Swimming Upstream

by Ruth Mancini

  Tim turned to face me. “I can't help it,” he said. “I still want you.”

  I sighed. “I don't know Tim. I don't know if I can promise you anything.”

  “It doesn't matter,” he said and put his arms round me. And as I kissed him and as he unbuttoned my blouse I wondered if I were the one that was crazy and if I was giving up the securest thing I'd ever had for the freedom to face the world alone.

  The radio was playing softly in the background. Tim was making a rollup with one hand, his other arm round me. He lit it and settled back against the pillows. I leaned forward and kissed him on the stomach.

  “What did you think of the funeral?” I asked him.

  “Gateway to heaven,” he said disdainfully. “Looked like a hole in the ground to me.”

  I didn't say anything. “When I go,” he continued, “I want them to chuck me in the sea.” He took a puff of his rollup. I craved a puff myself, but took a deep breath instead

  “Not a bad place to end up,” I agreed. “In the sea, your soul free and floating around with all the fish.”

  “Lizzie, what happened to your father?” asked Tim. He asked this hesitantly, as people always did, because they weren't sure that they should be asking. I only minded that they might not really want to know.

  “He died,” I said. “He was hit by a car. I was six. He collapsed, as he was crossing the road, and a car hit him. I was there outside our house, waiting for him on the pavement. I saw it happen.”

  “Oh God,” said Tim. “I'm sorry. You've never really mentioned him before.” He squeezed my hand.

  I said, “I suppose the subject just never came up. Until you asked, that is. I’ve never known how to talk about it without worrying that I’m upsetting someone else.”

  “Someone else?”

  I nodded. “No-one ever seemed to want to talk to me about it. It’s as if they think you’re going to crack up if they do. I just got used to shutting up about it. Until I met Catherine and Zara, that is. That’s the first time anyone wanted to talk about me. Before that… well, I got attracted to other people's problems and tried to solve them instead. It’s like some kind of self-nurturing by proxy. But it doesn’t really work.”

  Tim nodded, so I carried on.

  “It’s like everyone else’s pain was always out there needing attention. You seek out people who are the same as you, the walking wounded, because that’s what you know, what you’re comfortable with. But then they are so wounded too that they can never give you what you need. Larsen's father left when he was six, the same age as I was when I lost mine. When I told him about my father he dismissed it. Told me that having a dead father was preferable to having an absent one, in that a dead one was rejection only by default. I accepted what he said; I could see his point. But in the end it doesn't really matter who does the leaving. You still have to learn to live without them just the same. And if that's too painful ...”

  “What?”

  “You just convince yourself you never cared about them in the first place. Forget them. Replace them. Only, of course, that doesn't quite work. Not in the end, because there'll always be one day when you end up alone, when you have to face your ghosts.”

  Tim looked up. “Is that what’s happening now?”

  “I think so. Everything’s started coming back to me. Things that I had forgotten. Or if I did remember, it was just in a factual, anecdotal way. I’d lost the associated feelings. I could remember standing outside our house, the trees that lined the street, the sun shining down, even the dress that I was wearing that day, my favourite pink dress. But I couldn’t remember how frightened I was when the ambulance came, or what happened in the days and weeks that followed. It’s a bit like freeze framing scenes from a movie with no sound. “

  “So what did happen, to you, I mean, when your dad collapsed?”

  “A neighbour called an ambulance, and I stood there on the pavement and watched as they were both taken away.”

  “Both?”

  “My mother went with him. Pete, my brother, was at school. I was taken into a neighbour’s house. Then the police came and told me my dad was dead and my mum was staying at the hospital. They said she had had an asthma attack. She never really told me what happened. I stayed at the neighbour’s house for a few days with Pete. And then my mum came and took us home. But it wasn’t mentioned, wasn’t talked about. I suppose my mother just couldn’t.”

  “So how did it feel, losing your dad like that?”

