Into the Water(17)

Something about that image jarred, made me feel something I hadn’t felt in a while. Shame. The dirty, secret shame of the voyeur, tinged with something else, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on and didn’t want to. I tried to turn away from it but I remembered: that wasn’t the only time I’d watched him with you.

I felt suddenly uncomfortable so I got up from your bed and paced around the room, looking at the photos. Pictures everywhere. Of course. Framed pictures of you on the chest of drawers, tanned and smiling, in Tokyo and Buenos Aires, on skiing holidays and on beaches, with your daughter in your arms. On the walls, framed prints of magazine covers you shot, a story on the front page of the New York Times, the awards you received. Here it is: all the evidence of your success, the proof that you outdid me in everything. Work, beauty, children, life. And now you’ve outdone me again. Even in this, you win.

One picture stopped me in my tracks. It was a photo of you and Lena – not a baby any longer, a little girl, maybe five or six years old, or maybe older, I can never tell children’s ages. She’s smiling, showing tiny white teeth, and there’s something strange about it, something that made my hair stand up on end; something about her eyes, the set of her face, gives her the look of a predator.

I could feel a pulse in my neck, an old fear rising. I lay back down on the bed and tried not to listen to the water, but even with the windows shut, at the top of the house, the sound was inescapable. I could feel it pushing against the walls, seeping into the cracks of the brickwork, rising. I could taste it, muddy and dirty in my mouth, and my skin felt damp.

Somewhere in the house, I could hear someone laughing, and it sounded just like you.





AUGUST 1993





Jules


MUM BOUGHT ME a new swimming costume, an old-fashioned one in blue-and-white gingham with ‘support’. It was supposed to have a kind of 1950s look to it, the sort of thing Marilyn might have worn. Fat and pale, I was no Norma Jean, but I put it on anyway because she’d gone to a lot of trouble to find it. It wasn’t easy finding swimwear for someone like me.

I put on a pair of blue shorts and an extra-large white T-shirt over the top. When Nel came down for lunch in her denim cutoffs and a halter-neck bikini, she took one look at me and said, ‘Are you coming to the river this afternoon?’ in a tone which made it obvious that she didn’t want me to, and then she caught Mum’s eye and said, ‘I’m not looking after her, OK? I’m going there to meet my friends.’

Mum said, ‘Be nice, Nel.’

Mum was in remission then, so frail a stiff breeze might knock her over, her olive skin yellowed, like old paper, and Nel and I were under strict instructions from our father to Get Along.

Part of Getting Along meant Joining In and so yes, I was going to the river. Everyone went to the river. It was all there was to do, really. Beckford wasn’t like the beach, there was no funfair, no games arcade, not so much as a mini-golf course. There was the water: that was it.

A few weeks into the summer, once routines were established, once everyone had figured out where they belonged and who they belonged with, once outsiders and locals had mingled, friendships and enmities established, people started hanging out in groups along the river bank. The younger kids tended to swim south of the Mill House, where the water moved slowly and there were fish to catch. The bad kids hung out at the Wards’ cottage, where they took drugs and had sex, played with Ouija boards and tried to conjure up angry spirits. (Nel told me that if you looked hard enough, you could still find traces of Robert Ward’s blood on the walls.) But the biggest crowd gathered at the Drowning Pool. The boys jumped off the rocks and the girls sunbathed, music played and barbecues were lit. Someone always brought beer.

I would have preferred to stay at home, indoors, out of the sun. I’d have preferred to lie on my bed and read, or play cards with Mum, but I didn’t want her to worry about me, she had more important things to worry about. I wanted to show her I could be sociable, I could make friends. I could Join In.

I knew Nel wouldn’t want me to go. As far as she was concerned, the more time I spent inside, the better, and the less likely it would be that her friends would see me – the blob, the embarrassment: Julia, fat, ugly and uncool. She squirmed in my company, always walking a few paces ahead or lagging ten behind; her discomfort around me was obvious enough to attract attention. Once, when the two of us left the village shop together, I heard one of the local boys talking. ‘She must be adopted. There’s no way that fat bitch is Nel Abbott’s real sister.’ They laughed, and I looked to her for comfort, but all I saw was shame.

That day, I walked to the river alone. I carried a bag containing a towel and a book, a can of Diet Coke and two Snickers, in case I got hungry between lunch and dinner. My stomach ached and my back hurt. I wanted to turn back, to return to the privacy of my small, cool, dark room, where I could be alone. Unseen.

Nel’s friends arrived soon after I did; they colonized the beach, the little crescent of sandy bank on the nearside of the pool. It was the nicest place to sit, sloping down so that you could lie with your toes in the water. There were three girls – two locals and a girl called Jenny who came from Edinburgh and had gorgeous ivory skin and dark hair in a blunt-cut bob. Although she was Scottish she spoke the Queen’s English and the boys were desperately trying to get off with her because rumour had it she was still a virgin.