She let them drive her to Sussex when the time came. She had meant to be independent, doing it all by herself on the train, but in the end it was too much effort, she simply had too much stuff. It was a shock to see the place again: she hadn’t been down since her interview and now it was going to be her home. So many people, so much to do, to see, to learn, to explore. It was exciting and it scared her. She was afraid she could be very lonely here among all these people; she felt remote inside her head and shut off from everyone, as if behind glass. She couldn’t wait for Helen and Richard to go and yet she was scared to be alone.
‘Don’t worry if I don’t write,’ she told them. ‘I’m going to be very busy. I’ll just ring you now and then.’
Inge loved Sunday mornings. In the days of her marriage it had been a particularly good time to make love, with no excuses from Richard about being late for work or having to go shopping, the boys trained to play quietly in a cot full of toys (the bedroom door locked just in case) or, later, visiting their friends and preventing other people’s parents from making love. The atmosphere lingered although Richard had gone, and she always woke feeling restless and hopeful. Even without Richard, there were still the delights of the Sunday papers and bacon frying and loud music. Even without a job to relax from or a religion to practise, the morning presented quite a different texture from the rest of the week. It was not until later in the day that alcohol and depression took over.
The boys were more organised than she was, viewing the morning as a time to catch up on chores before they embarked on pleasure. Around noon Karl would appear in the doorway with a black dustbin liner stuffed with dirty clothes. She was pleased her children chose to take on these burdens that she had cast aside.
‘Anything for the launderette, Mum? I’ve got the sheets and towels.’
Inge considered. It was a good opportunity but too much effort to work out what really needed to be washed. ‘I don’t know. There may be something under my bed.’
‘Right. I’ll look.’ He stomped off, sounding resigned but not resentful as she would have been if her mother behaved like that. But she felt Richard’s desertion excused everything. Mere survival took all her energy: it was a daily achievement, she thought, not to kill herself out of sheer despair. She went on reading, turning up Gotterdammerung on her stereo because she could hear Peter’s hard rock intruding from upstairs, when a familiar face caught her attention in the paper. She had seen it many times, long ago at her own dinner table, enjoying her food and wine, expressing strong opinions, and favouring her with a particularly suggestive smile. She had always thought they would like to make love to each other, but in those days she was faithful to Richard so it was not possible. She had also thought there was interesting chemistry between Richard and Felix, although neither of them, she knew, would ever do anything about it. And now, the newspaper informed her, Felix Cramer would be signing copies of his new paperback The Shamrock Murder at the Penguin Bookshop in Covent Garden on Wednesday between twelve and two.
‘Five pairs of knickers and a cheese sandwich,’ said Karl, returning. ‘And Pete says could you turn down the Wagner a bit.’
Inge went on reading. It was years since she had seen anything about Felix in the papers: perhaps he had been ill or away or not writing much. She had read only one of his books because she didn’t like thrillers and it had seemed awkward to have a dinner guest constantly expecting praise. But the face was still attractive and looked as if it had seen many interesting things. She went on staring at the smiling photograph and felt herself responding to it. The house shook as Karl slammed the front door; Peter shouted from upstairs, ‘Mum, can you give it a rest?’
Inge smiled at the photograph and turned up the Wagner. It made a triumphant sound.
On Wednesday she dressed carefully, went down to the bookshop and stationed herself at the window. He looked older, she thought. There was definitely more grey in his hair than she remembered, but at least he wasn’t losing it. She studied him closely. There was a look of strain that she didn’t recognise, exhaustion or anxiety: that was new. As if he had passed through some recent trying experience which had left its mark. Odd, because she had never believed in Felix as a person who was affected by his experiences, except to convert them into copy; she had always seen him, enviously, as someone who could walk through fire unscathed. Perhaps he was having problems with his wife; perhaps he needed a good fuck.
But when he smiled, all the old charm was there and the years fell away. It was an amazing transformation: he looked young, gentle, vulnerable. Everything she knew he was not. Memories flooded back, of all the happy evenings she had spent with him and Richard, talking and laughing and getting drunk. Just looking at Felix made her feel closer to Richard.
She watched the women crowding round him. How happy they looked when he smiled at them, and how lonely he looked when they went away. It was an unfamiliar look: she had never thought of Felix as capable of loneliness. But she was pleased to see that he was; it meant they had more in common than she had realised. The bookseller and the PR person from the publisher fussed round him (at least she assumed that was who they were) but he still looked put out, a mixture of embarrassment and bad temper, like a film star deserted by his fans. She wanted to laugh but she also felt tenderness for him, as if he were one of her children at a party where he was not having a good time.
Felix always forgot how dreadful signing sessions could be. He wondered if mothers of large families felt the same about childbirth, memories of the pain blurring with time, or natural optimism making them hope it might all get easier with practice. At all events he felt a perfect fool sitting beside a pile of books that not enough people were buying. When he did get to sign one it meant engaging in idiotic conversation with his public, who all seemed convinced that they too could write books if only they had the time, because they had led very interesting lives and their friends often said they should put it all down on paper. When Felix asked what was stopping them, they didn’t seem to know, but some of them were keen to find out if he wrote in longhand or typed or used a word processor, as if therein lay some magical secret. Many more enquired if he had a say in the casting of the television series. Felix would have liked a pound for every time he had been asked this question, as he thought it might well exceed his bi-annual royalty cheque; he also felt close to hysteria as he answered, as if the day were not far off when he might burst out laughing, fall on the floor, chew at the carpet and foam at the mouth. Yet he was profoundly grateful to all these people: without them he would have no career, no money, no freedom, no identity. Why then did their questions make him feel a fraud, as if someone else had written his books? Why did he fear that his physical presence was subtly disappointing to most of them, as if he were an actor who looked smaller in person than on the screen?
‘We haven’t done at all badly, you know,’ said the PR girl, who had glasses and a cleavage. ‘It’s just slowed down a bit this last half hour.’
‘You could say that,’ Felix agreed.
The bookshop manager poured him another glass of wine. ‘But we’ve sold quite a few,’ he said encouragingly, reminding Felix of a doctor explaining that his illness, though chronic, was not fatal.
‘Quite a few isn’t enough though, is it?’ said Felix, downing the wine in one go. ‘What we needed was a stampede. Wild-eyed women fighting each other to reach my side, fivers clutched in their hot sticky hands.’
The manager refilled his glass.
‘These things are always difficult to predict,’ said the PR girl. ‘It could be anything, even the weather. Nothing to do with you or your book.’
Felix was just wondering if it would be worth trying to get the PR girl into bed when he recognised someone standing in a corner of the shop and watching him. As he stared at her she began to advance towards him.
‘I’m sorry, I may have to skip lunch,’ he said, touching the PR girl’s hand. ‘I’ve just seen an old friend.’
She was still beautiful in her own bizarre fashion. Dark brown hair worn long and gleaming with burnished red like henna. Eccentric clothes that might have come from a junk shop but were obviously chosen with care, a bizarre mixture of lace and satin and velvet in shades of brown and rust. Her skin was pale and slightly freckled: without make-up it looked almost damp with pallor, making the red lipstick stand out and the kohl round the eyes. The new soft lines marking eight years of endurance and disappointment were obvious and touching: he remembered her as young.
‘Inge,’ he said, wondering if they should kiss on the cheek. ‘What a lovely surprise.’
She put both hands into his and squeezed hard. ‘Hullo, Felix, how are you, how’s it going?’ She smelt of musk oil.
‘Not very well,’ he said and they both laughed. ‘Would you like to have lunch?’
He took her to a restaurant round the corner because it was already late to go further. They had large gin and tonics to start them off while they ordered their food and they kept laughing a lot at very small jokes, which Felix thought probably meant they were both nervous. He noticed that she still wore her wedding ring.
‘I felt such an idiot,’ he said, ‘sitting around waiting to sign books nobody wanted to buy.’
