Learning to Swim

by Clare Chambers

  Lexi, meanwhile, was in organisational overdrive: hospital, registrar, undertaker, solicitor, crematorium, all were being treated to her curious blend of tyranny and charm.

  The funeral would only be a couple of days away. There was no need to delay: there were no distant friends or relatives to be rounded up, and the crematorium was very accommodating. Apparently death has its favoured seasons, and business was slack in August.

  ‘Well, people are off on their holidays,’ was my mother’s interpretation of this statistical quirk.

  My granny took a great interest in the details of Auntie Mim’s death. ‘I’ll be next,’ she said, ‘thank God.’ Ever since I had known her she had been predicting her imminent demise with complacency. She was only seventy-eight, but her blindness had limited her activities cruelly and she was as bored with life as any ninety-year-old. ‘Did she leave anything?’

  I said I didn’t think so. Legacies were another of Granny’s long-standing obsessions. She used the necessity for scraping together an inheritance for my mother as an excuse for a miserliness which was becoming ever more ambitious and eccentric. Lately she had taken to saving and washing out the flimsy plastic bags in which the butcher wrapped raw meat. She had rigged up a piece of string in the kitchen on which to dry them, and they would hang there like damp little ghosts. When dry they were consigned to a drawer until the day dawned that a purpose could be divined for them. Even when her eyesight had failed she insisted on darning laddered tights. My mother had to supply her with a threaded needle, and she would sit at the kitchen table, a grapefruit forced into the toe of the holey stocking, creating a very tangly piece of mending indeed, cursing and yelping as she jabbed herself, but inwardly delighted to be saving forty pence.

  By some unfathomable method she had calculated the cost of her share of the food mother served her each week to be £2.67. There was no quarrelling with such a precise figure. Every Sunday, just as mother was dishing up the roast she would stump into the kitchen and decant just this amount, coin by coin, from her purse to the table, while mother would sigh and tutt and pound the potatoes to a mush.

  I was wrong about Auntie Mim. She had left her jewellery – none of it especially valuable – to Frances, £1,000 to Clarissa and the rest, which would be about £90,000, to Lexi.

  ‘Did you know she had any savings?’ I asked Frances on the way to the crematorium. Rad was driving us: Nicky and Frances were in the back. The adults – Mr and Mrs Radley, Uncle Bill and Auntie Daphne were in the Renault. Clarissa and her mother, Cecile, and, separately, Lawrence, were coming by taxi. There were no limousines.

  ‘She sold her cottage before she came to live with us, so I suppose I knew she must have something. I never really thought about it. She always looked so poor.’

  ‘It’s the looking rich that costs the money,’ Nicky pointed out. The atmosphere in the car was cheerful: it was ridiculous to mourn the death of a ninety-three-year-old, Rad said. We should be happy she lived so long. This was the best sort of funeral, Nicky agreed, as if he was a connoisseur: one where you could give someone a good send-off without feeling too upset. Frances leaned between the front seats and switched the radio on. We were all under twenty-one. By the time our turn came someone would have discovered a cure.

  Inside the chapel the eleven of us managed to fill the first two rows by spreading out a little. Lexi was in any case taking up as much space as two normal people on account of her outfit – a black jacket with huge shoulder pads, a peplum, a tight black skirt and a wide-brimmed hat smothered with quivering ostrich feathers. Frances herself had had to be restrained from wearing the bequeathed pearls. She made Nicky sit next to Cecile who was wearing a fox fur. ‘I don’t want to brush up against that dead thing,’ she said loudly.

  The service was over in a quarter of an hour. Lexi had instructed the chaplain not to go on too long. ‘She was ninety-three, so for heaven’s sake let’s keep it brief and jolly.’ There was no music – there weren’t enough of us to carry a hymn, and the Radleys weren’t keen singers. The chaplain rattled through the order of service at a jaunty pace. It’s not easy to say ‘We come into the world bringing nothing, and we take nothing with us when we go,’ in an optimistic voice, but he managed it. He gave the eulogy, using the biographical details furnished by Lexi, with such conviction that by the end of it I was almost ready to believe that he would miss Auntie Mim as much as those of us who had actually met her.

