A Clear Conscience (12 page)

‘Fifteenth of March, this year. Can you recall that date?'

‘Yes.' Voice no more than a whisper, fingers moving uncertainly, looking for something to hold.

‘Speak up a little, if you would. Questions come from me, answers to the magistrates. You don't have to look at the defendant. Please.'

Her voice barked the series of orders, plaintive to her own ears, brisk to others, merely compelling to the witness. The defendant looked harmless.

‘We've established you live with the defendant. What time did he come home that evening?'

‘About eleven thirty.'

‘Normal time?'

‘More or less.'

‘Did you have any conversation?'

‘Yes. He said he wanted something to eat and I said there wasn't anything. He got angry.' She was gaining confidence now, going faster.

‘What
happened next?' (Oh for a pound sterling in the bank to mark every occasion she had prompted a witness with such a neutral question.)

‘He hit me.'

‘Can you give us a bit more detail?'

‘He … he head-butted me. You know, bashed his head into my face. I felt my nose go, there was blood everywhere, I started screaming and the baby woke up and …'

‘Could we take this just a little bit slower? You see that lady writing down what you're saying. If you could just watch her pen.'

Phrase by phrase. The words, the blows, the crying of the baby, the decisions, should she go first to the child or to the bathroom for fear the blood would touch him. Helen's hair was piled neatly over a crawling scalp.

She leant towards her opponent. ‘No argument about calling the police, is there? Can I lead on that?' She turned over another damp page, as if she did not know it by heart. Behind her, she could feel Mary Secura relaxing slightly.

‘You called the police. What time was that?'

‘A bit later. About half an hour.'

‘Why delay? Why not do that at once?'

The skin on the girl's face was flushed a dull red, swollen with the first signs of anger.

‘I only called them when I saw what he'd done.'

‘Do you mean your injury?' There was an impatient gesture of denial; another flicker of moisture landed on Helen's hair.

‘No. He'd only gone into the kitchen and eaten the baby's food. Two jars of baby food, and he'd drunk all the milk. I didn't have any left for the morning. That's when I phoned.'

The cut-off point varies every time, Mary Secura said. No telling what will make them crack, the smell of another woman; the drinking of the baby's milk. Presto.

S
ummer had grown into a stultifying incubus of grey skies and humid life. Later, cooler, Helen was attempting to explain to Emily Eliot not only the wonder she was feeling two weeks after the arrival of Cath to clean the house, but also the mixture of emotions she felt at the end of a case she had managed to win. How it should have been a sense of triumph, justice done: a man waiting sentence of imprisonment, Mary Secura grimly pleased, witness weeping. There was no sense of triumph at all. Nothing but the sensation that all her manoeuvring, posturing, bullying and flirting in cross-examination could ever reveal was simply a pale and inaccurate version of the truth. Emily did not really want to listen; no-one wanted to listen to this, not if they came from the foreign realms of normal family life. No-one wanted to hear her expound on the frustration of playing justice by the rules, not for the sake of actually doing any good, but simply because that was the only way of doing the best possible. Emily did not want philosophical conversation.

‘I
think your lifestyle is perfect, you know,' Emily was saying, mournfully. ‘A virile man visiting a couple of days a week, no kids, double income, all that,' she added in the wine-and-coffee bar next to Peter Jones, late-night shopping, Wednesdays. For the first time ever, Helen was irritated with Emily, which was why it was important to put the record straight. A friend was a friend. A friend with kids was one you always had to cross London to see, since your convenience was always subject to theirs, your time infinitely less important, your own commitments to keeping yourself alive, apparently, nil.

‘You make it sound as if I do nothing for the rest of the time,' she said. ‘And I don't have access to Bailey's income, don't want it either. Pity, he earns far more than me.'

Emily looked crestfallen. ‘Oh, I'm sorry,' she said, defusing any misunderstanding before it grew into discomfort. ‘I'm not being very sensitive or realistic, am I? Only there are times when I envy you.'

‘You joke,' said Helen. ‘All I'm saying is you wouldn't have envied me this morning in court. And, as it happens, I often envy you.'

