“Can I do anything?” you said from outside the bathroom as I retched. You couldn’t hide the excitement in your voice.
I laid my forehead against the cold tiled wall and called out, “It must have been something I ate on the plane. I’m sure I’ll be fine in a moment.”
You didn’t come in. I heard you opening the suitcase clasps, then the drawers and the wardrobe, putting your notebooks and pens on your side of the bed, whistling through your teeth. The nausea rose again, my eyes watered, my forehead turned clammy, and I retched once more. I remembered to be thankful for the decent hotel and the clean bathroom with a toilet unsoiled by anyone other than me, even if we couldn’t afford these things and I’d be paying for them in reduced housekeeping money long after we returned to England.
After a while, when you heard me flush and run the tap, you came to crouch beside me where I sat on the floor. The tiles were embossed with a map of Italy, the sea around it an unreal blue, capped with white waves from which fishlike sea creatures jumped. “Do you think . . .” you said, a stupid smile across your face. “Is it possible, already?”
I flapped you out of the bathroom and was sick again.
“I’m sorry,” I said when I made it to the bed. “I’ve ruined our holiday.” You lay beside me, your head propped up on an arm, and stroked my hair.
“Poor Ingrid. There’s nothing to be sorry about. We can be happy again now.”
I was pleased for you. But I didn’t feel the same.
“Promise me you won’t tell anyone yet,” I said.
“I promise.” You kissed my forehead.
“There’s no point in both of us staying in. Not on our first evening. Let me sleep and in the morning we’ll go out together.”
You had the decency to be silent for a moment or two.
“Go,” I repeated.
“If you’re sure?”
“I’m sure. Find a nice restaurant and have some dinner.” I sat up against the pillows, drew in my legs, and wrapped my arms around my calves. A merman’s tail had been imprinted into the skin of my ankle where I’d kneeled on the bathroom floor.
“Can I get you anything?” you asked before you left.
In the way that sickness will pass quickly, when I’d rested for ten minutes I felt full of energy and not at all tired. I got up and sat again in the open window, my feet pressing against the frame, watching the mopeds in the street below bounce along the cobbles.
I washed my face, brushed my teeth, chose a dress (the one with the sailor collar), and strode out into the city. I walked without any sense of direction, taking in the Italians promenading through the squares. I was excited to be alive.
I stopped in a crowd to watch a man playing Für Elise by running his wet fingers around the rims of water glasses set out on a table. It was then, when the crowd was clapping, and he was bowing, and I was feeling maybe even happy with the thought of something new starting, that I saw you sitting alone at a table outside a restaurant, the yellow light from the windows spilling over your shoulders. I stayed within the crowd and spied on you, watching with a stranger’s eyes and playing with the fantasy of going up to your table and introducing myself. You were so handsome, so self-assured, watching the people walking past, and I was prepared to forgive everything.
You called the waiter over for the bill, I supposed, but the conversation was whispered and although the man brought a piece of paper and took some money, you continued to sit and wait. The crowd around me applauded the water-glass musician again, threw coins into the suitcase he had open in front of his table, and moved on, another group of tourists replacing them. I must have listened to that music five or six times before the waiter came to your table again, this time with a woman. She was about my age but taller, or tall in her high heels and miniskirt. Even from a distance I could see her eyes were ringed in kohl and her lips garish. She sat at your table and crossed her legs. You shook hands with the waiter and the woman leaned in towards you, and when you said something she laughed, so that a couple walking past the restaurant turned to look. When you stood, the woman held on to your arm—proprietorially, I thought with a stab. You walked towards the Medici Chapel and I followed. What else would you expect me to do?
She took you to an apartment building behind the empty market stalls on the Via del Canto dei Nelli. I don’t know why I’m telling you—you must remember. Please let me believe that you remember, because if you’ve forgotten, it means this prostitute who you bought on a Thursday night in Florence was only one in a long list of women on trips to London and wherever else you went. I never expected to be the kind of jealous woman who lets her imagination run away with itself.
