Learning to Swim

by Clare Chambers

  ‘That was a good idea of yours,’ he said a little later as we sat in the café, water trickling from the ends of our hair and rolling off the front of our coats. After only the first few seconds’ dash from the temple we were so thoroughly soaked that further haste was pointless. ‘We should have brought an umbrella,’ Rad said, watching me unwind the scarf from around my neck and wring it out into the plant pot beside me.

  ‘I’ve got a brand new one in the boot of the car,’ I said, as if this was of any interest now. ‘I’ve been saving it for a rainy day.’

  He put down his coffee untasted. ‘I was going to tell you you haven’t changed,’ he said. ‘But I’ve just realised that you don’t blush any more. Do you?’

  I shook my head. ‘I don’t much nowadays. I must have got all my embarrassments out of the way early.’

  This was his first hint, in all our conversations since I’d first found him fishing on the island, that such a thing as a shared past even existed.

  ‘You seem to have more confidence.’

  ‘That’s funny,’ I said, stirring brown sugar crystals into my coffee. ‘Because you seem to have less. But then you had far too much before anyway.’ I smiled to let him know I was joking, which I was, almost.

  ‘I think when you’re young you’re an extreme version of yourself and as you get older your personality moves towards the norm. Then when you get really old it swings to the extreme again.’

  ‘Is this a theory you’ve formulated over the years?’

  ‘No, I just thought of it,’ he admitted.

  ‘I remember you used to be very tough on me and Frances. Trivial was a word that came up a lot.’

  ‘Really? In what context?’

  ‘Oh, you know, high heels, nail varnish, jewellery – all that girly stuff.’

  ‘Did I? I quite like high-heeled shoes on women now. Though they’re obviously not for walking in, are they? Just for looking at.’

  I raised my eyebrows. ‘You have changed …’

  ‘I’m all in favour of a bit of trivia now and then. Like your earrings, for instance. The fact that you’ve gone to the trouble of putting a little gold moon in one ear and a gold star in the other – that’s nice.’

  ‘… On the other hand,’ I said, ‘you can still be as deliciously patronising as ever.’

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, shrugging his shoulders. ‘It’s years of practice.’

  On the way back to the car Rad offered to cook me dinner on the houseboat. I was pleased, of course, that he wanted to extend our day together, but an image of that shelf of tinned pilchards and rice pudding rose up unbidden. I could almost taste them on my mind’s tongue, and a look of anxiety must have crossed my face because Rad said, hurriedly, ‘No, of course, you’ve probably got other plans –’ and his forehead puckered into a frown.

  ‘I haven’t,’ I interrupted. ‘Well, I’ve got to get back at some point to feed the cat, but not this minute. Shall I stop on the way to pick up some food?’ I added casually. ‘You didn’t have much in when I was last there.’

  ‘You’re worried about my cooking, aren’t you?’ said Rad. ‘You’re thinking of that tin of frankfurters.’ In the face of such percipience I could hardly deny it. ‘I told you they weren’t mine,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not a fussy eater,’ I explained in mitigation. ‘But my tastes have evolved a little since the days of the Greasy Dog.’

  ‘So have mine,’ said Rad. ‘Unfortunately my abilities haven’t. So it’ll just be a packet of spaghetti and a jar of pesto sauce, if that’s not too basic for your evolved taste.’

  ‘That’ll be fine.’

  ‘It’s Mum’s sixtieth birthday party a week on Sunday,’ said Rad suddenly as we were driving through Richmond Park on the way home. ‘Will you come?’ He was attempting to wipe the inside of the windscreen with a shred of tissue that I had unearthed from the glove compartment. Even the full might of the car heater was not equal to the clouds of vapour coming off our wet clothes, and the windows kept fogging up.

  ‘I’d love to,’ I said, peering at the road through a fist-sized patch of transparent glass.

  ‘Everyone will be there – except Frances of course. I mean Dad will be there …’ he trailed off.

  ‘That’s okay,’ I said evenly. ‘I’d like to see them all.’

  ‘I know Mum would love to see you again. And Lawrence. He gave me such a hard time when we, you know, lost contact.’

  I smiled at the notion of our ‘losing contact’, and even at a distance of thirteen years I was pleased to imagine Rad having a hard time. ‘Not being Radleys was a strong bond between us,’ I said, and then, ‘Sixty. I can hardly believe it. Is she grey?’

  ‘Underneath,’ said Rad. He looked out of the window at the traffic crawling away through the park. ‘Is it me, or are there more cars around nowadays? The rush hour seems to go on all day.’

  ‘It’s getting worse,’ I agreed.

  ‘Makes me proud that I haven’t got a car.’

  ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘Much better idea to get a lift from someone who has – that way you can feel superior without having to get the bus.’

  He gave me a look that said smartarse, and started to pick through my selection of classical cassettes that were jammed into the cubby hole in the dashboard.

  ‘Who’s the greatest composer?’

  ‘Mozart,’ I said, without a second’s hesitation. ‘Who’s the greatest philosopher?’

  ‘Hume,’ he said. ‘But then I never finished the course.’

  I couldn’t help laughing at this. ‘What did you do when you left?’

