, she thought; she must have been made of sterner stuff than I am.
Marsha opened the door and her face lit up with joyful surprise at the sight of Helen. What a nice person she must be, Helen reflected; no wonder Carey loves her. I can’t imagine myself giving Inge such a radiant welcome if she turned up on my doorstep. But her eyes were drawn at once to Marsha’s distended belly, and she felt the loss of hope without really knowing what she had been hoping for.
‘Yes, now you know what I’m getting for Christmas,’ Marsha said cheerfully. ‘Oh, Helen, it’s lovely to see you after all this time.’
It was hard to remember that Marsha was ten years younger than herself. Her red hair curled wildly and she had put on a lot of weight. But her large freckled face was placid and friendly, rather like a good-natured cow. A child of two clung to her legs, one aged four peered round her and a six-year-old hovered in the background. Yet she seemed remarkably carefree.
‘I’m sorry to drop in like this,’ Helen said, ‘but I need to talk to Carey about Sally and when I tried to ring they said your phone had been disconnected.’
Marsha looked vague. ‘Has it? I don’t use it much. Well, I don’t get the time, not with this lot. I suppose he didn’t pay the bill. I do remind him but you know what he’s like.’
Helen smiled and nodded. She thought they might have been two mothers discussing a much-loved errant son.
‘Oh, do come in, Helen,’ Marsha said. ‘You’re looking ever so well. How’s the painting going?’
‘I won’t, thanks all the same. I’m in a bit of a hurry. Could you just ask Carey to ring me and tell him it’s urgent.’ Marsha shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, love, he’s in Brighton. He’s away all week.’
‘Could you give me his number?’
‘I don’t think he has one. Well, he probably has but he hasn’t given it to me.’ She laughed. ‘I expect he’s up to his old tricks. Well, you can’t blame him really, can you, not with me in this state. I’ve got his address, if that’s any good, only he doesn’t answer letters, does he?’
‘Not unless he’s changed out of all recognition,’ said Helen sharply.
‘I’ll get it for you,’ said Marsha, waddling off.
How strange, Helen thought. I actually used to be jealous of her. I used to torture myself imagining her and Carey making love. Now we’re like old friends, pleased to see each other and amused by his little weaknesses.
The two-year-old had followed Marsha but the other children remained. The four-year-old put its tongue out at Helen and she returned the gesture. It was a relief to admit to herself that she did not like children. They took up too much time and energy. They tore the guts out of you. She could never have coped with more: she simply didn’t have the resources. The depth of her love for Sally told her that, as much as Marsha’s cheerful chaos.
Marsha came back and gave her a piece of paper. ‘I do wish you’d have a cup of tea. I could do with a chat.’
She sounded lonely, missing adult company. Helen said, ‘I’m sorry, I’ve got so much to do. Maybe another time. Thanks for the address.’
Marsha patted her belly. ‘Wish me luck, won’t you?’
‘Oh, I do,’ said Helen sincerely. ‘Believe me.’
Marsha laughed. ‘This is definitely the last one. Mind you, we said that last time.’
Driving to Brighton tested the van to the limit of its powers, but she managed to arrive just as the rehearsal was ending, Sibelius’s Fifth wafting out to her as she sat in the lobby. It was her first moment of peace in a day that seemed already long and stressful. She closed her eyes and let it wash over her for a few moments before going to waylay Carey at the exit. Waiting for him made her feel like a wife again and that shocked her, the realisation that she still felt like Richard’s mistress. She wondered if he would take that as a compliment. She didn’t really believe in marriage any more, but that of course meant she didn’t believe in divorce either.
She was unprepared for the rush of feelings that swamped her when she saw him. Like Marsha he looked much older and heavier, and there was far more grey in his hair. She found herself feeling protective towards him, thinking how much he must hate growing old. She remembered the sense of identity they had given each other at the beginning, when one of their favourite fantasies was that they were twins enjoying an incestuous relationship.
He looked startled to see her, too, and then delighted. They stood and smiled at each other while the rest of the orchestra hurried past. Although he looked older, the mere fact of seeing him seemed to put her in touch with her own youth. It was quite a shock to remember how much she had once loved him.
She said, ‘Sibelius sounded OK.’
‘Yes, it still works, that one.’ And after a long silence: ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I want to talk to you about Sally.’
‘Come and have a drink then.’
She sensed him wanting to take her arm and not quite liking to. They walked together towards the nearest pub. Now it felt awkward, like a blind date.
She said, ‘Marsha was very cheerful.’
