by Allie Burns
Mrs Curtis had been very clear about her rules. She didn’t like lodgers in the house during the day, unless it was necessary. Guests were allowed to visit by permission only and she was absolutely forbidden to have a man in her room.
She stood at the foot of the stairs and called up to him. Still nothing. She took the stairs lightly, pausing every few steps to listen out for him. He didn’t seem to be on the landing. He must have gone into my room.
She opened the door, darted in and kicked it shut behind her.
‘If Mrs Curtis finds you…’ She stopped short when she saw what he had in his hands. The bookmark hung from the book, like a loose tongue wagging and giving away how far she’d read.
‘Building the Body Beautiful by Mary Bagot Stack,’ he said. ‘I thought you still believed in the old methods.’ He began to skip around the tight space of her room, imitating Delphi at the height of her trance, setting Natalie’s new vase vibrating on the shelf.
She couldn’t laugh; she was holding her breath. ‘You really ought to leave…’
‘Do you miss the college?’ he asked.
‘Parts of that life, yes, but I didn’t really belong there. I was reading the book for Delphi’s sake, actually. I’m concerned she’s lost interest in teaching and movement since she’s been courting Sid and it’s always been so important, and as we’d agreed to support one another’s careers, I thought perhaps I might revive her interest.’
‘But, Natty, didn’t we encourage her because we wanted her to find a way out from Mother and Father? The sad thing is she probably never could have done it anyway, not with her health.’
‘I believe that she could.’
‘No, it’s been a mistake. When I came back from America I was intent on saving her from Mother. But bringing her to the coast has exposed how fragile she is.’
‘Are you saying that you got it wrong?’ He began wafting again and then he crumpled dramatically into a heap at her feet, his head tucked in. ‘Jack, this is serious.’ After a pause he slowly climbed up her legs with his hands. ‘If you think she is too fragile for a career – which I don’t – she certainly shouldn’t be with Sid.’
‘Well we agree on that. He’s harmless, but he could never look after her.’
‘Do you think they could convince your Mother and Father that he’s a suitable companion?’
‘There’s a chance, yes. He has a steady job. He isn’t drinking quite as much. And it would save them from further embarrassment in London.’
‘Sid’s a lovely chap, but he is wrong for her, isn’t he?’ she sighed. ‘What can we do about it?’
‘We hope that the romance dies off.’
There had been no signs of the courtship failing. Quite the opposite. Is Sid really harmless? This was what really troubled her.
Jack was kissing her low on her neck, slow, tiny kisses that tickled her skin in a sensation that spread over her whole body. Without breaking away, he fumbled at her buttons and she met his hot palm with her own, stilling his hand before the trouser suit was undone and nothing more than a pool at her ankles.
‘Perhaps we could do something to discourage Delphi from seeing Sid?’
‘Such as?’
She rubbed her neck where he had kissed her.
‘I think…and I don’t know for certain, but I have a feeling that he has been stealing from the Lido,’ she said.
He broke away.
‘It’s a suspicion, that’s all, but a strong one. I don’t have proof. But Delphi might look at him in a different light if it were true.’
‘He is partial to a flutter on the horses,’ he said, his face creasing. ‘I can’t believe he’s been stealing under my watch. I ought to…’ They both froze as the sound of the front door slamming travelled up the outer wall. Then came the faint sound of Mrs Curtis calling for Catkin. Natalie pulled away to see that she’d reached the last button of his shirt. Had she really undressed him like that? She stared at his chest, at the wiry, sandy tufts of hair on it. His shirt hung loose. Despite the panic she laid a hand on his skin and felt his heart beat against her palm.
‘She’ll look for Catkin in the yard first.’ She refastened his shirt buttons. ‘If you’re quick, and quiet, you can get out the front.’
‘I need a cold shower now,’ Jack said, kissing her perfunctorily on the cheek as if he didn’t trust himself to do more, and then tucking in his shirt. ‘Are you sure I can’t stay?’
