Lynne Pemberton - Sleeping With Ghosts

‘ Our son, Jennifer, or were there other dalliances I know nothing about?’

Her right hand rose, poised in midair as if to strike him, but something held her back. She dropped it down by her side. ‘Please step aside. I’ve nothing more to say to you; except, believe me, you’ve both got a fight on your hands.’

Hopelessly he stepped to one side, but warned, ‘Be careful, Jennifer, you’ll lose him.’

His words fell on deaf ears, Jennifer was already out of the door, slamming it so hard it rattled the hinges.

Five minutes after his wife had left, Adam put on some old jazz records and started to drink. He usually restricted himself to a couple of Scotch and sodas, but tonight he felt like getting thoroughly smashed. Had he neglected Jennifer? The question nagged at him: was he to blame for her blatant love affair with Tanner? Dropping two ice cubes into a large tumbler, he filled it to the top with whisky and drained the glass. Staring into the bottom, he concluded that Jennifer was probably right. He refilled, thinking back over his eighteen-year marriage.

He’d always tried to divide his time equally between his family, his work, and his search for the man responsible for the murder of his late father’s family. But now he knew he had failed to balance all three. The promise he had made to his father twelve years ago had become an obsession. Jennifer understood that; he had not.

Adam sat down on the sofa still warm from Jennifer, the words she had uttered so passionately after his father’s funeral, resounding loud in his head. ‘Your father is dead, Adam; for all you know this German guy is dead also. And even if he is still alive, when you eventually get to him, he’ll be too old and senile to stand trial. For God’s sake forget it. Let them all go, they’re your father’s ghosts not yours. Your life is here and now, with Calvin and me. We need you.’

Images of his wife flooded into his mind. He tried to banish them, but they refused to be exiled: Jennifer on their wedding day, a vision in white lace and tulle; then on honeymoon, alighting from a vaporetto at San Marco in Venice, laughing at his stumbling Italian. A smile creased his face as a picture of Jennifer in the last stages of pregnancy entered his mind, her huge belly suspended above long skinny legs had put him in mind of a red-headed stork, albeit a beautiful one.

You’re a glutton for punishment he told himself as he visualized her the day they had met in his father’s gallery. She had accompanied her father, a collector of Dutch art. Whilst old Benjamin and Richard Carmichael had discussed a Rembrandt, Adam had observed Jennifer, tall and slim, dressed in a simple silk shift. It had been obvious to him she was not wearing a bra. As she leaned forward to study the paintings, he had been unable to keep his eyes off her small, perfectly formed breasts, straining against the sensuous fabric.

Aware of his scrutiny and enjoying the effect she was creating, she had played the coquette. They had both giggled afterwards, when he had admitted that for him it was lust at first sight.

The first time they had made love would stay with him for ever. Her skin was the colour and texture of alabaster, her pubis a slightly darker shade of auburn than her hair. She had recently returned from a vacation in the South of France, and he recalled admiring her all-over tan, and listening to her stories of nudist beaches and discotheques under the stars.

Adam had thought Jennifer very sophisticated and worldly, even though she was three years younger than him. He could hear her voice as clearly as if it were yesterday, telling him he was her drug – she was addicted to him, and she wanted him to go on making love to her for the rest of her life …

‘Goddamn it, Jenny baby; what happened?’ he whispered into his glass. She was an affliction that was going to take a long time, and a lot of treatment before remission, and at this moment Adam wasn’t sure if it was a complete cure he really wanted.

He tried to think back over the years. Deep down, Adam knew that it wasn’t only his promise to his father that had rankled with his wife. It was something more subtle. His ambition had never matched hers. Whatever she got or however much he gave her, it was never enough: Jennifer always had to have more. ‘You should have licked more ass, that’s where you’ve gone wrong all your life,’ he muttered into his half-empty glass, as he crossed the room to get the bottle of Johnnie Walker. ‘You could never get up those tight rich butts.’

With the bottle swinging in his right hand, he sat down again in the same position. The voice of Ella Fitzgerald singing ‘Long Ago and Far Away’ seemed poignantly apt as the alcohol slipped down his throat, and oblivion rose like an old friend to enfold him in a warm, protective glow. Dropping his head against the back of the sofa, Adam closed his eyes. The bottle slipped from his relaxed fingers, whisky soaking the Indian rug. He didn’t even notice, his mind had strayed to the last weekend he had spent with his father in his home in Connecticut ten days before his death.

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