Learning to Swim Read online

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Marcus. ‘Someone else must want to hear about my drains. It was nice to meet you again.’

  ‘You haven’t changed a bit,’ I said, then cringed at the cliché.

  ‘Oh I have though,’ he said with a half smile, before following Geoff into the heart of the party.

  A hovering waiter offered us more champagne. ‘Well,’ said Grace, tilting her glass towards mine and winking. ‘Here’s to the Arid Lands.’

  I examined my fingernails, waiting for the inevitable interrogation.

  ‘Okay, in your own time.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I said, innocently.

  ‘Oh, come off it. I’ve never seen such a shifty reunion. Talk about painful. What’s the story?’

  I just laughed, enjoying her curiosity.

  ‘He’s not one of your old boyfriends, is he?’ she asked, too casually.

  ‘Why? Are you interested?’

  ‘I might be. He’s good-looking enough. Nice body too. I bet he works out.’

  I gave her a pitying look. The Marcus Radley I’d known would readily walk ten miles to get somewhere, but he would never, ever work out. ‘I thought you were supposed to be celibate.’

  ‘I am. But I don’t want to get fanatical about it.’

  What’s the story? Every time I thought I’d found a starting point I’d remember some earlier incident on which the later one depended. However far back I took it I couldn’t seem to reach the source. If only I hadn’t gone back to the house on the day Lexi left; if only Anne Trevillion had been better at tennis; if only they hadn’t taken on a new German teacher at my father’s school thirty years ago. Finally I had said, ‘I used to know the whole family. I practically lived with them when I was at school. But we lost contact.’

  This is what I didn’t tell her.

  II

  * * *

  2

  I was christened Abigail Onions. I was meant to be Annabel but my father, in a state of heightened emotion when he went to register the birth, misremembered the very name he and my mother had spent a full nine months debating. He blamed this lapse on the fact that he had been listening to Nabucco the night my mother went into hospital, and the name Annabel and that of the wicked sister had become transposed in his mind. It was a long and difficult labour and an element of confusion is understandable. I suppose I should be grateful he wasn’t playing Götterdämmerung.

  After a few tears my mother resigned herself to the new name and as I grew into it she began to prefer it to the original, which she mysteriously came to decide was ‘cheap’, in her book the very worst thing a name – or anything else for that matter – could be.

  All of this meant little to me of course. Beside the horror of my surname – ammunition for a thousand puns and paralysing introductions – the slight variation between my intended and given names was immaterial. ‘Abigail’ was unembarrassing – a quality I admired above all others.

  We lived in a large, inter-war semi in suburban Kent. The garden, which was divided from its neighbours by knee-high fences, backed on to a railway cutting. The line was an underused commuter line operating four trains a day, and mornings and evenings would see me hopping up and down at the end of the garden waving at the dozen or so passengers as they clanked past on their way to and from work. When I was four this childhood ritual was rudely curtailed: a man in a carriage on his own exposed himself at one of the windows and when I told my mother she burst into tears and forbade me to wave at any more trains. ‘Robbed of an innocent pleasure by some filthy pervert,’ I heard her rage to father. I didn’t tell her that for some weeks I had been showing the commuters my knickers.

  My mother was the gardener of the family. She used to talk of landscaping, as though she had mountains and rivers to tame instead of a tablecloth-sized lawn and some flowerbeds. Father was assigned various menial duties – trudging up and down with a rotary mower sending up a glittering rainbow of grassdust; digging over the vegetable patch; fetching and carrying bags of compost, and pruning anything large and spiky and liable to snag.

  Roses were mother’s department. All winter the stunted skeletons squatted in their beds like a reproach and a reminder of the battle that was annually waged over their tender blooms between mother’s arsenal of powders, pellets and sprays on the one hand and greenfly, mildew and black-spot on the other. Her efforts were not unrewarded though, as each summer the bushes would sprout and thicken and finally erupt in a velvety mass of colour and scent. Picking the flowers was strictly forbidden. I received my first dose of corporal punishment for pulling all the heads off Baroness Rothschild as part of an experiment in perfume-making. The hand that was too gentle to crush a petal left a four-fingered bruise on my bottom through two layers of clothing. I had hoped to be vindicated by the success of my project, but the jam jar of water and rose petals turned overnight into a foul-smelling brown mush and had to be thrown on to the compost.

