The House on the Cliff

by Charlotte Williams

  “If you think that’s bad, try the three-volume version.” He paused. “But what an incredibly gifted man Jones was.” He spoke with enthusiasm. “As a writer, a thinker . . . quite apart from his brilliance as a doctor.”

  I couldn’t help catching his enthusiasm. “All those languages, too . . .”

  “Introduced psychoanalysis to the English-speaking world. Wrote books on all kinds of subjects, from nightmares to vampires to figure-skating. Saved Freud from the Nazis.” He paused. “Not bad for a colliery boy from Swansea.”

  I nodded. “It’s surprising he’s not more famous.”

  “He would be, if there weren’t so many skeletons in his cupboard.” Evan grinned. “I’ve often thought of making a film about his life. It’s got everything—intrigue, adventure . . .”

  I nodded again. I found myself wanting to continue the conversation but, instead, I let a silence fall. Then I got up to go.

  Evan got up too and put his hand out.

  I shook it. He held on to it briefly, pressing it a little, before I drew it away.

  “Good-bye,” he said. “Until we meet again.”

  “Good-bye,” I replied.

  Then I turned and walked out of the pub, aware that his eyes were following me as I went.

  When I got home, Bob was back, sitting at the kitchen table with his laptop. He didn’t look up when I came in. I hadn’t told him about my meeting with Evan Morgan, and I wasn’t about to. The only matters we discussed with each other these days were our domestic arrangements, mostly to do with the girls. And even those had become fraught with tension.

  I went over to the kettle.

  “D’you want a cup of tea before I go up to bed?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Are the girls asleep?”

  “Rose is. I don’t know about Nella.” He looked up for a moment. “A boy came over to see her this evening. With a guitar.”

  “Oh yes?” I was intrigued. “What’s he like?”

  “Seems pleasant enough. Polite.” He frowned. “But when I went into her room to look for the phone, I found them kissing on the bed.”

  “Did you knock first?” I asked, busying myself with the tea.

  “No. But . . .”

  I turned to face him. “Well, you should have, Bob. That’s her private space.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I’ll do what I want in my own house.” I was surprised at his tone. This was new to me, Bob acting the authoritarian paterfamilias. “And I won’t have her taking boys up to her room. After what happened in London . . .”

  “She’s sixteen, for heaven’s sake.” I tried not to raise my voice, but I did, a fraction. “She’s going to kiss boys, and if she wants to do it in the privacy of her bedroom, I can’t see why she shouldn’t. I’m certainly not going to try and stop her.” I paused. I thought of telling him about my conversations alone with Nella, and asking him about his. But we didn’t seem to have that level of intimacy anymore. “I think we should be pleased about this. A boyfriend of her own age—”

  “All right, I’ll have to do it then,” Bob cut in. “I’ll tell her if he comes round, she can entertain him downstairs in the sitting room. I don’t want her ending up pregnant.”

  “Bob, you’re overreacting.” I spoke more gently. “Nella’s growing up. It’s not easy to take in, is it?” I wished I could have found a tactful way to add, “And the fact that you’re not having sex with your wife isn’t helping, either,” but I couldn’t. He was too angry, and although I was trying to keep calm, his uncharacteristically macho behavior had riled me, too.

  “Oh, give me a break.” Bob got up and walked swiftly to the door. “You’re not on duty now, Dr. Mayhew.”

  He walked out, slamming it behind him. Great, I thought. A night on the sofa.

  That evening I crept into the sitting room with my duvet and my pillow after everyone had gone to bed. I programed an alarm call on my mobile so I’d wake at six-thirty in the morning, before they got up. I didn’t want the girls to know that I was sleeping on my own downstairs. I tried to make myself comfortable, but I slept fitfully: the sofa was too short, and I kept waking up during the night with a crick in my neck. At four a.m., just when I’d managed to settle into sleep, the phone rang.

  “Hello?” I picked it up, disoriented.

  There was no reply, just a low, slow breathing, in and out, in and out.

  “Who is this?”

  The breathing continued, getting louder and louder.

