In the end it had been her words that broke the silence, but they weren’t about the affair. Instead, she talked about Alfie. In halting, broken phrases she started to remember their son. She talked about his birth and about the precious moments she and Richard had shared standing over his cot watching him sleep. She remembered Alfie’s desire to do everything in a hurry, how he’d cut his first tooth at six months, crawled around the living room floor after the girls at just seven months, and taken his first wobbly steps at eleven months. She reminded Richard of Alfie’s first word: Dada; how they had sat up all night with him when he had chicken pox, and the time he had run a dangerously high fever and covered every single item of bedding they owned with his watery vomit; how his hair had shone golden in the sun and how the old ladies of Bridport would stop and coo as she pushed him around in his pram. She remembered him repeatedly pulling all the books off the bookshelves until, exasperated, she had spent a morning wedging them all in tight as sardines. She’d recalled the time he had stood outside innocently one late summer’s day and pelted rotting cherries he’d found at the foot of the cherry tree at the freshly painted exterior of the house, and the funny little dances he would do with the girls when they put their favorite CDs on and leapt and whirled around the living room. She relived a catalog of memories from the end of the bed, sometimes laughing, sometimes sobbing, sometimes both, and all the while Richard had lain there, still and silent, his face turned away from hers into the darkness of the room.
And then once, in a moment of sheer need and loneliness, she had padded upstairs, undressed silently, and climbed into their bed, pushing her warm nakedness up against her husband’s back. He was awake. She could tell from his breathing and she willed him to turn and put his arms around her. She wanted nothing more than to forget herself, to bury her pain in the familiarity of his scent and skin. But Richard just lay there, rigid and still under the sheet, until she had eventually turned away from him and fallen asleep.
Exasperated and out of ideas, she’d confided in Violet.
“I just don’t know what to do anymore. I’m so worried about him. He can’t go on like this…he’ll make himself sick…and I’m not sure I can handle things on my own.”
“Well, I’m here,” Violet offered. “I’ve already told you I don’t have anything pressing to rush back for and I really don’t mind helping.” She paused. “But I see what you mean. It must be difficult for you. I suppose he’s terribly sad right now. I think it might be harder for a man in some ways.”
Helen had raised an eyebrow skeptically. “Oh yes?”
“You know,” she’d gone on as Helen had stared at her blankly, “I’m not saying it’s easy for you. You are Alfie’s mother, after all. But Richard is the man. He’s the provider—the provider and the protector of the family. I suppose he might feel a little as though he’s failed you all, or failed Alfie. Not that he has, of course,” she rushed. “I just think perhaps he’s feeling terribly to blame. Poor chap.”
“But it’s not Richard’s fault!”
“Oh I know that! I’m so sorry; of course it’s not anyone’s fault,” Violet said apologetically. “This is coming out all wrong. What I mean to say is that Richard is a very honorable man. I should think he’s taking this very hard because he wishes there was something he could have done to save Alfie. Do you see what I mean?”
Helen nodded. No one understood that better than she.
Violet continued. “You could call a doctor. There may be things they can do for him…antidepressants…counseling? I know there’s all sorts of treatments available these days for breakdowns.”
Helen shook her head. “Richard’s not having a breakdown.” She paused. “He’s not. He’s grieving. He’s succumbed to his emotions. He was never one for really expressing himself, and this is what happens when you bottle everything up inside.”
Violet nodded.
“I don’t know what to do, V.” Helen sagged at the table. “Where do we go from here? How do we carry on with normal life when everything is so utterly destroyed? I don’t think I can do this on my own.”
“I think you’re probably all a long way away from a ‘normal life’ right now. A little time will help. You’ll see,” Violet said, patting her arm. “Try and be patient.”
Helen had shrugged. What else could she be?
In the end, and rather unexpectedly, it had been Violet who had gotten through to Richard. It had been her last day with the family and Helen had asked if she would mind taking Richard a tray of tea and toast before she left.
“Would you mind? You could say good-bye at the same time…not that he’ll say anything back,” she added grimly, “but maybe just let him know you’re leaving?”
“Of course, however I can help.”
Violet had taken the tray and disappeared upstairs. When she hadn’t returned a few minutes later Helen’s curiosity was piqued. She’d crept up the stairs and stood outside their bedroom on the landing. The door to the room was ajar, and she could see Violet sitting on her side of the bed. Richard lay with his back to her. Violet looked uncomfortable; she shifted her weight awkwardly on the mattress and played with the buttons on her shirtsleeves as she spoke to him in a low murmur. Helen could just make out what she was saying.
“It’s so terribly sad, Richard. You all miss him and you each need to mourn Alfie in your own way. I can understand you wanting to stay up here, away from the world. I just don’t want you to forget, in your grief, that you have two beautiful, vibrant daughters downstairs who need you an awful lot right now. And a wonderful wife who loves you very much.”
There was a small sigh from Richard’s side of the bed.
