Learning to Swim

by Clare Chambers

  There were crocuses out on the green in front of the house. Next door’s magnolia was already in bloom, waxy lightbulbs perched on every branch. Spring had come early. Mother was scarifying the lawn with a leaf rake when I arrived, ripping out chunks of moss and combing them into a heap.

  ‘You shouldn’t be doing that,’ I said, brushing her cheek with my lips. ‘It’s your day.’ She wears so much face powder nowadays it’s a bit like kissing a bap.

  ‘Someone has to,’ she said, a touch resentfully.

  Indoors father was sitting in his armchair with a wooden pocket chess set balanced on the arm. He was playing against himself. These games could drag on for days, only brought to an end when someone accidentally tipped the board over. He struggled to stand up as I came in, setting the chess pieces rattling in their peg-holes.

  ‘I don’t know why she bothers,’ he said. ‘Moss is green, and it doesn’t need cutting as often as grass. What we want is more moss, not less.’

  ‘Do you know who I met at a concert a few weeks ago?’ I asked as we were eating.

  ‘Simon Rattle?’ Mum guessed, hopefully.

  ‘No, no. I don’t mean someone famous. I bumped into Rad. Do you remember Rad?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Mum, inevitably disappointed. It would have been impossible for me to trump Simon Rattle. ‘I’m afraid I never liked that boy. I thought he treated you appallingly.’ By this stage I couldn’t remember what she knew about the true circumstances of our break-up so I couldn’t contradict her with any assurance.

  ‘What’s he up to?’ asked Dad, sensing that mother’s display of grudge-harbouring wasn’t the response I’d been seeking.

  ‘He’s been out in Senegal for the last five years, working for a charity setting up water-aid projects.’

  At the word Senegal mother rolled her eyes in alarm. ‘Well, for heaven’s sake don’t do anything silly. You know AIDS is absolutely rampant in Africa.’

  ‘Mother!’ I said, shocked by the speed with which her thoughts had turned to sex. ‘I only exchanged a few words with him. He asked after you both, actually.’

  ‘Oh really?’ she said, somewhat mollified.

  ‘Did you find out what Frances is doing now?’ asked father. He had always liked her.

  ‘She lives in Australia.’

  ‘Senegal. Australia. They’ve got around, haven’t they?’ said mother.

  Unlike me, I thought.

  ‘She’s married to a surgeon.’

  Mother raised her eyebrows. ‘She’s done well for herself.’ At the mention of Australia she had clearly imagined Frances shacked up with some sun-tanned jackeroo or surfing instructor. ‘Her mother must miss her. I hope you don’t get any ideas about emigrating.’

  ‘I bet she goes out to visit them every year,’ I said, ignoring her last remark. ‘Especially since Frances has had kids. Mind you, I can’t picture Lexi as a granny somehow.’

  ‘One can’t see her knitting matinée jackets,’ father agreed.

  ‘There’s no justice,’ said mother, a keen knitter.

  When I left them, just before teatime, I drove to Balmoral Road and parked outside the house – something I’d never done before. I have no reason to go in that direction nowadays; it’s not on any of my routes. The house had been altered beyond recognition. The tobacco-coloured brickwork had been stone clad to match Fish and Chips’ side, and aluminium windows with fake leaded lights replaced the old wooden sash-frames. The lead strips were not quite parallel, giving the glass the appearance of a bulging net. A dismantled car was jacked up on the driveway, its innards all over the crazy paving. At least the dead cactus had gone from the window sill.

  A car horn tooted: I was blocking the neighbour’s drive. I reversed out of the way, waving an apology, and as the car swung past me I saw Fish at the wheel, and a middle-aged woman – not Chips – beside him. He glanced at me and then looked again in recognition. I’ve passed the age of bad manners now, so I didn’t roar off, but waited, smiling, until he approached my door as I knew he would. He didn’t look that much older – he had less hair perhaps, but I would have changed more.

  ‘Hello,’ he said, as I wound the window down. ‘It’s thingummy, isn’t it? Frances Radley’s friend.’