  I clicked off the phone angrily. The screen showed “Number withheld.” I put the phone back on the coffee table, turned over, and tried to get back to sleep.

  A couple of minutes later, it rang again. This time I picked it up and switched it off. Then I lay awake, staring up at the ceiling, until it was time to get up.

  17

  When I got to my office the next day, I had a surprise waiting for me. Arianrhod was sitting on the wall outside.

  The moment I saw her, I panicked. What if she knew about my meeting with Evan and had come to bawl me out? What if a shouting match ensued, right here, out in the street, in front of the building? I’d assumed that she and Evan were incommunicado, now that he was living on the boat, but the Morgan-family dynamic, as I’ve said, was so tangled and twisted that I’d begun to feel I was always one step behind. It wasn’t a feeling I liked.

  I resisted the temptation to pretend I hadn’t seen her, turn down the nearest side street and run away. Instead I walked straight up to her.

  “Arianrhod. What are you doing here?”

  She was immediately apologetic. “It won’t take a minute, I promise. It’s about Gwydion.”

  So she didn’t know about my rendezvous with Evan.

  I gave a sigh of relief. “You’d better come up,” I said. “But I’ve got a client coming in half an hour, so it’ll have to be quick.”

  Arianrhod nodded. She looked tired, I noticed. There were dark circles under her eyes and her skin had a waxy texture to it.

  We went into the building. Branwen looked up as we passed, puzzled. She knew my first client wasn’t due in until nine. I shot her a glance that said, don’t worry about it, and she returned to her computer screen.

  Arianrhod and I went upstairs to my office. She waited as I unlocked the door and ushered her in.

  “Please.” I indicated the chair opposite my desk. Then I went round to the other side, sat down, switched on my computer, and waited until it stopped emitting its various bleeps. “Won’t be a minute.”

  By switching it on, I wanted to make it clear to her that I didn’t have unlimited time to talk. And that these unscheduled visits to my place of work were extremely unwelcome.

  “Right. Now, how can I help you?” My tone was more impatient than I’d intended. I was curiously discomfited at having someone in my office before I’d had a chance to prepare myself. It was something that hardly ever happened and, when it did, I felt more than a little undermined.

  Arianrhod took the hint and came directly to the point. “Gwydion’s gone into The Grange,” she said.

  I immediately regretted my brusqueness. The Grange is a private clinic situated in the Vale of Glamorgan, just outside Cardiff. The place where the rich go to do battle with the occupational hazards of privilege: alcoholism, eating disorders, that kind of thing.

  “Just for a short while,” she added. “I’m hoping he’ll be out soon.”

  There was a tremble in her voice as she spoke. I glanced down and noticed that she was twisting the fabric of her coat sleeve.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “Very sorry indeed.”

  “I wondered . . .” She went on twisting. “I think it would help if you could visit him there.”

  I shifted uncomfortably on my chair. I wondered what Arianrhod knew about my dealings with Gwydion. She and her son were on very intimate terms, I knew. How much would he have told her?

  “Arianrhod, I should explain . . .” I hesitated. “It’s not really very
good practice for a therapist to resume contact with a client, once the client has decided to terminate the therapy.”

  She gave me a reproachful look. I realized the jargon had offended her. So I tried switching to plainer language.

  “It’s just not done, really, to see former clients.” I paused. “It can lead to problems . . . of attachment . . . on both sides.”

  I’d come as close as I could to explaining the reasons for my reluctance to visit Gwydion. I wasn’t inclined to go further.

  “I take your point. But it’s just that he’s so distressed. And he seems to trust you.”

  I changed the subject. “Why’s he been admitted?”

  “Well, he was becoming very unbalanced. Paranoid, convinced people were following him.” She sighed. “But there are other things, too . . . well, you know what he’s like. Better than me, probably.”

  Was there a hint of sarcasm in her voice? If so, I ignored it.

  “It’s the stress of the hearing coming up,” she went on. “It’s all been too much for him.”

