The River House

by Margaret Leroy

  “It shouldn’t have happened,” I say, “and it’s over now.”

  “Who is it?” he says then. His voice sounds different—thin, clipped, as though he’s forgotten to breathe.

  “It isn’t anyone you know.”

  He’s turned away from me.

  “It’s Max, isn’t it?” he says. A knife edge of anger in his voice now. “I’ve often wondered about you and Max. I can’t stand the guy. He’s so fucking full of himself. I should never have let you go off on those weekends with him. I trusted you, I suppose. I’ve been a bloody fool.”

  “It isn’t Max,” I say. “It’s nothing to do with Max.”

  He stares; he’s trying to take this in.

  “Who is it then?” he says.

  “It’s someone I knew through work—you’ve never met him.”

  He doesn’t say anything for a while. The silence between us is like water rising, as though the room is filling up with it. Behind him on the wall I can see Ursula’s picture, the Little Mermaid, diving down through the blue translucent water. I think of Molly when she was little, staring at the picture, her eyes dark and wide-open and troubled. But won’t she drown, Mum? So deep down under the sea. Anyone would drown, Mum. Under all that water.

  “Do you love him?” he says then.

  I had planned to say, “It was stupid, it didn’t mean anything,” wanting to find some crumb of comfort for him: but I can’t quite say the words.

  “I suppose so. Yes. I suppose I did love him. … Greg, I’m so sorry. I didn’t want to hurt you.”

  He raises his eyebrows slightly, as though this doesn’t even warrant a reply. He looks different to me, someone I don’t recognize: as if saying the things I’ve said and doing the things I’ve done have made him into a stranger.

  “So exactly how many other people did you tell before me?”

  “Only the police—well, I didn’t say who it was. … I didn’t want to tell you,” I say. “It’s over, and I didn’t want you to know. I didn’t want to hurt you like that. But they’re asking me to give evidence. So it’s possible some of this might come out in court—you know, why I was there.” I feel so tired now: It’s an effort to drag out the words. “And I didn’t want anything to come out in court that you didn’t know about me. I didn’t want to put you in that position.”

  “It’s a bit late for that, isn’t it?” His voice is hard and dry. “To worry about what I think?”

  “It’s a weird time of life for us,” I say. “So much is changing—Molly going and everything. I know that’s no excuse. But I guess it panicked me a bit. There’s just this feeling so much is coming to an end.”

  He’s looking straight at me now, with a quiet, controlled dislike.

  “I’ve wondered, of course,” he says. “There’s this expression you have sometimes. This secret smile. Closed-in. But I’m not a mind reader, Ginnie. And most of the time I thought you were happy enough. You’ve seemed so much more relaxed recently, over the past few months. Happier in yourself somehow. … Fuck.” He screws up his face, realizing what he’s saying. “So, what was wrong with us exactly?” he says.

  “It’s not like that. It’s not that anything’s wrong. That isn’t why …” What I’m saying isn’t true. I think how he moved out of our bed. My voice fades.

  “This friend of yours—has he gone to the police too?”

  “He didn’t see anything.”

  “Maybe not. Or maybe that’s what he’s saying. But has he gone to the police?”

  “No.”

  “So he’s just left you on your own with this thing? This is the person you gave your love to—someone who could do that to you?”

  “He’s in a difficult position.”

  “Ginnie, I don’t begin to understand you.”

  He stands up and closes his briefcase. His face is composed, but I see that his hands are shaking.

  “What I don’t get,” he says dryly, “is why on earth you were by the river anyway. I thought people usually found a proper room somewhere. In a hotel or something. You could at least have behaved like adults.”

  He walks out quietly, his briefcase in his hand. But he trips as he goes upstairs. There’s a torrent of curses. I hear the raw anger in his voice: I’ve never heard him swear like this before. The study door slams.

  His book is still on the table. I pick it up: It has a new, crisp smell. As I flick through, it falls open at the dedication. There’s a fragment of Celtic pattern, and below it: For Ginnie, who showed me the meaning of Findabhair.

