A Taste for Malice (13 page)

‘Because …’ Jim sat down on the floor beside Ben, gathered him in his arms and kissed his forehead. ‘When we got you, you were so perfect we thought it would be too greedy to ask God to give us more children.’

‘Oh.’ Ben smiled, pleased with the answer. Then his attention went back to the TV. ‘But I only want a brother. ‘’Cos then I have somebody to play with.’

Once Ben was in bed Angela repeated the question.

‘Why did we only have one?’

‘This is a bottle of wine story,’ Jim answered.

‘That bad?’ Angela asked, folding her arms in anticipation of some discomfort.

Jim sat beside her, put his arm over her shoulder. She shrank from his touch and then faced him.

‘Sorry,’ she offered.

Jim pulled his arm away, dampening his irritation that even this form of contact was not allowed. Only the other night she was doing her best to tempt him into bed, but that was a road he could not, would not allow himself to go down. If physical contact of all kinds was banned, then he would just have to learn to live with it.

‘It’s not easy listening, honey. Why don’t you let me go and get a bottle and …’

‘Just tell me, Jim,’ her voice was quiet but firm.

He took a deep breath. ‘Okay …’ This was not an easy story to tell. They’d had a difficult time successfully trying for a child and then there were some added complications that would have to be edited out.

For the full and true story they had to go back to the weeks before and after Angela’s mother’s funeral. However, the heavily edited story Jim told Angela was this: they had been lovers for just over a year when it happened. He dropped Angela off home after an evening at the cinema when she invited him in to the house for a quick cuppa.

As they walked up the path, Angela wondered why the house was in darkness. It didn’t make sense to her; her mum was a poor sleeper and would sit up in bed with a barely glanced-at book until she knew Angela was back safe in the house.

Under the tired light of the street lamp, Angela checked her watch.

‘It’s just gone eleven. Surely Mum’s not gone to bed already?’

Slipping her key in the lock, she pushed the door open. ‘Mum. I’m home,’ she announced. Nothing. She turned to Jim, all colour washed from her face by concern.

‘Mum?’ She ran upstairs. The stair light went on. He stood by the front door and listened to Angela’s feet tread across the ceiling into her mother’s bedroom. Silence, then her feet thundered across the carpet and down the stairs.

‘Mum’s not in her bed, Jim. What’s going on? The house is empty. This isn’t like her.’ Her hands were at her throat.

‘Maybe there’ll be a note somewhere. Where would your mum leave you a note if she had to go out,’ he asked.

‘The kitchen table.’ She spun and half-walked, half-ran into the kitchen. Jim followed and all but ran her down when she came to an abrupt halt.

‘Oh my God,’ Angela’s whisper was like a shout in the still of the room.

‘Oh my God,’ she repeated. Her mother was slumped across the kitchen table, as if she was sleeping. For months Jim would see the colours every time he closed his eyes: the red of her cardigan, the white of the table and the sepia tint from the spilled tea that puddled in her grey-blond hair.

Sue was only fifty-five when she suffered a massive stroke.

The next piece of information, Jim decided to keep to himself: the real set of circumstances surrounding the discovery of her mother’s body. It was time for another white lie. What would be the point in telling Angela that they had ended their relationship?

They had actually fallen out a couple of weeks before Angela, on her own, found her mother dead in the kitchen. Prior to this they were getting to what he referred to as the point of no return. Either they made some form of commitment to each other, or they ended it and went their separate ways. Jim was just twenty-two, the same age as Angela and felt strongly that he was too young to settle down. Yes, Angela was a great girl. Yes, they had a great time together. But a lifetime commitment? Not at that point.

On discovering her mum and not knowing what to do, Angela phoned Kirsty. She wasn’t in. Next she tried Jim. He couldn’t refuse the panic in her voice and drove over to hers straight away. Well, after he dropped his new girlfriend off at her own house.

When Jim arrived, Angela was a tight bundle of limbs on the floor, head resting on her mother’s feet. After he helped her on to a chair he phoned 999.

Angela and he were still seated by the kitchen table after Sue’s body had been taken away.

‘Stay with me tonight,’ she pleaded. The need for company was naked in her expression, her voice so small, that Jim simply couldn’t say no.