  Outside the chapel our few floral tributes had been placed on the grass for our inspection. The lady funeral director had told us we could take them home with us if we liked. ‘If I’d known that, I wouldn’t have ordered a wreath,’ Cecile complained. ‘I’d have got something that would have done as a table decoration.’

  Clarissa was admiring Lexi’s outfit. ‘I like the peplum. Very skittish.’

  ‘Oh do you?’ Lexi smoothed it down over her hips. ‘I don’t know if it’s me. I’ll probably take it back – unless someone dies in the next day or two, of course.’ And she gave a throaty laugh. It was the only time I ever heard her attempt a joke.

  There were drinks and snacks back at the house. Cecile, on account of her seniority perhaps, was allowed a glass of sherry. Everyone else was on orange juice. Lexi had bought some boxes of ready-made cocktail snacks which were tipped on to plates and handed round.

  I noticed that the miniature photograph of Auntie Mim’s One Great Love was now on top of the bureau with the other family pictures. I decided to test Lexi out. ‘Who’s this?’ I asked, as she passed me holding aloft a plate of cheese straws.

  ‘Marigold Bray,’ she said, without hesitation. ‘She was Auntie Mim’s girlfriend. Lovely, isn’t she?’ And she whisked off again. Cecile, a more enthusiastic purveyor of tittle-tattle, had been listening to this exchange and swiftly moved into the space vacated by Lexi.

  ‘She was a lesbian, you know, when she was younger,’ said Cecile, as if it was a hobby one grew out of. ‘She had a sort of relationship with another teacher at the school where she worked. She was only in her twenties then. Did you know she used to teach? Yes, cookery. Impossible to believe, really, considering.’

  ‘So what happened then?’

  ‘Her parents found out and had her put in an institution. She was in there for six months and when she came out she was completely cured. Mind you, she never married. And do you know, it was from that time on that she ate nothing but potatoes and sprouts. Isn’t that curious?’

  ‘She was not “cured”, she was completely crushed.’ Lexi had re-entered the room and overheard the last part of our conversation. ‘I shudder to think what they did to her in that place. She never worked again for the rest of her life.’ The room had fallen silent during this exchange. Everyone was listening.

  ‘What did she live on for the next seventy years?’ I asked.

  ‘She went back to live with her parents and they kept her until they got too old, and then she looked after them. Her older sister – Mum’s mum – had already married and moved to Belgium, and Mim was condemned to be a maiden aunt from the age of about twenty-five. They never had any visitors, and never went anywhere, so she had no chance of meeting anyone.’

  ‘Why did she only eat sprouts and potatoes?’ asked Frances, who had caught up by now. ‘Is that all they fed her in the loony bin?’

  Lexi tutted. ‘I don’t really know. Before she was put away she’d been a teacher, and a really beautiful cook, apparently. I think it was her way of showing her parents that they’d damaged her.’

  ‘Why didn’t she and Marigold tell them to sod off?’ said Frances.

  ‘Children respected their parents in those barbaric times,’ said Mr Radley.

  ‘She didn’t have it in her to rebel,’ said Lexi. ‘And her teaching career was over – it was much harder for women to be independent.’

  ‘I wish I’d known all this while she was alive,’ said Frances with indignation. ‘I’d have made more effort to take her out and show her a good time.’

/>   ‘You mean down at the tattoo parlour, or trying on the make-up in Miss Selfridge?’ said Rad.

  Frances ignored him. ‘Why didn’t she get out and do something when her parents had died?’

  ‘She was about fifty by that time.’

  ‘That’s only the same age as you, and you’re not too old to go out and have fun.’

  ‘She’d probably lost the knack by then. Self-denial can become a habit like anything else.’

  ‘My wife is an expert on self-denial, as you all know,’ said Mr Radley.

  ‘Now I think about it,’ Lexi went on, talking over him, ‘she once told me that after her mother had died she did try to trace Marigold, and eventually found that she’d gone to live in Kenya. That would have been thirty years after they’d lost contact, and Auntie still hadn’t got over her.’

  ‘Well, I’ve always said that love lasts longer if it’s frustrated,’ said Clarissa.