‘Yes, she likes being pregnant.’
‘Just as well really.’
At the door of the pub he stopped and said to her abruptly, ‘You look wonderful.’
She told him about Sally and he listened, looking more and more concerned, but not speaking. When she stopped he said, ‘God, what a mess. I wish I knew what to say.’
She was conscious of feeling unfairly disappointed and also obscurely blamed. ‘Oh, I don’t expect an instant solution. I just thought you should know somehow, as you’re her father, and I daren’t tell Richard. It seems too big a thing to do on my own without talking to anyone.’
‘Poor Helen. I’m sorry. I wish I’d been there.’
She said sharply, ‘Well, you’re here now,’ thinking how typical it was that they should meet after all these years at a time of crisis and be almost at once on the verge of a row. It was all so familiar; nothing had changed.
He said, ‘Are you blaming me? Is it all my fault for buggering off?’
‘Well, I don’t think I’d go quite that far. But it did cross my mind that maybe if she’d had her own father around, she might not have found Felix so attractive.’
‘I thought Richard was meant to be the perfect step-father.’ He sounded bitter and sulky, as if all his life he had been compared and found wanting.
‘Yes, he’s been wonderful. They get on very well. But it’s not the same, is it?’ Suddenly she felt quite fragile and reluctant to fight: an alarming sensation when she had trained herself not to be vulnerable. ‘Oh, I don’t know, Carey. Maybe she needed you, maybe she didn’t. I just feel I’m all alone with the problem and I wanted to share it with you.’
Carey put his hand over hers on the table. His touch gave her a shock like electricity. So that too was unchanged. They both looked at their two hands and then back at each other.
‘I did mean to keep in touch,’ Carey said. ‘But it wasn’t easy. You were pretty angry with me at first.’
‘Yes, I was.’
‘I found it very painful, you know. I mean, seeing you both and then just going away afterwards. You made it so clear you didn’t need me.’
Helen remembered how much she had needed him and how hard it had been to pretend otherwise. ‘Sally needed you,’ she said.
‘I didn’t have very much to offer her then.’
‘What about now? If I can’t talk her into having an abortion.’ She paused: the alternative was really too dreadful to contemplate. ‘I just had this wild idea you might be able to fit one more baby into your household and hardly notice.’
‘My God,’ Carey said.
‘Oh well, it was just an idea. I must say my heart rather sank when I saw Marsha. Four seems a lot more than three.’
‘Yes,’ Carey said, ‘it does to me too.’ Their hands were still touching, linked but unmoving, there on the table. ‘Can’t Sally just have it adopted?’
‘Suppose she doesn’t want to when it comes to the point and I get stuck with it? I’m not having Felix’s child in my house.’ When she heard her own words she realised that the decision was made, regardless of Sally’s wishes, and she was shocked and relieved.
‘Is he as bad as all that?’
‘He’s a pig. I hope his cock drops off.’
Carey smiled. ‘You said that to me once.’
‘Did I? I don’t remember. Well, it obviously didn’t work. I can’t be a very efficient witch.’
He looked at their hands, and then at her face. He looked old and grey and tired, a man who had come to terms with his situation. She saw her own lost youth in his face and remembered how they had both intended to be famous and rich and in love for ever.
‘Well, what now? I’d like to go back to my hotel for a rest. Will you come with me?’
She heard herself saying, ‘I suppose that’s why I’m here.’
His skin still smelt the same, but then why should it not? That was normal, although it felt like magic. Their bodies slid together with the same familiar ease and they knew how to excite each other, dissolving the intervening years with laughter and skill. It seemed natural: everything fitted. She felt very healed, letting all her burdens drop along with her clothes, and able to forgive him for long-ago sins that she had carried heavily and angrily for many years. They were at peace.
She said, ‘You have a very comforting body.’
‘I’ve missed you.’
They kissed. The kiss went on for a long time, as if they were both afraid of coming out of it and starting to talk again.
‘You’re better off with Marsha,’ she said eventually. ‘This is all we ever had.’
‘It still feels like quite a lot.’
‘But not enough when I started shouting about the unpaid bills, the unanswered letters, the telephone cut off.’
They smiled at each other, because now in bed, all this time later, these were minor crimes and did not matter.
‘Not to mention the bits on the side in the afternoons,’ she added, thinking that she was now comfortably one of them. ‘Maybe it’s my fault you didn’t keep in touch with Sally. Maybe I made you feel unwelcome because I was afraid I’d do exactly what I’m doing now.’ And she remembered how when her father died she had been frantic to go to bed with someone, just for comfort. The warmth of another body as a hedge against death.
