The River House (28 page)

“I had to do it. Please understand, Will. I know it’s difficult …”

He interrupts me.

“Who else knows? Does Greg know?”

“I just told him I’d seen something and I’d rung the police. I said I’d been there because I’d gone off for a walk. It seemed
OK.”

“Oh yeah?”

“I mean, he didn’t say much …”

I hear the doubt in my voice.

I want this to be over now, for him to come to the river house. I hold this in my mind, as though by some magic I can make
it happen. By thinking it, imagining it, I can conjure it up. I want to say, Come and make love to me now, but my lips are
stiff and it’s hard to form the words.

I push my glass away.

“Are you ready?” I ask.

He doesn’t move.

“Will, d’you want another drink? Or shall we go now? It looks like the rain’s stopping.”

He sits quite still; he’s looking intently at his hands.

“I think we should leave it there, don’t you?” he says then. “After all this?”

It’s silent between us for a moment. There’s a chink as the barmaid puts down a glass on the bar. A sharp little sound, like
something breaking.

“OK.” I force myself to smile. “Next week perhaps?” Trying to sound casual, but my voice thin, frail, suddenly. The world
cracking open.

“I’m busy next week,” he says. “I’ll ring you.”

I’m scared to press him. I could say, Is it over between us, then? Are we ever going to see each other again? I swallow down
these questions. I don’t want to hear his answers to them, don’t want to hear the words.

This is how it ends then, says a voice in my head. You’ve often wondered: now you know. It ends with this coldness and wariness
in his eyes, here in the empty bar with all the mirrors: watched by an indifferent barmaid wiping glasses, the saxophone playing:
keeping your face still, trying to hold back your tears.

“I’m running late. I need to go,” he says.

“Will.” I reach out then, put my hand against his, awkwardly. The warmth of his skin astonishes me always. “Don’t just go.
Don’t just walk out of my life.”

My throat is sore, as though saying this has hurt me.

He gives me a puzzled look: It’s as if he’s discovered I’m not the person he thought. I watch as he walks away from me.

But at the door he turns. I can see that the anger has left him. He’s hunched; he looks defeated. He comes back to the table.
He reaches out and puts his hand on my hair, pushing my hair from my face: it’s a brief, tender gesture. Just for a moment,
he’s the way he used to be.

“Ginnie, I can’t cope with this. I’m sorry.”

I know then that it is really over.

After he’s gone, I sit in the bar for a long time, with my empty glass in front of me. I sit very still: like you might sit
in the absolute silence after a car crash, afraid to move in case part of you is broken.

T
HAT NIGHT, AND FOR MANY NIGHTS AFTERWARD
, I wake at four, suddenly and crisply, absolutely alert. Immediately I feel the silence all around me, and know there is
still a lot of night to get through. I lie awake for what seems like hours, then sink into a fragile sleep just as the first
birds stir. When I get up in the morning, my back aches as though I have lifted heavy weights in the night.

On Tuesday I wake from another poor night’s sleep to an extravagant spring day, my bedroom curtains filling with light as
a sail fills with wind. I push back the curtains, looking down into the garden. At the edge of the lawn, where I never mow,
there’s a tangle of forget-me-nots and white wild strawberry flowers.

The sound of the phone jolts me. People don’t usually ring so early in the day. I know what it is before I answer.

“Ginnie, there’s some sad news.” Ursula’s voice is slow and formal, but I can hear the shake in it. “I’m ringing to tell you
that Mum died at three o’clock this morning.”

“Yes,” I say. All other words dry up in me. All I can think is that I haven’t sent her the photos, the glittery pictures of
Molly with London spread out at her feet. I was going to send them and I know she would have loved them, but I left it too
late and now she’ll never see them. The finality of this shocks me, like something I’ve only just learned.

“They told me she died very peacefully,” says Ursula.

“Are you all right?” I say stupidly.

“All rightish,” she says carefully. “I mean, it’s not exactly unexpected. Dr. Spence said it’s the time of night that people
most often die—everything slows down, apparently, all your metabolism.”

“Yes, I’ve heard that.”

“Her suffering’s over now,” she says. “In a way it’s a blessing that she died before it all got worse. I’m thinking next week
for the funeral. Wednesday. Would that suit you?”

I tell her yes. We talk about the service. No flowers, of course: She wouldn’t want flowers; she always said they were pointless,
after you’d gone. We will sing “Lord of all Hopefulness.” Afterward, there will be refreshments at the King’s Arms next to
the church—and am I happy for her to take care of all the arrangements? Yes, of course I am.

