Swimming Upstream

by Ruth Mancini

  We took the front row and stood and watched as they lowered the coffin down solemnly onto the empty grating before the altar. The nurses were in the middle somewhere behind us, the neighbours huddled apologetically into a pew at the back, mumbling into their prayer books. Shelley, Zara, and I sang out loudly, to compensate, our voices echoing plaintively around the empty chapel.

  When the service was over we tramped over the springy mounds of grass that covered the graveyard and watched as they lowered the coffin into the ground. Zara was standing next to me, crying softly, while the vicar talked a lot about Jesus and only very abstractly about Silbert and it even made me wonder for a split second if they'd got the right person, if anyone really knew who it was laying there anonymously in the coffin in the ground.

  “I can't remember what he looks like,” I burst out in a loud whisper to Zara, then looked up, worried that I had interrupted the vicar's monologue. I felt a sudden surge of fear, fear that he would slip away and I'd make myself forget him and that then I wouldn't be able to grieve again for another twenty years.

  I felt Zara slip her hand into mine. “Just close your eyes,” she whispered.

  So I did. I stood there holding Zara’s hand and wobbling slightly on the uneven ground, the brim of my hat shading my face from the already warm morning sun. I closed my eyes and then I saw him quite clearly, lying there with his pale face and his thin lips and his aquiline nose, dressed in Zara's red jumper with his bony arms sticking out at the sleeves.

  When I opened my eyes again, Tim was standing opposite. He was wearing a long dark coat and black boots despite the heat and his head was bent down. It struck me how handsome he looked, like some hero from a period drama. Sensing my eyes on him, maybe, he glanced up briefly and I smiled at him. He smiled back and winked at me, and I felt such a warm glow inside that in that moment I wondered if I loved him, maybe, after all. Tim’s eyes continued to meet mine. I blushed and looked back down again into the ground.

  “...and Jesus said unto them,” said the vicar, “this is the gateway to heaven. And therein will you find your salvation.”

  Then he added something about holy washing and I had to let go of Zara's hand and turn away under the pretence of a coughing fit, but really I was trying to stop myself from laughing because all I could see when I closed my eyes was a row of mine and Catherine's knickers hanging over a radiator in some heavenly bathroom, glowing ethereally in the everlasting light - which in turn triggered a knot of pain in my chest, because Catherine wasn’t here, and I was pretty certain that I would never see her underwear draped over the towel rail in my bathroom again. Heaven only knew if I would ever see her again, at all.

  When the service was over, Zara and Shelley stopped to talk to the vicar and I headed off with Tim through the gravestones and through the trees until we reached a stile crossing a fence into the car park beyond. My high heels were sinking into the soft turf. We stopped for a moment and I pulled off each shoe in turn, and scraped off the moss and earth with a finger.

  “Here,” said Tim, as I wobbled, and offered me his arm. I grabbed hold of the sleeve of his coat, and Tim steadied me, with an arm around my waist. I glanced back briefly towards the church entrance where the girls were waiting. Zara was standing on the path, shading her eyes with her hands. She nodded towards the car park, then pointed to the church and she and Shelley wandered off up the path towards the vestry.

  Tim was climbing over the stile, his coat sweeping the fence.

  “Sit a minute,” he said, pulling me down next to him on the stile. We sat silently for a moment, watching as Zara and Shelley disappeared round the corner.

  “Zara seems well, given what’s happened,” I commented. “I thought this might set her back, losing Uncle Silbert. But it doesn’t seem to have done.”

  “She’s been good,” said Tim. “She seems to be on the mend.”

  “She certainly looks happy.”

  “How about you? Are you okay?” asked Tim.

  “Not really,” I said. “I feel like some kind of rug has been pulled from underneath me. Everything’s falling apart.”

  Tim took my hand and held it tight. “You mean Uncle Silbert?”

  “Partly, yes.”