Her
own words came back at her like little arrows. Envy for another was anathema. Even if they did have healthy children, faithful husband, wonderful house and a vision of life Helen found increasingly appealing. Castle walls, she told herself. Just build them.

‘No, I don't joke,' said Emily pulling a face. ‘I know you work hard, and it isn't easy, but keeping a family like mine often makes me feel like the clothes in the tumble dryer, all mashed up, even if they come out all right in the end. I don't know how long it is since I read a book.'

‘Well, tough,' said Helen, crossly. ‘I read them to stop having nightmares.'

They had only come out to make the final choice on the blues and yellows which had haunted Helen for a fortnight and now made her see double. Helen loved to shop; Emily Eliot knew how. Emily turned shopping into a mission with measurable targets; Helen treated it as an excuse for glorious indecision.

‘You wouldn't like a conventional family life, Helen, you really wouldn't.'

Funny how people go on protesting that their own fortune is not as good as it looks, Helen thought. Samples of the chosen curtain material lay on the table in front of them; Helen had a dozen others at home. She slightly regretted the finality of choice, still agonised, reeling at the shock and the cost, wondering if there was still time to change her mind before Emily's needlewoman did her worst.

‘How could you say I wouldn't like married life with 2.2 kids? I could just about do it if I got a move on, even though I'd be an elderly primagravida and I could save precious time by having twins.'

‘Yes, well, you'd better decide before you redecorate the house. Don't think you know it all just because you've got a cat.'

Helen said nothing, feeling the stirring of a depression which often arose, like the beginnings of a headache, when she subjected her life to scrutiny. Emily watched her closely, then picked up a small piece of golden coloured cloth with blue woven into the fabric in thin stripes.

‘You
were right about this one,' she said. ‘Listen, H, am I right in thinking you've got to the stage of wishing dear old Bailey would make an honest woman of you? Do I detect faint yearnings towards the joint mortgage and the patter of tiny feet?'

‘Put like that, I don't know.'

‘Well, just in case you were, let me suggest the primitive approach. You know how they dislike upheaval, poor darlings, and adore their creature comforts? Well, once your three or four rooms are revamped, beckon him in to an oasis of domestic bliss, nice food smells and all that. Works a charm.'

Helen laughed out loud. ‘Is that what you did with Alistair?'

‘You'd better believe it. Even the nicest men are ambivalent, you know. You have to lead them to it.'

‘And now,' Helen said, ‘even if it crossed his mind to want to go, which it wouldn't, of course, your darling Alistair couldn't possibly leave, could he?'

‘Over my dead body,' Emily said, with a grim determination Helen found slightly disconcerting. ‘I'd fleece him,' she added, ‘then kill him. Another glass?'

‘You only have to go round the corner. I have to get the 59.'

‘Oh Gawd, never mind.' A hand was waved. Emily shuffled forward on the small table, arms across bosom, confidential. ‘Now, never mind men. How are you getting on with Cath?'

‘What?' Helen was thinking of nest-building, a spider making a web to catch a big, ungainly fly. Emily drummed her fingers on the table, then snapped them in front of Helen's eyes.

‘Look, I need gossip. Cath, our cleaning lady. Listen, I never mentioned it, because she is such a treasure, and I trust her absolutely round the kids, but she can irritate. A bit clumsy here and there. Sometimes she's so careful I want to scream. Then she goes off into a different world. Must be why she's got the most frightful bruise from falling into your bath.' She bit her tongue, in memory of Cath's habit of open-mouthed eating.

Cath never cleaned the bathroom. Helen had been specific in saying leave the bathroom, that is the only bit I never mind doing and besides, I just can't ask anyone to clean my lavatory. The bathroom was the only thing pristine in the first place: Helen felt defensive and evasive.

‘I've
scarcely seen Cath since the first time,' she said, carefully. ‘I don't have to. She's usually going out as I'm coming in. Otherwise, I've only seen what she can do. Oh, by the way, who came to dinner the other week?'

Emily put her head in her hands.

‘Vegetarian judges. Three. With their wives. I'd cooked a leg of lamb.'

