Night Swimming

by Doreen Finn

  34

  The pool opened up the nights to us. We were proper night swimmers, the four of us. I had no Sarah to be conscious of, who would be alert to my nocturnal comings and goings. Gemma took to painting in the evenings, after I’d gone to bed, bringing her paints back up to the attic as I made my way upstairs. For those nights, I made no effort to stay up past my bedtime, did not wheedle my mother for extra time in the garden. If Gemma noticed, she said nothing.

  It was funny how quickly we adjusted to the new routine: bed, stones at the window sometime after midnight, swimsuit, garden. Daniel and Stevie were usually in the pool when we arrived, and we slid into the water with an urgency that felt as though everything depended on it. Which in a way, it did. We didn’t know it then, but it was a way for each of us to make a mark outside the confines of childhood, a means of reaching forward and doing what we wanted rather than what was expected of us.

  We didn’t spend the whole time swimming, though; we often sat with our feet dangling in the night-cool water, as the darkened garden of the empty house held us in its shadows. The trees and shrubs were all overgrown, the garden itself tatty and in need of care. For us, though, it was the perfect place to be invisible, away from the protective gaze of the adults.

  ‘Look!’ Beth said, standing at the edge of the pool, her toes curled under. ‘Watch me.’ She executed a perfect dive, making only the slightest sound as her body sliced through the water. She surfaced, her hair plastered to her skull. Wiping the water from her face with both hands she grinned up at us.

  One by one, she instructed us in the technique of diving. Stevie, eager to be good at everything in Beth’s presence, did it over and over again, Beth’s praise making him smile more broadly than I’d ever seen him do.

  Diving made me nervous; sometimes it still does. Conjuring all sorts of images of bashing myself off the bottom of the pool made me reluctant to let go and dive in. Daniel suffered no such worries; he sprang into the lightless water, sometimes graceful, other times clumsy as a toddler. But it was Beth and Stevie who took everything to new heights, new levels of accomplishment and competition. Up to that time I hadn’t realised Stevie’s prowess as a swimmer, his strength. He and Beth vied to outdo each other constantly with back flips, airborne somersaults, complicated dives. Daniel and I eventually lost interest in their struggle to come out on top. We retired to the edges, contenting ourselves with holding our breath underwater, counting to ten, fifteen, twenty, before exploding like salmon to the surface, drawing air deep into our lungs as though our very lives depended on it. We touched the bottom of the pool, first with our toes, then with our fingers, picking up pebbles that had settled there. There was never enough time, and the telltale line of dawn on the horizon each morning was a disappointment that was hard to quell. Maybe the finite nature of swimming at night made it more precious, more difficult to let go. It was with reluctance that we dragged ourselves out of the water at dawn and back to bed. Wet hair, wet swimsuits, a trail of wet footprints, glinting like silver, that dried in our wake.

  35

  And what of my mother? With what did she occupy those nights?

  The first night, she slept. Putting my eye to the crack in her bedroom door, she was a dark huddle in her bed, her hair spread across her pillow in both directions. Gemma preferred to sleep with the shutters open in summer. Shadows thronged her room. Beyond the sash window, the sodium streetlights were orange lozenges that burned and crackled in the hush.

  The second night, or rather, third morning, as we returned from our swim, I hesitated before creeping back into the garden. Peach light edged the darkness. Beth behind me, impatient with my dawdling. Hurry up, Megan, I’m getting cold. What’s the matter?

  There was no need to worry. Nobody occupied the striped deckchairs. The record player, its lid closed, sat squat on the patio. Leaving my wet swimsuit on the bedroom floor, I pulled my dry pyjamas on, my damp skin making the fabric stick. As I tugged, I heard a noise from upstairs. The attic? For a second I thought of ghosts, but ghosts don’t talk, not even in soft voices, and they don’t laugh either.

