Black Valley (27 page)

‘OK,’ she said. As ever, she found herself unable to refuse Elinor’s request. ‘I could see you one evening this coming week. When would you like to come in?’

Elinor arrived for her emergency session the following Tuesday. It was early evening, when Jess had finished seeing her patients, and the staff in the building had left. The
place was quiet, and when she heard Elinor press the bell, Jess went down to the front door to let her in.

‘Hello.’ Elinor stood on the doorstep. She looked different. She was wearing a leather jacket, and she’d had her hair cut in a fashionable asymmetric style.

‘Hi. Come up.’

As they went up, she noticed that Elinor moved differently, more like a woman, swaying her hips slightly, and running her hand up the banisters as she took the stairs.

When they reached the landing, Jess ushered her into the consulting room and closed the door.

‘It’s nice here in the evening.’ Elinor looked around the room. It was lit only by a Japanese floor lamp and the picture light that hung over the white relief on the wall.
‘Nice and calm.’

‘Thank you.’ Jess paused. ‘Take a seat.’

She didn’t offer her the couch, as this was a one-off session.

Elinor went over to the armchair and sat down. Jess took the chair opposite.

There was a silence. Elinor fiddled with her hair.

‘So, what brings you here?’

‘I don’t know, really.’ Elinor sighed. ‘Things aren’t going as well as I expected.’

‘Oh? Is it the claustrophobia?’

‘No. That’s much better. In fact, it’s more or less gone.’ She paused. ‘It’s Isobel. I thought everything would be all right, now I’ve got her back. But
it isn’t.’

Now I’ve got her back, Jess thought. That’s an odd way of putting it.

‘I can’t understand why,’ Elinor went on. ‘I mean, everything’s back to normal, but somehow we’re not as close.’

‘Elinor, the situation is hardly normal.’ Jess’s tone was gentle. ‘You’ve recently had two bereavements. One was your mother, the other Isobel’s husband.
It’s not surprising that she’s grieving for them. And that your relationship should have changed.’

Elinor looked puzzled. She really could be obtuse, Jess thought, then wondered why she felt so impatient. She realized that she was tired after her day’s work, and wished she hadn’t
acceded to Elinor’s sudden request for a session.

‘You’re right,’ Elinor said. ‘Isobel’s missing Blake. She misses him a lot. I wake up at night and hear her crying.’

‘You hear her?’

‘Yes.’

‘Does she sleep next door to you?’

‘Yes. She leaves the door of her room open, and so do I.’ She sighed. ‘I’m so happy to have her back, and she’s so miserable. I didn’t realize Blake meant so
much to her.’

Elinor’s tone was sad, but there was resentment there, too.

‘Elinor, the situation has changed.’ Since this was a one-off session, as far as Jess knew, she felt she could speak her mind. ‘You’ve both moved on. Isobel was married
to a man she loved for many years. You can’t pretend it never happened.’

Elinor didn’t respond. Then she covered her face with her hands, and burst into tears.

Jess felt an urge to go over and hug her, but she resisted it. Instead, she pushed over the box of tissues that was sitting on the table between them.

‘I miss you, Jess.’ Elinor’s sobs were coming from her chest. She was crying as if she’d never stop. ‘I miss you so much. Not really the therapy. Just being with
you, here, in this room. It’s the only place I feel safe.’

Jess was taken aback. She wondered what was going on in Elinor’s mind. Elinor had often been so distant, so distracted, in their sessions. In many ways, she’d never really engaged
with the therapy. But now she’d left, it was clear that Jess had meant a great deal to her; indeed, she seemed to have become essential to her wellbeing. Twin behaviour, Jess reflected. With
twins, there was never any in between. Either Jess meant nothing to Elinor, or she filled in as her twin, and meant everything.

‘You could come back into therapy if you wish. You’ve had a long break.’ Jess cast her mind back. ‘Four weeks, isn’t it?’

‘I’d like that.’ Elinor took a tissue and blew her nose. Her sobs were becoming quieter now, though they still came up from her chest, making her shudder. ‘Just so I can
see you. But I don’t think you can help me.’

She began to sob again. Jess looked at her small frame wracked with grief, and felt tears prick her eyes. She wished she could go over and comfort her. But she remained where she was.