“Oh, and bring some boxes,” she says. “We’ll go on to the house afterward and you can have a quick look through and see what
you’d like to take. Would that be OK? I mean, I’m perfectly happy to do all the clearing. You know, as I’m right on the spot.
It makes much more sense than you having to make lots of trips—and with Amber’s exams coming up and everything. …”

“That would be wonderful, Ursula.”

“It’s no problem,” she says. “Really.”

I go into the kitchen, where Greg is eating soy milk and cornflakes with the
Times
propped up in front of him. A slice of sunlight falls across the floor. I sit down rather heavily at the table.

“Greg, Mum died this morning.”

“Oh, Ginnie, I’m so sorry.”

Everything feels removed from me. I’m standing outside, just watching, as he pushes aside his cereal bowl and gives me his
full attention: You can’t go on eating after somebody’s died.

He reaches out and pats my arm.

“Are you OK?” Like I said to Ursula.

I nod. “I just feel a bit shocked. Weird, when we knew it had to happen.”

He studies my face, perhaps relieved I’m not crying.

“You seem to be coping with it very well,” he says.

“I don’t know.”

“Perhaps it was a good thing it happened before she got any worse,” he says.

“Perhaps. The funeral’s next Wednesday.”

“Hell. I’ve got a meeting,” he says. “Well, they’ll just have to manage without me.”

“Greg, don’t feel you have to come if it’s awkward.”

“You’ll want me there,” he says.

I think of taking Greg and Amber to the funeral—sorting them out some sober clothes, negotiating with Amber about not wearing
anything too revealing, finding them someone to talk to at the funeral tea. These simple tasks seem utterly beyond me.

“Look, I don’t suppose Amber will want to come anyway,” I tell him. “I wouldn’t expect her to. Funerals are horrible for children.
So you could hold the fort here.”

“Well, if you’re sure …”

“Really, I’ll be fine. We’re planning to start on the house afterward, me and Ursula. There’d be a lot of hanging around for
you.”

“If that’s really OK,” he says.

“Really. Greg, you can carry on with your breakfast.”

“Thanks,” he says.

He goes back to his cornflakes.

I ring Molly. She’s been to a ball at the Union. There were fairy lights and a party tent, and cocktails with cream on them
called Blowjobs, so all the lads thought it was really funny asking for two Blowjobs, which Molly thought was
so
infantile; and someone said Prince William was there, but the person who told her was drunk so she still isn’t sure. Her
voice keeps cracking: She has a heavy cold.

I tell her about her grandmother.

“Poor Granny,” she says. She’s sad, but in a detached way. “I used to love visiting there, when we were little,” she says.
It’s as though her grandmother was already in the past for her. “I loved those cakes she made, the ones with the currants
in. And the stream with all the colors.”

She breaks off to cough extravagantly.

“Molly, you ought to be in bed.”

“I can’t. I’ve got a morphology class.”

“Then miss your class and go to bed,” I tell her. “Tuck yourself up with some Lemsip.”

I hate her being ill when she’s so far away.

“But it’s karaoke tonight. And if I miss my class I won’t feel able to go to karaoke. …”

“Have you been taking your vitamins?”

“Well …”—a little guilty pause. “Nobody takes their vitamins, Mum. There’s this guy I know, and his parents were coming to
take him out to dinner, and they’d given him all these vitamins, and he took all the pills the night before so he wouldn’t
have to lie. … Anyway, Mum, are
you
OK?”

“I’m fine, sweetheart.”

“You don’t sound it,” she says. “Really, Mum, you sound terrible.”

Eva takes me out for a drink at the Café Rouge. She’s wearing leather trousers and a rather unbuttoned silk shirt. We sit
at a table by the window, with carnations in a glass. The waiter lights our candle. I tell her about my mother.

She puts her hand on my arm, looking at me anxiously.

“Ginnie. You look awful.”

“It doesn’t feel real yet,” I say.

“Is Greg doing all the right things?” she says.

“Greg’s being fine,” I tell her. “I mean, he isn’t coming to the funeral. But I said he didn’t have to.”

Her eyes widen. I see her throat move as she swallows.

“It was my idea,” I say. “It just seemed easier.”

She’s chewing her lip, as if there’s something she’s trying not to say. She looks into her glass for a moment.