‘But there were quite a lot of people, I think. I was watching.’
‘Not enough. Perhaps the gods are trying to tell me something. Perhaps it’s a lesson in humility.’
They both laughed at this unlikely idea.
‘Is it good, your new book?’ she asked, as if he could be quite dispassionate about it.
‘As far as I remember. The hardback came out last year so it’s not new to me. I suppose it’s all right, if you like Tony Blythe. Personally I’m sick to death of him, silly bugger. I can’t wait to kill him off.’
‘But I thought he was meant to be sexy, like you.’ Her light blue eyes held his with a challenging look: there was nothing coy or evasive about her. Felix felt he was being undressed at the table. He wondered if he looked at women in the same way; he hoped he was more subtle.
‘Well, that’s possible, I suppose.’
When their food and wine arrived she drank quickly and ate as if she were starving. He thought of all the meals they had shared in the past with Richard and Elizabeth, how cosy it had been compared to Helen’s cold hostility. He had never felt judged or condemned by Inge; he had always regretted that she was so tantalisingly out of reach. And now they were alone together for the first time. He sensed a tremendous need emanating from her, not just for food and wine, but for sex, conversation, human contact, as if she been let out of solitary confinement.
‘You know, Inge,’ he said, warmed by his memories, ‘it really is extraordinarily nice to see you. I’d forgotten how beautiful you are. Richard must have been crazy to leave you.’
‘I think so,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘Sometimes I’m so lonely I nearly kill myself.’
‘That would be a terrible waste.’
She shrugged. ‘Well, I survive so far on hope. Hope and hatred. I believe in a god of vengeance. He’ll punish the cow for stealing my husband, but he’s very slow.’
‘I suppose in eternity these things don’t feel very urgent.’
‘D’you believe in God, Felix?’
Felix thought about it. ‘Not exactly. Sometimes. I think I’d rather steer clear of vengeance, but a god of pleasure, I could believe in that.’
‘There’s not enough pleasure in the world,’ said Inge with enormous energy. ‘This is a puritan country. People are sick, they’re afraid of pleasure.’
‘I’m not,’ said Felix, feeling religious and dedicated like a knight in pursuit of the Holy Grail. ‘In fact I’ve spent my whole life trying to have as much as possible.’
‘Yes, that’s true. I think you are very healthy, Felix.’
‘I think so too,’ said Felix.
They stared at each other thoughtfully. Inge was such good value, he felt: there was an earthy intensity about her. He poured two more glasses of wine, and presently suggested he should drive her home. He had been rather depressed since Sally left and felt in need of a treat.
‘You have a beautiful cock, Felix,’ said Inge reflectively.
Felix, who was still slightly out of breath, felt himself in the presence of a connoisseur. ‘D’you mean in action or at rest?’ he enquired in the spirit of a genuine seeker after truth.
‘Oh, it moves very nicely,’ said Inge, ‘but it’s also good to look at as an object. I mean it’s pleasing aesthetically. You know?’
‘Yes, I think I know what you mean,’ said Felix, gratified.
‘The length is average but the width is excellent,’ Inge went on. ‘Width is more important than length, of course. You fill me up so beautifully, Felix. You give me a great deal of pleasure.’
Felix, who had counted six clitoral orgasms (evenly divided between mouth and fingers) and four vaginal orgasms (unevenly divided between man on top, woman on top, and both on all fours) before he gave up and surrendered himself to his own climax, was bound to agree. He did not subscribe to popular mythology that defined only one type of orgasm. Too many women had shown him otherwise.
‘It’s good that you’re circumcised too,’ Inge continued. ‘It’s more attractive and hygienic, I think. D’you remember how Richard didn’t want me to have the boys done, he said it wasn’t necessary, but I told him I knew best about such things.’
Yes, Felix thought, I’m sure you did. ‘Why don’t you like me to kiss you, Inge?’ he asked provocatively, is it because you’re still in love with Richard?’
Inge looked at him as if surprised. ‘Yes, of course,’ she said. ‘Aren’t you? Isn’t that why we’re both here?’
Felix forced himself to laugh but he felt the chill of the consulting-room settle on his soul. ‘Put away that paperback psychology,’ he said. ‘We’re here to have fun, not delve into the subconscious. Don’t spoil a good thing.’
Inge sighed. ‘Oh, that’s what I always do.’ She lay back, her brown hair merging with the brown sheets, her breasts sagging, her pubic hair still wet with their mingled juices. The scent of her was everywhere: musk oil and new sweat and something else he feared might be the result of not actually taking a bath every day. He did not want to name this hidden ingredient to himself (she was not visibly dirty at all) but there was something the exact reverse of Sally. With Sally he had felt she had always just had a shower and washed her hair, while with Inge he hoped that both events, with luck, had occurred yesterday or the day before. Sally had smelt of soap and shampoo and vanilla, whereas Inge smelt of Inge, in varying degrees of strength. Was it perverse of him to find this sexually exciting or was he simply in revolt against the twentieth-century Western obsession with cleanliness? Perhaps Napoleon had been right, telling Josephine not to wash for three days because he was coming home.
Sally’s hair was always shiny and swinging, gleaming with health and care as if advertising conditioner; Inge’s, though equally long and thick, was slightly sticky and smelt like a warm animal which had just crawled out of a nest of straw. Her cunt tasted like smoked salmon. Dark hair flourished on her legs and in her armpits; her teeth were uneven and sharp. Her body, too, was out of proportion. Whereas Sally was straight up and down, a sturdy five foot six and size twelve, Inge, though an inch or two shorter, appeared to be a blend of size ten and fourteen. Her breasts were large and tended to droop, and her hips were wide. But in between there was a ridiculously tiny waist and ribs that actually showed through her skin. Sally’s stomach curved, whereas Inge’s, though stretch-marked, was almost flat. He had the feeling that Inge, if seized abruptly at each end, might snap in the middle.
How pleasant life would be, he reflected, if he could have all three of them: Sally and Elizabeth and Inge. The virgin and the mother and the whore. The women’s liberation people, with whom he agreed intellectually, would probably dismember him for even having such a thought, but it was true. All aspects of himself would be catered for and he would have nothing further to desire. Nor would he fear boredom: in these three he would find the infinite variety of Shakespeare’s Cleopatra. But it seemed that only two out of three were allowed at any one time. ‘I’m hungry,’ said Inge. ‘And I want a drink.’ Abruptly she got out of bed and pulled on her clothes, a T-shirt and a long full skirt in various shades of mulberry, the same clothes she had been wearing before they went to bed, but without her underwear, which still lay discarded on the floor. Felix got dressed, since she was not offering him a bath or a bathrobe; it was obviously not going to be one of those cosy afternoons.
The bedroom had been a novelty but it was eerie to be back in the kitchen where he had spent so many evenings with Richard during the marriage. Inge poured whisky for them both and started doing something complicated with sausages. He had never been sure whether or not he liked Inge’s cooking, but it was certainly distinctive.
‘So,’ Inge said, licking her fingers. ‘Tell me. How is the cow? Does she still paint silly pictures that nobody wants to buy?’
Felix wondered how best to answer that. ‘She seems to be very busy,’ he said cautiously.
‘She’s a cold woman,’ Inge said, lighting a cigarette. ‘No wonder her husband leaves her. So she steals mine. But he can’t be happy with her, I don’t believe it. You wait and see, Felix, he is going to come back to me one day and the cow will be all alone with her silly pictures and it will serve her right.’
Felix watched ash falling into the frying-pan. ‘I could take you out for dinner, Inge,’ he offered.
‘No, the boys will be home soon and they are always hungry. Don’t you believe me, Felix, don’t you think Richard will come back?’
‘Well,’ Felix said, ‘after eight years it’s not very likely but I suppose there’s always hope.’ He was impressed by the way Inge made the whole thing sound so recent.