  I glanced automatically at Rad, and was treated to one of his sardonic looks. Beyond him, unnoticed by anyone else, Lawrence was staring straight at Lexi.

  38

  The portrait of Birdie and me is nearly finished. The background is looking good; our faces are still blank. We creep up and inspect it from time to time – just to check that Mr Radley is genuinely working on it. Sometimes I am struck with the mad idea that he isn’t painting us at all, but just pretending, and it’s all a joke, keeping us prisoner in the attic each day. I can’t think why he would do this, but then it wouldn’t altogether surprise me.

  Mr Radley is dithering at the easel. He always has a problem starting the figures, he says. A sort of painter’s block. Birdie says why doesn’t he do Still Lifes then. Or landscapes. He says when he wants her opinion he’ll give it to her. We are the only ones in the house apart from Clarissa, who is on the scrounge again. This time it’s Lexi’s golf clubs she’s after. She has a new boyfriend and is keen to introduce him to the game. Lexi went to the hairdresser’s early and is still not back. Mr Radley keeps looking at his watch. Nicky, Frances and Rad have gone wind-surfing with a friend of Nicky’s from King’s. As a non-swimmer and coward my role will be restricted to sitting on the edge of the reservoir watching the others have fun, so I decide to stay behind. In the evening we are all going out for a meal – this part I can manage. I am no closer to understanding my relationship with Rad. He seems to treat me in some ways as his girlfriend, but ever since that day at Half Moon Street he is careful not to touch me when we’re alone. Now I want him to; now he won’t. I’m not sure what is going on. He won’t tell me and I won’t ask.

  There is a terrific clatter from below and some choice language from Clarissa audible up two flights of stairs. I can guess the cause: retrieving the golf bag from the hall cupboard will have brought down an avalanche of mops, brooms, buckets, ironing board, hoover and flex. It happens every time. Mr Radley ventures to investigate. Birdie and I relax and stretch. The phone rings and is picked up. ‘Oh,’ he says. ‘Oh, all right …’ he sounds disappointed. ‘What about food? You don’t want me to save you anything? Okay, fine. Where are you anyway? … Oh really?’ His voice hardens. ‘Can you put her on? … No, I didn’t think you would, because in fact Clarissa happens to be here.’ And the phone is slammed down.

  Birdie and I look at each other nervously. ‘What was that about?’ she whispers.

  I shake my head. I’m just worried that any minute now Mr Radley is going to come back up here in a rage and take it out on us. But he doesn’t. We hear the click of the front door, and Clarissa’s car starting up. After five minutes or so we creep downstairs. The sitting-room curtains are still drawn although it’s late afternoon and Mr Radley is sitting in there in the gloom. I’m not sure what to do. If we withdraw without a word he’ll know we overheard. If we bounce in pretending to wonder where he is he might growl at us.

  ‘Let’s go,’ says Birdie. That settles it for me, and we make our separate ways home.

  At about six I make my way back. I don’t want to miss the meal. The others will probably be back by now, wondering where I am. When I arrive, though, the house is quiet. The sitting-room curtains are still closed but Mr Radley isn’t there. I decide to have a bath before the others come in and hog all the hot water. Although I have ‘officially’ moved back home with mother, I still often stay the night in Frances’ room, and keep most of my favourite clothes there. Mother and I are thoroughly reconciled, but I still find it hard to be in my granny’s company for long. She hasn’t apologised, or acknowledged any part in the crisis.

  While I am in the bath I can hear someone moving about. I emerge, dizzy and puffy from the over-hot water, wrapped in a king-size towel, and bump into Lexi, dragging two huge suitcases across the landing. She looks slightly dishevelled, and not altogether pleased to see me.

  ‘Hello,’ I say. ‘Are you going on holiday?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking. Give me a hand with this one, will you?’ It doesn’t seem to occur to her that I’m only wearing a towel. Clutching it and the suitcase I hobble down the stairs after her.

  ‘I’ve lost a gold and pearl earring,’ she says on the doorstep, pulling at her earlobe. ‘If you come across it put it aside for me.’ These are her last words to me.

