“And yet you treat me like one,” I spat out.
“This is about the book, isn’t it? You think I went too far.” You turned towards me and put a hand on my arm. You didn’t blink. “You don’t need to worry that Nan or Flora will read it. We won’t keep a copy in the house.”
“For God’s sake, not everything is about your work, Gil.” I pulled my arm out from under your hand.
“There’s no need for you to be concerned. You’re the mother of my children—it’ll always be you and the girls I come home to. I’d never desert any of you.”
“So you did take some stupid book groupie to your hotel and fuck her!” My fingers found my seat-belt button and the strap flew loose with force.
“It didn’t mean anything, Ingrid. It just happened.”
Without thinking I reached out across the gap between us and struck your face with the flat of my hand. It wasn’t hard, but you flinched and knocked the side of your head against the driver’s window. You said nothing, still looking ahead, as if punishment was something you wanted, something you deserved.
“It means something to me!” I said, pushing your head with both hands and slamming it into the window. I grabbed at the handle beside me, yanked the door open, and stumbled out of the car.
“Ingrid!” I heard you call. “Ingrid, I’m sorry!”
But without looking back, I ran into a gap in the gorse by the side of the road, slipping and tripping across roots and through sharp grass, sobbing as I ran. I kept running until my heart was pumping and my breath painful, and I had to slow to a trot. After a few minutes of walking, I recognised the path and found my way over the dunes to the sea. Behind a bank of clouds, the moon glowed and sprinkled its light across the moving water. The wind whipped my hair around my head. I considered wading in, thought about what would happen and whether I’d be missed, and although I believed I knew the answer, I took off my shoes, tied the laces together, slung them around my neck, and walked towards home on the firm sand that the retreating sea left behind. The car was on the drive when I got back, but you must have been in your writing room because you weren’t in the house. I paid the babysitter, sent her home, and went to bed.
In the morning, I telephoned Louise and she arranged everything for me. Two days later I went to a clinic and aborted our fifth child.
Ingrid
[Placed in Brilliant Creatures, by Clive James, 1983.]
Chapter 39
Gil went to bed when they returned from the beach. Nan gave him some water and one of the tablets he kept beside his bed. Flora sat next to him on her mother’s side, and Nan, still in her pencil skirt and top, in the chair.
“I’m sorry, Dad,” Nan said, “but Viv doesn’t have that book, the one you were holding when you fell. She asked what it was called, though, because she might be able to get you a copy, or she thought there could be another in the shop. Sometimes Viv has duplicates.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Gil said. “It was that particular one I wanted.” He coughed, his jaw clenched against the pain.
“Shall I get the doctor?” Nan stood up and plumped his pillows.
“No more doctors,” Gil said.
“Did the book have something in it, Daddy?” Flora asked.
“Just another note. Too late now.” He coughed several times, his head bending with the effort.
Nan held a glass with a straw up to his lips for him to suck on.
“You don’t want to see this, you girls. An old, sick man.”
Nan looked accusingly at Flora as she held the water.
“Better to be remembered like your mother—still young, still beautiful.” His eyelids dropped slowly, and Flora wondered if he saw Ingrid wearing her wide-brimmed hat and pushing a garden fork into the sandy soil or standing in the sunlight on the veranda.
They were silent for a while, Gil’s mouth falling open, his bottom jaw slack. Flora thought he was sleeping until, still with his eyes closed, he said, “Ambiguous loss.”
“What?” Nan said.
He opened his eyes. “I went to the library and they looked it up for me on a computer.”
“What did they look up?” Flora said.
“It’s when you don’t know if someone is dead or not and you can’t mourn. No closure.” He paused, as if gathering strength to continue. “Apparently I once told your mother that it was better to live without knowing, because then you could always live with hope.”
“You told me that, too,” Flora said.
“Dad, it doesn’t matter,” Nan said. “You should sleep.” She tugged on the side of the bedcover, straightening a wrinkle which wasn’t there.
“I was wrong,” Gil said. “Reality is better than imagination. Your mother is dead. I know that now.”
“No,” Flora said. “You saw her.”
“An apparition.”
Nan crossed her legs, said nothing.
“I don’t believe you,” Flora said.
“I used to think I needed a body, some kind of proof; I didn’t. It’s all in here.” He lifted a hand halfway to his head and pointed. “It’s not possible to live in limbo. You need to accept it, Flora. Bury her, say good-bye. All of us need to say good-bye.”