  I have a feeling like when you’re about to weep, but no tears come.

  CHAPTER 41

  I LIE AWAKE FOR HOURS. My pulse races as though I’ve had too much coffee; a pointless, febrile energy surges through me. I feel as though I will never sleep again.

  Eventually I get up. My alarm clock says three o’clock. I push the curtains wide, open the window, hoping to be soothed by the immensity of the night. For once it isn’t raining. I breathe in the rich night scents of flowers and earth. There’s a moon, almost full, its cold white washing over everything. I glance down into the garden: I can see the palest glimmer from the narcissi under the pear tree, absolutely without color in the moonlight. I start, seeing somebody there, a dark bundled shape on the bench beneath the tree. It’s Greg, in his dressing gown. It must be cold in the garden; I can feel the chill of the damp air on my skin: but he doesn’t move, just sits there. He’s hunched over: He looks so old and alone. I’m frightened.

  I grab my dressing gown and go downstairs. He must have heard me opening the door, but he doesn’t turn. I haven’t put anything on my feet; the grass is drenched with dew.

  I walk across to the bench. Once your eyes adjust, you can see a lot in the light of the moon, all the detail of the garden—the heavy, dense mass of the hedge; the silvered leaves of the pear tree, where the moon is caught in the woven nets of its branches. There’s a bright scattering of stars. The world feels vast and hollow.

  I go to stand by him. He doesn’t look at me.

  “Greg. How long have you been out here?”

  He doesn’t reply. Little sounds scratch the edges of the stillness—a siren, the high percussive bark of a fox.

  I sit beside him on the bench.

  “You ought to come in,” I say. “You’ll get so cold.”

  I put my hand on his arm. He tenses at my touch. His quietness frightens me, and the way he doesn’t look at me. I see the raw grief in his face. I’m numbed by how much I’ve hurt him.

  “Greg. You can’t stay here.”

  “I need to think,” he says.

  “You need to get some sleep,” I say. “You can’t think if you don’t sleep.”

  He says nothing.

  I feel dizzy out here without walls, under the huge night sky and the spill of silver over everything. I breathe in the chill sweetness of the air.

  “Promise me you’ll come in soon,” I say. “Please, Greg.”

  “I’ll come in when I’m ready,” he says.

  My feet hurt with the cold; the hem of my dressing gown is heavy with wet. I realize I am shivering. I didn’t know it got this cold in April.

  I go back to bed and lie there not sleeping. Scenes from the past flicker through my mind with a kind of feverish brilliance. I think of the Burns Night dinner where I met him. Of his elegance in his dinner jacket, and his cuff links shaped like little fish, and the story he read, its leaps of logic, the way it was stitched quite randomly together like bits of dream: the four companions walking together in a familiar land, and the mist that fell over everything, and when it rose, all the things they knew had vanished, all their flocks and herds and houses—just the four of them in this bright, wide emptiness, alone. I can see the look on his face as he thrust the book into my hand, showing me where he’d written his phone number on the title page—an eager, hopeful, hungry look, as if I was something he felt he had to have. I knew then what my life would be like; I thought it was all laid out before me,
a path through a clear country. Perhaps I should have listened more carefully to the story he read.

  I tell myself that in all this, it’s Amber who’s most important. That I’ll do all I can to keep her life protected and familiar, at least ’til she leaves home. That this is what really matters. Deciding this, I sleep.

  I wake with a start at eight o’clock. I must have forgotten to set my alarm, or turned it off in the night.

  I grab my dressing gown and go downstairs.

  Greg’s overnight case is in the hall. He’s standing in the kitchen, drinking coffee.

  “Greg—what’s happening?”

  “I need to do some thinking,” he says. “I need a bit of space to think things through.”

  I don’t say anything.

  “I’m going to stay with Mother—I’ve just rung her. I’m going over there straight after my afternoon seminar. I can get into work from there, it’s really quite straightforward. You can take the Metropolitan Line to Baker Street, and the Bakerloo Line to Waterloo, and then the overground train. …”

  He just keeps talking and talking, wanting to postpone the things we need to say.

