Learning to Swim

by Clare Chambers

  The scene in the garden was one of devastation. The marquee, still not fully dismantled, sat on the lawn like a great sunken soufflé. All around it on the grass lay discarded plates and empty champagne and beer bottles. People who had earlier been dancing were standing about, aimless and embarrassed, waiting to be turfed out. Some of the rowers were planning to form a posse to trawl the streets for Grant. Anne was still crying inconsolably, her mascara leaving inky trails over her cheeks. And at the end of the garden the burnt-out shed still dripped and smoked, and Neil crouched among the ruins picking over the remains of his charred motorbikes.

  The police were just pulling up as we left.

  ‘Where are we going?’ I said, as Rad set off in the opposite direction from his car.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Let’s just walk.’

  So we did, side by side, a foot apart, in silence, along the edge of the common past the grand houses with their eight-foot walls and gates like drawbridges against the world, until I was beginning to wonder if I hadn’t imagined the whole episode in the summer-house. But there was the bald patch on the front of my dress to prove it. I plucked idly at a stray thread and another strip of beads unravelled in my hand and cascaded to the floor.

  ‘Weird evening,’ said Rad, shaking his head.

  You can say that again, I thought, but before I could say anything Rad caught hold of my hand and pulled me off the path into the trees, setting my heart thumping with excitement and fear. ‘Look,’ he said, pointing upwards. ‘Bats.’ I peered between the branches and saw a couple of black shapes, like burnt flakes of paper, fluttering and wheeling. And then, because we were under a tree and it was a shame to waste it, Rad pressed me back against the trunk and kissed me, rather fiercely.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said afterwards, which struck me as the nicest thing he’d ever said, and the only time I ever heard him express uncertainty. He ran one hand down the length of my hair. ‘I love your hair. Don’t ever cut it.’

  ‘Haircutting isn’t really my thing. As you know.’

  He returned to the path and I followed, shedding more beads, and this time he put his arm around my shoulders and I put mine around his waist and we walked along, clashing hip-bones awkwardly, because it isn’t really a very comfortable way of getting around, but neither of us would admit defeat. Besides it was a relief to be walking so closely alongside him that he couldn’t see my burning face. Even at such an extremity, at this moment of openness, I couldn’t help feeling that we were treading a tightrope: the wrong word, the wrong gesture and we would be plunged into an abyss of embarrassment from which there would be no rescue.

  ‘Did you really mean that about having wanted to do this for ages?’ I asked, as we turned down a side-street of tall redbrick Victorian terraces. It would be nice to think it wasn’t just a whim of the moment.

  Rad nodded.

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Since France, I suppose.’

  ‘France? What took you so long?’

  ‘You never gave me any encouragement.’

  ‘You never encouraged me to.’ We stared at each other, almost crossly, as if we felt ourselves victims of some time-wasting practical joke.

  ‘You were always so aloof.’

  ‘But you were supposed to be able to interpret that. Anyway, a minute ago you said you didn’t like blatant women.’

  ‘A glimmer of interest is all that’s required. Even when you were cutting my hair tonight you were standing about half a mile away, doing it all at arms’ length. No wonder it’s such a botched job.’

  ‘I didn’t want to crowd you.’

  ‘And come to think of it I did give you encouragement. I drove you to Ypres that time on holiday. And then I bought you Goodbye to All That. For which, incidentally, you never thanked me.’

  ‘I would have done, but you’d gone off to Durham. I couldn’t very well ask Frances for your address – she’d have been suspicious.’

  ‘I almost made a move that afternoon at Hill 62 – do you remember those trenches in the woods outside the museum?’

  I nodded. ‘So why didn’t you?’

  ‘Well, we had the old man with us for one thing. And we’d just been looking at all those pictures of corpses and bits of horses in trees, and it didn’t seem quite the right moment.’

  ‘I didn’t realise you were so particular.’

  ‘I almost didn’t pluck up courage tonight, but then I saw Frank chatting you up and I sort of panicked.’

  ‘He was nice,’ I said.

