‘Do you remember that summer?’ I say to Kit. She’s drying the pans that I’ve washed, the ones that don’t go in the dishwasher. ‘The one when everything festered. It was really muggy and damp. All those East Anglian crops just rotted in the soil, and everything stank. There were terrible mosquitoes. The cats got fleas. You caught head lice.’
‘Mum! Why’re you talking about that? Head lice . . . yuck.’
‘Hey! And you’re a medical student.’
‘Yeah but you can keep the parasites for someone else. Not my thing I’m afraid!’
‘Anyway. There was a field of cabbages over the road and the leaves went mouldy. The stench was appalling! I thought there must be a curse on the land. Everything that should’ve been ripe and fertile turned rancid and sickly. Then we became ill too and spent a week or more in bed fighting off a virus.’
‘I don’t remember,’ Kit says.
‘No. I suppose you were only about six.’
‘Anyway, why drag up that summer? There were plenty of good ones. When the trees were all covered in May blossom. Remember the cow parsley along the hedgerows? And the cornflowers in the garden in June? God, I miss East Anglia so much sometimes. You could feel the seasons change. You just don’t get that in cities.’
Of course, for Kit, the country was her home. Her first forays into the world happened under massive skies and amongst spreading fields of poppies. The first images on her fresh baby retinas were of white cloud shapes against blue, green light filter-ing through canopies of chestnut leaves. Those first impressions, that are made before we are even conscious that we can see, stay with us, imprinted somewhere on our memories. They form our true image of home.
My first images were the river and its mud, the bones and smooth chalk stones washed up on the beach, clay pipes and discarded car parts and driftwood. Ropes and chains draped in dank weed. Lowering grey skies only just glimpsed above the towering wall of the power station and its dark monolithic chimneys. The steel coaling pier reaching a clanking brown arm out over the water. Kit never experienced East Anglia as I did, as an exile, even at its most radiant.
And why indeed am I talking about that one ugly summer? Why do I want to turn her good memories into something murky, best left forgotten?
‘You’re quite right,’ I say, wiping the surface with the dishcloth and putting on the espresso machine.
‘Treasure your good memories. Please darling. Hold them close to your heart. It’s very important.’
Later, when Kit and Harry have gone up to bed, Greg comes back into the kitchen and puts some guitar music on the CD player. It’s John Williams. My heart lurches. He sits down opposite me at the table on the bench, pours us each a large glass of cognac, leans across and takes my hand in his. He smiles a beseeching smile through pale older-man lips. His stubble is grey. His eyebrows, nostrils, and ears have long hairs growing out of them. Under his skin is a web of tiny red broken veins. He squeezes my hand.
‘Sorry about earlier,’ he says.
‘What? What’s there to be sorry about?’
‘About accusing you of being passive-aggressive. It wasn’t on.’
‘It’s OK,’ I say, sighing. I’ve withdrawn my hand.
‘Come and sit beside me?’
I move around to his side of the table and sit next to him on the bench. He puts his arm around me and I can smell coffee and old wool. It’s not unpleasant; it’s not that I find it repellent when we sit together. It’s familiar. It’s accompanied me through the last twenty-five years of my life, it’s almost as much a part of me as the smell of the River House, which you don’t notice until you’ve been away from it for a while.
He pulls me towards him and though I resist, he leans over and starts to kiss me on the lips.
I never actively enjoyed kissing Greg, but kissing does not even seem appropriate now we are over forty. Why is this? Do all married couples feel awkward trying to kiss when they get older? I do try. I open my mouth a little bit and he pokes his tongue between my teeth. And it feels like a tongue between my teeth. It doesn’t feel like a thing to abandon myself to. It does nothing. I can taste the cognac, and the faint residue of lemon tart. I’m afraid I’m going to gag. I push him away.
‘Sonia, I’m not having an affair if that’s what you think. That’s not why I’ve taken on all this lecturing. I promise.’
‘It’s fine,’ I say. ‘I didn’t think you were.’
