‘Lara, this is wonderful!’ I exclaimed, and such were the acoustics of the enormous room that my voice filled it, crashing crudely back at me.
‘Don’t shout, Mum,’ Molly hissed, and Lara eased her pain by putting an arm around her waist to guide her deeper into the space.
Now that she was standing still, I could see that the blue garment she was wearing was a silk kaftan, with silver embroidery at the neck and cuffs: it looked like something from a rooftop party in Marrakech in the sixties.
‘So what do you think, Molly?’ she asked, both hands on Molly’s waist as if she were about to spin her.
‘It’s cool how the living room is up here at the top,’ Molly said shyly.
‘I’m so glad you like it.’ Lara beamed. ‘You know, some people say they couldn’t possibly live in an upside-down house.’
Only people who have no idea how it feels not to have any house, I thought, but barely critically because I already knew that to mix successfully with the Channings was to overlook their carelessness of their own privilege. I already knew that I was going to be able to make this compromise. Ed, who had yet to speak, I was not so sure of.
As Lara called for drinks – I imagined a half-naked manservant appearing through a hidden door – I became aware of music, a voice I didn’t recognize: an old recording of a woman singing of love and grief, the kind of music that made you abandon all earthly protest and surrender to the melancholy of the human condition. (Hard to believe I hadn’t had any alcohol yet.) Then, at a sudden shout of laughter from the terrace, I felt nerves: I’d expected just our two families. This was something more.
‘It’s not remotely formal,’ Lara said, guessing my thoughts. ‘Just a little Sunday gathering of the godless.’
‘Mum! How do you know they’re not perfectly godly and just came from church?’ Georgia stepped forward from the kitchen to greet us, a jug of something pink in her hand. She was dressed in denim cut-offs and a cheesecloth blouse similar to one my mother had worn in the seventies and therefore, presumably, prized vintage. Her hair was pinned from her face, her skin flawless, a fabric fresh from the bolt. I knew Molly would be raising a hand to the crop of spots on her chin, regretting perhaps her decision to wear a sundress, though to my eye she had never looked prettier.
‘Oh, bugger, you’re not happy-clappies?’ Lara said. ‘Have I offended you?’ She spoke in the tone of one who can no longer remember a time when she was not forgiven her trespasses.
‘It’s all right, we’re not churchgoers,’ Ed said, with the slightly wary formality that told me he, for one, had not forgotten the professional relationship between our hosts and us.
‘Pleased to hear it,’ Miles said, appearing beside us with armfuls of wine bottles. They must have a cellar, I thought. His mien was quite altered now, relaxed and personable and ready to entertain – or, at least, be entertained. I had a sense that those unguarded moments at the door were exceptional, a glimpse we might never be given again.
‘We’re having Negronis,’ Lara said, and she reached for two cocktail glasses, positioning them for her daughter to pour from the jug. ‘Interested?’
Ed and I were not cocktail aficionados. This one tasted like pure gin, its effect instant and burning. Pink lemonade was produced for Molly. The same glasses were in use for the children’s drinks as the adults’ and I couldn’t help noticing how easy it might be for one to be mistaken for the other.
‘Right, come and meet the gang …’ Lara ushered us towards the open terrace doors. ‘Angie and Stephen are here. Ange is dying to see you again, Natalie.’
Given that we’d met only once and for five minutes, this was an extravagant claim and I thought momentarily of Gayle’s remark about overfamiliarity.
Though the sitting room was larger than the entire square footage of our flat, a full-width swathe of the top floor had been sacrificed to the sun terrace. Broad enough to seat a dozen people, it was an exotically dressed room in its own right, with a sofa, a hanging chair and several other lounging options. The floor was scattered with kilims and there were potted bays, hydrangeas and tropical plants I couldn’t name. Neither could I tell if the entrancing scent of vanilla and freesias was coming from the greenery or from one of the guests.
Angie drew the eye first, prone as she was on a steel spider’s web of a sun lounger and dressed in blood-orange Capri pants and a revealing silk vest. Those unsettling pale eyes were safely hidden by sunglasses and my attention was drawn instead to her slightly downturned smile, which lent her the sardonic air of an Austen wit. Her limbs, however, were pure twenty-first century: sharp and slender and conspicuously exercised to the point of looking as if the fluids had been drained from them.