‘If I didn’t believe it, I would kill myself,’ Inge said matter-of-factly. ‘But you can take me out to dinner another time. I love to eat and I never get fat. Will there be another time, Felix? Are we going to have an affair or is this a one-night stand?’
‘Oh, I think an affair, don’t you?’ said Felix, startled.
‘Good. It’s very important to me to have regular sex. I don’t like one-night stands, they’re so much effort, but I have them. I see a man I like and I bring him home and we fuck and off he goes and I never see him again. If the sex is bad I don’t mind, but usually it’s good and still they go away. Isn’t it strange? If you have a good dinner in a restaurant, you go back, don’t you?’
‘I do,’ said Felix. ‘Very often.’
‘Perhaps it’s my fault,’ said Inge. ‘Perhaps I talk to them about Richard and they don’t like it. But you don’t mind, do you, Felix?’
‘No,’ Felix said. ‘I don’t mind.’ He was overcome by sudden compassion for Inge; he got up and put his arms around her and she hugged him with a fierce strength that she had not used in bed.
‘Oh Felix,’ she said, ‘life’s so sad, isn’t it? Sometimes I can’t bear it.’
He felt her beginning to cry as he held her. The sausages smouldered in the pan; the cigarette burned on the pine surface. Felix felt sorrow for the whole world.
‘I always wanted to have an affair with you, Felix,’ said Inge faintly into his shoulder. ‘You understand about sex and love and how different they are. And you know about Richard. He doesn’t understand, you see. He gets confused. He’s like a child really.’
The front door opened and the moment was gone. Inge pulled away, wiping her eyes, rescued the sausages and retrieved the cigarette. The boys that Felix recalled as children of six and eight when Richard, frantic with guilt, had left them, came in as young men with pink hair, shaven hair, leather and studs, and endless height.
‘You remember Felix, don’t you?’ said Inge. ‘He was your father’s best friend.’
‘Oh yeah,’ they said. ‘Hullo.’
‘Hullo,’ said Felix, managing not to comment on their growth. ‘Nice to see you again.’
‘This is Karl and this is Peter,’ said Inge, pointing.
‘Yes,’ said Felix untruthfully, ‘I remember.’
‘Are you staying for supper?’ one of them asked, a polite enquiry, not indicating any preference either way. Felix hesitated.
‘No, he isn’t,’ Inge said. ‘We don’t have enough sausages.’
Felix left soon afterwards, feeling superfluous. Inge had a decidedly clinical approach to sex, he thought, which was both convenient and disconcerting. On his way home it occurred to him that he had been somewhat impulsive: there was no guarantee that she might not use the incident to make Richard jealous, if such a thing were possible. It might be as well to safeguard himself by discussing the possibility with Richard, as if nothing had happened yet. Then if Richard objected he could retreat and deny everything; while if he agreed he could continue with an easy mind, and hope that no one enquired too closely into actual dates. It was always these tiny details that betrayed even the most practised criminal, as both he and Tony Blythe knew only too well.
‘Doesn’t he look old?’ Karl said, after Felix had gone.
‘He looked poofy to me,’ said Peter, eating. ‘Is he a poof, Mum?’
‘No.’ Inge looked fondly at them. They cared about her. They asked questions. They ate what she cooked. She loved them so much she sometimes felt quite faint. But it was always easier to love them after someone had made love to her.
‘I don’t remember him at all,’ said Peter.
‘He looks ancient.’ Karl sounded quite pleased. ‘He used to be all right.’
‘He’s still all right,’ said Inge, smiling. At that moment she felt immortal.
‘Oh blimey,’ said Karl, ‘he’s not your latest, is he?’
Peter looked confused. ‘You said he was Dad’s friend.’
‘He is,’ said Inge. ‘But I’m lonely. I need someone.’
‘I thought you needed Dad,’ Peter said.
‘I do,’ said Inge. ‘But he’s not here, is he?’
‘Is he famous, this Felix?’ Karl asked.
Inge considered. ‘He’s a writer. He’s well known.’ She wondered how Felix would like this description.
‘Is he married?’ Karl wiped a piece of bread round his plate.
‘Yes, of course. Don’t you remember Elizabeth? She was rather fat.’ Like most thin women, Inge regarded anyone less thin than herself as fat. ‘And they didn’t have any children.’
Richard passed the phone to Helen and went back to his pile of probation reports. Sally’s voice was bright and cold. ‘Hullo. How’s everything?’ She sounded like a stranger met once at a party and dimly remembered, the sort of person you gave your number to when you were rather drunk and then when they rang, you didn’t recognise the voice, couldn’t put a face to it.
Helen said, ‘Hullo, love. How are you? How’s Sussex?’ She was shaking inside. Weeks of silence had demoralised her.
‘Oh, great. It’s wonderful. I’m having a fantastic time.’
‘Good. I’m glad.’
There was a pause and then this brisk social person added, ‘I’m going to meet Dad actually.’
‘Oh, are you?’ It felt like a blow to the stomach.
‘Yes. He rang up. You don’t mind, do you?’
‘No, of course not, I’m pleased. It’s about time.’
‘Yes, it is, isn’t it? He’s playing in Brighton. He sent me a ticket and we’re going to have a meal afterwards.’
She wanted to scream at Sally, to stop punishing her, to talk to her properly, to say she was angry and hurt and unforgiving, but at least to be real, not this dreadful phony stranger. ‘Good.’
‘He sounded awfully nice.’
‘Yes, he is. I hope it goes well.’
‘Oh, I’m sure it will. Look, I better go. I’ve run out of money.’
‘Shall I ring you back?’
But the phone made a pathetic noise and Sally was gone. Helen hung up, conscious of Richard watching her. It was hard to speak normally.
‘She’s going to meet Carey. Apparently he rang her up. He’s sent her a ticket for a concert and they’re going to meet afterwards. In Brighton.’ She poured herself a drink.
‘Bit of a shock.’
‘Not really, they had to meet some time.’ She heard herself sounding defiant. ‘I’ve been hoping they would.’
‘Still. It’s a big moment.’
‘Yes.’ She blinked rapidly and bit her lip.
‘She didn’t talk for long.’
‘No. She ran out of money and she wouldn’t let me ring her back.’
He said hesitantly, ‘I thought she sounded a bit distant.’
‘Yes. That’s independence for you. She’s trying her wings.’ The bloody awful tears managed to escape.
He got up and put his arms round her. ‘It hurts, doesn’t it?’
She nodded, not able to speak.
‘Darling. Don’t worry. She’ll be all right.’
‘Yes, of course.’ The hug felt wonderful but dangerous: if she let herself relax into it too much she might cry and cry and end up telling him the whole story. The temptation frightened her. She kissed him and pulled away on the pretext of getting some Kleenex.
He said, sounding tentative, ‘I did wonder… before she went off, just the last couple of weeks, she seemed very moody, and you and she… well, you seemed a bit scratchy with each other.’
‘Yes, you mentioned that at the time.’ It was a relief to be sharp. Much safer. It was so hard to deceive someone you were close to and it didn’t end with the abortion or with Sally leaving home, it went on and on. This awful secret would be between them for ever.
‘I just wondered… is that why she’s being a bit strange on the phone…?’
‘You mean is it all my fault?’
‘No, of course I don’t. As if I would.’
‘We did have a bit of a thing.’ She blew her nose and poured another drink. ‘Nothing serious. Just me being overprotective. I told you at the time.’
‘Not like you.’ She could see him being puzzled and hurt by her sharpness.
‘No. Well, there you are. Even I can act out of character. Baby leaving the nest and all that. I overdid the gypsy’s warning and she resented it, so now she’s sulking.’ Then she wanted to make amends so she added, ‘Want a drink?’
