Swimming Pool Sunday

by Madeleine Wickham

  Chapter Four

  As morning turned into afternoon, the air became more still, the sun seemed to expand, and the heat intensified. Voices around the pool became lower, as though confiding secrets; many people fell asleep in a post-picnic torpor.

  Barnaby and Hugh sat side by side on their deck-chairs, in a companionable silence. By the diving-board, Louise was standing with her arms folded, watching Amelia and Katie diving, and sporadically offering help and encouragement. Their cries of, ‘Watch me!’ rang through the sleepy, subdued, heat-filled air, along with the squeals of some younger children splashing in the shallow end. Hugh glanced at Barnaby and gestured towards Louise.

  ‘Hard for you,’ he said succinctly. Barnaby shrugged.

  ‘I’m all right. It could be worse …’ He broke off.

  Hugh nodded understandingly. There was another silence between them. Then Hugh said, ‘If you ever feel like getting away …’ Barnaby exhaled sharply.

  ‘I do,’ he said, ‘frequently,’ Hugh leaned back a little; shifted himself in his deck-chair.

  ‘There’s always our cottage in France. Use that; you can drive over.’ He turned his head towards Barnaby. ‘I mean it. If you feel you need some time on your own.’ He paused. ‘We went there, after Simon …’ He broke off.

  ‘Of course,’ said Barnaby. ‘I remember.’ He turned his head towards Hugh.

  ‘I’m very grateful,’ he said simply. ‘It’s good of you to offer.’ Hugh shrugged.

  ‘It’s extremely difficult to get things in perspective when you rub up against them every day. Difficult for both of you.’ There was a pause, and Hugh looked over towards Louise. ‘Can’t be easy for Louise, either,’ he said.

  Barnaby felt a sudden spurt of indignation, as though Hugh had suddenly changed sides halfway through the match. But he managed to say, ‘No, I’m sure it’s very difficult for her, too.’

  Hugh eyed Barnaby with amusement.

  ‘I don’t think you really mean that. And, fair enough, why should you? But I believe I’m right; that you’re both suffering at the moment.’ He leaned back and closed his eyes. ‘At any rate, it’s you I’m offering the cottage to. Take it any time, we haven’t any particular plans this summer.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Barnaby. He suddenly wanted to say more; to confide in Hugh; to ask his advice; to relate the story of his betrayal with the anger and pain which he had so far shown to nobody save Louise. But instead, he said again, ‘Thank you,’ in a voice that faltered slightly. Then he lay back, closed his eyes, and waited, miserably, for the onslaught of his own tangled, anguished, unavoidable thoughts.

  Louise was unwillingly standing in the heat of the sun, watching Amelia and Katie cavorting in the water. Every time she attempted to leave, they called desperately to her again, requesting her to witness yet another obscure acrobatic feat. As she stood, she saw Barnaby and Hugh talking quietly and gesturing towards her, and felt a surge of hot embarrassed fury. She could guess what Hugh thought of her. The Delaneys had always been more Barnaby’s friends than hers; no doubt Barnaby was now pouring out some tale of woe to overly sympathetic ears.

  ‘Hurry up,’ she said sharply to Katie, who was dithering on the diving-board. She could feel Hugh’s quizzical eyes on her, and determinedly ignored them. What was he thinking? Probably notching up even more black marks against her, for venting her frustrations on an innocent child. Katie looked up, surprised.

  ‘I’m just making it bouncy,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, hurry up,’ said Amelia, who was waiting behind to have her go. ‘You always take ages.’

  ‘I don’t!’

  ‘Yes you do! Slowcoach!’

  ‘Mummy!’ Katie’s shrill voice appealed to Louise. ‘She called me a slowcoach.’

  ‘Well then, get on with it,’ said Louise firmly.

  ‘Yes, come on!’

  Still Katie remained at the end of the board, and suddenly Amelia impatiently ran a few steps onto the diving-board, stamping hard. Katie gave a shriek and jumped off the end of the diving-board. When she surfaced, she was squealing angrily.

  ‘That’s not fair! Amelia, you …’ But she didn’t have time to finish before Amelia leaped off the diving-board, curled into a ball and dive-bombed her with an enormous splash.

  Ursula, walking by the pool, looked at these goings-on with alarm. She quickly approached Louise.

