Night Swimming

by Doreen Finn

  It wasn’t too deep, but where we were the river was wide enough to attempt to swim. Chris stood in the middle, the water stopping at his chest. Then he disappeared and popped his head up a bit further upstream.

  He whooped and shook his head so his hair swung. ‘Hell, it’s freezing. Now, who else is coming in?’

  Daniel surprised us by being next. He threw his fishing net onto the bank and worked his T-shirt over his head, flinging it after the net. It missed and fell into the water, so he had to run over and scoop it, soaking, out of the water. Once the T-shirt was safely on the bank again, Daniel leapt in and shrieked as the river enclosed his body. He kept his head above water and bobbed like a small dog. The ends of his hair dipped in the water and darkened. Chris called to him and Daniel paddled over to where he stood.

  ‘Are you coming in?’ Chris called to Gemma, who was helping me lay the blankets flat.

  ‘Give me a minute.’ Gemma rooted in her bag, pulling out towels for the two of us, plus our swimming things. ‘You can change over there if you like.’ She nodded towards a straggle of bushes set further back. ‘I’ll come with you.’ Carefully, she laid her camera on the blanket.

  

  The water was much icier than the canal, where we had done most of our swimming that summer so far. I looked down at my feet, white and bloated-looking from the rushing water, flecked with peat and river weeds. Stones were smooth under my soles as something else soft and squashy worked its way between my toes and I wondered how on earth I was ever going to manage to submerge myself. Gemma squeezed my hand, then let me go as she waded into the centre and allowed herself to plunge with grace into the enveloping cold.

  I stood where I was, the water nudging at my waist. Daniel splashed with Chris, their voices echoing off the surface of the brackish water. Daniel called to me for his net and I waded back to the bank to retrieve it. By the time I handed it to him the water was up to my chest. My mother floated on her back, her hair fanned on the water about her head. Even Beth was making headway, lowering herself gingerly into the water.

  She caught me watching her and waved. ‘This water! How can you stand it? It’s the coldest river I’ve ever been in.’

  I trailed my fingers in loops by my sides, watched as the ripples diminished. ‘It’s okay.’

  She laughed, for the first time since we’d left the house. ‘No, it’s not! You’re not even getting in. It’s freezing! Hey Dad! This is insane, right?’

  Chris looked up from where he was examining something Daniel was showing him in the bottom of his fishing net. His finger and thumb pinched the net, something tiny and silver flashing in the red mesh. ‘What’s that, baby girl?’

  ‘I said, this water is insane. Cold.’

  ‘Oh, it’s fine once you’re down. Just get yourself in and you’re set. Remember what we always say?’

  Beth rolled her eyes. ‘Swimming teaches you endurance.’

  ‘Good girl. Come on, now!’

  I wondered if this was what being part of a larger family would be like, with a father around to offer another, different view. Women coddled each other and their girls. We wore our protection like an invisible cloak, not noticing it until we needed it. Men were more bracing, less inclined to indulge the thousand minuscule pieces that made up a child’s daily world.

  For the first time I thought it mightn’t be so bad after all to have a father around.

  29

  Later, after our picnic and another swim, Chris got to his feet. ‘I propose a bit of exploring. Who’s on?’

  Daniel jumped to his feet. ‘Me!’

  Beth lay on her back, her hands shading her eyes. ‘Count me out.’

  Chris clicked his tongue. ‘No you don’t, honey bunch. Come on.’

  Gemma nudged me. ‘Up you get.’

  I protested slightly, but rooted around for my sandals, pulled them on and stood up. My mother held her hands out and I dragged her to her feet. She found her sunglasses and put them on. They were the big ones, the ones that made her look like a film star. She had plaited her hair and it fell in a loose braid down her back.

  ‘Things are safe here, right?’ Chris asked.

  ‘They’re fine.’ Gemma indicated our surroundings. ‘There’s no one around to take anything.’

  ‘Everyone set? Off we go.’ Chris flexed a long, thin stick in his hands.

