The House on the Cliff

by Charlotte Williams

  He went down to the steps, turned to me and held out his hand. “Come on.”

  I waved away his hand. “I think it’s safer if I hold onto this,” I said, gripping the handrail.

  “I’ll walk in front. That way, I’ll break your fall. Not that you’re going to fall, of course,” he added, seeing my look of dismay.

  We picked our way carefully down the steps. Once we were walking on them, the cliff face that they were cut into didn’t look so dizzyingly steep. And they were quite safe, I told myself, as long as you clung on to the handrail to stop yourself slipping. Ahead of me, Gwydion walked along without even touching the rail. He’d obviously been down here many times before. But for me, it seemed fraught with danger, and it wasn’t until we’d reached the bottom that I let go of the rail, venturing out tentatively behind him onto the jetty below.

  I followed him down to the end of the jetty. It led over the beach, which was covered in slimy clumps of seaweed and crusty turrets of barnacles, into the sea. Not a great place for swimming, I thought. Or anything else, for that matter. The kind of place that reminds you how glad you are to be living in comfort and safety in the twenty-first century, having the occasional flight of fantasy about avenging swan maidens and Valkyries, rather than having to avenge anyone or anything yourself.

  When we got to the end of the jetty he turned to watch me coming up behind him. Then we stood there together, looking out to sea, with the wind whistling in our ears and the water lapping around us. It made a curious slapping sound as it hit the wooden slats of the jetty.

  Neither of us spoke for a moment, and then, slowly, he turned to me, and I found myself looking into his green eyes, fringed with those dark, thick lashes.

  He bent closer toward me. I turned my head away from his, but I couldn’t seem to move my body with it. I felt his breath on my throat, and my neck began to heat up.

  The first thread of her red dress.

  The words came into my mind, and they gave me courage. Gwydion is not your client any more, they told me. He’s a man, and you’re a woman. Don’t be a coward. Seize the moment, while you can.

  I sense myself already.

  I turned my head back toward his.

  The lagoons were very green, very deep. I wanted to dive into them.

  So I did.

  It was a long kiss: deep, and warm, and satisfying. There was a bit of fumbling about as well, a hesitant hand up my top, stopping before it got to my breasts, and some pressing together of significant parts of the body; some catching of breath; a closing of eyes; a dizzying of senses; laughter, a strange kind of exultation at the lurch into the hyper-real, the breaking of the rules . . . and the surprise, and delight, and discomfort of it all, the crazy jumbling of sensations, his mouth on mine, his tongue inside it, mine inside his, the warmth of his skin, my skin, the skin of his belly, mine, under our hands and, around us, the waves lapping round the jetty, hitting it with that odd slapping noise, and the bitter wind coming in from the sea, making our eyes water and our ears ache. And for me, perhaps for both of us, standing on that rickety wooden structure sticking out into the sea, that sudden sense of the physical world operating by different laws; of somehow walking on water; of falling, falling into a parallel world, where something surreal has happened that you wanted to happen, but never admitted to yourself that you did; and then falling out of it again, and finding yourself back where you started, in the ordinary, the everyday, clinging on to each other, awkwardly, on a half-rotted jetty with gray water all around you, in a chill wind, slightly embarrassed at what you’d done, and wanting to get away from there, get home.

  It was the wind, of course, that ended any further exploration. Thrilling as the kiss was, neither of us were going to throw off our clothes in the teeth of a howling gale and explore further. It was just too cold even to think about. So we drew apart, and then I said I should be getting home, and we climbed back over the rocks and up the steps, and walked along the cliff top, and through the gate, and across the lawn, not talking, not touching, keeping our distance. We didn’t discuss what he’d remembered as a child on the boat. Our bodies in no way acknowledged that we’d kissed. It was as if none of it had ever happened.

  When we finally got to the house, to my relief, Arianrhod was nowhere to be seen. So I quickly told Gwydion to say good-bye to her for me, got into my car, and switched on the engine. I couldn’t wait to get away.

  Before I left, I wound down the window.

