The River House

by Margaret Leroy

  “Yes,” I say.

  This hint of intimacy stirs something in me, a little shimmer of sex.

  “You know about this stuff then, Ginnie,” he says, after a moment. “Well, of course you would. You work with the kids who get caught up in it all.”

  I have a sudden, sharp impulse to uncover myself, to reveal something.

  “It’s not just that,” I tell him. “It’s in the family.”

  His eyes widen. He’s very still suddenly.

  “Now, you mean?” His voice is careful, slow. “Or are we talking about the past here?”

  “Not now. Now is OK. In the past. My childhood.”

  “Your childhood,” he says gently.

  He makes a little gesture, reaching his hand toward me as though to touch me. His hand just over mine. My breathing quickens—I don’t know if he hears this.

  There’s a resonant clatter of coins from the slot machine beside us. The noise intrudes and pushes us apart. Will leans back in his chair again. The teenage boy scoops up his winnings and stuffs his pockets with coins.

  Will looks at me uncertainly, but the mood has changed; we can’t get back there.

  “Tell me more about Kyle,” I say.

  “The last time was the worst,” says Will. “Naomi reckons this is what triggered the mother’s breakdown. She said she was going to leave, that this time she really meant it, and he threatened her with a pickax. Actually, threatened doesn’t quite capture it. I think this could be the thing you need to know.”

  “Kyle built a room with Lego,” I say, “but he wouldn’t open the door.”

  Will nods.

  “How Naomi told it—Kyle and his mother were in the bedroom, and she pushed the wardrobe against the door and barricaded them in. She’d got her phone, thank God, she managed to call us. We got there just as the father was breaking down the door. … Afterward he said he wanted to make her love him. Weird kind of loving.” He twists his mouth, as though he has a bitter taste.

  I shake my head.

  “I got it totally wrong,” I tell him.

  “I’m sure you didn’t,” he says.

  “No, really. He’s so terrified. And I thought the thing he was so scared of—I thought it was there in the room with him. That he’d been abused or something. He’s always so afraid.”

  “It’s a pebble chucked in a pond,” he says. “That kind of violence. It reaches out, it hurts a lot of people. …”

  “Yes,” I say.

  A little silence falls.

  He leans toward me. His hands, on the table, are close to mine.

  “Tell me about yourself, Ginnie,” he says lightly. “You have a family of your own?”

  I tell him about taking Molly to university. I feel uncertain though—it makes you seem so old, to have a child at college. I wonder if he’s working out my age.

  “It made me think how when I was just eighteen, I was so sure that one day I’d have everything sorted,” I tell him. “That I’d know where I was going.”

  “I know just what you mean,” he says. “And then you wake up and you find you’re forty and all that’s happened is that life just got more complicated.”

  Forty, I think. Shit. Forty.

  “My other one—Amber,” I tell him. “She’s sixteen. I worry about her. She drinks a lot and stays out late—I mean, she’s quite pretty.”

  “Well, she would be,” he says.

  His eyes are on me. I realize I am flirting, running my hand through my hair, pushing it back from my forehead, as though it was the sleek, glossy hair you can do that with. For a moment I feel I have that kind of hair.

  “And you?” I ask.

  “We’ve got a son. He’s seven.”

  He doesn’t tell me his son’s name, or anything else about him. I’m suddenly uneasy, as though everything is fragile. I don’t know where this feeling comes from.

  “So you’ve still got all that teenage stuff to look forward to,” I say lightly.

  He nods. There’s still a wariness about him.

  “And your wife?” I ask tentatively, thinking of the photograph in his office, the woman with the long dark fall of hair. “What does she do?”

  “Megan’s a photographer,” he says.

  “That sounds so glamorous,” I say.

  “She’s good,” he says, with a thread of pride in his voice. “She doesn’t work much now though. She’s not happy with that really. But I guess we all compromise.”

  I would like to hear more: I have a feverish, disproportionate curiosity about her. But Will is distracted, staring over my shoulder across the room.

  “Great,” he says, very quietly, meaning the opposite.

