The Drowning Lesson

by Jane Shemilt

  I saw in the mirror that she wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. I’d forgotten. The cars were parked bumper to bumper both sides of the road. I’d have to stop in a driveway, more time lost.

  ‘It’s not allowed to drop me off so early.’

  ‘Of course it is, Ally.’

  ‘There’s nowhere for me to go.’

  ‘You can read in the classroom, talk to the others…’

  I twisted round to smile at her and looked back at the road just in time to take in the red lights up ahead. I jammed on the brakes, skidding to a halt. A young woman with rain-flattened hair glared at me as she shepherded her bundled child over the road. Behind me, Zoë started to cry loudly. She had been jerked forward and was crumpled in the trough between the seats. Sweating with guilt, I got out of the car, and yanked the door open. She was tightly wedged, her face streaked with tears of shock. I pulled her out and stood her upright on the pavement. No damage. I gave her a short, hard hug and put her back into the seat, this time fastening her belt. Behind us a line of traffic was forming. There were angry faces and horns blaring. I got into the car again, trembling. I rarely made careless mistakes but this morning I’d been in a hurry and distracted by the day ahead, forgot to check if I’d fastened the seat-belt. Was I becoming the kind of mother who put her career before her children’s safety?

  ‘I feel sick.’ Alice’s voice was unsteady.

  At school, she got out of the car and walked slowly across the empty playground without saying goodbye; she knew it was my fault. She disappeared down the steps leading to the cloakroom, her narrow back bent by the weight of the rucksack, shoulders hunched against the drizzle.

  Despite what had happened, Zoë had fallen asleep again. I carried her to Reception, trying not to dislodge the thumb from her mouth. We were greeted by Susi, the teacher’s assistant, who smiled as she took her. Too late, I noticed Zoë’s hem was coming down, her cuff was stained with felt tip and she was wearing unmatched socks. Susi carried her carefully from the door. I imagined how gently she would lay her on the deep cushions in the rest room. I had seen them when I’d looked round the school before the children had started there; that detail had been decisive. Now I was worried: why had Alice’s teacher asked to see me?

  Mrs Philips was waiting for me in the empty year-five classroom. She must have been cleaning the board – chalk dust hung in the air. She watched me, her head held sideways, a long orange earring touching her shoulder. Her fingers, tipped with matching orange, rested on a small picture of Alice that was fastened to a closely typed sheet; the nails were sharp and shining like the talons of a minor bird of prey.

  ‘I got your email,’ I began.

  ‘Thank you for coming in. I’ve sent Alice to breakfast with the boarders. I wanted to share my concerns in private, Mrs Jordan.’ Her voice was burdened with sincerity. She leant forward. ‘I think you should know that Alice has been taking things, small things.’ The earring swung and trembled.

  I had a vision of a shining pile of mobiles, watches and coins. ‘What kind of small things?’

  ‘Pencils, rubbers, scrunchies, a pair of socks.’

  ‘Is that all?’ I wanted to laugh. ‘She was probably only borrowing this stuff temporarily and then forgot. At home we tend to share things, so –’

  ‘The items were found in her desk, in a little box, labelled with her name.’ She smiled gently.

  ‘Does she know you know?’

  ‘I removed them and told Alice I would have a discussion with you. No one else is aware of the situation.’

  I glanced out of the window; I disliked this woman though I wasn’t sure why. Small knots of children of about Alice’s age were beginning to walk across the playground in twos and threes, holding hands, chatting. They looked happy, but perhaps they secretly minded about losing their pencils or scrunchies. They might be plotting revenge. I felt a pang of worry for Alice.

  ‘I’ll talk to her,’ I said. She usually told me about school, though not so much lately. I looked at my lap where my hands twisted together. Surgeon’s hands, like his, Dad had said. Clever hands that could dissect to the problem and cut it out. I ought to have known if Alice had a problem: it should have been something she’d confided to me in whispers at the end of the day when I tucked her in. But I often wasn’t there then. Adam was. Even if I asked her what was wrong, would she tell me? She might have decided on the evidence that I didn’t care.

