Learning to Swim Read online

  Clare Chambers

  * * *

  LEARNING TO SWIM

  Contents

  Part I Chapter 1

  Part II Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Part III Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Part IV Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Part V Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  About the Author

  Clare Chambers’ first job after reading English Literature at Hertford College, Oxford, was working with Diana Athill at André Deutsch. They published Clare’s first novel Uncertain Terms in 1992.

  Clare is also the author of Back Trouble, Learning to Swim, A Dry Spell, In A Good Light, The Editor’s Wife and Small Pleasures.

  Since 2020 Clare has been a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the University of Kent. She lives with her husband in south-east London.

  Praise for Clare Chambers:

  ‘Chambers’ eye for undemonstrative details achieves a Larkin-esque lucidity’ Guardian on Small Pleasures

  ‘An irresistible novel, wry, perceptive and quietly devastating’ Mail on Sunday on Small Pleasures

  ‘Gorgeous … if you’re looking for something escapist and bittersweet, I could not recommend more!’

  Pandora Sykes on Small Pleasures

  ‘A dazzling, exquisitely written story’ Red on Small Pleasures

  ‘The writing is beautiful’ Jessie Burton on Small Pleasures

  ‘Smart, astute and very funny’ Daily Express on Learning to Swim

  Also by Clare Chambers

  UNCERTAIN TERMS

  BACK TROUBLE

  A DRY SPELL

  IN A GOOD LIGHT

  THE EDITOR’S WIFE

  SMALL PLEASURES

  For

  Christabel, Julian and Florence

  I

  * * *

  1

  Loyalty never goes unpunished. My father said that once when he was passed over for promotion at work and I’ve never forgotten it. I went to visit my parents on the Saturday afternoon just before I was due to play in a big charity concert, having received a summons from my mother. She was having a clear-out ready for the decorators and could I come and pick up a box of my belongings or they’d end up in the church jumble sale? My mother likes to invent a practical purpose to my visits so she doesn’t feel she is making frivolous, self-indulgent demands on my time.

  She was in the process of sifting through a cardboard box of old, uncatalogued photographs when I arrived, and had clearly been at it for some time. All around her lay empty packets, slippery strips of negatives and neat piles of pictures sorted according to subject matter, date and quality.

  ‘Blurred, blurred, duplicate, awful bags under my eyes, don’t know who that is,’ she intoned, tossing a series of rejects into the bin. I reached past her and picked up an old school photograph from the box. It was of the netball teams. There I was, standing on the end, second reserve for the B team. And there was Frances, captain of the A team, seated, holding the county trophy on her lap, that usual defiant expression on her face. I was assailed by a sudden, overwhelming sense of nostalgia – my memory has a trigger that’s easily sprung – and I started leafing through the loose prints in search of other ghosts.

  ‘Don’t rummage,’ mother said crossly. ‘I’ve been at this all morning.’

  ‘One thing I always hated,’ I said, looking at my thirteen-year-old self, long hair scraped back off my face into a ponytail, my spindly legs ankle-width from plimsolls to knickers, ‘was being the thinnest person in the class.’

  ‘You weren’t thin,’ she said defensively. ‘I would never have underfed you.’ My mother can take the oddest things personally. She twitched the photo out of my hand. ‘That’s never my Abigail,’ she said, screwing up her eyes, and then, realising that this line of argument was not going to be sustainable, said with a snort, ‘Well, I don’t call that thin.’

  In the kitchen, my father was unpacking a new toy: a large, shiny black and chrome cappuccino machine which took up half of one work-surface. Ever since he gave up smoking his pipe – after realising that he could no longer keep up with mother’s cracking pace around museums and art galleries without wheezing – he has become increasingly addicted to modern gadgetry: anything that keeps his hands busy.

  ‘Hello,’ he said, blowing dust from the glass jug, before setting it on its stand. ‘Can I get you anything to drink?’

  ‘I’m dying for a cup of tea,’ I said, without thinking. ‘Coffee, I mean.’

  ‘Colombian, Brazilian, Kenyan, Costa Rican, Nicaraguan or decaffeinated,’ he asked, producing half a dozen unopened foil packets from the shopping bag in front of him.

  ‘Whatever,’ I said, and then thought, oh don’t be an old spoilsport. ‘Colombian.’ And I watched him meticulously measure out the beans into the grinder with a little plastic shovel, and crank away at the handle.

  ‘Have you got a concert tonight?’ he asked, spooning the grounds into the metal funnel and tamping them down, a rapt expression coming over his face.

  ‘Yes. A charity do. The Arid Lands, or something.’

  ‘Very poetic. Where would that be?’

  ‘Er … Senegal, I think.’

  ‘I meant the concert.’

  ‘The Barbican. Want to come? It’s only a hundred pounds a ticket.’

  His eyebrows shot up. ‘A hundred pounds. That’s one whole wall plus ceiling and mouldings. Besides, there’s still all this clearing out to do – plus the packing.’ They were off on holiday while the decorators moved in: Florence, this time. They never took me to Florence. It had been left to others to introduce me to the pleasures of the Continent.

