The House on the Cliff (26 page)

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. Well 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.

“Maybe when I get out of here, we could meet up for a drink.”

“I don’t think so, Gwydion.”

I looked down and noticed that he had put his hand under his jumper and was absentmindedly stroking the buttons on the front of his shirt.

I felt it was time to leave. I could see Gwydion was manic, perhaps hypomanic, and I knew that people suffering from the condition sometimes experience intense, and usually inappropriate, sexual urges.

“Will you come back and see me?”

“I’ll try to.”

I gave him what I hoped was an encouraging smile, and got up to go.

In an instant, his mood changed. He turned away from me and went back to staring out of the window.

“Take care, won’t you,” I added. I felt sad to be leaving him there, all on his own, sitting looking out at the view like an old man living out his last years in a nursing home.

But he didn’t reply. As far as he was concerned, I’d already left the room.

Back in my office, I went straight to my couch and lay staring up at the ceiling, watching the shadows thrown on it by the leaves of the tree outside, and trying to make sense of what Gwydion had said to me. I replayed our conversation in my mind, paying attention to the exact words that he’d used. It’s a tip I learned from the master, and from Lacan: that the mind plays with words, conflates and confuses them, tries to give the speaker, and the listener, the slip; but I also know that, if you do your best to follow the trail closely, it can sometimes, with luck, lead you to the truth.

I’ve stopped myself dreaming the dream
, Gwydion had told me. Well, that was pretty straightforward. He was telling me that his recurring dream was now over, that he was relieved of it. Strangely, though, he’d spoken as if he’d ordered his unconscious to dispel it, and had somehow managed, against the odds, to succeed. There was a sense of pride in the way he’d announced the news, like a small child who has managed to carry out a difficult task. And his next words had also confirmed that impression:
I’ve buttoned up all the buttons. They’ll never come undone again.

That was Gwydion the child speaking, of course, and the child who went on,
You see, sometimes she wanted them done up. And sometimes she wanted them undone.
You didn’t have to be much of a therapist to work out who “she” might be, or an avid Freudian to suspect that there was a strong sexual aspect to all this. Evidently, “she” was Arianrhod, the mother, who had frightened Gwydion, the child, with her conflicting demands, to button and unbutton as she commanded.

But how did this connect to the dream? Could it be that Gwydion had been ordered, by Arianrhod, to “button up” or “unbutton” about the dream? Such an interpretation made a kind of sense. If Gwydion had had the dream as a child, in the days when Arianrhod was still trying to keep her marriage intact, and had told his mother about it, she might well have instructed him to keep quiet about it. But now, he was being asked to tell all, not only to Arianrhod, but to a judge and jury, in order to put his father behind bars. Such a conflict of interests, it was plain to see, might well lead a young man, still very attached to his mother and with hostile feelings toward his father, into deep mental torment.

I cast my mind back to my first session with Gwydion. He’d come to me with the button phobia, and that had now, apparently, been cured. But what if the cure had plunged him further into mental illness? What if the button phobia had been his bulwark, his attempt to create a symbolic, almost talismanic, protection for himself, against the reality of his situation: that he was still at the beck and call of his mother, that she called the shots, told him when to button his lip, when to unbutton it. And what if he continued to do her bidding because of his strong, perhaps still-sexualized, attachment to her, and his hatred of his father?

I thought of the phrase Gwydion had used about Evan kissing Elsa, a child’s phrase:
Evan
unbuttoned her mouth
. That would have provided a further cause for hatred of his father: Evan, the errant husband, was free to do all the buttoning and unbuttoning he pleased, in contrast to Gwydion, the little boy, who had no control over the women that he loved: his ever-changing roster of au pairs, and his timid, neurotic mother.

The Oedipus complex, as I’m only too aware, is one of Freud’s more unpopular theories. It’s difficult to stomach, the idea that an adored child might harbor sexual designs on his mother and want to kill his father. The Victorians were horrified by it, and over a hundred years later so are we. It flies against our basic experience of parental and filial love; and on top of that, there are all the ramifications about the female child, the Electra complex, penis envy, and so on, which are far from convincing. But in my view, broadly speaking, it doesn’t seem to stretch credibility to an absurd degree to suggest that a boy might want to keep his mother to himself—after all, in most cases, she’s his first source of food, of warmth, of care, of love—and wish his father would, if not perish at said infant’s hand, at least disappear off the radar for a while. Sophocles was onto something when he wrote
Oedipus Rex
, and so was Freud when he dreamed up the Oedipus complex. That’s why those ideas have lasted: because they tell us a story about ourselves, a story we don’t want to hear, but feel compelled to listen to, despite ourselves.

A car went past the window outside, throwing a shaft of light through the shadows on the ceiling, moving the leaves in mysterious, circular patterns. It was only four o’clock, yet already the nights were drawing in. The window rattled as the car went by, and I felt a draught blow in. A sense of dread ran through me, briefly, but deeply, like an animal feeling the first deep chill of winter. Or perhaps it was an uncomfortable sense that I was beginning to find out more than I wanted to about the Morgan family, more than I’d bargained for when I first took on Gwydion and his button phobia; and that, now I’d set out on the trail, I’d let myself become bound to follow it, wherever it might end.