  I turn and follow his gaze. The man who walks toward us is shorter than Will but authoritative, in a sharply cut linen jacket the color of wheat. They greet each other with that slightly forced bonhomie men will sometimes use, when they know each other well but aren’t at ease together. Will introduces us. The man’s name is Roger Prior, and he works in the murder squad.

  “I’m helping Ginnie with a case,” Will tells him.

  “Great to meet you, Ginnie,” says Roger. I’d guess he comes from a different background from Will, probably rather affluent, his voice deliberately roughened to fit in.

  He bends down toward me. I can smell his aftershave, a bland, rather sweet smell, with vanilla in it. His skin against mine is cool, like some smooth fabric; his handshake seems to last a little too long. I see myself through his eyes, sitting here drinking whiskey when I should be home with my family, too old to be holding a stranger’s gaze and running my hand through my hair, my voice too eager, my shoes too bright and high.

  “Will’s helping out, then?” says Roger. “Will’s always pleased to help.”

  “Ginnie’s a psychologist at the Westcotes Clinic,” says Will.

  “A psychologist?” says Roger, his cool gray gaze on me. “So you can see straight into me, Ginnie?”

  My laugh sounds forced and shrill. Roger has an affable look, but his eyes are veiled.

  “Well, I mustn’t distract you both,” he says. “I mean, from your case discussion. Good to meet you, Ginnie. Don’t let Will take advantage.”

  He goes to join someone on the other side of the bar, but it’s as if he’s still with us—his skepticism and cool amusement and vanilla smell. It’s hard to talk, to recover the ease we had, as though Roger’s pragmatism has undone something. I realize I had impossible hopes for this encounter—wild, deluded fantasies. I know it’s time to leave.

  I pick up my bag.

  “Well, thanks for the drink and the info. I guess I have to go.”

  I’d like him to grasp my wrist and say, Don’t go yet, Ginnie.

  “Yes,” he says. “We both should.”

  As we get up, the noise in the place breaks over me, all the talk and music and laughter. I can’t believe how unaware of it I’ve been. Roger is at the bar, chatting to a very toned blond woman, who smiles and nods subserviently at everything he says.

  I follow Will to the door. I think how I’ll never see him again, and a sense of loss tugs at me.

  Outside it’s getting dark and the streetlamps are lit, casting pools of tawny light. There are smells of petrol and rotting fruit, and a dangerous, sulfurous smell where kids have been letting off fireworks. A chill wind stirs the litter on the pavements.

  “God, what a dreary night,” he says. “You’re the only bright thing in the street.”

  This charms me.

  I point out where I’ve parked my car, thinking we’ll say goodbye now and he’ll leave me. But he walks beside me.

  I stop by the car.

  “That was a real help,” I tell him. I’m very polite and reserved. “Thanks for taking the trouble.”

  I’m fumbling in my bag for my keys, keeping my head down. I’m embarrassed at what he might read in my face, something too open and hungry.

  “A pleasure,” he says.

  I expect him to say good-bye, but h
e just stands there. It’s quiet on the street, just for the moment—no traffic, no one passing. I feel the quiet in me everywhere. I am stilled, waiting.

  “Would you like to meet again?” he says. “Perhaps for lunch or something.”

  “Yes. Yes, I’d like that. I’d like that very much,” I say. I manage not to say please.

  “We’ll do that then,” he says. “If you’d like to.” But he doesn’t move.

  I can feel his eyes on me, but there’s such a space between us: unbridgeable space.

  “Ginnie,” he says.

  My name in his mouth. The tenderness in his voice undoes me. I look up, meet his eyes: everything loose, fluid in me.

  Slowly he moves his hand across the space between us, reaches out toward me, runs one finger slowly down the side of my face, tracing me out, watching me. I feel the astonishing warmth of his hand right through me: hear my quick in-breath.

  He shakes his head, with that look he has, as though I puzzle him.

  “I dream about you,” he says.

  “Yes,” I say. I think of my own dream.

  “I want to make love to you. You know that, don’t you?” I nod. I can’t speak.