‘No. Please go.’
‘I’ll be at my flat. Why don’t you come over? We can talk about Sid, what we do next. You can calm my nerves for my contest too. Don’t be long,’ he leant in close and whispered in her ear.
With a wink he left her alone with nothing but the lingering trace of his fingers. She waited on the landing until she heard the front door softly kiss the frame.
‘He’s up here, with me,’ she called down to Mrs Curtis.
Then she clapped her hands at Catkin to move, but he blinked slowly at her, his head not even lifting from his paws. Don’t be silly; the cat can’t possibly know what you were thinking of doing.
*
‘That’s it, that’s it, kick, kick, kick. Like a dog scratching his behind, flick, flick, flick.’
‘I am, miss, I am.’
‘Kick, kick, kick, flick, flick flick. Hold on tight to the bar or you’ll lose your teeth.’
‘I am, I am, I am.’
‘Take a rest now. This is wonderful progress, just wonderful. And just look at you now. You’re standing in it up to your shoulders. Droplets on your face. Look down. Can you see your feet?’
‘Not really, they’re wavy, and they’ve grown.’
‘And you’re not scared?’
‘Not really. Miss?’
‘Yes, George.’
‘Is it time for my ice cream now?’
*
When she got back to the flat Catkin was waiting on her bed. She lay on her side and stroked him.
On the street below, holidaymakers made their way back to their lodgings, their landladies opening the doors to them again now the evening was drawing in. The sounds from the street changed from morning to night. In the evening there was more laughter, more chatter, as if a day of sun and sea had pumped life into them again to revive them.
Her eyes grew heavy, then she smiled. George. He’d stood in the water, he’d gone up to his shoulders and hadn’t even noticed. Her thoughts turned to Jack back in his flat, waiting for her to come to him. She didn’t know if she had done the right thing in confiding her suspicions about Sid, but it was out of her hands now. It was over to Jack to decide how he responded, and if Delphi needed her, when she needed her, she would be there.
*
‘Let’s have a race,’ Natalie suggested. She planted her face into the oily water and cupped her hands into the sea towards the pier, but after a few strokes she sensed Jack wasn’t with her and she stopped to tread water and see what had become of him.
‘I’ve had my fill of competition for one day,’ Jack called as she rested her cheek on the water to take a breath. He started to swim back towards the shore, but she tore ahead to cut him off in his path.
The sea was cold and it made it hard to breathe deeply enough to store the oxygen needed for four strokes.
‘I appreciate what you’re trying to do,’ he said once she reached him, ‘but I’m more likely to forget with the help of a whisky than a swim.’
George had followed her down, she noticed. He sat by their belongings, legs sprawled. Jack wouldn’t want him around today.
‘Just one race,’ she goaded, ‘one-two-three…’
Her lungs naturally wanted to pant and volley the cold air in and out, in and out. As she tilted her head to the right she could hear him approaching on her shoulder. It had worked.
She swam blind, her eyes seeing nothing beneath her, but she took a second to lift her head and get her bearings. She was approaching the thickset legs of the pier. Nearly there. Jack was at her shoulder. He was f
ast. She added extra force to her legs as she fluttered them, shaking loose the water, moving from two kicks per beat to four. She couldn’t feel the cold any longer. Jack drew level. He overtook her, batting one of the pier’s long limbs just before her.
‘It hasn’t made me feel, any better.’ His breath was fast. ‘The water’s numbed my head, but not my memory.’
Under the eaves, they each wrapped an arm around the pier’s stilts to keep them afloat. She thought about asking him what he had decided to do about Sid’s stealing, but actually she decided she’d rather not know.
‘It wasn’t as bad as you think,’ she said, but it was – it was every bit as bad. The British team coach had come for the contest. He was suntanned, took notes, and sat on his own. He had left straight after Jack had dived. Jack’s first few dives had been perfect. Neat and tight with a clean entry, and he’d been leading the pack.