‘Well, there is clearly still quite a lot of work for us to do here.’ Jess spoke in a low tone. ‘You’ve never really talked about your relationship with your
mother—’

‘I don’t want to talk about my mother,’ Elinor interrupted. ‘I don’t feel anything about her. I never did. She was irrelevant to me. The only person that ever
mattered to me was Isobel. And my father, I suppose. But then he went and died.’

There was anger in her voice.

‘Ursula was hopeless as a parent,’ she continued. ‘She liked us to call her by her Christian name, said it made her feel boring to be called Ma. To be honest, I didn’t
think of her as my mother at all. She was completely self-obsessed. There was always some drama going on, some secret affair or mysterious illness, something that meant she was always out, or lying
on the sofa in a darkened room. My father coped with her as best he could – we all did. It was really a case of us mothering her, rather than the other way round.’ Elinor paused.
‘I suppose I ought not to say this, but I couldn’t care less that she’s dead. She was a bloody nuisance, and I’m glad to be rid of her.’

Glad to be rid of her
. It was chilling the way Elinor spoke about Ursula. She was resentful towards her, of course, but even so, it seemed very harsh to discuss her in such terms,
especially after she’d met such a horrible end. Not for the first time, Jess realized that beneath Elinor’s air of timid vulnerability there was a cold, unforgiving side to her nature.
Or perhaps it was simply that Elinor found it easier, at this stage, to be angry with her mother than to mourn her loss. At any rate, Elinor seemed more positive in general, and her claustrophobia
appeared to have gone.

‘I’m more upset about Blake, to tell the truth. He was always so supportive of my work. Believed in me as an artist.’ She sniffed. ‘And he was a good husband to Isobel.
Helped her run the gallery, expand it. They were happy together, I think. She loved him.’ A forlorn tone crept into her voice. ‘I often felt rather excluded.’

‘Excluded?’

She nodded. ‘I was terribly lonely when Isobel went off with Blake, leaving me alone. Then my father got ill, and my parents went off to Italy. When he died, it was completely traumatic
for all of us. He was the one who’d held the family together. My mother became more neurotic than ever. She couldn’t decide whether to sell up in Italy and come home, or to stay there.
She was forever flitting back and forth, turning up unexpectedly, interfering in our lives, offloading all her misery onto us, then disappearing again. I remember thinking at the time, I wish it
had been her rather than Pa who’d died. It would all have been so much easier.’

Jess couldn’t help feeling sorry for Ursula. However difficult she’d been, by the sound of it, Elinor seemed to have been unable to offer her mother any comfort in her time of
bereavement.

‘Blake was pretty good with her, I must say,’ Elinor went on. ‘He and Isobel used to have her to stay for weeks on end. I couldn’t cope with her.’ She furrowed her
brow. ‘I think that’s when things really changed between me and Isobel, come to think of it. She grew closer to Blake when our father died. I think she came to depend on him a
lot.’ Elinor hesitated. ‘More, even, than me.’

‘Well, that’s natural, isn’t it? To lean on your husband, first and foremost, at such a time?’

‘Yes.’ Elinor seemed puzzled. ‘I suppose so.’

There was a silence. Once again, Jess was struck by the strange dynamic of the twin relationship. Frederick’s death had strengthened the bond between Isobel and Blake, yet Elinor appeared
to be having trouble understanding how that could be. For Elinor, the relationship between her and her twin sister seemed always to take precedence over any other.

‘I must admit, I felt jealous of Blake.’ Elinor was getting into her stride now, talking more freely than she’d ever done in her regular sessions. ‘I felt he’d
taken my sister away from me. Isobel didn’t come over to the house much any more. And when she did, we didn’t really talk.’

‘So you missed her?’

Elinor nodded. ‘Very much. I didn’t have a man in my life, never have had, really. There’s been the odd one here and there, over the years, but none of them ever lasted. I
didn’t mind.’ She shrugged. ‘I always felt I could manage without all that. As long as I had my painting. And . . .’ Her voice trailed off.

‘And?’ Jess prompted.

‘And Isobel.’ She paused. ‘I’d always taken it for granted that we’d be together. I can remember when I was a child thinking, I don’t care what happens to my
parents, as long as I’ve got Isobel. So of course, when she came back to the family house, after Blake died, I felt so happy.’ She paused, as if checking herself. ‘No, not happy
exactly. Relieved. Because things were back to normal. It was just like old times. Me and Isobel, together again.’