  We stand there for a moment. He cups the side of my face in his hand. I press my mouth into his palm: There is an extraordinary pleasure in the feel of his skin against my mouth. I would like to feel his whole body against me. He says my name again.

  But people are coming toward us along the pavement—people from the bar, with their harsh, raised voices and laughter. He takes a step away from me, lowers his hand. I can understand that he doesn’t want to be seen here with me, but I still feel a quick ache of rejection when he takes away his hand. I hate these people. I would like to stay here forever on this pavement, his gaze on me, feeling his warmth on my skin.

  He shrugs a little.

  “We’ll speak,” he says, and turns and walks away.

  CHAPTER 11

  THURSDAY IS MY AFTERNOON OFF. I decide I shall clean out Molly’s room so Greg can sleep there.

  Greg is working at home today, in his study under the eaves. Before I start on the bedroom I take him a mug of coffee. He’s intent on his work; he doesn’t hear me come in. In the angled light from his desk lamp, the bones and lines of his face are etched in shadow; he looks older, more severe. The room feels cloistered, apart; up here you’re scarcely conscious of the bustle of the street. You can see across the trees in people’s gardens and down to the river, on this dull, wet day a sullen, dark surge.

  He’s checking through the editing of his latest book, an anthology of medieval Irish prose and poetry aimed at a general readership. I glance at the page over his shoulder. There’s a little poem called “The Coming of Winter”: It tells how the bracken is red and the wind high and cold, the wild goose crying, cold seizing the wings of the birds.

  “I like that,” I say. “It makes me feel cold just to read it.”

  He smiles a little. This pleases him.

  “We’re calling the book ‘Our Celtic Heritage,’” he says. “Fenella reckons that anything Celtic sells.”

  “It’s a good title,” I tell him.

  “D’you think so? I’m really not sure,” he says. “I thought I’d have a word with Mother about it.”

  Greg’s mother is a highly energetic woman, who likes to wear elegant layers of gray linen, and volunteers with the Citizens Advice Bureau, work to which she seems admirably well suited. I don’t doubt she’d have an opinion.

  I put the coffee mug down on the desk beside him.

  “Not there,” he says.

  I put it on the floor.

  Molly’s room has purple walls and fairy lights and a feather boa draped across the mantelpiece. She used to say smugly, No one would think it’s a lad’s room, would they, Mum? But today her room smells troublingly of vinegar, and everything is covered with a velvet bloom of dust. I fling the curtains wide. This hasn’t been done for months; she lived a subterranean life, never let the day in. There are cobwebs where I’ve pushed back the curtains; I swipe at them with a duster and they break up, but the rags of web have an unnerving stickiness, lacy gray fragments clinging to my fingers. I feel a vague surge of guilt. There are certain feminine skills I’ve never really mastered—ironing, making your home gleam, straightening your hair. When the girls were small and I picked them up from school, there were women I used to notice at the gate, who clearly understood these things, who knew what it means to be female: who were different from me, sleek and ironed and certain. I bet those women never find such cobwebs in their homes.

  Molly is a hoarder. Her desk is littered with things she has no use for but can’t quite throw away—earrings speckled with tarnish, dog-eared essays, Karma bracelets. I come upon a handmade birthday card from Else, her German pen friend. It’s decorated with spangly stickers, and inside Else has written, in carefully looped handwriting, “To your eighteenth birthday. I wish you health, good luck, and a lot of effect in your life!”

  I penetrate under the bed, where I find a muddle of magazines and an apple core and an open bag of crisps—the source of the vinegar smell. I scoop up all the glittery chaos from her desk into boxes, and dust and polish everywhere. The room comes into focus, as though its lines and edges are clearer, sharper, than before.

