The River House

by Margaret Leroy

  He’s late; he has a preoccupied look. He smells of smoke and rain.

  “Perhaps we should wait here a little, see if it stops,” I say.

  “OK,” he says.

  I buy him a drink. We talk about our other lives. I tell him about my mother’s scan and diagnosis.

  “Poor her,” he says. “Poor you.”

  I ask about Jake. There’s a special school they’re trying to get him into, but it’s such a struggle, he says: The council’s refusing to provide the funding. He says they’re going to fight it all the way.

  The rain is easing off now: The sun is shining behind the cloud, so the pale sky has many faint iridescent colors, like a pearl. Soon we will go to the river house.

  “Will …” I watch his hand on the table, his long, clever fingers curling around his glass. I think how much I love his hands. I know I have to tell him now. But it’s hard to drag the words out.

  “Will, I saw Sean Faulkner’s TV appeal.”

  The words in my mouth are solid things.

  He looks up sharply.

  “He’s the husband of the woman they found in the river,” I tell him.

  He’s sitting quite still.

  “I know who Sean Faulkner is,” he says.

  “Will, I think he was the man I saw that day on the river path.”

  I feel his gaze on me. He doesn’t say anything.

  “I made that call,” I tell him. I’m looking at his hand, not looking at him. “To the Incident Room.”

  I make myself look up then.

  His eyes are narrowed, as though I am his enemy. His silence scares me.

  “Jesus,” he says then.

  “Will—how could I have done differently? I was trying to do the right thing. I couldn’t just leave it—it would have felt so wrong.”

  “The whole thing’s wrong,” he says. He’s leaning forward, speaking in a low voice—as though afraid people might hear, though there’s no one near except the barmaid. I can see the red flecks in his eyes. His voice has a knife edge of anger, but I don’t know who he’s angry with, whether it’s him or me. Perhaps he doesn’t know either. “We shouldn’t have been there anyway. We shouldn’t have been doing this. None of this should have happened.”

  His mood frightens me. For a moment I can’t say anything.

  “And then?” he says.

  I stare at him blankly.

  “What happened?” he says, in that hard voice.

  “They came to see me. They took a statement,” I tell him. “There were two of them, Ray and Karen.”

  “Christ.”

  “Will. I did everything I could to protect you—to protect us. I told them that I couldn’t say who I was with.”

  “You said that—that you were with someone?”

  “They’d have known,” I say. “They’d have worked it out. They’ve been around—they know what people are like. I mean, why would I have been in the river house on my own? She isn’t stupid, that woman.”

  He’s looking at me as if I appall him. I can’t believe how rapidly we got here. You’re so close to someone that he feels like part of your body, you move to a single rhythm. Then just a few words and suddenly this coldness—so quickly, so easily—everything undone.

  “I had to do it. Please understand, Will. I know it’s difficult …”

  He interrupts me.

  “Who else knows? Does Greg know?”

  “I just told him I’d seen something and I’d rung the police. I said I’d been there because I’d gone off for a walk. It seemed OK.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “I mean, he didn’t say much …”

  I hear the doubt in my voice.

  I want this to be over now, for him to come to the river house. I hold this in my mind, as though by some magic I can make it happen. By thinking it, imagining it, I can conjure it up. I want to say, Come and make love to me now, but my lips are stiff and it’s hard to form the words.

  I push my glass away.

  “Are you ready?” I ask.

  He doesn’t move.

  “Will, d’you want another drink? Or shall we go now? It looks like the rain’s stopping.”

  He sits quite still; he’s looking intently at his hands.

  “I think we should leave it there, don’t you?” he says then. “After all this?”

  It’s silent between us for a moment. There’s a chink as the barmaid puts down a glass on the bar. A sharp little sound, like something breaking.

  “OK.” I force myself to smile. “Next week perhaps?” Trying to sound casual, but my voice thin, frail, suddenly. The world cracking open.

  “I’m busy next week,” he says. “I’ll ring you.”