  ‘Dear, I think perhaps you should calm the children down a bit; they seem terribly excited.’ Louise turned round at her voice. Bloody Ursula. Another censorious face, another voice of disapproval. So now, not only was she a heartless hussy for splitting up with Barnaby, she was also an inadequate mother.

  ‘They’re fine, Ursula,’ she said tightly. She waited for Ursula to come out with another tactless comment about Barnaby. Perhaps, this time, she would say, Oh, wasn’t it a shame for the children.

  But Ursula’s eyes were on Katie.

  ‘Hello, Katie!’ she called.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Delaney,’ Katie called back. ‘Do you want to watch Amelia swimming under my legs? It’s really clever.’ Ursula glanced hastily at Louise, who allowed herself the satisfaction of a small smile.

  ‘Yes, why don’t you watch the girls?’ she said, with distant amusement. ‘You’ll find it’s tremendous fun.’ And quickly, before Ursula could protest, she stalked off.

  Meredith had fallen asleep, lying on a chair next to Alexis. For a while, from behind his sunglasses, he affectionately watched her sleeping. His eyes ran idly over her face, and then over her tanned skin, and her long legs, and her strong narrow feet, and her determined hands. He paused, staring at Meredith’s hands, and counted to ten. Then, holding his breath and without moving his head, he shifted his attention away from Meredith and towards the young girl with the pale skin and dark clouds of hair.

  She was sitting up on her towel, now, pushing her heavy hair off her neck as though she were too hot, looking around cautiously. The patch of grass on which she was sitting was, by this hour of the afternoon, partially shaded by a tree, and as she moved, lacy, leafy shadows gently dappled her white skin. Slowly she rose to her feet, tugging awkwardly at her bathing-suit and pushing her hair back again. She glanced nervously at the family group sitting near her, then, as the father of the family rose his head questioningly, flushed and looked away again.

  Alexis watched in fascination as she traced a halting solitary path towards the swimming-pool. She paused by the edge and looked at the water doubtfully, as though not entirely sure whether it was meant for her. Then, slowly, she dipped in a toe. As she did so, her long milky-pale leg was reflected in the glimmering blue water, so that it briefly appeared to be one long swan-neck limb.

  ‘Daisy!’ A voice came from the other side of the pool, and at once the girl retrieved her toe, looking round in sudden apparent guilt. Alexis looked for the source of the voice. Waving from a garden chair, attired in a jolly scarlet bathing-suit, was a woman whom he recognized as the vicar’s wife. She was now gesturing reassuringly at Daisy.

  ‘It’s absolutely lovely in the pool!’ she was calling. ‘Have a good swim, and then come over and have a chat with us!’

  Alexis looked back towards the girl. Daisy. Suddenly, unexpectedly, she smiled at the vicar’s wife; a shy, uncertain smile. Alexis felt a strange pang under his ribs. He watched her dive into the pool, dark hair streaming out behind her, white feet pointed. And as he did so, he suddenly wanted to see her smiling shyly again; this time, at him.

  ‘So, Louise,’ Sylvia Seddon-Wilson smiled charmingly, and drew on her cigarette, ‘where’s that sexy man of yours?’ Louise shrugged hesitantly.

  ‘Who do you mean?’

  ‘Oh, Louise! You don’t think I mean Barnaby!’ Sylvia’s playful voice rang out with a calculated resonance, and Louise shrank slightly into her chair. She had not meant to be drawn into Sylvia’s coterie today, but after snubbing Ursula there had been nowhere else for her to go and sit. And Sylvia was, to be fair, a long-term acquaintance �
� if not exactly friend – of Louise’s. Some years older than Louise, and with her teenage sons away at school, she lived a leisured life in the old vicarage, redecorating herself and the house at frequent intervals and observing the affairs of the village through sharp, if slightly jaundiced eyes.

  As her voice rose provocatively over the sounds of the swimming-pool, Louise glanced hesitantly over towards Barnaby, but he was too far away to hear Sylvia’s remarks.

  ‘No, I mean your delicious toyboy,’ said Sylvia. Louise blushed scarlet, but Sylvia appeared not to notice. ‘Cassian. Gorgeous Cass. Is that what you call him? Cass?’

  ‘No,’ said Louise discouragingly. It had been, she acknowledged to herself, a mistake to sit down with Sylvia.

  ‘Well, I must say’, said Sylvia, leaning comfortably back in her chair, ‘that I think he’s divine. So sexy. That hair … He’s Italian, is that right?’