  Our road was a tree-lined cul-de-sac, lollipop shaped, with a round green at the top from which dogs, children – indeed any creature whom it might have afforded some pleasure – were debarred, and it was used as a turning area by drivers who had overshot and missed the Bromley road – a fact which caused my mother considerable dismay. I would sometimes find her standing at the window, arms folded, staring through the net curtains, following the progress of some offending vehicle. ‘Turners,’ she would explain, tutting. Apart from incursions by the Turners it was a quiet road: front gardening tended to be done in silence, and neighbours communicated across adjoining hedges and walls with nods and inflexions of the eyebrow rather than words. It was quiet inside the house too. The thick, spongy carpets seemed to swallow sound the way blotting paper takes up ink, and mother’s rule about the removal of outdoor shoes meant that the three of us padded around in our socks as silently as cats. Even the cuckoo clock, a souvenir from my parents’ Swiss honeymoon, had gradually lost its voice, and the little bird would emerge every hour from behind its shutters with a silent grimace instead of a chirp. Mother sometimes listened to classical music on the record player, but only with the volume on its lowest setting: oboes twittered like canaries, cymbals clinked like teaspoons, and great, roaring symphonies were quelled to a whisper.

  I suppose this is why the following incident stands out so clearly in my memory. It seems strange that I can remember something that happened when I was only two in such detail, but I know I can’t have been any older because I was in my cot at the time and it is well-documented in family lore that the cot collapsed when I was two and a half, trapping my fingers, and was deemed dangerous and given to the Scouts’ jumble sale.

  What I remember is this: some time after I had been put to bed I was woken by the sound of my mother crying, sobbing in fact. Through my open door I could see light from my parents’ bedroom striping the landing, and my mother emerged dragging a suitcase. A moment later there was the clump of footsteps on the stairs and my father appeared, also crying. Then there followed an exchange of angry voices and a struggle for possession of the bag, which my father naturally won, and a tremendous crash as he flung it down the stairs. It was the only act of violence I ever witnessed under that roof and my frightened wails soon brought my mother hurrying in and she cuddled me, fiercely, to sleep. To my knowledge they never raised their voices again. It was a very civilised household.

  There were also medical reasons why quietness was so revered at Number Twelve, The Close. My mother suffered from terrible migraines which would incapacitate her for days at a time and which could be triggered by bright light, heat, noise, emotion and a variety of innocent-looking foods. She would resist their onset for as long as possible, dragging herself around the house, white-faced, her eyes pinched shut and a packet of frozen peas pressed to her forehead, until she was finally driven upstairs to seek refuge in a darkened bedroom. The ice compartment of our fridge was stocked with frozen vegetables for just this eventuality. The packs had to be circulated regularly as the white-h
ot intensity of mother’s headaches could melt one in twenty minutes. She never complained. At frequent intervals father and I would tiptoe to her bedside and change the ice-pack or apply a wet flannel to her brow, and she would smile weakly and promise to be down soon. Occasionally I would be called upon to scrape her scalp with a metal comb, according to the principle that if the pain could not be relieved it could at least be varied.

  During these periods of withdrawal father and I would be left to fend for ourselves downstairs. Refusing merely to muddle along, father would rally, fetch out cookery books from the study, drive for miles in search of obscure ingredients and produce something elaborate and quite unsuitable for a child’s palate – squid, perhaps, or a fiery curry – which I would force down valiantly, all the while praying for my mother’s swift recovery.

  Sometimes father would think it his duty to entertain me, a situation which would cause anxiety to us both. Once when I was five he took me to a matinée of Love’s Labour’s Lost through which I slept soundly, and on another even worse occasion to a circus where I had to endure both the spectacle of grown men in clown costumes making themselves ridiculous and that of my father beside me writhing with boredom and embarrassment. ‘Did you think I’d enjoy that, Daddy?’ I asked him kindly afterwards, a story which he would often tell against himself when I was older. After these disasters father refrained from suggesting excursions for a while and confined himself to more homely entertainments – teaching me to play backgammon and rummy, or merely sitting alongside me on the couch while we read our separate books and waited for the migraine upstairs to pass. One occasion, though, stands out from all the rest.