  Daniel held his jam jar in one hand, his net in the other. Beth walked beside me, her thumbs hooked in the belt loops of her shorts. Up ahead, Gemma walked beside Chris. I strained to hear their conversation, but only snatches drifted back to me. I wasn’t sure what exactly I was hoping to hear. Some things were clear: Chris liked my mother. My mother responded to him. I had spotted them out walking, had witnessed them night swimming. Gemma had a new dress, new silver bangles, new shirts. Painted nails and different perfume. But even from my nine-year-old perspective, there wasn’t a whole lot to go on. Maybe they just wanted to be friends. Gemma didn’t have too many friends any more. Some were married, some had left Ireland. Life gets in the way, Gemma said once, when I’d asked her why she didn’t see as much of her friends as she used to. By life, I knew she meant me, but that was okay. She was busy with me and I did take up a lot of her time. That’s what being a mother is about, she told me, and I wouldn’t change that.

  But still the possibilities crowded my head. I wasn’t stupid. I’d seen how Chris looked at her, had seen how much Gemma smiled when he was around. She had sat on the canal bank with him, had allowed him to tuck her hair behind her ear. Really, though, what did any of it prove?

  ‘Megan, look!’ Daniel beckoned, cupping his hands. ‘It’s a Painted Lady.’

  Inside his hands, a pair of wings fluttered. I could just make out the orange and black, the white dots on the edges.

  ‘Beth, you have to see this.’

  Slowly, Daniel opened his hands. The butterfly was motionless for a moment, then, with a beat of its wings, it was gone.

  ‘Why didn’t you put it in your jar?’ Beth asked.

  ‘Because I can’t feed it, silly.’ Daniel pointed to the thistles that grew along the path. ‘That’s what they eat.’

  ‘Your mom should paint it,’ Beth said. ‘I’m going to say it to her.’

  Up ahead, Gemma and Chris had walked on, unaware of our stoppage.

  The grass was long and it caught at our feet. The river wound its way alongside us. A family of ducks floated past. My mother’s laughter drifted back to us.

  ‘Where exactly are we going?’ Beth’s mood had improved only slightly by the time we had caught up with the adults. ‘Why are we walking so far?’

  ‘We’re exploring, baby girl.’ Chris didn’t turn around to answer her. He used the stick to point out things to my mother. They kept pace up ahead, but there was no hurry in their steps, no sense of urgency. Gemma stopped every so often to photograph something. We trailed behind again, Daniel stopping to examine various insects.

  ‘I wish he’d stop calling me that,’ Beth muttered.

  ‘Why?’ Daniel held his hand aloft, a fat green caterpillar inching its way across his outstretched palm. The bones of Daniel’s shoulders were visible under the tight stretch of his skin. His back was beginning to redden under the white heat of the sun.

  ‘Because I’m going to be thirteen.’

  ‘But not for ages,’ Daniel pointed out.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. I’m not a baby.’

  ‘I don’t think he means that you’re actually a baby,’ I offered.

  ‘So what? It’s just stupid. He doesn’t listen to me and I’m always telling him.’

  Daniel blew on the caterpillar, but it didn’t budge. ‘You’re lucky to have a father. And he’s nice.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  Daniel plucked a leaf from an overhanging tree and placed it beside the caterpillar. ‘But he is. He’s always in a good mood and he’s nice to all of us.’ Daniel didn’t look at Beth once the whole time he spoke to her, his eyes only on the
fat green grub on his palm.

  Beth’s hands pulled at the long grass that grew alongside where we walked. She was barefoot. Like my mother, Beth had painted toenails.

  ‘Where’s your father?’ she asked Daniel.

  I looked at my best friend, absorbed by his latest creature. Daniel’s father was a closed book. He was not spoken about or referred to. When he forgot to come home, Mrs Sullivan had given him lots of chances to remember, but slowly, over time, he had been erased from their family. They didn’t speak of him or wonder any more where he was. It was as though he no longer existed, and I supposed, for his family, he no longer did. Birthdays came and went, Christmases too, and Mr Sullivan missed them all. He had missed school concerts, holidays, Communions, all the things that go into the fabric of family life. My own father had missed everything too, but he had never been around to begin with, so his absence had made no difference to my life. But I knew that Daniel missed having a father, and his fierce loyalty to his mother made it even more difficult for him. I know he had forgotten to come home one day after work, but I had heard other things too, whispered conversations that spoke of another family, of England. Another child. A brother or a sister that Daniel would never meet. But Daniel never breathed a word about it and I didn’t have the words to ask him.

