Learning to Swim

by Clare Chambers

  ‘What did you say to that?’

  ‘I don’t think I said anything. I just gaped.’

  ‘I won’t be able to look at her in the same way now you’ve told me that,’ said Rad.

  ‘You won’t get the chance to look at her at all if your prognosis is correct.’

  Rad pulled a face. ‘That’s going to be one quiet funeral.’

  ‘I’ve never been to a funeral,’ I said.

  The cottage at Half Moon Street was still abandoned and boarded up, though one of the upstairs boards had fallen off, giving the place a one-eyed look. There were plenty of other people about, walking by the water or sitting on the grass. It wasn’t sunbathing weather, or swimming weather – the clouds had started to roll in as we walked down, hand in hand, from the pub car-park. We made our way automatically to the spot we’d occupied last time, and sat eating our sandwiches and treacle tart. I offered Rad the two apples to choose from and he obligingly took the mauled one, waited until I’d finished mine and then lobbed his into the undergrowth. We hadn’t thought to bring any drinks with us, and the combination of peanut butter, treacle and yesterday’s pastry left us gasping with thirst.

  ‘Shall I go back to the pub and get something?’ Rad offered, clambering to his feet and brushing the crumbs off his jeans.

  ‘It’s too far,’ I protested half-heartedly: it was over half a mile to the pub, but I was ready to plunge my head in the lake if I didn’t get a drink soon. ‘Shall I come too?’

  ‘No, I’ll run.’ And he set off, self-consciously, knowing he was being watched.

  I threw the soggy pastry crust we’d rejected to a flotilla of ducks at the water’s edge. They were soon joined by some Canada geese. Peeved at arriving too late, they waded out on to the grass and bore down on me, honking, until I was forced to beat a retreat.

  By the time Rad came jogging down the path with two well-shaken Coke bottles the geese had given up and flopped back into the water, and the first fat drops of rain were starting to fall. Although there was blue sky at the horizon, above us it was black. ‘It’s just a shower,’ he said, as the clouds opened and the rain came down like spears. The few other people still at the lakeside were dashing for the cover of the trees. There would be no chance of making it to the car. We would be drenched in seconds. ‘Come on,’ Rad ordered, flinging the rug over his shoulder and wading through the knee-high grass and poppies to the cottage. He peered through a chink in the boards. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘There’s even some furniture.’ The front door was locked, but the back door, itself rotten and crumbling, was secured by a rusty padlock which fell apart in Rad’s hand. Rad leaned gently on the door which shuddered open, scratching an arc on the flagstones.

  Inside it was dark and cool and smelled of soot. Thin wands of light from holes and cracks in the boarding striped the walls and floor. The ‘furniture’ consisted of a cast-iron range and a couch whose seats had been ripped out to reveal the springs and webbing. Through an archway a further room, apparently empty, was visible. Rad dropped the rug on to the stone floor in front of the range and sat down. He passed me one of the bottles. ‘Don’t …’ was all he managed to say before I had twisted the lid off and showered us with a foaming fountain of Coke. ‘I suppose you’ll want to drink mine now,’ he said, when we’d wiped our faces.

  ‘No,’ I said bravely. ‘There’s a full inch and a half left in here.’ He opened his a degree at a time until it had stopped hissing and then handed it to me.

  ‘Go on.’

  When we had shared the drink I stood by the window and listened to the rain drumming on the plywood. Rad by now was lying on the rug, propped up on one elbow, idly spinning the empty bottle, waiting for me. I could feel embarrassment welling up inside me like hot lava. In these situations I am either struck dumb or I start to jabber. On this occasion silence prevailed. I don’t know why I was so hesitant. I’m not such a hopeless romantic that I’d imagined I would lose my virginity between white satin sheets in a four-poster on my wedding night, but somehow I’d never envisaged it happening on Growth’s blanket. I suppose it was fear – of giving too much away and having nothing left in reserve for emergencies.

