Night Swimming

by Doreen Finn

  And the Americans. What can I say about them?

  Judith emerged, stronger and more determined than she had been before. The woman who had told my mother to leave her husband alone made a decision. I heard her one day, talking to Chris. I was watering the pots on the deck, using dishwater siphoned from the basin in the sink.

  ‘We’re leaving. Beth and I. We’re going home.’ No emotion, nothing. Just a flat statement.

  ‘I can’t go.’

  ‘That’s the point. You can stay here. But we’re going.’

  Chris said something I couldn’t catch. Judith snorted, derision making her voice edgy.

  ‘For fuck’s sake! Are you insane? No, wait, you are. You’re absolutely insane.’

  There was steel in Chris’s voice. ‘I’m not.’

  ‘You’re right. You’re not insane. I am. I must be, to have put up with you for all these years. My God.’ Judith laughed, only it didn’t sound like proper laughter. ‘My God, I uprooted our daughter, took her away from her life back home, so that we could maybe start over, and what do you do?’ I imagined Judith throwing her hands up, shaking her head. ‘You do it all again. And with that poor girl, too. You had no right, Chris. You had no right.’

  Did she mean Gemma? Was that who the poor girl was? Why would anyone describe Gemma thus? My mother was at that moment, while I stood in the sunshine watering plants, on her way into Kildare Street, to put her name down for two years of study. She had put on her denim dress after breakfast, the one she’d bought in the Dandelion, brushed her hair till her arm ached, strapped on her red sandals and left in a flurry, nervousness making her jittery. She’d put on her silver bracelets, her earrings, but she wore them in a distracted way, as though they were no more important to her than the dress or shoes. She was doing the right thing by going back to college, I knew it. Nothing much would change with Gemma studying. She might be around less, but Sarah and I would be waiting for her when she came home. No, Judith couldn’t have been talking about my mother. Was there someone else Chris had been night swimming with?

  ‘I think I love her.’

  Judith laughed, a mirthless snort. ‘Love? Please! You don’t love her. You don’t love anyone but yourself.’

  ‘No, that’s just how you see me.’

  Judith’s voice dropped, but I heard her anyway. ‘Go fuck yourself.’

  They moved away, further into the house. A vague murmur of voices, a door closing.

  Footsteps behind me. A swing of white hair. Beth. She eased herself into the space beside me, held up a hand in greeting.

  ‘How’ve you been?’ she asked.

  I shrugged.

  She sighed. ‘I know. I’m the same. I know he was your friend all your life, but I really liked him too.’ She put her chin on her knees, wrapped her arms around her legs. ‘He was so nice and I miss him.’

  I didn’t want to talk about Daniel. I really, really didn’t want to talk about Daniel. My thoughts whirled, dervishes in my addled mind, and I was exhausted. It was bad enough thinking about him all the time. Talking about him only added to it.

  ‘Have you seen my mom?’

  I lied. ‘No.’

  42

  Judith and Beth were moving home. Judith wanted to go to New Mexico, where her parents still lived, but Beth put her foot down. New York or Dublin. End of story.

  ‘I know what I’d have said if she gave me that choice,’ Sarah said to Judith over a cup of tea in the garden. They didn’t seem to know Beth and I were on the deck above them. The tops of their heads were visible, circles above the circle of the table they sat at. They reminded me of draughts on a board.

  ‘I know, but this is a big thing and I need her to feel that at least one of us is considering her needs.’

  A glance at Beth, but she was absorbed by the jigsaw we were piecing together and didn’t appear to hear a word of the conversation below us. The puzzle was a difficult one that Sarah had unearthed earlier in the attic. Two thousand pieces and a map of Europe. Now that Gemma was going back to study, the attic would be used by all of us again. It would still be Gemma’s, but Sarah and I had each claimed some space for our things. Change was afoot. Judith and Sarah had started walking, a routine they had established in the aftermath of Daniel’s accident. Maybe it would have started anyway, but each evening my grandmother and Beth’s mother took to walking for an hour. The evenings were shrinking perceptibly, that slow darkening of the summer skies happening earlier and earlier. The heatwave lingered, but less so.