  Over the sound of hawking and spitting from the coffee machine father talked about the trip, which had been planned to the last detail. They would be staying in a cheap hotel – a former convent – some distance from the centre of the city, but it had its own restaurant, so they wouldn’t need to venture out after dark. During the day there was a punishing regime of galleries, churches and palazzos to be followed. They were going to do the Renaissance if it killed them. ‘Apparently all these museums and so forth are free for geriatrics,’ he said, putting a jug of milk under the jet of steam and frothing it to the consistency of uncooked meringue. ‘We’ll save a fortune. Here.’ He handed me a tall cup containing about an inch of coffee topped with a stiff peak of milk. I could see my thirst was going to remain unslaked. ‘Oh, wait. Let’s do the thing properly.’ He took it back again. ‘Cinnamon? Nutmeg? Grated chocolate?’

  I glanced at my watch: I still had to pick up my sub-fusc from the dry-cleaner’s. ‘Whichever’s quickest.’

  As I left,
carrying my box of salvaged possessions – mostly old schoolbooks, elementary sheet music for the cello, letters, badminton and tennis racquets, and a collection of wooden, glass and pottery elephants of different sizes, amassed over many years – I noticed a pile of library books on the hall table. Background reading. Where normal people might take Where to Eat in Florence, my father had Machiavelli, and Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Artists as his guides.

  I nearly didn’t make it to the concert because of a burst water-main at Blackfriars: on such mundane contingencies our fates hang. Part of Embankment and the underpass was closed and the traffic was gridlocked. I was forced to abandon my car on a double yellow line and take the underground – something I would never normally do because of the rough treatment meted out to my poor cello by other tube travellers, but it was just that bit too far to carry the thing on foot.

  It was crowded on the platform and I could see that no one was going to give an inch. I was already dressed in my performance gear – a precaution in case I was late – and I had to keep hoisting my long skirt up to stop it getting trodden on. When a train blew in there was a surge back and then forwards like a wave breaking and I found myself being sucked through the doors with the crowd and shoe-horned into a corner, my feet straddling the cello case.

  By the time I emerged at Barbican I was convinced the poor instrument had been reduced to firewood. A few flakes of snow were starting to fall. I must be getting old because I immediately thought, Oh bloody hell. Snow. I’ve caught myself out like that once or twice lately. A few months back I had a desperately unflattering haircut but I found I was completely unperturbed. In fact I tipped the hairdresser handsomely. And at the last party I went to which was in Bristol, when the prospect of a hundred-mile drive home at 2 a.m. was beginning to look intimidating and it was suggested I might like to ‘crash out’ on the sofa, I suddenly realised how very far I would be prepared to drive to sleep in my own bed. Finally, the other day I used the expression ‘all the rage’ in all sincerity. This wasn’t even acceptable currency when I was at school, but I couldn’t think of any modern equivalent. The person I was talking to didn’t seem nonplussed. Perhaps it’s come round again. Perhaps it’s all the rage.

  I hardly had time to do more than check that my cello had survived the journey, and was in my seat a matter of seconds before the first violinist swept on to the stage. Grace, next to me, shot me a questioning look as we tuned up, and I raised my eyes ceilingwards. I could feel sections of my hair working loose from the clip at the back of my head. It doesn’t matter, I thought, as another hank swung down in front of my eyes. No one will be looking at you.

  There was a reception afterwards. Most of the orchestra went straight home: a lot of them have young families and they tend not to linger after performances. There was no reason for me to rush off. I’ve always hated that moment of entering my flat alone last thing at night and will put it off if I can. Grace said she was staying: she knew one of the organisers at the charity end and felt she ought to show her face. I like her because she’s a born enthusiast, but her endurance is low. She always has some new fad to promote. This season it was celibacy, which she claimed to have been ‘practising successfully’ for three months. I didn’t like to tell her that I had been similarly disposed for the last couple of years without needing to practise. The difference was I tended to view it as a predicament rather than a hobby.

  I hadn’t had time to eat before the concert, having rushed home from my parents’ via the dry-cleaner’s, and thought I might be able to pick up a vol au vent or something. I’m not keen on charity galas generally. The audience aren’t necessarily music lovers; they’ve come to gawp at the royal patron. They clap in the wrong places and seem reluctant to return from the bar at the interval. Tonight they were a well-behaved crowd, but disgruntled no doubt because the minor royal had been replaced at the last minute by a lesser breed.

  I found Grace drinking champagne and reading one of the display boards illustrating the charity’s work on an irrigation project. There was a sequence of photographs of some aid workers and local villagers digging a well, and some rather patronising text.

  ‘Not exactly hard-hitting images,’ I said to Grace.

