A Question of Guilt Read online

  ‘Suffering from guilt, and so he should. On a reading from my unchauvinistic mind, you understand, I think he led Mrs Cartwright up a garden path. Just a bit. Not the first time he’s had a profound effect on female clients: a few legacies from the older and more affectionate; he seems to have a way with them. Oh, I believe him when he says he never went to bed with Eileen, or wanted to, though I’ve come across stranger tastes and even uglier mistresses. Sorry, that is a chauvinistic remark, but I don’t believe him when he says he never gave her any encouragement either. She isn’t that mad, that directionless. Apart from that minor dishonesty, he’s an unexceptionable man, handsome and charming, wonderful manners. You’ll probably fall for him. I gather most women do.’

  ‘Now that really is chauvinistic,’ Helen laughed, ‘or just prejudiced. But I’ll overlook it. Go on.’

  ‘I think Michael Bernard loved his wife after his fashion, but if it wasn’t for the manner of her dying, he’d recover pretty quickly. As it is, it’ll take longer.’

  ‘You’re rather hard on him. When you say encouragement, I take it you don’t mean encouragement to kill his spouse?’

  ‘No, no, I’m sure not. I don’t mean that at all. I just mean … encouragement. Bernard was like a man with a pet he didn’t understand: he let himself touch her, flatter her vanity and she him, that’s what I mean. He encouraged the hopes, but not the consequences, poor bastard.’

  They were silent for a minute.

  ‘Perhaps that’s what real love is,’ said Helen, suddenly depressed, trying to dismiss it. ‘Willingness to go to any lengths, a belief in being right about it. No room for doubt.’

  ‘God save me from it then,’ said Bailey, sensing the downward mood, and smiling her away from it. ‘And on that note, preferring as I do to live happily, is there time for a last drink?’

  ‘My round, I insist.’

  ‘With respect, no. My pleasure.’

  An animal being stroked, but lightly. Nothing personal in the conversation: no more than a chatting in the warmth of sympathetic company, but Helen relaxed like a cat, full of the mild sensation of being placed in a corner, looked after carefully, a temporary peace, a small relinquishing of the daily battle to survive. There was no particular need for the alcohol, but she liked to drink it: no sad craving for acceptable male company, but she liked that even better; at least two desires momentarily satisfied. Rare to sit at ease with a man as distinctive as Bailey, even to speak of a cast of characters, victims and criminals, as if gossiping of old acquaintances. When she thought of it, the conversation was almost as satisfying, and not dissimilar. Bailey returned to see her handsome face pleasantly vacant, her whole stance nicely slouched. He had stopped in his path from the bar, suddenly struck and pleased by this view he had of her as a stranger unconscious of his observation. A woman seen in this revised glance as youthful without being young, girlish without being a girl, elegant without fuss, self-possessed without self-consciousness, open but hidden. He saw what he had merely noticed before: long, thick hair falling from expert pins, a small muscular body with more of the strength of an athlete than the grace of a dancer, graceful nevertheless; a face of resignation, slim, practical hands. An unassuming beauty in the features with the wide, slightly lined forehead, crow’s-feet visibly cornering large, dark eyes, a crooked nose, firm chin and chiselled mouth. To his discerning eye, the clothes were good, stylish without being obtrusive, like Helen herself. The cosmetics on the face had been applied with a confident and knowledgeable hand, and despite such help, she was as natural as air, better like this, when the day’s stresses had unravelled the air of command. He liked all the colours of her: was absurdly flattered that she seemed as comfortable with him in this nondescript place as he was with her. Pity time was so limited. Pity she was a lawyer and he a policeman. On another day, he thought, we could be enemies.

  ‘You know,’ she said, a follow up to nothing, ‘I feel better.’

  Better than what? He did not ask, but his answering smile was a blessing of acknowledgement. It extended from his chin to his hair, the way Geoffrey’s smile did, lifting the shutter of his face and exposing hallmarks. A creased face, with one magnificent frown line lending it gravity, other lines hatched in like shadows in a drawing, until the smile adjusted them all into the complexion of another man, less English, far less severe. It was the smile which betrayed him to Helen, just as her leaning unselfconsciousness revealed that portion of herself he had seen. A mutual interest, perhaps: a little affection to mull the mutual respect. The last drink consumed to inconsequential talk, in peace.

