The House on the Cliff

by Charlotte Williams

  We fell silent. Eventually I spoke.

  “I think you do care about it, though, Gwydion.” My tone was tentative. “I think this conflict became part of you when you were growing up. That’s what happens to children when their parents fight. That’s what you’re still carrying now, inside.” I paused. “And maybe the jolt . . .”

  “In the dream?”

  I nodded. “It could be something that actually happened, of course. Or perhaps something that you wish would happen? So that the conflict can be resolved at last.”

  “Maybe.” He didn’t look convinced.

  There was a short silence, and then he began to talk about the upcoming rehearsals for the drama series. He’d have to miss the next session, he said, as he was wanted for meetings with the director, but he was keen to press on as quickly as possible after that: he needed to get the button phobia under control before dress rehearsals started, and he was still troubled by the dream, which woke him up at night, leaving him too tired to focus on his work properly during the day. I felt for him. He was in a rush to solve these pressing practical problems that threatened to ruin his career. It seemed irrelevant, at such a juncture, to be delving into old family conflicts that couldn’t be changed—he had a life to get on with.

  And yet I knew, from past experience, that there was no real alternative for Gwydion. Sooner or later, when things are wrong in our lives, there comes a jolt. The call of conscience, as Kierkegaard named it. We can ignore it and carry on, constrained perhaps by our decision, limiting our horizons, or we can see it as an opportunity to put things right. Whether Gwydion was going to be able to respond to the call, I didn’t know. But if he could only get to the end of his dream, I thought, there was a good chance he might be heading in the right direction.

  We talked some more, mostly about the button phobia and the costume he was going to wear for his role as Granville Beauclerc, the male lead in the drama series. He said it was likely to feature metal buttons on the waistcoat and jacket, and horn ones on the shirt, sewn on through a shank at the back, rather than through holes in the buttons themselves. He explained that they wouldn’t be the worst type for him, and that he’d probably be able to manage once he had buttoned himself into his costume. We went on to discuss practical issues, such as how he might contrive to be alone when the buttoning took place, or whether someone else might do the buttoning for him, and then it was time for him to go. We said good-bye, and I wished him luck with his upcoming meetings; he seemed reluctant to leave, and I, too, was sorry to see him go, aware that his absence the following week would interrupt the steady progress we had been making in our sessions.

  After he’d gone I went over to my desk to catch up on my correspondence before my next client came in. But instead of scrolling through my e-mails, I sat for a moment looking at the screen saver, a drawing of our house and garden that Rose had brought home from school as a young child.

  My session with Gwydion, as so often happens with a client, had raised a few issues of my own. I thought of the sudden jolt in his dream, the call to conscience as I’d interpreted it, telling him that something fundamental was amiss in his life, something that he needed to address immediately. Could that apply to me? Was Bob’s infidelity the jolt I’d needed to show me that our marriage was in trouble? Perhaps it was his way, albeit unconsciously, of telling me that. I’d responded sensibly, or so I’d thought up to now. I hadn’t shouted and screamed, hadn’t threatened to leave. I’d behaved like a responsible adult, a parent, not a jealous lover, aware of how much was at stake, how much would be lost—for all of us—were we to fight and part. But in truth I was angry with him. Seething with rage, to be more exact. My gut reaction to Gwydion’s description of Evan’s philandering had told me that. If I was to be honest with myself, I needed to acknowledge my anger, find a way to express it, not simply turn away from it for fear of the destruction it could cause. The problem was, how was I going to do that, without wreaking havoc in my life?

  “Bob, I’m thinking of going away for a few days.”

  “Mmm?” Bob looked up from the paper. We were sitting at the kitchen table after breakfast, reading the Saturday papers.

  “I need a break.” I picked up my coffee cup and warmed my hands on it.

  “Good idea. Where shall we go?”

  “No. Not us. Me. On my own.”

  He put down the paper, pushing his specs up into his hair as he did.

  “Jess, when are you going to stop punishing me?” There was a look of genuine anguish on his face. “I’ve said I’m sorry. I’ve done my best to make amends. What more can I do?”