  ‘Well, are you going to spend all afternoon gazing out of a boarded-up window, or are you going to come here?’ Rad asked finally, and I spun round guiltily, like someone tapped on the shoulder by a store detective. My heart was thumping wildly – you couldn’t have beaten time to a rhythm like that; it was all over the place. Perhaps I’ll have a heart attack, I thought as I lay down beside him, then I won’t have to Do It. A few seconds later we were kissing and for a while it was like it had been in the summer-house – a sense of discovery and relief – and I relaxed and thought, it’s all right, nothing’s going to happen. The back of my head was pivoting around a piece of grit under the blanket, so I reached back with one hand to dislodge it. Rad must have interpreted my sudden squirming as a sign of encouragement, as he began to undo first my jeans then his own.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I said, breaking away.

  He shrank back as though I’d thrown cold water in his face. ‘What do you think?’ he said, looking rattled. ‘It’s all right, isn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t think we should?’ I said, unable to meet his eye.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I … I don’t know you well enough.’

  ‘You’ve known me for six years.’ We were sitting up by this point, cross-legged, not facing each other but at right angles, like two sides of a triangle.

  ‘No. I mean properly. Like this. We’ve hardly even talked about things.’

  ‘What do you want to talk about?’

  ‘Nothing specific. I just … you’ve done this before, haven’t you?’

  ‘Abigail. I’ve been at university for two years. I’m not a monk.’

  ‘Well I haven’t, so it’s a bigger deal for me.’

  ‘Are you worried about getting pregnant?’

  ‘No,’ I said, a trifle shrilly. It was at this point that I did my trousers up. ‘I mean, yes, that would worry me too, but that’s not it.’

  ‘It must be me,’ he said. ‘You’ve gone off me.’

  ‘I haven’t,’ I insisted. ‘I just need to feel sure of you. I could only Do It with someone I love, who loves me.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ said Rad in a disappointed tone. ‘You want me to tell you I love you, is that it?’ And I felt myself shrivel under his gaze.

  ‘Only if it’s true.’

  ‘I can’t do that,’ he said after a moment’s reflection. ‘No. It would be a bit like paying for sex.’

  If I hadn’t already been so reduced, so mortified by this exchange I would have gasped. Instead I said, ‘You must hate me to say something like that.’ We were on our feet now, tucking our shirts in, trying to preserve what remained of our mortally wounded dignity.

  ‘Love. Hate. Nothing in between will do for you.’

  ‘I don’t understand what you’re talking about,’ I said. Any second now I’d be in tears and there would be nothing for it but to chuck myself in the lake, or emigrate.

  ‘You know me,’ said Rad. ‘In spite of what you say, you know what I’m like. I don’t know about “love”, and I won’t say something that isn’t true, even if that’s what it takes to get your knickers off.’

  ‘I’m just frightened that you’re going to screw me and then dump me.’

  ‘Why would I do that?’

  ‘Because you can.’

  ‘So could you.’

  ‘Oh no. It won’t be me that splits us up. It’ll be you. You’re the one who isn’t sure of your feelings.’

  ‘I’m sure that I prefer you to anyone else I know, and that I’m not looking over your shoulder for someone else, and that I wouldn’t intentionally do anything to hurt you. But that’s not enough for you, is it?’

  I opened my mouth to retaliate and then shut it again. I was suddenly overwhelmed with misery and weariness. I slumped down on the arm of the broken cou
ch. ‘I’ve really messed everything up,’ I said. What I really wanted to say was ‘Am I still your girlfriend?’ but I knew this would be received with even greater derision.

  Rad softened a little. ‘Come on, let’s go home and forget all this. It doesn’t matter.’ He pulled the door open, flooding the room with watery sunlight. ‘When you’re ready,’ he said, and I wasn’t sure whether he was urging me to get a move on or referring to the larger issue, but from that time onwards there was a sort of restraint in the way he kissed me, and he was careful not to touch me in any way that might cause a repeat of that day’s unpleasantness.

  36

  ‘I’m going to see your father today,’ Birdie said one morning as we stood in the launderette loading the driers with Radley bedding. It was an indication of her thorough assimilation into the household that she was now a full part of the chore rota. I was slightly taken aback by her news. Birdie had been dropping hints in that direction for some time, and I had vaguely envisaged arranging a meeting, but had done nothing about it. I hadn’t even broached the subject with father. I suppose I was nervous on his behalf in case they didn’t hit it off or, as was more likely to be the case, had nothing to say to each other. But there must have been an element of jealousy, too, because my protective feelings towards Birdie started to diminish almost from the moment she said she was going to see him. I felt outmanoeuvred.