  I paused. And then I told him about Martin. I wasn’t sure how he would react, but I owed him an explanation, or something. Or maybe I just needed to connect with him, with my remaining friends. I needed to not feel so alone. But when I’d told him, Tim looked hurt and angry, and he let go of my hand. I realised that I’d done the wrong thing and isolated him instead.

  “The bastard,” he said.

  “It’s really hurt Catherine. And now she’s gone.”

  “She’ll get over it,” he said.

  “I doubt it.”

  Tim stared away up into the trees. I knew that he was angry with me as well as Martin. I knew that he felt betrayed. I knew that he was secretly wondering whether I really wanted Martin. I now regretted having told him.

  “I never wanted it to happen,” I said. “If that’s what you’re thinking. I knew he liked me, it’s true, I could sense that. But it was all one way. I swear. And even if it wasn’t, do you seriously think I would have risked hurting Catherine, risked my friendship with her? Apart from Zara, she was the best friend I ever had.”

  “I’d like to punch his face in,” said Tim.

  I sighed. Tim was no different from any other bloke in this respect. His pride was hurt because he felt that I was his. And that was all that he could think about.

  Tim sat and looked at the church in silence. I turned away and put my head in my hands.

  “It’s not just about him,” I said. “It’s triggered things. Other things. I just can’t stop feeling frightened. I feel like something terrible is about to happen, every minute of the day.”

  Tim didn’t say anything for a moment. Then he said, “Let me look after you.”

  I swallowed hard and wiped my eyes on the back of my hand. Tim put his hands on my shoulders and turned me round to face him. “I love you Lizzie,” he said. “I've loved you from the very first moment I set eyes on you.”

  I looked up at him and smiled, briefly. For a few moments we just sat there, the air around us warm and still, the sweet, sickly smell of cow parsley, clover and knapweed mingling and rising up from the hedgerows.

  Then Tim said, quietly, so that I almost didn't hear him, “But you don't love me.”

  I looked up again. “I do ...” I began, but I was too slow.

  Tim got up and looked me squarely in the eye. I could see he was angry again.

  “Bullshit,” he said, and jumped off the fence and into the car park.

  “Tim!” I yelled after him, but he was gone.

  Back at the house we sat in the living room, where we ordinarily never sat, and surveyed each other in gloomy silence. It was a big room. There were a couple of paintings propped up on the floor against the wall and dustsheets over the furniture. The room, which was cold and never got enough light anyway, was suitably funereal. It looked like the front room in an American horror movie.

  Zara kept getting up and making tea. Every time she got up and went out to the kitchen I jumped, thinking there had been a knock on the door and that she was going to answer it.

  “He's got a key,” said Shelley, after a while.

  “I know,” I said. “I just feel bad, that’s all.”

  Zara came back in with the teapot.

  “He'll come back,” said Shelley. “When he's ready.”

  Zara put down the teapot and stared at her, her tear-stained face illuminated with hope.

  “Do you really think so?” she said in a whisper.

  “She doesn't mean Uncle Silbert,” I told her. “She's talking about Tim.”

  “Oh,” said Zara. “I see.” She sat by the window and stared out onto the front lawn. “I can't believe he's gone,” she said.

  “Who are we talking about now?” asked Shelley.

  “Uncle Silbert,” I off
ered. “And maybe he will. That’s what Catherine would say. Maybe he’s here with us now.”

  “He is,” said Zara. “I know it. I can feel him around us.”

  “You’re spinning me out now,” said Shelley. “I’ll go and make some more tea.”

  When Shelley was out of earshot Zara grinned and said, “I’ve got something to tell you.”

  I felt something tighten inside my chest, a fluttering of my heart. I seemed to have been in this semi-permanent state of anxiety since the day after the party, since Uncle Silbert died. It felt as though I was waiting for something bad to happen at every turn.

  “What is it?” I asked. “Are you okay?”

  “You bet,” said Zara. “I’m more than okay.”

  “More than okay?” I said. “Doesn’t that mean “not okay”, for you?”