Carey said, ‘You know… we could keep in touch.’
‘Oh no,’ she said, alarmed at the temptation. ‘This is strictly a one-off. A bit of help and comfort in my hour of need. God, you feel wonderful. You feel so solid. I have to keep reminding myself how flimsy you are inside.’
‘You don’t do a lot for my morale.’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘Yes, you do.’ He smiled. ‘I’d really like to see Sally again. Can I?’
‘I wish you would. She’s going to need someone. I’m afraid she may go off me in a big way when this is over, but that’s a chance I’ll have to take.’
He said, sounding dubious, ‘You’re that sure you’re right?’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘I do hate to think of her having an abortion.’
As if I don’t, Helen thought. Men can afford to have these fine scruples. You won’t be the one having to cope with this baby you don’t want aborted. Suddenly she was annoyed with herself for involving him in such a female mess.
‘So do I,’ she said, ‘but she’ll get over it. She’ll grieve for a few months and she’ll blame me. That’s all right. What she won’t get over is a lifetime with Felix’s child.’
There was a long silence. Carey said hesitantly, ‘When you kicked me out…’
‘When you left me.’
‘When we split up, I thought you might be pregnant.’
She remembered then his old gift for sensing things, for picking up vibrations, without any real evidence. It could be attractive or threatening.
‘So did I,’ she said smoothly. ‘But I wasn’t.’
‘I’d have come back if you had been.’
‘But I didn’t want you back. At least, only like this.’
‘Just wanted you to know,’ he said peaceably.
‘Thank you. I think I did know really.’
They cuddled for a while and she thought of the child that might have been with sadness but without regret. It was better as it was.
‘Are you happy with him?’ he asked.
‘Yes. We suit each other. We have a good life. It’s warm and friendly and calm. His ex-wife is a pain in the arse, but that’s the only snag.’
‘You haven’t said anything about love.’
Now she felt uncomfortable, pinned under the microscope and dissected. ‘And we love each other.’
‘So you’re not even slightly bored?’
‘No.’
‘I’m bored with Marsha,’ he said, sounding defiant.
‘You were bored with me too,’ she reminded him.
He turned to her in bed and held her face in his hands. ‘Oh Helen. We were too young. It could have worked if we’d been older. And richer.’
She said, ‘Perhaps,’ and wondered if she meant it.
Driving home she thought that now it was really finished in a way it had not been before, although she had not realised. How strange to be carrying all that for so many years without knowing. She was free of him now and she could also forgive Richard for not being accessible in her dilemma. She had balanced her scales.
Sally came to Felix for what he sensed was a last-ditch attempt. He felt pure terror. It was like war-time: he was under fire and he did not know if his nerve would hold. Not that he had ever been in a war but he was sure that was how it would feel. All her guns were blazing at him. He saw her as a woman for the first time, grown-up and alarming, protecting her half-formed child. But he had a marriage to preserve, and he was stronger than she was because he had lived longer and had more practice in self-defence.
He said gently, ‘Darling, I’m sorry, but Helen’s right.’
‘You really don’t want it.’
‘It’s not that, it would have been wonderful, but… you’re going to college… Elizabeth would be terribly hurt…’
‘I could go away,’ Sally said, suddenly young again. ‘Nobody would know. My father might help me. Then when I’ve finished at college I can get a job. You could visit me and… the baby.’
What a long view she was taking; how fast she made the years go by.
‘My love, it’s a fantasy,’ he said. ‘It’s just not practical.’
‘You want me to kill it instead,’ she said, the angry woman again with her gun.
‘That’s not the way to think of it.’
‘It’s practical. And that’s how it feels.’ Then suddenly she crumpled up. ‘I’m frightened.’
He went to her and tried to embrace her, but she pulled away.
‘Mum says Elizabeth wanted children but you wouldn’t let her have any. Is that true?’
Now it was the really big guns and he felt quite steady.
‘No.’
In the silence that followed he could tell that she knew he was lying.
‘We’re finished, aren’t we?’ she said. She sounded very sad.
‘No. We’ll get through this, I’ll come down to Sussex. It’ll be all right, I promise you.’
But she was too young.
‘You really didn’t mean any of it, did you? All those things you said. It was just a game.’
It hurt to see her face change, that new look of disillusion and disgust that he had put there. He wasn’t proud of that.