T
he sultry day had transformed itself into an evening of treacherous splendour after a shower. The light was perfect, and the stillness made the trees flanking Helen's street and Helen's garden droop with graceful relief, the leaves green and luscious from the earlier rain. There was the pretence of a fickle greeting in the languid movement of the branches, like a hapless crowd of tired school-children hired to greet a late-arriving celebrity.

Curtain material bought, paint purchased. Renew the house; there was nothing more important.

No Bailey tonight, no hand and body held in the dark. Helen let herself in through the basement door, noticing as she did so how clean the windows were, reflecting her pale face and long dark hair, distorted into greater untidiness. And then when the door swung inwards, she noticed the smell, the first, now familiar and pleasant scent of Cath's ministrations. Lavender polish, a whiff of bleach, an absence of dust and the removal of any other odour. Helen revelled in this smell, liked it enough to mitigate her own reluctance to give away keys, an aspect of the arrangement she detested. She was not like Emily Eliot: she did not really like an open house.

But there was more than a smell; there was someone else there. She could sense the breeze which wafted down the long corridor and threatened to slam shut the front door when the French windows were left open in the bedroom. As her hands fell to her sides, nerveless with a sudden fear, the door slammed behind her. There was a momentary return to throat-constricting panic, but as her eyes adjusted to the light, the fear refused to emerge. In the gloom of the hall, she saw the Hoover crouching like a sleeping animal, a duster on the floor, and from the bedroom, the strange grunting sound of someone humming ‘Onward Christian Soldiers'. Burglars did not clean; Cath did that. The slow development of relief turned to anger.

‘What
the hell do you think you're doing here?'

It was a stupid question, and even in the phrasing of it her anger ebbed away. Cath was cleaning the French windows, standing with her mouth open in mid-verse, the cat curled at her feet, the woman herself smelling of work, blouse abandoned and wearing nothing but a T-shirt, modestly ill fitting. They gazed at one another in mutual shock.

‘I'm cleaning the windows, aren't I?' Cath mumbled defensively. The light was bright, the way it was at the back of the house. Helen squinted, eyes adjusting yet again, still taking in what they had to see: the upper part of Cath's arms covered in bruises which extended across her chest. Cath followed her glance, then deliberately turned away.

‘You frightened the life out of me,' Helen said, moving towards the bed which was central to the room. She took off her jacket and laid it down over Cath's white blouse. The other woman did not speak, did not resume the singing either.

‘Working late?'

‘Yes.'

‘I'll make us some tea, then.'

It was cruel, she supposed, to make a woman sit in the light of the south-facing room where clean windows spared neither her exposure nor the aggression which suffused her face, as she sat with her arms hugged across her chest, a picture of defiance and misery combined. Sweating, just like the witness. Wary eyes, like Shirley Rix.

‘I thought you cleaned for me between three and five.' She looked at her watch. ‘Seven thirty now.'

There was a mumbled response and a violent shaking of the head. She has lovely hair, Helen thought. Rich and curly. Instinctively she felt for her own head, the hair lank from the effect of the courtroom.

‘What
did you say, Cath? Didn't hear you, sorry.'

‘I said, it was so hot, I couldn't stand the thought of that bus.'

‘Did you sit in the garden, then? Fall asleep or something?'

Helen wanted to relinquish the simple art of cross-examination, to rid herself of the habit of incessant questions, and make herself turn a blind eye when the woman's eyes pleaded with her to do just that. She put the tea on the table. It seemed quite inappropriate to offer wine, especially since she remembered her own embarrassment at the thought of Cath finding so many empty bottles in the bin. Helen leant towards her, biting the bullet reluctantly.

‘Listen, Cath, you don't know me and I don't know you. Perhaps that makes it easier. Only you aren't going anywhere until you tell me about those bruises. Is that understood?'

‘I
s that understood?' said Bailey to Ryan. ‘No wisecracks with this lot. We've got to be sober and reasonable.'

‘I'm always reasonable,' Ryan objected.

‘So said the fox in the chicken run. We want to look like two coppers out having a drink and a chat.'