  Rad pulled a face. ‘I suppose I should be grateful to him for getting you drunk.’

  ‘I’m not drunk,’ I lied. The pavement was flowing beneath my feet like an airport walkway. The stars looked brighter and more numerous than ever before, and above us shone the thinnest fingernail of moon, like a rip in the backcloth of the sky. At the end of the road we stopped.

  ‘Which way?’ Rad said. On the corner opposite stood a large, ugly house at the end of a curved drive. It had turret rooms on either side, and asymmetrical windows on the upper storey, giving it a skewed look, like someone whose glasses have been knocked off one ear. The house was guarded by a pair of gateposts surmounted by the head of a lion in mid-roar, and a vicious-looking eagle.

  ‘I’ve been here before,’ I said.

  ‘I often have that feeling,’ said Rad. ‘Even without the drink. I was reading somewhere quite recently that déjà vu is caused by a kind of short circuit in the brain,’ he rattled on.

  ‘No. I mean I’ve actually been here before. Years ago. My dad stopped here on the way to Half Moon Street to deliver a parcel. I remember being frightened by those carvings.’ I started to walk up the driveway.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Rad said.

  ‘I’m going to ring the bell.’

  ‘It’s nearly midnight. Are you mad?’

  ‘There’s a light on downstairs.’

  ‘What are you going to say?’

  ‘Hello.’ I don’t know where this surge of irrationality came from; maybe it was the champagne making me show off, or the euphoria at being with Rad, or something altogether weirder. But I only started to lose my nerve when I reached the front door, and by then the sound of my heels on the path must have been audible through the open window, as a face appeared briefly at a gap in the curtains, the hall lights were thrown on and before I could retreat the door was snapped open a few inches, and then closed again as the unseen occupant grappled with the chain. I was suddenly sober, embarrassed, and would have fled back down the path if I’d thought I could get away with it. Rad was still hanging about in the shadows at the bottom of the drive, ready to rescue me or run if necessary. Oh God, what have I done now? I thought. Perhaps I’ll just pretend to be lost and needing directions.

  ‘Sorry,’ we both said, as the door opened.

  Standing opposite me was a girl, perhaps two years younger than me. She had long fair hair, my eyes, my nose, poor thing, and when she gave a little laugh of surprise, I could see she had my crooked tooth. We stared at each other for a moment or two.

  ‘Hello,’ I said finally. ‘I’m Abigail Onions.’

  ‘I know,’ she said, making a sudden, unsuccessful movement with her foot to detain a skinny cat, which shot past us into the rhododendrons. Even her voice sounded like mine.

  ‘Who are you then?’ I must have been experiencing one of Rad’s short circuits, because I seemed to hear the words before she had even spoken them.

  She put a hand out for me to shake. ‘I’m Birdie,’ she said.

  IV

  * * *

  32

  The fuse that had been burning for sixteen years had reached the charge at last and my family was blown apart.

  It was my father who left home, although mother would have preferred to make that gesture: fill a suitcase, bang the front door, there, do your own ironing, I’m not spending another night under the same roof. But she couldn’t very well leave my grandmother behind in t
he enemy camp. So it was up to my father – somewhat belatedly – to do the decent thing. He didn’t want to go: he had abased himself thoroughly and done his penance many years ago now, or so he thought, but my mother’s forgiveness turned out to have been a loan, rather than a gift, and she was now calling it in.

  He hardly took anything with him, and chose the most wretched accommodation that could be imagined, as if he couldn’t really believe what was happening, and wouldn’t admit that it could last. I went to visit him there after a couple of weeks: he was renting a bedsit in a large Victorian house about three miles away. There was a strip of carpet on the stairs so worn that on every tread you could see the wood beneath. In the hallway was a dead weeping fig in a wicker stand and a pile of unsorted post on the doormat. The tenants would obviously rifle through the mail, take out what was theirs, and chuck the rest back on the floor.