  ‘Half Italian,’ mumbled Louise. She felt that she was being misrepresented; that she should somehow try to correct Sylvia’s assumptions. But then, what would she say? What exactly was going on between her and Cassian? She wasn’t, herself, entirely sure. And while she struggled in her mind to define, in simple terms, their relationship, she was also aware of a slight flowering pride at Sylvia’s admiring comments; a desire for the alluring picture of herself and Cassian as a glamorous couple to continue.

  She turned her head slightly, so that the reproaching sight of Barnaby vanished from the corner of her vision, and gave Sylvia a secretive smile.

  ‘His grandparents were Italian,’ she elaborated, casually laying claim to Cassian’s family as well as him.

  ‘Italian men!’ exclaimed Sylvia, giving a theatrical shiver. ‘To die for!’

  ‘Oh no, you don’t mean it! They’re awful! Revolting!’ Louise looked up. It was Mary Tracey, a cheerful young woman who lived not far from Louise and had often acted as baby-sitter for Amelia and Katie. She was dripping wet from the pool, and holding an equally wet, fat and happy baby. ‘We went on holiday to Pisa once, and my bottom got sore from all the pinching! I wouldn’t have minded if it had got any smaller,’ she added, sitting down, ‘but it didn’t.’ Louise giggled.

  ‘I wasn’t talking about peasants from Pisa,’ Sylvia said airily. ‘I was talking about gorgeous young lawyers.’

  Mary glanced swiftly at Louise and her face closed up slightly. Louise looked away, with a small uncomfortable pang. Mary had been demonstrably upset when the Kembers had split up; it had happened just after she came home from the hospital with baby Luke, and Louise had always felt that she had let Mary down in some inexplicable way.

  The baby began to grizzle and slither on Mary’s lap, and she sighed.

  ‘He’s hungry again,’ she said. ‘He’s always hungry.’ She jogged him up and down a little, and he affectionately grabbed a strand of her hair.

  ‘Ow!’ she yelped. ‘Get off!’ Sylvia raised her eyebrows at Louise.

  ‘Aren’t you glad yours are past that stage?’ she asked in mock-horror. Louise laughed, but she was mesmerized by Luke; by his determined, concentrated expression and his waving, grasping hands.

  ‘Amelia and Katie were never like this great lump,’ said Mary cheerfully. ‘They were little sweethearts.’ She sat Luke down on the grass. ‘Why can’t you be good, like they were?’ she chided him. He gazed at her for a few seconds, then screwed up his face, and began to howl.

  ‘I’ll have to feed him, I suppose,’ she sighed. ‘See you later.’

  As she retreated, Sylvia took another drag on her cigarette. She pulled out a gold compact and checked her reflection unhurriedly. Then she put it away, smiled, and regarded Louise lazily again from under azure-painted lids.

  ‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘you must come over to dinner sometime, Louise … you and, of course, Cassian.’

  ‘Yes, that would be nice,’ said Louise hesitantly. She lay back in her chair, closed her eyes, and tried unsuccessfully to imagine herself actually attending a dinner party with Cassian as her acknowledged partner. The Law Society dinner, a fortnight ago, had been different. That was in London; no-one there knew or cared what their background story was. She’d gone as Cassian’s guest, eaten four courses, listened intelligently to the speeches, joined in the discussion, even put one of Cassian’s colleagues right on some political point. It had been a wonderful evening. But that had been in London, not here in Melbrook, in front of Barnaby, in front of all of them. Village events – even private dinner parties – were not the same thing at all. To go anywhere publicly with Cassian would be at best uncomfortable, at worst a fiasco. Sylvia should realize that, thought Louise. Then, looking sidelong at Sylvia’s faint smirk, it occurred to her that Sylvia already did.

  Meredith awoke to find the sun behind a cloud and an empty place beside her. Alexis must have gone for a stroll, she thought. She lifted herself up on her elbows and blinked sleepily. Cast in a sudden shade, the pool appeared chilly; the sleek wet heads of the swimmers bobbed darkly amid dull blue-grey waves, and the splashing and shrieks of the children seemed to have risen in volume.

  She pushed her hair back, sat up cross-legged on her chair and stretched out languorously like a panther. Then, mid-stretch, she froze. There, in front of her, was Alexis, in the water. Alexis, who famously never swam. She stared at him. His hair was wet and he was inefficiently treading water, and he was smiling at someone.