  ‘I can’t remember. I think I had a bit of a breakdown. I just about got through that autumn term after Birdie’s death, sort of sleepwalking, but then at Christmas I went slightly mad. I was so obsessed by the idea of death I couldn’t see the point in anything – eating, working, getting out of bed, getting into bed. Mum sent me off to see this psychotherapist in Battersea. She just sat there with her hands folded and occasionally replied to one of my questions with another question, and after about three months of this twice a week I worked out what it had cost and thought, Christ, I could have gone round the world for that and got more answers, so I packed it in. Then once the idea of travel had occurred to me I started to think about VSO and within six months I was in India.’

  ‘You’d have thought they would try to screen out people who are just running away.’

  ‘I wasn’t just running away. Anyway, I reckon about ninety per cent of the volunteers I met out there saw the whole thing as a sort of equivalent to joining the Foreign Legion.’

  ‘How long were you there for?’

  ‘Two years. Then I came back and got a job with this Arid Lands project and after a few years in the office the posting came up in Senegal.’

  ‘And now here you are.’

  ‘Yes. Here I am,’ he said, not sounding terribly convinced.

  On the houseboat Rad lit the Calor Gas stove and hung our coats in front of it over the back of a rickety drying frame. He looked at my jeans which, like his, were soaking from knee to ankle, and then vanished into the spare cabin and reappeared carrying a couple of towels. ‘Do you want a shower while I slave over this jar of pesto? It’s the only way to get warm in this place. You can borrow a pair of my trousers while these dry off if you like.’ He pushed the cabin door open and pointed to the piles of clean laundry. ‘Help yourself.’

  This is a bit kinky, I thought, selecting a pair of brown corduroys, ironed by Lexi with a crease down the front, and a faded denim shirt. In the bathroom I inspected Rad’s toiletries for any signs of female habitation: shampoo, soap, deodorant, toothpaste, shaving foam and a Bic razor. So far so good. Outside I could hear him clattering saucepans, and the whine of the tap running. The shower was so low on the wall only a dwarf could have washed his hair without stooping, and even infinitesimal adjustments to the dial could not deliver water at a temperature between freezing and boiling. I squealed as Rad turned off
the kitchen tap and scalding water erupted from the shower head.

  ‘Sorry,’ he called. ‘I forgot to mention that the dial is stuffed. You need the touch of a brain surgeon.’

  There was no room in there to get dressed, and besides every surface was awash by the time I’d finished, so I was forced to emerge, wrapped in a towel, red-shouldered and flustered, and make my way to the spare cabin, dropping and retrieving items of clothing along the way. Rad, who was sitting on the bench seat with his leg up, reading and drinking red wine, watched my undignified progress with amusement. ‘I’m afraid a bit of water went on the floor,’ I said, underplaying the facts rather.

  ‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘Help yourself to wine.’ And then, ‘Godalmighty, what were you doing in here?’ as he stepped into the bathroom with a splash.

  I poured wine into an empty glass – one of those indestructible types they give away in petrol promotions. I still had a few like that back home; they outlived all the decent ones – practically bounced when dropped. On the cooker the saucepan lid started to rattle, so I stood a sheaf of spaghetti in the bubbling water and watched it collapse against the side of the pan. On the dresser was a jar of green pesto and a hunk of parmesan which looked as though it might have spent a couple of weeks in a mousetrap. There was no cheese grater, of course, so I was reduced to hacking chunks off the block with a blunt fruit knife.

  How can anyone live like this? I asked myself as I nearly took off the end of my finger for the second time. Making do with stuff you’d find in a badly equipped caravan. All this ad hockery was perfectly acceptable for a fortnight’s holiday, but Rad had been here over four months and now owned the place. You could have too much of this minimalism, I decided.

  Once I’d disposed of the cheese and given the spaghetti a stir I removed my coat, now steaming, from the drying frame and replaced it with my wet jeans and jumper. Then I settled down on the bench with my wine and picked up Rad’s book, an ancient Penguin edition of Three Men in a Boat priced three and six, and opened it at the first page. ‘There were four of us – George, and William Samuel Harris, and myself, and Montmorency …’ A bookmark fell out on to the table. It was my card: the one I had sent some three months ago now and which he had never followed up. Sorry we didn’t have a chance to talk properly the other evening. As I went to slip it back between the pages, about half-way through, where I guessed it had been lying, I saw that on the back, all around the address, he had doodled the name Jex over and over again, dozens of times, in large and small handwriting. I felt my scalp prickle, and then the bathroom door opened and I dropped the book guiltily and stood up.

  ‘It’s nearly done,’ I said, pointing at the pan. He burst out laughing when he saw my outfit. And I suppose in his oversized shirt and trousers, with everything rolled up several times at ankles, cuffs and waistband, I did look rather like one of those home-made guys that you see slumped outside tube stations on Bonfire Night. While he was in his cabin changing I cast around to try and check my appearance, finally turning up a chipped mirror tile on the inside of a cupboard door at about chest height. Clearly the boat’s last owner hadn’t been one to preen.