I sat on the steps of San Lorenzo, hugging my knees, and saw a light come on in an attic window. Of course it might not have been yours (hers), but I imagined it was. I thought about you ducking your head in a room where the walls sloped, where the wooden floorboards were flecked with paint from slapdash decorating, and where there was one low window which overlooked the red-tiled roofs of Florence.
“Do you live here?” you might have asked in English, just to say something. Her skin was the colour of caramel, her black hair poorly cut, and although she’d laughed at your joke at the restaurant table, she didn’t understand what you said and might have been from any number of countries. She didn’t answer, or maybe she shrugged and you were relieved you didn’t have to make conversation. It was a transaction. You were buying and she had something to sell; it was no different from the dinner you’d eaten. She was another digestif you allowed yourself because you had something to celebrate.
In the attic room (small but clean), maybe the woman undressed and you took off your own clothes, looking around for somewhere to place them that wasn’t the bed or the floor. There, I have made a chair appear for you to save getting your trousers or white shirt dirty. She took a condom from a bedside drawer, and although you shook your head and offered her more money, you relented when she insisted. (I have convinced myself that she insisted.) Your erection didn’t flag when you protected the three of us; I don’t think it’s the loss of sensation you worry about; it’s the missed opportunity of insemination.
You had sex with her first on the bed, vigorously. You were only forty-one. Then, through gestures and manoeuvring, you had her lean forwards on the windowsill so you could come while looking out over the floodlit Duomo.
I was back in the hotel bed, pretending to be asleep, long before you returned. The next day you described in detail the antipasto (salami, grilled asparagus, tiny peppers stuffed with soft cheese), the pasta e fagioli, the sublime agnello dell’imperatore with its wreath of bay and rosemary, and how afterwards you’d strolled across Ponte Vecchio for a grappa in a bar in Piazza della Passera. I never challenged your story.
But when we got home, I did tell Jonathan everything. He’s a good listener, he didn’t interrupt me, he let me relate all of it while we sat with our backs against the Agglestone watching Nan with her legs splayed out in front of her, playing with the sandy soil.
“I’m going to leave him,” I said.
“Really?” Jonathan said quickly. “You’ve decided?”
“Probably.”
He sank back into himself.
“I just haven’t worked out how I’d live. What job could I do? No education worth talking about, no experience, and a baby to look after. There’s not enough money for any alimony.”
“There are ways,” Jonathan said, without looking at me. With a fingertip he drew a spiral in between Nan’s chubby legs. She leaned forwards, patting the ground and laughing, raising red dust. He drew it again.
“There are always ways.” I sighed, and gave a halfhearted laugh. “Perhaps I could turn to prostitution. Get Gil to pick me up. That’d give him a surprise.”
“You don’t know that’s what he was doing.”
“Why is it you always defend him?” I said. Nan rocked herself forwards and grabbed on to the rock, levering herself upwards until she
was standing. “Maybe you’re right, maybe it was all in my imagination. I saw him going into a house with a woman. I don’t know what he did in there, not really.”
Nan looked over her shoulder at us, smiling, pleased with herself. She let go of the rock with one hand.
“You’re right,” he said. “Perhaps she was his therapist.”
“Some kind of therapist!”
“I was joking,” Jonathan said. “Look, I just want you to be sure. I don’t want to be the one to persuade you.”
“You don’t think I should leave him, do you?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Oh, Jonathan, you’re so old-fashioned. So Catholic.”
“Take a lover of your own, then,” he snapped.
Nan let go of the rock and, shocked to find she was standing unaided, toppled backward onto her bottom and after a pause began to cry. Jonathan picked her up and swung her onto his shoulders. We walked home in silence.
The next day I said I’d buy one of the new home pregnancy tests, but you insisted I take a bottle of urine to Dr. Burnett.
“More accurate,” you said.
“Cheaper,” I thought.
It was positive.
I finished this letter an hour ago. I’m sorry about the places where the ink’s run, but I’ve decided I can’t write anymore. What’s the point? These letters and my stupid idea of putting down the truth only causes me pain, and most likely you’ll never read them. So this is the last.