  “I’m not punishing you. I just want to be on my own for a bit, that’s all.”

  “Look.” He sighed. “I made a stupid mistake, and I regret it terribly. But I’m sure we can work this out. Why won’t you talk to me, let me explain?”

  “We have talked about it.” I took a sip of coffee. “You had a one-night stand. I’ve accepted it. You’ve said it won’t happen again. I believe you. There’s nothing more to say.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake!” Bob was exasperated. “You’re a psychotherapist, aren’t you? You’re supposed to believe in people expressing themselves, communicating. Why can’t you do it yourself?”

  “Psychotherapists are just the same as anyone else, Bob.” My voice was beginning to rise. “They get pissed off when their husbands cheat on them. They feel jealous. Hurt. Resentful. We’re not bloody saints, you know.”

  “OK, fair enough. But you’re just not giving me a chance here. We need some time on our own together. I’m sure that would—”

  “I don’t want time on my own with you, Bob,” I cut in. “To be quite honest, I can hardly bear the sight of you at the moment. But, as it happens, I want to stay married to you. I don’t want to lose all this.” I gestured around the room. “Or upset the girls.” I paused. “I’m sure this feeling will pass. You’ll just have to let me get it out of my system in my own way.”

  He was about to reply, but just then Nella walked in. There was an uncomfortable silence. She walked over to the fridge, opened the door, got out a carton of juice, and poured herself a drink.

  “Are you two having a row?” she said.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “No,” Bob said. We spoke in unison.

  “I see. Well, don’t let me interrupt you.” She shut the fridge door, picked up her drink, took a biscuit from the tin on top of the fridge, and walked out.

  There was a silence. We were both feeling ashamed about quarreling in front of Nella.

  “Nella’s getting rather sarky these days,” Bob said, changing the subject.

  “Just adolescent stuff, I think.” I did my best to sound conciliatory. “She’s very touchy at the moment. I tried to talk to her the other day about this so-called A&R man . . .”

  “What about him?” Bob looked concerned.

  I’d already told him that Emyr had been sacked from his job, and why. I’d said I thought it was unfair, that there was a kind of hysteria in schools these days about the issue of physical contact between teachers and pupils. However, I hadn’t yet said that Emyr had also been my client; I hadn’t wanted to worry him—or to disclose confidential information unnecessarily.

  “I wasn’t going to mention it before, but he came to me for a few sessions a while ago.”

  “Oh? What for?”

  “Nothing much. Just mild depression after losing his job.” I paused. “I only saw him two or three times, but he seemed fairly normal, as far as I could tell.”

  Bob frowned. “Is he trustworthy, do you think?”

  I thought for a moment. I pictured Emyr standing in the car park burbling on about youngsters and Safe Trax.

  “Well, he’s a bit of a twit. But pretty harmless on the whole, I’d say.”

  “Good. Better keep an eye, though.”

  There was another silence, this time a long one. Then Bob spoke.

  “When do you want to go off, then?”
/>   “I thought toward the end of next week maybe, and over the weekend. If you could look after the girls.”

  “Of course.” He thought for a minute. “Although, hang on, I’ve got a meeting on Saturday morning . . .”

  “Tough,” I said. “Cancel it. Or take Rose along with you.”

  He nodded silently.

  “It’ll be a good opportunity for you to spend time with Nella,” I went on. “I think she needs a bit of input from her father right now. Maybe you can talk to her about this man Emyr. I don’t want to be the one who’s always breathing down her neck.”

  He nodded again. Then he glanced at his watch.

  “I’d better go up and change. I promised I’d take Rose out for a game of tennis this morning.”

  He got up from the table, looking miserable.

  “Make sure she puts her sun cream on, won’t you. And her hat.”

  “Of course.” He paused. “I thought we might go out for lunch somewhere afterward. The three of us.”

  “Sorry, I’ve got to get through this. Take her on your own, she’ll like that.” I went back to reading the paper.

