The Pools

by Bethan Roberts

  We walked through the downstairs rooms, Kathryn leading the way, her heels clacking on the bare concrete floor. The walls in the hallway were covered in green paint that was so thick it shone. Kathryn ran a finger along the paint as she walked, tracing each bump.

  She opened the door to the kitchen, looking back at me uncertainly before entering.

  We stood in the middle of the room and looked around. I knew that her eyes would be registering every detail, and I noticed, with a sudden, sharp clarity, all the things she would be noticing. I don’t think the walls had ever seen plaster. They were painted white, but had gone yellow long ago. On one wall there was a brown outline where the cooker must once have been. The smell of ancient chip fat hung in the air.

  I knew these were all merely surface things, things I could fix. But my wife felt differently.

  I watched as her face fell.

  ‘Let’s go upstairs,’ I said, before she could speak. ‘Bound to be better in the bedrooms.’

  When Kathryn stepped into the room that was to be our bedroom, she started to cry. There was mould all up the wall around the window. A sheet of wallpaper hung down like a strange curtain.

  ‘It’s not that bad,’ I said. ‘Look at that lovely big window. The light it lets in.’

  She sniffed.

  ‘We’ll get it sorted in no time.’

  ‘I can’t live here. Look at it.’

  ‘You’re not seeing it, though; you’ve got to trust me. I can see how it will look – when I’ve finished.’

  ‘I can’t live here, Howard.’

  ‘Wait,’ I said. ‘Wait here a minute.’

  I’d had a feeling that she’d react like this, so I’d bought her a little gift, in preparation. I fetched it from the car and ran back up the stairs to her.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I thought you could help me plant it. In our new garden.’

  She looked at the gnarled stump of a rose that I’d placed in her hands, and was silent.

  ‘It’s for you, Kathryn.’

  She put the tub down and embraced me, her arms tight around my shoulders.

  ‘Thank you, Howard,’ she said, but I felt the wetness of her tears on my neck.

  I didn’t stop Kathryn working at the library, even though Mum mentioned it every time we went there. ‘And you’re still working at the library?’ she’d ask as she poured the tea or handed round the biscuits. ‘Yes,’ Kathryn would reply, with a look at me.

  ‘Full time?’ Mum would add, and I’d have to say, ‘Mum, you know Kathryn’s full time,’ and attempt to change the subject. On bad days, Mum wouldn’t let the subject change, and she’d quiz Kathryn on how she had the time to prepare my dinner and keep the house clean. Then Kathryn would be silent with me on the walk home, and I’d have to go out in the garden and stay there, whatever the weather, until she called me in or came out and put her hand on my shoulder, which was the signal that I was forgiven. Then I’d lead her round the flower beds and show her what I’d planted, and what was doing well, and she’d listen to it all, nodding and smiling, and usually she’d spot a weed.

  ‘You’ve missed a bit,’ she’d say, pointing and laughing.

  Sometimes when I was out there she’d bring me a cup of tea. ‘You never drink enough,’ she’d say, handing me the cup and saucer, her eyes squinting against the sun, and then I’d want to call Mum round to the house immediately, to show her what a good wife Kathryn was.

  One Saturday she came home from her morning’s work at the library with a packet of seeds she’d bought in Woolworths.

  I knew she’d been seduced by the photograph on the packet (people always are): glossy red poppies, a whole field of them.

  Now, poppies are not what I’d call a stylish flower. They look lovely in their place – a farmer’s field, at the side of the road – but in a garden they all too often end up looking sad and scraggy, their stems sticky with blight, their flowers over in a jiffy, leaving the seeds to blow all over the place so you just don’t know where another one is going to pop up next year, or the year after that.

  But Kathryn was keen on poppies.

  I was sitting down with the newspaper and a fresh pot of tea (I knew she’d be back by one thirty, so the kettle went on at one twenty-five, and I was usually pouring by the time she opened the front door). She stood in front me and waved her packet of seeds; her dark hair shook around her shoulders.

  ‘Look what I’ve got.’

  ‘Do you want tea?’ I asked.

  ‘What? Oh, yes. Thanks.’ She sat opposite me and held out the packet of poppy seeds before her.