  There has been an atmosphere in the house all morning. Not an argument, but a sense of things simmering. Our regular Saturday visit to the butcher’s and the greengrocer’s has been conducted in silence, and by eleven o’clock mother has retired to bed with a headache. For me this is an early stage in my growing awareness that my parents are not particularly happy – at least not simultaneously. I have begun to realise that although they don’t shout at each other like couples I have seen in the Post Office, for example, neither do they show any special signs of affection. They kiss, cuddle and tease me, not each other.

  While mother withdraws to her bed and father to his study, I am in the back garden playing with Margot and Sheena. By this stage (I am six) I have acquired two imaginary friends, Margot, who is slightly older than me, pretty, dark-haired and very bossy, and Sheena, who is younger, fair, pretty of course and not quite so confident. I prefer Sheena, but it is Margot who gets things done. We are practising our ballet. Margot executes a series of pirouettes culminating in a leap and Sheena and I applaud enthusiastically. Margot is already using pointes, whereas we are still in soft pumps: our feet are not sufficiently developed, is Margot’s reasoning, and if we attempt to move into pointes too soon we will end up deformed and very probably crippled.

  ‘Your turn,’ she commands, and I begin the routine which I have been polishing for some days now. It is, I think, superior to Margot’s, because it tells a story: it concerns a young girl who befriends a nightingale which then flies away leaving her bereft, and it is performed with as much pathos as I can manage. Sheena is very moved.

  ‘Do you like it?’ I ask Margot.

  ‘Yes darling, very good.’

  ‘Was it as good as yours?’ I persist.

  ‘No darling,’ says Margot kindly, ‘not quite.’

  I am still recovering from this when I see father at the window. He is standing between the net curtains and the glass and gazing into the middle distance. I wave at him but he doesn’t see me. He is still in the same position when I get indoors, and I creep up beside him, under the net. He absent-mindedly puts a hand on my head and ruffles up my hair, which I promptly smooth down again.

  ‘Daddy?’ I say. ‘Why are you and Mummy sad?’

  He jerks his hand away as though he has put his finger in a live socket and says, ‘We’re not sad, sweetie. How could we be with such a beautiful daughter?’ And fighting off the net curtains, he swings me up and gives me a kiss on the nose. ‘I’ll tell you what, we’ll go out, shall we? We’ll go out for lunch.’ This idea is very exciting to me as I’ve never eaten outside the house before.

  As father is reversing the car out of the gate, the bedroom window judders open and mother appears holding a plastic bag. ‘Haven’t you forgotten something?’ she says coldly, and father yanks on the handbrake and strides back down the drive. A moment later he re-emerges with the bag, which seems to contain a brown paper package, and stows it in the boot.

  ‘What’s that?’ I ask as we are finally on our way.

  ‘An errand,’ he says, in a tone that discourages further questions.

  I am sitting, legs stretched out, on the back seat – it is apparently dangerous for me to be in the front, but all right for father. This makes conversation difficult, but father is not a great talker anyway and the journey continues in friendly silence through street after street until after nearly an hour we pull up outside an extraordinary house. But for this house the road is unremarkable – two rows of tall redbrick houses, no gaps between them, small front gardens, and two ribbons of parked cars. On the corner though, set back from the road at the top of a crescent-shaped drive, squats this monster with a turret room on each side, like a pair of hunched, bony shoulders, and windows of uneven sizes, giving it an alarming squint. The garden, a forest of unmown grass and brambles and vast rubbery bushes choked with purple flowers, is surrounded by a high wall and on top of the gateposts are two terrifying carvings. One is the head of a wolf, snarling, and the other is of an eagle or vulture – a ferocious-looking bird anyway – with a hooked beak and glaring eyes which seem to be fixed on me. While I cower on the back seat, trying to avoid their gaze, father retrieves the parcel from the boot and hurries up the driveway. His business at the front door is obscured by one of the purple bushes, but a moment later he reappears and we set off once more. His errand behind him, father seems more inclined to talk, and he tells me that he is taking me to a lovely place, one of his favourite places, a holy place called Half Moon Street, and that he hopes I am wearing comfortable shoes as there will be some walking involved. I look down at my feet. Taking advantage of my mother’s indisposition I have put on my white patent leather sandals which I am only allowed to wear indoors, on special occasions. Father can usually be counted on not to notice such details. I tell him that they are extremely comfortable, which is true, and pray that there will be no mud.

