“Have you seen my shoes, Mum?”
“By the front door, where you left them.” She turned and threw milk and cereal bowls onto the table. “Alfie, get down! You’ll fall and hurt yourself.” Alfie grinned at her from his precarious position hanging over the back of one of the kitchen chairs. “Alfie, I mean it. Get down now.”
Slowly he clambered down.
“Where’s Cassie?”
Dora shrugged. “Still in bed.”
Helen let out a groan. “That girl!” She raced out of the kitchen and stood at the bottom of the stairs. “Cassie! Get down here now. You’re going to be late for school.”
Richard appeared at the top of the stairs, struggling with a tie. His hair was still wet from the shower and his face bore a livid shaving rash, an angry red against his pale skin. “Morning, love.”
“Will you tell Cassie to get herself down here? She’s going to miss the bus again.”
Richard turned and huffed back up the stairs.
Honestly, thought Helen, sometimes it was like having four kids to look after. She headed back to the kitchen.
“They’re not there, Mum.”
“What’s not there, Dora?”
“My shoes.”
“Maybe if you put them away every night, like I ask you to, we wouldn’t have to go through this every morning. Have you thought of that?”
Dora rolled her eyes and stomped off in the direction of the conservatory.
Helen hurried into the kitchen, turning her attention back to breakfast, removing toast from the toaster and filling glasses with orange juice. “Did you tell her?” she asked as Richard appeared.
“I told her.”
“Is she coming down?”
“She was still in bed when I went in, but she got the message.” Richard sat himself at the kitchen table and reached across for a slice of toast. “Did you buy more marmalade?”
“Do you have any idea how busy I’ve been this week? Just when would I have had time to get to the shops?” She sounded more defensive than she’d intended, but Richard, thankfully, didn’t rise to the bait.
“Would you like me to stop at the supermarket on my way home from work?” he asked carefully.
“No.” She shook her head. “Thanks,” she added after another moment.
Richard shrugged. “You know,” he continued, spreading butter across the slice of whole wheat in front of him, “if Cass went to bed at a sensible time we wouldn’t have this problem every morning.”
Helen sighed. She’d tried, but Cassie was going through yet another phase. No one, it seemed, could tell their daughter what to do. “Did you find them?” she asked, glancing up as Dora entered the room, grateful to change the subject.
“Yes.”
“Where were they?”
“In Alfie’s toy box. He must have put them in there.”
Richard smiled indulgently. “Funny boy. Hello, Panda, did you sleep well?”
“Yes, thanks.”
Helen couldn’t miss the meaningful glance Richard threw her way. He was always drawing comparisons between the two girls, but it wasn’t fair. They were so different. Chalk and cheese. Dora was just like her father in temperament, solid and dependable. Cassie was more spirited. It was a good thing.
“Speaking of Alfie,” said Helen, “where is he?”
All three of them went still, listening for traces of a little boy making mischief. It was ominously quiet.
“Great,” sighed Helen. “I’ll go.”
She found him, moments later, on the sofa in the den. He was perched in front of the television set, still in his dinosaur pajamas, his straw hair even more electric than usual. Piled beside him was a mountain of cornflakes. The empty packet lay on the floor, and Helen could just see the rim of a bowl poking out from beneath the landslide. “Did you help yourself to breakfast, Alfie?” she asked, surveying the wreckage.
He nodded and reached a chubby hand into the pile for a flake, angling it into his mouth, his gaze never leaving the cartoon on the screen.
“Were you hungry?”
He nodded again. “Alfie spill it.” He looked up at her then with his cornflower-blue eyes. “Sorry, Mummy.”
Any frustration she felt about the mess instantly faded. “That’s okay. Just ask me next time, or one of your sisters. We will help you.”
“I can do it myself,” he asserted, ever independent, shoveling more dry cereal into his mouth.
“All right, Alfie, but we don’t just help ourselves, okay?”
“Why?”
“Because if we all helped ourselves to the food in the cupboards we’d run out very quickly.”