Addio,
Ingrid
[Placed in Italian (Teach Yourself), by Lydia Vellaccio and Maurice Elston, 1985.]
Chapter 29
In the kitchen a few days later, Nan said, “I telephoned Jonathan this morning.” She was standing with her back to Richard and Flora. Her words dropped into the washing-up bowl in front of her, as if telephoning Jonathan were an everyday occurrence and she were hoping they would sink and no one would notice she had spoken.
But Flora said, “Our Jonathan?” They didn’t know any other Jonathan. The thought of his coming was one of relief; that there would be someone other than Nan and Richard to tell her what she should be doing. Three or four times a year Jonathan and Flora met in London. He took her to an exhibition, the aquarium, or an art gallery, then out to dinner; somewhere expensive, with white linen tablecloths and heavy silver cutlery. And he would ask about her art, and she would tell him what she was working on, both of them knowing they were making conversation until they could get round to the subject of the Swimming Pavilion, Gil, and finally, over glasses of cognac, Ingrid. Jonathan wanted to know how Flora’s father was, what he had been doing, and she would try to make their visits to charity shops or walks along the beach sound interesting. In return, Flora wanted old stories about her parents and Jonathan—hippies camping in the garden, playing cricket in the hallway, telling ghost stories and getting drunk on Irish whiskey. Like a child at bedtime, she never tired of listening and would mine each story for every tiny detail. Although he never said it, Flora was sure that Jonathan searched for Ingrid in crowds, like she did. He looked for her on the tube at Lancaster Gate, in the throng of tourists watching the sea horses being fed, or in the tour group standing in front of Monet’s Bathers at La Grenouillère.
In the kitchen, Nan turned. “Dad asked me to invite him.”
“What?” Flora said. “To the house?”
“Who’s Jonathan?” Richard said. Flora ignored him. She was irritated that he was still there four days after her fight with Nan, eating their food, hanging around, talking to Gil with the bedroom door closed. She wondered what Richard had told the bookshop about why he needed the time off; whether he’d said it was because he’d been asked to be at the deathbed of a famous author, or if he’d admitted he was there to burn a houseful of books.
“Dad wants him to bring Louise and . . .” Nan began.
“Louise?” Flora jumped in.
“I was as surprised as you are.”
“Is Jonathan his brother?” Richard said. Flora wondered if during the night he bashed out all the information he had gathered during the day on Gil’s old typewriter.
“He’s Dad’s best friend,” Nan said.
“Was,” Flora corrected.
“I’ll have to get some more food in. Cook something nice. A salmon, perhaps.”
“And Louise—who’s she?” Richard asked.
Flora looked up at Nan, who was drying her already dry hands on a tea towel. Nan stared back, her mouth set, her eyes pitiless, and Flora realised she was probably wearing the same expression, a mirror of her sister’s. Richard looked between the two of them.
“Oh,” he said. “That Louise.”
Chapter 30
THE SWIMMING PAVILION, 22ND JUNE 1992, 9:00 AM
Gil,
I wasn’t going to write again. I mustn’t write—it hurts and doesn’t solve anything, but I have to put this down on paper. I need to get it out of my head and right now there’s no one else to tell.
I went to the sea again this morning for a swim. (Early.) I shouldn’t have gone. Oh God, I shouldn’t have gone. It was still dark and cold so I wore your greatcoat, the one you got from a young man in Moscow in exchange for a borrowed pair of suede shoes. (“Tell me the Moscow story, Daddy,” I can hear Flora saying, swamped by the coat, her little head poking out the top.) I was naked underneath it; I’ve always liked how the heavy wool scratches and tickles. It smells like a musty version of you.