  I’m scared to press him. I could say, Is it over between us, then? Are we ever going to see each other again? I swallow down these questions. I don’t want to hear his answers to them, don’t want to hear the words.

  This is how it ends then, says a voice in my head. You’ve often wondered: now you know. It ends with this coldness and wariness in his eyes, here in the empty bar with all the mirrors: watched by an indifferent barmaid wiping glasses, the saxophone playing: keeping your face still, trying to hold back your tears.

  “I’m running late. I need to go,” he says.

  “Will.” I reach out then, put my hand against his, awkwardly. The warmth of his skin astonishes me always. “Don’t just go. Don’t just walk out of my life.”

  My throat is sore, as though saying this has hurt me.

  He gives me a puzzled look: It’s as if he’s discovered I’m not the person he thought. I watch as he walks away from me.

  But at the door he turns. I can see that the anger has left him. He’s hunched; he looks defeated. He comes back to the table. He reaches out and puts his hand on my hair, pushing my hair from my face: it’s a brief, tender gesture. Just for a moment, he’s the way he used to be.

  “Ginnie, I can’t cope with this. I’m sorry.”

  I know then that it is really over.

  After he’s gone, I sit in the bar for a long time, with my empty glass in front of me. I sit very still: like you might sit in the absolute silence after a car crash, afraid to move in case part of you is broken.

  CHAPTER 37

  THAT NIGHT, AND FOR MANY NIGHTS AFTERWARD, I wake at four, suddenly and crisply, absolutely alert. Immediately I feel the silence all around me, and know there is still a lot of night to get through. I lie awake for what seems like hours, then sink into a fragile sleep just as the first birds stir. When I get up in the morning, my back aches as though I have lifted heavy weights in the night.

  On Tuesday I wake from another poor night’s sleep to an extravagant spring day, my bedroom curtains filling with light as a sail fills with wind. I push back the curtains, looking down into the garden. At the edge of the lawn, where I never mow, there’s a tangle of forget-me-nots and white wild strawberry flowers.

  The sound of the phone jolts me. People don’t usually ring so early in the day. I know what it is before I answer.

  “Ginnie, there’s some sad news.” Ursula’s voice is slow and formal, but I can hear the shake in it. “I’m ringing to tell you that Mum died at three o’clock this morning.”

  “Yes,” I say. All other words dry up in me. All I can think is that I haven’t sent her the photos, the glittery pictures of Molly with London spread out at her feet. I was going to send them and I know she would have loved them, but I left it too late and now she’ll never see them. The finality of this shocks me, like something I’ve only just learned.

  “They told me she died very peacefully,” says Ursula.

  “Are you all right?” I say stupidly.

  “All rightish,” she says carefully. “I mean, it’s not exactly unexpected. Dr. Spence said it’s the time of night that people most often die—everything slows down, apparently, all your metabolism.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard that.”

  “Her suffering’s over now,” she says. “In a way
it’s a blessing that she died before it all got worse. I’m thinking next week for the funeral. Wednesday. Would that suit you?”

  I tell her yes. We talk about the service. No flowers, of course: She wouldn’t want flowers; she always said they were pointless, after you’d gone. We will sing “Lord of all Hopefulness.” Afterward, there will be refreshments at the King’s Arms next to the church—and am I happy for her to take care of all the arrangements? Yes, of course I am.

  “Oh, and bring some boxes,” she says. “We’ll go on to the house afterward and you can have a quick look through and see what you’d like to take. Would that be OK? I mean, I’m perfectly happy to do all the clearing. You know, as I’m right on the spot. It makes much more sense than you having to make lots of trips—and with Amber’s exams coming up and everything. …”

  “That would be wonderful, Ursula.”

  “It’s no problem,” she says. “Really.”

  I go into the kitchen, where Greg is eating soy milk and cornflakes with the Times propped up in front of him. A slice of sunlight falls across the floor. I sit down rather heavily at the table.

  “Greg, Mum died this morning.”

  “Oh, Ginnie, I’m so sorry.”

  Everything feels removed from me. I’m standing outside, just watching, as he pushes aside his cereal bowl and gives me his full attention: You can’t go on eating after somebody’s died.

