Swimming Lessons Read online

  Flora and I aren’t designed for sleep. Our eyelids are too thin, our bodies too light to stay weighted down in a bed, and our ears too sensitive. We wake at any noise, whether it’s real or imagined: the rain on the roof, the creak of the floorboard in front of the cooker, or the rattle of the window frames already dulled by chocks of ripped-up beer mats. When the windows are opened, scraps of card with the words “Old Speckled Hen” and “Henry’s Original IPA” litter the floor under the sills.

  Your letter had arrived in my university pigeonhole a week after I’d run out of the café. Although I carried it with me everywhere and tried out all sorts of replies in my head, the letter was too huge to know how to respond, so I never did. And I didn’t tell Louise any of it (the tutorial, the café, the near kiss), and I didn’t show her the letter. I knew she’d have warned me off, made a joke about older men, initiated a conversation about children and why neither of us would be having any. I went to your class sick with excitement but didn’t say much and you didn’t ask me any questions, avoided my eye. Like when you’d lent me the book, I lingered just long enough for you to ask me to stay behind, but you didn’t. I found out where you lodged in London when you were teaching and I walked past your house, guessing which window was yours. I scanned the streets for a mustard-coloured Triumph Stag, but didn’t see one. When I was supposed to be writing, or working, or revising, I found myself doodling the words “Gil Coleman” and would have to black them out with my pen, pressing hard enough to mark the desk with tiny oblongs of redaction. I joined my nearest public library, but the only books I borrowed were the two you’d written. I sat on a bench in St. George’s Gardens and consumed them both in a day, trying to tease the author out from the words on the page like a winkle from its shell. I’ve never told you that I loved them. I loved them.

  For that week I replayed our time in the café so often the memory became grey through overuse, and I thought you must have given the letter to the wrong person (the wrong Ingrid). Then, in my pigeonhole I found my short-story assignment about a girl, a boy, and a box of matches. You’d marked it, underlining the words “now and again he would glance at the undulation of her top lip and imagine pressing his thumb into that narrow channel,” and in a scrawled hand you’d written, “Please see me.” Reading your handwriting brought you back into Technicolor, and so I told Louise.

  She said the things I’d been expecting her to say: that you had a reputation, that you were a misogynist, an old man preying on young students; that it was sick, I should report you, the letter was an outrage, and I would be more of a fool than she ever could have imagined if I saw you again.

  One wet Saturday lunchtime on the way back from Levitt’s, my bike got a puncture. I was worrying that the jarring of the flat tyre against the pavement would prematurely crack the two eggs wedged into the corner of the bike’s front basket with four rashers of streaky bacon wrapped in greaseproof paper. Louise and I had slept in late and I’d volunteered to go and buy breakfast. When I looked up, you were leaning out of the window of your car.

  “Hello,” you said.

  I carried on walking, the bicycle limping through the puddles.

  “Ingrid.” Your voice was raised. “Don’t be so fucking difficult.”

  I stopped and pushed back the hood of my raincoat with the inside of my wrist. Trickles of cold water ran over my cheeks and dripped from my chin. “Just get in the car,” you said. “So we can talk.”

  I indicated my bike and made to carry on walking, although we were beside the railings outside my house.

  “Ingrid,” you said more quietly, “I want to wind up the window, I’m wet. Please get in.”

  I propped my bike against the railings, taking a long time about it and trying to look nonchalant. When I got in the passenger’s seat you turned on the car’s ignition and for a moment I thought you were going to drive us away, but instead you stretched across and adjusted the vent until warm air blew over me.

  “Are you ill?” you said. “You shouldn’t be out in the rain. You’re so pale.” Your fingers touched my cheek, but I continued to look straight ahead at the blurred shops and houses of Goodge Street while trying to work out what I should say about your letter. “Let’s go and get a drink,” you said. “We can talk, that’s all. I promise.” You smiled your winning smile, which was already chipping away at the cold, hard core of me.