“Helen is very worried about you. They all are. I know you’ll be up and about when you’re feeling ready to face everyone, and I’m not pressuring you. Truly I’m not. I just wanted to remind you that although Alfie has gone, there’s a lot more life left in your home, for you to enjoy, when you’re ready.” Violet paused and tucked her hair back behind her ears. “Anyway, listen to me going on and on. I really just came up here to let you know that I’m leaving now. I have to return to Sussex. I need to go and check up on my shops. Autumn is a busy time for a florist; strange isn’t it? But if you ever need me, you or the girls, you just go right ahead and pick up that telephone. I’ll be here like a shot, for any one of you.”
Violet leaned over and gently kissed the top of Richard’s head and as she touched him, Richard jolted. He lurched up into a sitting position, reaching out for her hand and staring at her with wild, darkened eyes.
“I can’t do this,” he’d croaked at her. “I can’t carry on. I keep thinking of him, out there in the water…his little body battered and bruised from the waves, being pummeled against the rocks, or”—Richard’s voice cracked—“or dragged along the bottom of the ocean. I close my eyes and I see his skin being torn by the reef, his beautiful face all white and swollen. Fish nibbling at him…crabs tugging at his hands and feet…”
Helen shuddered. Her heart was in her mouth. She couldn’t bear to hear Richard’s nightmares, but she couldn’t tear herself away either.
“I can’t talk to Helen about it. I don’t want to upset her any more than she is already. It’s not fair to her. Oh God,” Richard said, sobbing. “I just want to hold him. I’d give anything to hold him one more time…to smell his skin…to touch his hair. My beautiful boy. My beautiful boy is gone.”
With that Richard had let out a cry and thrown himself at Violet. He put his arms around her, leaning his head onto the curve of her shoulder, releasing loud, primitive sobs that made his whole body tremble with grief.
It was clear that Violet did not know what to do at first. She sat utterly still and helpless as Richard held on to her. Then slowly, she raised a hand to Richard’s head and began to stroke his hair. As her hand moved, backward and forward, backward and forward, she murmured comforting shushing noises, over and over, until Richard’s weeping subsided. The two of them sat like th
at for a while. Then, as if sensing Helen’s presence, Violet looked up toward the door. The two women locked eyes over the top of Richard’s head; they stared at each other, frozen in the moment, until Helen mouthed a silent thank you and turned on her heel.
Violet left an hour later, and an hour or so after that Richard had wandered downstairs in his dressing gown. He’d walked into the kitchen and put the kettle on. “Would you like a cup of tea?” he’d asked her, as if the long days and nights of self-imposed isolation had been nothing more than a surreal dream.
She decided to follow his cue and pretend that this was nothing out of the ordinary. “Yes. Yes, that would be lovely. Thank you.”
“I think I’ll go back to work on Monday,” he’d added as he rummaged in the crockery cupboard for mugs.
“Oh, okay, if you’re sure?”
“Yes” was all he’d said.
And that had been that.
Helen shook herself. The memories were still fresh more than two years on. Just like her grief, just like her guilt. She glanced once more at the devastated painting hanging on the wall, sighed, and then lifted herself wearily from the arm of the sofa. It was cold outside, and her joints were stiff and sore. She felt tired, old and tired. Pulling her dressing gown around her body protectively, she walked through the chilly hallway, bracing herself for a confrontation.
As she walked through the dining room, she averted her gaze from the framed family photos spread across the sideboard, memories of a happier time. They hadn’t thought to capture any moments on film since the funeral. She’d been trying her hardest just to keep herself functioning on some basic level.
After Richard had returned to work, Helen hoped things might settle down. The girls had gone back to school, and Helen had steeled herself and returned to campus for a new term. It was as if some strange force, some inevitable momentum, pushed her onward. She woke. She dressed. She went to work. She bought groceries. She made dinner. She brushed her teeth. She went to bed. She felt like an actress playing her part on a vast, empty stage, day after aching day.
She did her best to avoid him, but Tobias pursued her. He arrived at her office unannounced and begged her in urgent, hushed undertones to return to him. He would leave flowers and notes on her desk, and messages on her voicemail, but Helen ignored them all. She simply couldn’t face him, or the thought of the destruction their affair had wreaked. Each scribbled word he left her, every wilting bloom he plucked and presented as a symbol of his affection, now served as nothing more than a painful reminder of her culpability. Alfie’s death had sucked every ounce of passion from their relationship, just as a raging fire sucks oxygen from the air, and losing Alfie only served to highlight an inevitable truth, one she had been too foolish to see: It was Richard she wanted. Only Richard. Only now did she see that his dependability, his fierce principles about family and duty, and his fundamental goodness weren’t signs of weakness or things to irritate and annoy, but rather qualities to be admired, qualities to cling to.
Yet Richard was strangely absent. Business trips kept him away for longer and longer periods, and when he did return, he would drift about the house aimlessly, or take long solitary walks up onto the Cap returning hours later mud-splattered and windswept with the same distracted look in his eyes. And at night, after they had completed their familiar round of locking doors and turning off lights, they would retreat to their bedroom, only to dress chastely in pajamas before turning off their bedside lamps and slipping silently under the covers.