  He reaches out and pats my arm.

  “Are you OK?” Like I said to Ursula.

  I nod. “I just feel a bit shocked. Weird, when we knew it had to happen.”

  He studies my face, perhaps relieved I’m not crying.

  “You seem to be coping with it very well,” he says.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Perhaps it was a good thing it happened before she got any worse,” he says.

  “Perhaps. The funeral’s next Wednesday.”

  “Hell. I’ve got a meeting,” he says. “Well, they’ll just have to manage without me.”

  “Greg, don’t feel you have to come if it’s awkward.”

  “You’ll want me there,” he says.

  I think of taking Greg and Amber to the funeral—sorting them out some sober clothes, negotiating with Amber about not wearing anything too revealing, finding them someone to talk to at the funeral tea. These simple tasks seem utterly beyond me.

  “Look, I don’t suppose Amber will want to come anyway,” I tell him. “I wouldn’t expect her to. Funerals are horrible for children. So you could hold the fort here.”

  “Well, if you’re sure …”

  “Really, I’ll be fine. We’re planning to start on the house afterward, me and Ursula. There’d be a lot of hanging around for you.”

  “If that’s really OK,” he says.

  “Really. Greg, you can carry on with your breakfast.”

  “Thanks,” he says.

  He goes back to his cornflakes.

  I ring Molly. She’s been to a ball at the Union. There were fairy lights and a party tent, and cocktails with cream on them called Blowjobs, so all the lads thought it was really funny asking for two Blowjobs, which Molly thought was so infantile; and someone said Prince William was there, but the person who told her was drunk so she still isn’t sure. Her voice keeps cracking: She has a heavy cold.

  I tell her about her grandmother.

  “Poor Granny,” she says. She’s sad, but in a detached way. “I used to love visiting there, when we were little,” she says. It’s as though her grandmother was already in the past for her. “I loved those cakes she made, the ones with the currants in. And the stream with all the colors.”

  She breaks off to cough extravagantly.

  “Molly, you ought to be in bed.”

  “I can’t. I’ve got a morphology class.”

  “Then miss your class and go to bed,” I tell her. “Tuck yourself up with some Lemsip.”

  I hate her being ill when she’s so far away.

  “But it’s karaoke tonight. And if I miss my class I won’t feel able to go to karaoke. …”

  “Have you been taking your vitamins?”

  “Well …”—a little guilty pause. “Nobody takes their vitamins, Mum. There’s this guy I know, and his parents were coming to take him out to dinner, and they’d given him all these vitamins, and he took all the pills the night before so he wouldn’t have to lie. … Anyway, Mum, are you OK?”

  “I’m fine, sweetheart.”

  “You don’t sound it,” she says. “Really, Mum, you sound terrible.”

  Eva takes me out for a drink at the Café Rouge. She’s wearing leather trousers and a rather unbuttoned silk shirt. We sit at a table by the window, with carnations in a glass. The waiter lights our candle. I tell her about my mother.

  She puts her hand on my arm, looking at me anxiously.

  “Ginnie. You look awful.”

  “It doesn’t feel real yet,” I say.

  “Is Greg doing all the right things?” she says.

  “Greg’s being fine,” I tell her. “I mean, he isn’t coming to the funeral. But I said he didn’t have to.”

  Her eyes widen. I see her throat move as she swallows.

  “It was my idea,” I say. “It just seemed easier.”

  She’s chewing her lip, as if there’s something she’s trying not to say. She looks into her glass for a moment.

  “It’s a big one, when your mother dies,” she says then. “It changes you. To be honest, I didn’t really feel like a grown-up ’til my mother died. …” She shrugs; she has a slight, wry smile. “But she didn’t like me very much, and I guess that makes a difference.”

  “I keep thinking about these photos that Molly sent,” I say. “I was going to send them on to Mum, I was thinking how much she’d have loved them. I was going to do it tomorrow.”

  “It’s always in the middle of something,” says Eva. “Death’s always an interruption. There’s sure to be something you didn’t do or say.”

