Swimming Lessons Read online

  “A first edition?” Richard said. Flora and Nan made eye contact and smiled.

  “Richard,” Gil said, as if he were teaching a five-year-old. “Forget that first-edition, signed-by-the-author nonsense. Fiction is about readers. Without readers there is no point in books, and therefore they are as important as the author, perhaps more important. But often the only way to see what a reader thought, how they lived when they were reading, is to examine what they left behind. All these words”—Gil swung his arm out to encompass the table, the room, the house—“are about the reader. The specific individual—man, woman, or child—who left something of themselves behind.” With Richard’s help, he opened the book and revealed a paper napkin lodged in the pages. It was folded into a square—yellow and brittle with age. Flora looked over his arm. The napkin had an emblem on the front with an M in the middle, and underneath in an ornate font, Hotel Mirabelle, Salzburg. Below that some handwriting.

  “Suzannah, room 127,” Flora read aloud. With her knife she spread egg yolk over the now crustless toast and ate it together with the bacon, using her fingers. Nan tutted.

  “A whole story is contained in those three words,” Gil said, stroking the text with his thumb as if to pick up some smell or particles of Suzannah. “Did she write her own name and room number, or did a man overhear it?”

  “Maybe he visited her in room 127 and had to pay for her services,” Nan said.

  “Or perhaps it wasn’t a man who visited her, it was a woman.” Flora raised her eyebrows again at her sister.

  “I’d rather know the truth, though,” Nan said. “I’d like to know what really happened.”

  “Not knowing is so much better, isn’t it, Daddy?” Flora said. Gil took his eyes off the napkin and looked at her as she continued. “I don’t want to discover that the writer was actually the chambermaid and Suzannah was just a guest in room 127 who needed fresh towels. Or that room service got Suzannah’s request for eggs on toast but couldn’t find the order pad.”

  Gil was slow to answer, looking down at his uneaten bacon.

  “Daddy?” Flora said.

  “Perhaps,” Gil said. “But I’m beginning to think it’s better to know, one way or the other. It’s taken me a long time to realise, but I don’t think it’s good to have an imagination that is more vivid, wilder, than real life.”

  “But you’ve always said we should hope and imagine. You can’t just suddenly change your mind.” Flora sounded petulant.

  “I agree with Nan,” Richard said. “Better to live with the facts even if they are mundane.”

  Gil closed the book, put it on the table, and Nan turned back to the sink. Richard, oblivious to the atmosphere, picked up Queer Fish and flicked through it, stopping at a different page and holding it open. “What about this doodle? Black biro, obscenity rating unclear. A man, would you say?”

  Gil took the book again and inspected the drawing of a cloud with fish falling from it. Frowning, he said, “You’re catching on quickly. Yes, definitely a man.”

  Flora folded her arms, said nothing.

  Chapter 18

  THE SWIMMING PAVILION, 10TH JUNE 1992, 4:30 AM

  Dear Gil,

  Annie died yesterday. It was unclear whether Nan or Flora was responsible, but there was a terrific noise from their bedroom (wailing and shouting) and, when I ran in, the skeleton was on the floor, most of its ribs in bits, the skull in several pieces like a broken teacup, and the teeth scattered. Nan said she’d hung Annie on the back of the door and that Flora, knowing the skeleton was there, had thrust the door open against the side of the wardrobe and then stamped on the bones. It sounds too vicious an attack even for Flora, but she was wearing your greatcoat and heavy boots, seven sizes too big for her. Whatever happened, Flora was in there kicking and shouting while Nan wrung her hands and asked if we could glue Annie back together. I knew she was past repairing. Flora stopped her noise and said, “Daddy will be able to mend her.”

  She ran outside to your writing room and we watched her standing on the top step, beating on the stable door with her fists.

  “Daddy! Daddy! Annie’s bust!” (Bust—where did she learn that word?)