  ‘I think Alice is self-validating,’ Mrs Philips was continuing. ‘Ten-year-old children who steal may be looking for ways to reward themselves. I wondered if she was getting sufficient positive feedback from … all her caregivers.’

  I felt my face heat. The clock behind her head showed eight. I would be late if I stayed to argue. I stood to go. ‘She gets plenty of feedback at home. We praise her all the time. Perhaps you could make sure that happens at school, too, instead of accusing her of theft.’

  She didn’t reply but I could feel her eyes watching me as I walked to the door. Iridescent lines danced at the corner of my vision: a migraine was approaching. I delved in my bag for paracetamol as I crossed the playground, fine rain driving against my hot cheeks. My heels tapped the tarmac, jarring my head with each step. Bloody woman. I shouldn’t have lost my temper but I was worried for Alice. As I swallowed the bitter tablets I wondered whether any of the sweet-faced children running past me in the opposite direction had retribution in mind.

  The operating theatre was brightly lit, warm and calm. Classical music flowed from speakers in the ceiling. It was easy to empty my mind of everything except what I had to do. The patient lay in front of me, unconscious, intubated, eyes taped shut. Cancer had invaded the bladder from the uterus. The task distilled and became, simply, careful dissection and painstaking repair. The anaesthetist nodded. It was safe to begin. The theatre sister quietly handed me the knife and I started to cut. The music and murmurs of my team faded into the background as I worked, blinking away the sweat as it stung my eyes.

  Two hours later the skin was neatly sutured, bladder function preserved.

  Back in my room, I took more paracetamol, this time with a palmful of metallic tap water from the basin. I sat at my desk massaging my temples; on the screensaver in front of me Alice and Zoë were laughing on a sunny beach. Alice’s face in the mirror this morning had been bleak. Perhaps what Mrs Philips had implied was true: perhaps there wasn’t enough positive feedback at home – perhaps there wasn’t any. We didn’t praise her all the time; in spite of what I’d said, I couldn’t remember the last time we had. The opportunity never seemed to present itself, or maybe it was simply lack of time. It might be worse than that.

  I got up from my desk and stared out of the window. In front of me was a panorama of north London: sky, houses, roads, the grassy slopes of Hampstead Heath. The hidden ponds behind the trees where the water was green and deep. Had I become like my father in some way that was hidden from me? Did she feel she had to win to make me happy?

  If I worked through lunch I could finish my review paper on intrauterine growth retardation for the Journal of Reproductive Medicine. I’d get home earlier for once – I could catch Alice and we would talk.

  In the early-afternoon gynaecology clinic I was called back to theatre to help with an obstructed labour. The monitor showed the baby’s heart rate was dipping between contractions. As I tugged on the McIndoe’s forceps, the small bloodstained face appeared at the bulging introitus, the tiny nose squashed flat. A deep episiotomy, one last tug and the delivery was done. The tiny boy went straight to the waiting paediatricians to be checked, then, wailing, was handed to the exhausted mother. The father bent over them, too overcome to speak. Nodding congratulations, I stripped off my gloves and left, leaving the placental delivery and vaginal stitching to my registrar. Suffused with anxiety about my own child, I had nothing to say to these parents – they wouldn’t thank me if I was honest, if I warned them that labour was trivial measured against the worries that lay ahead.

  A
s I walked back to the clinic along the corridor, several colleagues hurried by, all of them intent on the next ward round or clinic. I felt in my white coat for my mobile: I wanted to talk to Adam. When we were first qualified and up all night with emergency admissions, we would meet in the hospital canteen at two a.m. As we leant wearily against each other, with our cups of watery hot chocolate on the Formica table in front of us; we would try to make sense of the demands and the suffering. We never talked about those things now. I was put through to Megan’s answering machine and cut the call without leaving a message.

  The last two patients of the day had cancelled so I left early. Alice wouldn’t be back yet and I had time for a swim in the leisure centre. The poolside seats were full of parents at this time of day, chatting as their children changed after swimming lessons.