  ‘How did you arrange that?’ Without me, I asked.

  ‘I wrote him a note, and he wrote back and told me to ring at a certain time, and we talked on the phone for a bit and he said he’d meet me in the Central Library this afternoon.’

  Typical father. Only he could arrange such a potentially hazardous reunion in a library, where it would be impossible to talk comfortably. Birdie must have read my mind as she went on, ‘We’re only meeting there, because it’s somewhere we both know. We’ll find a café or something. He obviously couldn’t come to my house, and he said his wasn’t fit for visitors.’

  ‘You’ll recognise him because he looks like us,’ I said. ‘And he’ll be wearing a tweed hat, whatever the weather.’

  I had half a mind to skulk around the library steps and watch this bizarre encounter, but didn’t of course. What was particularly galling was that all my information about the occasion would have to come from Birdie. I didn’t feel able to call father and casually ask how things had gone. He was hopeless at recounting detail anyway; all I would get would be monosyllables.

  Instead Rad and I paid a visit to Auntie Mim in hospital. Mr Radley, who to my surprise went to see her every day, had warned us that she wouldn’t be looking well. She had been refusing food and was now being fed through a tube which she kept trying to yank out. ‘It’ll take her back to her youth,’ said Mr Radley. ‘She used to be a suffragette.’

  We bought some flowers in the foyer shop and I picked up a copy of Country Living. It was what mother always took to people in hospital, with the idea that pictures of beautiful furniture and landscaped gardens might transport them from their gloomy surroundings. Or perhaps that envy might be a spur to recovery, I don’t know.

  ‘We can’t even take her grapes,’ said Rad.

  We made our way through the labyrinthine corridors, our shoes squeaking on the vinyl. In Feltham ward where we had expected to find her the bed was empty and stripped. We exchanged a look of alarm before approaching the desk, behind which a nurse was sitting, filling in a time-sheet.

  ‘She’s been moved to Fairfax 2,’ she said, jerking her Biro in the direction we had just come from. Another half-mile of corridors took us out of the modern block through a covered walkway into the Old Buildings which had been condemned to demolition and reprieved several times. The floors dipped up and down like a switchback, doors were no more than thick polythene flaps, dusty pipes swarmed over the walls like vines, and the whole place had such an air of dilapidation and neglect that the prospect of successful recuperation there seemed remote.

  Fairfax 2 was a female geriatric ward with six beds. Rad nodded at the nurse on duty, and twitched the bunch of flowers to indicate that we were visitors. ‘There she is,’ he said, approaching a bed in which a tiny, shrunken old woman was sitting propped up, asleep, mouth open. I noticed a basket of fruit on the bedside cabinet, and an open packet of biscuits.

  ‘I don’t think it is her,’ I said.

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  We peered at the occupants of the other beds. In hospital night-gowns, with no make-up, white, once-permed hair now limp and straight, and papery skin sagging from cheekbone to jaw, they all looked the same. Any or none of them could have been Auntie Mim. We retreated to the desk, unnerved.

  ‘We’re looking for Mrs Smith,’ said Rad.

  The nurse showed us to a smaller side ward with only three beds. Our relief at recognising Auntie Mim at last was somewhat tempered by dismay at her surroundings and condition. Even basic standards of cleanliness and hygiene seemed to have been abandoned: there were balls of dust and fluff and dried drops of God knows what on the floor. The windows were streaked with smears, and some of the curtains had great frayed rents in them. On Auntie Mim’s chair was a pile of dirty tissues, and a soiled bedpan had been left on the trolley at the foot of her bed. The patient herself looked extremely poorly. There was a tube up her nose, taped to her top lip, and a drip in her hand, which was bruised from wrist to knuckles. From beneath the bedclothes another tube emerged, leading to a plastic bag which was half full of clear, reddish liquid. My stomach heaved, and I buried my head in the glossy, scented pages of Country Living. Box hedges, yellow wallpaper, Toiles de Jouy, I turned the pages feverishly, Gieves & Hawkes, William Morris, Sissinghurst, quilts, that’s better.