  You put the windscreen wipers on to clear the glass and peered out at the Jekyll and Hyde. “How about that place? Come on,” you said. I’d never been inside before, but I’d heard the drinks were overpriced and I already knew the clientele were cheap; I’d often sat at my top-floor window opposite, watching the drunks fighting, groping, or vomiting their wages into the gutter at closing time.

  Eleven men’s heads twisted towards us as we went in. They sat in a line at the bar on top of their owners’ necks while their hands alternately lifted pints of beer and cigarettes. A watery sun slanted in through tall Victorian windows, highlighting eddies of smoke that swirled into the pub’s brown corners. You bought me a port and lemon. Did you have a whiskey? I don’t remember, but I can still recall the smell of cigarettes mixing with the greasy odour of pastry kept for too long in a pie warmer on the bar. A yellowing sign taped to the side of the glass read, “Topless Bar Maids Every Wenesday Lunchtime.”

  “There’s a girl in the novel I’m writing who looks like you,” you said after we’d sat opposite each other in a vinyl booth. “I keep trying to get her to eat, to fatten her up and give her a bit of colour. I’m worried she’s going to fade away.”

  “Would that be a problem?”

  You considered the question. “I think the whole plot might collapse without her,” you said. “She’s central to the protagonist’s well-being.”

  “So she’s not the protagonist?”

  “No, I’ve never been good at putting myself inside women’s heads. Far too complex.”

  “Have you tried?”

  “Many times.” You gulped at your drink.

  “I’m sure your character is perfectly capable of looking after herself.”

  “Oh, I know that, but she keeps surprising me. I haven’t quite pinned her down yet.”

  “Maybe you should give her a subplot of her own,” I said, and sipped my drink. “What’s that cliché? The one all creative-writing lecturers come out with at some point?” You gave me half a smile. “Let them be, and you’ll find that after a while your characters will write their own story.”

  “But I think this girl is heading for an unhappy ending, and that would be a shame.”

  “There’s a man in the story I’m writing,” I said and paused, took another sip.

  “Yes?” you said.

  “He doesn’t look anything like you.”

  You laughed, chin up, loud, so the heads at the bar turned ninety degrees to stare at us again. “What does he look like, this man in your story?” you said.

  “Actually, I lied.”

  “He does look like me, after all?”

  “There aren’t any men in what I’m writing, only a woman.”

  “Isn’t she lonely?” You finished your drink, put your glass on the table.

  “She has plans—things to do, places to see.”

  “And a man would stop her?”

  “Yes.” I finished my drink too.

  “I think you’re wrong. Would you like another?” You held up my empty glass.

  “Yes, please.”

  You eased yourself out of the booth and stood at our table. “Maybe they could do those things together. No one wants to read a novel with just one character.” You fished in your trouser pocket and took out a crumpled pound note.

  “The Old Man and the Sea,” I said. “Hemingway.”

  You shook your head. “What about the boy, Manolin? Will you get the drinks? I’ll be back in a moment.” You headed towards the men’s toilets. Before you went through the door you shouted, “And don’t forget the marlin.”

  At the
bar, the landlord lifted my glass, saying, “Another port and lemon?” He put the drink on a bar towel in front of me, picked up your glass, and then, not to me, but to his front-row audience, said, “And the same again for your father, love?” One of the men at the bar snorted into his pint and a flush rose up from my neck.

  “No, nothing,” I said, my insides clenched.

  “Nothing for you or nothing for your father?” The landlord winked at his regulars. Another snort.

  “Nothing at all.”

  “Make up your mind, love. I’ve poured the port and lemon already, you’ll have to pay for it now.”

  I slammed the money on the counter and left the pub, laughter following. Outside, the rain had stopped, a warm lunchtime sun had emerged and London steamed. I took lungfuls of the city air as the pub doors swung open behind me and you were out on the pavement too, my raincoat over your arm.

  “Where did you go?” you said. “What happened?” You took my elbow. “Are you all right?”

  “Do you have a pen?” I said through gritted teeth.

  “A what?”

  “A pen, or a pencil?”