  ‘That’s right. I was just passing, and I thought I’d look at the house, you know, nostalgia.’

  ‘They moved years ago,’ he said. ‘Do you still see the family?’

  ‘Not any more. We lost touch.’

  ‘Funny lot,’ he said, encouraged by this admission. ‘I shall never forget that dog – bloody great lump on its side. I don’t know why they didn’t take it to the vet and get it sorted out.’

  I just smiled. It wasn’t my job to defend their standards of petcare. ‘How’s your mother?’ I asked.

  ‘She’s been in a home since I got married. We’ve just come from visiting her, actually.’

  His companion had got out of the car by now and was standing by the porch, arms folded impatiently. She was wearing shiny white knee-high boots of the sort that might have been acceptable on someone half her age in 1965, and a jacket of black bobbly wool which put me in mind of a poodle. The look on her face wasn’t especially friendly. ‘That’s my wife, Pauline,’ he said with some pride. She didn’t return my smile but turned on her heel and let herself into the house, slamming the door behind her. A jealous woman, I thought, as Fish made his excuses and hurried down the drive after her.

  That evening I tidied my flat. It was already tidy, but once you start looking there are always things to be done. Then I put on Britten’s War Requiem – loud – and lay on the couch with tears sliding into my ears until the woman in the upstairs flat knocked on the door and asked me to turn the music down because she was trying to get her baby to sleep.

  Three weeks after I’d posted my letter to Frances her reply arrived on a misty spring morning. Her chubby schoolgirl handwriting on the envelope was unmistakable. It was written on one of those flimsy aerogrammes that are impossible to open without demolishing half the text, and there was 50p excess to pay because she’d enclosed a set of photographs.

  Dear Abigail

  I was so pleased to get your letter and hear all your news, and I’m really glad you’ve made it as a cellist. Are you in fact more famous than you’re letting on? Have you, for instance, made any recordings? Copies please, if so.

  I’ve been here eight years now and feel totally Australian. The only thing I can’t get used to is the midsummer Christmas. I get all sentimental about White Christmases (there’s probably a word to describe that feeling of nostalgia for something you’ve never actually experienced). But apart from that, and family of course, I can’t say I miss Britain at all. I applied for citizenship last year – it seems crazy to be a different nationality from my own children (photos enclosed). We live about five minutes from the beach, so we’re down there most afternoons: there’s a whole group of mums and kids who meet up. I help out in a kindergarten in the mornings. The twins (Esme and Hera, 5) are at school now, and Tyler (3) comes to kindy with me. I’m not intending to continue with this domestic slavery indefinitely, in case you were wondering. As soon as Tyler’s at school I’m going to university to do a psychology course, so that I can become a psychotherapist to this community’s many nutters. Nev, my husband, is a plastic surgeon, and tends to run up against a fair few of them in his line of work, so he will be able to put some business my way. (Only joking.) He does a lot of work with burns patients and road crash victims as well as a bit of ‘vanity’ work, but he hasn’t put me under the knife yet – as you can see from the photo I am entirely unenhanced. He says he’ll give me a discount if I make a block booking – liposuction, tummy tuck, breast reduction, and he’ll throw in a free nose job.

  It’s true I haven’t been back to England since the children were born – a family visit is out of the question, but I haven’t ruled out a solo trip. Mum and Lawrence have been out twice now: we all went up to Cairns for a fortnight and took a boat out on
the reef. Can you imagine Mum in a snorkel? Dad was here last summer – he was really good with the children – very grandpaternal. Perhaps I’ll try and persuade him to move out here. Nev’s parents live right down in Melbourne so we’re painfully short of relatives.