  “I can imagine.” For a moment, I felt a wave of sympathy for Gwydion, but then I checked myself. “But I’m sure he’s in good hands at The Grange.”

  Several of my clients had come to me from a sojourn there, as it happened. Gwydion was the only one of them to make the trip the other way round. “The staff there are very experienced, very skilled.” I paused. “I expect he’ll be out before long.”

  “That’s what I’m worried about, though. He might not be able to give evidence against Evan in time.” She stopped.

  “For the rehearsals?”

  “Yes. And . . .”

  “The hearing?”

  So that’s what all this is about, I realized. Arianrhod’s main worry was not her son’s distressed condition, or the damage to his career prospects, but that he might not be able to testify against Evan at the upcoming trial.

  Arianrhod started to rub at her sleeve again. This time I didn’t feel so sympathetic.

  “Well, thank you for letting me know where he is.” I glanced at my watch. “But I’m going to have to get on, I’m afraid . . .”

  “So you’ll go and see him there?” She affected not to notice my efforts to close the conversation.

  “I’ll certainly think about it.” I stood up. “Now, if you’ll excuse me . . .”

  This time, Arianrhod got up to go. Together we walked over to the door.

  “Please.” She stopped at the door and clutched my arm. “Do go and see my son, Dr. Mayhew.”

  “Good-bye, Arianrhod.” I drew my arm gently away. “And do remember to telephone next time, won’t you?”

  She nodded obediently, almost like a small child. But I noticed that she didn’t say yes.

  I opened the door, waited till she’d walked through, and shut it firmly behind her.

  I didn’t go to see Gwydion that day. I was busy at work, and at home. Nowadays Bob seemed to be out most of the time. I couldn’t blame him—the tension between us had been running high, and it was a relief to be away from each other—but it meant that I was doing more than my fair share of looking after the girls. The other reason I didn’t rush was that I had doubts about whether it was a good idea to resume contact with my former client. I didn’t want to encourage him in his misguided attachment to me; of course, that might have passed by now, but I couldn’t be sure. At the same time I needed to find out more from him about the accident. I mistrusted Evan, but since my discussion with him I had also begun to doubt Arianrhod’s story. I was hoping that Gwydion, despite his fragile state, might possibly help to shed more light on the whole issue, so that I could make up my mind about whether to stand as a witness or not.

  Next morning, when I drove over to The Grange, it was raining. Not raining properly, just drizzling unenthusiastically, as though the weather itself had given up making an effort. One of those days when the cold and damp seep into your bones, you look up at a colorless sky and find it hard to imagine that you’ve ever seen a patch of blue up there. I’m not normally given to gloom, but when I got out of the car and surveyed the ugly sub-Deco pile, it was hard not to feel downcast. On a fine day the building might have been imposing, even rather grand; in the dank air of a wet Welsh morning it was, at best, discouraging, at worst somewhat menacing—as though, in this building, sheer unadulterated dreariness had distilled into its essence, gathered strength, threatening to overcome all who entered its dismal portals.

  As I walked up to the doorway an elderly man appeared. He was clean and tidy, carefully dressed, but there was a wild look in his eye. I nodded politely, hoping to avoid further contact, but as I passed, he put out his arm to stop me.

  “I’m broken,” he said. “I’m broken and I can’t be mended.”

  Alzheimer’s, probably, I thought. I felt sad for him, so I stopped for a moment.

  “Yes.” He frowned. “I’m lost, you see. I need to report myself as a missing person.”

  Just then a nurse appeared in the doorway. “I’m so sorry,” she said, in a heavy Eastern European accent, and led the man away.

  I followed the two of them into the hallway. Inside, on a highly polished side table, there was a huge floral display of madonna lilies in a blue-and-white Chinese vase. They gave off a sweet, sickly scent that almost, but not quite, masked the smell of institutional food and stale urine that wafted down the corridor. The hall was newly decorated in a tasteful Farrow & Ball–style paint combo, and portraits of ancient worthies in heavy gilt frames hung on the walls. They nearly, but not quite, dispelled the impression that this was a hospital: a private, high-end one, but a hospital all the same.