  ‘They’re so beautifully red. And yet so delicate.’ She seemed pleased with that thought. ‘Don’t you think so, Howard?’ she asked. ‘Isn’t it strange how a flower can have such a strong colour and yet be so vulnerable?’

  I looked up from my newspaper. ‘Where are you going to plant them?’

  ‘I thought I’d just scatter them. You know. Be a bit free-spirited about it.’

  I laughed. ‘You can’t just scatter them. I’ve got to know where they are. For watering.’

  ‘But you water everywhere,’ she said. ‘Anyway. There’s no need to worry. I’ll look after them.’

  ‘What do you know about gardening?’ I asked, reaching out to take the packet from her.

  ‘What do I need to know?’ She snatched the packet back. ‘You shove them in the ground and hope for the best. Then you spend hours out there, watering, trimming, hoeing and picking out the bits you don’t want, and – Bob’s your uncle – you’re a gardener. Apparently.’

  We stared at each other.

  ‘Well. You’d better plant them, then,’ I said, opening the back door and stepping outside. I had box to trim, dahlias to dead-head. Plenty to keep me busy.

  About an hour later, I stopped and looked up at the back of our house. Kathryn was standing at the bedroom window, staring out at me. I waved, and she opened the window.

  ‘I’m going to plant them,’ she called. I glanced over my shoulder to make sure the neighbours weren’t in their gardens.

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘Watch me.’ She leant out and shook the open packet. The wind must have carried most of the seeds over into next door’s garden, but I felt a few of them brush my face as they fell to the earth.

  ‘That’s what I call gardening,’ she said, and she closed the window.

  three

  Autumn, 1968

  I knew there wouldn’t be any sweets in the sweetie tin, but I opened it.

  About a year after we’d moved into our own house in Totleigh Way, I was looking in Kathryn’s drawer for a bar of soap. She kept soap in her underwear drawer for the fresh smell.

  But instead of soap I came across an old sweetie tin. On the outside, there was a picture of toffees in all kinds of wrapping.

  Inside was a small pile of photos – there couldn’t have been more than twenty – held together with a piece of white lace. I slipped the lace off. It was soft and wide, with a blue bow on it, and it was threaded with elastic.

  It wasn’t until afterwards that I realised this was a wedding garter, and that Kathryn hadn’t worn a garter on our wedding day.

  The top photo was of Jack, smiling, on a motorbike, both feet firm and flat on the ground. I recognised Kathryn’s house behind him, the neat hedges that her father always kept so well. Jack was wearing wide trousers, with a sharp crease down each leg.

  I let the photographs fall on the eiderdown.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  I tried to scoop the photos back up into the box, but my fingers seemed to have jammed in one useless position.

  ‘Howard? What are you doing?’

  Kathryn snatched at the photos and turned away from me. ‘You’re getting them in a muddle!’ She began to sort them, placing each one out on the bedspread so she could survey them. ‘What were you thinking?’

  I stood behind her and watched her shuffle the photos. She was careful not to touch
anything but their edges. ‘What a muddle,’ she kept saying.

  She slipped the garter back around the photos. I had an idea then that it looked like one of those fancy ribbons people tie round the necks of poodles and other silly dogs.

  I reached out and tried to draw her to me, but she kept her arms rigid at her sides, holding the photos in one hand.

  ‘Please don’t touch them again,’ she said. ‘They’re all I’ve got.’

  For the next month, I stopped myself from opening that sweetie tin. Every Saturday when Kathryn was at the library and I was alone in the house, I made myself go into the garden and away from that drawer. I told myself that I must not invade her privacy, that to peek would be unforgivable, that anyone with an ounce of integrity would leave the photos to lie there in their ribbon, wrapped and safe and in the past, just where she left them.

  But I kept seeing the image of Jack on the motorcycle, his feet so steady, his smile so wide. And I kept imagining what would be on the other prints: Kathryn and Jack smiling in all the local beauty spots, Hepton Lock, Whitley Clumps, Shotton Hill, Bradley Woods in the springtime, for the bluebells. I had to look to see if it was as perfect as I imagined it to be. To see where he’d taken her so I could avoid going there. To see how I could take better photographs than him.