  Gemma’s room was empty. Carefully, quietly, I crept up the stairs to the attic. The door was closed, but there was enough of a gap under the door to let sound out. Lying down, I manoeuvred my head into a position that allowed me to look under the door. There was enough light from the dawn to allow me to make out shadows, then, as my eyes adjusted, for the shadows to take form. I saw two pairs of bare feet, side by side. Gemma and Chris were sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall. I couldn’t see more of them than their feet and their legs, but I could hear Chris’s voice, soft and slow. It was definitely him. Their legs were touching, all the way from their hips down. Chris’s legs were longer than Gemma’s, her ankles reaching a point above his. No matter what way I contorted myself, I couldn’t see anything else. They weren’t speaking about anything in particular, just a general swoop and fall to their voices. They were talking not to be heard. By me.

  Chris was the first to move. His words not as soft. ‘Christ, I have to go. The time! I’ve a meeting at eleven. I need to get a few hours’ sleep. You do too.’

  ‘When do you actually start teaching?’

  Feet slipped into flip-flops. ‘Late September. This is all just prelim stuff, summer classes, that sort of thing. No pressure.’

  Like a serpent, I slid down the stairs and back to my bed. Chris and Gemma were almost silent in their descent. The door to Gemma’s room closed over, a chink of new light falling through the gap.

  

  The third night was more complicated. Gemma and Chris were still sitting outside when we wanted to go swimming, trapping Beth indoors. Climbing on a chair, I took the key to the door to the basement off its hook and slotted it into the lock. It turned with an audible click. Carefully, I opened the door to the staircase that led downstairs.

  Halfway down, I whispered Beth’s name. No response. ‘Beth!’ Slightly louder this time. She heard me and crept on bare feet over the tiled hall floor to where I stood in the shadows.

  ‘What are you doing there?’ She climbed the stairs behind me. I closed the door after us. In the kitchen, she stopped. ‘How did you know I couldn’t get out?’

  ‘I saw them outside.’

  ‘Jeez, I couldn’t believe it. How can we go to the pool now? They’ll see us for sure.’

  The deck was attached to the wall that separated our garden from Daniel’s. Potentially, we could get on the wall and drop over into the Sullivans’ garden. But we’d have to be extra careful because the wall was higher at that point than further down.

  We tried it and, other than Beth landing awkwardly on her ankle, it worked just fine. On our return, Gemma and Chris were no longer outside and we were able to sneak back to our beds.

  The following morning, though, disaster almost struck. Gemma was in the kitchen when I finally woke up.

  ‘You’re up late.’ She wasn’t annoyed, but she knew I’d been up to no good.

  How could she have known about the night swimming? All sorts of possibilities ran through my mind: she had seen Beth and me clambering over the wall, despite the care we took not to be discovered. Someone had seen the swimming pool. We’d been heard while night swimming. All that splashing and diving had to have created some level of noise.

  ‘What time is it?’ I asked.

  ‘Almost ten.’

  It wasn’t that late. The way my mother had said it, I thought it might have been lunchtime.

  ‘Megan, have you been using those stairs?’ With a thrust of her chin, she indicated the door to the basement and the staircase behind it.

  I froze.

  ‘What did Sarah say about keeping that door locked?’

  I shrugged.

  ‘Don’t shrug at me, Megan. You’re not Beth and I’m not Judith. I won’t put up with that kind of disrespect. What were you told about using that door?’

  ‘Not to use it.’ I made no effort to keep the sullen e
dge out of my voice.

  ‘Exactly. Those people are paying us to live there. They deserve their privacy and they will have it. Do you know what I saw when I got up this morning?’ She didn’t wait for me to answer. ‘The key in the door. I can only assume you were opening the door for some reason, unless there’s another explanation that I can’t possibly imagine.’

  A wasp buzzed behind Gemma. She swatted at it without turning around.

  ‘Well?’

  I picked at a scab on the back of my hand from where I’d grazed it climbing over the wall a few days before. ‘I wasn’t doing anything,’ I said, not looking at my mother.

  ‘Then what was the key doing in the lock?’