  From your jacket pocket you produced a red pen. I took it and marched back into the pub. The heads at the bar were still laughing with the landlord, but all rotated for a final time as I appeared. I went up to the pie warmer and uncapped your pen. On the poster taped to the side I wrote a giant red d in the middle of “Wenesday” and turned on my heel. Back outside you gave me a crooked smile and didn’t ask for an explanation. A bit more of the rock inside me crumbled.

  “Would you like some lunch?” you said. “There’s a little place I know around the corner.”

  “Louise was expecting me with breakfast half an hour ago.”

  “Really?” you said, disappointed.

  We waited for a car to pass and then crossed the road. “This is where I live,” I said. “Up there.”

  “I know,” you said, and I remembered your letter and how you wrote that you would pull up outside my house and I would put my sleepy head out of the window, and I realised you’d found out where I lived.

  “I can’t invite you in.” If I’d let you come upstairs, Louise would’ve been outraged that I’d had a drink with you; she would’ve accused you of taking advantage of your position and she would’ve caused a scene. So instead, I leaned towards you and, keeping my eyes open, pressed my lips against yours. You drew away to look at me, hung my raincoat over the railings next to my bicycle, and moved forwards again. I saw your hands come up to my hair, I watched your eyes close and your brow soften as you kissed me, and I also watched Mrs. Carter from the university’s Arts Faculty Office walk past us, a tiny dog trotting at her heel. The clear plastic scarf tied over her styled hair was beaded with raindrops, and it was me, with my open eyes, who saw her glance at us and hurry on.

  When we broke away we were shy, surprised. I fumbled in my bag for my key, and when I unlocked the door you were right behind me. I manoeuvred myself so I was inside the hallway while you were still on the step.

  “Well, good-bye,” I said. “Thanks for the drink.”

  Your hand was on the door, pushing.

  “Wait, Ingrid,” you said, and I paused. “If you won’t come to lunch, come to a party to celebrate the end of term. Next weekend. Saturday.” You looked like a hopeful boy; you might have been sixteen and me the older woman.

  “Maybe,” I said, and shut the door.

  I ran up the three flights of stairs, and with Louise standing behind me saying, “What? What? Where’s the bloody eggs and bacon?” I shoved up the sash window at the front of the flat and leaned out. You were three houses down already.

  “Yes!” I shouted.

  I need you.

  Yours,

  Ingrid

  [Placed in The Complete Poetical Works of Amy Lowell, 1955.]

  Chapter 11

  The loose floorboard in front of the kitchen cooker creaked while Flora lay in the cooling bathwater. The music in the sitting room had come to an end and she gripped the sides of the bath, bringing her knees up to her chest without sloshing the water. She turned her head towards the door, waiting, listening again for the creak, but there was only the gurgle of the under-floor pipes. Pressing with her palms against the rim of the bath, she lifted herself up and pushed her bottom against the cool of the wall tiles and her head against the ornate mirror saved from a long-ago house. Now hung on its side, the frame was lopsided and flaking gilt into the water.

  The towelling curtain that hung around the bath to keep out draughts was pulled open, and Flora saw a shadow pass across the crack under the door, and she shoved herself farther backwards as if hoping the mirror and the tiles could soften and envelop her. The doorknob twisted and Flora screamed, her heels slipping on the enamel so that she plonked down and a wave of water flowed over the side of the bath. Her sister stood in the doorway.

  “For goodness’ sake, what’s all the screaming about?” Nan said, coming into the room and flapping a towel she picked up from the floor. She held it out for her sister and pushed the bath mat into the puddle of water with her foot. “I’ve put the kettle on.” She turned to go.

  “I’d rather have something stronger,” Flora shouted. And then to herself, “Maybe a whiskey.”

  In the kitchen Nan had tidied up and pushed the books to one end of the table. “I thought you weren’t coming until tomorrow,” she said.

  “And I thought you were Mum,” Flora said. “I heard the creaky floorboard, and I really thought you were her.”

  “Which creaky floorboard?”

  “The one in front of the cooker.”

  Nan looked at her blankly.

  “How can you have forgotten?”