‘No.’ He was still watching her compassionately. ‘Don’t worry about her meeting Carey. It had to happen.’
‘I’m not worried.’ She heard herself being as bright and cold as Sally. ‘He’ll charm her. What else can he do?’
Carey told her there’d be a ticket waiting for her at the box office with her name on it. Our name, she thought with satisfaction, for that was one thing Helen had never been able to achieve, a change of name: she was still Sally Hinde, not Sally Morgan or Sally Irving. She had often thought that his name was all she had left of him and she was glad it was a pretty one; in history lessons about the Golden Hind she had seen herself streamlined and sinewy, darting about the forest or gliding through the water, animal or ship or a strange amalgam of both, with a glamorous pale gleam, like something she had seen in a commercial for petrol or butter.
She looked up the programme and it was Shostakovich’s Fifth with a Rossini overture and the Sibelius Violin Concerto. A really jammy selection, she thought. Shostakovich was a favourite; she had often played him very loudly in her bedroom to remind Helen and Richard that it wasn’t just pop music she liked. Revenge through culture. A Soviet artist’s reply to just criticism. She liked to think that Dmitri had been rebellious too.
She had never thought to ask Felix if he liked Shostakovich and now it was too late.
It was hard to believe that she was actually going to meet Carey, that from being someone she didn’t remember he had become a voice on the phone and tonight she would see him and touch him. A bit like the Cheshire Cat in reverse, building up from the grin. When she was in her seat she looked at her programme and stroked his name in the list of viola players; when the orchestra filed in she strained to pick him out from among the others but couldn’t.
Rossini was nice and cheerful as always and made her want to laugh out loud but she thought people would think she was mad so she made do with smiling. Sibelius was better than she remembered, so good in fact that she wondered why she hadn’t bought a cassette of it, except that she wasn’t particularly fond of the violin. She must remember not to say that in case he thought it meant she didn’t like the viola either and she did. In the interval she had a drink she didn’t really want, hoping it would stop her feeling so nervous. She wondered what other people would say if she suddenly accosted a complete stranger and announced she was going to meet her father whom she hadn’t seen since she was little. There couldn’t be anyone else at the concert for such a bizarre reason, she was sure of that.
Then it was time for Shostakovich and she started to cry. Not hard painful sobbing that could block up your nose but a few luxurious tears spilling over. She felt wonderful. She also didn’t want the concert to be over because it was comfortable and exciting to look forward to meeting Carey but the actual meeting would be alarming; and then if they didn’t get on, the let-down would be so awful that her heart thumped at the thought and she had to take deep breaths to calm herself.
Eventually, though, she couldn’t stop it being over and she had to go and wait at the artists’ entrance where he had told her they would meet. As usual she was surprised by the speed with which the players came out but he wasn’t among the first. Perhaps he was as nervous as she was, hanging about inside and putting off the moment until he couldn’t put it off any more. It was the first time she had considered his apprehension as well as her own.
Then he came out and she knew it was him because he had her own face. She had always thought she looked like Helen; photographs of him had not made the connection for her. But now he was in front of her it was like looking at herself in the mirror. They stared at each other for a long moment and then identical smiles spread over their faces and he held out his arms.
He took her to a Chinese restaurant and she talked about Sussex.
‘I keep telling Mum and Richard I like it, it’s OK, it’s fantastic, whatever I think they want to hear, just to keep them happy, but really I can’t believe I’m there. I mean, I keep thinking, is this it? At school they go on and on to you about university and when you finally get there, it just isn’t how you imagined it. I don’t know what the difference is but it doesn’t feel real.’ She heard her voice running on but she didn’t know how to stop it. ‘Maybe it’s me. It’s like sleepwalking somehow. I feel I’m just drifting through and I needn’t bother to make an effort because soon I’ll wake up and I won’t be there any more. I’m sorry, I’m talking too much.’ The effort of stopping was terrifying: it jolted her, as if she had deliberately steered into a tree.
He said, ‘Helen did tell me what happened.’
‘Oh.’ The sound came out very small. She felt relieved but also somehow deflated. She would have liked to tell him herself. And knowing he knew also meant knowing he had not offered to help. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. ‘I should have written to you but I’m not very good at letters.’
‘It doesn’t matter. I probably wouldn’t have answered anyway.’
Now she sounded angry.
‘It must have been awful for you.’
‘Oh well, it’s all over now.’
He said, ‘Are you very angry with me?’
She shrugged, embarrassed by his directness. It was too awful if they were going to quarrel when they had only just met.
‘I was afraid you wouldn’t want to meet me. After all, I haven’t been much of a father, have I?’
‘You haven’t been a father at all.’ It was a shock to hear the words come out. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that.’
‘Why not?’ he said mildly. ‘It’s true.’
Now she had tears in her eyes. ‘But I’ve been longing to meet you, I’ve been counting the days, and now I’m being rude. I meant to be very nice and careful and make a good impression. I actually wanted you to like me. And now it doesn’t seem to matter, I can say whatever I like. It’s as if you’re a stranger on a train. It’s weird. I don’t understand it.’ Helen and the doctor would probably say it was her hormones, she thought with resentment; they were bracketed together in her mind as powerful people.
‘Sounds like a good thing to me. Come on, eat up.’
‘I’m not usually like this but I’ve been feeling funny lately.’ She applied herself to the food. ‘This is lovely. I didn’t realise I was so hungry.’
She ate in silence for a while and he didn’t speak either. When she looked up from her plate she found him watching her with a wistful expression that she found puzzling. ‘D’you think we can possibly make up for lost time?’
She didn’t know what to say. It seemed such a large question.
She had intended to get the train but in the end he insisted on driving her. They discussed the amount of lager he had drunk and decided it wasn’t very much. Going from the restaurant to the car broke their concentration and made a different atmosphere. She was conscious of feeling suddenly very tired, thinking how lovely it would be to be back in her room and alone and able to lie down and think and go to sleep and not have to please anyone.
She said, ‘It was a lovely concert. I love Russian music, it’s so over the top. Was he a good conductor, d’you think? I can never tell.’
‘Don’t know, didn’t look.’
She was so tense now that she laughed much harder than necessary and he seemed pleased.
‘The old jokes are the best.’
‘But I hadn’t heard that one before.’
He said urgently, ‘Every year I meant to write to you. For Christmas. For your birthday. And I never did. It was too painful. I kept thinking of you and Helen and Richard all cosy together and I felt it might be better if I kept away. And the longer I left it, the more impossible it got.’
She felt cross. He had behaved like that and now she was expected to forgive him. ‘It doesn’t matter. Really. We’re here now, aren’t we?’
‘I think I was afraid of seeing Helen again and wanting her back. And frightened you might reject me. And there was Marsha and all the children.’
‘It’s all right,’ she said, raising her voice slightly. ‘Honestly it is. I had a very happy childhood. You didn’t ruin anything. There’s no need to feel guilty about it.’
Then they drove in silence till they were on campus and she had to direct him to East Slope. She wondered if she should ask him in to see her room but it was late and she was tired. Another time, she thought.
She said, ‘You’re the nicest stranger I’ve ever met,’ to show she had forgiven him but also to remind him there was a lot to forgive.
He kissed her on the cheek. It felt strange. ‘Bye, Sally. Keep in touch. I don’t want to lose you again.’
She said suddenly, almost with panic, ‘I don’t know what to call you.’
Elizabeth came round to ask how the meeting had gone. She caught Helen in the garden.
‘I don’t know,’ Helen said. ‘She hasn’t rung.’ She wasn’t surprised but she was disappointed.
After a while Elizabeth said, ‘It must be very difficult being a parent.’
‘Yes, it is.’
‘Still envy you, though.’ She watched Helen’s savage pruning. ‘My God, you really do cut them back.’
‘Yes,’ Helen said, ‘I believe in drastic measures.’