  ‘She’s asleep,’ said Rad helpfully. ‘We’d better hang about for a bit to see if she wakes up. Are you any good at flower arranging?’ he asked, handing me the carnations. On the bedside cabinet was a slim vase containing a wilting posy of bluebells and daisy marigolds and other varieties of flower to be found in the front gardens of the houses adjoining the hospital: a gift from Mr Radley. I removed them and thrust our own offering into the murky water. We had obviously been sold a rogue bunch as most of them had broken stems and flopped down over the edge of the vase, leaving the remaining few standing up like fence posts.

  ‘Very nice,’ said Rad.

  We hovered around the bed for a quarter of an hour or so before giving up. I sensed that Rad was as relieved as I was that she hadn’t woken while we were there. The only sounds in the room were faint snores and the scratch of a pen as the nurse laboured at her paperwork. And somewhere in the distance the hum of a floor polisher.

  ‘Do you think they ever go round and check who’s still alive?’ I said.

  As we were leaving the woman in the opposite bed, who like all the other patients we had seen had been apparently comatose, started to groan as if in agony. The nurse glanced up briefly then carried on writing. On the way out Rad deposited the used bedpan on the desk and was rewarded with a cold stare and a bitten-off ‘thank you’.

  ‘We’ll come back another day,’ Rad said to me without much enthusiasm when at last we stepped through the automatic doors and breathed fresh air.

  ‘Oh yes,’ I said, colluding.

  ‘How did you get on then?’ I asked Birdie that evening.

  ‘Good. We recognised each other straight away. I’d have known him even if you hadn’t told me about the hat.’

  ‘What did you talk about?’

  ‘Oh, you know, he asked me what I’m studying and what I want to do at university. We didn’t talk about the past at all. He didn’t even really acknowledge that he’s my dad: it was a bit like meeting some long-lost godfather. At one point he said he was really pleased to have met me at last and that he was glad I’d turned out so well. But I could tell it was going to get emotional, so I headed him off. He asked how Mum was and I just said, “Fine”, and he said, “Good, good”, and that was the end of that subject.’

  ‘So what else
did you talk about?’

  ‘Books mostly. He wanted to know what I was reading and I said Virginia Woolf and he pulled a face and we had a bit of a dispute about whether she was a genius and then he told me to read Gibbon. Whoever he is.’

  ‘That’s his answer to everything,’ I said.

  ‘I just can’t work out how he and my mum ever got together. They’re so different. I mean he’s so sweet and old-fashioned.’ I was about to agree – indeed to chip in with a few anecdotes of my own – when she added, ‘like you.’

  ‘Do you think you’ll see him again?’ I said as if we were picking over last night’s date. I found myself unwilling to examine my feeling of relief when she said, ‘We didn’t arrange anything. I’m still wondering how or whether to tell Mum. She’ll find out sooner or later; I’m bound to let it slip.’

  ‘Will she mind?’

  ‘I’m not sure. She won’t like being deceived.’

  ‘I know the feeling,’ I said.

  As a quid pro quo I told her about our afternoon in the hospital. She grew quite pale. ‘I’m not going to get old,’ she said, shuddering. ‘I’m just not.’

  37

  We would have been the last members of the family to see her, though she, of course, had not seen us.

  The hospital telephoned early the next morning to say she had died during the night. Mr Radley seemed to take the news worst of all: for the rest of that day he sat in the armchair, staring out of the sitting-room window and biting his lip, absorbed in his own thoughts. When I brought him a sandwich at lunchtime he looked at me as if I was a total stranger, before saying, ‘Thanks, Birdie, leave it on the table,’ where it stayed untouched until I cleared it away in the evening. This surprised me. I’d never put him down as a man of deep feeling where other people – real people – were concerned. He could work himself up into a lather of sentimentality over long-dead strangers – names on the Vimy memorial, for example – but he tended to step over beggars in the street.