  My father had been sitting three rows back at my school’s gala day, a Wednesday – I remember that. He never came to galas, he always worked Wednesday afternoons, but it was my tenth birthday and he’d swapped things around. His shoulders had been hunched, his mouth turned down. He looked unhappy; he’d looked unhappy for five years.

  Can you die of a broken heart? My teacher says you can. My toes curl around the lip of the pool. My heart is banging so hard I can’t think.

  The whistle goes into my spine, like hot electricity.

  My legs are beating as I hit the water, my arms already slicing. At the first turn, I’m in third place. By the time I turn again I’m lying second. On the last length I don’t turn my head to breathe, not once. I draw level halfway down then pull ahead. Bursting for breath, I touch first.

  The roar from my school echoes round the pool. I pull myself out and turn to check on Dad. He’s smiling. Really smiling. I haven’t seen him smile since Mum died.

  Now I know exactly what to do.

  In the evening, Alice didn’t want her supper. She was quieter than usual.

  ‘Is anything wrong, sweetheart?’

  ‘Not hungry.’ She shrugged, pushing mashed potato round the plate.

  ‘You know I saw your teacher today …’

  Zoe looked up, interested.

  Alice pushed her plate away. ‘I’ve had enough, thanks,’ she said. ‘I need to practise.’

  I followed her upstairs but by the time I reached her room she had her violin in her hands. She looked up, her face a polite, questioning blank.

  ‘Ally, you probably want to know what Mrs Philips said …’

  Her fingers tightened around the bow but she didn’t reply.

  ‘She told me you might have some things that belonged to the other girls. I knew if you’d taken them, there’d be a reason –’

  ‘They wanted me to look after their stuff.’ She pulled the bow over the strings, sounding a small discordant note. ‘I said I’d keep it safe for them.’

  ‘All the same –’

  ‘I gave it back today. They can look after their own things.’ She turned over a page of music, frowning. ‘I’ve got to practise, Mum, okay?’

  I could come back when she’d finished. She might be ready to talk later but the violin scales went up and down for half an hour, then her Mozart piece started; it stumbled a little with a couple of long pauses. I waited until I was sure she had finished, but when I went up again the room was dark and she was already in bed. Her eyes were closed and her breathing was regular. I kissed her and she didn’t stir. Everything seemed normal: her shoes were neatly side by side, her clothes carefully folded, but the ceramic Russian dolls on the mantelpiece caught my eye. They were lying down for once, spaced out evenly in size order, though usually they were stacked one inside the other. I’d brought them back from Moscow years ago after an obstetrics congress. I picked one up. The china was sharp beneath my fingers – the doll was cracked. Checking each in turn, I saw they were all broken, the smallest in several pieces, its bright fragments scattered on the carpet. The curtains were moving in the breeze: the window had been left open. Perhaps the dolls had simply blown over. I slid the pane down quietly.

  We would chat tomorrow on the way to school; she could tell me what had happened then. It was often the only time we were together with nothing else in the way. I closed the door and went downstairs. The morning’s migraine had started up again and was playing itself out in a drumroll of pain. I needed quiet and dark.

  Sofia was washing up in the kitchen, ponytail swinging as she jigged from foot to foot in time to loud pop music. She was responsible for dusting the children’s rooms. I switched the radio off and she turned, her dark eyes round with surprise.

  ‘Sofia, do you know how Alice’s Russian dolls got broken?’

  Her face reddened. There was a pause. She met my gaze for a second, then looked down, shaking her head.

  The blush and her silence were telling: she must have broken them but wasn’t going to own up. The dolls were special to Alice – she used to play with them all the time, making little family groups, the larger dolls arranged in a ring around the smaller ones, with the baby in the middle.

  ‘Well, please take Zoë up to bed now. Perhaps you could mend them tomorrow.’ Despite her carelessness, I needed Sofia. ‘There’s ceramic glue in the right-hand cupboard in the utility room.’

  She shrugged, pulling off rubber gloves, her face wiped of expression.

  I bent to kiss Zoë. ‘Night, sweetheart. I’ll be up later.’

  Zoë held up her stuffed dog for a kiss, then trailed after Sofia.