He looked up at her with interest. “Why?”
“Because Mummy only goes shopping once a week.”
“Why?”
“Because Mummy is very busy, working and looking after all of you.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s what mums do.”
“Why?”
Helen sighed. It seemed he had entered that phase. She opted for the fail-safe conversation closer. “Just because.”
It seemed to work. He turned back to the television, silenced for a moment, until he twisted back to her with a smile. “Mummy’s nice.”
She grinned back at him idiotically, his words swelling her heart.
Eventually, after several more attempts to prise Cassie from her room, a battle with the dishwasher, a curt good-bye to her husband, and a fight with Alfie about a plastic dinosaur he refused to leave behind, Helen bundled the girls down the driveway, fastened Alfie into his child seat, and then leapt into the car. It was going to be one of those days.
She got as far as the end of the lane when a tractor came into view. “Goddammit!” she cursed, thumping the steering wheel with frustration. She was going to be late for work, again.
“Dammit, dammit, dammit,” Alfie babbled at her from the back.
She looked at his chubby little face in the rearview mirror with a guilty start. Richard was always warning her about minding her language in front of the kids, but she always forgot.
“Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit, Alfie. That’s what Mummy said,” she tried cheerfully.
“Goddammit!” Alfie giggled back at her. He was nearly three and no fool.
Helen sighed. No doubt that would be another black mark against her. Mrs. Kendall, the nursery school head, had taken her aside just yesterday and told her sternly that she really did need to collect her son on time each evening. They wouldn’t mind if it had just been the once, but it was becoming something of a habit. Still, Helen consoled herself, just one more day and then she and Alfie and the girls would all be home for the summer holidays. No more late nights sitting up preparing lectures for uninterested, yawning students; no more mad dashes across the Dorset countryside; no more guilt as she realized that she would be late to pick up Alfie yet again, at least not for the next six weeks anyway.
Guilt: It was an emotion she felt consumed by these days. Helen loved her job but it was proving harder and harder to juggle all the pieces of her life, and she felt constantly as though she were falling short in every single area. Wife, mother, employee—she tried hard to make it all work, to fit the pieces together like a complicated jigsaw puzzle, but it felt like as soon as she got one piece slotted into place, the table was jostled and another piece came springing free. She had complained to Richard about it that weekend but he had only infuriated her by gently suggesting that if she couldn’t “cope,” perhaps she should consider giving up her job at the university.
“What?” he’d asked, confused at the fury spreading across her face. “I’m only trying to help…I know you enjoy your job, but we shouldn’t let the house just fall down around our ears. You don’t have to put yourself under this pressure, not for us. Why not relax a bit, enjoy the peace and quiet here, instead of rushing off to Exeter day after day?”
She had nearly thrown the saucepan she’d been holding at his head. Did he really think she would giv
e up her job to stay at home and dust bookshelves? Did he really know her so little? She had no intention of giving up her job, not now. It was one of the few things that gave her a thrill. It was one of the few times that she actually felt like herself again, and not just a frumpy housewife or exhausted mother.
Helen followed the tractor round yet another hairpin bend and was about to release another string of profanities unsuitable for the tender young ears in the backseat of the car when the vehicle finally pulled up onto the grass verge, allowing her to pass. The road was clear in front, and just twenty minutes later she was dashing back across the nursery school parking lot to her car. Thankfully she’d managed to avoid grumpy Mrs. Kendall, plonking Alfie into the arms of a pretty young teacher she didn’t know the name of, and waving cheerfully to him as she said good-bye. “Have fun, little man, see you this afternoon.” Alfie’s bottom lip had wobbled slightly, but the young woman holding him had artfully distracted him with a big red train.