  “Frightening. I know that we had to move. We couldn’t stay in the house, my mother told me that later. But all I remember at the time is we left suddenly with no warning. I still can’t remember anything much about it. Except feeling frightened. The whole time. Feeling… just scared. Pretty much what I’m feeling now, as it happens. I think my dad dying so suddenly like that… I think I must have thought that it was going to happen to my mother, and then to me too. I’ve always had these nightmares, about ghosts. I think that’s what they were about. Death. Ghosts coming to claim me, just like they claimed my dad.”

  Tim hugged me to him. “That makes sense.”

  “But that wasn’t the end of it. My mother then met the man who became my step-dad. He hated us, me and Pete. His pleasure came from making us unhappy. It wasn’t just the random, unpredictable violence, the times he hit us, pushed us from behind, so that we stumbled and fell, the times he kicked us up the backside, humiliated us, smacked our heads into walls….” Tim looked shocked, aghast. “It was the bullying, the teasing, the way he belittled us, called us names. It just erodes your self-confidence. Eats at the essence of you. It was as if he was trying to destroy me as a person. If I complained, tried to tell my mother, he would just say I was weak, couldn’t take a joke. My mum couldn’t cope with it, any of it. Nobody talked about what was going on. I think Pete felt so humiliated and angry that he didn’t want an ally in me; he just alienated himself from the whole family. Who could blame him? Nobody could acknowledge it. But that made it even more isolating. Sometimes I would watch my mother, I would know she wasn’t happy, and I would wonder if she would have it in her to leave. But then along came Keri. So we stayed. I just went to school to get away. Then Pete left, went to live with friends, and I realised that I could do the same. On my sixteenth birthday I packed my bags and left home.”

  Tim was silent, taking it all in. He held me tighter. “What a bastard,” he said.

  “I know,” I agreed. “But it wasn’t until Martin came along that I allowed myself to remember, relive it. How bad it had all been, you know? It’s not just the actual violence. It’s living with that permanent threat of it hanging in the air; that’s worse in so many ways. I spent most of my childhood treading on eggshells, trying not to upset him, trying to make him like me. It’s like those people you hear about who are kidnapped and then start to identify with their kidnappers. Violence, the threat of it - it makes you stop being yourself and start being what you think they want you to be.”

  “You were just a kid,” said Tim, shaking his head. “I want to kill him.”

  I nodded. “I know Pete felt that way. For a long time. Probably still does. He did the right thing, allowed himself to be angry, to hate him. Me, I just adapted, tried to be good, blamed myself when I wasn’t, when I made a mistake, got things wrong. My mother left him eventually. And I escaped it all, in the end, before then. I moved in with my boyfriend, David. I lived with him and his family for three years and realised for the first time what a normal family was like. Then I got a grant and went away to college and had the confidence to leave David behind. But the past crept back in. I was scared of being alone, facing myself. Until I met Larsen that was, and then it felt like I had finally found what I had always been looking for. That bond. That indescribable closeness. The thing that I had never had with a man, with a father, the thing that I had been missing all my life. That person who loved me so deeply, so passionately that he could never let me out of his sight. We were inseparable from the very
start. It felt as though he was what had been missing all my life.”

  Tim took his arm from round my shoulder. “So why did it end. With Larsen, I mean?” He picked up his Rizla papers and started to roll another cigarette.

  “I think that what attracted us to each other was the thing that destroyed us in the end: we needed each other too much, to fill a void. We were literally each other’s “other half” when what we needed to be was whole. Neither of us had faced our ghosts.”

  Tim was silent for a moment. He finished rolling his cigarette and turned to face me. “And now?”

  I pushed back the bedclothes and stood up. I pulled on my dressing gown, drew back the curtain and stood for a few moments by the window looking out at the black chimney tops over the fire escape and at the bright, white full moon that sat alone in a vast and empty indigo sky. “I think now it’s time to face the truth about what’s happened and be who I really am again. And it’s something I need to do alone. Being with you is….” I paused. “You make me feel…”

  “Brand new?” suggested Tim, with a smile.