There was a brief silence.

‘Of course, Isobel was devastated about Blake. She couldn’t understand why he’d committed suicide. And when it all came out, that the business was in trouble, that he’d
killed Ursula and stolen the painting, she said she didn’t care, that she still loved him.’ She paused. ‘I thought, over time, she’d start to feel better. But she
hasn’t.’ A look of anguish came over Elinor’s face. ‘It’s not the same now. She wants him, not me. It’s almost as if . . .’ She broke off.

Jess didn’t prompt her.

Elinor began to sob again. ‘As if she blames me for everything.’

Jess thought for a moment. Psychically speaking, Elinor had wanted Blake out of the picture. After all, he had supplanted her in her sister’s affections. And psychically speaking, Isobel
must have sensed Elinor’s hostility, so that a part of her blamed Elinor for Blake’s death. In terms of the twin dynamic, Isobel’s reaction had an emotional logic, however
irrational it might be in reality.

Elinor changed the subject. They began to discuss the many practical issues that needed to be resolved in the wake of Blake’s death, including whether to sell the chapel or the family
house at Llandaff Green. Elinor seemed to take it for granted that she and Isobel would be living together in future, despite the tensions between them. Finally, as the session came to a close,
Jess asked her if she wanted to continue with the therapy.

‘I don’t know. I can’t be sure about that.’

‘Well, I think you need to make up your mind.’ Jess was firm. ‘I can’t keep arranging one-off sessions for you like this.’

‘I know.’

There was a silence.

‘You’ve talked more freely in this session than usual, haven’t you?’

Elinor nodded.

‘I wonder whether that’s because it’s a one-off, and you feel you don’t have to commit?’

‘Perhaps.’ Elinor hesitated. ‘It’s weird, but in the past I felt guilty if I told you too much. As if I was being disloyal to Isobel. But now that things are changing
between me and her, I think that might change, too.’ She looked pensive. ‘Can I think about it and let you know?’

‘Of course. But I’ll need an answer soon.’

Jess glanced at the clock.

‘Now, Elinor, I’m afraid our time is up.’

After Elinor left, Jess stayed on in the consulting room. During the session, she’d begun to feel that there was something going on between Elinor and Isobel that she
didn’t fully understand; some kind of secret pact that they were engaged in together, which Elinor only hinted at from time to time. She wondered what it was, and how, if Elinor did come back
into therapy, she could help her to unburden herself of it, since it seemed to be troubling her so deeply.

She walked over to the couch under the window, and lay down. She’d made it a rule not to, but she was breaking it now, because she was using it for its proper purpose: to allow her mind to
wander, to free associate, until it showed her what she wanted to know. This was a feature of the psyche that was so often forgotten in the hectic pace of life, and which, she told herself, she
ought always to remember – the way that, given time and space, fleeting thoughts could, as if by their own accord, assemble themselves into a pattern without being directed to do so. And a
pattern was what she needed at the moment, as the first step in coming to some understanding of what was happening in Elinor’s life, and why she was so disturbed.

The tree outside the window was coming into leaf, the bark black against the bright green of the foliage. If she listened intently, she could hear the crackle of its leaves unfurling, or so she
fancied. Probably, it was just the sigh of the branches as they moved in the wind. She focussed her eyes on a twig that tapped the window: two leaves curled on either side, soft as gristly babies;
the twig between them brown and stiff and knobbly, a grandmother’s arm. She thought of Elinor and Isobel, and their grandmother Ariadne, Augustus John’s lover. Their mother, Ursula,
didn’t come into the picture. Jess thought she knew why that was. As a neglectful mother, Ursula had, to all intents and purposes, been absent to her daughters. In death, she seemed to loom
larger over them than she had done in life. And because they were twins, perhaps more dependent on each other than they had been on their mother, they had been protected, to some degree, from grief
over her passing.

A painting by Gwen John jumped into her mind. It was of a Japanese doll, sitting by a small, open wooden box. The colours were muted. The slanting attic window, with its weak shaft of light,
spoke of dim, dark days shut away from the bustle of the street below. Then another image came before her eyes: Dorelia, Augustus’s wife. Her hair was like the doll’s: square cut, black
as coal. But the paint was bright, the face forceful, strong. Too strong, perhaps. Too definite.