  So the next Saturday morning, not a minute after Kathryn had left to catch her bus, I was upstairs. I stood in front of her underwear drawer for a few minutes, listening to my own breath and knowing I was going to look inside the sweetie tin.

  I delved my hands into her piles of knickers. My fingers trawled through cotton and elastic until I felt the hardness of the tin. I dragged it out. A pair of pink knickers that I hadn’t seen before came with it and I flicked them back into the drawer.

  I sat on the bed, opened the lid and slipped off the garter. My fingers were trembling, the tips wet with sweat. I was sure I’d mark the garter, sully its whiteness.

  I fanned the photos out in my lap.

  As I picked up each one and examined it, the thing that struck me was that you could tell there was no one else in Jack and Kathryn’s lives, because no one was ever around to snap them. There was only one photo of the two of them together. In all the others they were alone, but in the same location; there’d be one of Jack standing there, posing, and then another of Kathryn in exactly the same pose, in exactly the same place. Like they were mirrors of one another. As if they couldn’t bear to do anything differently.

  Kathryn on Jack’s motorbike, her bare legs against the metal, her black eyes squinting against the sun. Kathryn on a picnic blanket, her thick hair curled up on the top of her head, holding what looked like a chocolate éclair to her open mouth. Laughing.

  It seemed that in all the photos her mouth was wide open, her lips pulled back over her teeth. I didn’t remember ever really looking at her teeth before, but now here they were, bared. And her chest was pushed out into the air; each breast seemed to be showing itself somehow, showing itself to him.

  A couple of the photos were on a beach. I guessed from the new-looking pier that it was Bournemouth. One of them showed a flat expanse of sand, with KATH LOVES JACK scraped into it. It was the capitals I hated. So definite. The sun must have been low behind him when he took it, because I could see his long shadow in the corner, spreading over her letters.

  There was only one photograph of the two of them together, in front of one of the pools by the power station. They must have stopped some stranger and asked for a snap, Jack smiling, handing over the camera, explaining how it worked, no doubt, while Kathryn stood waiting and laughing in front of the pool, one hand on her skirt to stop it blowing up too much in the breeze.

  In this photo Jack was leaning forward, grinning, and Kathryn looked so small beside him you might have thought she was his little sister. She had both arms flung around his middle, gripping him, and her head was squeezed into his armpit. Behind them, the pool looked black, wide and bottomless. I studied Jack, his confident pose, the way his hair stood up off his forehead, the way his clothes seemed just that little bit too large for him. He looked like he had room. His big body had room for manoeuvre.

  Then there was one of Kathryn alone. This one didn’t have a mirror image with Jack in the same pose. And it was the only photograph that was taken inside.

  She was lying on a double bed. On the wall behind her was a painting of the sea. A lamp with a tiny fringed shade was in the corner. I guessed it must be a Bed and Breakfast room. We’d never stayed in such places.

  She was lying on the bed in her underwear. Jack had taken a photograph of Kathryn in her underwear. Her bra was black and lacy; the pattern swirled around her breasts, and I remembered the lace of her petticoat, the one I’d seen in the library that day, and I thought of how I hadn’t seen it since. Again, her chest was pushed forward. Her knickers were pushed down over her hips so you could see her white stomach bulging just slightly over the top of them.

  And she had her make-up on. Her eyes were the blackest things in the photograph. I had never seen Kathryn with make-up on in bed.

  I looked at that photograph for a long time, wondering who the woman in it was.

  I cut open the steak and there was blood, just as I like it. Kathryn speared a piece of cheese omelette.

  I couldn’t taste anything, so I reached for the salt.

  ‘You should watch your salt intake, Howard,’ Kathryn said, swallowing her omelette. ‘Dr Webb was in the library today and he was telling Audrey about the dangers of high blood pressure. Apparently her husband – ’

  ‘Did you tell Jack what to put on his chips?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Did you tell Jack what to put on his chips?’

  She put her knife and fork down.

  ‘Don’t say his name in that way.’

  ‘I asked you a question. Did you tell Jack what to put on his chips?’