They sat up for hours drinking from Sue’s favourite stainless steel teapot. Sometimes Angela would talk about her mum, but mostly they sat in silence. At some point, Jim couldn’t remember when or how, they ended up on the couch together. Perhaps Angela wanted to feel someone’s arms around her. It was important to her to feel the solidity, the
thereness
of another person.

What could he say about the inevitability of what happened next? Even now as he reels them off they sound like really weak excuses. They were twenty-two, lying face to face on a couch that had seen much
face to face
action previously.

There was no agenda, no calculation, no aforethought. He can remember being stirred by her nearness, breathing in the apple scent of her hair. One soft press of lips on her cheek, led to one on her neck, to one at the corner of her mouth. She turned to ease his reach. Then it became urgent, pressing, squeezing, touching, grabbing.

‘What are …we can’t …?’ He straightened his arms and pushed himself off her.

‘Please. Don’t stop,’ whispered Angela.

‘But…’ a particularly delicious movement of her tongue on his froze the thought.

Clothes were forced aside.

They thrust at each other, until everything tightened …and then loosened in a sharp, molten exhalation. Like a last, valued breath.

He remembers rolling off the couch on to the floor, panting like a pup. Guilt was an indistinct mass rolling in on the next emotional front, but he didn’t want to pay too much attention just yet. Nerve ends were still snapping.

Breathing now regulated, sitting up, he leaned over and held Angela’s hand.

‘You okay with this,’ he asked, not really knowing what the right thing to say was. Or the right thing to do. Should he go? Should they go back to cuddling? She looked at him as if to say
what the fuck just happened there
? Then she sat up, gathered her knees to her chin, and stared into the near space.

‘That was …’ from her expression she didn’t know what it was. Silence reclaimed the room. A silence thick enough to be grated. A silence that words retreated from.

They dressed facing away from each other, modesty a symptom of their new sense of unease. Not moments before they were two healthy animals caught up in a …what? A bodily reaction? Now they were all thought, reason and dissemblement.

Angela just looked at Jim as he walked backwards out of the room. A big shovel would have been handy at that point. Then he could have just kept on digging.

‘Let me know when the funeral is?’ he said at the door.

Just as he pulled at the handle it flew open and in charged Kirsty.

‘Oww,’ he rubbed at his knuckles, but it seemed churlish in the extreme to complain.

‘What’s wrong,’ she asked, not even seeing Jim. ‘Mum said you were looking for me.’ Her face was pink with alarm and uncertainty. She walked towards Angela, her arms held out. ‘Angela?’

Jim closed the door behind him on the way out, feeling it was best that the two girls be left on their own.

Of course, all these years later this goes unsaid. It comes in under the heading of
Too Much Information
. Then there’s the sub-heading
How Could I
? From the distance of time Jim was less than proud of his actions. Immaturity can only excuse so much; what manner of man was he to take advantage of Angela in that state? With an internal cringe that was souring every moment, he realised that history was repeating itself. And what’s more he was as unable now as he was then to stop himself.

Jim and Angela had hugged like near-strangers after the service, exchanged words over a sandwich at the Funeral Tea, and said what seemed like a final farewell at the door to the hotel where the Tea was held.

Some weeks later, Angela appeared, pale, thin and tired at Jim’s parents’ house. Her timing was impeccable he had just arrived home after a game of squash with his new girlfriend.

‘We need to talk,’ she said. Not a good sign, but he was not quite fully present. His girlfriend was upstairs. The same girl he’d left on her own to go and help Angela on the night of her mother’s death. He didn’t tell her about his session on Angela’s couch, nor had he told Angela that he was seeing someone else.

‘I’m kind of …in the middle of …’ he said.

‘Jim. I wouldn’t just come round if it wasn’t important.’ Something in her tone and in her eyes sent a bead of sweat on a slow slide down the length of his spine.

‘Right.’ He wondered what he should do. There was something really, really wrong here. ‘Let me …’ He looked behind him into the house. ‘Give me …’ God, what should he do?

Angela mentioned a pub in the town. ‘I’ll meet you there in fifteen minutes.’

‘Right.’ Oh shit. He could do without this complication. ‘Okay, see you in fifteen.’

His girlfriend was lying on his bed with Lucky, the family cat. She was less than enamoured. ‘You’re going for a drink with Angela?’ She jumped to her feet, furious.