‘Let’s go back,’ Jack said. ‘I need to get drunk.’
He swam away from her back towards the beach.
It had happened to her once or twice on a descent. It was the urge to push oneself that did it. To add in an extra somersault for good measure, only to become lost and confused in the dive, to lose sight of the boards, which way was up, which way was down, to land awkwardly, with a slap. To make the spectators hunch in sympathy and for an ‘oooh’ to resound about the terraces. Yes, she’d done it herself, just never when the stakes were so high.
*
‘I’ve written to my father,’ George told her, a hand sheltering his eyes from the sun. There was barely a patch of his skin that wasn’t covered in rust-coloured freckles now.
‘And what did you say?’ She rubbed her face with her towel, laid it out and sat next to him. Jack was still splashing about much further out.
‘That I’ve nearly learned to swim, that if he came back for the bank holiday gala he could see me doing some swimming, like you said, a demonstration for the other boys and girls.’
‘And do you think he will be able to come? He must travel all over the world.’
‘I dunno. I really hope he does.’
‘And what about your mother?’
His head went down as he looked between his legs at the pebbles.
‘She still cries.’ He rubbed his eyes and mimicked a sob. ‘I haven’t even told her about you teaching me in case she says I have to stop.’
‘I thought she knew by now?’
He shook his head. She supposed that George had always arranged his lessons when Yvonne was ill or not working her shift at the cafeteria. She would be bound to kick up a fuss when she found out.
‘How about you persuade her to compete in the bathing contest at the weekend? It’s the last heat before the final.’
‘She says that snooty Toots will win the competition,’ he said.
‘Yes, she probably will,’ she agreed as they paddled into the shallows, ‘but if your mother wins a place in the final, she will meet the film-star hairstylist Cornelia Moon, and that’s what she really wants.’
He stopped where the sea met the shore, the water covering his feet and pulling away, and then submerging his feet again while he thought over what Natalie had said.
‘Thing is, she won’t listen to me. But she might if you spoke to her.’
The boy was right. It wasn’t fair to ask George, and it was time Yvonne learned that Natalie had been teaching her boy to swim.
Chapter Thirteen
Dolphin dive
The diver jumps up and out feet first, with their tummy to the sky, before turning for a forward entry.
The first sign that Jack had taken action over Sid came the next morning when Natalie noticed that the fountain had stopped working overnight. The small jet usually sent aerated water into the main pool, to keep it bubbling with oxygen and free of algae and germs.
The second came when she tried to find Sid to see if he knew about the problem. He wasn’t to be found anywhere.
In the engine room, Jack’s navy canvas tool bag sat beneath the chugging seawater filter unit, illuminated by a diving board’s width of light from a bare electric bulb above.
‘I’ll be up in ten minutes.’ Jack lay on the damp concrete floor beneath a pipe, spanner in hand. His shirt was damp and sticking to his torso.
‘What happened?’
‘He went wild, that’s what happened,’ Jack shouted as he strained to get enough leverage on the nut that stuck out like a knuckle on the pipe. ‘And ran around smashing the place up and damaging the equipment.’ Natalie perched on another wide pipe.
‘Did he say he had been stealing?’ she asked.
‘He didn’t confess, but he didn’t deny it either,’ he said in a level tone, wiping his forehead with his shirtsleeve.
‘And where is he now?’
Jack exhaled forcibly as he pulled on the spanner.
‘I said where is…’
‘I heard you, all right. I heard you.’
‘I’ll make us a cup of tea,’ she said, feeling less at home in her bathing suit in the boiler room than she had been before up by the pool.
Placing her bare feet on the cool concrete of the bottom step, he said quietly: ‘I sacked him.’ His voice echoed around the pump room.
She paused, her hand on the doorknob.
‘But this isn’t what we discussed. You were supposed to talk with Delphi and tell her our suspicions and our fears for her.’