  I asked for Gwydion, and a nurse ushered me up to his room. He was sitting by the window, gazing out at the view. When we came in, he turned to greet us, a beaming smile on his face.

  “Jessica. How wonderful to see you.”

  The nurse shot me a warning glance and left.

  I sat down in the chair opposite his. “How are you, Gwydion?”

  His face was flushed, as though he’d been running.

  “Great. Never better, actually.”

  He grinned at me. I recognized that type of smile. It was manic, possibly seriously so. I wondered what medication he was on.

  “I’m going to be leaving here soon,” he continued. “I’m being let off. Because I’ve stopped myself dreaming the dream. And I’ve buttoned up all the buttons.”

  When you go into a mental hospital—psychiatric healthcare facility, I should say—you often seem to be entering another dimension. People speak a different language—not just the patients, but the doctors, too. But the strange thing is, the patients speak a kind of sense, tell a kind of truth, that the sane never do. The man I’d met at the doorway, with Alzheimer’s, evidently was broken, couldn’t be mended; and he was, in an all-too-real sense, a missing person. In Freudian terms, the disturbed mind expresses itself in codes that can be cracked, sometimes easily, sometimes with difficulty. Gwydion, too, had begun to speak in these codes. I could see that he’d deteriorated since I’d last seen him, and was beginning to lose his grip on reality; but it was my job to listen, and try to make sense of what he said, rather than to intervene.

  His smile widened. “They’ll never come undone again.”

  I nodded. I was feeling guilty, wondering whether my rejection of him in the Travelodge had perhaps contributed to his breakdown.

  “You see,” he went on, “sometimes she wanted them done up. And sometimes she wanted them undone. I couldn’t always remember which. I was such a scatterbrain.” He ran a hand through his hair. “So I used to be scared of them. But I’m not anymore. Look.”

  He pulled up the bottom of his sweater. Underneath I saw that he was wearing a blue cotton shirt with buttons down the front. “I can wear them, touch them, and everything. They’ve taught me how to do that here. So it’s all sorted now, and when I get out I won’t need to worry about the rehearsals.”

  “That’s great, Gwydion. We
ll done.” I didn’t know what else to say.

  “The thing is, I’ve got to give evidence soon. About Elsa.” He began to look anxious. “I’ve got to tell them about the dream.” He paused. “I should be able to remember that, don’t you think?”

  I nodded vaguely. I wasn’t quite sure where this was heading.

  “I mean, it can’t be all that difficult. They were fighting on the boat, I know that. I heard them, the two of them.” Gwydion’s voice took on a childlike tone. “I saw them. They were sitting by the wheel, kissing. It made me feel sick, so I went down into the cabin. And later, when I came up, I saw them fighting.” He paused. “I was sad about Elsa. She was so nice. I thought she was for me. But she wasn’t. She was for Evan.”

  There’s no way he’s going to be able to give evidence, I thought. No way.

  “Evan unbuttoned her mouth. I saw him, lots of times. And then, when we went out on the boat, he pushed her into the water. That’s right, isn’t it, Jessica?”

  “I don’t know.” I looked Gwydion in the eye. “Is that what you saw?”

  There was a long silence.

  “Yes, it is.” He returned my gaze, quite steadily. His voice returned to its normal, adult cadence. “Evan pushed her overboard, into the sea.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I am.”

  We stopped talking for a moment and looked out at the view from the window. The building was surrounded by a large garden, separated from the fields beyond by a turfed ditch. There were sheep grazing in the fields, and in the far distance you could see the sea. I wondered whether the ditch was there to stop the sheep getting into the garden or the patients from getting out of it. Probably both, with the emphasis on the patients.

  Gwydion broke the silence.

  “You’re looking nice today.” He was staring at me as though he’d seen me for the first time.

  “Thank you.”

  I was wearing a plum-colored woolen dress and black patent Mary Jane shoes that fastened with a buckle at the side. I’d taken the precaution of leaving my coat, with its buttons, in the car.