He said, knowing she wouldn’t believe him, ‘Sally, I love you. Nothing has changed. Only we can’t have a baby and I never said we could.’
Mum left me alone with Richard tonight. Not that I couldn’t manage to be alone with him any time if I wanted to, but she did it very pointedly as if to say there now, there’s your chance, don’t say I’m forcing you into anything. She went to bed early and there we were, Richard and me.
He was going through a whole pile of probation reports. He looked so nice, so concerned, so remote. I only had to speak. I imagined how it would be if I told him, shock, horror, and a big row with Mum and Felix, and lots of help for me to keep the baby. I nearly did it. I don’t know what stopped me. Somehow when it came to the point I was more scared of telling him than not telling him. I felt it would all be out of my hands, although of course it isn’t in my hands, it’s in Mum’s. It seemed such a huge thing to do. It would start such a long chain of events, I’d lose control of the whole thing. Only I don’t have control anyway.
I got so close to telling him he actually realised there was something the matter and then I panicked and had to pretend I was nervous about going to Sussex. He was lovely about it and said he’d come and fetch me any time I wanted to come home. I knew more than ever then that I couldn’t tell him.
He’d be so disappointed in me. But it wasn’t just that. I was disappointed in him too, that he couldn’t read my mind. Unfair, I know, but if he’d guessed, then I could have told him. It doesn’t make sense. Only I’m so bad at pretending, how can he help me if he can’t even see through me? He's just not powerful enough.
Felix is powerful. He doesn’t want the baby and that’s that. He’s not going to give an inch. I tried to talk to him but it wasn’t any good. He kept saying he loved me and Mum was lying about him not letting Elizabeth get pregnant, but I know he was lying, I just know it. He’s frightened too that I might tell Richard. I hate seeing him frightened. It’s awful that he and Mum hate each other and yet they’re in total agreement about this. I don't stand a chance. I've lost Felix by getting pregnant and now I’ve got to lose the baby too. Oh, he says he wants to go on seeing me but I just can’t imagine it, not after all this.
Mum is the really powerful one. She’s just going to take charge of everything and no one can stop her. I could if I had the guts or someone to help me, but I haven’t. Maybe in my heart I think she’s right. That’s the worst part. Not being sure what I feel.
Next week I’ll go back to the doctor and tell him I’ve made up my mind. And he’ll believe me.
Helen thought they had made it as nice as they could. A large anonymous clinic looking out on to flowerbeds and trees, an atmosphere of luxury and comfort, contrasting sharply with the bleak austerity of her own abortion, fifteen years ago. She caught herself feeling terrified that Sally might actually run away at the last moment; she wanted them to sedate her immediately and knew they would not. She couldn’t bear the waiting; she wanted the time to pass as quickly as possible and the whole thing to be over. Never mind the guilt and blame, she would cope with that. She could cope with anything once Sally was no longer pregnant by Felix.
Sally’s room was small but full of everything she needed: a bed, chair, phone, television and flowers that Felix, damn his eyes, had sent despite her prohibition. Sally read the card and put it in her handbag. She looked around.
‘It’s very smart here,’ she said. ‘It’s like a hotel. Did you make him pay for all this?’
‘Yes, of course,’ Helen said. ‘But he offered. Don’t you think he should?’
‘Why not?’ Sally said. ‘It’s all he can do, isn’t it? And we couldn’t, could we? But I don’t suppose it’s a lot of money to him.’
She wandered round the room, fiddling with things and looking out of the window. She opened a door and found a bathroom. She disappeared into it and presently came back. She looked very pale and Helen wondered if she had been sick, although she had heard nothing other than the sound of running water. They had both slept badly and she looked pale herself when she glanced in the mirror. Lying beside Richard at night and blaming him for not divining her secret, yet being grateful he did not, getting Sally ready and bringing her here, all that had exhausted her. She felt close to the end of her resources; she hoped the relief of having it all over soon would give her fresh energy to cope with the aftermath.
‘Lovely pink towels,’ Sally said. She was talking very fast. ‘Only I’ll hardly have time to use them. I suppose the next person will. Funny to think of people coming in here all the time to have abortions. Must be quite a rapid turnover if it only takes fifteen minutes. I wonder how long they let you lie down for? Bit like being a blood donor really. D’you remember that Hancock sketch? I wonder if they have a high season and a low season. What d’you think?’
‘Oh darling,’ Helen said, ‘it’s going to be all right.’ She could see the scare in Sally’s face and longed to hug her but sensed this would not be welcome at all.