Elizabeth scrunched through the dead leaves on the grass. ‘You know, it’s funny,’ she said, ‘but I feel ever so much lighter these days. Oh, physically I’ve still got all the same boring symptoms, but in myself, as they say, I feel I’m floating. It’s as if Felix and I have passed through some crisis I didn’t even know about. I wanted to talk to you about it but you seemed so preoccupied with Sally going away.’
Is she really blind, Helen wondered, or just very stupid, or perhaps absolutely brilliant at protecting herself? ‘Yes, it was quite a wrench,’ she said.
Elizabeth pulled up a couple of weeds and tossed them on the compost heap. ‘I wish I felt you could talk to me if you had a problem. You’ve been such a help to me and it would make things a bit more equal.’
Helen almost laughed. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ she said. ‘I don’t really talk to anyone.’
‘I suppose it’s enough to have Richard,’ Elizabeth said comfortably. ‘You can always talk to him, can’t you?’
Richard never quite got used to prison visits. He tried to think of them as just part of the job, but in many cases the sentence seemed disproportionate to the crime and the loss of liberty such a savage punishment that he had no patience with anyone outside who complained that conditions were too soft. Knowing that he could leave and his client couldn’t gave an uncomfortable edge to all his interviews. And yet at the same time he knew he was often a vital bridge between them and the outside world. The smell and the feel of prison stayed with him for hours afterwards, tainting the day.
‘I just know there’s something wrong,’ Bob had said. ‘You know how you can tell but you can’t put your finger on it.’
Richard did know, all too well. ‘Have you asked her?’
‘Oh yeah, but she keeps smiling and saying don’t be silly. It’s that smile really… I just know she doesn’t mean it.’ Richard knew the smile too because Sandra had used it on him, seeming to agree with him and then ignoring all his suggestions. It was a docile, secretive, subversive smile: he could picture her as a child using it on parents and teachers to get her own way, hoping they wouldn’t notice what she was doing.
‘Maybe it’s something she wants to save up till you get home,’ he said without much hope. ‘Maybe it would be easier to talk about it then when you have all the time you need.’
‘I can’t last out till then,’ Bob said. ‘There’s no way.’
‘But it’s not long now, if you can just hang on.’
‘I’m afraid I’ll do something stupid. Can’t you go and see her for me and ask her? Tell her to give it to me straight. I’d much rather. I can’t think about nothing else.’
He thought of Bob now as he sat in the pub hearing Felix talk about Inge. ‘I wasn’t at all sure how you’d react,’ Felix said.
‘You shouldn’t have worried,’ Richard said, ‘it’s a weight off my mind.’
Felix looked relieved. ‘D’you mean that?’
‘Yes, I really think it might be good for both of you.’ Felix turned his glass round and round on the table and Richard found the gesture irritating him almost to screaming point. ‘Nothing’s happened yet. But when she turned up at the shop I thought it was only fair to take her out to lunch and I got the impression she’d quite like to have an affair.’
‘I’m sure she would. She’s always telling me how frustrated she is. I think she feels it’s not such a humiliating word as lonely. It’d be ideal for her – someone like you to keep her happy. And she’d be no threat to Elizabeth.’
‘No, of course not,’ said Felix, looking surprised. ‘Well, we’ll see. I just wanted to clear it with you, just in case. It does feel a bit incestuous.’
‘It wasn’t her fault I left her,’ Richard said, trying to be fair. He had never liked the position of dog in the manger. ‘She didn’t do anything wrong. I just felt I was being eaten alive.’
‘She does still adore you,’ Felix said thoughtfully, as if meeting her again had given him a fresh perspective on the stale known facts. ‘It’s very impressive.’
‘Yes, I know,’ Richard said irritably. He felt Felix was trying to reassure him and he resented it.
Felix went on turning the glass. ‘The boys are amazing. So tall. It was all I could do not to comment on their growth.’
‘Oh, were they with her?’ This was a surprise. It seemed unlike Inge to take them to a bookshop.
‘No, but I drove her home.’
‘That was kind of you.’ It was odd to think of Felix arriving at the house with Inge, seeing the boys. Odd not to be there with them. The whole thing was odd.
Felix stood up, glass in hand. ‘Same again?’
Richard thought of Bob again when he went to see Sandra. Her council flat was cold and cramped and smelt of damp washing. With three children under five Sandra often found it too difficult or expensive to get to the launderette. But her face had a new look of determination and self-satisfaction as she listened to Richard, the look of a woman who has finally got her life in order. She was twenty-seven, though she somehow managed to look both older and younger, like an elderly child. She listened but she did not hear. She was starting a new life. Soon all her washing would be drying in the sun.
‘He’ll go mad if I tell him now,’ she said.
The children played round their feet, demanding attention or stumbling off to hide behind the furniture. ‘But he’s already going mad worrying about it,’ Richard said. ‘He knows something’s wrong.’
Sandra’s face set with a stubborn mulish look. She wasn’t bothering to smile today. She didn’t have to be ingratiating to Richard any more. Or to Bob, come to that.
‘I can’t help that,’ she said. ‘We’re going. Dave’s got the tickets.’ She said his name with pride. Another man wanted her. Her and Bob’s three children.
‘Does it have to be Australia?’
‘Yes, it does.’ The two-year-old wailed. ‘Oh, shut up Darren. I’ll be safe there. He can’t have another go at me if I’m in Australia, can he?’
‘But he’ll never see his children.’
‘He should have thought of that before.’ She sounded almost smug.
Richard tried a different approach. ‘Look, I know he gave you a bad time—’
‘A bad time? My doctor says I nearly died.’
‘I think you’re exaggerating a bit. I did see you in hospital and I talked to your doctor…’
‘Well, Dave says I nearly died.’
‘I’m not defending what Bob did, but you did know how violent he can be and you did make him very jealous.’
Sandra looked shocked. ‘Are you saying it’s all my fault?’ The four-year-old started investigating a power point. ‘Samantha, come out of there, you’ll hurt yourself.’
‘No, of course I’m not. Bob has to take responsibility for what he did, just as you have to. But he is very sorry and he does care a lot about you and the children. He knows something’s wrong and he’s in quite a state about it.’ But he could tell he wasn’t getting through. Sandra’s gaze drifted around the room. She stubbed out her cigarette and lit another. ‘Couldn’t you tell him the truth and maybe put off going away till he’s out, so at least he can have some time with the kids? It’s going to be one hell of a shock for him to come out and find he’s lost his entire family. It could push him right over the edge.’
‘It’s funny really,’ Sandra said thoughtfully. ‘If he’d married me when I wanted I couldn’t do this, could I? It’s like he’s brought it on himself.’
Richard said, ‘Look, Sandra, will you think about it? If you can’t face him with it, can you write him a letter and I’ll support him all I can.’
Now Sandra smiled. ‘I want you to tell him for me. After I’ve gone.’
Helen watched Magdalen walk round the studio, pausing in front of each canvas. It was agony. In the old days she would have lit a cigarette. But in the old days the paintings would have been finished. She had never let Magdalen see unfinished work before. It felt dangerous, unnatural, even slightly obscene.
She tried to think about something else while Magdalen walked and looked. She was reminded of the indignity of lying on the gynaecologist’s hard couch for one of what felt like countless internal examinations for pregnancy, contraception, abortion and minor forms of VD. It was the same process of trying to disassociate her mind from her body and remind herself that this was an unpleasant necessity. Somewhere out there Magdalen was examining her intimately and it had to be endured: she had to grit her teeth and relax and soon it would be over.
Time passed. She remembered the cold hard speculum. Magdalen said, ‘I don’t know what you’re worried about. I think they’re wonderful.’
Warm relief flooded Helen. She knew Magdalen never pretended. She heard herself talking fast and excitedly, like a child. ‘I’m pleased with some of them, but they’re not all finished and I can do better, I know I can, and there aren’t enough of them…’
Magdalen turned her back on the pale oblong shapes. ‘What is all this? It’s not like you at all.’
