The Swimmer Read online

‘Yes,’ she said, a little smugly. ‘We have, shall we say, certain sympathies.’

  I stared at her. Something was stirring at the back of my mind.

  ‘And you shouldn’t use such words to describe him.’

  I was speechless.

  ‘Oh, Ria, don’t look so shocked. Your brother isn’t a fascist. He just wants the best for this country. He and I happen to agree on certain issues. It’s not so terrible. This country has had terrorist attacks; we do need to be more vigilant and less trusting. I’m not telling you anything you don’t already believe. So why the shock and horror?’

  I swallowed. There was something I needed to tell her.

  ‘There’s one thing I do know,’ I said. ‘Jack doesn’t have any ideology. He’s just interested in power. He couldn’t care less about this country. He’s interested in control. Something got destroyed when Dad died. He functions on…he doesn’t want…he…’ I couldn’t go on.

  ‘Ria, something happened to you both, not just Jack. You’re very hard on him. He’s a sincere man; I don’t think you see your brother for what he is. He’s clever and funny and handsome too. I don’t think even Miranda understands him,’ she added softly.

  Astonished, I didn’t know what to say. It occurred to me that she had always rather fancied Jack. I remembered her telling me once that she used to write to him when he was at boarding school. She began to slice some ham and bread.

  ‘I hear you’ve given your cleaner the heave-ho!’

  I nodded, feeling deflated. An unresolved thought hovered and then vanished.

  ‘I don’t suppose you’ve eaten, have you?’ she asked, then continued before I could answer, ‘honestly, Ria, you’ll fade away!’

  She put everything on a large tray and we went outside. The heat, even under the shade of the tree was stifling. Further away towards the fields the sun fell heavily on the pastures, and the grass was dry and lifeless. It doesn’t look in the least like England, I thought. There were beads of perspiration on Heather’s face, which she wiped on her napkin, and suddenly I felt sorry for her. Long ago, when we had been children, she had run behind the tractor with me. A slight figure with long legs; she had been my first real friend.

  ‘D’you want some eggs?’ she was asking.

  Maybe I was too hard on her. Old friends, what did that expression mean? Did we need to have things in common?

  ‘Do you still boil your eggs in the kettle?’

  She smiled, and for a second I saw traces of that slender child, but then it was gone again. Well, there had to be someone you shared the past with, to keep it alive, I thought.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘God, how long ago did I use to do that?’

  Driving back through the shimmering afternoon heat I saw the journalist again. He was sitting in his car with the windows open and his hat down over his eyes. When he heard my car he sat up and stared out of the window. Then he raised his arm. There was something ferret-like about his features that I didn’t much like. As I accelerated I saw him open the door of his car and get out. I was certain he was going back in to see Heather.

  I was beginning to think I would never see Ben again. On Sunday I stayed up late in the hope he would return for a swim and some supper but there was no sign of him. The renters were packing to leave. Their car was parked in the lane that led up to their house and they were loading it noisily. Perhaps this had put him off, I thought worriedly. Someone had been working the field beyond the river and the scent of hay drifted across the garden. Madame Alfred Carrière, my old white French rose, gave off a trail of fragrance along the back of the house and all around the dry dusk air was filled with muted birdsong. But although the evening presented itself as polished as glass, beautiful and serene, all I felt was an awful sense of loneliness. Pouring myself a gin and tonic I went indoors and turned on the television. Two pigs had been found killed in the same way as the calves, with their throats slit. Local farmers were now seriously worried about their livestock. I was just about to switch channels when the phone rang.

  ‘What are you up to, then?’ Miranda asked. ‘Everything okay?’

  I wondered if she had heard the news.

  ‘Of course. I’ve been working all day.’

  The lie slipped out easily. There was a pause.

  ‘Jack’s out at the Six Bells all the time,’ she said flatly. ‘And tomorrow he wants us to entertain some people on the boat, can you imagine? I’m fed up with him.’

  I was alarmed.

  ‘How long are you actually staying for?’

  ‘Not sure really. The kids have made friends so I guess we’ll stay for a couple more days. You don’t fancy joining us, I suppose?’

