Swimming Lessons Read online

  “The nudist beach is that way,” he said, pointing along the coast.

  Flora glared, picked up the dress and her towel, and slipped her feet into her flip-flops. Only when she was at the top of the chine did she put the dress back on.

  She’d expected everyone to still be asleep, but when she went into the house Flora heard voices in the front bedroom. The bed was empty and Nan was crouching beside one of the carved legs, while Richard was lying on his back with his head under the frame, like a mechanic under the chassis of an old car.

  “Shall I get a torch?” Nan said.

  “Where’s Daddy?” Flora said.

  “He’s in your bed, sleeping,” she replied without looking up, and to Richard, “It might be screwed together.”

  “What’s going on?” Flora said.

  “Richard’s taking the bed apart.”

  “Well, trying to.” His voice was muffled.

  “You can’t do that,” Flora said. “Why would you want to do that?” She gripped one of the posts. Her fingers remembered the pathway of every vine as they spiralled up towards the pineapple finials, every curled leaf and closed bud. The oak was an oily black in the middle sections where centuries of fingers had grabbed, stroked, and clung on. Hidden in the foliage on each post was a tiny animal: mouse, minnow, viper, and wren. Flora liked to speculate about how the minnow, out of water, could have survived all this time. The tiny fish’s mouth gaped, tilted upwards as if gulping for air, and when, as a child, she had dared to put her little finger in between the minnow’s lips, the cavity was deeper than its full length. On the 2nd of July 1993—a year after her mother was lost—Flora had marked the anniversary alone by dropping one of Annie’s teeth into the yawning hole.

  Nan took a deep breath. “If the bed came in, we must be able to get it out.”

  “You can’t do this,” Flora said to Richard’s legs and the back of Nan’s head.

  “I don’t think it’s that simple.” Richard moved farther under the bed. “A carpenter must have put it together in the room. There aren’t any screws—it’s proper dovetail joints.” He came out from underneath, coughing. “There’s a lot of stuff under there—suitcases, more books.”

  “Oh Lord,” Nan said. “I’d forgotten about all of that.”

  “Wait!” Flora shouted now to get their attention. “This is Daddy’s bed. You can’t just take it apart. I’m going to talk to him.” She went to leave.

  Nan caught hold of her sister’s arm. “Flora,” she said. “There’s a new bed coming, an adjustable hospital one.”

  “Why would he need one of those? Have you asked him if that’s what he wants?”

  “Let him sleep.” Nan’s grip tightened.

  “Not if you’re going to pull his belongings apart as soon as he’s out of the room.” She yanked her arm free, wheeling it above her head. “I’m sure he’ll have something to say about this.”

  Nan tried again to catch Flora’s arm—as if that alone would pin her down, keep her silent. Flora turned sideways.

  “Be quiet,” Nan hissed. “You’ll wake him.”

  “What are you going to take next?” Flora yelled. “The sofas? Or how about the paintings? Would you like one of the paintings, too?” She marched to the windows, which overlooked the sea. “I’m sure they’re here somewhere.” She pushed at the top half of a pile of books stacked against the wall, hardbacks and paperbacks scattering. Behind them was a small seascape in a deep frame. “Here you are.” She yanked at the painting, but it was attached to the wall with mirror plates and didn’t move. “Sorry, Nan, it seems you can’t have a painting unless Richard wants to take it off with his fucking trusty screwdriver.”

  “Flora,” Nan said, and came across the room. “Stop this. Please.”

  “Stop what? Stop what?” Flora was screaming.

  “I’ve been trying to tell you for days. This isn’t just about a sprained wrist and a black eye,” Nan shouted over her. Flora saw Richard’s face, his mouth a thin straight line. “You do realise that, don’t you?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “He’s dying.” Nan held her hands out as if ready to catch her sister. There was something inside Flora that refused to budge, a boulder that wouldn’t roll.

  “Who is?”

  “For God’s sake. Why must you make every conversation so difficult?” Nan had her palm across her forehead, and Richard had stepped away until he was backed up against one of the bedposts. A thread of cobweb clung to his hair above his left ear. And for a second, Flora thought that Nan was talking about him.

