The River House (6 page)

W
E DRIVE SLOWLY OUT OF THE CITY
, through heavy traffic. The car feels lighter without all of Molly’s stuff in it.

“I wonder how she’ll get on,” I say to Greg.

“Don’t worry, she’ll be fine,” he says. “Molly always copes. Look, I don’t suppose you could dig me out a milk of magnesia,
could you? I shouldn’t have had that crème brûlée.”

There’s a packet he keeps in the glove compartment. I tip out a pill and hand it to him. The jasmine scent of Molly’s bath
oil is still all over my hands. We have to wait for a long time at the roundabout on the edge of the city. I feel as if there’s
something lurking just around the corner of my mind—some grief, skulking there, waiting to grab me.

Amber is hunting in her bag for her Walkman.

“It’s weird,” she says. “You feel you haven’t said good-bye properly—that there’s something you should have said which you
forgot to say.”

“I feel the same,” I tell her.

She takes out the Walkman and slips in her Dido CD.

“I’ll miss her,” she says, her voice a little husky.

“I know you will, sweetheart. We all will.”

She isn’t listening anymore; she has her earphones on.

“Greg, I’m worried Molly won’t wake in time in the mornings,” I say. “I thought I’d send her our alarm clock—you know, just
to tide her over ’til she can get to the shops.”

“Ginnie, for God’s sake.”

“She needs something.”

“Well, so do I. I mean, what will wake
me
up?” He turns slightly toward me; I smell the chalk on his breath.

“You could use the alarm on your watch.”

“OK, OK,” he says wearily.

We drive through the Chilterns, through the swoop and dip of the downs. The sky is blue as ash. I can just hear the faint,
tinny sound of the music on Amber’s Walkman.

“I wonder what it will be like without her,” I say.

“Well, not so very different, I imagine.”

“We could do more things together, I suppose.”

“Such as?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Perhaps we could go out a bit.” My voice is small, tentative. “You know, when Amber stays with her friends.
Perhaps we could go away together or something.”

“It’s a possibility,” he says. “Though to be honest I’d welcome a bit more time to get this book together. Fenella’s very
patient, but she’s starting to make noises.”

I think of Fenella, his literary agent: her Sloaney clothes—the pearls, the velvet hair bands—her immaculate vowels and limitless
self-assurance. I try to push away the irritation I feel.

“But, I mean, things will be different now, won’t they? It’s a big change.”

“Ginnie, we only left Molly half an hour ago.”

“But we have to make it a positive thing. You know, a chance to do things differently. …”

He’s quiet as though he’s thinking. I feel a surge of hopefulness—that maybe he will agree.

“There
was
one thing I thought of,” he says. “I thought I might move into Molly’s bedroom. Just while she’s away. I’m sure we’d both
sleep better. Would that be OK with you?”

“Yes, of course,” I say. “If you want to.” This jolts me. I swallow hard. “I’d have to clear out her room first—it’s a total
tip in there.” I’m trying to be light about it. “But I was thinking more of maybe doing things together. …”

“Let’s not go rushing into anything,” he says.

A dark mood washes through me.

The cars all have their headlights on now; bright beams from the oncoming traffic weave across us. We drive through a stand
of birches, their slender trunks and branches pale and naked in the lights. I realize I had hoped for something in this moment—though
the hope was never fully conscious, and certainly never expressed. That there’d be a kind of freedom or renewal. That we’d
enter a new landscape, with glimmerings of what life might be like when Amber too goes, when it’s just the two of us, and
that it would be a place that I could live in. That there’d be a new intimacy—dinner sometimes in restaurants on the waterfront,
trips to the theater, winter weekends in Prague. A rediscovery of each other.

Yet in this moment I know the limits of what we have, what we are. I see that what is missing is not just something postponed
or that can be recovered. Not something put aside for a while or safely stowed away—like a book you never quite finished but
hoped one day to return to. Is this my fault? I wonder. Have I tried hard enough, done enough to mend it?