  I am standing by Frances’ wardrobe wearing my bra and knickers when Mr Radley walks in. He doesn’t seem to care about or even notice my state of undress, but walks straight over to the window and watches the space where until a few moments ago Lexi’s car was parked. Then he sits on the bed and puts his head in his hands.

  ‘She’s gone,’ he says. ‘What am I going to do?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I say, although I know. I’m not sure how my experience of life so far has taught me that it would be rude to carry on dressing while someone is trying to tell me that his wife has left him, but I stand there in my underwear and wait for him to say it.

  ‘She wants to marry Lawrence.’

  ‘Oh dear. I’m so sorry.’ My vocabulary is wide, but this is the best I can do. There is a long pause. I find I am staring at the thinning patch on the back of his head: beneath it his scalp is tanned and shiny.

  ‘I said, “What do you want to marry him for? You see him every day as it is.” But that’s not enough.’

  ‘She’ll come back,’ I say. ‘She’s probably under a lot of pressure at work, and she’s just flipped.’

  He looks up. ‘That’s just it. She says she’s had enough of working her arse off so I can sit around. She says Lawrence is going to support her properly. Do you know what she said? “I’m going to stay at home. I might even take up painting.”’

  ‘You poor thing.’ I am in agonies of embarrassment and can see no way out. My torment is taken to new heights when he gives a sort of sob, reaches out blindly and pulls me on to his knee. I sit rigidly, like a garden gnome. In any other context than this I would leap away and run for it – perhaps even slap him – but I can’t do that now. In any case his arms are tightly round me, as if he’s trying to uproot a tree. It’s not a terribly threatening embrace, but even so. He must sense me flinch, as he says, in a tone that manages to combine pleading with impatience, ‘Oh, don’t pull away. I’m not going to rape you. I just want to hold someone. If you’re that bothered I’ll go and hug the bloody dog instead.’ I have to laugh at this. His grip relaxes. ‘What am I going to do? Do you think I’m a selfish bastard? Perhaps I am. I thought we were happy. Of course I knew she’d always fancied Lawrence – he’s a good-looking man. Do you think he’s good-looking? I never stopped her going out with him.’ He rambles on, not appearing to expect an answer, for which I am grateful, because I haven’t got one. ‘She doesn’t even want anything. She said I can have the house – that’s how desperate she is to get away.’ He strokes my hair absent-mindedly: perhaps he thinks he’s holding the dog after all. I decide to risk hinting that I’m getting cold as soon as he comes to a pause, but the words keep on coming. ‘She’s been waiting all this time – God knows how long she’s been planning t
his – for Mim to die. Not for the money, but because she couldn’t leave her behind. And now she’s dead – boom, that’s it, she’s packed her bags and left. Even Frances will be off to some poly or other in a month’s time, and I’ll be on my own, and Rad will go back up to Durham …’ He doesn’t get any further because at that moment the door opens and Rad himself appears, saying in a cheerful voice, ‘We’re back – oh!’

  And I do the stupidest thing. I leap away from Mr Radley as if I have something to be guilty about. As if there’s something going on. I am pulled up short as the buckle of Mr Radley’s watchstrap becomes entangled in my hair, and I have to stand there in my underwear, half bent over, with my neck cricked, while he releases me in an unhurried manner, and Rad looks on in disbelief.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he says.

  ‘Nothing,’ I say, grabbing my dress and struggling into it, my face burning with shame. Well go on, tell him, I silently urge Mr Radley. I can’t tell him his mother’s just left home. But Mr Radley, a few moments ago so weak and vulnerable, doesn’t say anything. And in the second or so that it takes Rad’s expression to change from confusion to anger I realise that he has no intention of coming to my rescue; that he wants Rad to think something has been going on, and he doesn’t care if I go under as a result.

  Rad interprets the silence in the worst possible light. ‘Get out,’ he says, suddenly seizing my wrist and dragging me towards the door. I start to scream. ‘StopitstopitIhaven’tdoneanythingit’snotwhatyouthinkaskhimaskhim.’

  ‘You won’t let me touch you, but you’ll sit there and let him grope you.’

  ‘I didn’t!’

  ‘He’d tell you he loved you. He’d say anything.’

  ‘It wasn’t my fault.’