‘Oh, they’re meant to be about serenity and I’m not feeling serene.’
‘No, I can see that.’ She studied Helen’s face. ‘Why not do one about how you’re actually feeling?’
‘It’s too soon.’
‘We could settle for a smaller show.’
‘No, I must get it right. It’s important. I want to get it right.’
Magdalen lit one of her small cigars. ‘Helen, stop saying yes but. How much more time d’you need?’
‘To be realistic, not optimistic… about three months, I think.’ She had rehearsed this in her head but it was still hard to say.
‘OK,’ Magdalen said easily. ‘It’s not the end of the world.’
‘Oh Magdalen, I’m sorry. Sackcloth and ashes. I’ve had one hell of a year.’
Magdalen looked puzzled. ‘The last time we talked it was going so well.’
‘Yes, it all fell apart in September.’ She needed a shield against the facts; she went over to the corner where she kept a bottle of whisky and poured herself and Magdalen two drinks.
‘What happened?’ Magdalen said.
‘Oh – life just got in the way.’
‘You’re not doing too much teaching?’
‘No, that’s all fine, the students are lovely. Besides, I need the money.’ She watched Magdalen shrug. ‘Yes, I know, if I did more work, etc, etc. Anyway, there it is. I can’t be ready on time.’
The shame of it. She had never before had to postpone a show. She had never had to ask Magdalen to look at unfinished paintings. She had never been unprofessional and let people down.
‘Come and have lunch,’ Magdalen said, as if it didn’t matter at all.
‘I don’t deserve lunch.’
‘Helen. I’ve never seen you so punitive.’
‘No, neither have I.’
Magdalen sat on the arm of the old brown chair Helen had never replaced. It was hard and prickly, horsehair stuffing bursting from it. Helen sat in it every day to look at her work and think about what to do next. It had been second-hand when she and Carey bought it for the first flat they had ever shared. Magdalen said, ‘Are you missing Sally?’
‘Yes, I expect that’s part of it.’
‘How’s Richard?’
‘He’s fine. Busy as ever.’ She could feel Magdalen probing for clues and she didn’t like it: they had always talked about work or trivia. She didn’t feel she owed Magdalen information because she had been understanding about the show.
‘Well, I’m not just here to make money out of you,’ Magdalen said after a short pause, and they both smiled. ‘Not that I object to that. But you know I’ve got every confidence in your work. If there’s anything you’d like to talk about, or anything I can do to help…’
‘I know. I appreciate that.’
‘Thank you but no thank you?’
Helen went on smiling.
‘I wish you’d come to the Jerome Ellis party,’ Magdalen said, grinding her cigar out on the floor. ‘He’s so pleased with your Seven Deadly Sins, and they really look very good in the oast house.’
‘He just thinks of me as an interior decorator. Only cheaper, of course.’
‘Look, I know he’s a pretentious git on a bad day, and a pain in the arse on a good one, but he is rich and he fancies himself as a patron. They’re thin on the ground these days.’ Magdalen eased herself off the chair and Helen tried once again to work out how she managed to look so elegant when she was considerably overweight. ‘You might meet some useful people at the party and if you let him commission you again…’
‘God, I think he must be the original fate worse than death.’ Helen felt safer now they were talking about someone else; she could relax. ‘He wouldn’t know a real painting if it jumped up and bit him.’
‘I know you hate doing commercial work but you do it very well. I don’t think you realise how versatile you are. You could have two quite separate careers.’
They faced each other across the ancient chair, Magdalen pulling on her gloves.
‘Sorry, Magdalen, I know I’m hard to promote. It must be a nightmare for you.’ She wanted to placate Magdalen now the heat was off. She could feel her attention span was coming to an end. In a moment, like the searchlight beam from a lighthouse, it would move past Helen and be focused somewhere else.
‘I don’t mind. It just seems a pity for you. Such a waste of potential. Still, if that’s how you want it.’
Felix was nearly asleep when he heard Inge say, ‘Shall I get us a drink?’ He had been aware of her moving restlessly beside him and he knew she hated him to doze off after fucking: he had had the same problem with many women, who seemed to take it as a personal affront, but he had kept his eyes shut nevertheless.
‘That would be nice,’ he said, wishing she had left him in peace for another ten minutes. It didn’t seem much to ask after all his exertions. He was beginning to find her heavy going because she always seemed to want more. He understood that he had to make up for years of starvation, and for the fact that he was not Richard, but he still found it a strain.
She got out of bed and he heard her moving around and the clink of glasses, then she said, ‘I do hope you’re right, Felix, I hope you’re sure we’re not going to catch any infection.’
The remark irritated him profoundly. She had made it before, but always after the event, which indicated, he thought, that she was not really worried at all but merely did it to annoy, because she knew it teased him.
‘We’ve been into all that,’ he said, immediately regretting his choice of words. ‘I’m quite sure we’re both perfectly healthy.’
‘Perhaps. But I can’t take any chances. It would be terrible if I give Richard a disease when he comes back.’
‘Well, that’s an original way of looking at it.’ He was now thoroughly awake, noticing her mad certainty that Richard, like Pinkerton, would return. Inge as Madame Butterfly. It was an intriguing thought and one that had never occurred to him before. He wondered if he should share it with her.
‘Don’t you agree?’
‘I don’t believe you and I are at risk at all but if we were then I don’t think Richard’s health would be my first priority.’
‘Ah,’ she said, with a curious note of triumph mixed with sadness in her voice, ‘then you don’t love him as much as I do.’
‘That’s hardly surprising,’ said Felix, feeling uncomfortable and forgetting about opera.
‘Don’t you even worry about Elizabeth?’ She came back to the bed with two glasses of wine and stared at him. He always found it disconcerting that her eyes were blue when the rest of her seemed like a sepia print.
He said, ‘Inge, in a long career, I’m happy to say that none of these dread diseases has ever materialised.’
‘You’ve been lucky.’ She sounded sulky. ‘It’s very boring at the clinic. You always have to wait a long time and occasionally they are rude to you.’
‘I’ll take your word for it. Maybe you could get Richard to pay for Bupa.’
‘Poor Richard,’ she said. ‘He can’t afford anything now he has to support the cow.’
Felix drank his wine rather fast. Really she was stuck in a time warp, as if desertion and remarriage were recent events. Perhaps she was more like Miss Havisham, with her yellowing wedding dress and cobwebbed cake. ‘Actually, I don’t think that’s quite accurate. I think it’s supporting you that he finds a strain.’
‘Have I made you angry talking about disease?’
‘Well, it’s not exactly romantic.’
Her eyes widened and he realised that he had fallen into a trap. ‘But I didn’t know we were supposed to be romantic. I thought we were two old friends who have sex together. I thought we could speak frankly. Anyway, I like to speak frankly with everyone. Don’t you think it’s the best way?’
This was so far from being Felix’s philosophy that he was amazed she could even ask him such a thing. It must be her foreign sense of humour again. She was playing games and he felt tired at the thought of it. He had played games in the past, but Sally had not played them and he had got out of the habit.
‘Not always, no,’ he said, ‘I think it can cause a lot of damage.’
A slight look of worry came into her face, as if he had threatened her. She got up and wandered off in the direction of the wardrobe.
‘If you’re looking for the bathroom,’ he said, as she opened the wardrobe door, ‘it’s over there… and that’s the wardrobe.’
Inge stared at the clothes he had bought Sally. Felix felt naked, exposed and angry as never before in his life.
‘Full of beautiful clothes,’ she said. ‘Now I know your secret, Felix. You like to dress up.’ She laughed. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t tell, so long as you are nice to me.’