  “Brand new,” I smiled. “Like a movie star.” I turned to face him. “But I’m sorry, Tim. I mean it when I say it. I’ve got to do this alone.”

  21

  I made my decision to leave England on the night of Uncle Silbert’s funeral, as Tim slept, as I lay in his arms and looked out of the open curtains at the moon, full and bright and beckoning, like another planet waiting to be explored. I hadn’t yet formulated a plan, but I realised now that this was what I wanted - to go to France, first of all, and then maybe to travel for a while. As strong as my desire to stay with my friends, to feel safe and secure, was the need to begin the process of self-definition, away from everything and everyone who wanted me to be something that I wasn’t at all sure that I was anymore. But there was something I had to do first.

  The following day I waited until the lunchtime show was over and then knocked on Sandy’s door.

  “Lizzie, come in,” said Sandy. He immediately put down his pen and papers and jumped up, as if he had been expecting me. He ushered me into a sofa next to his desk, and sat down in an armchair opposite me. He folded his hands in his lap and waited for me to speak.

  “I need to leave,” I said. “I am so sorry. But I have to go away.”

  Sandy’s face fell. He clearly hadn’t been expecting this. “Really?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry,” I said again.

  “Is there anything I can do? Anything to persuade you to change your mind? You are a great asset to us Lizzie. You are very talented. In fact, I had had in mind that you might be interested in taking on the role of News Editor.”

  “News Editor? Really?” I was astonished, overwhelmed. I contemplated this for a moment, then shook my head, sadly. “I’m sorry,” I said, for the third time. “And I am really very grateful. But I can’t accept. I’ve made up my mind. I have to go.”

  “I’m the one who is sorry,” said Sandy. “Sorry to lose you.”

  “Thank you. That means a lot.”

  Sandy smiled, and shifted a little uncomfortably in his chair. “You know, you could take some leave. And then think about it. Take a holiday, take a sabbatical. If that would help.”

  I considered this for a moment, then nodded. “It would.”

  “All right,” said Sandy, looking relieved. “Good. That’s settled then. When do you want to go?”

  “Well my contract says three months…”

  “We won’t hold you to that. Not if you need to go sooner.”

  “Is eight weeks enough notice?”

  “That will be just fine.”

  I hesitated. “Actually, there was something else. Something else that I think would help, that is. You mentioned, once before... I was wondering if you could, in fact, put me in touch with someone. You know. To talk to.”

  Sandy nodded and stood up. “Of course.” He went over to his desk, thumbed through a book and wrote a name and number on a piece of paper.

  “There,” said Sandy. “It’s a man. Is that alright?”

  I thought about this for a moment. “Yes.”

  “I’ll call and let him know you’ll be in touch.”

  “Okay.” I stood up and started to walk out of the door, then turned back, walked over to his desk and kissed him on the cheek. Sandy looked a little taken aback.

  “Thank you for everything,” I said. “And, I’m sorry.”

  “You don’t have to apologise,” said Sandy. “Not for anything.”

  He stood up and took my hands and held them for a moment.

  “Thank you,” I said, again.

  In mid-July Lynne phoned to tell me that her contract was ending early. I put most of my belongings in storage and moved into the house with Zara, Shelley and Tim. I had researched and found a list of guest houses in Paris and was ready to find a flight and book my ticket. But something strange was going on. Gradually I noticed that I couldn’t eat or drink certain things, things that I had always liked before. I couldn’t face my dinner in the evening, or the smells of Shelley’s cooking in the kitchen, wafting into the hallway and up the stairs. I found that I was getting home from work each afternoon and going straight up to bed, exhausted, where I’d sleep for ten or eleven hours. And then one morning, a few weeks after I had moved into the house, and just as Zara had finally stopped throwing her guts up, I started throwing up myself.

  I knew immediately whose baby it was. I also knew immediately what I was going to do; I was going to keep it. Lord knows it wasn’t what I had planned. I was supposed to be travelling, leaving England with no ties, no anchor, with nothing to stop me making and amending my plans from one moment to the next. Having children wasn’t even on my radar. But as Zara said, life changes direction and you just have to go with it. I knew that there was no other option for me.

  Zara was over the moon when I told her.

  “Now you can’t go travelling,” she said, excitedly. “You’ll have to stay. We can bring them up together. They could be sisters! Or brothers! Or brother and sister!”

  I smiled, and said, “We’ll see.”

  After the initial shock had worn off, Tim too was pleased. “I know this wasn’t what you planned. And I know I wasn’t part of your plan. But I want to be there for you and the baby. We can do this together,” he said. “I’ll be there for you every step of the way.”

  “I don’t know, Tim,” I told him. “I just can’t think beyond the next five minutes. We’ll have to talk about this another time.”

  The sickness floored me. I was unable to think about anything for several weeks, except for how to stave it off. By then, fortunately, I had left the radio station, and I had the luxury of being able to crawl back to bed in the daytime and stay there for most of the day. I still had the money from Jude’s parents, sitting in my investment account but I didn’t want to start dipping into that just yet. I put an advertisement in the paper to sell my car.

  Zara went out for bananas and Weetabix - they were all I could stomach, along with the mashed potatoes Tim made me each evening, or at different times of the day, depending on his shift. Zara sat on my bed and held my hand and chatted happily, and made plans for us both and our babies, while she flicked half-heartedly through the daytime TV channels on an old portable black and white TV that Clare had left behind.

  Once a week, I dragged myself out of bed to see my counsellor. I had had been seeing him since the start of the summer and it was helping beyond belief. When the session was over I was both physically and mentally exhausted. I would walk back to the house, climb back into bed and intermittently cry and throw up but I was happy in a strange, sad and ironic way. I knew that the counselling was necessary, not just for me but for the baby too. I had come to believe firmly in the principle that what you don’t hand back, you hand on. I soon realised that I wanted this child more than anything, and that I didn’t want its legacy to be one of anything but love.

  In contrast to me, Zara was full of energy
. I had noticed how bubbly she was, how happy and how many plans she had for us and the babies. It had vaguely crossed my mind that it could be mania setting in but I had dismissed that as cynical. For the first time in her life, she had everything she wanted. She was feeling well for the first time in weeks, now that the hormones had settled down. Why wouldn’t she be happy?

  But one morning, when she hadn’t come in to see me as she usually did and I had got sick of the sight of my bedroom walls, I dragged myself downstairs to find her sitting in the living room drinking tea alone. I poured myself a cup, sweetened it and sat down opposite her. I noticed she had dark shadows under her eyes.

  “You okay?” I asked her.

  Zara nodded, and said nothing.

  I looked around the room. The dust sheets had been cleared away, a carpet had been laid and the room was now habitable. Zara’s canvases were now tacked to the walls.

  I looked at the Rose and said, “I know how you feel.”

  “What?” said Zara. “What do you mean?”

  “Not you, the Rose. Wilting. Sick.”

  “Oh.”

  Someone outside the window caught my attention, a man with a bald head, wearing a beige Macintosh. Zara had spotted him too. I heard Shelley running down the stairs and opening the front door.

  “Who was that?” said Zara, jumping up and pulling back the curtain.

  The front door slammed shut and there was a male voice in the hallway. Shelley poked her head round the door. “Lizzie, there’s a man here to see you. He says he’s come about your car.”

  Zara frowned. “Who?” she said. “Who is it?”

  “Oh okay,” I said. “Tell him to come in.”

  The man in the Macintosh walked in and I waved him into a chair. “Sorry,” I said. “I’m not feeling the best. You saw it outside, right? I’ll get you the keys.”

  I stood up and went to find my handbag.

  The next thing I heard was Zara’s voice, screaming, “Get out!”