She still hated leaving him, but she couldn’t deny she’d grown to love the sensation that descended upon her just minutes later as she clambered back into her car, turned up the radio, and put her foot down on the accelerator. She knew what it was she felt: sheer, unadulterated freedom. Was it normal to long for these solitary moments so much? she wondered. Or did that make her a bad mother? A bad wife? Well, she thought with a sad smile, pulling onto the highway and putting her foot to the floor, she already knew she was a bad wife, and she didn’t need Richard to remind her of it, as he did so frequently these days. Last night’s row had been no exception. She couldn’t even remember how it had started now. But it had been awful. She could still hear Richard’s bitter words echoing in her ears.
“Do we really have to live in this perpetual chaos?” he’d asked, hurling the remains of his uneaten dinner into the bin. “I can’t bear it. I’m not asking much, am I?”
“No, of course you’re not asking much!” she’d spat back. “And Cassie’s not asking much! And Dora’s not asking much! And Alfie’s not asking much. None of you think you’re asking for much, but add it all up and you’ll soon see that I’m being torn in four different directions. I don’t have time for me anymore. I can’t even remember who I am.”
“Oh don’t be so melodramatic. Other women seem to balance work and family just fine—and I already told you just this weekend—”
“Well perhaps you should have married one of those superwomen then!”
And round and round they had gone, all the recent family niggles and annoyances rolled into one angry mess. She’d looked at Richard as he’d stood across the kitchen from her, his mouth opening and closing in a Charlie Brown waah-waah-waah, and all she could focus on was a small, irritating tuft of hair that had made a break from one of his nostrils and flapped helplessly in time to his words. It was then that she knew her feelings for him had faded beyond recognition. She didn’t know what she felt for him anymore, but it was a long way from the early romance of their youth. She had stood there in a sort of daze, wondering how they had come to this.
She’d thought about it plenty over the years, wondering why she had accepted his proposal of marriage when they barely even knew each other. The only conclusion she had been able to draw was that he had seduced her with a false promise. Not a malicious one, but something sly and subtle. Because when Richard had sat across from her on the night he’d proposed, his eyes full of adoration and hope, it had seemed so romantic, so spontaneous, that she’d convinced herself Richard might just be the man for her. He wasn’t merely attractive and intelligent and what her mother would have deemed to be a good catch; he’d seemed passionate and adventurous too.
But as the years passed, Helen’s simmering disappointment grew and grew as slowly she realized that Richard’s sense of spontaneity and adventure was a short-lived thing, a tiny, hot flame that had burned brightly for just a moment and then extinguished itself forever. He’d acted in a way that had promised her something she knew now he simply couldn’t deliver. He seemed aware of her disappointment—how could he not be when she was so frustrated, so spiky and volatile—but his cautious tiptoeing around her, his gentle, soft-spoken attempts to pacify and smooth the waters, only served to irritate her more. Frankly, she would have preferred it if he’d shouted and raged and shown her a fiery, passionate spirit, but every day that she endured his cautious, wary glances, his dry, conservative views, the careful way he kissed her, his perfectly lined-up shoes in the wardrobe, or his habit of folding the newspaper just so, she felt more and more angry, like a tightly coiled spring about to explode.
They had reached a critical point in their relationship, a sort of stalemate that they just couldn’t move beyond; whenever one of them reached out to reconnect, something always went wrong. His well-meaning attempts to lighten her load only made her feel defensive and guilty, while her attempts to swallow back her frustration and disappointment only seemed to make it spew forth more furiously when she did, inevitably, lose her temper. Their few clumsy efforts to reconcile only sent them spinning farther away from each other, like two magnets repelling each other at force.
She mourned the life she thought she should have, the one she’d believed they would share, with bright lights, culture, a bustling city landscape, travel and adventure. To have ended up cloistered away in a sleepy seaside hamlet, rattling around the rambling old farmhouse of his childhood, seemed unfathomable. She’d told him from the start that she wanted a career…that she wanted to be in London…that the life his mother had lived wasn’t for her, and yet here they were, Daphne and Alfred Tide, reincarnated. Thanks to his overblown sense of familial duty, she’d forgone her dreams and traded her ambitions, all to service the legacy of his dead parents.