  Hating herself, Meredith casually lay back down on her chair and reached for her sunglasses. The black-tinted lenses made everything around her seem even more gloomy, but at least with them on she could stare inconspicuously at Alexis and whoever it was he was talking to; still talking to – and still smiling at.

  From the bathing-suit it appeared to be a woman, but her face was turned away from Meredith. Without really intending to, Meredith swiftly catalogued all the women of the village that it could be, dismissing each in turn with a snap judgement. Too old. Too bossy. Too married. Then, as the nameless woman began to turn in the water, a sudden realization hit her mind, flooding it with relief. It wasn’t a woman, it was the dippy girl; the klutzy teenager. Daisy … Daisy Phillips.

  Filled with a sudden lightness, she stood up, approached the pool and dived in.

  ‘Hi, Alexis,’ she said, surfacing near the pair of them. ‘Hi, Daisy.’ Alexis gave Daisy a surprised look.

  ‘You know Meredith?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Daisy hesitantly. ‘At least, I didn’t know she was called Meredith; sorry,’ she stumbled, turning to Meredith, ‘I mean, I didn’t know you were called Meredith. Thank you very much,’ she added, ‘for letting me use your room.’

  As Daisy came to the end of this halting little speech, Meredith raised her eyebrows sardonically and tried to catch Alexis’s eye. But he was still gazing at Daisy in apparent fascination.

  ‘Oh, that’s OK,’ said Meredith, in friendly playing-along tones. ‘Any time.’ She registered, in slight disbelief, that Alexis was turning and smiling at her, as though thanking her. What the hell for? Who was this kid to him? A surrogate daughter?

  ‘Feel free to use my room at the end of the day if you want to,’ she offered, adding a cheery grin for good measure. The girl, Daisy, smiled gratefully at her. And then, like a fucking mirror image, so did Alexis. What’s going on here? Meredith wanted to shout. Next I’ll be asking this loopy girl if she wants to come bake cookies with me.

  But instead she smiled at Alexis and Daisy, said, ‘I’ll catch you later,’ and swam swiftly, confusedly, away.

  The sun sat determinedly behind a cloud for the next half an hour, and eventually the prone sunbathers around the pool gradually began to stand up, stretch, look at their watches and start to gather their belongings together.

  Meanwhile, Amelia and Katie, utterly oblivious of the weather, had commandeered the diving-board. Amelia was doing back dives and Katie was doing front dives.

  ‘I’m going to be in the diving team when I go to senior school,’ Amelia was announcing proudly, standing with h
er back to the water. She bounced up into the air, arched her back, and entered the water cleanly, hands in a neat point.

  ‘So am I,’ said Katie, as soon as Amelia’s head popped up above the water again. ‘Look at my star jump!’ She leaped high into the air, with legs outstretched and toes pointed, then brought them together sharply before plunging into the water.

  ‘That’s not a dive,’ said Amelia scornfully.

  ‘Well, nor is a back dive,’ said Katie, paddling breathlessly to the side of the pool.

  ‘Yes it is,’ retorted Amelia. ‘Why do you think it’s called a back dive if it’s not a dive?’

  ‘Dives are facing forward,’ said Katie. ‘Look!’ She rushed recklessly past Amelia onto the diving-board, and essayed a cautious forward dive from the end, one hand clutching her nose.

  ‘That was rubbish!’ yelled Amelia, as soon as Katie’s head was clear. ‘I’m going to do another back dive. Get out of the way!’

  ‘So am I!’ retorted Katie desperately. ‘So am I going to do a back dive! You just wait, Amelia.’

  Louise was gathering up her things, preparing to leave, when Barnaby came striding over.

  ‘I thought I’d take the girls out to supper,’ he said, with no preamble. ‘For a pizza, maybe. They’d like that.’

  ‘They’ve got school tomorrow,’ objected Louise, ‘and it’s already getting late. Maybe another time.’

  ‘We won’t be long,’ insisted Barnaby. ‘I’ve hardly seen them today.’

  ‘Yes, you have,’ retorted Louise. She paused. ‘And anyway, they’ll be too exhausted to go out after all this swimming.’

  ‘No they won’t,’ said Barnaby obstinately. ‘It’s only five. We’ll go straight from here, eat at six, be home by seven. Easy.’

  ‘It’s not easy,’ said Louise, her voice rising. ‘I then have to get them bathed and ready for bed, and check their homework, and make sure they’re in a fit state for school tomorrow.’