‘They’re all being so nice to me,’ Sally said. ‘I never imagined it would be like this.’
‘Of course they are. Why ever not? It’s the least they can do.’
‘It just seems wrong somehow. But then the whole thing seems wrong.’
‘It’ll soon be over and you’re going to be fine.’ She was reminded of taking Sally to the dentist as a child, something else that had to be done, and how hard even that had been, subjecting her to short-term pain for her long-term good. She didn’t expect Sally, at this moment, to believe that she would willingly sacrifice her own life to protect her child from suffering of any kind. She would not have believed it of her own mother either. But it was a bitter thing to know it could not be done. ‘I’m just so sorry you have to go through this,’ she said inadequately.
‘I could still change my mind though, couldn’t I?’ Sally said. ‘Right up to the last minute.’
Helen looked at her. It was true and there was nothing she could do about it. She knew there must be a look of dread on her face and wondered if that counted as blackmail. Yet she was still sure she was right or she couldn’t have persisted.
‘Don’t worry,’ Sally said. ‘I’m not going to. I know when I’m beaten.’
‘Don’t punish yourself. You don’t deserve it.’ Helen tried to hug her then, instinct defeating judgment, and Sally predictably pushed her away. Perhaps they both needed that act of rejection, she thought.
‘Could you leave me alone please? Only I haven’t got much more time.’ She tolerated Helen’s kiss. ‘Please. It’s all right. I just want to be alone with it, whatever it is.’
Helen went and waited in the waiting-room but she couldn’t settle down with magazines, and other people looking anxious. She went out and walked around; she looked at the flowers and confronted the fear that Sally might actually die and she would have killed her. But it was less likely than death in childbirth and she would not have feared that. Yet even in this extremity she still had no doubts that it was wrong for Sally to have Felix’s child, or any child, at eighteen, and she had to save her from it. The decision was entirely hers. She thought of Richard at work, caring for other people and taking on their problems; she thought of Carey, escaping into music and letting Marsha look after him; she thought of Felix, merely writing a cheque and going home to be adored by Elizabeth. She had never felt so alone. When she went back inside, a nurse came up to her and said, ‘Oh, Mrs Morgan, I’ve been looking for you, your daughter’s fine.’
Helen resisted the impulse to kiss her, to fling her arms round her and sob with relief. She didn’t seem much older than Sally herself. Would she learn anything from her work?
‘Can I see her?’
‘In a little while. She’s only just come round and she’s having a little weep.’
The knowledge that Sally was crying seemed impossible to bear.
‘Oh, it’s all right,’ the nurse said. ‘They all do that.’ And then Helen remembered doing it herself, a buried memory, only she hadn’t known it was universal. The nurse put her hand on her arm.
‘Why don’t you go and have a nice cup of tea?’
She sat with Sally until it was time to go home. She had stopped crying but she looked very white. She didn’t speak or look at Helen. When she got up she moved stiffly and she wouldn’t let Helen touch her to help her down the stairs or into the car. Helen drove her home and she went straight to bed. The house seemed very quiet. Helen sat alone downstairs for a long time, not moving. If she had been religious she would have given thanks to God.
On the day of the abortion Felix took Richard out to dinner, as he had promised Helen he would. It would help her, she said, to have as much time as possible to get Sally settled after it was all over. Then the next day, if need be, it could all be passed off as a bad period. She was crisp and clinical about the whole thing: he was to pay the money into her bank but he was not to send flowers to the clinic. Above all, he was not to telephone or visit.
He was glad to pay the money, almost wishing it were more, and shocked to find he had no inclination to phone or visit. He resented being cast in the role of villain when he did not see how any of this was his fault, when all he had done was trust Sally to go on taking the pill. He was also terrified that she might be the one in a million or whatever it was who would confound statistics and actually die. He couldn’t talk to her any more; they had said everything they could possibly say. But he still feared she might ring him up at the last moment and beg him to save her from the ordeal. This fear made him feel that, far from avoiding such a risk, he actually had to answer the phone all the time in order to give her maximum opportunity to put him on the spot. It was insane generosity, or uncharacteristic masochism, or perhaps he felt more guilty than he knew, because he still had no intention of changing his mind if she did contact him. But of course she didn’t phone, and of course he did disobey Helen and send flowers. He couldn’t think of an appropriate message when it came to the point, so he just put ‘from Felix, with all my love’. Even as he did it, he had the distinct feeling that whatever he said would be wrong.