  Father’s room was on the second storey. It had brown paintwork and porridge-coloured walls pockmarked with drawing-pin holes and tiny blobs of blu-tack. Some of the pins still had fragments of paper attached, from posters torn down in a hurry. It was the sort of place you would be quick to leave. There was a single bed over which was spread a knitted blanket from home, a table with his school work and typewriter on, a chipboard wardrobe which was standing at a diagonal in one corner to hide a boiler, and a hand basin with a seaweed green streak from tap to plughole. Under the basin was a Baby Belling, the oven part of which father was using as a filing cabinet. He didn’t seem to be intending to cook. From the smell of the room and the wrappers in the bin I deduced he must be living on kebabs and curries.

  I made a move to the large sash window overlooking the dustbins and whirligigs of the neighbouring gardens.

  ‘Can we open this a bit?’ I said. The heat was stifling, and added to the kebab smell was one of unwashed laundry and pipe smoke.

  ‘It’s nailed shut,’ said father. ‘Presumably to prevent any occupants hurling themselves out in despair.’

  ‘Don’t say that.’

  ‘Sorry. How’s your mother?’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Good, good. And your granny?’

  ‘I’m still not living there,’ I admitted. I hadn’t stayed overnight at home since I had made my discovery. Unable to confront my parents to their faces I had left a cowardly note which gave me an opportunity to vent some of my anger without fear of an open confrontation.

  Last night I met, by accident, my half-sister. I am still in a state of shock – not so much at her existence, but at the fact that you kept it a secret from me for so long. In particular I can’t forgive Granny for the lie she told me about my having had a sister who died. This was cruel and unnecessary. I’d prefer to stay at Frances’ house until I have sorted my feelings out.

  love

  Abigail.

  This note had been through many versions – some long and histrionic, some cold and terse. The ‘love’ was a great concession. It hadn’t occurred to me that my parents might separate over it. Mine! Who hardly ever even argued, and who never raised their voices. I was thinking only of myself and the apologies I was owed.

  The Radleys accepted my arrival without a murmur, and treated me with the respect due to someone who has, against all expectations, brought drama into their household. That my family should have risen up and proved itself tragic and interesting seemed like an affront to nature. The strangeness of things was underlined that Sunday by all the Radleys, plus Auntie Mim, Nicky and myself, sitting down to a lunch of roast beef, cooked by Lexi, during which conversation was co-operative and civil, while a few miles away my parents were tearing their marriage apart.

  Within twenty-four hours of my father’s expulsion, mother was on Frances’ doorstep begging me to come home. Rad answered the door.

  ‘Hello, R … er, is Abigail there?’ Mother had always had an aversion to nicknames: she simply couldn’t bring herself to articulate something that wasn’t actually on a birth certificate. I couldn’t very well invite her in to the Radleys’ for a heart-to-heart, so we walked down to the high street looking for somewhere to sit. She suggested the Wimpy Bar – my first indication that she was in a desperate mood.

  ‘Please come back,’ she said, trying not to cry. ‘There’s no need for you to go too.’ We stirred our tea with plastic rods. Neither of us felt much inclined to drink it.

  ‘Why has Dad left now? I don’t understand. If you’ve always known about Birdie, what difference does it make that I know?’ I’m the injured party now, I wanted to shout.

  ‘It makes all the difference. It’s easier to forgive something in private. Soon everybody will know.’ A young woman manoeuvred past us with three toddlers on reins like a pack of dogs, and mother lowered her voice – as if they might be interested in eavesdropping on our family secrets! ‘Everybody at church, and the surgery, and my Wednesday group.’ Her chin gave a tremble.

  ‘How will they find out? I won’t tell anyone.’

  ‘You’ve already told Frances, haven’t you?’ she said. ‘And the whole family now knows, I suppose.’

  ‘I had to. Rad was with me at the time. I’ve got to talk to someone, anyway. If you hadn’t lied to me in the first place –’

  ‘We never lied!’ She was unswervable on this point. ‘We just decided it was something you never needed to know. I didn’t know Granny had made up that awful story. That day when you said you’d found a photo in Dad’s wallet, she just told us she’d calmed you down and made you promise not to mention it ever again. I’m furious with her.’ Her mouth collapsed. ‘Nobody’s talking to anybody now.’ I held her hand across the table as she reached for a tissue. I could sense us being observed with interest by the two girls behind the counter. A brown skin had formed on the top of my tea. I scored a cross in it with my stirrer.