  ‘Chris will have to find somewhere else to live, you know that, don’t you?’ Sarah placed her cup carefully back in its saucer. ‘It wouldn’t be right for him to stay on here. I’ll find someone else to rent to.’

  ‘Of course he’ll have to find someplace else. That’s his problem. Not that it should be too big an issue for him; he knows enough people here to help him.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘He’s not a bad man, you know?’

  ‘Hmm?’ Sarah said, looking incredulous.

  ‘No, he’s not. He’s just selfish.’ A short laugh. ‘Seduced by his own beauty.’ A pause. ‘I’ll miss you, Sarah, you know that?’

  ‘And I’ll miss you. I really will.’ She put her hand on Judith’s arm. Judith covered Sarah’s hand with her own and they stayed that way until Judith began to clear away the tea things and they both went indoors, Judith promising to show Sarah some cookbooks she could keep if she liked.

  It was that time of day, with the last light before the sun goes down falling on our faces and arms, making our skin look as though it were on fire. With Judith and Sarah’s conversation at an end, I returned my attention to the activity in front of me.

  Mid jigsaw, Beth announced that she wanted to watch television. ‘Are you coming?’

  I slotted a particularly tricky piece into its groove. ‘In a minute.’ A segment fell to the ground and I picked it up. Part of Czechoslovakia. Near Romania, where Nadia was from. Another country behind the Iron Curtain. I pondered the Curtain, as I frequently did, and all those lives lived behind it, under the control of someone else. Invisible power. The most dangerous kind. Were their lives lived in colour, or was everything black and white?

  Gemma cut across my contemplation of secrecy. ‘How are you getting on with that?’ She stood, framed by the doorway. A strand of bougainvillea drooped over the wooden railing and she pulled at it. Despite the dwindling summer, the interminable heat, the plant showed no sign of fading. In fact, it was positively robust, in full perfect bloom.

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Where’s Beth?’

  ‘Gone in to put on the telly.’ The border between East and West Germany was a heavy black line. East was pink on the map, West green. I rummaged for Checkpoint Charlie in the box. Shouldn’t that have been on the map too? Maybe there wasn’t space.

  Gemma nodded towards the house. ‘You should go in with her.’ I knew my mother wanted me to have company, was worried that I’d be lonely. Gemma knew loneliness, had walked its crooked paths and winding ways. She didn’t want that for me, but she needn’t have worried.

  ‘I will in a minute. I’m just finishing this part.’

  

  The potted plants partially obscured me. Chris and Gemma must have assumed I had gone indoors. They sat on the wooden stairs, Gemma one step above Chris. Gemma leaned back on her elbows, her hair fanned on her shoulders. In the pumpkin-coloured light, her white top was orange, her tanned skin the colour of almonds.

  Chris turned around to face my mother. ‘It could have worked, you know.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she said, her voice sharp.

  ‘I’m not,’ he replied, sounding sulky now, like a small boy.

  ‘Chris, your wife is leaving you and taking your daughter with her.’

  ‘But you and I could still be together. Couldn’t we?’

  ‘No. It’s too much, all of it.’

  ‘Please, Gemma. That’s not fair.’

  Gem
ma’s hand on his arm. The tinkle of her silver bangles. The softening of her voice. ‘No. It’s too huge, too much. I can’t tell you that I’ll do what you want or be who you’d like me to be. I have a child, and she comes first.’

  My spirits lifted when she said that, and I knew everything would be all right. I would get through this blackness I’d been stuck in since Daniel’s death, everything slowed to a crawl. Sometimes, it felt like I was wading through water, wanting to go faster but not being able. My mother understood. She would carry me through.

  ‘I still don’t see why we can’t just be together. It’s not as though no one knows about us now.’

  Gemma’s voice like a knife. ‘No one knows about us. Besides Judith, no one knows, and that’s how I want it to stay.’

  ‘Why?’

  A slow shake of her head, her hair moving on her shoulders. ‘Because, Chris, it’s just too much. It’s all wrong, everything.’ Gemma flung her arm wide. ‘The timing, the place. I live with my mother , for God’s sake! Megan comes first, and she has to. I’m all she has.’