  “Because you never say what you mean!” Flora moved towards Nan, her head thrust like a bull about to charge.

  “Our father is dying. He has pancreatic cancer!” Nan shouted, and gripped Flora by the shoulders. And with a reaction that was instinctive, animal, Flora lifted her hand, which had formed into a fist without her knowing it, and punched her sister in the chest. Nan cried out, buckled, and fell back at the same time as Richard leaped forwards. “Flora, Flora,” he said, trying to contain her, but she flailed her arms and hands, slapping and hitting until he ducked and moved away, out of her reach.

  “No,” she said, sitting. Through strands of hair stuck to her face by tears and snot, she saw Richard with one hand over his mouth. On all fours Flora crawled over the books, their covers torn where they had been trodden on, her feet catching on the skirt of the dress, to Nan, who opened her arms and held her like a baby. And then she was aware of Richard, crouching beside them. He smelled of fabric conditioner and deodorant, colours too light to identify.

  “Please can the bed stay?” she said into Nan’s chest. Nan didn’t answer, but against her ear Flora heard and felt her sister’s speeding heart slow and grow steady.

  Chapter 26

  THE SWIMMING PAVILION, 14TH JUNE 1992, 4:10 AM

  Dear Gil,

  On Friday, Flora’s teacher phoned. She asked if I would “come in for a quick chat on Monday.”

  “What’s it about?” I said, but thinking, What now? (Why is it I never imagine it will be good news?)

  “I’d rather you and your husband came into school. It won’t take long.”

  I wanted to tell her that you won’t be coming with me because you’re not here and I don’t know where you are, although I can imagine. But instead I said in my cheeriest voice, “Of course. I’ll catch the school bus with Flora on Monday.”

  I’m no good at motherhood.

  After I saw it wasn’t writing you were doing at the end of the garden, after the crying, and the packing and the begging, you wrote me another letter. I didn’t keep this one, but it was short and I remember it.

  Ingrid,

  I know I’ve blown it. I know that nothing will undo what I have done. I am a stupid fucker. A stupid fucker who loves you.

  Please don’t leave me.

  Gil

  You left it, the letter, on top of a large flat cardboard box which you’d placed on the bed. Inside the box was a dress: layers of long pink chiffon below a sleeveless bodice sewn with silver beads and sequins—antique, expensive. Without thinking, I took it out and held it up to me, running my fingers against the fabric and then, suddenly remembering, shoved it back in the box. I’ve never worn the dress, but I did hang it in the wardrobe because I couldn’t ever quite bear to throw it away.

  Despite the letter and the dress, I wouldn’t let you sleep in the house. Every evening you said good night to Nan and you looked at me with your sad eyes, and I made you leave for your writing room. I wanted you to lie in the bed where (literally) you ate the cake you wanted. At night the house belonged to me and our daughter. At night it would go like this (it still goes like this): I try to stay up as late as possible, but by 10:15 PM my eyes are aching in their sockets and it’s impossible to resist laying my head on the kitchen table or falling asleep where I sit, so I get ready for bed. I stretch out under the bedcovers and sink into sleep. At 2:35 AM by the numbers on the digital
alarm clock, I am awake. There isn’t a period of waking; I am just awake. I hope that if I lie motionless with my eyes shut, sleep will find me again. At 2:56 AM my eyes are dry and scratchy and my butterfly mind is flitting from one monstrous problem to the next, unable to settle or resolve anything. At 3:12 AM I am angry with myself, with sleep, with the girls, with you. I kick the mattress and push my fingers into my closed eyes until they might burst. I sit up, drop my chin forwards onto my chest and stay like that until 3:21 AM, when I pull the cover from the bed and stand at the window to look at your writing room. There is never a light on, of course. If it’s very cold, I pace from the sitting room to the kitchen, or, more recently, I wrap myself up, sit at the veranda table, and write to you.