It was his own fault, of course. He should never have let her come to the flat. But he was so used to entertaining women on his own territory, safe from the unexpected return of husbands and children and au pairs, that it had become a habit. Besides, it was tiresome to have to keep driving to Camden Town from Putney or Fulham and Inge was eager to get out of the house, so the arrangement suited them both quite well.
He said, ‘Inge, I seem to remember you saying when we started this affair that you always spoil a good thing. I’m beginning to see what you meant.’
She reached out a hand and very slightly flicked with one finger a black and silver jacket he had bought Sally just before she had told him she was pregnant. A jacket she had never worn. ‘I was only teasing you,’ she said. ‘Where’s your famous British sense of humour? You talk about it all the time, you English, but I don’t think you have it really.’
‘You do like to push your luck.’ The words seemed totally inadequate for the boiling rage he was feeling, but the tone must have reached her, for her expression softened and she turned to face him.
‘Don’t be cross with me, Felix. They’re such beautiful clothes and I’d like to try them on. May I? Did you buy them for a married woman who could never take them home?’
He supposed they had just had their first row and he found it oddly stimulating. They couldn’t love each other but at least they could fight. She was still Richard’s wife and the smell of her excited him and she had the most responsive body he had ever touched. Now she had blundered across Sally’s clothes and he wanted to punish her. He could be violent with her in a way he had never been to Sally and she would understand and they would both enjoy it. Perhaps she had even done it on purpose.
‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Now shut the wardrobe door and come back to bed.’
It was noisy in the coffee shop and Sally didn’t know all the people round the table, only the ones in her seminar group. They were discussing a case in the news, about a student who was taking legal action to try to prevent his girlfriend from having an abortion. Sally wished they would talk about anything else. She wanted to run away but she had only just come in and she was hungry; she wanted to finish her pie and chips and her nice fattening cake. She had been eating rather a lot lately but it never seemed to be enough.
‘But it’s her body,’ said Tessa, who was a keen feminist. ‘How can he possibly make her have a baby she doesn’t want?’
‘It’s his baby too,’ said a bloke with a beard. ‘He must have some rights.’
‘You’d be the first to shout if he was insisting she had an abortion.’
‘I think it’s murder,’ said someone with a cross round her neck.
‘God, you’re living in the dark ages,’ said Tessa’s friend Ann, munching a doughnut. ‘It’s a woman’s right to choose.’
Sally wondered if any of them had any idea what they were talking about, what it felt like to make that decision, to have a child inside you and let someone take it away. How surprised they would all be if she stood up and shouted at them that they just didn’t understand.
‘What about the man’s rights?’ said the bearded guy.
‘He doesn’t have any rights.’
‘Why not? Just because he’s a man?’
‘No, because it’s her body. I just said that. You don’t listen.’
‘Anyway, if he cares so much about babies,’ said a girl Sally had seen at the debating society, ‘he should have been more careful.’
‘She should too. It’s not that difficult,’ said the beard.
‘Anybody can make a mistake,’ said Tessa. ‘There’ll always be abortions because nobody can get it right all the time.’
‘It’s not about abortion,’ said Jamal suddenly. He was in Sally’s seminar group and she liked him but he was usually very quiet. ‘It’s about one person trying to force another to do something against their will. That has to be wrong. What do you think, Sally?’
Sally couldn’t speak. She was afraid she might start crying. She could feel Jamal watching her and she shoved more pie and chips in her mouth as an excuse for not answering.
‘If you don’t want that lasagne,’ said Ann to the beard, ‘can I have it?’
‘God, you’re such a pig,’ said Tessa fondly.
The next student was a girl. Helen wondered if she had realised yet the particular difficulties that lay ahead of her as a woman painter, or whether she thought the pill and woman’s lib. had taken care of all that. She wasn’t sure which way up her paintings should be, so they took some time to arrange. There were four of them, all different sizes, in red and orange and yellow, full of lines and holes and cuts.
‘They’re quite slow,’ Mike said after studying them for a while.
Helen said, ‘They seem to be about something in decay. Something bruised or damaged in some way.’
‘I’ve been leaving them to dry and then removing bits so I get a mark where they’ve been,’ the student said. ‘It’s like a sort of controlled accident.’
‘It’s as much about the edge as what’s inside,’ Andy said.
The student lit a cigarette. She looked as young as Sally, although she couldn’t be if she was in her final year. ‘I see the interior shape as an animal skin,’ she said.
‘The two middle paintings seem to receive light from outside,’ said Mike.
‘I’m thinking of making the canvas do the drawing for me,’ the student said.
‘That’s a neat trick if you can manage it,’ said Helen.
Andy said, ‘D’you see the paintings as concrete memories?’
The student looked surprised. ‘No. I feel they’re living things.’
Helen said, ‘Does anything about them disappoint you?’ She liked the students to be self-critical.
‘Yes, the scale is wrong. I worked on it too long without stretching it.’
‘What did you do in the summer?’ Andy asked.
‘I’ve been looking at wall paintings in monasteries in India. And Tantric art. And torn posters and stains and water marks.’ She sounded enthusiastic.
While I arranged my daughter’s abortion, Helen thought. But no one wanted to hear about that. Or at least there was no one to tell. No one to congratulate or sympathise or absolve. Was Sally punishing her by not writing, not ringing up? Or was theirs a conspiratorial silence to evade detection?
‘Have you seen Regent’s Canal since they drained it?’ Mike asked conversationally. The student looked vague.
‘The colour isn’t distorted through perspective,’ said Andy, still studying the paintings. ‘I see it very much as spaces within spaces.’
Helen said, ‘The ones that are painted stretched help the decisions you make about the edge.’
‘What’s your thesis about?’ Mike asked.
‘Suicide,’ said the student. ‘In painters and poets.’
‘Ah,’ said Andy, ‘death is a very big subject this year.’
‘Have you read Sylvia Plath?’ Helen asked, thinking that there was someone who wrote to her mother a lot.
‘No, not yet,’ said the student, as if there was no urgency with graduation only a few months away.
‘There’s a very good book about a psychotic girl doing paintings,’ said Mike.
Andy nodded. ‘And who was that mathematician who killed himself by making cyanide from apple pips, using electrodes?’
It was strange, Helen thought, how they seemed to perk up at the mention of so much death. But that couldn’t be why Sally was silent. She couldn’t be as unhappy as that. And someone from the university would have got in touch.
‘Isn’t it interesting,’ Andy said, ‘how many people commit suicide outside their own country?’
The next student was a tall dark thin young man with glasses. His paintings were busy with vivid splashy colour all over the canvas.
‘How d’you know when to stop?’ they asked him.
‘When I don’t know what to do next.’ He frowned. ‘They’re not finished as such, but I don’t want to spoil what’s there.’
‘Well, I feel I’m allowed to sink back into the canvas,’ Mike said.
They both lit fresh cigarettes and questioned the student about the scale size. ‘How did that come about?’
He didn’t answer, although he looked as if he meant to.
‘You’re controlled by the way you make a gesture,’ Helen told him. ‘There’s a wedge of pictorial information that pushes you through the surface of the painting into another painting.’
The student had brought constructions and collages to be assessed as well as paintings. Helen asked him why he compartmentalised his work, but he didn’t seem to know.
‘Couldn’t you think more in terms of a synthesis?’ she persisted.
The student smiled but did not reply.
‘We’re going to be looking at thousands of these paintings soon,’ said Mike. ‘That’s not to say they’re bad.’
‘In fact they’re close to being very good,’ said Andy.
‘But they all look the same, or they soon will.’ It sounded cruel.
‘The nice thing about the collages is, they’re a breathing space,’ Helen said encouragingly.
The student was doing a thesis on guys who didn’t speak in films. There was not much they could say to that. The deadline was the end of March and he hadn’t started yet but seemed confident that he would have the first draft done by the New Year. Helen admired his optimism. She tried to imagine Christmas with Sally. Elizabeth asking questions. Felix dropping in.