Her husband, Stephen, was one of those heavy-set men with a bashed-up face whose youth had likely been misspent on the rugby field. He was gung-ho in his handling of their two teenage children, one of whom, Josh, I recognized as the boy from Georgia’s lido group; he eyed me with polite blankness, clearly not remembering me. The girl, a classmate of Georgia’s, was named Eve and had a fitting self-consciousness. As quick to colour as she was to please, she was in Georgia’s thrall, I saw; acolyte rather than deputy. To my delight, the group accepted Molly willingly and immediately disappeared.
The other guests were a gay couple in their late thirties, Douglas and Andrew, owners of the adjoining house, who sat hip to hip on the hanging chair. One had eyes the vivid green of a budgerigar and a jutting bony nose, the other smoother, more forgettable features.
‘Come and check out the view, Natalie,’ Stephen said, seeing me hover. ‘Don’t look so scared – I’m not going to push you off.’
‘I should hope not.’ Remembering my melodramatic thoughts on arrival, I joined him at the railing and exclaimed in pleasure. In all my years in the area I had never had the privilege of such a view: the low-slung structure of the lido in the foreground – we were not quite high enough to see the water, but close enough to hear the squeals – and, beyond, the green mounds and folds of the park, then the brick-brown parallel lines of the nineteenth-century homes off the high street, predictably dubbed The Toast-rack. Hidden from sight at the outer edge, on the site of the former municipal dump, was Rushbrook Primary, the employer that had brought Ed and me to the area years ago. It had never seemed so remote from me as it did now. Feeling a surge of elation, I lowered myself on to a pouffe patterned with the face of Frida Kahlo.
‘This is amazing,’ I said, to the neighbours in the hanging chair. ‘You must have the same terrace next door.’
‘Same size, but Lara’s is nicer,’ Douglas said, adding, ‘Bitch.’
‘Don’t listen to a word those two say,’ Lara said sweetly. ‘We only invite them to these things because we feel we have to. It’s either that or risk having them call the police to complain of a disturbance.’
As both men hooted, I could see Ed eyeing them as exotic creatures, imagining they must be in musical theatre, and I wanted to laugh when they gave their professions as anaesthetist and solicitor.
Further small-talk revealed that Angie and Stephen had followed Lara and Miles to Elm Hill from Battersea, where all offspring continued to attend Westbridge. They referred to the Channings as pioneers, as if no one had set foot in the postcode before, and to Lara as a Glenda Jackson figure on account of her campaigning zeal (I could imagine Gayle’s response to that). ‘The lido was a big draw,’ Angie explained, ‘because of Josh’s swimming. He trains with his club down in Surrey, but it’s good to have somewhere so close for him to go every day. We bought the house before it was public knowledge that the pool was reopening, but Lara had tipped us off.’
‘Insider trading – is that allowed in property?’ Andrew asked.
‘Who cares what’s allowed?’ Lara said, and the phrasing reminded me of Mel, whose unwelcome cameo I dismissed from my mind’s eye at once.
Upright now in her web, Angie began listing the many training sessions and expeditions required for Josh’s swim te
am and complaining about ‘bloody diving trips’ to the Caribbean with the school, information that predictably offended Ed’s sense of social equality.
‘Compulsory, are they?’ he mocked. ‘The trips to the Caribbean? I wasn’t aware there was a GCSE in scuba diving.’
‘Not GCSEs, just the various PADI certifications,’ Angie said, smartly choosing not to acknowledge the sarcasm. I tried to transmit to Ed that if he didn’t lighten up soon we’d be queuing to push him over that railing. At least he was draining his Negroni: that could only help.
‘Does Lara still act?’ I asked Douglas and Andrew.
‘Twenty-four hours a day, darling,’ Douglas said, ‘but not professionally any more.’ He called out to interrupt the tête-à-tête our hostess was having with Stephen: ‘What d’you call yourself these days, La? A roving ambassador for the aquatic arts? No, that’s to do with fish, probably. A humanitarian?’
