Guilty Love. CHARLOTTE LAMB

didn’t argue any more; just followed her out to the car park and watched her climb into her red Ford Sierra.

      ‘I’ll be working out of the office on Monday morning, don’t forget,’ he told her before she drove away, and she nodded. ‘Have a restful weekend,’ he added.

      When she got home Barty was out. He didn’t get back until midnight and by then Linzi was asleep. She had tried to stay awake but her body was too weary. She woke up when Barty fell over something in the sitting-room of their small flat. The crash, followed by swearing, shocked her awake; she sat up just as the bedroom door opened and the light blazed on, blinding her.

      ‘Oh, there you are, you little tramp!’ Barty muttered thickly, glaring at her across the room. She could see at once that he had been drinking heavily; he was unsteady on his feet, his face flushed and blurred with drink, his eyes bloodshot.

      Alarm leapt up inside her; she tensed, very pale. When he was this drunk he sometimes became violent and started hitting her. Next day he was always horrified, would cry and beg her to forgive him, and she always did.

      You couldn’t stop loving someone because they were going through a very bad period, and she had loved Barty for as long as she could remember. They had both been through so much together; the bonds of pain bound them as strongly as the bonds of passionate love had done long ago.

      ‘I’m sorry I was late again, Barty,’ she said quietly, hoping to placate him. ‘But it won’t be so bad next week because we won’t be quite so busy. We’ve been preparing a presentation for this new contract...’

      His lip curled as he stared at her. ‘Don’t give me that! I know what you’ve been doing with him. I thought this time you were staying with him all night—that’s the next step, isn’t it? You’ll want to spend all night with him, lovers always do. Or has he got a wife who might object?’

      Linzi was too tired to cry. Wearily she said, ‘Don’t start that again, Barty. How many times do I have to tell you there’s nothing personal between me and Ritchie Calhoun?’

      Barty lurched towards her. ‘Liar!’

      ‘Stop it, Barty!’

      He leaned over her, swaying on his feet. His brown hair was dishevelled, he had lost his tie, and his shirt was open. He still looked so young, she thought, watching him unhappily—there was a lot of the boy left in him. He was too thin, painfully thin, although there was a puffiness around the jaw and eyes that came from drinking, his skin was always sallow and his hazel-brown eyes had heavy shadows under them, but she could still trace the old Barty there.

      ‘I’m not putting up with it any more!’ he snarled at her. ‘You’re giving him notice on Monday. Do you hear? You’re leaving that job, or leaving me—take your pick!’

      Warily she said, ‘We’ll talk about it in the morning.’

      ‘We’ll talk about it now!’

      Linzi could see there was no arguing with him in this state, so she slid out of the bed and picked up her robe from the nearby chair.

      ‘Where do you think you’re going?’ Barty demanded.

      ‘To sleep on the couch,’ she said, suddenly angry.

      ‘Oh, no, you don’t!’ Barty took hold of her by her long, silky hair, and shook her, making tears start into her eyes.

      ‘Barty, you’re hurting me!’ she cried out, and he suddenly threw her away from him. She fell heavily across the bed. The edge of the headboard hit her cheekbone and she gave a cry of pain, stumbling up, a hand to her face.

      ‘Why don’t you just admit it?’ Barty shouted. ‘He’s your lover, isn’t he? Isn’t he?’

      ‘No, Barty!’ she moaned, her voice rising higher. ‘No, no, no!’

      ‘Yes,’ he screamed, and hit her hard. She was too shocked to cry. She stumbled backwards again, fell on to the bed, and before she could scramble up again Barty threw himself on top of her, wrenching his clothes off while he held her down with the weight of his body.

      ‘You’re my wife!’ he muttered hoarsely. He hadn’t tried to make love to her for many months; there had been a time when he’d kept trying, growing more and more humiliated, more and more frustrated. Linzi had tried desperately too, knowing that, physically, it was possible. His doctors had told her that firmly. He would never now be able to father a child, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t make love. The blockage was in his mind—not in his body. She didn’t know if they were right or not; but in the end Barty had given up trying. His ego couldn’t take the constant failures.

      But now his desire was spurred by jealousy and rage; Linzi shuddered with misery as he tried again, his face set, flushed, more with hatred and a drive to impose his possession of her, she felt, than passion. She felt no desire for him; she hadn’t for a long time, and although she didn’t resist him she couldn’t hide her lack of a response. All she felt for Barty now was a weary compassion and a tenderness which was mostly old affection and kindness.

      If Barty wanted her body, she would let him have it, for old times’ sake, because she was his wife and he had been her best friend all her life. But it was useless, he couldn’t do it. Angrily, more and more desperately, he tried—then he slackened and lay still, trembling like a beaten animal on top of her, before rolling off and lying on his face, his body racked by dry sobs.

      Linzi put her arms around him and tried to comfort him, wordlessly murmuring, but he pushed her away.

      ‘Leave me alone! It’s all your fault. How can I make love to a woman who doesn’t want me? Do you think I don’t know you don’t? Do you think I can’t feel you shrinking away from me? You despise me because I can’t give you a baby, I’m not a real man...’

      ‘No, Barty, no, darling,’ she assured him, stroking his hair, and pulled him back towards her, holding him tightly, cuddling him against her like a frightened child. ‘I love you, I’ve never despised you, and it doesn’t matter about babies, we can always adopt one. Why don’t we do that? We’re young, we should be able to adopt...’

      There was a touch of hope in her voice: if they could have a child maybe this would finally end, this nightmare in which they had been lost for two years? They would be a real family again, love would come back, and Barty would be his old self.

      But he lifted his head and glowered at her. ‘I don’t want someone else’s baby! I want my own! The one we were going to have when—’

      ‘Don’t!’ she cried out in agony, as if he had knifed her to the heart. ‘Don’t talk about that.’

      She never had, since the day Barty crashed and the news made his mother collapse with a heart attack and die a day later, just hours before Linzi lost the baby she had been carrying. They had all been in the same hospital that week—Barty in a coma, knowing nothing of what was happening to the two women he loved; his mother dying in the heart ward with Linzi at her bedside when she did so, and later that very day Linzi herself going into premature labour and losing her baby. Linzi had discovered how it felt to be in hell that week.

      ‘You see?’ Barty said bitterly. ‘You can’t even talk about it! That’s why you don’t love me any more. Your great dream was to have children, a family of your own—do you think I don’t remember how happy you were when you discovered you were going to have our baby? It was all going to come true for us, wasn’t it? And then I crashed and Mum died and you lost the baby, and ever since then you’ve hated me.’

      ‘I’ve never hated you, Barty, I couldn’t do that, I love you, this is all in your own mind...and Ritchie Calhoun, too, none of that is true, there’s nothing between me and him.’

      ‘Then why won’t you give that job up?’ he muttered, and Linzi gave a long, weary sigh.

      ‘Yes. We can’t go on like this, Barty—I see that. I’ll resign on Monday, and get another job.’ She didn’t want to do it,