  ‘I’ll drive you home.’

  ‘No, please. No need. You go the opposite way.’

  ‘It’s no trouble.’

  ‘I don’t believe you, and it’s no trouble to get a taxi, really.’

  ‘If you’re sure,’ both slightly withdrawing from the touch of a smile and the mellowing of wine, pleased to retreat a little. Nothing personal. Going home separately, no trouble, only slightly the wiser to one another, both pleasantly warmed. Bailey waved briefly and strode away, while she took her businesslike step over the road, pausing once on the crossing to look back at him, just as he paused to look at her. One more slight wave, embarrassed, both caught in an act of open curiosity handled with ease. An uncertain pair, blessed with social graces, almost ungracious in the reserve of their parting. Far from romance, such a limited acquaintance, but yes, she liked him, the look of his bony figure as it moved away from her, liked his observation, his intellectual ease, his lack of typicality. As for the man, he had just remembered the pleasure of simply liking a woman without wanting, and a kind sensation it was, one he could not remove from his mind.

  The house of the Detective Superintendent was as different from those of his colleagues as was the man himself. He was childless for a start, parentless to boot, but it had not always been so. Halcyon wedded days, years in the modern Chelmsford house with the unmodern wife, mowing the lawn with the best of them, had brought him finally to this. Not everyone’s taste, not even his own some of the time, not a suitable place for a child. There had been the one and only child, whose tenure of life had been brief enough to break the heart of the father, the spirit of the mother and with it, six years’ optimistic marriage. Happy years, despite so much pulling and twisting, testing and probing, unblocking of tubes in the long trial of his wife’s progress towards pregnancy. Bailey had thought that if she did not have the child she so desired, she would reach the insanity she merely touched with the finger of her intense longing, while he had only loved his daughter when she became recognisable in all her gorgeous, puckered features, twisting his heart in her tiny fingers. Cot death, as they watched television, relieved at her unusual quietness. And while some named disease might have made acceptance possible before guilt and loss made ravenous inroads into their lives, this nebulous cause gave scope for both, a grief of awful bitterness. I love you, he had told her. I love you: hold on to me. There is an end to this …, and she seemed to believe him, seemed to stop herself from standing in the child’s room, shaking and weeping months after, so that Bailey ceased to hold his breath, began to hope they would survive, until the day when he failed to remove her from the upstairs room where she had locked herself to scream at the world, howling for his benefit an endless stream of hideous invective. Bailey lived as he lived to lose the vision of his struggling wife in the hands of brown-coated officials looking like removal men, with her scratched and dirty mouth wide open, screaming towards him the obscenities she could not normally have known, let alone understood in her usual, gentle life. So much so young, they said: Grief, they said, crazy with hatred.

  Not the end, could not have been the end even if Geoffrey had possessed less will and understanding, but it was the beginning of the end. Sophie left their house on more heart-stopping occasions than he could count, flying to be pursued and persuaded home, only to fly again within the month. ‘I am not fit to be a wife,’ she would say. ‘Look at what I have
done.’ ‘You have done nothing,’ he would say. ‘You are my beautiful wife, fit to be a queen, come home, my love,’ pampering her without giving way to crying himself, until, soothed by his belief, she stayed between flights like a caged bird hating its master, looking for the space between the bars.

  Until his power for reassurance failed: she fled again, and his energy with her. Not any more. He no longer knew if he pursued her for her sake or for his own and this time, let her go, smoothed the path of her release, still caring. Ceasing to bang his skull and heart against the brickwork of disaster was a doubtful relief: when it stopped, there was peace, but copious bleeding, and in those agonised years of his wife’s breakdown, when the daily tragedies of work only mirrored his private hell, Geoffrey Bailey had acquired his frightening patience. It was then that he became so intimately acquainted with the several kinds of madness, sceptical of success, bland in his approach, secretly helpless day in day out, awash with pity, even while he knew the futility of it.