  ‘It was all done for you. We’ve tried to give you a happy childhood.’

  ‘I know, I know. I am happy,’ I quavered. ‘I just wish you’d told me before I found out like that.’

  ‘We weren’t to know you’d ever run into her. It seemed so remote.’ There was a pause while she exchanged her wet tissue for a dry one.

  ‘Did you ever meet the woman?’ I asked, in some trepidation in case this provoked more tears.

  ‘No. Never,’ she said. ‘She was a student teacher at the school. Your father was supposed to be looking after her because she was finding things difficult. It was just a one-off thing. It wasn’t an affair. And he confessed immediately. And we were all right. But then she told him she was, you know, going to have a baby.’ Her voice became watery again. ‘And it was just awful.’

  I could hear her talking as if from a great distance. We were sitting in the Wimpy Bar, my mother and I, talking about my father, who wore a tie every day, even on holiday, who wouldn’t park on a yellow line, getting someone pregnant. I suddenly felt overwhelmed with pity for her. It seemed so obvious now that my parents’ marriage hadn’t been conventionally happy – had in fact been cold and empty. And it was plain that years of acting out a forgiveness she didn’t feel, for my sake only, had diminished her, and made her thin and sharp and bitter.

  ‘You were only one and a half. I made him choose. Us or Them.’ I watched the skin on my tea re-form itself. She squeezed my hand. ‘And he chose you.’

  Father offered me a cup of tea. He had bought a tiny travel-kettle from Boots, which he filled at the handbasin. He hadn’t brought anything useful with him from home, and wouldn’t buy anything that smacked of long-term independence. This was an acceptable compromise: the sort of purchase you might make with the next fortnight in mind, but no longer.

  ‘These things are rather handy,’ he said, indicating the tea-bags as he dropped them into mugs. He was pleased with this discovery. We always had leaf tea at home, warmed pot, tea-cosy, china cups. Frances wouldn’t even have recognised loose leaf – she’d looked in the caddy at our place once, and said, ‘What’s that? Snuff?’

  Dad fetched the milk from the window sil
l where it had been standing in full sunlight. He sniffed it and pulled a face. When he shook the carton I could hear the slip-slop of jelly against cardboard and the bile rose in my throat. ‘Black’s fine,’ I said.

  ‘Isn’t it time you moved back home?’ He carried the wet tea-bags over to the bin in a spoon, leaving a trail of drops. ‘Your mum must be missing you. And you shouldn’t be taking all this out on her.’

  ‘I will if you will.’

  ‘She doesn’t want me back yet. It’s too soon. I’m better off here for the moment so she can have some time to herself. Anyway, the Radleys can’t put you up all summer.’

  ‘They don’t mind. I’m like a daughter to them,’ I said without thinking, and could have bitten my tongue off when I saw the hurt expression come and go on his face in a fraction of a second.

  ‘I’m so sorry about all of this,’ he said, lifting his shoulders in a gesture of helplessness. ‘Whatever you think of me, you know how much I … care about you. I didn’t want to lie to you, but telling you seemed even worse.’

  ‘Birdie knew all about me.’

  ‘Well, naturally, her predicament was rather different. You’ve spoken to her at some length, I gather.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How is she? Is she well?’

  ‘Yes. She looks just like me. And you.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Why did you stop going to visit her?’

  ‘I saw her when she was a baby, and I used to take presents over at Christmas, and Easter eggs and so on.’

  Easter eggs, I thought, a memory struggling to be born.

  ‘But of course it used to make your mother unhappy, and when Birdie was old enough to ask questions she started to find my visits confusing and upsetting, so Val, her mother, told me to stop. I still sent money for a few years after that, but then that was returned, so I assumed she had got married.’ He raised an enquiring eyebrow.