  ‘Oh, Miranda, I can’t. I’m on a roll with my work. It would be a pity to be distracted.’ Again the lie.

  But then, after she rang off I could not settle. Suddenly I felt sorry for her. Why was Jack leaving her on her own so much, and what was the real reason that Heather had rung him up? I frowned. All I really wanted was for Ben to reappear. I was being ridiculous, rushing to the window whenever I thought I heard the splash of water. Nothing stirred. There was never anyone there. A burst of singing was followed by laughter from over the hedge. The renters were leaving and the whole world seemed to be enjoying the evening.

  That night I slept fitfully and on Monday morning went into Aldeburgh again. Another scorcher lay ahead. The shingles down at the water’s edge glittered like brown sugar. The light was almost too painful to bear and the day itself seemed unnatural and useless. I walked aimlessly. Out at sea a group of fishing boats, some blue, some grey with sails of brilliant white, drifted westwards on an ocean of bright green. The sails sat transparent as wings on the water. I stared. In the splintered, extraordinary light, the whole scene seemed to my dazed eyes to have been conjured up from some foreign place. Perhaps it was time for a change, I thought. I had no ties here, perhaps what I needed was to move abroad, get away, start over again. I could go to Africa, I thought or, I hesitated, I could go to Sri Lanka and work in the war zone. Blushing, I looked around me. Fool! Turning my back on the sea, I returned to the car and drove home, cursing my stupidity.

  All that long, hot afternoon I tried and failed to work. So much for the run of creativity, I thought, pouring myself more white wine. Once again someone was disturbing my hard-won peace. Restlessly I kept going over our last conversation. Then, as the afternoon turned into early evening I began to worry that something might have happened to him. The image of the migrant workers in the watercress field recurred and I wondered uneasily if I ought to go over to one of the farms near Unthank and make a few enquiries. I could of course have visited Eric, but Eric would know the instant he saw me the kind of mood I was in, and I didn’t want his questions. In any case, I had no clear idea on which farm Ben worked. At six o’clock I poured myself a very large gin, thinking grimly I was drinking far too much. It was the only comfort of the lonely.

  ‘Idiot,’ I cried out loud, catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror. ‘Stupid cow, what were you hoping for? Did you think you had something in common with a refugee, then? A young man nearly half your age?’

  My reflection stared back at me.

  ‘Or was it sex? Is that it? No sex for five years has left you gasping for it, hasn’t it?’

  I swallowed and my reflection swallowed along with me. I’m going mad, I thought. Solitude had finally begun to unhinge me. Barren and sexless, and now, unhinged. But I want to be touched, I thought, my face hot with the admission. Memories of Ant, of what we had done together, were returning. This way lay insanity, I thought, closing my eyes. Was this the sole reason for my interest in the swimmer? I could not bring myself to say his name. Shame spread across my neck. I was mesmerised by my reflection. When had I become so ugly?

  ‘Why should a man eighteen years younger than you are be interested in having sex with you, Ria?’

  There, it was out. Like sickness. I sipped my gin, wanting to weep. When my father died it had been anger I
had felt. Cold rage that everyone, my mother included, mistook for a lack of feeling. Actually, I had wanted to kill her. For years the desire had sustained me. Until the discovery of my body’s own betrayal. Acceptance had been terrible; harder still was the dead hopelessness that followed. Until finally I was able to fall asleep without weeping. So why had I allowed myself to become unsettled now? Why had I not protected myself better? I sloshed another large gin into my glass and tried not to think about Ant, happily married; with his pretty, empty-headed wife and his twin girls. Last Christmas, tracing me through my publishers, he sent me a card. Printed on it was his e-mail address and a link to his social-networking page. Middle-aged, balding and smug, he had invited me to become one of his friends. Suddenly the thought of it set me laughing. I stood in the kitchen and shook. My life as a farce! That was what I should be writing about. Outside, the garden darkened imperceptibly. A bat swooped low from under the eaves. The invisible wound had not healed. It was seeping blood once more. Perhaps, I thought wildly, perhaps I could pay him for sex! The idea seemed hilarious. Oh God! I thought.