  ‘Who needs it?’, he had laughed away the hesitant queries of those who wondered how he lived so far outside family life. He never wasted time on explanations which would explain nothing. There was never a shortage of women, just a shortfall in the desire to try, although he had borrowed bodies and affections out of the available pool, handled with care, only to replace them in what he hoped was undamaged condition. Good enough life for all that; not worth risking for more heartbreak of loving. He wondered if Helen West’s independence was as complete as it seemed or as final as his own, since instinct told him she lived alone. Probably: such women were strong, so much more complete as creatures and so skilled in compromise.

  So how would the same Helen react to his present home? Top floors of a converted warehouse in an unfashionable part of the East End neglected with good reason. Spacious and uncluttered, furniture scarcely uniform, yards of open shelving constructed by himself; no sign of pretty chintzes. Bailey had hounded the auction rooms for the huge settee, four-seater freak of diminished glory, bliss to the behind and a place where he often slept. The walls were decorated with the books on the shelves, prints he had framed himself and hung on the white painted bricks. The floor was sanded wood, polished at irregular intervals in a fury of frustration, adorned with a selection of rugs exotic and otherwise. An oak table, complete with matching oak chairs, a mahogany school clock, two faded armchairs, and an open fire completed it. Equipment gleamed in the kitchen-annexe, no fun to buy compared with the happy scavenging and bargaining he preferred. That was all. One colossal room, a bathroom, a spartan bedroom, lamp for reading, another odd chair and desk: tailored for ease, Bailey remembered as he switched on the lights and watched his home spring to life. Nothing new or valuable in the whole mixed bag of his possessions, but as they presented themselves to him, all in their own places, he knew he was home. Pointless to cook, bread and cheese would do when he could use the same time for reading or pottering with the clocks he repaired, radio for company, glass of red in hand. What would Helen think of such profound ordinariness, such unadventurous pastimes amongst the shelves of books which fed his imagination with everything from history to drama and all the endless detective fiction he consumed with such scornful fascination? The eclectic collection of a late self-educated man. Would she like the adopted cat which scratched inelegantly on the balcony? Why worry: she would never see. Hands clumsily restless, he ignored the wine when two glasses failed to please, and went to bed with a book. Nicolas Freeling’s Van der Valk: endearing character, irritating style, a story of crime passionnel. Very apt. He must tell Helen: she might enjoy it. Then again, she might not. In any event, she had no business in his mind, none at all and it irritated him like an unaccountable rhythmic sound, this repetitive thought of her. He was better off with fiction on the page, being kind to cats and polite to those he despised. Leave me alone, Helen. And as the thought formed he imagined he knew the likely response from abrasive Miss West: she would say she had not asked to be in his head and he should not blame her.

  If Geoffrey Bailey had half hoped that Helen West was vexed with the same irritating, reciprocal thoughts as his own, he would have been disappointed. Not that Helen would have been immune from that glimmer of satisfying, safe attraction if there had been time to dwell on it, just as she might have sighed with the enormous satisfaction of reaching home without the phone shrilling as she placed her key in the lock, as if the two mechanisms were connected. She always answered, could not fail to answer in case it was a cry for help, in case it changed her life, although she knew, kicking her bag aside in the rush towards the ringing, it would be neither.

  They had queued for her attention, the telephoners, like planes banked above an airport. First widowed father, mercifully short, a two-whisky complaint rather than a five-whisky babble. Time she went home. Then there was brother: could she lend money? Then friend Kelly, ‘Helen? Thank God you’re in …,’ a strained and tearful voice choking at the other end of the line, brokenhearted. ‘He’s done it again, the bastard. What am I going to do?’ Poor Kelly, believer of false promises painted on tissue, dumping problems as unselfconsciously as she might have dumped litter: so did Father, ex-husband, and half her acquaintance. Helen admired it, felt old, cold and defective for hiding herself so much, envied such public confession, wished she could copy that and help the rest, and slipped slowly from chair to floor, legs against the wall, head by the door, acutely uncomfortable for the hour it took to make Kelly laugh.

  In open defiance of her silent plea, Helen’s phone rang again as she made coffee.

  ‘Hallo, darling.’

  ‘Hugo? Where are you? Hallo?’

