The House on the Cliff (7 page)

He let go of my hand and turned to Arianrhod. “Is Gwydion out of bed yet?”

“Not yet, no.” An anxious note crept into her voice. “But he’ll be up sooner or later, I’m sure . . .”

“So, no joy, eh?” He turned to me, a look of exasperation on his face. “I really don’t know what we’re going to do with him. Lying around in bed all day, like a teenager. Still tied to his mother’s apron strings. I despair of him sometimes . . .”

I didn’t reply, but I felt my anger rising. No wonder Gwydion has problems, with a father like this, I thought.

“I hope you can help him. It’s time he pulled himself together. Made his own life, away from here.” He looked me in the eye as he spoke, and I felt a flush start to rise from the back of my neck. He seemed to be sizing me up, assessing my competence, whether as a woman or a doctor, or both, I wasn’t sure.

“Dr. Mayhew and I were just going for a stroll, before she goes home,” Arianrhod said. There was a subtle touch of martyred patience in her tone. She paused. “We won’t be long. We’ll take the dogs, if you like.”

“Whatever you want.” He gave a sigh of frustration. “I’ve got Rhiannon coming over in a minute.”

At the mention of Rhiannon, Arianrhod looked pained, but did her best to hide it.

“We’ve got a ton of work to get through . . .” He paused, as if he’d suddenly remembered I was there. “Good-bye, Dr. . . .”

He looked at me again, registering my discomfort, a faint smile playing about his lips.

“Mayhew,” I reminded him. “Jessica Mayhew.”

He nodded curtly, then walked off toward the house, his boots crunching on the gravel. As I watched him go, I realized with a shock why he looked so familiar. It wasn’t just his similarity to Gwydion, or the fact that I’d probably seen his face in the papers or on TV. He was, without a doubt, the man in the photograph I’d been sent, with the blacked-out eyes.

Arianrhod and I set off across the lawn, the dogs circling us in their excitement at the prospect of another walk. Then they ran off ahead, on the trail of some scent or other, darting back to us from time to time as we headed out into the walled gardens overlooking the sea.

For a while, neither of us spoke. My mind was racing. I knew now who the man in the mystery photograph was, but I still didn’t know who had sent it, or why.

“I’m sorry about that,” Arianrhod said at last, when we were out of earshot. “Evan isn’t the most patient of men. He gets upset whenever Gwydion’s . . . ill. He worries about him. And it tends to come out in . . . well, an odd way. He’s very fond of him, really. He doesn’t mean any harm.”

I nodded, but I didn’t reply. I was still puzzling over the photograph. Then it came to me. It must have been Gwydion who’d sent it. It had arrived the morning he first came to see me, after all. He was obviously unstable, and hated his father—he’d told me as much at the last session we’d had. And clients quite often send me notes they’ve written in advance, rather than bringing up difficult issues in the session. This was evidently just a variation on that theme.

I felt a sense of satisfaction. Although I’d brushed it aside at the time, the question of the photograph, and the message beneath it, had been at the back of my mind ever since it had arrived. Now I could cross off that small but irritating anomaly in my life.

We reached a high stone wall.

“This way.” Arianrhod opened a small wooden door set into it and ushered me through.

Gardens by the sea are strange places. There’s a beauty to them, but they’re not comfortable, domestic, tamed. The salt wind stunts the trees, twists them out of shape, and the shrubs, bushes, and plants wear a tough, embattled air as though struggling for their right to survive. Arianrhod’s garden was no exception, but the stone walls facing out to sea helped to shelter it. It had been carefully planted, too, with an emphasis on architectural form, on the contrasting shapes and colors of branches and leaves, rather than flowers. And the design of the garden was a pretty one, a series of walled squares, each connected to the next by a little wooden door, with narrow paths that led around the lawns and beds.

I’m not much of a gardener myself—I’m reserving it for my old age, when I’ll have more time—but I could see, as we walked around, that a lot of work had gone into maintaining the place. The lawns within each walled square were mown, the edges of the beds clipped, the leaves raked into neat piles in the corners. It was as lovingly cared for as such a windblown spot could be.

“Do you do this all yourself?” I asked, as we walked into the final square, which was evidently the kitchen garden.

“Well, there’s a man who comes in to do the lawns.” Arianrhod brushed the hair out of her eyes. “But that’s all.”

“It must be a lot of work.”

“It is. But I like it.” She reached up and deadheaded a rose as we passed. “It’s peaceful out here. Relaxing.” She paused. “I’m so keyed up most of the time. What with Gwydion and . . .” She hesitated.

I sensed there was about to be an intimate revelation, possibly about Evan, but I headed it off at the pass.

“Well, it’s lovely. You’ve obviously got an eye for this sort of thing.”

I wasn’t being unsympathetic, but I didn’t want to talk to Arianrhod about her husband. She wasn’t my client, Gwydion was. And if there were problems in the family, which there evidently were, I’d rather hear about them from the horse’s mouth than the horse’s mother.

Arianrhod seemed to get the message and changed the subject. “Do you want to go out and look at the view from the cliff top?” she asked. “It’s pretty spectacular.”

“Fine,” I said. I felt the urge to get away, before Arianrhod decided to confide in me further, but I didn’t like to refuse. Besides, I wanted to look out at the sea before I left. I wanted to store it up in my mind for future use. If I take a long look at something beautiful during the day, I’m often able to recall it in detail when I’m in bed at night, and it helps to get me off to sleep. It’s a trick I’ve learned, and I sometimes recommend it to my clients as a cheap alternative to Temazepam.

We walked through another small wooden door out onto a narrow cliff top path, which led through a dense thicket of gorse bushes and brambles to a small clearing. We stopped there and looked out over the vast expanse of slate-gray sea, stretching far off into the hazy horizon beyond.

It was, indeed, spectacular. The tide was out, and below us was a dizzying drop down to the exposed seabed, a sheet of cratered rock like a slimy brown moon, pitted, turreted, treacherous. Around it hung a curtain of yellow cliffs, the soft limestone layered like mortarless bricks on a half-demolished building.

Without thinking, I caught my breath and took a step back from the edge of the cliff. There was no form of fencing or hedging between us and the abyss, and I wished there was.

“I know,” said Arianrhod. “It’s a bit overwhelming, isn’t it?”

“I’m fine,” I said. “As long as I keep away from the edge. I don’t have much of a head for heights, I’m afraid.”

We gazed out in silence at the sea. Then I looked down and noticed there were some steps and a handrail cut into the side of the cliff, leading down to a jetty that stuck out over the rocks below.

“Can you get down there?” I asked. “Not that I’m thinking of trying.”

Arianrhod laughed. “It’s safer than it looks, actually. We often go down and swim off the jetty out there in the summer. Even at this time of year, if the weather’s good. The sea’s warmed up by now. I mean, when I say warm . . .” She laughed again. She seemed to have a habit of ending, or rather not ending, her sentences with a laugh.

She led me over to the top of the steps, and I peered down at them cautiously. Now that I was close up to them, I could see they were cut quite deep into the rock. With one hand on the rail, they’d be fairly safe, if a little slippery. Even so, it was a very long way down to the sea.

“I really must be getting on,” I said. “I’d like to be home before it gets dark.”

“Of course. It’s getting late. I hadn’t realized . . .” Another unfinished sentence. Another laugh.

I was about to turn and go when I noticed there was a little plaque at the top of the steps, with a name and a date inscribed on it:
ELSA LINDBERG 1971–1990
. Below it some words in a foreign language. A Nordic one, by the look of the
A
s with little circles on the top, and the
O
s with umlauts over them.

“What’s this?”

“Oh.” She paused a moment. “Very sad. A young girl, a tourist from Sweden, I believe. It was a long time ago. There’ve been a few casualties here over the years, I’m sorry to say. Mostly people who swim out too far. The currents can be very treacherous.”

There was something offhand in the way she spoke that contrasted with the usual intensity of her manner. I wondered whether the accident had upset her more than she was letting on.

“I can imagine.” For a moment an image of the girl, and of her cold, lonely death out there in the slate-gray waters, flashed through my mind. But it didn’t do to dwell on it, so after a moment I added, “Come on. Let’s go.”

As we walked back up the path I took a last glance down at the steps and out to sea. In the short time we’d been there the tide seemed to have moved in, stealthily, without me noticing, so that the water was now approaching the bottom of the cliffs. I shivered involuntarily. I was glad to be leaving.