“It’s a big one, when your mother dies,” she says then. “It changes you. To be honest, I didn’t really feel like a grown-up
’til my mother died. …” She shrugs; she has a slight, wry smile. “But she didn’t like me very much, and I guess that makes
a difference.”

“I keep thinking about these photos that Molly sent,” I say. “I was going to send them on to Mum, I was thinking how much
she’d have loved them. I was going to do it tomorrow.”

“It’s always in the middle of something,” says Eva. “Death’s always an interruption. There’s sure to be something you didn’t
do or say.”

The carnations have a powdery scent, like the smell of an expensive woman. The candle falters in the draft that comes in around
the window frame.

Eva tells me about her week, trying to entertain me. Lauren went off to this party with a couple of friends, and Eva was doing
the transport, and Lauren rang at one o’clock, sounding completely out of it.

“It was a nightmare,” says Eva. “These poor bloody parents had gone off for an innocent evening out, and got back to find
all these kids tanked up on vodka and puking in their bathroom. The police had been called and everything. And Lauren and
her mates were rather the worse for wear, and one of them threw up just as we were coming down the A3, and I didn’t have any
tissues. … It was like being caught in the circles of hell,” she says.

We order more drinks and listen to Art Pepper. I ask about work. It’s still a total pain, she tells me; the kids couldn’t
give a shit, and her headmaster is really mean. At the table beside us a lean young man with dreadlocks is talking to a stylish
woman who’s smoking a Sobranie. The woman must be about our age. Eva watches curiously as the young man talks with animation
and the woman leans across the table, staring into his eyes.

“I don’t know, Ginnie,” says Eva then. “Sometimes I think I should do something really drastic. You know, move to the country
or something. I keep on cutting these pictures out of the paper. Swap Shop in the
Evening Standard
—all these fetching cottages you could buy with the price of your London rabbit hutch. Watermills in Somerset, and cottages
in Suffolk with thatch and pink-washed walls.”

“But, Eva, I didn’t think you liked the country,” I say.

“I don’t,” she says. “I hate it really. I remember that, in my saner moments. I grew up in the country and mostly it’s just
so tedious. No one who looks like they’ve ever eaten an avocado, and you can’t get a decent coffee. Anyway, we couldn’t possibly
move ’til Lauren and Josh have finished school.” She fiddles with her rings, twisting them around on her fingers as though
she can’t make them comfortable. “I don’t know, Ginnie,” she says again. “I know I need to change something, I just don’t
know what to change. …”

When we say good-bye, she wraps her arms around me.

“Poor love. You seem so sad,” she says. “It’s hit you hard, hasn’t it? I only wish there was something I could do.”

It rains a lot. We wake to the sound of water, its whisper on the gravel and the percussive sound where it overflows the gutters
and taps on the lids of the dustbins. It’s dim all day, too dark for March, as if somebody’s left off the lights. Snails creep
up our downstairs windows, sucking stickily at the pane, their shells dark as walnuts or the color of honey, and frilled,
blotched toadstools grow up out of our lawn. There are smudges of mold on my kitchen wall, as though someone has rubbed it
with a dirty eraser. I wipe at the mold with Dettol, but I know it’ll grow back soon.

The Thames runs high, spilling over the bank in places. Greg anxiously watches the news. There’s flooding in Chertsey, higher
up the river, and the press is full of warnings. Hundreds of thousands of people will soon be at risk because of rises in
sea and river levels. Flash floods will be more frequent, where Victorian drainage systems can’t cope with sudden downpours.
Houses will become impossible to insure. Whole tracts of cities may have to be demolished to make green corridors to take
the water away. Greg reads these predictions with mounting apprehension.

One evening, when the sun is setting after another day of rain, but the clouds have briefly blown away, we walk down to the
end of the road together. The riverbank here is urban, built up, orderly: not like the untended places where I used to walk
with Will. Here, there are houses and gardens, pruned and trimmed and manicured, and the river path is paved. It’s a beautiful
evening, the sky all gentle flower colors, rose and lilac and lavender, the river giving back the colors of the sky. Pink
water laps up onto the path and in places covers it over, though it hasn’t reached the road, and geese paddle there, and slow,
poised, ponderous swans, and Chinese ducks with flashes of jade in their wings. There are little dinghies moored here, waiting
for summer: You can hear the nervous slap of the water against their hulls. Other families have come to enjoy the lull in
the weather. Children in Wellingtons wade and splash through the water, relishing the shifting landscape, the way the edges
of things are less defined. Their voices as they call out have that lonely, echoey quality of voices heard across water.