‘I just sometimes feel you don’t want me with you.’
‘That’s nonsense!’ I say. ‘What on earth makes you think that?’
‘Well, look at us. We haven’t slept together for three months now. I mean properly sleep together, not just share the same bed.’
‘Fuck, you mean.’
‘Well if you want to use that word. I’d rather say make love.’
‘I’m just clarifying what we’re talking about here.’
‘OK. We’re talking about sex, Sonia. Three months. And before that, how long? Six? Eight?’
‘Yes, but we’re not the kind of couple who spends their every waking moment copulating. We never were. Nothing’s changed, Greg. This isn’t a marriage of grand passions.’
‘Not on your part, no.’
‘What?’
‘I mean, it’s not for want of trying on my part. I want us to . . . have more sex than we do. I still find you desirable, Sonia.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean? Still? Am I supposed to be past it at forty-four?’
‘OK. OK. Sorry. I shouldn’t have used the word still. I was talking about the fact we’ve been together for a long time. I know we’ve had our rough patches, but I thought things were better recently. Since Kit’s grown up. I haven’t tired of you. Some husbands . . . God, Sonia, some guys I know, they’re fed up to the back teeth with the women they married and are having affairs left, right and centre. But that’s not for me. You’re the one. Always have been. Always will be. It’s why I want us to move. Be together more often. In a place that is ours. Not one that really belongs to your parents. Can’t you consider it, Sonia? Think of it. Geneva. Clean air. Mountains.’
Why won’t he give up?
‘Come to bed?’
Later, I’m woken in the night by visions of Jez skeletal, his flesh gone yellow and withered. There’s a stench of rotting cabbages, flies and lice crawl over him, eating into his once-flawless flesh. I have to get out of bed, leaving Greg’s contented, post-coital snoring mound under the covers. I pull on my kimono and am about to turn and climb up the stairs to the music room when I remember with a jolt that he’s not there. I go downstairs instead. I put my long wool coat over my night clothes and pull on my boots. Then I turn the handle of the hall door and slip quietly out into the night.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Thursday night
Sonia
He stares wide-eyed at me. He won’t speak.
‘Is this the only way you can think of, to show me you’re upset I’ve put you in here?’ I ask. He won’t reply.
‘I didn’t want to do it, believe me. But I’ve got people in the house who won’t be happy you’re staying. I had to hide you for your own good.’
I’ve lit a candle and am looking at him by its wavering light. I’m dismayed. Something’s changed. Jez’s face is white and pasty looking, as it was in my dream. His skin is faintly moist. I feel a rush of anger and I am not even sure who it’s for. Jez, for losing his vitality? Greg for coming back and forcing me to do this to him? Or for someone – something – else?
I sit on the bed and pour Jez some water and offer it to him but he turns his head aside and refuses to drink it. It’s the first time, since Sunday, that he’s been so uncooperative.
‘Jez, we both dislike this situation, but we have to make do. It won’t be for long. I promise. Please eat. Here. I’ve bought you some cake from Rhodes. There’s a choice in fact, Princess Cake or Tarte au Citron.’
He takes a deep breath and spits at me, not once, but again and again.
It’s so unexpected and so violent I have no time to duck.
Saliva runs down my cheek. I wipe it off with the sleeve of my coat.
‘That wasn’t necessary,’ I say. ‘I’ve come out here in the middle of the night to make sure you’re OK, not cold or frightened. That’s the only reason I’m here Jez, to look after you. Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.’
He doesn’t reply.
I sit down on the bed next to him, stroke his damp hair away from his forehead to show that there is no ill feeling after his outburst even though it was hurtful. He flinches from my touch.
‘If you’re not going to talk to me, if you won’t even tell me what’s wrong, I don’t see how you can expect me to help,’ I say. I feel gripped, not by fury this time but by hopelessness, frustration, at the thought that I must keep Jez like this. It’s not how I want it to be. I want him back in the music room, to go back to the beginning. Show him I only want to do him good. I never wanted to make this into something unpleasant. Neither do I want him to think bad things about me, to think that I should wish him any harm. That’s not how it is. It isn’t how I am. Some force is taking what we’ve got and turning it sour. It’s what I predicted in the kitchen when I remembered that East Anglian summer. It’s like the way they turned what Seb and I had into something shameful.