‘If he’s a thief, and he didn’t deny it when he had the chance, then he isn’t working for me. I’m not having it.’
‘Oh, Jack, this isn’t what I intended at all. And what about Arthur? He won’t let you sack Sid, even if he is a thief.’
‘I don’t want Arthur to know.’
‘But it won’t stay a secret for…’
‘Can you just put the kettle on, please?’
Hands on hips she was ready to snap back at him that if he wanted a cup of tea he could blasted well brew it himself, but before the words flew out Jack had apologised. Wiping the spanner with a mottled cloth as he stood.
‘I shouldn’t have said that, but you do make a spectacular cup of tea.’
‘Leave the fountain; leave the pump. I’ll call the Borough Engineer.’
Jack tossed the spanner to one side with a clang and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. The pump’s rhythmic chugging grew laboured. Each jab of the piston became slower and slower until the pump made one last long wheeze and came to a stop. The engine room was silent.
‘I want to put it right myself. Otherwise it’s another black mark against me with Arthur.’ He kicked the pump and then hopped about clutching his toes.
She needed to find Delphi and speak with her herself. She shouldn’t have left it to Jack.
*
‘She’s busy I’m afraid, miss,’ the Palm Court’s concierge told her.
‘I’m sure she’ll see me; I’m her friend.’ Natalie headed towards the lift.
‘Miss Mulberry was very firm about it. I am to say that she is perfectly well, that there’s no need for concern. But she is not receiving any visitors. At all.’
*
‘Jack?’ The bare bulb was lit in the middle of the engine room. She’d come straight back from the Palm Court to find him gone. The only sign of him a crumpled white shirt abandoned at the foot of the silent beast of the filtration pump. She lifted an operating manual for the pump from the floor.
‘He’s really such a stubborn thing,’ she sighed to George, who had followed her down when he saw her come back from the Palm Court.
The Borough Engineer could probably fix the pump in an hour or two. She lingered, the cool of the engine room was a blessed relief from the heat outside, which seemed to intensify as it bounced back off the concrete.
‘I’m good with a spanner.’ George took the manual from her hand. She left him to read it under the bulb.
‘Miss Flacker?’ came a voice from the doorway. It was Arthur. The glaring sunlight at his back an aureole around
his head as he asked after Jack.
‘I’m not sure where he is, Arthur.’
‘Do you know what he’s done?’ Arthur, still wearing his suit jacket, blotted his forehead with a handkerchief. His bushy hair had wilted forwards across his forehead. His eyes travelled down and up her legs. ‘Sid’s been to see me.’ She saw him register the look on her face. ‘So you know. I thought they were working well together, how did this happen?’ His voice ricocheted from the walls.
She lifted her shoulders lightly.
‘He had no right to sack my man. Now Sid says he won’t come back to work under Jack.’
‘Where is Sid?’ she asked.
‘He’s moved into his girlfriend’s hotel room. Sid’s given me an ultimatum,’ Arthur continued. ‘He’s told me it’s him or Jack. He says Jack frolics around all day, and that without you book-keeping and Sid managing the staff and the promotion that the place wouldn’t be fit to open.’
‘I don’t suppose Sid’s told you the half of it.’
‘Enlighten me.’ He put his hands on his hips. She froze. It was only a hunch that Sid had been stealing the takings and the accusation hadn’t been received that well so far. She lowered her hands from her hips.
‘Jack is proving me right to the council with this carry-on. He never should have got the manager’s job.’
‘I’ll call the Borough Engineer to come and fix everything up today,’ she said, knowing that she would have to answer to Jack for that but that it was an argument worth having, ‘and then I’ll try and get the men to patch up their argument.’
‘You’d better be quick,’ Arthur said. ‘My patience is running thin. We’re coming up to the August bank holiday, and I want this place to make as much money as possible. And for that, those two need to work together, or Jack’s out.’
He winced as he stepped back into the heat, leaving Natalie and George standing alone again in the stark light of the feeble bulb.