  “But it’ll take you ages.”

  “I’ll manage,” he says.

  “And you won’t have enough clean shirts—I was going to do a shirt wash today, half your shirts are dirty.”

  “Mother can wash them. I’ll be all right,” he says.

  I take a slow, shaky breath.

  “How long are you going for?” I say.

  “I don’t know. I’ll ring you.”

  “What about Amber? Don’t we need to speak to her?”

  “I’ve spoken to Amber,” he says. “I’ve explained everything.”

  Fear floods me.

  “What did you tell her?”

  “What had happened. I told her what had happened. What you’ve done.”

  “Shouldn’t we have spoken to her together?”

  “You were asleep,” he said. “What was I meant to do exactly? Make her late for school?”

  “Greg. What did she say?”

  “Not a lot.” He turns away from me.

  “She went to school OK? She had her Graphics mock GCSE today. Did she take her ruler and her colored pencils?”

  “For God’s sake, Ginnie. She’s sixteen. I’m sure she can pack her own schoolbag,” he says.

  My body feels insubstantial, as though I’m just a thin shell that could be blown away in a single breath.

  “Greg. I’m so, so sorry I hurt you,” I say.

  “It’s a bit late for that, isn’t it?”

  He puts his coffee mug down on the drainer.

  “D’you mind washing that?” he says. “I need to be getting off.”

  This shocks me, that he feels he has to ask me to wash his coffee cup. It’s as though I’ve torn the whole texture of our life together, the intricate warp and weft of sharing and obligation. Nothing can be assumed anymore.

  He goes into the hall, puts on his overcoat, picks up his case.

  I go to the door with him. It’s raining again; the path is sodden. I hear the rain hiss on the gravel.

  “Hell. Look at this.” He turns up the collar of his coat. “Keep an eye on the river level. These things can happen quite suddenly,” he says.

  CHAPTER 42

  I HAVE A NEW CASE, KEVIN PARKER: He was neglected as a baby; he’s missed out on loving of the most basic kind. His teachers are worried because he’s been stealing food from the kitchens, as children who’ve been neglected so often seem to do. You want to tuck him up in a blanket and feed him with cups of cocoa. He does some drawings of people in his family, all with their hands behind their backs and dressed in identical clothes. Then I see Katy Croft. She talks about her self-harming and the rush of relief it gives her, the way it blanks out all her psychic pain. For the first time she shows me her scars, where she’s pressed the pull tabs of cola cans into her thighs. It astonishes me that she’s managed to keep this secret from her parents.

  The sky is dark, relentless: The rain shows no sign of stopping. In the secretaries’ office, where I go to get a report typed up, they’re eating chocolates to celebrate Brigid’s birthday and talking about the rain.

  “My brother’s got a cottage on the bank of the Avon, they’ve been flooded twice and now he can’t get insured. …”

  “We looked at a house on the floodplain, and Jim was really keen, but I just said, No way. …”

  “People don’t think when they buy those houses, do they? I mean, what can they be thinking of?”

  Brigid has seen a television program about the flood of 1953, when hundreds of people died. There was a family where the older children escaped from the flood by climbing up in the rafters, but the mother wasn’t agile enough; she stayed on the floor with the pram that had the babies in it. And she just went on rocking the pram all night, while the water rose above it and the babies were still inside.

  When I check my phone I find a text from Amber: She won’t be home ’til nine. I stare at the phone, frustrated. I can’t phone her now—the girls are given detention if their cell phones ring in school. I dread the conversation we’ll have, but long for it as well: I just want to reassure her that whatever happens with her father and me, her life will carry on in much the same way—we will keep everything safe for her.

  Molly rings.

  “Mum, are you OK? Just checking.”

  I wonder if Amber has spoken to her. But she’s always in such a rush in the mornings—she might not have had time.

  Molly is tired. She’s been up all night writing an essay on Simone de Beauvoir: She kept herself awake with coffee and ginseng. She’s just had the tutorial; she’s going to bed now.