‘Everything’s going to be OK, you know,’ I say. ‘Everything’s going to be lovely. We just need to get through this bit.’
‘You were taking me home.’
‘Yes,’ I say, ‘I was. But, you know that isn’t possible, the way things are. You said yourself it would be difficult to explain things to everyone. I thought about what you said, and you were right. It would have been impossible.’
‘Helen and Alicia have no idea where I am, do they? The surprise party was a lie.’
‘I never told a lie, Jez. The party, if you remember, was an idea you came up with by yourself.’
He starts to writhe, tugging at the duct-tape bonds.
‘Why am I tied up? And locked in? Where am I?’
‘SShh. It’s OK. You’re still very close to my house. I wouldn’t have taken you far from me. I’d never abandon you. You know that.’
I pause, waiting for him to calm down.
‘My only regret,’ I go on, ‘is that circumstances are less than luxurious for you for the next couple of days. I’m being forced to keep you in undesirable conditions. But it’s not for long.’ I look to see if my words are reaching him at all.
He stops struggling and stares at me with a doubtful expression, wanting to believe, not quite allowing himself to.
‘I promise, Jez.’
The cold in the garage makes your bones ache. It’s worse than I’d anticipated. Even under his duvet and with the blankets and hot-water bottle, Jez is shivering, and though I am wearing my long, black wool winter coat and a scarf and boots over my night clothes, I too am unable to keep my teeth from chattering together. My lips are so numb it’s hard to get words out. I must bring another duvet down as soon as I can. I don’t want him to fall ill.
‘Think of this as a little adventure, like camping in the woods. I’ll bring you anything, you know that. You only have to ask. Look, I’ve put the acoustic guitar there for you. And there’s a torch if you need light to see by.’
‘How am I supposed to play when you keep my wrists strapped up with this . . . What is it? Gaffer tape?’
‘I didn’t want to restrain you, believe me. I was worried if you woke up and panicked you might hurt yourself trying to do something silly.’
Neither of us mention what I’ve used to stop him soiling himself. I know how humiliating this would be for him.
‘I’ll cut the bonds off soon if you’re good. I’d like to keep them off so you can play guitar, smoke and wash. I wish there was running water in here. I’ve brought you a flannel so you can wipe your face. And there’s water in the plastic container. Jez, I’m making it all as pleasant as I can in the circumstances.’
I say I’ll unleash one of his hands now so he can take a drink. I snip the tape off with the kitchen scissors I’ve brought in my pocket. I put the glass of water to his lips. That’s when he starts to get difficult again.
He swipes the glass from me and it smashes against the bedpost. I can see by the state he’s got himself into that he’s going for me even from this sitting position. He’s managed to keep a shard of glass in his fist somehow, and as I back away he lurches off the bed towards me. I swivel away from his hand but he catches me on the wrist with the glass shard and drags it, producing a long line of pinpricks in my skin. Luckily for me, he’s still weak from last night’s drugs, and with his feet and one hand still strapped to the bedposts he can’t move far. I take advantage of this to push him back down. I kneel on him. He cries and tries to lash out again with his one free hand, but I guess it’s lost feeling in the cold and he hasn’t much strength. I grasp his hand and twist it. He yelps as I rip strips of the duct tape from the roll in my bag and fasten his wrist tightly to the bed frame again.
I stand and look down at him. Seb often frightened me, he often threatened to abandon me. And he could be rough. But he would never have gone for me the way Jez just did. I swallow.
‘Jez, believe me, I don’t want to have you tied up like this. I’d much rather watch you move, listen to you play. But what you did just then was hurtful.’
I wait a bit and when I see he’s not going to reply I speak to the silence.