‘I have many hats,’ ‘La’ said, and her hand went to her head as if expecting to find one there. Eyes wide with surprise, she forked startlingly long plum-coloured fingernails through sun-fired hair.
‘Not as many as you have pairs of shoes,’ Douglas drawled, which of course drew everyone’s attention to Lara’s feet, bare, fine-boned, presumably highly flexible after her years of synchronized swimming; I wondered if anyone else was imagining them as I was, emerging from the water with the upper arches stretched flat and the toes pointed skywards.
The voice drifting from inside was a new one, both soulful and charged, over what sounded like the trombone. ‘Who is this singing?’ I asked Angie.
‘Bessie Smith,’ said Georgia, who had reappeared for waitressing duties. I couldn’t imagine many other fifteen-year-olds knowing that.
‘Not the same Bessie of Yorkshire pudding fame?’ Douglas led another gale of laughter and below, in the street, a pair of passing faces turned in surprise.
I wondered what the temperature was up here in the golden glare of the sun; it felt like several degrees above that at ground level.
‘Can we get Molly to help with drinks?’ I offered, even though Ed and I did not approve of children serving alcohol. ‘Or can I?’
‘No, no,’ Lara said. ‘Georgia likes doing it. And Marthe is here somewhere. Talking of which, we will eat soon, I haven’t forgotten …’
So vague was this promise that it was a surprise half an hour later when a lunch of roast chicken and summer salads was served by a cheerful soul I gathered to be Everett’s nanny, though the boy himself was at a friend’s for the day. The teens joined us for food, clustered on a rug as if at a picnic, Molly in a straw hat borrowed from the Channings that made me think of Lucy Honeychurch in A Room with a View. It jolted me to see her like that, as a stranger might.
Lara had squeezed next to Ed on a rocking loveseat. ‘How did you and Natalie meet?’ she asked him. ‘I’m dying to know. Was it at teacher training?’ This she enunciated comically, as if it were some vaguely rude foreign term, which set off more cackling from Douglas and Andrew, and caused Miles and Stephen, who’d been talking together, to fall silent. As Ed set aside his plate to reply, Molly lowered the brim of her hat in horror.
‘Actually, we were undergraduates,’ he began.
‘Beware a story that starts with those words,’ Andrew said, but Lara shushed him and urged Ed to continue.
I held my breath slightly. My husband was a chronicler rather than a raconteur, not one to let a good story get in the way of the facts. I hoped he would at least be brief.
‘We met at a house party. We were the only sober ones there. The whole thing had been taken over by this crazy fast set –’
‘“Fast set”? Was it the nineteen twenties, then?’ Angie cut in, giggling.
‘Sounds marvellous,’ Lara said.
‘I’m afraid it wasn’t our scene at all,’ Ed said. ‘You could say we bonded over our condemnation.’
‘Stop, Dad,’ Molly pleaded, and Eve placed a consoling hand on her shoulder.
‘Condemnation?’ Stephen said, in his bold, bombastic way. ‘That’s a bit strong, what were they doing? Speedballing?’
‘I don’t know what that is,’ Ed said, ‘but I guess it was standard student debauchery.’
Two things struck me: one, he sounded a little pompous; two, this must be how I normally spoke too.
‘Oh, wow, louche behaviour,’ Lara said, curling her legs against Ed and enjoying herself immensely. ‘I hope today isn’t bringing back bad memories for you both. So you got together at this student bacchanal, did you? Who made the first move?’
I decided to wrap this up. ‘To cut a long story short, some guy insulted me and Ed shot him down and rescued me.’ But the crude finality of my tone didn’t deter anyone: they clamoured to know both the nature of the rude remark and just how Ed had responded. I drained my glass. ‘He asked me what was wrong with my face and Ed told him to shut up. He said why should he shut up, to give him one good reason, and that was when Ed quoted Abraham Lincoln.’
Molly groaned and placed her palms over her face. Georgia and Eve giggled. The three made a picturesque tableau.
‘Abraham Lincoln?’ Angie’s brows were raised so high they were visible above the top of her sunglasses. ‘This is getting surreal.’
‘What was the quote?’ Lara demanded, fingers pawing Ed’s arm. ‘I love a quote.’