  ‘Well –’ she indicated the bejewelled hordes – ‘we don’t want to rub their noses in it.’ In our long black skirts and high-necked blouses we looked like a couple of governesses who had wandered in from the servants’ quarters. One woman had already tried to give me her coat. Grace’s friend, Geoff, approached us looking hassled. He was about six foot six and thin with it, and held his arms bent at elbow and wrist as if he was being operated by strings. Grace introduced us and when he offered me the feeblest of handshakes I noticed that the cuffs of his dinner jacket were frayed and exposed a good three inches of shirt. He smelled of stale cigarette smoke. He won’t remember my name, I thought.

  ‘Lovely music,’ he said, stooping to kiss Grace. ‘Bloody Duchess.’ He scratched his head violently, making his hair stand up in tufts. ‘I suppose she can’t help being ill,’ he conceded.

  ‘Do these events work?’ asked Grace.

  ‘Oh yes,’ he nodded emphatically. ‘I know it’s easy to dismiss these people as …’ he looked at the guests milling around in their finery, ‘socialites, but they do in fact come up with the money.’

  ‘Is this what it’s all about then? Digging wells?’ I asked, indicating the posters. ‘Do you have full-time engineers out there?’

  ‘If you’re interested I can introduce you to the chap who’s been running the project in Senegal for the last five years. Or were you just being polite?’

  ‘No,’ I said politely. ‘I’m interested.’

  He disappeared into the crowd and after ten minutes still hadn’t returned. I picked up a glass of champagne from a patrolling waitress and thought about my car by now sitting in a pound on some bleak industrial estate off the A3 with a price on its head no doubt. I discreetly hailed another waitress who was holding a large platter of what Grace insisted were called de luxe canapés in catering circles. Certainly there wasn’t a sausage roll or a Ritz cracker in sight. Someone – man or machine – had taken the trouble to remove the yolks from hard-boiled quails’ eggs, mix them up with something creamy and pipe them back in place in little rosettes. Everything was so tiny, so beautiful, so delicately done, you could eat all night and never be satisfied.

  ‘Oh, there you are,’ said Geoff. ‘Abigail Jex. Marcus Radley.’

  Marcus Radley. I had rehearsed this meeting, or variations of it, a thousand times in my mind, but in spite of all this preparation failed to deliver any of the brilliant and devastating lines I’d practised over the years. Instead I said ‘Hello “Marcus”,’ putting the faintest emphasis on his name and savouring its strangeness. His appearance was just as I had planned it: my imagination had aged him automatically so that in my mind’s eye he was always two years older than me. His hair was the same – dark and curly and badly cut – as was his frown, which the uninitiated took to indicate disapproval but which occasionally signified concentration, and his eyes, which registered the shock of recognition before reverting to neutral.

  ‘Hello Abigail,’ he said, quite composed now. ‘Jex.’ He considered this for a second. ‘Good name for Scrabble.’

  Geoff, whose mind was on other things and who evidently hadn’t absorbed from this exchange that we weren’t strangers, said, ‘Abigail was playing the cello here this evening. She’s interested in hearing about the project.’

  ‘Marcus’ looked at me sceptically.

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Geoff and hurried away again, unaware of the minefield he had left us to negotiate. Grace wasn’t nearly so obtuse and said, her eyes narrowing, ‘Do you two already know each other or something?’

  Flippancy was what was needed here, I decided. ‘I’m afraid so. Marcus once branded me on the forehead with a red-hot poker. Although he wasn’t called Marcus then.’

  ‘Abigail sent me her hair in an envelope,
’ he said, almost smiling. ‘She wasn’t called Jex then.’

  Grace looked at us in turn with raised eyebrows. No casual acquaintanceship this, clearly. ‘So how long is it since you last saw each other?’

  ‘Thirteen years,’ we replied simultaneously, without needing any time for totting up. The ghost of a smile was gone. We were both remembering the occasion of our last meeting: the heat in the chapel; the schoolgirl soprano breaking the last of us down; the windy graveside. There was a moment’s awkward silence, then in a determined effort to get the conversation back on to safer ground, he said, ‘You’re a professional cellist now, then?’ I nodded. ‘That’s good – good that you kept it up.’

  ‘There are worse ways of being poor,’ I said.

  ‘You’ll have seen most of them,’ said Grace to Marcus.

  ‘What about you?’ I said. ‘I gather you’re not a professional … er … philosopher.’

  ‘No,’ he laughed. ‘Not even an amateur. I never finished my degree.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘I’ve been out in Senegal for the last five years. I’ve only been home a month; I’m still adjusting.’

  ‘Why did you come back?’ asked Grace.

  ‘I’d been there too long. They need someone young and enthusiastic.’

  ‘You look young enough to me,’ she said, emitting signals like a Geiger counter.

  ‘Also the longer you’re away the harder it is to settle in back home. No doubt after a couple of weeks in the office drafting public awareness surveys and arguing whether we need a new soap dish in the staff bog I’ll be wishing I was back there.’

  In the background I could see Geoff weaving through the crowd towards us, stopping to acknowledge people left and right. ‘Marcus, can I borrow you?’ he called when he was within earshot, beckoning with a skinny finger.