  I was sitting at the kitchen table and did not hear the step or see the shadow that fell across the flagstone floor.

  ‘Why are you crying?’

  Ben had entered silently and was standing over me. I started and he thrust something at me.

  ‘This is for you,’ he said. ‘I have been collecting for some time and I didn’t know what to do with them.’

  Caught off guard, I could only stare. He was holding a brown paper bag.

  ‘There was no one to give them to, but I kept finding more. So now I would like you to have them.’

  He went on looking at me, his face unsmiling and anxious, as though he had done something wrong, or had been caught out. Fleetingly confused, I imagined it was how he looked when his mother had told him off as a child.

  ‘Why are you crying?’ he asked again, with a puzzled frown.

  He had looked this way when I had caught him swimming. I wiped my eyes.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked, faintly. ‘Why don’t you sit down?’

  ‘Open it,’ he said. ‘Carefully.’

  Some geese flew overhead with a slow sawing like rusty blades. I undid the paper. Inside was a string of broken bird’s eggs, about thirty of them, blue and white and scribbled and speckled brown, reminding me of a rhyme we used to sing as children. I gasped. God knows how I looked with my eyes brimming over and my mouth slackened and out of control. The shells were strung together into a necklace, graded by colour. They were utterly beautiful.

  ‘Do you like it?’

  ‘Where on earth did you find them?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘If you look, wherever you walk there are broken things lying on the ground.’

  He did not take eggs from nests, he told me, only those that had already fallen and were broken.

  ‘I have been collecting them ever since I left Sri Lanka. There were several on the grass verge when we stopped in Russia. The rest I found here. So I thought, why not? And I began to collect them again.’

  He had always collected things, from when he had been a boy. But whereas in the past he had given his collections to his mother, or later on to his friend, now there was no one to give them to.

  ‘Until I met you,’ he said seriously.

  When he had been a boy he had loved wandering across the fields at the back of his home. Collecting was part of preserving memory, he told me.

  ‘There was a canal near our house. When I came home after school I would find all sorts of things: small animals caught in traps, birds that had damaged wings…’

  He would bring them home, much to his mother’s annoyance, and look after them until they were well again. Around this time he had thought he would become a vet, but later on he had decided that he wanted to become a doctor.

  ‘When I went to medical school, the animals in the back yard remembered me from one holiday to the next,’ he said.

  There was a silence during which I began to feel exposed and embarrassed.

  ‘Why were you crying?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh…it’s nothing.’

  ‘People don’t cry for nothing. Why?’

  I took a deep breath, my face was hot. I wanted to crawl away in middle-aged shame.

  ‘When you are alone a lot, as I am,’ I began, ‘you get to speculating about stupid things.’

  I paused, but tears continued to spill out of my eyes. He waited, watching me, solemnly in the way a child watches an adult, adding to my considerable shame. He looked so wholesome, so strong, so…I could feel that at any moment I might break into a howl. I was busy concentrating on keeping my voice steady. At last I sighed deeply and attempted to pull myself together.

  ‘I was…I wondered what had happened to you, how the samphire-picking had gone. If you were all right.’

  I pushed my glass away, utterly embarrassed, now, aware he was smiling.

  ‘You were worried!’ he said, as if the idea had only just dawned on him. ‘My mother used to be worried. You mustn’t worry!’

  Shut up, shut up! I thought. Don’t you dare talk to me like this.

  ‘I said I will be back and here I am! We picked samphire for three days. I wanted to bring some back for you, but they were watching us, so I brought you the eggs instead. Tomorrow I have no more work, so I can clean the banks for you.’

  He grinned.

  ‘Oh, no, no,’ I said hastily. ‘Really, there’s no need, absolutely not. I’m just glad you are okay.’

  I couldn’t look at him. All I wanted was for him to go. And I also wanted to put out my hand, touch his arm, make him sit down. I did none of these things. Instead, I asked him if he would like an omelette and a glass of wine.

  ‘An omelette, yes. Please. But not the wine.’

  ‘I’ve no more beer left,’ I said.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. Will you eat with me?’

