The River House (32 page)

“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.

I
HAVE A NEW CASE
, K
EVIN
P
ARKER
: 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.

I ring his office. His secretary has a wholesome, pony-club voice.

“I’m afraid Mr. Sutton has gone already,” she says.

I decide I shall go to find him. I can’t face going back to my house and sitting there alone.

My car is reluctant to start, which is troubling when I’ve recently spent a fortune on the transmission. Perhaps the rain
has seeped into the engine.

The traffic is heavy on the road to Max’s house: A street has been closed; there are yellow signs warning of flooding. I drive
past the fair at Hampton Court; its febrile scarlets and yellows are dulled by the veil of rain.

The road goes by the river for a while, past the half-timbered houses in the old village. Soon this road too will be cordoned
off—water is lying across it, in the dip by the antiquarian bookshop, and I see that there are sandbags at the door of the
shop and a notice in a florid hand that says “Shop Closed Due to Flooding.” I wonder if the proprietor with the cultured voice
and stubble and ancient greatcoat has managed to save his stock. There were all those books piled everywhere, with their curly
old-fashioned fonts, and their thick, soft pages with the dull gold edging, and the way they creaked as you opened them, with
a sound like the breaking of many tiny bones. I can’t imagine how he must be feeling, with everything at risk now, all the
love and work he’s invested. I pass the reservoir, where the wind tosses the seagulls around and whips up the water into rapid
little waves. At the racecourse, there is a Crystal and Gem Fair.

I turn off into some quiet streets where blossoming trees are planted in the pavements. I near the cul-de-sac where Max lives.
Suddenly, doubt seizes me. I’ve been so stupid, to assume I’d find him here at home, when he could be anywhere. He’s probably
in some classy bar, all stripped wood and neon, sipping a whiskey and soda, laughing with colleagues, beguiling some woman
with extravagant flattery: doing the things that unattached people do. But I’ve come this far through the flooding and the
traffic, and it’s hard to turn back now. It takes more energy than I have, to admit I should turn around. It’s easier just
to keep going.

I park about twenty yards from his house in the only available gap. In the front garden near where I’ve parked there is a
huge magnolia; the flowers are going over, the petals loll outward, flat and purplish, like the tongues of animals. I go to
ring his doorbell, hearing it sound in the hollowness of his house, imagining those quiet, immaculate spaces. Just as I expected,
nobody comes to the door.

I walk slowly back to my car. I tell myself I’ll wait for fifteen minutes, and then if he doesn’t come I’ll go straight home.
I adjust my seat backward, turn on my radio: It’s Jazz FM, a female voice, sultry, confiding. I listen, half closing my eyes.

But I’m in luck. I’ve only been there for a minute or two when Max’s silver Mercedes turns into the road. Relief surges through
me; I know that Max will help me.