  ‘What about her father?’

  ‘Stop it. Stop it this minute.’

  ‘But you’re perfect for me.’

  Gemma turned to face him. Her unblemished profile, outlined by the dying sunlight. Chris touched his fingers to her mouth. She caught his wrist, held it, rubbed his hand against her cheek, then twisted away.

  Chris, his fingers under her chin, tried to turn her face to his again. Gemma resisted. ‘Look at me. Please, Gemma. Just look at me.’

  She acquiesced, but reluctantly.

  Chris moved his fingers to her hair, winding a strand into a corkscrew. ‘This is what I want to remember. Okay? If we can’t take it further, then I want to be able to have moments like this to think about.’

  ‘What, when you’re old and grey and feeble, you mean?’ But I heard humour in her voice, saw a smile lift the edges of her mouth.

  He laughed, elbowed my mother, put his hand on her hair again. ‘You’re great. And I’ll miss you more than you will ever know, believe me.’

  ‘I’ll miss you too.’

  ‘You’re right for me.’

  ‘I’m not. I’m not the right person for anyone, except maybe my child.’

  ‘Children grow. They grow up and then they leave.’

  ‘Which is why we have to take care of them while they’re with us. I don’t want Megan to turn around in twenty years and think that I didn’t do everything I could for her. You’re the same as regards Beth.’

  Chris looked ahead. ‘I know.’

  Gemma shook her head. ‘Then don’t say you’ll abandon her for me. I couldn’t live with that and you couldn’t either, no matter how you feel right now.’

  Chris threw his head back and laughed. ‘My God. The martyrdom!’ But his laughter held no mirth. ‘The Irish martyrdom.’

  Gemma stood up. ‘Don’t be such a child.’

  Chris got to his feet too. He reached out and pinched Gemma’s cheek. ‘Let’s not fight. I don’t want any more fighting. I’ve enough of that in my own life.’

  Gemma caught his hand, threaded her fingers through his, touched her lips to his knuckles. Neither of them spoke for a moment.

  ‘I’m in love with you.’

  Gemma looked down, didn’t let go of his hand. ‘Please. Please don’t.’

  ‘But it’s true. And if you’re honest, you’ll say the same thing.’

  ‘Maybe, but I can’t.’

  ‘You’re perfect for me.’

  ‘But our timing couldn’t be worse. Really, Chris.’

  ‘But this doesn’t just happen. In life, this isn’t something we run into many times.’

  ‘I can’t. I’m sorry, but I can’t.’

  ‘Timing? Is it just about timing? Really?’

  Gemma dragged her hands down her face, exhaling as she did so. ‘Isn’t everything?’ And I knew she wasn’t just talking about Chris. She meant something else entirely, but she let Chris think that it was just about him.

  Chris shook his head. ‘What’s that they always say? The right person at the wrong time is the wrong person.’

  ‘I haven’t heard that one before, but there’s a lot of truth in it.’

  ‘Will you think about it? Just think about it?’

  Beth appeared at the kitchen door. ‘Megan, are you coming in?’ She spotted Chris at the foot of the stairs. ‘Oh, hi, Daddy!’

  Chris twisted his torso around to look up the steps. ‘Hey, baby girl. What y’all up to?’ A wave at me. ‘Hey there, Megan.’

  ‘Nothing much.’ Beth turned to me. ‘Are you coming?’

  Gemma stood, advanced towards where I sat, obscured by plants. She held her hands out to me, supplicant. ‘Have you been here long, Megan?’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘Did you hear me talking to Chris?’

  ‘You weren’t whispering, were you.’

  She looked back at him, then put her hand on my face. ‘We’ll talk about this another time, okay sweetheart? For now, go inside with Beth. She’ll be gone soon and you’ll have all the time you need for jigsaws.’