  “It’s funny to think of all you guys there, just getting on with your lives without me,” she says. There’s poignancy in her voice today, but it might just be tiredness. “Everything’s OK at home, isn’t it? I mean, we haven’t spoken for a bit. I just wondered …”

  I say something vague and reassuring: She seems to accept this, so Amber can’t have rung her. I’ll talk properly to Molly when we’re both feeling stronger.

  I need to write up my sessions, but I can’t concentrate. I go to the bathroom and hold my wrists under the water, hoping the shock of the cold will clear my head. The sound of the rain is muffled in here. Pigeons trying to shelter on the outside windowsill are blurry, murmuring heaps against the frosted glass.

  Clem comes in. She’s wearing a rainbow wraparound skirt and battered cowboy boots. She peers at herself in the mirror.

  “Hell. Look at this frizz,” she says. “And I’m going out for a drink tonight with this rather tasty probation officer.” She runs her hand through her curls, then lets them fall. “When the weather’s like this I just give up,” she says. “I come out waving a little white flag of surrender.”

  She catches sight of my face in the glass.

  “Oh my God, Ginnie, what’s happened? You look dreadful.”

  “Greg’s left.”

  She swings around to face me.

  “Did I hear that right?” she says.

  “He’s walked out, Clem.”

  “Oh, Ginnie.” Concern surges through her voice.

  “It’s my fault.”

  “For Chrissake. Of course it’s not,” she says briskly. “Nothing is ever just one person’s fault. Not in a marriage. You’re a psychologist, Ginnie,” she says, with mock severity. “You ought to know that.”

  “It’s something I did, Clem.”

  She wraps me in her arms.

  “Poor love,” she says.

  She’s so unperturbed and accepting.

  “Clem. You’re not surprised, are you?”

  She holds me lightly, her hands on my arms. She’s looking at me warily. She shakes her head a little.

  “Ginnie, you’ve been so unhappy. He’s been shutting you out for years.”

  This shocks me.

  She looks at her watch.

  �
��Hell. I’ve got to go, I’ve got a case conference. I hate to leave you like this,” she says. “I’ll come around tonight. I’ll bring a bottle.”

  “No, Clem, you’ve got your probation officer.”

  “I’ll cancel him,” she says.

  “No. You can’t do that. Come tomorrow. I’ll be fine.”

  She leaves me with a light touch on my arm.

  There’s a team meeting in Peter’s office. Everything seems unreal—too small, too sharp and clear. There’s an urgent discussion about filing. The debate is conducted with great passion; everyone’s voice seems loud to me. The remains of Brigid’s chocolates are passed around, the hard centers that nobody wants. It’s all I can do to sit there. I feel a feverish restlessness.

  The last child today is Gemma Westerley. We play with clay together, and talk about the things that make her afraid. After she’s gone I sit at my desk for a while.

  I check my watch. Eva should be out of school by now.

  She answers straightaway.

  “Oh, Ginnie, I’m really suffering. I’m in bed,” she says. “I’ve got this evil food-poisoning bug, I ate some dodgy chicken. It’s hideous.”

  “Eva, how awful.”

  “Anyway, how are things with you?” she says with an effort.

  “It doesn’t matter. Really. It can wait. We’ll talk properly when you’re better,” I say. “You poor thing. Is Ted there?”

  “He’s coming home to look after me. Well, you know how Ted is, he’s such a sweetie. Ginnie, if I was a little old lady I honestly think this would have killed me.”

  I watch the rain streak down the window. The sky is a startling ultramarine; the wind rips through the branches of the elms. I feel bereft without Eva. I need to talk to somebody.

  I think of Max. And immediately it’s obvious that Max will be perfect to talk to. He knows or has guessed so much about what’s happening—he knows about my affair. I don’t know why I didn’t think of him before. I imagine how I’ll sink into his leather sofa, a very large whiskey in my hand: how he will soothe me with his pragmatic comfort. I feel a surge of affection for him, remembering how at college we would talk about almost anything. Max is my safe ground, my neutral territory. I cling to him in my mind: I know that Max won’t judge me.