  I couldn’t work out from your letter whether you’re still in contact with Rad; if you are you’ll already know about his accident. He came off his motorbike in the snow in January and broke his arm, leg, collar bone and some ribs. He spent about six weeks in hospital but he’s apparently out now. I had all this from Mum who’s been nursing him. I haven’t seen him since my wedding – nearly seven years, but he writes good letters. I suppose it’s him I miss more than anyone. If you ever find yourself hankering to escape an English winter – or an English summer for that matter – we’d love to have you. I wish I could promise to keep in touch but I’m the world’s slackest correspondent nowadays. Nev does a ‘Dear friends’ mailshot on the computer at Christmas but, frankly, it’s completely unreadable – so I’ll spare you that. Nevertheless please write again anyway if you have time.

  Love

  Frances

  P.S. Do go and visit Rad if you can as he is bored and lonely.

  There were four pictures – a studio shot of the three children and others of Frances and Nev, the whole family, and the outside of the house – a large, white, single-storey building with a green tiled roof and a lemon tree on the front lawn. I didn’t pay them the attention I might have because my mind was still racing from Frances’ news about Rad. I reread the crucial paragraph. He came off his motorbike in the snow. That would have had to be during the three or four days following our meeting, as the snow had not lasted long and we’d had none since. Perhaps he’d never received my card – had been taken to hospital before I’d even posted it. I read on: he’s apparently out now. The letter was dated a fortnight ago. The feeling of hope that had bloomed a moment earlier wilted as I realised he would have had plenty of time by now to respond to my card if he was the slightest bit interested. Maybe it was his writing arm that was broken? I thought, trying to picture him plastered from shoulder to fingertips, prone on a bed somewhere, fumbling helplessly with that two-inch piece of crayon, surrounded by the litter of a dozen illegible messages to me. This didn’t seem terribly likely somehow; it would take more than a few broken bones to deter someone truly keen and resourceful. Do go and visit Rad if you can as he is bored and lonely. Well, that makes two of us, I thought, reaching for my road map.

  Even my jumbo sized A–Z couldn’t help me with the meagre information Rad had supplied by way of an address. There were roads called Riverside in Twickenham, Richmond and Woolwich, but not Laleham. I began to wonder whether my card could possibly have arrived at all. I toyed with the idea of driving over to The Close to borrow Dad’s Ordnance Survey map of the relevant area but decided a trip into town to buy one would be quicker and less exasperating. It would take us hours to crack the arcane filing system that had come into play since the study had been redecorated, and of the whole set of maps, amassed over many years, it would inevitably be the one missing or out on loan that I required. I’d been caught that way too many times before.

  I spent some time at the shops trying to find a suitable visiting gift. Was it okay to take flowers to a man? Country Living was obviously out in this instance. A book would be no good. He might already have it, or hate the author. If I chose one I hadn’t read I couldn’t vouch for its being any good, but to go for an old favourite of mine on the assumption that he hadn’t read it seemed bossy somehow – like giving homework. Finally I settled for some expensive chocolates – I didn’t want them to look like an afterthought, picked up at any old garage on the way – and a bunch of daffodils. You can’t go wrong with daffodils: you can just ram them in a beer mug and they look fine.

  The OS map wasn’t any use as far as Riverside was concerned, of course, but it did offer some clues. At Laleham the river Thames had carved out a meander so deep that it had almost formed an ox-bow. Before that could happen a navigation had been dug through the short cut, and there was now a lock and a small island. The area was called Penton Hook: the place illustrated on Rad’s postcard. It occurred to me that he might be living in the lock-keeper’s cottage itself; if not, someone there might be able to point me in the right direction.

  It took over two hours to reach Laleham. Even with the maps spread out all over the passenger seat I lost myself several times, got enmeshed in a one-way system in Kingston and ended up on the wrong side of the river. My attentiveness in Mrs Twigg’s second-year mapwork lessons had been wasted apparently. Identifying escarpments and giving the coordinates for a youth hostel and a church without tower or spire had not proved adequate preparation for work in the field.

  Eventually I found what I was looking for. An alleyway between two houses in a quiet residential street led past a building site to the river, and there it was: the lock and the white cottage from the picture that had been propped on my mantelpiece for the past two months. A man in overalls was sitting on the doorstep in the sunshine fitting a new tyre to a bicycle wheel using a couple of spoons. He squinted up at me as I approached. ‘Do you know a place called Wentworth?’ I asked, feeling suddenly foolish. He gave a little nod. ‘I can give you directions, but if you’re looking for the guy who lives there, he’s out on the island, fishing.’ He pointed across the weir.