  The carnations have a powdery scent, like the smell of an expensive woman. The candle falters in the draft that comes in around the window frame.

  Eva tells me about her week, trying to entertain me. Lauren went off to this party with a couple of friends, and Eva was doing the transport, and Lauren rang at one o’clock, sounding completely out of it.

  “It was a nightmare,” says Eva. “These poor bloody parents had gone off for an innocent evening out, and got back to find all these kids tanked up on vodka and puking in their bathroom. The police had been called and everything. And Lauren and her mates were rather the worse for wear, and one of them threw up just as we were coming down the A3, and I didn’t have any tissues. … It was like being caught in the circles of hell,” she says.

  We order more drinks and listen to Art Pepper. I ask about work. It’s still a total pain, she tells me; the kids couldn’t give a shit, and her headmaster is really mean. At the table beside us a lean young man with dreadlocks is talking to a stylish woman who’s smoking a Sobranie. The woman must be about our age. Eva watches curiously as the young man talks with animation and the woman leans across the table, staring into his eyes.

  “I don’t know, Ginnie,” says Eva then. “Sometimes I think I should do something really drastic. You know, move to the country or something. I keep on cutting these pictures out of the paper. Swap Shop in the Evening Standard—all these fetching cottages you could buy with the price of your London rabbit hutch. Watermills in Somerset, and cottages in Suffolk with thatch and pink-washed walls.”

  “But, Eva, I didn’t think you liked the country,” I say.

  “I don’t,” she says. “I hate it really. I remember that, in my saner moments. I grew up in the country and mostly it’s just so tedious. No one who looks like they’ve ever eaten an avocado, and you can’t get a decent coffee. Anyway, we couldn’t possibly move ’til Lauren and Josh have finished school.” She fiddles with her rings, twisting them around on her fingers as though she can’t make them comfortable.
“I don’t know, Ginnie,” she says again. “I know I need to change something, I just don’t know what to change. …”

  When we say good-bye, she wraps her arms around me.

  “Poor love. You seem so sad,” she says. “It’s hit you hard, hasn’t it? I only wish there was something I could do.”

  It rains a lot. We wake to the sound of water, its whisper on the gravel and the percussive sound where it overflows the gutters and taps on the lids of the dustbins. It’s dim all day, too dark for March, as if somebody’s left off the lights. Snails creep up our downstairs windows, sucking stickily at the pane, their shells dark as walnuts or the color of honey, and frilled, blotched toadstools grow up out of our lawn. There are smudges of mold on my kitchen wall, as though someone has rubbed it with a dirty eraser. I wipe at the mold with Dettol, but I know it’ll grow back soon.

  The Thames runs high, spilling over the bank in places. Greg anxiously watches the news. There’s flooding in Chertsey, higher up the river, and the press is full of warnings. Hundreds of thousands of people will soon be at risk because of rises in sea and river levels. Flash floods will be more frequent, where Victorian drainage systems can’t cope with sudden downpours. Houses will become impossible to insure. Whole tracts of cities may have to be demolished to make green corridors to take the water away. Greg reads these predictions with mounting apprehension.

  One evening, when the sun is setting after another day of rain, but the clouds have briefly blown away, we walk down to the end of the road together. The riverbank here is urban, built up, orderly: not like the untended places where I used to walk with Will. Here, there are houses and gardens, pruned and trimmed and manicured, and the river path is paved. It’s a beautiful evening, the sky all gentle flower colors, rose and lilac and lavender, the river giving back the colors of the sky. Pink water laps up onto the path and in places covers it over, though it hasn’t reached the road, and geese paddle there, and slow, poised, ponderous swans, and Chinese ducks with flashes of jade in their wings. There are little dinghies moored here, waiting for summer: You can hear the nervous slap of the water against their hulls. Other families have come to enjoy the lull in the weather. Children in Wellingtons wade and splash through the water, relishing the shifting landscape, the way the edges of things are less defined. Their voices as they call out have that lonely, echoey quality of voices heard across water.