  She knew you weren’t in there, that you haven’t been here for months (I’ve just worked it out, and you’ve been gone for three-quarters of a year), but perhaps Flora liked to imagine your door opening, you sweeping her up, striding over to the house, and fixing everything. Nan tried to catch my eye, to share an expression with me. I turned away, but not before I saw those raised eyebrows, that adult understanding of where her father might be—too many things guessed at without any real knowledge, even for a girl of fifteen. Of course, you aren’t here to fix Annie; you aren’t here to fix anything anymore.

  “Daddy’s in London doing things with books,” Nan called out to her sister, and Flora stopped her hammering and gave the door a kick instead. Later, when I kissed her good night, she asked whether you’d be home in time for her swimming gala, and I didn’t know what to say. What shall I tell her, Gil? And what do I say to Nan when she raises her eyebrows again with that knowing look? That I’m tired of forgiving you? That I’m not sure I want you back this time?

  So, Annie. I couldn’t bear to just sweep her up and tip the pieces into the dustbin (jaw against ankle, hip touching skull), so late yesterday we piled all the bones we could find (Flora crawling in the dust under the beds—I’m sure several teeth have vanished) into the old Silver Cross pram I found under the house, and bumped it down the chine to the sea. Every time a wheel hit a stone, Annie’s remains jumped and rattled.

  We carried the old Silver Cross over the sand, up to the far end of the beach where it tapers away under the cliff. As the sun set behind the village, the children helped me dig a hole—the three of us excavating rocks for half an hour—then we laid Annie to rest and toasted her with flat lemonade. We put the picnic rug over the top of her grave and ate jam sandwiches.

  “I think we should say a prayer,” Nan said.

  “Don’t be stupid,” Flora said. “You don’t believe in God; none of us do.”

  “But a prayer is still a nice thing to say and sometimes it makes you feel better,” Nan said patiently. She bowed her head. “To dear Annie. We will miss you. May your bones be washed by the salt water, your spirit return to the sand, and the love we had for you be forever around us.” (Nan can be quite poetic when she puts her mind to it.)

  “Amen to that,” Flora said.

  “Amen,” I said.

  Later, after the children were in bed, I went again to the beach. I lay on the grave with the stars shining above in the huge arc of the sky and wondered where you were lying, and I thought about all the things that have gone wrong and whether we will ever be able to put them right.

  It was Jonathan I told first about the pregnancy. Not you, not Louise, and actually for a while I denied it to myself—the frightening idea that something alien had set seed inside me. I wanted Jonathan to make it go away. I wanted it to never have happened. But perhaps there were other things Jonathan didn’t want to face, because he said I had to tell you.

  “You should make the decision together,” he said.

  I tried to tell you that I didn’t want it, wasn’t ready, might never be ready, but you put your finger on my lips and said, “Marry me,” and all those plans of creating my own category and giving you up after the summer disappeared like a wisp of sea mist under the relentless energy of your sun. You stroked my stomach. “One down, five to go,” you said, and took me to America to celebrate.

  Do you remember the yard sale we stopped at on the road between Sebastopol and Guerneville after we’d driven north from San Francisco? And those three grown-up brothers selling the contents of their grandmother’s house, everything laid out by the side of the road for any passing tourist to rummage through? Heaps of tarnished cutlery, books, threadbare linen piled on decorating tables, and a leather three-piece suite set out in the front yard.

  “Let’s buy it,”
you said, bouncing on the cushions.

  “Gil, get up,” I said, pulling on your hand. “Don’t be silly. It’s horrible, and how would we get it home?” You gave me a tug so I fell into your lap. You held me by the waist and kissed me, and we toppled sideways, you manoeuvring until you were lying on me in full view of the house.

  “Tell me what you want me to do. We can do anything—anything at all,” you whispered.

  “Gil! Someone will come. Someone will see,” I said. And then, as a final attempt to get you off, “The baby!”

  “Who’ll come? The Three Brothers Grimm?” Your hand was under my skirt and your mouth pressed against my neck.

  “Gil!” I struggled, but I was laughing, too, twisting my head to move your lips from my ear. I think you might even have got as far as unzipping your fly when a shadow fell across my face.