  ‘Gone,’ he said and flicked the caterpillar off his hand.

  ‘Gone where?’

  I cut across Beth and her questions. ‘Let’s catch up with the adults again. They’re going to leave us completely behind.’

  She silenced me with a raised finger. ‘Where’d he go, Daniel?’

  ‘It’s none of your business,’ I warned.

  Beth placed her hands on her hips. ‘Why isn’t it? I’m his friend too. I just want to know.’

  ‘He went to work one day and he forgot to come home. That’s all.’ Daniel started to walk on. But Beth followed him, ignoring all the signs that were in evidence that Daniel didn’t want to talk about his father.

  ‘That’s stupid. You can’t just forget to come home. Who forgets to come home? He’s an adult, isn’t he?’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘Why not? It’s the only way you’ll find out what happened.’

  Daniel stopped. He turned to face Beth. The sun shone down directly over us. The silence poured itself into all the spaces around us as Daniel glared at Beth. The family of ducks quacked on the river, a dragonfly alighted on a branch beside us, but Daniel didn’t pay any of these the slightest bit of notice.

  ‘Why do you want to know? What difference will it make to you?’

  It was the first time I saw Beth falter. ‘I just thought that – ’

  ‘That you’d be nosy? That you’d ask me about something I don’t want to talk about? What’s wrong with you, Beth?’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with me.’

  ‘Then lay off me.’

  Beth stomped her foot on the dusty trail. ‘You people! You’re so silent about everything. No one says anything about anything. Look at the two of you. No fathers, and you don’t know anything about them. What’s wrong with asking? How else will you find out? What are you afraid of ?’

  Maybe fear had something to do with it. We weren’t a silent family, but maybe Beth was right. The one thing we didn’t talk about was my father. It wasn’t that he was banned as a topic of conversation; we just didn’t discuss him. There wasn’t really anything to say. But what if I was afraid? And if I was, what form did my fear take?

  We walked on in silence. I wanted to say something, to break up the lines of tension that had wound themselves around us. I wished the Americans had never come to live with us. There would be no worrying about my mother. I could be on my own with Daniel without anyone else crowding us. Then I remembered how much I liked having Beth around too, how nice it was to have a girl that I could see every day. Then I felt guilty again about Daniel. I should have defended him more ardently, told Beth to stay quiet, but underneath it all there had been my own curiosity, all the questions I wanted to ask Daniel but never felt I could.

  Up ahead, Gemma and Chris had stopped. They weren’t looking at us and instead faced the river, where Gemma was pointing something out to Chris. She had uncapped the lens on her camera again, was aiming at something on the water. Possibly the light. Gemma loved light and always reminded me how important it was, how much it affected us in ways we couldn’t begin to understand. Gemma had two lenses, a close-up one for portraits and a wide-angle lens for scenery. She carried them in a special bag, along with rolls of film in canisters. She kept her pictures in albums in the attic, along with the photos Felipe had taken. The ghosts kept watch over them.

  When we were almost beside them, Gemma held up her hand. ‘Hold it there, the three of you. Now smile!’ The click was audible in the summer hush. Two kingfishers flew by at great speed. Daniel immediately broke free of our grouping and ran to the river’s edge. Gemma turned her lens on Chris. ‘Your turn!’ Another click, then the whirring of the camera as it wound the film on.

  

  ‘Why the long faces?’ Gemma whispered to me, as Beth and Chris followed Daniel.

  I shook my head. ‘Nothing much. Beth asked Daniel about his dad, that’s all.’

  ‘Oh God. What did he say?’

  ‘Nothing. Told her to lay off.’

  Gemma sighed. ‘She shouldn’t ask him. It’s not fair.’

  I looked up at my mother, but she had put her camera to her eye again, was training the lens on the trio on the riverbank. Daniel and Chris stood in the river, up to their ankles. Daniel swished his net around the water, Chris pointed things out to him. Beth sat on the grassy bank, plaiting daisies into a chain.

  ‘Why isn’t it fair?’

  ‘Because there’s nothing Daniel can say about it, is there?’

  ‘What about my father?’

  The question fell into the space between us.