  I thanked him and waited impatiently by the lockside while the gates swung open to let a pleasure cruiser pass downstream. The mists had all dissolved now and a milky sun shimmered on the water as I crossed the weir to the island.

  He was on the far side beyond the trees, sitting on the bank on one of those legless green canvas chairs with his back to me. There was a fishing rod propped in front of him, parallel with the river, and he had his head down as though reading, but as I came closer I saw that he was asleep, an open copy of Huckleberry Finn face down on his lap. A small silver bell hung from the tip of the fishing rod. The devil entered me and I reached down and gave the line a tug, setting the bell jangling. Rad started violently and lunged for the rod, sending Huckleberry Finn tumbling down the bank into the river. He gave a sort of splutter of annoyance, which turned to surprise as he saw me.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, aghast, dropping the chocolates and daffodils and scrambling down the bank to retrieve the book which was now lying under about six inches of muddy Thames water. I wiped it on the grass and handed it, dripping and buckled, back up to him.

  ‘Hello,’ he said, giving me one of his sardonic looks. ‘You’re the first bite I’ve had all week.’ He offered me his hand and pulled me up out of the mud on to the grass beside him.

  ‘I shouldn’t have done that,’ I said. ‘I just saw that little bell there and I couldn’t resist it.’

  ‘I thought you were a twenty-pound pike,’ he said.

  ‘Sorry to disappoint you.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not disappointed.’

  ‘Frances wrote and told me you’d had a bad motorbike accident and needed cheering up.’

  ‘So you thought you’d come and knock my book into the river.’

  ‘I hadn’t planned that bit. I thought you might need things doing – shopping and stuff. Frances gave me the impression that you’d broken every bone in your body.’

  ‘I’m afraid you’ve been dragged here under false pretences: one of my legs was fine.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to sound cheated. I’m glad to see you looking so well.’

  ‘I looked more impressive a few weeks ago when I was still in plaster. I feel a bit of a fraud now, although I still can’t walk far.’

  ‘How did you do it?’

  ‘I was riding back from work in the snow – I suppose it wouldn’t have been long after I’d bumped into you at the Barbican – and this little kid came flying down his driveway on a sledge and straight out into the road. I swerved and went into a skid and got thrown against a parked car with the bike on top of me. It was my fault – I was going too fa
st.’

  ‘God. You’re lucky to be alive.’

  ‘I suppose so. When I was lying in hospital all strapped up I honestly didn’t know whether I felt lucky or unlucky.’

  ‘What got broken?’

  ‘My collar bone, three ribs, my right arm and my left leg. The worst of it is the bike’s not even mine – I was borrowing it from the bloke who’s taken over my job.’

  ‘Are you having physiotherapy?’ What did I care about someone or other’s bike?

  ‘Twice a week at the moment. This woman gets me moving my arm around and squeezing tennis balls and lifting incredibly light weights. But she seems to spend most of the time just massaging my shoulders, and chatting.’

  I bet she does, I thought. I remembered the chocolates and daffodils – now somewhat battered – that I’d flung down earlier, and retrieved them. ‘I wasn’t sure what to bring,’ I said. ‘You probably hate flowers.’

  ‘I don’t actually,’ he said in a matter-of-fact voice. ‘When I was working in Senegal I went to dinner with one of the local dignitaries. He was quite well off by their standards and had some really beautiful furniture – ebony tables inlaid with brass, and fantastic carpets, and he insisted on showing me his prized possession, which turned out to be a vase of plastic daffodils. I’ve looked at daffodils through different eyes since then. I see you didn’t think I was up to Country Living.’

  ‘It was the other way round, I assure you.’

  ‘I ought to put these in some water,’ he said. ‘I’m only a few minutes’ walk away – would you like a cup of tea. Or a beer?’