  We have lunch at a village pub. We sit in the garden as it is a sunny day and as children are not allowed inside. Father is extremely scrupulous about observing this sort of prohibition, and won’t even let me use the pub loo; instead we have to trail around the village until we find a Ladies.

  We both have steak and kidney pie and chips. When I have finished father picks over my scraps and eats the tinned peas which I have steered to the side of the plate, and the chunks of meat which I have discarded as too tough or gristly. I have my first taste of clear lemonade. How, I want to know, can something that looks like water taste so lovely? Father starts to explain about flavourings and chemicals, and then seeing my face remembers himself and asks if I would like another glass. He lights his pipe, and as the first plumes of smoke drift skywards the people at the next table pick up their plates and decamp to the furthest corner of the garden. Sighing, father taps out his pipe into the ashtray. It is warm enough for me to have tied my cardigan around my waist, but father is still wearing shirt, tie, jumper and jacket. He always wears a tie. His wardrobe is modest and although none of his clothes are casual, none are exactly smart either. He feels the cold, too, which is unfortunate as our house is virtually unheated: any trace of warmth can bring on one of mother’s heads.

  Half Moon Street is reached through a tunnel of sunken lanes. The trees, newly in leaf, arch above us, blotting out the sky. All around us is the sharp acid green of spring. It is like burrowing int
o an apple. We have to park some half a mile away in a pub car-park and approach on foot; the path becomes a dirt track, and I have to be careful to avoid puddles. Occasionally father has to carry me across great swathes of mud. We descend into a hollow, round a corner and there it is: my first sight of Half Moon Street, not a street at all but a moss-green lake surrounded by a coronet of trees, with a tiny redbrick cottage and a jetty on one side. The garden, a waterfall of bluebells and forget-me-nots, reaches to the water’s edge where there is a small wooden boat tethered to a sign which reads NO BOATING NO FISHING NO SWIMMING. The cottage is evidently inhabited as the upstairs windows are open and I can see curtains fluttering. There is a tub of wilting daffodils outside the front door and a flaking green chair with a patchwork cushion on the seat and a book hanging astride the arm. ‘Last time I was here the cottage was empty,’ says father. ‘I’m glad it’s got a tenant. It seemed such a waste.’ Out on the lake a duck and some ducklings are swimming. Only their hairpin trails disturb the symmetry of the trees’ reflection. It’s so beautiful it isn’t real.

  ‘It’s a hammer pond,’ says father, and starts trying to explain about water wheels and iron smelting, but my mind has soared out of reach and I soon stop listening. I’m planning how I will live here in the future, with a friend perhaps. I already know that it is going to be one of my special places. I haven’t even asked father how he discovered it. It doesn’t matter; it’s mine now. We make a circuit of the lake; father walks and I run, weaving in and out of the trees and down to the water. A sign nailed to a tree reads BEWARE ADDERS, and seeing it father tells me to watch where I’m treading.

  When we get back to the car an hour or so later I notice that my sandals are black with mud. Wiping them with a hanky proves fruitless – dirt is ingrained into the stitching and the leather has been grazed by twigs. They are ruined. After a few deep swallows I burst into tears and blubber out a confession. Father is sympathetic. Compared to his own shoes, which are plastered with mud, mine look quite respectable, but he knows that little girls and indeed grown women set some store by smart footwear. Besides he will be held partly responsible for their deterioration by mother and therefore remedial action is called for.