18

On Thursday evening, toward the end of another exhausting week, I went late-night shopping with Mari in town. On the whole I’m not much of a one for retail therapy. The sight of the high-street shops disgorging a never-ending stream of badly made, ill-fitting clothing no doubt stitched together by half-starved children on the Pacific Rim never fails to depress me. However, Catrin’s boutique in the Arcades, along with a few other independently run ventures in the same area, was a haven of taste and sanity. We stopped off there for an extended trying-on session. Catrin had saved me a couple of outfits in my size, and collected together some vintage costume jewelry for Mari to view. I bought a pair of navy-blue capri pants with a zip up the side, and a cropped cream sweater to go with them. Mari chose a sixties rhinestone brooch that she immediately clipped to her jacket lapel, though it was totally unsuitable for daytime wear. Then, armed with our booty, we went for a drink at the café opposite the shop.

We took a table by the steamy window that fronted onto the street, and looked out as the sky began to darken over the town. Mari ordered a red wine, and I had a coffee. When it came, it was hot and sweet. As she chatted, I took a swig, warming my fingers on the cup, and for the first time in days felt myself begin to relax.

“Any more news about the Morgan case?” Mari tilted her head on one side and looked at me quizzically.

“Not really.”

I didn’t really want to discuss the subject. I didn’t want her spreading a lot of rumors about the case and, more particularly, my part in it, so I didn’t elaborate.

“Will you be giving evidence? For . . . your client?” Mari’s tone told me that she was desperate to know who the client was, but I ignored it.

“They want a statement from me, yes.”

“Have you made it yet?”

“Not formally, no. I’m still thinking about it.”

“Oh?”

“There are one or two things I’m not sure of. Small details.” I didn’t want to give too much away. But on the other hand I knew that, as an ex-girlfriend of Evan’s, Mari might well be a useful source of information. And, to be honest, I’d grown rather curious about Evan himself since I’d met him.

“Tell me, Mari,” I said, trying not to sound too interested. “Did you ever go sailing on Evan’s yacht?”

“Of course.” She paused. “I think he took all his paramours out on it—a rite of passage, as you might say. There’s something very sexy about being seduced on a yacht. I suppose that’s why rich men have them.” She gave a short laugh, then checked herself, perhaps remembering what had happened to Elsa Lindberg.

“Did you go often?”

“Three or four times at most. As I said, we weren’t together long. But it was a lot of fun.” She sighed. “Looking back on it, I suppose it wasn’t very safe. We often got quite drunk out there. I remember one time, a storm blew up. Evan crashed around the boat, mucking about with the sails, reeling them in, reefing them up, or whatever you do, and I had to hold on to the tiller.” She smiled at the memory. “I know nothing about sailing, yet there I was, trying to steer this bloody great boat, with him yelling instructions at me. Of course, the wind was so strong, I couldn’t hear a thing. And the tiller was so heavy, I could hardly budge it anyway. In the end we almost capsized.” She took a sip of her wine. “Madness, really.”

“Weren’t you scared?”

“No, not particularly. In those days everything seemed fun.” There was a hint of sadness in her voice, as though she wished those days could have gone on longer, forever perhaps. “I have such happy memories of that time in my life. The Morgans used to hold these fabulous house parties down at Creigfa House. We’d play tennis, go sailing, stay up half the night, drinking and dancing. Bob used to come down sometimes, I remember. Before he met you.”

“Yes, he told me that.” Now that she mentioned it, I realized I should have asked him more about that when he first raised the matter. I couldn’t now. Our relationship had become too strained to discuss anything important.

“Did he run after a lot of women in those days?” I ventured.

Mari nodded. “He had quite a reputation, actually.”

“Oh?”

Mari hesitated. I could see that, ever since Bob had decided to defend Evan, her attitude toward him had changed. She was no longer prepared to hide her misgivings about my husband out of loyalty to me. Bob had hurt me, not just through his infidelity, but because he’d used me to further his own ambitions. She knew that, and now she felt no need for further pretense.

“And he didn’t always treat them very well either. There was one girl back home, I remember. He was engaged to her, but when he got his place at Oxford, he immediately broke it off. He was very ambitious.” She paused. “Can’t blame him, I suppose, but it was the way he did it. . . .”

I was shocked. Not so much at what Bob had done, but because he’d never told me about it. Lately, I was beginning to realize that I’d never really known my husband.

Silence fell. Mari evidently felt uncomfortable, because she changed the subject.

“It’s strange, isn’t it,” she said. “I wouldn’t have thought Evan capable of . . . of rape, and certainly not murder.”

“No?”

“Not at all. He could be bad-tempered at times. He’s got a very short fuse. But I never saw him hurt anyone. I never felt physically threatened by him.” She frowned, as if she was trying to puzzle something out. “You think you know people. But you don’t, do you?”