  At 4:33 AM the fear that there won’t be any more sleep until the evening kicks in. I feel sick at the thought that soon the day will start and I will have to get Nan and Flora up, make them breakfast and packed lunches, search for stray gym shoes and money for a school trip, and for the whole day I’ll have to stay awake to stand the smallest chance of sleeping through the night. At 5:00 AM I give up and go for a swim.

  There were months of me moving about the house like a nervous horse ready to bolt and you being too nice—falsely bright, like a stable hand with a bridle and bit held ready behind your back. Our conversations were inconsequential, about what to have for dinner and when you could drive me into Hadleigh to buy food if I missed the bus. We didn’t touch each other, we didn’t kiss—I wouldn’t let you. I thought about leaving, often. Once or twice I got as far as dialling Louise’s number but replaced the receiver before she answered. Another time, I packed that blue suitcase but couldn’t work out how to carry it together with all the things Nan needed as well as push the Silver Cross. So I unpacked it and put the clothes away.

  And I thought about leaving without her.

  Several times that summer, people turned up uninvited (even by Jonathan) for the sunshine and the beach, to camp in the grass like the year before. You avoided them but I was grateful for their company, and if I’m honest, I was grateful because those girls in long skirts and bare feet loved Nan. One day, I came across a girl—a woman (she must have been ten years older than me)—breastfeeding her. The woman was topless, sitting on a mat with her friends, smiling down as our daughter fastened to her nipple. At the time I couldn’t work out how she was able to do it, how she had the milk, but later I understood. When she saw me, the woman’s face and chest flushed, she slipped a finger into the side of Nan’s mouth, unlatched her, and held the bawling baby out to me, but I shook my head and sat beside her. She smiled again and guided Nan’s gummy mouth back to her nipple.

  And then Jonathan came to stay.

  He’d been down for a day or two after Nan was born, but now he arrived with a toy bear that growled when it was upturned, two bottles of Kilbeggan, and a round of Gubbeen for me.

  We were both so thankful for his arrival that we moved from our defensive positions, and on his first evening the three of us stayed up late, passing the baby in the opposite direction to the whiskey and the cheese.

  “Smells like the bog,” you said when I unwrapped it.

  “I camped on the farm where they make it and helped with the milking,” Jonathan said.

  “Jonathan—the world’s best lie-abed—got up to milk the cows?” I said, my mouth full of soft yellow cheese and cracker.

  “Needs must when you’re a travel writer.” He laughed and then stopped. “A terrible thing happened while I was there.” We watched his face. His eyes shifted away from ours and momentarily he pressed his hand against his mouth. “A child fell in the bog and was lost.”

  “Oh God,” I said.

  “Lost?” you said, holding Nan tighter. “How the hell do you lose a child in a bog?”

  “Her brother dared her to cross it. She sank and he couldn’t pull her out.”

  “Oh God,” you said. “How old was she?”

  “Six. Her brother ran to the dairy and a group of us ran back with him, but he couldn’t remember the exact place where she went in, and we found nothing. Nothing. The whole village came out to search.”

  “And you didn’t find her?” I said.

  “She was gone,” Jonathan said.

  “Not even a body to bury? I can’t imagine anything worse.”

  We were silent until you said, “Of course that isn’t the worst thing. Finding the body is surely more terrible, more absolute. With a body there is no possibility of hope.”

  “I’m telling you,” Jonathan said, “the child was gone.”

  “Maybe she was,” you said, “or perhaps one day she’ll come walking back into Bally-whatever saying she bumped her head, forgot who she was, and wandered off. Without the body her parents are free to imagine, to hope for anything.”

  “But maybe they’ll be hoping forever,” Jonathan said. “What kind of life would that be? You can’t exist like that, with not knowing.”

  “It’s about believing two opposing ideas in your head at the same time: hope and grief. Human beings do it all the time with religion—the flesh and the spirit—you know that. Imagination and reality.”

  “That old Catholic upbringing rears its head again,” Jonathan said. “Pass the whiskey, I need cheering up.”

  The two of you carried on drinking and talking until Nan fell asleep, and I lay on the sofa with my head resting in Jonathan’s lap and shut my eyes to listen as I drifted in and out.

  “I bumped into Louise when I was in London,” Jonathan said.