Ed cleared his throat, though thankfully did not attempt an accent: ‘“’Tis better to be silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.”’
‘Ooh, I like that,’ Lara said. ‘I’m going to use it myself at the next opportunity. Girls, could you get that into a philosophy paper or something?’
Georgia and Eve exchanged pitying looks. It was reassuring to see that even Lara suffered the condescension of her youngers.
‘I don’t understand,’ said Douglas. ‘What did he mean about your face, Natalie? It looks perfectly all right to me.’
‘And he is the only one of us who’s a medical doctor,’ Angie pointed out, chuckling.
‘It’s my birthmark,’ I said. ‘It was hot at this party and my make-up must have melted. I’m like the Phantom of the Opera under my foundation.’
‘You’re not, Mum,’ Molly protested.
‘She’s exaggerating,’ Ed confirmed.
‘Well, I am a bit.’ Looking up, I saw that Stephen was watching with an interest that was faintly cruel. I had the sense that he might be one of those people drawn to others’ frailties.
Through all of this Miles had been silent. My eye had strayed to him often during the afternoon; though not loud or insistent in his speech like Stephen, he had the power to draw your gaze and hold it. Compared to the rest of us, who were animated or agitated or drunkenly unsteady, he sat quite composed, swivelling his left ankle sporadically as if easing an ache, an old injury perhaps. A question about his job had drawn an indescribably dull answer that confirmed my snap judgement that what he brought to the table was material in nature. The Channings were, I assessed, the classic Daddy’s rich/Momma’s good-looking union, she the prize, he the winner. Cordial though he was (that blank welcome notwithstanding), he lacked Lara’s ability to lubricate the dry spells in a conversation and, with her by his side doing the talking, had had no reason to develop the skill.
As the conversation moved on, I escaped to the bathroom – an assemblage of black marble and stainless steel that might have graced the suite of a transatlantic liner – where I studied myself in the mirror. I could see at the edges of my make-up a rare drunken flush; the skin at my neckline and on my bare arms burned hot too. Had Ed and I really just shared that story? I had a terrifying and pleasurable feeling that when I re-emerged I might say anything.
Passing back through the sitting room, I lingered by a wall of art, mostly full-colour photographs of swimming pools. There was the famous one of Faye Dunaway the morning after the Oscars, newspapers scattered at her feet, and another of two blonde women lying by a pool, hazy purple mountains in the
background.
‘Slim Aarons.’ Lara had appeared by my side, close enough for me to feel the heat of her skin, though she was not flushed like me. ‘He’s my all-time favourite. He understood about pools and how they make people feel. You know how he described his job? “Photographing attractive people doing attractive things in attractive places”. See? I told you I like quotes.’
‘That’s fun,’ I said. And however rarified her status, her lifestyle, it seemed to me that Lara was in fact very inclusive. She made you feel like you were one of the attractive people and Elm Hill one of the attractive places, that just by being with her you were doing an attractive thing.
Our eyes locked. ‘Lara, I haven’t had a chance to thank you for recommending the hypnotherapist. Molly’s had two sessions already and says it’s really useful.’
‘Oh, I’m so pleased.’
‘Not that I have any idea what they’ve actually done,’ I added. ‘She won’t tell me a thing about it.’
‘Well, from what I gather it’s about the power of suggestion. Like brainwashing.’ She said this as though brainwashing were the most marvellous thing, something to which we should all aspire to be subjected. ‘So when the fear or the temptation itches, the suggestion overrides it.’
I giggled, not an appropriate response when musing on my daughter’s chronic psychological difficulties and the very opposite of the one I’d experienced in Bryony Foster’s waiting room. Clearly, I was not quite in control of myself, but if Lara noticed, she didn’t mind. I peered at a framed photograph of a girl in a blue tracksuit, recognized my hostess in a teenage shot. She held a trophy, but for a girl posing in triumph there was an odd sense of sorrow in her expression that stirred some memory in me. ‘Have we met before?’ I blurted. ‘I mean before this summer?’
‘Not that I know of.’ Her gaze followed mine to the photograph. ‘Not unless you were on the south-east synchro circuit or in showbiz or at one of the kids’ schools.’
The Swimming Pool Page 10