The beach was empty. The tide was going out, leaving a wide ribbon of seaweed creased on the sand and swaying in the shallows. I walked around Dead End Point to Middle Beach, where the sea is always clear. I unbuttoned your coat and, I don’t know why, but I checked the pockets first before I took it off. Flora must have been wearing it again, because I found the queen of hearts from the pack of cards which has those ladies on the back, two sheets of Green Shield Stamps, and my purse! Still with ten pounds and a few pence inside. I put everything back, folded the coat, left my flip-flops on top, and ran into the sea opposite the beach huts.
The water was steady and black. An inch below the surface my body disappeared as if it didn’t exist. I swam straight out toward the rising sun, which was underlighting the clouds with a dramatic orange as if I were swimming into a Renaissance landscape. It shone a path over the water’s surface, saying, “This way, straight on,” but I tired and turned back towards the shore. I swam a lazy breaststroke, keeping my head above the water, and in the distance I saw a light: a campfire in the dunes.
Do you remember when we used to go to the sea together in the middle of the night to cool down, that first summer? We’d strip off, grabbing on to each other, yelping and laughing, and run across the sand and into the sea through the night air, as warm as noontime.
When I reached the beach, the flip-flops and the coat had gone. My first thought, and I feel guilty writing it, was that Flora must have followed me, but she wasn’t there. I searched the length of Middle Beach, and in front of the last hut I found a discarded and crumpled queen of hearts. There was no sign of my purse or the other things. I could have gone home. I should have gone home, but I was so angry. I needed that money; Flora loves that coat! Then I remembered the campfire I’d seen from the water and, without stopping to think, went in search of it.
I crouched in the dawn, watching two men drinking and laughing. The flickering orange from their fire set their skin alight and I recognised your coat, slung around one of the men’s shoulders. The other appeared to have square tattoos on his cheeks and forehead, and it took me a moment to see that these were the Green Shield Stamps. Behind a tuft of marram grass I growled, long and low.
“Did you hear that?” greatcoat-man said, looking up.
“What?” the other said, drunk, I think, and slow to react.
I rustled the grass and greatcoat-man stood. “There’s something out there.”
“It’s the weed giving you the heebie-jeebies. Here.” The man held out his hand to the other, the lit t
ip of a cigarette glowing.
I jumped into the ring of firelight like a wild woman or a tiger. I made a grab at the coat; even if my purse was no longer in the pocket, I was bloody going to get it back. But the man was on top of me before I could stop him, still wearing the coat, his weight pinning me, a hand across my jaw, pushing the side of my face into the sand away from the fire, and giving me a mouthful of grit. I don’t know what happened to Green Shield Stamp-man; I didn’t see him. I think the one with the coat had expected me to be male; his arm was tensed, flexed, and his hand a fist. But he must have realised what, or who, was beneath him, and his grip changed—as if it wasn’t a fight he was after. With one hand constricting my throat he pushed his thighs between mine. I don’t think I shouted. I tried to shake my head, tried to say no, please no, tried to get out from under him, but his hand pressed harder. And I stopped struggling. Struggling, I decided (have decided), would (will) make it worse. As the man was unzipping his trousers, my left arm became free and I moved it out across the sand, my hand scuttling sideways until it came across a cylindrical object, smooth and light. An empty beer can. My hand dropped it and moved on towards the flames. While the man on top of me grunted with the effort of keeping me down and releasing himself, my hand closed around a thick stick lying at the edge of the fire. I lifted it up, the end glowing white with heat and ash, and I lowered it over the man’s back, pressing it against the olive wool of your coat. There was the smell of burning fabric, and I forced the stick down harder. He didn’t notice until his T-shirt began to burn, and for some moments more, while he was screaming, I clamped that man to my body with my arm and the stick until he managed to roll off me, swearing and yelling. He flung the greatcoat away and I grabbed it, dropped the stick, and ran.
I didn’t slow until I reached our beach at the bottom of the chine, and it was only there that I felt my own pain. The sun had fully risen, a yellow light streaming through tattered clouds, and I saw the white scalded skin across my palm and fingers. I stared along the beach while I squatted in the waves with my hand under the surface, and I began to laugh. The bottom of your coat was sodden with seawater.
Swimming Lessons Page 17