  Hallo, ex-husband – keep it light and cheerful, ‘You sound close.’

  ‘In Paris. On business.’ Hugo was never anywhere ordinary doing anything without purpose. ‘On my way home, I think. Hope you don’t mind my calling. What time is it?’

  ‘Ten-thirty, here.’

  ‘Not late then. Have you got a minute?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Simply for words of advice from the store of your wisdom.’ At least Hugo was polite. He hid all demands, large and small, in that cloud of courtesy she remembered so well for its irresistibility. A mild anxiety at what would follow glued her hand to the receiver.

  ‘What advice? More to the point, what wisdom? Didn’t know I had any of that.’ Again she reminded herself to keep this light as pastry. There was a tiny hesitation.

  ‘I may as well tell you … I’m thinking of marrying again, but I’m not sure. That’s why I want your opinion. First hand.’

  ‘Well. What do I say but congratulations? Many of them.’

  ‘No, not yet please. Thinking of it, I said. You’re sure you don’t mind my asking you? You’re wise, Helen, and I need the help. I was sure you wouldn’t mind. You’re so sensible, darling …’

  You’re being evasive, Helen thought. You didn’t tell me you wanted to chat to your ex-wife about a future one, since you’ve certainly made up your mind already. I find this distasteful, just a little humiliating.

  ‘Of course I don’t mind,’ she said, swallowing the line. ‘But I don’t quite see how I can help.’

  ‘But you can. I’d like you to meet her.’

  ‘Meet her? Just the two of us? A friendly lunch? Mulling over your tastes in food and other pleasures?’

  ‘Don’t joke, Helen. It’s too serious. No, I mean the three of us, in London, next week. We’ll pick you up about eight. For dinner. I suppose you’re still in the same little basement?’

  Her garden flat was immediately eclipsed into a thinly disguised cellar, and her life, reflected through his eyes, was petty and dull.

  ‘Hugo, it’s rather a strange suggestion. If I were her, I might just resent it.’

  ‘Oh no, she doesn’t mind. I just want your opinion, but all I’ve told her is that we’re still great friends and I’d like her to meet you.’

  ‘And she agreed?’

  ‘Of course.’
r />   Hugo’s impatience was sharpening his tone. ‘Wednesday, then?’

  It defeated her why she agreed, and then she despised herself for agreeing the moment the phone was down, all her lines of resistance collapsing a moment too soon. Not quite allowed, one more call to go.

  ‘Helen? Darling, where have you been?’

  So many darlings in one evening. How wonderful to be so loved, so finely cherished.

  ‘I’m sorry, Adrian. I’ve been so busy …’

  Adrian, romantic Edwardian, eighty-three if a day, grandfather to none, alone in his room, praying for visitors and playing one indulgent friend against another in ten minutes’ diatribe each. No visitors, he said. Helen knew it was a lie. An old man’s lie, and thus a forgiveable one, like her father’s sometimes, Kelly’s sometimes, and Hugo’s none of the time. Visit the day after tomorrow with the chocolates he liked. He had forgotten the visit of the day before.

  ‘I should think so. I may forgive you if you do come, but I don’t see why I should. I long to see you, darling. You’re so selfish, so young. Don’t be so busy.’

  No, don’t. Stop being busy, stop listening. Stop having days trying to be cheerful and capable followed by quiet evenings entirely devoted to bombardment by phone. An ordeal to be renowned for kindness, or even worse, for sanity. What a joke; what a big joke, for any of them to imagine her as sane, wise or strong. How little they knew. It’s as well, she thought, that I really love you all, or I’d be madder by now. Take the phone off the hook? Like to, but can’t.

  A slow crawl to bed, to sleep in that pretty salvage of divorce, threatened island of a woman who, obliged to live alone, actually enjoyed it most of the time. Not in the cold light of dawn, or when the nightmare woke her and she could have breathed again at the mere touching of his back. Not when the Hoover broke, the lights fused and the bookshelf disintegrated. Always the little things which carried such premonitions of defeat into her life. Tragedies were easier somehow, less irritating, fewer choices, and even these did not stand in the way of the frequent calm pleasure of living alone in a home she enjoyed as much as this.