  ‘I just wanted to see if it still fitted.’ It sounded ridiculous, even to my ears, but Gemma wasn’t going to let it go and there wasn’t anything else I could come up with. Thinking under pressure made me nervous, particularly if what I was saying wasn’t the truth.

  To my surprise, my mother seemed to accept this. ‘Stay away from the door. Our lodgers deserve their privacy. No, they’re entitled to it. Do you understand me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good. Now, what will you have for breakfast?’ Gemma turned to get me a bowl and a spoon.

  I should have asked her why she was always hanging around Chris if the Americans were so entitled to their privacy. But of course I didn’t dare. There are things that sound great when unspoken, but the minute the words are uttered they come out wrong and end up causing far more trouble than was ever intended. Part of me wanted to shout at my mother for being such a hypocrite, but there was no one to back me up. So I let it go.

  36

  That night, it was just Beth and me. The boys had an aunt staying for a couple of days and they didn’t want to risk waking her as well as their mother.

  It was nice to swim without them because there was no competition, no need to be the best at diving or holding your breath or jumping or anything else that could have a competitive edge added. Beth floated on her back, her hair billowed on the water. I tumbled in the pool, did handstands, walked on my hands. Without Stevie telling me he could do it all better, faster, longer, I took my time.

  ‘Not bad,’ Beth said, moving her hands and feet. She was a starfish on the pool’s surface. ‘You’re strong.’

  Pride blossomed inside me.

  ‘My dad always says swimming – ’

  ‘Teaches you endurance,’ I finished for her. ‘I know. You said it the day we went to the river.’

  ‘I never really knew what he meant by that when I was little,’ Beth continued. ‘But then one day we got caught in a pretty strong current at the beach in Brooklyn and we had to swim really hard to get back to the shore. I had to get on his back, but he managed to get us both to safety. I remember watching the muscles in his back working, and thinking how strong he was.’

  A cat ran along the garden wall and jumped silently down. We watched it pad past, ignoring us. It disappeared into the long grass, only the tip of its tail visible above the overgrown lawn.

  ‘I want a cat,’ sighed Beth. ‘My mom won’t let me have one in New York because she says our apartment’s too hot and too cramped for an animal. Maybe we can get one while we’re here.’

  For a while we were quiet. The only sound came from the water splashing against the sides of the pool as we swam haphazard lengths. It was only when dawn made its telltale appearance in the eastern sky – that almost imperceptible lightening that could be easy to ignore if we were under no pressure to get back to bed for fear of being discovered – that Beth spoke. We were sitting at the edge of the pool by then, watching our feet swish through the tepid black water, leaving mini whirlpools in their wake.

  ‘So, you know that if my dad and your mom get married that we’ll be sisters.’

  It was a statement, not a question, and yet I sensed Beth required some reaction. I turned to her. Her face, in profile, was unreadable. She reached down and plucked a leaf from the water, and twirled it on its stalk between her finger and thumb.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  She flicked the leaf back into the pool and it floated on the water. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Who said they’re getting married?’ It was too much of a leap, surely.

  ‘Jesus, Megan. Wake up.’ She sounded like Stevie, all impatience and superiority. ‘When are you going to actually open your eyes and see what’s going on?’

  ‘What’s going on?’

  Beth clicked her tongue. Standing up, she made a rope of her hair and squeezed it. Water splashed around her feet. ‘Your mother is making a fool of my mother. That’s what’s going on. She doesn’t seem to mind that my father has a family. She stands there, all helpless and lonely, and he falls for it.’

  Scrambling to my feet, I pushed Beth. ‘My mother doesn’t do anything of the sort.’ My voice, louder than I’d meant it to be, was amplified by the quiet garden, by the overgrowth that sheltered our secret swimming pool.

  Beth put her hands on my shoulders and pushed me back. ‘Bullshit. She does. She’s all oh help me, I’m so quiet and artistic, I’m so lonely and good, I’m so cool and talented.’ Beth made her voice go high and silly. Mocking Gemma.