  The pasta was cooked by now so I hunted vainly for a colander, but found only a buckled tea strainer with a ten-pence-sized hole in the middle, and was forced to make do with the saucepan lid. Rad appeared in dry jeans and a white shirt, rubbing his wet hair with a towel, to find me picking strands of spaghetti out of the sink. We were so hungry by this time that if it had been faintly scented with Fairy Liquid we wouldn’t have noticed. Rad sat on the bench seat with his bad leg up and I sat opposite on the new chair – a handsome but rather hard Victorian carver. Rad had found a night-light which he stood in a jam jar and placed on the table between us. ‘There,’ he said, ‘I hope all this luxury isn’t making you uncomfortable.’

  ‘If I’d known I was going to have a candlelit supper I’d have worn my jewels,’ I said, rolling up the trailing cuff of my borrowed shirt for the hundredth time.

  Pudding consisted of an apple and a bar of fruit and nut which we shared with coffee. I was glad to see that the chocolates I’d bought him on my previous visit didn’t put in an appearance. It would be hard to admire the sort of self-control which could make a box of truffles last nearly a week.

  ‘They’ll be wanting you back at work soon, won’t they?’ I asked as we washed up. ‘You must have been off for a few months now.’

  ‘They’ve been very good about it,’ Rad said. ‘They just want me fit and well.’ From the clipped way he spoke I sensed that he didn’t care to pursue this, though I couldn’t for the life of me imagine why. ‘What about your job?’ he asked. ‘You haven’t told me anything about it.’

  ‘There’s not much to tell. I rehearse, I perform, I quite often travel. I teach, too, but not very well because I’m away so much. I have no social life whatsoever because my evenings are taken up with concerts. When I do get a morning or an afternoon free there’s no one to share it with because all normal people are at work. Still, I’m not complaining. I know I’m lucky to make a living from my hobby.’

  ‘It must be very important to you, your career – you’ve been playing since you were how old?’

  ‘Nine. I suppose it is. I mean I’m not fit to do anything else.’

  ‘Competition must be pretty fierce at the top.’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m not at the top – I’m B-list material through and through.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re not.’

  ‘No, honestly. I thought I might make it as a soloist when I left the Royal College because I’d won a few competitions. But it just didn’t happen. I was lucky to get a job with a provincial orchestra – and even luckier when this one in London came up. It’s not like other careers where you work your way up slowly to a position of eminence. Here, if you miss the boat that’s it.’ Story of my life, really, I thought.

  ‘How can you say you’ve missed the boat? You play with one of the best orchestras in the country. In the world for all I know.’

  ‘I said I’m not complaining. I just don’t want you to have the wrong idea about how famous or successful I am. Because I’m neither.’

  ‘It’s strange to think that all the years we knew you you were quietly working away at something which you turned out to be brilliant at. I don’t think any of us ever even heard you play.’

  ‘I remember Nicky was quite surprised to find out that I played the cello,’ I said, looking up at Rad through my fringe. ‘“I can’t imagine her getting anything between her legs,” I think he said – to your great amusement.’

  Rad, who had been washing up the pasta saucepan, stopped and then started again slightly faster. I couldn’t quite see his face because he had his back to me and it had grown dark by now, the only light coming from the candle and the blue and orange glow of the gas stove.

  ‘Don’t tell me I’ve succeeded in embarrassing you?’ I said.

  He gave an awkward laugh. ‘I don’t remember that conversation, but I’ll take your word for it because it sounds like vintage Nicky, and it’s obviously seared itself on your memory.’

  ‘Well, I’m afraid it reinforced that totally false impression you have in your teens that one way or another everyone has an opinion about you. It’s such a relief when you get older and realise that no one has given the matter a moment’s thought.’

  ‘You exaggerate,’ he said.

  ‘Not at all. When I got to thirty I suddenly decided that I was never going to worry what people thought of me again. You’ll have missed out on this peak experience because you never did care what anyone thought of you.’

  He acknowledged the truth of this with a smile. ‘I meant you exaggerate when you say no one has an opinion about you. I do for instance.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ I said in as neutral a tone as I could manage.

  ‘But I wouldn’t dream of telling you what it is because you’ve completely convinced me that you’re not the least bit interested in other people�
��s opinions.’

  The wet tea-towel gave a crack as I flicked it at him, catching him just above the elbow. He laughed, infuriatingly, and took a step back. ‘Yes, I can see indifference written all over your face.’ Crack. He dodged and the draught extinguished the night-light, leaving us with only the glow from the heater to see by. ‘You wouldn’t use violence against a helpless cripple, would you?’

  Crack. This time he caught the end and we stood there in the dark with the tea-towel taut between us. ‘All I was going to say was that you’ve improved with age,’ said Rad.

  ‘Like a cheese?’

  He ignored this. ‘Although you’re still very bad at taking compliments.’ The tea-towel slackened and I took it back.

  ‘Well, I don’t get the practice,’ I said, folding and refolding it. ‘And if you don’t mind my saying, I’m not sure you’re so hot at giving them: “improved with age” sounds as though I was a bit defective when I was young.’

  ‘That’s because you take a masochist’s pleasure in disparaging yourself.’

  ‘You’re very confident in your pronouncements on my character. After such a short re-acquaintance.’