  Kathryn was holding on to the edge of the table as if it might blow away at any moment. Her hair was clasped at her neck with a gold clip, which seemed to pull her cheeks tighter. ‘Don’t say his name in that way,’ she repeated.

  ‘How am I supposed to say it? Tell me, Kathryn. How do you say it?’

  She stared at her plate.

  ‘How do you say it? Because I’ve never heard you say it.’ ‘I won’t have this,’ she whispered, still gripping the table.

  I stabbed my fork into the solid meat of the steak.

  Kathryn stood up. ‘I can’t have this, Howard.’ There was a tremble in her voice.

  I took a big bite of meat and chewed on it.

  ‘You have no right.’ Her mouth was twisted. She reached up and touched her hair clip.

  I could see she was close to tears but I carried on chewing for a while. Then I swallowed. ‘I think I have a right to know.’

  She said nothing.

  I shook more salt on my chips. A few of the hard crystals bounced across the tablecloth.

  ‘I have a right to know, Kathryn.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I’m your husband,’ I said. ‘For Christ’s sake. I’m your husband.’

  I did everything I could to be near to her. I liked to walk with her so I could lead her by the arm. If she was going up the shops I would go too, just so I could touch her sleeve, steer her by the shoulder, and then, when we were in the shop, I could place my hand flat against the small of her back as she paid for half a pound of bacon, and everyone would know that she was my wife. That she was my Kathryn.

  After I saw the photograph Jack had taken, I thought about her in her black underwear, the little bulge of her stomach shelving suddenly down into the top of her knickers. I thought about the lacy pattern of her bra, the dark shadow of her nipples blooming beneath it.

  When I held her in bed before we slept, I worked out the words in my head. I would say, ‘Why don’t you come to bed in your underwear?’ Or, ‘I’d like to see you in your bra and knickers.’ But these were words I’d never used in front
of my wife. Bra and knickers. They were women’s words. Like period and pregnancy.

  The closest I came was one night after we’d been to the pictures to see The Graduate. Kathryn knew about these things, what films were on and where and what they were about and whether they were any good. I just went along to have a look, and usually enjoyed them, whatever they were.

  We were sitting there together in the dark and I could smell the new perfume I’d bought her. It was strong and acidic, and it made my nostrils itch a bit; but the fact that she’d sprayed something I’d bought on her bare neck and her upturned white wrists pleased me.

  When Mrs Robinson removed her clothes and shut Benjamin Braddock in the bedroom, Kathryn put her hand on my knee and squeezed. I closed my fingers over hers and she didn’t resist when I moved her hand further up my thigh.

  I don’t remember the rest of the film.

  Outside the night was clear and cold; a sparkle of frost was just visible on the road. We stood under the lights of the foyer and kissed. I reached my hand up into the heaviness of her hair. She held onto my fingers as we walked to the car, and though her hand was cold I felt I had enough warmth for both of us.

  I drove too fast on the way home. Kathryn didn’t say anything; she just sat there smiling in the seat next to me.

  ‘I enjoyed the film,’ I said, changing into fourth as we hit the Darvington road.

  ‘I thought so,’ she said, with a look over at me.

  ‘We should go more often.’

  ‘Yes, we should.’ She squeezed my knee again.

  I pulled up outside the house and jumped out to open Kathryn’s door. It stuck a little and I spent a few moments laughing and tugging at the handle.

  She stepped out, her high-heeled shoe making a crunching noise on the frosty pavement.

  ‘You treat me like such a lady, Howard,’ she said, and I thought I heard a little sigh in her voice.

  I followed her inside. The house was warm and I was pleased with the way I’d decorated the hall and the living room to match. The lights were just right, big paper globes that softened the glow. Kathryn had chosen them and I’d fixed them up for her. I’d spent two weekends sanding down the woodwork, undercoating and painting three thin coats of white gloss on. Now the doors and the skirting boards shone, and the embossed wallpaper she’d chosen for the hall hung flat and bubbleless, all the patterns matched up at the joins. I’d enjoyed flattening out that paper and wiping it over with the soft brush. Afterwards, Kathryn had stood with her hand on the wall and said, ‘It looks so much warmer.’