It always came back to that damn house! It seemed to stand between them, casting a huge, dark shadow over their faltering relationship. She was no fool; she knew now they were there for good. She knew that the only way he would leave Clifftops would be to be carried out in his bloody coffin; she just couldn’t bear to go the same way. She wasn’t yet forty, far too young to resign herself to a sedate life of quiet country pursuits. The thought made her shiver.
Helen sped onward, solitary in her little car, winding down the window so that the breeze blew her hair loose from its clip. A warm weekend had been forecast and she was grateful that the holidays were nearly upon them, but for now it was just enough to be on her own, on her way to work, enjoying the sunshine. It was far too nice a morning to spend it dwelling on her unhappy marriage. Pushing all thoughts of her family from her mind, Helen began instead to think about the day that lay ahead. She had one lecture to give, a few papers to grade, and then she would be free. She turned up the radio and put her foot to the floor. For once, she could feel her blood pumping and her skin tingle in the summer breeze. For once, she felt alive. It was going to be a good day.
A little over twenty minutes later Helen pulled into the faculty parking lot. Miraculously she was on time. She tried to resist glancing at the space opposite hers but failed. The little green MG was there already, its battered hood winking cheerily in the sunshine. She felt a sudden heat flood through her body and tried to ignore the sensation, instead grabbing at the books and papers that had spread themselves across the backseat and making her way into the Classics Department. Just a silly housewife’s fantasy, there was no harm in that.
“Last day with the buggers for a while, eh?” Dean Childs called out as she walked by his open door. “Are you joining us at the pub later to celebrate?”
“Yes,” she agreed, caught off guard. She had forgotten about the end-of-year faculty lunch.
“Good, good.” The gray-haired professor nodded. “Nice to have a respectable turnout, and I’d be interested to hear how your class has gone this semester. I’ve heard good things from the students.”
“Great!” Helen exclaimed with false enthusiasm. “See you then.”
Eager to avoid any more chitchat, she sped to the end of the corridor
and unlocked the door to her office. She entered and closed it behind her with a sigh. That ruled out lunch in the staff cafeteria then, and any possible chance of bumping into him.
Just thinking of a possible encounter again made her stomach twist with lust. She glanced at herself in the little mirror she’d hung on the back of her door. Her shoulder-length hair was wild and curly after the car journey, and there was a pink flush to her cheeks where the wind had whipped at her face. She’d dressed carefully, eager to look youthful, but careful not to overdo it. She thought she’d struck just the right note in a brightly patterned calf-length skirt, a fitted white shirt, and wide brown leather belt and boots. She didn’t look half bad for a mother of three, although it didn’t really matter now. She sighed. It was probably just as well.
The classroom was half empty when Helen entered, with just a smattering of unusually prompt students already in their places. She moved to the lectern, arranged her papers, and ran through the slides one last time. By nine thirty the last stragglers slipped into their seats. Helen dimmed the lights, cleared her throat, and began.
“The Iliad. Of all Homer’s orations, this one is perhaps the most celebrated, the most popular. And at its center, at the very heart of the tragedy, lies one woman: Helen of Troy. Daughter. Sister. Wife. Adulteress. Victim…or perhaps…villain?” She paused for dramatic effect. “She has been called many things over the centuries…”
Helen looked out across the room. In the dim half-light a number of students had begun to scribble furiously in notepads. She could see one or two others leaning back in their chairs, arms folded, their eyes on the screen overhead. To the far right she saw another student with his head resting upon the desk, clearly settled in for an hour’s sleep. She pressed her clicker and flashed up a series of images, details of Helen taken from frescoes and vases, pausing on a slide showing Evelyn De Morgan’s famous nineteenth-century portrait.
“Undoubtedly she is one of the most alluring women of ancient mythology. She was the face that infamously launched a thousand ships, and yet even before we meet her in The Iliad, she has experienced a life of tragedy and controversy.”
The House of Tides Page 10