It was a difficult day to get through: he didn’t know what time the abortion was actually being done and he really didn’t want to focus on it at all, though he would have liked to know when he could safely relax and think, Thank Christ it’s all over, poor little thing, I hope they didn’t hurt her. He felt obliged to give himself unpleasant tasks, instead of having a large lunch and several drinks, so he sorted out a lot of papers for his accountant and faced up to a chapter in the book that needed partly rewriting and partly throwing away. By the end of the day he was exhausted and irritable.
At dinner Richard seemed perversely determined to talk about Sally: what a joy she had always been and how much he and Helen were going to miss her once she went to Sussex, although of course they would also enjoy being alone together for the first time. Then he bemoaned the fact that Helen had never been willing to have more children because she was so wrapped up in her work. Felix chafed at the irony of the conversation and tried his best to steer Richard on to safer topics, but only succeeded in talking about Helen’s paintings, which he thought were sterile and Richard thought were beautiful.
‘Beautiful and sterile perhaps,’ said Felix, aware that they were still on aspects of reproduction.
‘No, you can’t get away with that,’ said Richard, smiling tolerantly. ‘She’s a good painter and it’s very unfair she can’t give all her time to it. I had another go at Inge the other day about money but it didn’t work and the boys gave me a hard time.’ He sighed. ‘I don’t know. Maybe you’re better off without kids.’
But Felix knew he didn’t mean that. ‘Well, you can’t get it right, whatever you do,’ he said. ‘That seems to be the general message. Lizzie’s been very moody lately. I think it’s her age.’
‘How’s your little friend in Cambridge?’ Richard asked, reminding Felix of the lie he had almost forgotten telling before the fatal weekend. So they were still talking about Sally. The subject seemed inescapable, like chewing gum sticking to your shoes. The more you scraped and struggled, the more it clung to you.
‘Oh, that’s all over,’ he said hurriedly. The last thing he wanted today of all days was to have Richard reminding him of his amorous exploits, though such a conversation would have normally given them both pleasure.
‘You’ll soon find someone else.’
‘I’m not actually looking at the moment. The bloody book seems to take up all my energy.’ Perhaps they could talk about work; that would be safe.
‘Is Natasha pressing you?’
‘Not really. She knows when she’s beaten. I’ve explained to her that I’m almost suicidal and one more nudging phone call could push me over the edge.’
Richard laughed. Felix was glad to be amusing, and relieved to have got off the subject of Sally, babies and sex, but the irony of the situation left him discontented. If it were any other problem, he could have talked to Richard about it. He reflected how curious it was that he had led such a tranquil life, despite being generally regarded as a rogue, while Richard, the good Samaritan, had deserted his wife and abandoned his children. For a wild moment he wanted to throw himself on Richard’s mercy, confess and be forgiven. Richard of all people should understand; burdened with his own guilt, he should not condemn others. But he would. He would be outraged and it would be the end of the friendship. Felix knew that: he had finally trespassed too close to home. Suddenly he felt very afraid. He had been so preoccupied all day with the abortion that he had failed to notice that now and in the future lay the greatest danger. For ever more there would be a secret between them, like an unexploded mine.
‘I know the feeling,’ Richard said. ‘That’s exactly the effect Inge has on me.’
‘You’ll get her off your back one day,’ Felix said. ‘She’s bound to remarry eventually.’
Richard sighed. ‘The boys say all she needs is a new man. As if they expected me to find one for her.’
‘Is she still as beautiful as ever?’ Felix had always desired Inge as indeed he desired Helen, though they could hardly be more different.
‘I suppose she is. I don’t really see her any more, I just see problems.’
‘You always marry such beautiful women,’ Felix said.
‘Both of them, you mean? God, you can’t be envious, after all the women you’ve had.’ But he sounded pleased and flattered.
‘You really think I lead a charmed life.’
‘Maybe I want to,’ Richard said fondly. ‘Anyway, don’t you?’
‘Some of the time,’ Felix said. ‘I’ve been feeling very old lately.’
It was a long time before Sally slept. She had refused to let Helen sit with her, saying she wanted to be alone, but really it was a comfort to know Helen was only downstairs.
In the clinic she had lain with her hands on her stomach for those final minutes, saying goodbye to the baby, calling it little one, saying she was sorry, asking it to forgive her. Now she wrapped her arms round herself for consolation, feeling hollow and empty, needing Felix to hold her, loving him and hating him, longing to call for Helen but too angry to open her mouth, and confused, most of all confused, that she could feel already, acutely, both a sense of loss and a sense of relief.