  Adam was writing at the large desk in his study. His face looked empty. When I’d told him we wouldn’t be coming to Africa he’d been disbelieving, then angry. Now, three weeks on, it had finally sunk in.

  ‘How’s it all going?’ Laminated maps were stacked in tidy piles on the surface in front of him, and the invoices lay in ordered rows. My own desk was deep in layers of paper. He was annotating a list in neat red capitals: blood bottles, syringes and centrifuging kit, mosquito net, trekking boots.

  ‘Anything I can do?’ Close up, I could see the eczema flaring in a red line along his collar.

  ‘It’s coming together.’ Then he put his pen down and stared up at me. ‘Though I still wish you were all coming. Em, are you completely sure?’

  ‘We’ve been through this a hundred times. You know I can’t leave.’ I felt giddy and sat down quickly on the sofa, wishing I’d eaten lunch. ‘Let’s not tell the girls you’re going till nearer the time – Alice might worry. I saw her teacher this morning.’

  I described the meeting with Mrs Philips. As Adam listened, his fingers were constantly moving, stacking papers edge to edge, and placing pens in parallel rows.

  ‘I don’t think she needs more discussion about stealing,’ he said, when he’d heard the story. ‘We ought to simply –’

  ‘Do nothing? Let things completely unravel? She’ll get isolated. Kids don’t like it if their stuff gets nicked, even if she has given it back.’ I glared at his hands arranging his phone and calculator side by side, like little black soldiers. ‘Can you stop fiddling? It drives me insane. We ought to simply what?’

  ‘Love her, I guess,’ he said. His fingernails raked under the edge of his cuffs. ‘Make home a safe place for her to be.’

  ‘For God’s sake, stop scratching.’ I felt winded with hurt. ‘How can you imply I don’t love her? She knows she’s my top priority –’

  ‘Which particular top priority, Em?’ Adam stood up, patting his pockets for an inhaler. ‘There are so many: operations, clinics, research …’

  ‘That’s a fucking hypocritical thing to say. It’s exactly the same for you. And now you’re completely preoccupied with this Botswana project.’ My cheeks were burning with fury. ‘When did you last really talk to Alice?’

  ‘This very evening. I went up when she was practising her violin.’ He inhaled a couple of puffs of Ventolin, then leant back against the desk, frowning. ‘I noticed all her Russian dolls were broken. She did it on purpose.’

  ‘She didn’t do it, Adam. Sofia did. It was an ac
cident, I’m sure, but Sofia looked so guilty when I asked her, it must be her fault. Alice might be taking the blame to protect her.’

  Adam looked doubtful. ‘My guess is that it’s less complicated. Alice is bidding for attention. Negative attention is better than none. Maybe she needs more of our time … Perhaps she doesn’t realize how much we love her.’ He paused, scratching his neck.

  ‘Of course she does.’

  ‘How?’ He sounded genuinely curious.

  ‘I tell her all the time.’ That wasn’t true, though. I never told her. I took it for granted she knew. ‘I show her as well.’

  Did I? When? Amid the hurry to school in the morning so I could get to work on time, or in the evening’s rush to catch up with paperwork? She couldn’t read my mind. She might not realize she was loved. Adam could be right.

  I turned my back on him and stared out at the streetlights. In the silence, the rain started again, hitting the study window like handfuls of tiny stones. Six thousand miles away the sun would be shining on an emerald landscape. It would be hot. Adam had emailed some pictures the other day, in an attempt to change my mind. One showed a large flat-topped tree by a lake. The water had been shimmering in the sun, and under the tree the grass had looked thick and soft. I closed my eyes and let myself imagine sitting in the shade with Alice. There would be the sharp scent of young grass and the peaceful calling of birds across the water. Alice would have bare feet. We both would. There wouldn’t be a briefcase in sight.

  Adam came up beside me, staring at the drops sliding down the dark glass. ‘I booked Provence today. Same villa, same fortnight. You’re not getting out of that one.’

  Sunshine and peace for two weeks. I took his hand and brought it to my mouth, turning it over to kiss his wrist. The rash felt hot and bumpy under my lips.

  CHAPTER FOUR