The last student brought one large blue-grey abstract and a lot of small collages. They had a strong architectural feel.
‘These are spaces a human being could inhabit,’ Mike said.
‘In fact why not have a human presence?’ Andy lit a cigarette.
‘I want that ambiguity,’ said the student. ‘I don’t want to give those clues.’
‘Well, I’m not sure what the hell I’m looking at,’ said Mike.
‘Well, all right,’ said the student, hurt.
‘At its worst it’s too much about art,’ said Andy crushingly.
Helen was looking at the drawings in the notebook. They were quite different from the painting and collages on view.
‘These are much your best work,’ she said. ‘Very stylish, very assured.’ She had often found this so: the privacy of the notebook allowed students to relax and work naturally, whereas a large canvas could make them self-conscious and clumsy.
‘If you’re painting flags,’ said Andy, still looking at the picture, ‘why not stick on two flags instead?’
The student looked shifty, as if he had been caught like that before. ‘I like to hide things with aesthetics,’ he said.
‘I think you know what the subject-matter is and this is camouflage,’ said Mike severely.
The student lit a cigarette. He said he was doing his thesis on the harlequin. He equated the harlequin with art. It was all about frustrated means of expression. Helen sensed an accusation somewhere.
‘What next?’ she said. ‘Are you going to do your MA?’
‘Not yet. I thought I might go to Japan for a while.’
‘You’ll need to speak Japanese, won’t you?’ said Andy.
‘Or Germany perhaps,’ said the student quickly.
‘Do you speak German?’
‘No.’
Carey came to fetch her and they drove around Sussex, stopping for cream teas or walks on the downs. She found it hard to think of him as her father: it was more like flirting with a stranger, or going out with a new boyfriend or even (if she closed her eyes) being with Felix again. She found she talked all the time about Helen and the abortion, not sure if he wanted to listen but certain she was talking too much, yet unable to stop. Words leaked out of her like tears or menstrual blood, fluid beyond her control, and he answered, but she hardly heard his answers because she was so anxious to talk again.
‘I haven’t written to her at all and I only ring up when I have to, so Richard won’t think it’s odd. Then I pretend I’ve run out of money so I don’t have to talk for long. I’m so angry with her, I just want to punish her all the time.’ The anger pulsed inside her, alarming waves in which she might drown, yet all mixed up with wanting to see Helen and hug her and be comforted.
‘Well, she made you do something very serious,’ he said, sounding grown up and reasonable.
‘But I let her do it, so it can’t be all her fault.’ Even now she still wanted to be fair. ‘And Felix could have stopped her. It could all have been different.’
‘Do you wish it had been?’
‘I don’t know, that’s the worst thing. I don’t know what I feel. Sometimes I dream I’m still pregnant and when I wake up I cry because I’m not and yet I’m so relieved I’m not… So how can I blame her? It’s not fair really, is it?’ The dreams were awful and she dreaded them; they made her put off going to bed.
‘D’you blame Felix too?’
‘Yes, but not so much. I’m very angry with him but I have to keep remembering some of it was my fault. I didn’t tell him when I took a risk. I don’t know why I did that. I’ve thought about it a lot.’ And right up to the last minute she had thought he might change his mind and turn up to rescue her, but that was hard to say. ‘He wrote me a lovely letter all about how sorry he was and how he’d always love me, but I haven’t answered it. I want to punish him as well as Mum. Isn’t it pathetic? That’s the only way I can punish them, by not writing letters. That makes me look pretty feeble, doesn’t it? Maybe they don’t care whether I write them letters or not.’
‘I’m sure they do,’ he said gently, ‘especially Helen.’
‘Well, I could punish them more. I could tell Richard what happened and I’m sure he’d hit the roof, but I don’t want to do that. He’d be furious with them both and he’d be terribly disappointed in me and it still wouldn’t make me feel better. Sometimes I just wish I could go to sleep for years until I could be sure of waking up feeling different.’
There was an awkward silence then and she sensed him trying to say something difficult.
‘I feel a bit guilty too,’ he said at last. ‘Helen did ask me if we’d foster the baby if you wouldn’t have an abortion, but Marsha wasn’t keen. Not now we’ve nearly got four of our own. She said she would if she had to but she’d much rather not and I couldn’t really blame her, as she’d be doing all the work. I mean, I’m away so much.’
Sally felt confused, almost wishing he hadn’t said that. ‘Mum didn’t tell me that. She never made me feel I had any choice.’
‘Well, I don’t think you did, not really. Not without telling Richard.’
‘That’s the worst thing. She just made me do what she wanted and I don’t know if it was because she thought it was best for me or because she hates Felix so much.’
‘Maybe she doesn’t know either,’ he said, as if that made it all right.
She said, unable to ask directly for what she needed, ‘I’m really dreading Christmas.’
Richard was surprised how uncomfortable he felt to know that Felix and Inge were having an affair. He had thought it would be a wonderful relief: a happier Inge, off his hands and off his mind, and a happy friend enjoying harmless pleasure. In prospect, this had seemed an ideal arrangement, beneficial to everyone concerned. But somehow in his mind they had lingered forever on the brink of an affair; he had not thought at all about the reality of them actually having one. When Felix said to him one night in the pub, ‘She really does love you very much,’ Richard felt a sensation he could not quite identify, a shiver of alarm that Felix was trying to tell him something he did not want to hear.
He said, ‘Ah, you’ve seen her again,’ and could not look at Felix although he could feel that Felix was looking at him.
‘Yes,’ Felix said, very clear and straight, ‘we’ve been seeing quite a lot of each other.’
A strange churning began in Richard’s stomach. Images of Felix and Inge naked, in bed, making love, flooded into his mind. It didn’t make sense. Surely he couldn’t be (it was difficult even to focus on the word, he squirmed at the thought) jealous? He loved Helen. He had been trying to escape from Inge for ten years. He said carefully, ‘So it’s begun.’
Felix said, ‘Well, yes. I didn’t know how to tell you. It’s a delicate matter.’ He sounded pleased with himself, Richard thought. ‘I couldn’t just ring you up and say “Oh, by the way…” now could I?’
‘It’s all right, Felix,’ Richard said, conscious of sounding irritable. ‘We discussed it in advance and I gave you my blessing or however you like to put it.’
‘Not quite the same as a fait accompli, though, is it?’ Felix drained his glass. ‘I actually feel quite embarrassed talking to you about it. That’s a new sensation.’
Richard said sharply, ‘D’you want sympathy?’
‘Sorry, sorry.’
‘No, I’m being stupid.’ Now he felt Felix was trying to humour him. He took a deep breath to steady himself. ‘It’s all for the best. I’m pleased, really I am. Now maybe she’ll cheer up and get a job and Helen won’t feel we’re being held to ransom all the time.’
Felix said, ‘It’s no picnic being with someone who’s so very much in love with someone else. Never happened to me before. Quite a blow to my ego. All she wants is someone to prop her up till you come back.’
Richard believed him. He knew Felix was telling the truth and yet he felt unbelievably angry, as if Felix was trying to patronise him. He said furiously, ‘Tell her not to hold her breath.’
There was a tense silence. Felix said, ‘You’re not going to let this affect our friendship, are you? Because if you are, I’d rather drop the whole thing. Just think of it as the nearest I’ll ever get to social work.’
Richard forced himself to look at Felix and saw the same civilised face that he had known for twenty years. It was odd to see Felix unchanged after what he had just heard him say. He wondered if he was going slightly mad. Felix was very attractive and so was Inge. He didn’t desire either of them – how could he? – so why should they not enjoy each other and leave him free to be happy with Helen? It was a perfect arrangement, and he had sanctioned it in advance, so why did he not feel good about it?
‘It’s all right, Felix,’ he said. ‘Really it is.’