  “Ingrid’s Louise?” you said. “I haven’t seen her since the wedding.”

  I heard more whiskey glugging, the chink of glass on glass.

  “I took her out to dinner.”

  “Really?”

  “Well, OK, she took me out to dinner.”

  “She’s still into women’s lib?” Your voice was less distinct; you must have got up, turned away from us.

  “I suppose. She did pay.”

  “And you paid her back in kind, did you?”

  “The kind where you only leave a deposit? No, I’m not her type.”

  There was a click as you switched on the record player, and a shuffle while you put an album on the turntable. The music started, the needle finding the beginning of a track. Wedged on the opposite sofa, Nan gave a single squawk and you turned it down.

  “If there was an offer on the table I’d be very happy to carry out a thorough audit of her fixed assets,” you said quietly.

  “I’m sure you’d depreciate them.”

  “Let’s say there would be a definite upwards movement of goods and services.” You both sniggered like schoolboys and Jonathan’s leg muscles twitched under my head.

  “So, how’s family life?” Jonathan said.

  “Good, fine.” You were unconvincing.

  “Because I have to say there’s been a bit of an atmosphere.”

  “Has there?” You sounded defensive.

  “You’re missing being the bachelor about town, is it?”

  “I’ve finished with all that,” you said more loudly, and I wondered if you’d guessed I was listening.

  “Really? I didn’t think you took your marriage vows so seriously. You know, I never imagined you would settle to life in the country. Wasn’t this place meant to be somewhere for writing and parties? I thought you’d escaped for good when your father died.”

  “What do you mean? What’s Ingrid been saying?”

  “I haven’t spoken to Ingrid,” Jonathan said. There was a pause. Perhaps you both looked at me, trying to decide if I really was asleep. “Don’t be cruel to her, Gil. She deserves better. If you’re going to fuck around, let her go.” You were both silent, drinking, until Jonathan said, “I didn’t think being barefoot and pregnant would be Ingrid’s thing either. I thought she wanted something more.”

  “I saved her,” you said without a trace of irony.

  “What the hell from?”

  “A sad and lonely life.”

/>   “Bloody hell, Gil. I think you really believe that.” If you replied I didn’t hear. “Well,” he continued, “you’d better write faster. Get the next book written before she pushes out another sprog.”

  “That’s the plan,” you said, and yawned. “I’ve got to go to bed. I can’t keep up with your late-night drinking now I’m a family man.” I heard you go down the hall towards the bathroom.

  Over my head Jonathan swilled the whiskey in his glass and knocked it back. I smelled the fumes on his breath as he bent over me. Moments passed and then he whispered, “Ingrid.” His fingers moved the strands of hair from my face and stroked my cheek.

  I opened my eyes and looked up at him. “In Norway,” I said, “when a person drowns you’re meant to go out in a rowing boat with a cockerel.”

  “Oh yes?”

  “When the boat is over the body, the cockerel is supposed to crow. And then you can retrieve it so they can be properly buried.”

  I don’t know what Jonathan would have said—would he have preferred to know or to live with hope?—because we heard you pad back along the hallway from the bathroom, and I sat up.

  “Come on, sleepyhead, time for bed,” you said to me. You came forwards and took my hand as if the past few months had never happened; it was the first time we’d touched in weeks. You didn’t look at Jonathan as you pulled me off his lap and led me into the bedroom.

  Although I was still breastfeeding Nan and Jonathan received the occasional cheque from his travel writing, with three of us to feed and keep in whiskey, money was always an issue. We lived off vegetables and lentils, and sometimes I bought the remains of a fisherman’s catch going cheap. I thought it was this that made me sick one morning, but when I threw up a second time, I knew. You’d always insisted on using the withdrawal method for our contraception (some Catholic thing, I supposed). I should have been firmer, I should’ve insisted on taking the pill, should’ve taken it without you knowing. I’d already been dreaming of when Nan was older, of the places I could go, the things I could see, even if you didn’t come with me. The walls of the Swimming Pavilion were closing in. And when you caught me kneeling beside the toilet I didn’t need to explain.