We went to a marriage guidance counselor once. It was my idea, of course, but Greg agreed to come—unwillingly, but at least
he agreed. I was so grateful to him. I remember this, as we drive along the motorway and the countryside darkens around us.
I tell myself, At least I did what I could, at least I tried.

The counselor had a room with walls the color of mint toothpaste, and on the table an African violet that looked as though
it was made from plastic, the leaves too clean and symmetrical to be real. She smelled of antibacterial soap, and she wore
a polyester blouse with a floppy bow at the collar.

We talked for three sessions before we reached what we’d come for. She never seemed quite comfortable with us—perhaps my being
a psychologist made her nervous. We talked about our children, the families we grew up in, and how we handled disagreements.
The thing we had really come to say hung there in the room with us.

Eventually I told her that sex was our problem. She flushed a little when I said this, her neck blotching with purple above
the polyester bow. Her embarrassment seemed a serious flaw in a marriage counselor. She said, rather primly, that she thought
the physical relationship between any two people would be fine if the communication was right. And I thought, No, that’s not
true: Sex is about sex, it’s not about communication.

I remembered how it had happened. How after the children I was always so tired; and we went on having sex, though I didn’t
really want to, because it seemed mean to say no, but an orgasm seemed to take more energy than I had. There’s a moment of
decision, of reaching out for pleasure, when you have to focus, to fantasize—well, it’s like that for me anyway—and it never
seemed quite worth the effort. So I used to say, Leave it, really, I don’t mind. … And sex had come to seem pointless, even
inappropriate—as though it wasn’t what our relationship was for. I’d tell myself this didn’t matter, that I could live without
it. Yet always with an awareness of something obscurely wrong, of an absence—some primary color missing from my life, as though
I were a picture painted without red. I couldn’t begin to explain this to her.

She tried a different tack. She said how sex—just the physical thing—often isn’t enough for women: We women need to feel we’re
making love
. She said this with emphasis, as though it was a unique insight. I told her this was a distinction I’d never understood.
My response seemed to perplex her. But romance was so important, she said, all those little gestures that make a woman feel
special.

I tried again.

“But, I mean—after having kids—sex does go sometimes, doesn’t it? Don’t you find that with other couples? What happens to
them? Does it ever come back?” My voice was shrill, urgent. I really wanted to know this.

She said it was
us
she wanted to talk about now—not other couples.

She had some suggestions, some stratagems. I was to ring Greg at work and to make an appointment for sex. When she saw how
we both responded to this, imagining me interrupting a semiotics class with a lascivious proposition, she moved on down her
list. I needed to pamper myself, she said—she was very keen on pampering, which seemed to involve the purchase of scented
candles and expensive bath products. I muse on this now, as we drive on through the darkening landscape—because it’s quite
a common belief, and yet so very strange. As though sex can be found at a department store cosmetics counter, among the flash
balms and exfoliants, and purchased from one of those pushy women with clinical white coats and far too much mascara. Whereas
desire is to be found in other places entirely. At a party where a stranger comes up behind you and runs his hands down your
sides. Or in an afternoon office, where a man who smells of smoky rooms holds your eyes for a little too long and pushes up
his shirtsleeves. Yes, especially that: just thinking of it.

And then Greg had said, “Ginnie’s ever so tired, aren’t you, darling? Bringing up the girls—she has her hands full. You know,
life’s very busy. …”

And the counselor said yes, that it would probably all change when our daughters were older. I felt a kind of despair then,
as they both insisted that our problem was not such an issue really and perfectly predictable. I knew such bleakness, in the
room with the African violet and the toothpaste walls. Feeling that this was beyond repair, that we’d reached the end of the
line.

After that she retreated to safer ground—to our relationship history and the story of how we’d met. She sat back in her chair
now; she seemed to be more at ease. I understood what she was seeking to do—to unearth or recover whatever had originally
drawn us together. I might well have done the same in her place. Though I didn’t see how this could help us. You can’t go
back there.

I told her how we’d met at a dinner party—just giving the outline of the evening. It was a Burns Night dinner, held by some
friends of Max’s, to which Max had wangled me an invite. We were all told to bring a song or a poem, and I fell in love with
Greg when he was reading aloud.

