Dirty Tricks

same time. Now he was dead, it would be too dangerous and too dull.

So far from convincing Karen she was wrong, by the Sunday afternoon I had come round to her point of view. Most couples, however fossilized their relationship, have some interest in common, if it’s only cooking or travel or pets. We had nothing. We were like creatures so different that their scales of vision are incompatible. To myopic Karen my world was a featureless, threatening blur, while for me hers was a chaos of microscopic inanity. To seduce Dennis’s swinging wife had been a welcome compensation for my social and financial humiliations, but to lay siege to his frigid, guilt-stricken widow was a very different matter. What on earth was I doing pursuing this common gym mistress instead of a woman like, say, Alison Kraemer?

Once this sunk in, my manner changed abruptly. No longer did I bother to appear gracious, sympathetic or understanding. On the contrary, I told Karen that she was quite right. We had no future together. The weekend had been a failure — or rather a success. Having settled our separate bills, we walked out to the car park together. For the first time that weekend the rain had stopped, and although it was still overcast we could make out something of the beauties of the landscape. Suddenly it came home to me with tremendous force that this was my last chance, the very last of all the countless chances I had thrown away just like this, because I had been too lazy or too proud to exploit them properly. If I squandered this one there would be no more. The door to a BMW would never beckon again. I would be on my bike for the rest of my life, stuck on the stopping train to nowhere. This wasn’t just another tiff we were having. We wouldn’t kiss and make up later. There wouldn’t be any later, unless somehow, at the eleventh hour, I freed Karen from her sterile remorse. But how could I achieve in a few minutes what I had failed to accomplish after hours of trying?

‘Let’s go for a walk,’ I said.

She shrugged listlessly.

‘What for?’

‘I’ve got something to say to you.’

‘You can say it here.’

I felt as though I were seducing her all over again. She wanted to, she really did, but she needed to be made to feel she could, or rather that she couldn’t not, that it was out of her hands, that she couldn’t help herself.

‘Come up to the lake with me. It’s not far.’

In view of the significance of the Elan Valley in later developments, it would perhaps be as well to sketch the local topography briefly at this point. Set on the fringes of the Cambrian Mountain chain, the valley was flooded to satisfy the thirst of Victorian Birmingham and incidentally create a picturesque ‘feature’, a series of artificial lakes connected by dramatic waterfalls. A century later, to eyes hardened by exposure to the brutalities of reinforced concrete, the dams and weirs seem part of the landscape from which their stone was taken. Only the water itself, its wildly fluctuating level carving a swathe of devastation along the shore, betrays the deception.

We walked along a path which wound attractively through a pine forest and round a spur of the hillside to a viewpoint overlooking the lower lake, which is spanned by a narrow bridge across which a minor road leads up into the mountains. After we had admired the panorama for some time in silence, I said, ‘It’s lovely, isn’t it?’

‘Mmmm,’ Karen agreed vaguely.

‘Really makes you feel life’s worth living.’

She was silent.

‘Believe me, Karen, I understand how you feel. This is an appalling tragedy which will haunt us for the rest of our lives. We shall never be again as we were. Dennis is gone, and we are the poorer.’

She looked away, biting her lip.

‘But in the midst of death, we are also in life. If it was wrong for us to acknowledge our love while Dennis was alive, it would be even more wrong to deny it now. If we have been indirectly responsible for a death, there is only one way we can make amends.’

She frowned.

‘What do you mean?’

‘First of all, let me ask you something. On the phone the other day you said that if only you and Dennis had had children then something of him would have survived. Now he told me, that night we got so drunk, that it was because of you that it hadn’t happened. Is that true?’

Her head shook minimally.

‘We had tests done. They said it was some illness he had when he was young. Denny never accepted that, though. He always claimed it was me.’

‘Did you consider using a donor?’

‘You mean like they do with cows? Some bloke you never meet jacks off with a copy of Penthouse and then they pump his come up you with a syringe? No thanks, I’m not that desperate. It’s not just the baby, you know. It’s whose baby.’

‘So what were you going to do?’

‘I tried not to think about it. I suppose I hoped Dennis might, you know, get better. It happens, sometimes. We still had plenty of time, or so I …’

She broke off, wiping her eyes.

‘That was one reason why I tried to stop us, you know, going all the way,’ she went on. ‘You thought I was on the pill, of course, that’s why you never used a sheath or anything. But I wasn’t. There was no need, you see. Not with Dennis. And with you …’

Tears started to roll down her cheeks.

‘That was the worst thing I did. I mean trying, well not trying, but I wasn’t … I mean, if I’d got pregnant he might have thought it was his, that he’d got better somehow. He’d have been ever so proud! And I still would have known the real father, known him and loved him. But it was wrong, terribly wrong. That’s why I’ve been punished through his death. And the worse thing is that now there’s nothing I can do about it. It’s too late!’

I put my arm around her in a chaste, consoling embrace.

‘It’s never too late, Karen.’

‘What do you mean?’ she sobbed softly.

‘You can still have that child. With me. If it’s a boy we’ll call him Dennis, and if it’s a girl, Denise. Let us return life for death, Karen, good for evil. We have caused enough harm by our thoughtless, irresponsible, selfish behaviour. Now let’s strive to live for others. This is a turning-point in my life. It may have come too late to save your husband, but I beg of you, Karen, spare the life of our unborn baby!’

This seems to you exaggerated, melodramatic, in poor taste? I quite agree. But it was a question of horses for courses. My speech was directed at Karen Parsons, and whatever reservations you or I may have about it, I can assure you it went down a treat with its target audience.

‘Do you really mean that?’

There were still tears in her eyes, but for the first time that weekend there was colour in her cheeks as well. I’ll spare you my reply. If you found the opening pitch a bit over the top, the follow-up would gross you out completely. But Karen lapped it up and came back for more.

‘I never thought … I mean, it was great in bed and everything, but I thought that was all it was. I thought all I was to you was just a good lay.’

I smiled ruefully.

‘You were certainly that. The best I’ve ever had. But that was never all you were, Karen. It wasn’t just the sex. There was always something else as well.’

Overcome by emotion, she turned away, gazing out over the black waters of the reservoir. Then a violent shiver convulsed her. At the time I assumed she was thinking of Dennis, but I now wonder if she had a premonition of her own fate. At all events, it only lasted a moment. Then she looked back at me and smiled a brave, convalescent smile, not yet well, but on the mend, cured in spirit.

‘Let’s go home,’ she said.

And home we went, in the BMW, my bike tucked away in the capacious boot. While she drove, Karen talked non-stop about her childhood, her parents, her hopes, her dreams, her problems. In turn I told her a little about my own background, as though we were out on a first date.

I didn’t tell her about my vasectomy.