  Gemma kept the camera in her hands, her gaze on the river, but I knew she wasn’t thinking about the scene in front of us. Seconds ticked by. Birdsong blended with the vague babble of water. Off somewhere in the distance, an engine chugged. A tractor, maybe, or a country bus.

  Gemma blinked, but she didn’t move. Then she looked down at me, smiled, turned her attention to the lens cap.

  ‘Well?’ I sounded braver than I felt.

  Gemma cupped my cheek with her hand. ‘I suppose I’ve been waiting for this, but you’ve taken me by surprise, I have to say.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. Really.’

  ‘No, of course it matters. You have a right to know.’

  ‘Beth asked me about him before. She thought Jim was him.’

  ‘Jim?’ Gemma laughed so hard that I thought she was going to choke. ‘God, no.’

  ‘He’s really nice.’ I felt compelled to defend him against my mother’s mirth.

  ‘Jim is lovely, but he’s not your father.’ Gemma touched her fingers to the corners of her eyes. ‘He’s definitely not your father.’

  ‘Who is?’

  Gemma quietened, her laughter subsided. ‘I’ll tell you properly another time.’ Something in my face must have caught her, because she put her arm around me and drew me in to her side. ‘I will, my love. I promise you. I’ll tell you all about him, but not now. It’s not the time and it’s definitely not the place.’ She kissed the top of my head, then knelt down in front of me. I was taller than her when she did that. ‘Look how big you’re getting! I forget sometimes that you’re not a baby any more.’

  ‘Beth hates when Chris calls her a baby girl.’

  ‘Does she? I think it’s nice. It doesn’t mean she’s a baby, it means she’s his baby.’

  ‘That’s what Daniel said.’

  ‘And he’s right. It’s just an expression. Beth’s not in a good mood today, is she?’

  We looked at Beth, sitting apart from Chris and Daniel, picking and shredding wildflowers, her daisy chain on her head like a crown.

  ‘No,
she’s not.’

  ‘Is all this over Stevie?’ Gemma laughed. ‘I hope I don’t have the same problems with you when you’re twelve!’

  I was appalled. ‘That’s disgusting. Stevie’s disgusting.’

  My mother shushed me. ‘No, he’s not. He’s just a boy. He’s annoying, but he’s not disgusting.’

  I didn’t like to hear my mother defend Stevie. ‘He is.’

  ‘He’s Daniel’s brother. You wouldn’t like to hear anyone saying Daniel is disgusting, would you?’

  A thread had escaped the embroidery on the front of Gemma’s blouse. I pulled on it. ‘I’d hate it.’

  ‘There you go. See? He’s a little dote. A good boy.’

  ‘You know he’s not really that holy, don’t you?’

  ‘I know. It’s his mum. And that’s fine too. She’s a good person.’

  ‘Even with all the prayers?’

  ‘Even with them. She’s had a difficult time.’ Gemma shook her head. ‘All those kids and your man gone. I’d kill him.’

  ‘Did he really forget to come home?’

  My mother smoothed my hair with her hand. ‘They never do. Sometimes men just leave.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because they can.’

  More questions bubbled on my tongue, curiosity driving them on, but Chris called to us and we were compelled to go to him, to look at the tiny frog Daniel had found. I needed to ask Gemma about my father again, about the line of tango dancers and the photographs from old newspapers. The poster of Che. The tin miners and los saleros . Los Desaparecidos. But the moment was gone, replaced by something else.

  A small frog sat squat on the back of Daniel’s hand. Chris called us again, pointing at the tiny creature. Even Beth was interested, and we were drawn back into the weave of conversation. Chris winked at my mother over our heads. She smiled, looked away, distracted herself with the camera around her neck. Her smile was secret, meant to be hidden, but I saw it. Don’t smile for him, I wanted to say. Don’t be anything but his friend. But I couldn’t say a word because saying such things out loud would be to make them true and then it would all be my fault. Better to keep them unsaid, unspoken. That way, there is always the possibility that nothing will happen. Despite how Beth scorned us for keeping things out of view, I understood why it had to be done. If we all started talking about Mr Sullivan, then it would be true that he had abandoned his family and his home for other people, another place. If he was simply the victim of memory loss, on the other hand, there was always the possibility that he would come back.