  He was looking disapprovingly at my empty glass. Then he picked it up and sniffed it, crinkling his nose at the smell. I laughed.

  ‘Don’t you like gin? Look, why don’t you go and play the piano while I get the food ready? I’ll call you.’

  I felt unhinged. The necklace of broken eggshells lay on the table. I moved them carefully to one side. I would have to find a suitable place to put them. In my study perhaps, or on the mantelpiece in my bedroom, away from the prying eyes of my brother’s family. Then with sudden energy I took out butter and garlic. I cracked four eggs and went outside to pick some parsley. Suddenly I too was ravenous. Through the open doors I could hear the sound of the piano. He was playing that piece of jazz I had first heard him play, only now he sounded confident. I listened, marvelling at how, in so short a time, my house had an air of being lived in.

  Roses bloomed across the garden wall and the evening was very warm and soft. I set the table outside while a quarter moon rose amongst the pines beyond the river. Placing a few tea lights around on the paving stones I went in.

  The music had changed and quickened. He was playing a tango, snatching at scraps of movements, making me want to dance. Unable to resist, I drifted towards the doorway and watched, struck by the way the music gripped him. He swayed slightly and I saw a kind of isolation had encased him. At the same time he looked a little stern, removed from everything, a person from a precarious world with no clear future. I wondered when last he might have played this piece of music and who might have heard him. He was connecting me with his past through it. An unseen hand struck a match in the sky. A pale phosphorescent streak gleamed and went out as he finished playing and turned to me with a dazed look. I felt he was still elsewhere.

  ‘Come and eat,’ I said, and he nodded, closing the lid of the piano.

  We were both silent over supper, remote from each other.

  ‘Tell me about your home,’ I asked eventually.

  ‘If you will tell me first why you were really crying when I came in?’

  I was silent, listening to an almos
t forgotten sound within myself. As if my heart, stopped for so long, was beginning to beat again.

  ‘You are lonely,’ he said. ‘Like me?’

  He sounded surprised. Then he leaned towards me and placed his hand over mine. I was struck by the youthfulness of his arm.

  ‘I feel out of the main part of the world, too,’ he said quietly, sipping the wine he hadn’t wanted.

  ‘Once my life was in the centre of things, but now…’ He shrugged. ‘Now I no longer can be counted. This is very hard to accept when I had not been born into such circumstances. Do you understand?’

  I nodded.

  ‘War does that. It picks you up and moves you to places with no future.’

  Once, he said, people had deferred to him. He was capable of taking decisions, people looked to him with trust. Now all he could do was wait passively. What was the use of his existence? he asked softly. He smiled, with the suddenness that I had noticed before. He was like some exotic bird, inadvertently here on our northern shores.

  ‘My mother,’ he said, ‘calls me her swimmer!’

  He took a thin wallet out of his pocket. It was worn and falling apart. Inside were some passport-sized photographs that he spread on the table. His mother, the dead cousin and the other, irreparably damaged, and living with his aunt and uncle. There was one other picture, of a young girl with wide, startled eyes, like a faun. She must have been about seventeen.

  ‘Your sister?’

  He shook his head, silenced.

  ‘No.’

  Still, foolishly I persisted.

  ‘A relative?’

  ‘No,’ he said steadily. ‘She was just a girl I knew. In my village.’

  ‘What happened to her?’

  ‘Nothing. She is still there, I think. But I am here.’

  I pulled a face. He had silenced me fairly effectively.

  ‘Well,’ I said with a brightness I no longer felt, ‘I have some ice cream. We could have it with raspberries.’

  What I really wanted was another drink. And then I wanted to howl. I could feel an exaggerated nervousness in the quickness of my breathing and I was thrown, aware of his unhurried gaze. Riverlight lay in the distance, starlight above us as he reached out and put his hands on my shoulders. This was so far from my expectations, so beyond my hope, that I froze, astonished. Time halted; this first touch made me blind with excitement. I felt the trees tremble above me like great dark waves in the sky. When I could see clearly again I saw he was standing up. He was saying something. It sounded like: