Something small but monstrous was hatching in my memory.
‘That’s what the smell was,’ she said, ‘the venison. In the end I had to ring up the butcher and complain but I think he still came even after that.’
I thought I could picture the green van parked outside our cottage, the blond man hulked at the wheel. The thing that was hatching grew tentacles that slithered down the back of my neck.
‘It’s horrible to think of myself talking to him now,’ she continued.
There was something glinting in my mother’s eyes that made me think of a cat bringing a mouse to the door. ‘It must have been around the same time that he did it,’ she said, shuddering. ‘Around the time he used to park outside our place. They only caught him because of his DNA on a completely separate charge.’
Just then Angus started to whimper. My breast tingled, filling with milk. It was as though it was a separate entity, beating to a different tune, with a different conductor from the other parts of my body. A man from the United Nations had just taken to the podium and a cheer went up from the crowd. The rest of me was running with ice but my only thought was that I would have to find a bench to sit down and produce warm milk to comfort my crying son.
Ahead of the Pack
Helen Simpson
Helen Simpson (b. 1959) is a British novelist and short story writer. She worked at Vogue for five years before becoming a writer full-time. Her first collection, Four Bare Legs in a Bed and Other Stories, won the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, and her second, Hey Yeah Right Get A Life, won the Hawthornden Prize. In 1993 she was selected as one of Granta’s top twenty novelists under the age of forty.
Thank you for making the time to see me. I do appreciate how busy you are; so, I’ll talk fast! I’d like you to think of this presentation as a hundred metre dash.
Yes, you’re right, it can be difficult to find finance for a new idea. But not in this case. I’m far more concerned about someone stealing this idea than turning it down, to be honest; which is why I want to tie up a joint venture agreement as soon as possible. By the end of the week, preferably.
So. A little bit about where I’m coming from first. My original background was in TEFL, then in PR for various NGOs – I’ve had something of a portfolio career – but in the last decade I have concentrated on developing my motivational skills in the areas of personal training and weight loss. I’m a zeitgeisty sort of person and I’ve found I have this unerring instinct for homing in on what the next big thing will be. You could say I was like a canary in a mineshaft – but more positive, I hope!
The next big thing? Carbon dioxide is the next big thing! Yes, I am talking global warming, but please don’t glaze over quite yet. Yes, I do know how boring it is, how much of a downer it can be but bear with me for the next seven minutes and I promise you’ll be glad you did so.
I know, I know, there are still some people who say it isn’t really happening, but they’re like my weight-loss clients who say, ‘It’s glandular’ or ‘I’ve got big bones’. What they’re really saying is, they’re not ready to change. Whereas the client who is ready to change is very often the one who’s had a nasty scare. My prize slimmer is a man who’d been living high for years and then a routine scan revealed completely furred-up carotid arteries. He had a great sense of humour, he used to wear a T-shirt with ‘I Ate All the Pies’ on it, but underneath his heart was breaking. Literally. At twenty stone he was threatened with the very real prospect of a triple bypass, not to mention a double knee replacement, early-onset diabetes and gout.
Now, another client in a similar situation might have chosen to ignore the warning; opted to dig his grave with his own teeth, basically. I’ve seen that happen, I’ve been to the funeral. Fair enough, their choice. This man, though – a well-known local entrepreneur as it happens (no, I’m sorry, client confidentiality, I’m sure you’ll understand) – this man directed his considerable drive towards losing seven stone over ten months, and as a matter of fact he finished in the first thirty-five thousand in this year’s London Marathon.
And my point is? My point is: either we can carry on stuffing our faces and piling it on; or we can decide to lose weight. We’ve suddenly acquired this huge communal spare tyre of greenhouse gases; our bingeing has made the planet morbidly obese and breathless. Food, fuel; same difference. See where I’m coming from? And that was my eureka moment, when I realised that what’s needed is a global slimming club.
I thought of calling it Team Hundred, because we in the motivational world have a belief that it takes a hundred days to change a habit; plus, there are only a hundred months left in which to save the world, apparently. Then I tried Enough’s Enough, but that was too strict, and possibly a teensy bit judgemental. Finally I came up with Ahead of the Pack, which I think you’ll agree sounds both positive and urgent plus it has the necessary lean competitive edge. Perfect!
It’s simply a matter of time before it’s compulsory for everyone, but those who’ve managed to adapt by choice, in advance, will be at a huge advantage. Ahead of the Pack! I mean, think of the difference between someone who’s achieved gradual weight loss by adjusting their portion size and refusing second helpings, and someone else who’s wolfed down everything but the kitchen sink for years and years and then wonders why he needs gastric banding. I know which one I’d rather be.
Yes, you’re right, that is exactly what I’m proposing – to set up as a personal Carbon Coach! In fact, I think you’ll find that very soon it’ll he mandatory for every company to employ an in-house Emissions Expert, so you might well find me useful here too in the not-too-distant future, if we’re counting our chickens. The thing is, I have this programme tailor-made and ready to rock. I’ve already test-driven it for free on several of my clients, and it’s been fantastic.
First off I take their measurements, calculate the size of their carbon footprint – very like the BMI test, obviously, as carbon dioxide is measured in kilos too – and work out how far outside the healthy range they’ve strayed. We talk about why shortcuts don’t work. Carbon capture and control pants, for example, squash the bad stuff out of sight rather than make it disappear. And, somehow, magic solutions like fat-busting drugs and air-scrubbers always seem to bring a nasty rash of side-effects with them.
Anyway, we visit the fridge next, discuss the long-distance Braeburn apples and the Antipodean leg of lamb, calculate their atmospheric calorie content. My clients generally pride themselves on their healthy eating habits and they’re amazed when I tell them that a flight from New Zealand is the equivalent of scoffing down two whole chocolate fudge cakes and an entire wheel of Brie. We move on, room by room, talking weight loss as we go, how to organise loft insulation, where to find a local organic-box scheme; I give advice on fitting a Hippo in the loo, and practical help with editing photo albums.
Photo albums? Oh yes. Very important.
In ten years’ time we’ll be casting around for scapegoats. Children will be accusing parents, and wise parents will have disappeared all visual evidence of Dad’s gap year in South America and Mum on Ayers Rock and the whole gang over in Florida waiting in line to shake Mickey’s hand. Junk your fatso habits now, I advise them, get ahead of the pack, or you’ll find yourself exposed – as hypocritical as a Victorian adjusting his antimacassars while the sweep’s boy chokes to death up the chimney. Nobody will be able to plead ignorance, either. We can all see what’s happening, on a daily basis, on television.
And if they have a second home I advise them to sell it immediately – sooner, if the second home is abroad. Of course! Instant coronary time! Talk about a hot potato.
Really? Oh. Oh.
I hear what you’re saying. You think I’m going directly against my target client base with that advice. Yes. Well, maybe I do need to do some tweaking, some fine-tuning.
Basically though, and I’m aware that I’ve had my ten minutes, and I’d like to take this opportunity to thank you for your time – basically, is it
your feeling that you’re prepared to invest in Ahead of the Pack?
You’ll get back to me on that one. I see. I see.
So, you happen to have a house near Perpignan, do you? Yes, it certainly is your hard-earned money. A bit of a wreck but if you can get there for twentynine pounds, why shouldn’t you? No reason, no reason. O reason not the need, as Shakespeare says! As long as you know of course it means that, globally speaking, in terms of your planetary profile, you’ve got an absolutely vast arse.
To Brixton Beach
Stella Duffy
Stella Duffy (b. 1963) is a writer and performer, born in London and raised in New Zealand. She has written thirteen novels, ten plays and fifty short stories. Duffy has twice been longlisted for the Orange Prize, for her novels, State of Happiness and The Room of Lost Things. She is a member of the comedy improvisation company, Spontaneous Combustion.
There are images in the water. The pool holds them, has held them, since it was built in the thirties and before. And before that too, when there were ponds here, in the park, ponds the locals used to bathe in. Men at first, then men and women, separate bathing times, of course. A pond before the pool, a house with gardens before the park, perhaps a common before that, a field, a forest. We can go back for ever. And on, and on.
6 a.m. The first swimmers arrive, absurd to the gym-goers, the yoga-bunnies, those impatient, imperfect bodies readying for the cold, clear, cool.
When Charlie was a boy he and his brother Sid used to run all the way up from Kennington to swim, skipping out in the middle of the night, long hot summer nights, too sweaty in their little room, no mother there to watch over them anyway, sneaking off on their mate Bill’s bike, to where the air was fresher, the trees greener, the sky and stars deeper, wider. And the pond so clean, green. Charlie hadn’t been to the sea or to the mountains then, but the air in Brockwell Park felt cool enough.
8 a.m., the pre-office rush, pushing at the entrance desk, swimmers to the right, gym-ers to the left, one half to fast breath, hot body, pumping music, the other to cold, cool, clear.
Mid-morning and the local kids begin to arrive. Jayneen lives in the Barrier Block, in summer she and her friend Elise and Elise’s cousin Monique go to the lido every day. They walk along streets named for poets, poets Monique has read too, poets she knows, smart girl, smart mouth an all, they walk in tiny shorts and tinier tops and they know what they do, and they laugh as they do it, as those boys slow down on the foolish too-small bikes they ride, slow down and look them up, look them lower, look them over. They three are all young woman skin and flesh showing and body ripe. And they know it, love it. The girls walk along and make their way to the lido that is Brixton Beach and they don’t bother getting changed, they are not here to swim, Elise spent five hours last weekend getting her hair made fine in rows, tight and fine, she doesn’t want to risk chlorine on that, they come to the lido to sit and soak up the sun and the admiring glances. Jayneen looks around, smoothing soft cocoa butter on her skin, as she does twice a day, every day, as she knows to do, and sucks her teeth at the skinny white girl over there by the café, all freckles and burned red, burned dry, silly sitting in the sun. Jayneen’s skin is smooth and soft, she’s taught Monique too, white girls need to oil their skin too. Maybe white girls need black mothers to teach them how to take care of themselves.
Charlie is in the water. He is already always in the water. Strong powerful strokes pulling him through. He slips past the young men who are running and cartwheeling into the pool, trying to get the girls’ attention, trying not to get the lifeguard’s attention, paying no attention to the long low deco lines. The young men look only at the curving lines on young women’s bodies. Charlie finds himself thinking of young women and turns his attention back to water, to swimming hard and remembering how to breathe in water. He swims fast and strong up to the shallow end, avoids the squealing, screeching little ones, babes in arms, and turns back, to power on down, alone.
Lunchtime, the place is full. Midday office escapees, retired schoolteachers and half of Brixton market, rolled up Railton Road to get to the green, the water, the blue. One end of the café’s outdoor tables over-taken with towels and baby bottles and children’s soft toys, floating girls and boys in the water with the yummy mummies, wet mummies, hold me mummy, hold me.
Two babies hanging on to each arm. Helen can’t believe it. This is not what she’d planned when she booked that first maternity leave, four years ago. Can it really be so long? She looks at her left hand where Sophia and her play-date Cassandra jump up and down, pumping her arm for dear life (dear god, who calls their daughter Cassandra? Foretelling the doom of the south London middle classes), while in her right arm she rocks the little rubber ring that Gideon and Katsuki hang on to. Helen shakes her head. Back in the day. Back in the office, loving those days in the office, she wondered what it would feel like, to be one of them, the East Dulwich mummies clogging cafés and footpaths with their designer buggies. She looks up as a shadow crosses her, it is Imogen, Cassandra’s mother. Imogen is pointing to the table, surrounded by buggies. Their friends wave, lunch has arrived, Helen passes the children out one by one and immediately they start whirling, wanting this, wanting that, she can feel the looks, the disapproval from the swimmers who have come here for quiet and peace. Helen has become that mother. The one with the designer buggy. And she hates the lookers for making her feel it, and hates that she feels it. And she wouldn’t give up her babies for anything. And they do need a buggy, and a big one at that, they’re twins. (At least she didn’t call them Castor and Pollux;) Helen can’t win and she knows it. Sits down to her veggie burger. Orders a glass of wine anyway. After all.
Charlie swims, back and forth, back and forth. He lurches into the next lane to avoid the young men dive-bombing to impress the girls and irritate the life guards, makes his perfect turns between two young women squealing at the cold water. He swerves around slower swimmers, through groups of chattering children, he does not stop. Charlie is held in the water, only in the water.
3 p.m., a mid-afternoon lull. Margaret and Esther sit against the far wall, in direct sunlight, they have been here for five hours, moving to follow the sun. From inside the yoga studio they can hear the slow in and out breaths, the sounds of bodies pulled and pushed into perfection. At seventy-six and eighty-one Margaret and Esther do not worry about perfection, though Margaret still has good legs and Esther is proud of her full head of perfectly white hair. Margaret looks down at her body, the sagging and whole right breast, the missing left. She had the mastectomy fifteen years ago, they spoke to her about reconstruction, but she wasn’t much interested, nor in the prosthesis. Margaret likes her body as it is, scars, white hair, wrinkles, lived. She and Esther have been coming to the pool every summer, three times a week for fifty years, bar that bad patch when the council closed it in the 80s. They swim twenty lengths together, heads above the water, a slow breaststroke side by side because Esther likes to chat and keep her lovely hair dry. Then Esther gets out and Margaret swims another twenty herself, head down this time, breathing out in the water, screaming out in the water sometimes, back then, when it was harder, screaming in the water because it was the only time Esther couldn’t hear her cry. It’s better now, she is alive and delighted to be here, glad to be sharing another summer with the love of her life. Esther passes her a slice of ginger cake, buttered, and they sit back to watch the water. Two old ladies, holding age-spotted hands.
Charlie swims on.
5.30 p.m., just before the after-office rush. In the changing rooms, Ameena takes a deep breath as she unwraps her swimming costume from her towel. She sent away for it a week ago, when she knew she could no longer deny herself the water. It arrived yesterday. It is a beautiful, deep blue. It makes her think of water even to touch it, the texture is soft, silky. She has been hot for days, wants to give herself over to the water, to the pool. She slowly takes off her own clothes and replaces them as she does with the deep blue costume. When she has
dressed in the two main pieces – swim pants and tunic – she goes to the mirror to pull on the hood, fully covering her hair. Three little girls stand and stare unashamedly. She smiles at them and takes the bravery of their stare for herself, holds her covered head high, walks through the now-quiet changing room, eyes glancing her way, conversations lowered, walks out to the pool in her deep blue burkini. Ameena loved swimming at school, has been denying herself the water since she decided to dress in full hijab. She does not want to deny herself any more. The burkini is her choice, the water her desire. She can have both, and will brave the stares to do so. In the water, Ameena looks like any other woman in a wetsuit, swims better than most, and gives herself over to the repetitive mantra that are her arms and legs, heart and lungs, working in unison. It is almost prayer and she is grateful.
Charlie swims two, three, four lengths in time with Ameena, and then their rhythm changes, one is out of sync with the other, they are separate again.
8 p.m., the café is almost full, the pool almost empty, a last few swimmers, defying the imploring calls of the lifeguards. Time to close up, time to get out. Diners clink wine glasses and look through fairy lights past the lightly stirring water to the gym, people on treadmills, on step machines, in ballet and spinning classes. Martin and Ayo order another beer each and shake their heads. They chose food and beer tonight. And will probably do so again tomorrow evening, they are well matched, well met.
It is quiet and dark night. Charlie swims on, unnoticed. Eventually the café is closed, the gym lights turned off, the cleaners have been and gone, the pool and the park are silent but for the foxes telling the night, tolling the hours with their screams. And a cat, watching.
Charlie climbs from the water now, his body his own again, reassembled from the wishing and the tears and the could be, might be, would be, from hope breathed out into water, from the grins of young men and the laughter of old women and the helpless, rolling giggles of toddlers on soft towels. Remade through summer laughter spilling over the poolside. He dresses. White shirt, long pants, baggy trousers falling over his toes, a waistcoat, tie just-spotted, just-knotted below the turned-up collar, then the too-tight jacket, his big shoes. Without the cane and the moustache and the bowler hat he was just another man, moving at his own pace, quietly through the water. With them, he is himself again. The Little Tramp walking away, back to Kennington, retracing the path he and Sid ran through summer nights to the welcome ponds of Brockwell Park.
The Story: Love, Loss and the Lives of Women: 100 Great Short Stories Page 124