  “No,” laughed Zara. “It doesn’t. It means I’m pregnant.”

  “What? Are you sure?”

  “I’m certain. I’ve been to the doctor. I thought it was just what with being ill and everything that I was so late. It didn’t even occur to me that that was what it was. But the doctor confirmed it. I’m ten weeks gone.”

  “Oh my God! That’s… incredible.”

  “I know.” Zara grinned happily.

  I hesitated. “So … well, you’re having it?”

  “Of course I’m having it Lizzie!” Zara looked at me as if I was stupid. “This is what I’ve always wanted, all my life! You know that. You know I always regretted not having the baby before, Doug’s baby. Now I’ve got a chance to get over that.”

  “But… what did the doctor say?”

  “He said I’m having a baby.” Zara was starting to look cross.

  “But… what about the illness? And the drugs?”

  “He’s taken me off the mood stabiliser and put me on a different anti-depressant.”

  “So, the doctor said it’s okay?”

  “Yes.”

  “I mean did he say you should have it?”

  Zara hesitated. “Yes. Of course. You don’t kill a baby just because you’re depressed.”

  “I know that. But you weren’t just depressed, Zara, you were psychotic.”

  “It’s my choice. He said it was my choice.”

  “But what did he advise?”

  Zara was silent. I looked across at her, sitting curled up in the armchair in the corner, her legs underneath her, her hands in her lap and her golden hair tumbling over her shoulders. She looked calm and peaceful, more so than I’d seen her in a long time. “He said it wasn’t going to be easy,” she admitted. “But that it was my choice.”

  I sighed. “Well, of course. That’s true.”

  “Life changes direction,” said Zara. “You just have to go with it. You have to “Feel the Fear and do it anyway””.

  I said, “That book’s not for people with manic depression, Zara.”

  Zara grinned back at me and we both burst out laughing.

  “See? I’m well now,” said Zara. “I feel well. I’ll be fine.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Okay?”

  “Okay.” I paused. “Are you going to tell James?” I asked her. “I assume it’s his?”

  “No. I mean, yes, it’s his. But I’m not going to tell him. He doesn’t want me. And I can tell you right now, he won’t want the baby. He’ll think it’s a trap. And he’ll pressure me to get rid of it. Like Doug did. I’m not having that.”

  “You don’t know that!”

  “Oh yes I do. He’s young. He’s ambitious. He doesn’t want a family. And if he did, he certainly wouldn’t want a baby with me. Not with my genes. The last time I saw him he looked at me like I was crazy.”

  “You were,” I smiled. “A bit.”

  Zara smiled. “I know. But I’m not any more. My nurse said that I may not have another episode for years.”

  “Was that really what she said?”

  “Okay. She said I could also have one again next week.”

  “And coming off the medication?”

  “She said that it was a possibility that the pregnancy hormones would keep me “buoyant””.

  “But?”

  “But that I could get ill again.”

  “So, about James… well, I just thought, if you get ill again then… maybe you could do with the help.”

  “No. He won’t help. He won’t want it.” Zara’s face suddenly lit up. “Hey, though. Here’s an idea. You could help me. We could do it together. Didn’t you say that you’d have to move out of Lynne’s at some point? You could move in here, have Clare’s room. We could bring it up together!”

  As Zara turned away from the window to face me her golden hair caught the light and glowed like a buttercup and for a second I could see her aura spread out all around her. I watched her little chin jut out and her big blue eyes wrinkle up the way they did whenever she asked a question. I thought about Tim. And I thought about how safe and secure it would be, the four of us living here like a family, with Zara’s baby.