‘Everything I do is for your own good,’ I say. I take the scarf from the crack under the window and reluctantly I tie it tightly around his mouth.
‘For your own good.’
It’s pitch black outside, and such a raw cold my eyes sting. It takes me several minutes to adjust to the darkness. There’s not a star in the sky. The tide’s up high and the water sloshes against the wall only a couple of feet from the top. There’s an insistent clank clank clank as if someone’s trying to get my attention from up there on the steel structure of the coaling pier. Too regular a rhythm for the wind surely, though I know I’m frightening myself. I strain to see. There’s nothing but the thicker black shape of the pier against the black of the night. The clank changes rhythm for a moment, as if whoever or whatever is up there has moved. I do know what the sound is, it’s there all the time, a large sheet of corrugated iron that has come loose and flaps in the wind, a sound that turns into a bang on a particularly stormy night. I walk forward, tentatively. There’s the regular slurp of the water against the wall. Then I’m certain. I can hear breathing.
I daren’t move. Something’s down there below the wall, on the water. I’m drawn to it, to peer over, to check who’s there. A gaggle of swans rises up and down on the water’s surface, huddled together against the cold, an eerie silver in the darkness. I feel the swift warm shudder of relief. I think of something I heard once, about how Hindus revere swans for the way their feathers don’t get wet in the water. The way a saint is in the world without being attached to it. One of the swans lifts its wings and stretches, revealing the muscular white underside, and I remember a production of Swan Lake, the sinuous bodies of the ballet dancers as they moved. The image gets confused with the one I still have of Jez, his arms stretched over his head as I left the garage. The regret that he’s losing his beauty, as he lies wasting away, assails me again. I move on down the alley towards the entrance in the wall to the River House. The panoply of images, the swans, the ballet dancers, Seb, Jez, all become confused in my mind.
There’s a bright amber square of light in one of the windows down the alley, but otherwise everyone’s asleep. Not a sign of life. I slip in through the door in the wall, push open the front door, stop to listen before entering the hall. Is that a door closing gently upstairs? I’m on edge. Imagining things. Every sense aches with the strain. My mouth’s dry. My fingers tingle.
I stand still for a few more moments barely daring to breathe. Slide through the hall door, leaving my coat and boots in the lobby. Slip
into the downstairs loo. Flick the lock across. Wait. Try to breathe silently, but my breath comes in great loud gasps. I run the cold tap and bathe my bleeding wrist in the icy water. The blood refuses to be stemmed, it continues to ooze out of the pinprick cuts that turn the water pink as it swirls down the sink. I listen. Someone’s moving about upstairs! I can hear the creak of floorboards, footsteps on the landing. Another door closes. When all’s quiet I pull the light cord, slide the lock back. Open the door. A slender figure steps towards me in the darkness.
‘Sonia.’
It’s Harry.
‘I needed the loo. Couldn’t remember where the bathroom was up there.’
‘Be my guest,’ I say, wondering what possesses me to employ a phrase I never use. How absurd it sounds, too, in the dark, in the entrance to the downstairs bathroom. Maybe I imagine it, but I feel as if he stares at my back as I climb the stairs, to return to my bedroom and slide back in-between the sheets next to Greg.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Friday
Sonia
The next day, Friday, Greg announces he’s got us all tickets for a dress rehearsal of Tosca at the Royal Opera House and that he’s treating us to a trip upriver on the Clipper, and then champagne and a post-rehearsal supper. Kit’s beside herself with girlish excitement. She and Greg go into a huddle over their breakfast coffee to discuss the Soprano while Harry has a shower. All this happens in a blur, beyond me. As if I’m watching them from a parallel universe. I can’t leave Jez on his own. Not after the fight last night. I need to make sure he’s OK and that we’re friends again. The way I left him was so awful, so cruel. I need to make sure he understands that all I feel for him is tenderness.
‘Judy’s coming,’ I complain to Greg. ‘I don’t like to leave her in the house on her own. She never does a proper job if I’m not here.’
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