“Good night, dear,” he would say primly, the words and tone of a man much older than his forty-odd years.
“Good night,” she’d reply, turning away from him and pulling the sheets up underneath her chin, all the while silently yearning for the warmth of his touch. She couldn’t remember the last time they had made love. She had spent nineteen years in a marriage she had convinced herself did nothing but stifle her, only to find that she now longed for its security, its safe dependability. It was more than ironic; it was perverse. But she knew it was nothing short of what she deserved. With Cassie hiding up in London, and Dora closeted away in her bedroom or out of the house at every seeming opportunity, Helen found herself wandering around Clifftops like a ghostly, lost soul. The echoing, empty house was her cross to bear, her punishment, and she knew it was being meted out in full force.
Yet through all the pain, and all the sadness they had inflicted and endured, she still dared to hope that Richard loved her. She just needed to give him time, she told herself; time to let go of his grief, time to heal, and time to find her once again, this time, waiting for him.
She paused outside the kitchen. Perhaps now the affair was out in the open they could begin the necessary steps to healing their marriage. There didn’t need to be any more secrets or lies. Perhaps this was the fire they needed to walk through to cleanse their marriage. It had been the worst two years of her life, yet she still had to hope there was a future for them; for really, what else did she have left?
She braced herself. Then, with a deep breath, she pushed open the door and walked in.
Richard was seated at the kitchen table. He had his back to her but she saw him stiffen as she entered the room and he spoke before she had a chance to address him.
“How long, Helen?” He didn’t look at her. His voice was gravelly, as though he’d been crying. “How long has it been going on?”
She swallowed. “Three months, but it’s over; it has been for a long time. It was nothing, Richard; it meant nothing.” Her words sounded clichéd, even to her ears. She moved around the side of the table to look at him but he avoided her gaze, turning his head to look out of the window instead. There was a scrap of paper on the table in front of him. She peered down at it, and sensing her interest he pushed it across at her.
“You’ll probably want this little memento.”
She looked down at it. It was a simple sketch, drawn in charcoal, of a naked woman reclining under the shade of a tree. She had been captured in a blush-inducing pose by the artist’s expert pencil. Helen stared at the image with horror.
“You look lovely,” Richard said.
“I…I had no idea…,” she stammered.
“Don’t try to deny it. It’s clearly you. As you told me yourself all those years ago when you brought that hideous painting home, he’s a ‘genius artist.’ The likeness is uncanny, don’t you think?”
Helen swallowed again. Discussing the affair was one thing, but coming face-to-face with such graphic evidence was both unexpected and wholly mortifying. Poor Richard.
“How…where did you find this? Did he give it to you?” Helen’s mind was racing.
Richard gave a little snort. “Someone took pity on me and decided to post it to me at work. I received it yesterday. I should think his wife took it upon herself to inform me, poor cuckold that I am! I imagine she’s sick to death of her husband’s philandering and decided to take matters into her own hands.”
Helen bit the inside of her cheek. She couldn’t bear to think of Richard opening an envelope containing the crude sketch, and in the office of all places. “I don’t know what to say…it’s over. You have to believe me. It’s been over for a long time. Since the funeral. There was no way I could…” Her words trailed off as Richard looked up at her. There was a genuine disgust in his eyes.
“No way you could sleep in another man’s bed, a married man at that, when your own son was out there, lost? Dead? How very decent of you, Helen.” His voice dripped with sarcasm. “How very noble.”
“I’m not proud of myself, Richard. I’ve lived with the guilt these last couple of years. I wanted to tell you—I really did.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
“I didn’t want to add to your burden. We were grieving for our son. The affair was over. I thought it was best…” Again, her words faded away.
They sat across the table from each other. Richard gazed at her blankly, and then shook his head with incomprehension. All the w
hile, the little scrap of white paper sat between them, staring up at them like a glaring reminder of all that had gone wrong for them over the years.
“Do you love him?” Richard asked finally.
“No!” she exclaimed. “God, no! He was a mistake, a fling.”
“When did it start? I want to know everything. Don’t spare me the details. I don’t want any more lies, do you understand?” His voice was grim.
Helen nodded. “It was a flirtation at first. We met that first time in Bridport, when I visited his gallery and bought the painting.”
Richard nodded.
“We flirted with each other, but it was nothing more at that point. We hadn’t been in Dorset that long. It was a difficult time. Remember?”
Richard gave a little nod again and turned to look out the window again. She could see tears welling at the corners of his eyes. She longed to move across the table and hold him, but she held herself back. She owed him an explanation.
“Then I got pregnant with Alfie. Tobias just…he just faded away; it was one of those things that never happened. It wasn’t meant to be. You and I, we were happy. You must remember?” There was desperation in her voice. It was important he remember what they had, what they could be.
“So when did you first sleep with him then? What changed?”
“It was my second year lecturing at Exeter. He’d been appointed as artist in residence at the university.”
Richard nodded. “Go on,” he said.
“We’d occasionally bump into each other on campus. Then at the end of the summer term he invited me out to lunch.”
The House of Tides Page 30