  And then I thought about Larsen, about Catherine, and Uncle Silbert and the fear came creeping back again. It was like a sick feeling that just kept rising up in my chest like bile, and never really going away. But I couldn't talk about how I was feeling because I knew that Zara would try and reassure me, and there was simply nothing anyone could say to make it go away. So I sat there on the sofa in the dusky living room which smelled of joss sticks and dust and Zara's oil paints which were spread out across the table, and I just smiled and said, “Maybe we could,” because I didn't know how to tell anyone that I was terrified that they’d gone, Larsen, Catherine, Uncle Silbert, and that it could happen to anyone at any time; that it could happen to me, and to Zara and to Tim too, and that eventually it would, to all of us; it would happen to all the people that you cared about and the more you cared the worse it would be, when one day they just weren't there any more.

  “Lizzie? So what do you think?”

  “It sounds like a plan,” I said. “But quite a big one. Let me think about it for a bit.”

  “Okay, okay,” Zara laughed.

  I stood up and looked round the room. “You're painting. Those are yours,” I said to Zara, realising suddenly. “You're painting again. That's what the dustsheets are for. “

  Zara grinned at me coyly. “Well ... I'm giving it a go.”

  I threw a cushion across the room at her.

  “Okay, okay,” she smiled. “I'm painting again.”

  “These are really good,” I said, getting up and taking a closer look at the ones against the wall. They were all of flowers again, but they were different from the still-lifes I'd seen in her room before. These were abstracts, and really atmospheric. There was one of a row of daffodils on a hill, with a big white cloud floating up above.

  “Wordsworth,” said Zara. “I wandered lonely as cloud…”. I'm experimenting with poems about flowers.”

  “That's great. Really great.” I picked up a gloomy canvas with a single blood red velvety rose, wilting against a black background.

  “William Blake?” I smiled. “Oh rose, thou art sick…”

  “Yes!” said Zara, excitedly. “That’s it!”

  I turned to face her. “Maybe this is the right thing for you,” I said. “You seem really happy.”

  “I am,” said Zara. “I really am.”

  I caught the tube home. When I got to Baker Street it was already dark. I hurried through the empty back streets, glancing over my shoulder all the while. I’d never been nervous about walking home on my own late at night, and yet tonight I was alert to every sight, every stranger, every sound. I couldn’t shake off the feeling of fear and vulnerability that had been with me all day.

  As I reached my front door, someone moved out of the shadows and up the steps behind me. I stifled a scream then realised who it was.

  “Oh Tim,” I gasped. “It’s you.

  Tim put his arms round me. “Who did you think it was?”

  “It do
esn't matter,” I said. “Come on in.”

  Tim stood in my kitchen in his long black coat and boots while I made hot chocolate for us both. He watched me as I opened cupboards and moved around fetching mugs and teaspoons from the sink. I spotted one or two bits of broken plastic that Zara had missed, on the floor below the cooker. As I bent down to pick them up, I had to steady myself with one hand on the floor.

  “You're shaking,” Tim observed.

  “I know. But I'm okay, honest.”

  Tim looked at me suspiciously. I handed him a mug and he followed me into the living room.

  He took off his coat and sat down. “I'm sorry about today,” he said. “What I said.”

  “What did you say?” I smiled.

  Tim put down his mug and smiled back at me. “Are you sure you haven't got anything stronger?”

  I got up and fetched two glasses and a bottle of wine from the kitchen.

  When I returned, Tim was standing by the window with his back to me, misting up the glass with his breath. I stood and looked at him for a moment, at the familiar tall lean back, the muscled forearms, the black curls at the nape of his neck. I walked up behind him and put my arms around him.

  “You're wrong,” I whispered. “I do love you, you know.”

  “But not in the right way,” said Tim.

  “I don't know if I can love anyone in that way right now,” I told him. “There's too much I have to sort out.”

  “Is that an excuse?”

  I shook my head. “This isn't about you, Tim, this is about me. I've always depended on someone else for my happiness, and blamed them for my misery. I need to take control of my own life. I need to know I can survive on my own.”

  “No man is an island,” said Tim.

  “I know that. And that's true. But... this may sound crazy, but I don't feel I can be really free to let anyone love me properly until I don't need them to anymore.”