  “Good-bye, then,” I said. “Take care. Good luck with . . . everything.”

  Gwydion rested his arm on the car roof, leaned down, and surreptitiously tried to plant a kiss on my lips, but I swiftly moved my head away.

  “Stop that. Someone might see.”

  He ignored me. “I’ll be in touch.”

  I nodded in what I hoped was a none-too-encouraging fashion. “OK. Take care.”

  He tapped lightly on the roof of the car, as though permitting me to leave. I backed the car as he watched me, an amused grin on his face.

  I drove off over the gravel toward the gate. On the way out I spotted the peacock strutting through the flowerbed, dragging the long train of his tail behind him, the peahen trotting demurely alongside.

  I arrived back at the bungalow in time to eat a late lunch that Bob and Nella had made for us all. I was concerned that they’d have missed me, would be starting to wonder where I’d got to, but my absence, far from upsetting anyone, seemed to have had the reverse effect. Bob appeared relaxed, his cheeks flushed from his exertions in the waves. Rose was her usual cheerful self, and even Nella seemed to have come out of her shell a little. No one asked me where I’d been. So I didn’t need to make up any stories, which I was glad about, because lying to people, especially my nearest and dearest, always feels like an imposition to me, a dereliction of my true self.

  After we’d eaten we sprawled about in the living room for a while, us with the papers, the girls watching television. When it was time to go, I left them there and went round the house, packing away our belongings. And instead of being irritated by the mess in the kitchen after they’d cooked, and the muddle of clothes and wet towels flung on the floor in the bedrooms, as I usually was, I found myself positively relishing my role in restoring order. For the first time in months, I felt magnanimous toward my family. Generous. Patient. I became intensely aware of how much I loved them all, and I felt how lucky I was to have a family to come home to, and clear up after, and care for; a family that depended on me, for whom I was still essential, and would be for many years to come.

  It was only a kiss, I told myself, as I drove back to Cardiff that night. Nothing to get too fussed about. The girls had fallen asleep, curled up in the back under their duvets, and Bob was snoring quietly beside me in the passenger seat. So it was just me, Late Junction on the radio, the catseyes, and a long drive home.

  The road was dark, and there were no other cars around, so I was able to switch on my headlights full beam. It was raining, and from time to time I saw a frog leap up out of the way, or the white tail of a rabbit scuttle into the hedge. I drove cautiously, aware of the precious cargo sleeping around me, thinking about Gwydion, and the kiss, and Elsa Lindberg, and what I was going to do next.

  The kiss, as I said, was no big deal. To be honest, I didn’t feel terribly guilty about it. On the contrary, I felt relieved. It had got something out of my system. After Bob had confessed his infidelity, I’d been hurt and angry, and I hadn’t found a way to forgive him. Now, I realized, I was beginning to. Despite my protestations to Mari about marriage not being a power game, I’d found she wasn’t far wrong. Of course, it was childish and irresponsible to take my revenge on Bob by kissing a good-looking young man, but to be honest, I felt a great deal better for it. At the same time, I knew that I didn’t want to risk my marriage by having a full-fledged affair. I didn’t really want Gwydion as a lover—he was too young, too needy, too vulnerable. I’d allowed the kiss to happen because I’d been feeling neglected
; I’d just wanted someone, somewhere, to notice me as a woman and respond to me as such. And now, someone had. So it didn’t need to go any further. The kiss had done its job, and that was that.

  I drove carefully up the slip road to the motorway and checked in the rearview mirror, accelerating as I edged into the traffic and settled into my lane.

  No, it wasn’t my momentary weakness with Gwydion, but the question of what to do about the whole situation that was troubling me. Ought I not to contact Solveig and tell her what was going on? She’d begged me to help her, to find out what had really happened all those years ago, and now it looked as though we were coming closer to the truth. Yet something told me to wait. Until I gained a clearer picture of the events leading to Elsa’s death it wasn’t really fair to burden Solveig with each new development. I needed to get the story straight before I went to her.

  I leaned forward to turn up the radio as one of my favorite artists, the African kora player Toumani Diabaté, came on. The light flurry of strings made me think of fireflies and humming birds and bats, half-seen creatures that flit about in the dark, and hot African nights with millions of stars up above. Beautiful, mysterious places I’d never seen in my life, and perhaps never would. But I’d made my choices. Here I was in Wales, with the frogs and rabbits, and the fog and rain, and that had its own strange beauty and mystery, too.

  Bob stirred next to me. “OK? Want me to take over?” He sounded half asleep.

  “No, I’m fine.”

  “Mind if I turn this down a bit?”

  “Go ahead.”

  He leaned forward, turned the dial and the music quietened. Then he went back to sleep.

  I drove on. Although it was late, and the others were sleeping, I felt wide awake, my wits about me. A wind blew up and it began to rain heavily, the cars in front throwing up a fine mist of water in their wake, so that it was hard to see. Inside, our breath began to fog up the windscreen, so I had to keep switching the heating fan on and off to clear it, without getting the car too hot, and I couldn’t open the window in case the cold air woke up my sleeping passengers. At times I could feel the wind shake the car, as if it were trying to blow it off the road. All in all it was hard going, but I kept driving, and Bob and the girls kept sleeping, until at last we reached home, safe and sound.

  12

  On Monday morning I was back in my office, sitting at my desk, relishing the peace and quiet and reading a paper on recovered memory. I’ve got dozens of them on the subject. The central issue—whether a child can be sexually abused or witness a traumatic event, forget about it completely and then remember it, under therapy, as an adult—used to be a hot potato back in the nineties. But recently the fuss seems to have died down. Not really because any conclusions have been reached, any evidence sifted; sadly, nothing as rational or sensible as that. It’s more that everyone seems to have got bored with the whole issue. Psychotherapy, like medicine, has its fads and fashions. Recovered memory is one of them; and it simply isn’t in vogue anymore. Satanic abuse, too, is pretty old hat. Even false memory syndrome, the theory countering recovered memory, has had its day. And the main reason they’ve been dropped is that it’s all too damn complicated; the whole business of how and why we remember what happened to us as children is so obscure, so fraught with confusion; plus there’s so much anger flying around—toward parents, therapists, or anyone else who happens to be standing in the firing line—that it’s become almost impossible to get at the truth of the matter . . . if there is a truth, that is.

  Nevertheless, I felt I should go back to my papers on the subject, because now I’d had a client, Gwydion Morgan, with an apparently bona fide recovered memory. My first, actually. Of course, I’d had clients come to me before with tales of abuse—some of them with the ring of truth, others quite obviously false. And I’d heard my fair share of stories from my clients, past and present, about traumatic episodes of horrific violence they’d witnessed, or experienced, as children. But I’d never come across an actual death before. Particularly one that had been remembered via a dream. It was a double whammy. And, I must admit, I couldn’t help feeling rather excited about it—if, indeed, the story turned out to be true.

  As I went along, I tried to relate what I was reading to Gwydion and his recovered memory. And what I read seemed to support what he’d told me. At the age of six he’d have been able to remember what happened on the boat, and report it accurately afterward; it was also quite possible that he could have repressed the memory of a traumatic episode; and that it could, years later, have been triggered by a dream. What was more, in his case, the facts surrounding the revelation backed up his story.

  I began to wonder whether I should go to the police, ask them to look into the matter again, perhaps check the postmortem record. But I decided to wait until I had more evidence; they were hardly going to be in a rush to help—all I had to go on so far was Gwydion’s account of the dream.

  As I was on the last page of the paper, the phone rang. I listened as the answerphone came on. Then a voice came through. I recognized it immediately: it was Arianrhod Morgan.

  “Dr. Mayhew? Are you there?” Pause. She was on a mobile. I could hear the sound of traffic in the street. “Please, could you pick up? I really need to talk to you. It’s an emergency.”

  It didn’t sound like an emergency, so I didn’t pick up.

  “I’m outside your office.” Long pause. “Can you come down and meet me, please. As soon as you can. I’ll wait out here.” Then the phone clicked off.