  “What the fuck?” said the man looking down on us. From where I lay, I could see the bottom of his belly hanging over the cinched belt of his jeans.

  Still on top of me, you reached for a box of books beside the sofa and picked up the top one. “How much for this?” You smiled your most handsome smile. I pushed hard against your chest with my hands and scrambled out from underneath you, pulling my skirt over my knees, sitting up straight and blushing like a teenager caught by a parent who’s come home earlier than expected. You sat up, too, and flicked through the book, stopped at a page and read. The margins were filled with notes and drawings. “In fact,” you said, “how much for the whole box?”

  Later I learned the cost of that holiday. Everything, including the box of books, bought with money we didn’t have.

  Yours,

  Ingrid

  [Placed in Hand Crocheted Creations for the Home: Bedspreads, Luncheon Sets, Scarfs, Chair Sets, by Bernhard Ullmann, 1933.]

  Chapter 19

  After breakfast, Flora brushed her teeth and got dressed, and when she returned to the kitchen, Gil said he thought he would go back to bed for a while.

  “But you just got up,” Flora said. “I thought we could go to the beach. Or for a walk, show Richard the heath and the Agglestone since he doesn’t seem to have to go to work today. You’d like to see the Agglestone, wouldn’t you, Richard?”

  “Perhaps later,” he said, helping Gil to his feet and leading him out of the kitchen. Flora went to follow, but Nan grabbed her arm and pulled her back.

  “Dad has asked Richard to stay a bit longer,” Nan said.

  “What?”

  “He asked Richard if he can take some time off work.”

  “Why?” Flora said.

  “He does work full time, doesn’t he?”

  “I mean, why would Daddy want Richard to stay?” She glanced towards the hall and hissed, “He’s just some guy I’m sleeping with.”

  Nan rolled her eyes. “Well, I like him and Dad does too. He says he can talk to Richard.”

  “But you both barely know him. And anyway, why can’t Daddy talk to us?”

  Nan shrugged and went into the hall. Flora followed.

  Gil lay against his pillows in the front bedroom. Richard had eased off the old man’s shoes and Nan was fussing, making sure he had a glass of fresh water. He appeared small in the bed, as if the mattress were growing around him so that in a few days or weeks he might be absorbed by it, in the way that trees will grow around iron railings. Nan opened the curtains and a window, and the smell of the sea came into the room—billows of Cambridge blue.

  “What a magnificent bed,” Richard said.

  “It belonged to my grandparents,” Nan said, smoothing the cover. “When they lived in the big house down the road. I was born in it, and Dad was, weren’t you, Dad?”

  “It’s a fucking ridiculous bed.” Gil sank backwards and closed his eyes.

  “Well, it’s the wrong height for nursing.”

  “You’re not at work, Nan,” Flora said. She went around to her mother’s side and lay next to Gil.

  “Do you want me to read to you?” Richard pulled up a chair to Gil’s bedside. All the thousands of books in the house, and Flora realised she’d never heard her father read any of them to her. It had always been her mother.

  Flora opened her eyes to a stack of books on the bedside table and a cold cup of tea balanced on top. She shut them again when she heard Richard and her father talking behind her back.

  “I used to follow Ingrid sometimes, in the dawn,” Gil said. There was a catch in his voice that surprised Flora. She tilted the side of her head that was against the pillow so she could hear better, and smelled the khaki whiff of unwashed hair again. “She was a poor sleeper,” Gil continued. “And I spent most nights in my room at the end of the garden.”

  “And is that when you did your writing?” Richard said.

  “Writing?”

  “At night?”

  “No, I didn’t use the night for writing, although I should have. It was Ingrid who wrote in the night, well, the early morning—she sat for hours on the veranda.”

  “I didn’t know Ingrid was a writer. Did she have anything published?”

  “No,” Gil said sharply. “She wrote letters.”

  “To her family?”

  Too many questions, Flora thought, and her father must have thought so too because he didn’t answer. Instead he said, “She would go swimming as well, although her doctor advised her against it.”

  “Against swimming?” Richard said. “I thought it was meant to be good for you.”