  Reluctantly, I put down the piece of puzzle I was holding. The geraniums in the pots glowed so brightly in the fading light that they looked as though they might burst into flames at any minute. A pig squealed over the wall. Sarah said that the piggery was going to close soon. Too many complaints. About the noise, the stench. Their owner had told Sarah he was going to keep hens instead, and sell eggs. A cleaner business altogether, he’d said. Equally noisy, though, Sarah said. The following summer, with no heatwave, we would hear the clucking of hens, their early morning squawks, see their feathers blown on the wind. By then, my mother would be finished her year of study and would be readying herself for the next.

  But that was all a long way off. When you’re nine, six months is an eternity, a year even more so. Slowly. Change was better when it happened slowly.

  I followed Beth indoors, leaving my mother with Chris. With one last look back I saw the last of the sunlight slip over the garden, coating everything in its tangerine light.

  My mother and Chris stayed outside, until eventually I forgot they were there. Beth and I sat on the couch with the television on and the lights off. The programme we watched filled in the gaps in the silence for us. I was too tired to speak. Events had hollowed me out, and the peace and quiet that came with watching people compete in team games while wearing foam suits was enough. We even laughed, quite a bit as it turned out, and it was strange to hear our laughter in the quiet house. It pushed some of the shadows back into the darkness, allowed me to imagine, just for a moment, the possibility of moving forward.

  It wasn’t much, to be honest, but it was something. A start.

  43

  Before Gemma resumed her studies, she and I were in the attic, clearing out some of her things. Already, it was more organised. After fixing the old bookshelves, Jim had put up several more long shelves and a bookcase at Sarah’s request, and had painted the attic walls and ceiling.

  The new shelving was a marvel, row upon row of plain wood running the entire length and breadth of the walls, which Gemma had stained in various colour washes. On it, we stacked boxes of paints and brushes, blocks of paper, baskets of inks, pastels, pencils. Carefully, we placed art books, huge tomes, spines straight, dust jackets immaculate. Gemma’s artwork went in special boxes, her current pieces stacked neatly on her huge table. As we worked, a record whirled on the player. John Lennon. A parting gift from Chris before he moved out. He had taken his records with him. I wouldn’t miss them – The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd – all the noise of rock and roll and the summer.

  Judith and Beth were leaving soon. Going back to New York in time for school to start. Judith was going to get a job teaching music. I hadn’t even known she could play an instrument, but here she now was, unfolding her talents to us. It was as though Chris had taken up all the energy in their family, his needs, his brilliance, his ideas.
No room for anyone else to venture forth. Yet now Judith was taking her own steps, away from his gaze.

  I’d sat on the wall with Stevie one evening, eating ice-cream wafers. Mrs Sullivan was praying indoors. His sisters played quietly with dolls on the grass behind us. Ever aware of Stevie’s need to needle me, I was tense, ready to drop off the wall and go home, but he was fine. He was starting at a new school in September. Boarding school. Dismissively, he said it was his grandfather’s old school. They were letting him in because of family connections. ‘That, and money too.’

  ‘Why are you switching schools?’ The ice cream had made my lips freeze. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.

  ‘My mother says a change will do me good.’ He snorted. ‘She thinks that if I start shoving people around a rugby pitch that I’ll behave myself when I’m at home. Use up all my energy in sport. She hasn’t a clue.’

  I brushed crumbs from my shorts. It was a change, being affable towards Stevie, but Gemma said he needed a friend. Stevie already had friends, the boys he went fishing with and played football with, jumped the cinema queue with, but Gemma said we all needed to be good to him.

  The record sleeve was cool to my touch. I ran my fingers over John Lennon’s face, which was obscured by clouds. Behind me, his piano music spilled out into the warm room. Above me, the sun shone through the open skylights, illuminating the millions of dust motes that we were unleashing with our cleaning and tidying. Jim’s shelves were filling rapidly, the floor suddenly bigger, wider, emptier.

  Gemma’s trunk occupied the middle of the floor, large, draped with the handstitched quilt. Over the course of the summer, Gemma’s trunk had loosened its grip on my curiosity. Even the ghosts were less of a threat now, maybe not a threat at all. Daniel was a ghost now too, and who could be scared of Daniel? Maybe that’s all Gemma’s ghosts were, remnants of other people, other lives, drifting around the space they could no longer occupy.