  ‘Fuck off, Beth.’ Fury tightened my jaw, clenched my teeth so that my speech was low, unrecognisable.

  ‘You fuck off,’ she shrieked. ‘Your mom’s a whore, that’s what she is.’

  ‘Go and fuck right off and leave us all alone!’

  I shoved her again and she fell into the pool. There was no time to assess the risk of making noise, and the splash she made was huge, magnified in the stillness.

  Beth didn’t surface immediately. I hoped she had drowned. This was quickly replaced by fear that she had indeed drowned, which was assuaged when her head emerged, followed by her shoulders. She had swum underwater to the far end of the pool.

  ‘Bitch!’ she spluttered. ‘You bitch!’

  Satisfied that Beth was still alive, I stalked off. Back inside my own garden, I locked the door in the wall. Let Beth climb over if she had to. I didn’t care.

  37

  For two days I ignored Beth. Without Sarah to question the reason behind our estrangement, I was able to blithely go about my business without curious glances or questions from anyone. If Gemma noticed, she said nothing, but Gemma didn’t seem to notice much those days. She did all the usual duties of care – the cooking, the laundry, the chatting to me – but behind it all I sensed that my mother was merely passing time until she could be alone with Chris again.

  Beth had been right, loath though I was to acknowledge it. I may have been nine years of age, nearly ten, but it was blindingly clear to me, finally, that something big was happening between my mother and Chris. Probably, I had known all along, at some level, but it is a big thing for a child to accept. I was being usurped, my place at the unquestioned centre of my mother’s universe expanding to fit someone else. A man. Chris Jackson.

  Without Beth, I went back to observing. I noticed Judith for the first time in days. Beth had said she’d been unwell, a cold or a sore throat. Something like that. Judith had waved up at me from the patio, where she was chopping vegetables on a small folding table. She caught me watching her from the safety of the deck.

  ‘Hello, sweetie,’ she called.

  I waved down.

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘I’m fine, thanks.’

  ‘Good! I’ve baked some bread. Would you like to take some?’

  I took the stairs two at a time. Everything that was baked in Judith’s oven was delicious.

  The bread was warm and yeasty, crumbling in the tea towel in which it had been carefully wrapped before Judith placed it in a small basket. I checked Judith for signs of drinking wine through a straw straight from the bottle, but there was no way to tell. Responsibility weighed on me, then resentment. This was my mother’s doing, not mine.

  

  Daniel and I played together. His aunt helped him put up sh
elves in his room and we stacked his treasures for display. Snail shells, a dried-out starfish we found on the beach in Sandycove one day in early June, myriad feathers. A snake skin he’d picked up in the reptile house at the zoo. A robin’s skeleton, white and brittle. Birds’ eggs, an ostrich feather, a butterfly’s wing.

  We went on another cycle, took the path by the canal in the opposite direction and ended up along the docks by the old mills. The stench of the river and the menace of those derelict backstreets sent us scarpering back to the relative safety of the canal banks.

  Daniel and I were playing Monopoly on the deck later on that afternoon. Beth had gone somewhere with Stevie. Daniel had just landed on my most expensive street when a glass broke downstairs. Then another. Our game forgotten, we looked at each other.

  Judith’s voice rang out. ‘You absolute bastard! I cannot believe this is happening again. Again! All this uprooting of our daughter, all this resettling into a new place, and you do it all over again. We may as well be back in Manhattan for all the difference it’s made.’

  ‘You’re overreacting, honey bun.’

  ‘Don’t call me that! And I’m not overreacting to anything. I’m absolutely correct.’

  ‘You’re letting your imagination run away with you, as usual. I’m not up to anything.’

  ‘Chris, stop. You must think I’m stupid. Or blind.’

  ‘I don’t think any such thing, Judy. I’m just saying that you’re reading too much into things. A few late nights, a glass or two of wine, and suddenly you’re throwing plates at me.’