  “There’s never been a creaky floorboard. It’s just your imagination running away with itself again.” Nan stood in front of the cooker and rocked back and forth. There was no squeak.

  “I thought you were Mum,” Flora repeated, tying her towel around herself more tightly.

  “You must have fallen asleep in the bath. You left the record player on and your bags and shoes were on the doorstep. Didn’t you hear me come in?”

  “No, I suppose not.” Flora felt as if she’d been cheated. Nan put two cups of tea on the table. “How’s Daddy?”

  “He’ll be discharged tomorrow, hopefully.” She looked at her watch. “Later today.” She sighed and poured milk into her cup. “But he’s weak; he’ll need looking after. I’ve arranged for some compassionate leave from work.”

  “Isn’t that for when someone’s dying?” Flora said. “He’s just got scrapes and bruises, a black eye, that kind of thing, hasn’t he?”

  “Yes.” Nan didn’t look up as she spoke. “That kind of thing. He was very lucky.” She blew across her tea, rippling the brown surface, pushing back the tide. “Goodness, I’m so tired.”

  Sometimes Nan surprised Flora: when she moved her head a certain way, or if soft lamplight caught her, she could be beautiful for a moment, like sunlight on the peak of a wave, there and gone. But more often, Nan was out of proportion with her surroundings—broad shoulders, with hands large and muscular enough to catch a slippery newborn. She was wearing her uniform, dark-blue patches showing under her armpits, the fabric tight across her large chest.

  Nan started to say something but changed it to “Aren’t you going to put some pyjamas on?”

  “Probably not.”

  “You must be cold.”

  “Not really.” Flora sniffed the bottle of milk, put it down, and stirred her tea with the end of the pen that had been lying on the table.

  “Please use a teaspoon. For my sake,” Nan said wearily.

  Flora stood and the towel, which had come loose from under her arms, remained on the chair. She strode naked to the cutlery drawer and yanked it open, Nan huffing behind her.

  “What?” Flora said. “I got the spoon, didn’t I?”

  “Flora,” Nan said, and put her head in her hands in exaggerated distre
ss. Flora opened the cupboard under the sink to hunt for her father’s whiskey. She opened several more cupboards. The fourth, in the corner above the toaster, was packed with tins of dog food, all of them lined up with their labels facing outwards. Flora stared for a moment, then closed the door and sat at the table. She wrapped the towel around herself again as a concession to modesty. She tried to think of a way to shift the subject around to who their father had seen in Hadleigh but couldn’t work out how to do it without Nan dismissing it as nonsense.

  Her sister yawned. “I’ve got to go to bed. It’s been a long day. The ferry had stopped running when I got there because of the weather. I had to drive all the way round.”

  “Oh my God!” Flora interrupted, rapping her forehead with the bowl of the teaspoon. “I forgot to tell you. It rained fish when I was driving along Ferry Road.”

  “Driving?” Nan put her tea on the table.

  “They fell out of the sky. Dead fish all over the tarmac.”

  “Flora, you haven’t bought a car, have you? You’re an art student. You can’t afford a car.”

  “I would have taken a picture if I’d had a camera, or drawn them if it hadn’t been raining.”

  “The insurance must be astronomical.”

  “It’s not my car,” Flora said. “It’s Richard’s.”

  “Who’s Richard?”

  “Shit! Richard’s car.” Flora jumped up. “It broke down and I just left it there.” She rushed from the kitchen into their bedroom and pulled on her knickers and a sock.

  “Where?” Nan said, following. She sat on her bed.

  “I told you, Ferry Road. Can we get someone to tow it?”

  “Now? It’s nearly one. We’ll sort it out tomorrow.” Nan was speaking in that voice, not the sister or the mother one, but the calm sensible one, which Flora sometimes found herself listening to.

  She pulled her sock off by the end of its toe. “OK,” she said, and saw that she had forgotten to wash her feet and ingrained dirt still crusted her toes.

  “What do you think Gabriel’s doing right now?” Flora said into the dark of the bedroom. “What do you think he looks like? Maybe he has a moustache.”