6

When I got home, after a tedious drive back up the motorway, the house was empty. I checked my phone and found two messages. Bob was working late—no surprise there—and Nella had gone out with her friends. Rose, I knew, was off on a school outing to see a play. They’d both arranged for Bob to pick them up on his way home. There was nothing for me to do, no one who needed me. I could relax if I wanted to, please myself, have some “me” time, as the women’s magazines call it: pour myself a drink, take a long, hot bath, cook myself a dish the girls don’t like—risotto, perhaps, or soup—read something undemanding, and get an early night.

Tonight, however, I didn’t want any “me” time. I wanted to be out and about, with people around me, lights, noise, chatter. Anything to prevent me from thinking too hard, to dim the memory of my trip to the Morgan place: that odd house, those odd people, and my odd part in their lives. And, luckily enough, it was Friday.

A group of my friends, all women, meet up regularly on Friday nights for a drink at our local arts center. Sometimes we eat there, or take in a film, but mostly we just sit around talking, winding down at the end of a busy week. There are about six of us in all, but often one or two of us are missing. It’s a relaxed, simple arrangement: you go if you feel like it, and not if you don’t. I made a quick phone call to a friend, Mari Jones, to check whether she would be there, and when she told me she would—but later, after she’d eaten—I decided to do the same.

When I got to the arts center it was already getting on toward ten. The place was packed, but my friends had found a table in a quiet corner of the foyer. I said hello, asked if anyone wanted a drink, took a couple of orders, and went up to the bar. After a moment’s deliberation I decided to have a half of Reverend James, the local brew, named after a Victorian saver of souls with a sideline in selling beer.

I brought my drink back to the table and sat down. The conversation was in full flow, dominated as usual by Mari. An actress with a steady career in Welsh-language theater, television, and radio, she was loud, and funny, and glamorous; and if sometimes she talked a little too much and laughed a little too long, I made allowances for her, because she was warm and expansive, and generally larger than life. Sitting next to her was Sharon, an American academic who worked at the university. The polar opposite of Mari, Sharon was quiet, thoughtful, and bookish. The others who had turned up that night were Polly, a full-time homemaker—well, it’s better than “housewife,” isn’t it?—and Catrin, who ran a vintage-clothes shop in the Arcades and was the source of many of my outfits.

I listened as Mari held forth, laughing with the others as she mimicked the absurd pomposities of the theater director she’d been working with that week. As time went on, the conversation around the table became more animated, but I found it hard to join in. My head was full of what had happened that day. I couldn’t discuss what I’d seen of Gwydion and his family life, of course, because he was my client, but I couldn’t put it out of my mind either. So, instead, I began to probe Mari on the subject of the Morgans’ place in the acting world.

“Your director. He’s not this guy Evan Morgan, is he?”

“No.” Mari gave a wry grin. “Why d’you ask?”

“Oh, no reason. He’s the only Welsh theater director I’ve ever heard of, that’s all.”

“I wish it was.” Mari sighed. “Evan’s brilliant, absolutely brilliant. Best director I’ve ever worked with, actually.” She paused for a moment. “Strange guy, of course. Used to have a terrible drink problem. Vile temper at times. And he’s a dreadful womanizer.”

She hesitated. I waited. I knew there was more to come. Mari isn’t the soul of discretion, which I suppose was the reason I’d been pumping her for information.

“In fact, I had a bit of a—” She stopped in mid-sentence, a coy smile playing about her lips.

I didn’t say anything. I had a feeling she wouldn’t need prompting.

“It was nothing, really,” she went on, after a brief pause. “Just a quick fling, years ago. There was no future in it.” She sighed again. “A lot of fun, though, at the time.”

I waited again. And there was more, as I knew there would be.

“Haven’t seen him for ages.” She hesitated. “There was some kind of scandal, I seem to remember, a while back. Something about . . . I don’t know, a young girl. Surprise, surprise. Anyway, it was all hushed up. He’s doing incredibly well for himself these days—up for a knighthood, apparently.” Another brief pause. “But he’s not a terribly happy man, by all accounts. Dreadful marriage. His wife’s one of those posh Anglo-Welshies from up the borders.”

Mari stopped, took a sip of her gin and tonic, and continued. “Arianrhod Meredith. She was very young when they got together. Very beautiful. Evan had great ambitions for her at first, but she ended up just being his wife, giving parties for his friends . . .”