  “I followed her to Little Sea Pond once. It’s a pool behind the dunes, a beautiful place, secluded. I sat in the bird hide and spied on her while she shed her clothes. She was so slender and pale, almost transparent. She stepped into the pond and turned; she might have been looking straight at me, except I was hidden. She lay back and it was as if the pond cradled her; she didn’t have to move her arms or her legs to stay afloat, she just reclined in the dark water, her hair spread about her head. I watched as the sun rose—a naked Ophelia.”

  “Like a creature native and indued unto that element,” Richard said.

  “But long it could not be till that her garments, heavy with their drink, pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay to muddy death,” Gil finished and was quiet for a moment, remembering perhaps. “But I should have shown myself, should have waded in, a lumbering old fool, to tell her I loved her. Too late now.”

  “Perhaps she knew, in her way.” Richard’s voice was soft. Flora held her breath, straining to listen.

  “She had no fucking idea.”

  “Perhaps you’ll have another chance to tell her, soon.”

  Gil snorted. “Nan’s told you about that Catholic rubbish, has she? I very much doubt Ingrid will be in the same place as the one I’m going to.” Flora felt Gil’s position in the bed change. “Flora, are you awake?”

  She stretched and opened her eyes as if she had only just woken up. And Flora knew it was because Gil thought she’d been listening that he said abruptly, “Don’t start with that religious shit, Richard.” And the younger man, shocked, withdrew into his chair.

  Chapter 20

  THE SWIMMING PAVILION, 11TH JUNE 1992, 4:25 PM

  Dear Gil,

  Yesterday afternoon as soon as the girls got home they started arguing. When I went into their room, Nan’s face was filled with horror and Flora was huddled on the bed, clutching your old cuff link box tight to her chest.

  “Oh my God!” Nan cried. “She’s killed someone! She’s actually killed someone and kept their teeth.”

  “They were on my side of the drawer,” Flora said, tears running. “You shouldn’t be looking. They’re mine.”

  “You’re sick, Flora,” Nan said. “Something’s wrong in here.” She tapped the side of her head.

  “They’re Annie’s. You know they’re Annie’s!”

  Nan made a surprise attack, snatched the box and shook it in the air like a rattle. Flora jumped up at her sister’s arm, pulling on the sleeve of her school shirt and screaming for her to hand th
em over.

  “Stop!” I shouted. “Both of you, stop it!”

  The shirt ripped. Nan wailed, flung the box onto her bed, and ran out of the house, slamming the front door behind her. Flora grabbed the box of teeth and locked herself in the bathroom. I sat on Nan’s bed feeling useless and gazing out at the sea where ragged clouds tore themselves to shreds against a knife-sharp horizon.

  Later, when Nan had gone to a friend’s house to do homework, Flora and I sat together on her bed. She rested her head against my chest and I stroked her hair, breathing in the sweet smell of my child. Without lifting her face she said, “Why are blackbirds called blackbirds and not brownbirds, when the ladies are brown? And dogs . . .” She pulled away to look up at me. “Why aren’t they all called bitches? And foxes should be vixens. That would make it fairer.”

  I was starting to answer but she carried on.

  “And why is it mothers have to stay at home to look after the children? Why can’t that be the father’s job? Because they are better at it, aren’t they?”

  Louise stopped calling you by your first name when I told her I was pregnant and used “that man” instead. You and I were back in London; me living at the flat with Louise and you staying in your old lodgings.

  “He’d better be there when you get rid of it,” had been the first thing she’d said.

  “I’m not going to get rid of it.” I was sitting on the sofa, my handbag on my lap. “Gil and I are engaged; we’re going to be married. On Tuesday. I was hoping you’d be a witness.”

  “What?” Louise banged a saucepan of beans on the stove. “Are you mad? Married? For God’s sake, why? What about everything we’re going to do?”

  “I love him.”

  She made a phh noise. “I thought we were going to see the world. I thought we weren’t going to end up like our mothers.” Her tone was as dismissive as I’d imagined it would be.

  “I can go later.”

  “And what about me?” Louise said.