  He came over and put his hand on my shoulder.

  “Go off on your trip, Jess,” he said. “Don’t worry about the girls, I’ll take good care of them. It’ll be fun.” He paused. “Just come back and try to forgive me, OK?”

  In my mind’s eye I saw him lean toward the translator, take off her headset, and whisper something in her ear.

  “OK.”

  He waited for a moment, hoping perhaps that I would reach up and take his hand, but I stayed motionless.

  “See you later, then.”

  “Later.”

  I didn’t look up as he left.

  I spent the next couple of hours sitting at the kitchen table on my own, drinking tea and reading an essay by the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan snappily entitled “Of Structure as the Inmixing of an Otherness —Prerequisite to Any Subject Whatsoever.” I was trying to put Bob and the translator out of my mind and, after a while, I managed to do so.

  I have to admit, reading Lacan is a bit of a secret vice, as far as I’m concerned. I’m well aware, of course, that in many ways the man’s a pretentious bore; he takes the idea of the Freudian slip a little too literally, going in for a lot of heavy-handed Gallic wordplay, but even so, there’s a lot I like about the guy: his insistence, like Freud, on paying attention to the precise words we use, the language we speak, as a way of penetrating the barrier between what we know about ourselves and what we don’t; and that strange French concept of jouissance, of pleasure that is also suffering, the pursuit of which dominates our lives, disrupts them, makes us want to live more rather than less, whatever difficulty, misery, or disaster, that may bring.

  Probably we would all be quiet as oysters if it were not for this curious organization which forces us to disrupt the barrier of pleasure or perhaps only makes us dream of forcing and disrupting this barrier.

  I was just about to tear myself away from jouissance and galvanize myself into action when the phone rang. I picked it up.

  “Hiya, cariad. Mari here. How’s it going?”

  “Not too bad. You?”

  “Oh, bearing up . . . Can you talk?”

  “Yes. Bob’s out playing tennis with Rose.”

  “Any developments?”

  “Well, I’ve decided to go away for a short break. Without the family.”

  “Good thinking.” She paused. “Where are you going?”

  “I haven’t decided yet. But it won’t be West Wales.”

  She laughed. “D’you want me to come with you?”

  I thought about it. “No. I think I need some time on my own, actually. But thanks for offering.”

  We went on to chat about this and that. Mari told me she was up for a part in a new film about the early life of Shirley Bassey, set in Cardiff in the fifties. She was hoping to play Bassey’s mother, the redoubtable Eliza Jane, and had been practicing her accent for the audition. Then she asked me about how Nella’s singing was going, and I told her about Emyr Griffiths. I said I was worried about him, explaining how he’d been sacked from his job at the school, but I didn’t tell her that he’d come to me as a client afterward. As I’ve said, Mari isn’t the most discreet of souls. She advised me not to worry, to let Nella get on with her life, as I knew she would. Then she asked me how things were going at work.

  “Actually, there’s something going on with one of my clients.” I hesitated, not wanting to break my rule about patient confidentiality. “I can’t really tell you about it, but it involves that director you told me about, Evan Morgan.”

  “Oh yes?” Mari sounded intrigued.

  “Didn’t you mention there was some kind of scandal about him and a young girl. Way back?”

  “That’s right. She was working for the family at the time.” Mari gave an ironic laugh. “The Swedish au pair. Priceless, isn’t it.”

  “She was Swedish?”

  “As far as I remember. There was some kind of accident. She went off swimming on her own. Drowned, out there in the bay behind the house . . .”

  My mind was racing. So the Swedish tourist that Arianrhod had told me about wasn’t a tourist at all. She was the family’s au pair.

  “I really can’t remember the details. But the family were upset about it,” Mari went on. “And of course, there was the suspicion that . . .”

  “That what?” I pictured the photograph of Evan Morgan, with the blacked-in eyes, and felt a cold fear rise up from my belly.

  “Well, you know what he was like.”

  “What d’you mean? You think he had something to do with the accident?”