  Damn, I thought. For a moment I felt a little panicky. I wondered if there were going to be any more startling revelations about the death of Elsa Lindberg, and, if there were, how I was going to deal with them. And, more trivially, I wondered whether Gwydion had told her of my misdemeanor, that silly kiss on the jetty. He and Arianrhod seemed very close—overly close, perhaps. If he had, it would be embarrassing all round.

  And then I thought, come on, Jessica, tough it out. You may be on the trail of a murder here, and if you’ve got any decency you should stay on it until the whole truth emerges. And this business about the kiss is trivial. Gwydion’s not your client anymore. You’ve done nothing terribly wrong. Besides, there’s something much more important at stake: the death of a young girl, the necessity, for her grieving mother if no one else, of finding out exactly what happened to her all those years ago; and perhaps, if you’re lucky, helping to bring the culprit to justice.

  I took my time about going downstairs to meet Arianrhod. As it happened, one of my clients had canceled that morning, so there was no rush. But I wanted to make a point. I wasn’t in the habit of being summoned out of my office to meet people on the street at a moment’s notice, and I didn’t like it. So before I left I finished the paper I was reading, jotted down a few notes, and made sure my desk was neat and tidy. I went over to the hat stand in the corner, put on my coat, and hung my bag over my shoulder. Then I stood in front of the mirror for a while, powdered my nose, and applied some lipstick. I wanted to look calm and self-possessed for this encounter. Unruffled. But to tell the truth, I was feeling ruffled—very ruffled—and as I walked down the stairs to the front door I could feel my heart thumping in my chest.

  When I got to the front door I let myself out. Outside, Arianrhod was waiting for me, sitting on the low wall of the courtyard in front of the building. She got up as I approached, a tense smile on her face.

  “Thank you,” she said. She reached forward and clutched my arm, rather dramatically. I noticed she looked pale, drawn. There were dark circles under her eyes.

  I drew away as politely as I could. “I’m afraid I haven’t got long.” I glanced back at the building, hoping that no one would see us.

  “That’s OK. It won’t take long. Shall we get a coffee somewhere?” Arianrhod peered vaguely at the buildings lining Cathedral Road. It’s one of the main thoroughfares of the city. Where I am, it’s mostly private consulting rooms, doctors, dentists, that kind of thing, until you
get further down, nearer the center of town. I realized she hardly knew Cardiff, despite it being the capital of the principality she inhabited.

  “No.” There were a few coffee bars we could have gone to in Pontcanna Street nearby, but Cardiff is a small place, and I was bound to bump into someone I knew. “I haven’t really got time. Let’s go for a quick walk down by the river, shall we? It’s not far.”

  It was a bright autumn day, the trees turning to gold beneath a tender blue sky, but there was a sharp nip in the air. We turned into Llandaff Fields and walked down the side of the sports pavilion onto the high bank that runs alongside the river. There were few people to be seen there at that time of the morning, except for dog walkers and cyclists, none of whom took any notice of us.

  Clearly, Arianrhod had something important to say. Otherwise there would have been a bit of small talk as we walked along. Instead, there was silence. I got the impression it was up to me to break it.

  “So, how are things?” I tried to sound sympathetic, encouraging, but it was a bit of a struggle. I was still feeling resentful about being called out on this supposed emergency.

  She sensed my impatience and immediately looked crushed. “I’m sorry to disturb you in the middle of your day. . . .”

  “Never mind about that.” My resentment began to evaporate. “Just tell me. What’s the problem?”

  “It’s Gwydion.” She put up her hand to brush a wisp of hair away from her face. I could see that her hand was shaking. I suddenly felt sorry for her and wished that I hadn’t been quite so brusque.

  We passed a bench on the path. It’s one of my favorite spots, high up on the bank, a sheltered place, where you can sit and watch the river run; and, if you’re lucky, you’ll see herons, and cormorants, and kingfishers darting up and down on the water; and if you’re not, you can study the ducks and moorhens in the shallows, and the wind bending the willows, a busy other world of birds and fish and trees, right there in the heart of the city.