A Clear Conscience by Frances Fyfield Read Free Book Online Page B

‘Look,’ he would say. ‘That’s what happens when you see your life passing in front of your eyes. At the last glance, you are now fifty-six.’ Maybe it wasn’t so funny after all.
    Bailey, long and thin, with his slightly cadaverous features, did not look like a man who smiled easily, although he could and did, frequently, if sometimes shyly, like a man amazed by his own amusement. Helen made him smile: he could catch himself watching her from a distance and grinning. He supposed he was lucky. Not many men could have these ups and downs, these swings of mood, these black days and this unfair ambivalence in the face of commitment to a rather beautiful woman, and still find themselves loved and tolerated, albeit with a degree of exasperation. As an old-fashioned man, raised to regard marriage as the desirable norm, Bailey was ashamed of his lack of formal commitment; sometimes, he realised that Helen had reached the point in their relationship when that was what she wanted. If you don’t want to make a lifetime of it, he told himself sternly, you should let go and make space for some other bugger to do better, but he did not want that either. Nor did he want anyone else, not even the freedom to search for a relationship less complex, although he had flirted with the idea, as had she, both retreating from the brink. And he had proposed marriage, repeatedly, in the early days, to be met by her uncertainty, hurtful at the time, like someone refusing a gift he had taken the trouble to wrap. The tables had turned in the last few months: he supposed he was getting some small revenge.
    Accordingto the clock, one hour had passed in one minute. Helen was late. They were currently in one of their tranquil phases, a celebration of the hazy days of summer, but despite his silent insistence that their relationship remain as it was, the uncommitted, nevertheless exclusive kind, he had to admit that all this talk about tearing down walls in her flat disturbed him a little. He wanted her independent, of course, but not so independent that she built a life without reference to him at all. You’re getting your cake and eating it, said Ryan, ever jealous of the bachelor state. Bailey supposed he was. He hadn’t said to Ryan that even eating cake took effort.
    Nor did he confide in Ryan that Helen and he had hardly made a good job of living together the one time they had tried, although the choice of place, which both of them loathed, had been less than fortunate. And their tastes did not coincide. She was all for deep colours, dozens of pictures, warm fires, dark old curtains, so that her red-walled living room resembled a gentleman’s club. Bailey’s huge single floor, with not one curtain, contained less colour than her bathroom. There was wood and more wood. Shelves rather than cupboards, the pastel work surfaces of the integral kitchen where he placed the clock all cleaned with a spray and wipe. The only dirty thing around here was the cat which came and went and remained missing for days at a time. Cats are like women, Bailey told himself with the cynicism of a policeman; they stay if they want to.
    Eight thirty, supper simmering and no-one to share it. If all else failed, he would read a book. He had been thinking of going further than his LLB, acquired at night school; he might even read a law book. Pity, though: it was one of those evenings when he really needed to talk. There were not many couples, he reflected, who could discuss murder while eating lamb chops. Nor those who study post-mortem photographs for dessert. He wanted to share his current moral dilemma: a trial in which he knew they had not arrested the right man. If not exactly the wrong man, not the right one either.
    Theflat was clean: he was clean. Only his conscience was like a dirty windscreen.
    H elen did not know what to do with a cleaning lady. The confrontation made her awkward. It struck her as a rather lonely and boring