  “Of course not. No, that there’d been some hanky-panky between him and the girl.” Mari sighed. “It wouldn’t have looked good if that had come out. Not in the circumstances.”

  “But wasn’t there an investigation?”

  “I suppose there must have been. But the family managed to hush it up, or that’s what was rumored. They’re a pretty influential lot, the Morgans, aren’t they?”

  I pictured the little plaque at the top of the cliffside at Creigfa Bay, the unfamiliar script with its circles over the As and dots over the Os. I wondered who had put it there. Her parents, most probably, as a memorial. I wondered what it said and, if I could find out, whether it would tell me anything more about the girl who had drowned out there in the gray waters.

  Mari began to press me for information as to who my mysterious client might be. She must have thought she was being subtle, but it was clear to me that she was simply looking for gossip. So I brought the conversation to a close, telling her that I was running late, that I had a ton of household chores to do, and that we’d have to talk another time. She sounded disappointed, but I rang off all the same.

  Damn, I thought, as I put the phone down. I went over to the table and began to clear up the breakfast things. Outside, the sun was still shining. I’d been looking forward to getting out there, pottering about in the garden in a haphazard way, perhaps hanging out the washing if the weather held. Now I had this to think about, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to relax.

  I stacked the plates and cups by the dishwasher and started to load it, pondering on the problem as I did. Why had Arianrhod lied to me about the girl? Was it to shield her husband from a sex scandal, or for some other, more obscure, reason? Could Gwydion’s recurring dream, about the man and the woman fighting, be connected to the accident? And, most disturbing of all, could Evan Morgan have been involved in the girl’s death?

  I looked out of the window at the garden. There was a lot that needed doing. Cutting back, mainly. I’d been planning to tackle it that morning, striding out into the sunshine brandishing the shears, restoring order, shape, and beauty to the sprawl, but now I felt overwhelmed by the task. It began to seem like an impossible chore, a doomed attempt to gain control over encroaching chaos.

  Sometimes, in these gardening situations, you just have t
o tell yourself to carry on. Bust through the feeling of helplessness, hopelessness. Go down the “Yes, we can” route. Ignore the “No, we can’t” option, even if that’s the more realistic response. So I did. I put on my gardening boots, donned my scruffiest jumper, arming myself with a hacksaw, shears, and a penknife, and went out.

  For two hours I sawed, and chopped, and clipped, and heaped, and piled, and dragged, and tidied, and as I did, some phrases from the Lacan paper kept coming into my head:

  Life is something which goes, as we say in French, “à la dérive.” Life goes down the river, from time to time touching a bank; staying for a while here and there, without understanding anything . . . and it is the principle of analysis that nobody understands anything of what happens.

  When I’d finished I cleared away some dry, dead wood and built a small bonfire at the end of the garden, by the compost heap. I set light to it and watched it burn. It caught fire quickly and began to crackle. As I watched the flames leap up, and the smoke curl into the sky, a sudden realization came to me. The photograph of Evan had been sent to me as a plea to find out what had really happened, and whoever it was from, I felt impelled to accede to its request.

  It began to rain. I poked away more vigorously, but the flames died and the bonfire began to smoke. I heard a crack of thunder in the distance. I looked up and saw that the sky had gone dark.

  Nobody understands anything of what happens.

  As the downpour gathered momentum, I picked up my tools and ran for cover, back into the house.

  8

  The air hostess came past—cabin attendant, I think they’re called nowadays—and I ordered another gin and tonic. I like to drink when I fly. Cramming yourself into a metal tube hurtling through the sky begins to seem like tremendous fun, which it never does when you’re sober. I also like to take drugs. Beta-blockers, Temazepam, that kind of thing. I’d take cocaine, too, if it wasn’t illegal. For me, it’s all part of the holiday. I know I’m a respectable psychotherapist and mother of two, but as far as I’m concerned, when I step onto a plane I leave all that behind. It’s something to do with being up in the clouds, I think, unable to lift a finger to help anyone, however dire the circumstances. It’s an intoxicating feeling, even without chemical enhancement.