Lucky fled from the room. ‘I had something important to tell you.’

‘Can’t it wait for a couple of hours? Something’s up. I can tell.’ He shrugged an apology.

‘You haven’t told her about us yet, have you?’

‘Look. Not now. Okay? Her mother just died, for chrissake. She needs …’

‘What?’ She demanded. ‘You’re
my
boyfriend now, Jim. I feel just as bad as you about her losing her mother. And I know when she finds out about us she’ll be less than pleased …but you can’t just run off when she clicks her fingers.’

‘Just this once. Okay?’ He kissed the tip of her nose.

‘There’s nothing to worry about, sweetheart. You’re the one,’ Jim paused. ‘The one I’m with. Okay?’

Angela had a seat by the window, her fingertips on the stem of her wine glass that was more of a prop than a drinking utensil. Her expression was neutral, her eyes studying the knots and swirls of the pine surface of the table.

While he waited for a pint at the bar Jim wondered what he was about to get hit with. Did Angela want them to get back together?

He sat his pint on the table, careful not to spill anything. Before he could meet Angela’s gaze, she spoke.

‘I’m pregnant, Jim.’

His new girlfriend was still in his bedroom when he returned home. Thankfully, his parents were down at the bowling club and didn’t witness all this to-ing and fro-ing.

‘Angela’s what?’ she asked.

Jim sat down on the bed, elbows on his knees, head in his hands. ‘What a fucking mess.’

Silence.

‘Oh my god.’ She paced back and forward. ‘How is she?’

She looked at him, ‘Don’t answer that. You probably didn’t even notice.’

Silence.

‘But we’ve been together for a couple of months. How far gone is she?’

‘Five weeks.’ Jim answered.

‘You bastard.’ She slapped him. ‘You utter bastard. You were sleeping with both of us at the same time.’

He nursed his face. ‘No it was just the once. It was an accident.’

‘Oh. Well that’s all right then.’ She shouted in his face, ‘So what happened? You accidentally fell on top of her …and through four layers of clothing your dick managed to …what…accidentally slide into her vagina where it accidentally left behind some semen?’

‘Something like that,’ he mumbled.

‘You prick. You bastard,’ she shouted and kicked at a pile of his records. Then she turned to face him. ‘So what really happened? You went round to give your condolences and gave her one for old times sake while you were at it?’

‘Something like that.’ His chin was resting on his chest.

‘That is the worst …’ she screamed a short burst of anger. ‘You are unbelievable.’

‘I know.’

‘That girl was in mourning and you …’ again she screamed. ‘That is the lowest, the worst thing I have ever heard.’

‘It wasn’t like that,’ he tried to defend the indefensible. ‘We just …I was comforting her. She needed a shoulder. I …we cuddled on the couch …and it just happened.’

‘She needed a shoulder, Jim. Not your dick.’ She looked him in the eye. ‘And to think I’m …’ Her eyes brightened with tears.

‘You’re what?’

She shook her head to dispel the tears and ignored his question. ‘So how did you and Angela leave things?’

For all Jim knew Angela was still at the bar, still holding the stem of the wineglass with her fingertips, still waiting to hear his response.

Jim had just looked at her when she stopped speaking.

Pregnant, the word echoed through the blank landscape of his brain. Angela was pregnant. He probed for an emotion. How did he feel? Did he want her? Did he want her and the baby?

Pregnant?

Oh shit.

‘You don’t have to say anything, Jim.’ Angela appeared so calm, so together. ‘You needed to know.’ But god only knew what was going through her mind.

In his bedroom, his girlfriend stared at him in disbelief.

‘So you just left her there on her own?’ she asked.

‘What was I supposed to do? Go down on one knee? Offer to pay for an abortion? What?’

‘You’re supposed to talk about it. Re-assure her. Help her cope with this.’

‘How can I do that when I don’t even know what to think myself?’

‘What’s there to think about? You’re going to be a father. Either you take responsibility or you don’t. She didn’t have the luxury of time to think. She’d just be presented with the fact.’

Kirsty walked to the door. ‘And to think I was falling in love with you. I’d never have come into this relationship if I’d known what a bastard you are.’ She shivered. ‘You’ve made me feel so cheap.’