It was done with panache—a long refectory table, a proper damask tablecloth, the whole place shimmering with candles. The
men wore dinner jackets; the women were in long dresses. I remember one woman who had a dress of some slippery cloth that
was tight across her breasts, and a mass of blond hair pinned high up on her head. There was whiskey that tasted wonderfully
of woodsmoke.

But even after the whiskey, most of us were a little embarrassed reading the poems we’d brought. Mostly we chose comic poems,
keeping the emotional temperature down so as not to seem pretentious. Max read something by Craig Raine. I read a poem by
Wendy Cope, which was short and a little poignant. The blond woman didn’t read anything, though toward the end of the evening
she pulled out her hair clip and let down all her hair, shaking her head a little as it fell, so it rippled and gleamed in
the candlelight. Max watched intently. Someone took out a guitar and sang a Tom Lehrer song.

I didn’t really notice Greg ’til he started to read. He was rather too thin for my taste, and was seated far away from me,
up at the other end of the table. But he had a beguiling speaking voice—a subtle, cultured baritone. He read something obscure
and Celtic, a strange tale of enchantment, of four companions who were walking in their lands when a mist fell; and when it
lifted the land was bright, but everything they knew had disappeared, all their flocks and herds and houses and the people
who were with them; there was no animal, no smoke, no fire, no man, no dwelling, so only the four of them remained alone.
The narrative was disjointed, dreamlike, as though the storyteller had stitched together many different strands. There were
curses and metamorphoses and one thing becoming another, and magical objects and animals—a shining white boar, a golden bowl.
Greg read with complete confidence, expecting to be listened to. It was a bold thing to do, to read something so rich and
elusive. We heard him in attentive silence. Afterward, before we clapped, there was a little collective sigh of pleasure.

At the end of the evening, as people started to drift away, I went to him and asked about the story. I was warm with the whiskey,
fluid, more forthcoming than usual. It was from
The Mabinogion
, a collection of medieval Welsh stories, he said. He lent me his copy, wrote his phone number in it, insisted that I had
to give it back when I’d finished. I noticed that his cuff links were little silver fish. He seemed quirky, cerebral, charming,
but with a kind of reserve that made me feel at ease. Max gave me a quick, knowing smile as he slid out of the room, his arm
around the blond woman, his fingers tracing the curve of her hip through the flimsy fabric of her frock, as though they were
lovers already.

Yet I misread Greg, of course. The whole attraction was based on errors of interpretation. I saw his detachment as a kind
of peacefulness, a safety I knew I needed. And he, I think, misunderstood me too—welcomed my shyness, my hesitancy, believing
I would be happy to be a rather traditional wife, grounding him, keeping everything calm and stable: while life for him, the
real thing, happened elsewhere. There’s such readiness, at some points in your life, to move on to the next stage—the old
world over, the new one not yet begun. You grasp at anything you feel might take you forward. There, it’s all signed and sealed,
the choices made, the path plotted out. … And you find yourself in the middle way: your marriage empty, your children leaving,
the mist falling over the land.

I
SIT IN THE SOFT LATE-AFTERNOON SUN
that falls across my office, sipping a final coffee. I like to stay here sometimes before I head for home, letting the day
and all its tensions fall from me.

The file of the last child I saw is on the desk in front of me. Gemma Westerley—a little waif in frilled socks, with hair
the color of straw and a naked, timid smile. She has special needs, though for years her teachers didn’t realize; she was
quiet in class, and her exercise books were orderly, with hearts drawn in the margins, and nobody saw how little she understood.
Now her teacher is worried she might have been abused. Her confusion is still here in the room, like a trace of smoke or perfume.
I make some notes, then put the file away.

I plan my evening. There’s fish in my bag for tea. I went to the market at lunchtime and braved the fish stall with its glazed
dead eyes: This made me feel like a good mother. Amber is going out later, to the Blue Hawaii for a birthday party, where
they will drink cocktails named after sex acts and laced with too much vodka, and I want to make sure that at least she’s
eaten properly. And when Amber has gone I shall start to tidy Molly’s room.