  And as I do these things there’s part of me that’s somewhere else entirely—as though I’m living another life in parallel to this one. A life in which I’m with Will on the pavement in the dark of the evening: And this time no one disturbs us, and he pulls me toward him and holds me to him, the whole warm length of his body pressing into mine. The sensation overwhelms me, and for a moment I sit on the bed and just let myself feel it—and the smell of his skin and the touch of his hands are almost as real as if these things are happening. As though it’s this room and my life here that are imagined. But mixed in with the longing, I feel a kind of fear. Yet what is it I’m so afraid of? That something will happen between us? That I could imperil everything? Or do I fear that nothing at all will happen, that nothing will be imperiled, that my life will just carry on, quite calmly, like before?

  I Hoover under the bed, and the noise brings Greg downstairs.

  “How long is this going to take?”

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “It’ll just be a moment or two.”

  Next to the fireplace there are bookshelves that stretch to the ceiling. It’s a kind of archaeology, these layers of the past—A-level and GCSE textbooks and, from further back, the books the girls liked as children. There have always been loud protests if I threatened to give them away. “The Storyteller” is here—and Death who played dice with a soldier, with his bulbous eyes and his sack, the drawing that haunts me—and Amber’s book of nursery rhymes. I turn to “Gray Goose and Gander,” the poem I had to read each evening, feeling a mix of tenderness and tiredness, remembering the countless repetitions of early mothering, the things that always had to be done the same. Eva can get quite poignant about this sometimes, in the Café Matisse after one too many Bloody Marys, resting her chin in her hands, her splendid cleavage gleaming, the candle flames reflecting in her eyes. “What happened, Ginnie?” she’ll say. “D’you ever think—what happened to those children? The little children you bathed and read all those stories to? Don’t you sometimes want to be back there? You know—when you could make them perfectly happy by buying a chocolate muffin. … And you’re so scared for them—you fear for them, that it’s all so fragile, that something awful could happen, that they’ll stick their fingers in an electric socket or something. But the thing is, you lose them anyway. You don’t think about that, you think it’ll go on forever.” She’ll look down into her glass and slowly shake her head. “Sometimes I wonder—where have those little children gone?” I always tell her that I don’t share her nostalgia—that I like the teenage years; but now as I pile these books into boxes, ready to go to the secondhand bookshop in Sunbury, it seizes me for a moment, that sense of something lost and irreplaceab
le.

  Right at the top of the bookcase there’s a shelf of Ursula’s books. Leaves and tendrils from her drawings decorate the spines. Ursula draws such wonderful plants—extravagant, Italianate—that she sometimes gets letters from fans: “Ursula, I would so love to see your garden.” But the plot at her Southampton home is a few square yards of decking and a cactus—the enchanted gardens she draws are all from her imagination. I run my finger along the spines, feeling a flicker of envy; it must be good to have achieved something as solid as this whole shelf of books. The one that made all the difference for her is here—the volume of Hans Andersen fairy tales she illustrated.

  She wasn’t always successful. She’d been struggling for years, largely living off Paul, her husband, wondering if it was worth it, or whether she should perhaps go back to primary teaching, when she did this book. I remember when she showed it to me—hesitant, self-deprecating—she used to be hesitant then. I could see at once it was special. There was something about these stories that suited her wayward imagination—these white-fleshed girls with their voluptuous deprivations: the mermaid trying to walk on the beautiful legs that cut her, the curve of Gerda’s white throat and the scratch of the robber girl’s knife. Everything was animate, full of sex or threat, every petal, every tree root; tendrils of ivy clutched like greedy, caressing fingers, the flowers had lascivious smiles.

  Nothing much happened to start with—she sold the usual few thousand copies; and then it was chosen by children’s BBC to illustrate a series of fairy tales read by celebrities, and suddenly everyone was buying it. Not just children either, for her books inhabited that sought-after terrain—books for children that adults also enjoy. One drawing was even reproduced in Vogue, in a piece on the New Romantics—the picture of the Little Mermaid that I have in my kitchen, the one Molly found so troubling as a little girl. I remember when Ursula visited, just after the arrival of her first fat royalty check. She looked different. Still hardly any makeup, and her hair severely tied back, but with a new coat of the softest buttery suede. Though it wasn’t just the money. There was a new certainty about her: She knew what she was for.