Swimming Lessons(11)

I nodded.

“Oh dear. You weren’t meant to read it—it is dreadful. I shall have to make it up to you.” You stood and put the book on a different shelf from where you’d taken it, stuffing it into a gap. “How do you like your coffee? Actually, don’t bother to answer that, there’s no milk and no sugar.”

“Black would be fine.”

“I know . . .” You turned once more and sat again on the sofa’s arm. “Let’s not have coffee; let’s go out and get a proper drink.” You slid over the rounded arm of the chesterfield and landed beside me in a puff of dust. “You didn’t have any other plans, did you?”

I’d never been so close to your peppery smell before. “I have to go to the library,” I said, “but I can go later.”

The side of your leg, your jeans, was touching my bare leg. In that moment after I replied, you looked down at my knees, my short dress, and your legs, wide open, pressing against me. And you jumped up.

“The library?” you said, staring out of the window although there was nothing to see except blue sky. “I have some library books that need taking back. They’re here somewhere. I don’t suppose you could return these while you’re there, could you?” You picked up a pile of folders and a stack of papers and dumped them on the floor, uncovering six plastic-wrapped books. “They’ve been on at me for ages to get them back.” You put them in my hands. “God, I need a cigarette,” you said.

There was a queue in the library, and I swore at you under my breath, and I swore at myself for being so ridiculous—for reading every signal wrong and for coming so close to embarrassing myself. “He’s an idiot,” I said, and realised I’d spoken aloud when the plump woman in front of me in a grey cape swivelled her pigeon head.

At the front of the queue I handed your books over.

“Eight pounds forty,” the librarian said. Eight pounds forty. That was forty-six loaves of bread, or about forty boxes of eggs, or twenty-eight glasses of Cinzano in the Duke of York. It was more than I’d ever had in my purse.

“They’re not mine. I’m returning them for a . . .” I stopped. “Someone else,” I said. The librarian scowled, and the queue behind me shuffled and muttered. I found my chequebook in my bag and the woman stood over me while I wrote, signed, and tore out the slip. I wasn’t sure it wouldn’t bounce. I should have stormed into your office, demanded you pay me there and then, but I went to the bike shed, deflated, all the anticipation gone out of the day, and cycled home.

I didn’t see you again properly until my next tutorial. One of your classes had been cancelled and another covered by the deputy head of the English Department. There were rumours you were ill, that you’d been suspended for drinking, that your wife had died. Wife! How that made my heart lurch. Everywhere I walked—around the English block, the library, through the streets of Bloomsbury—I looked for you. Once I saw you at a distance, hands shoved in trouser pockets, walking away from me, head lowered, and stooping handsomely near the history rooms. I turned and raced around the building, slowing on the final corner so I could saunter towards you, but by the time I got there you were talking to the bird-lady from the library. You laughed at something she said, touched the top of her arm, and I could see the pleasure in her face from your attention. The two of you walked away. I wanted to pluck that old woman’s feathers out.

For a week I didn’t check my pigeonhole so I could claim ignorance if you cancelled my tutorial. Although I was still cross with myself for paying your library fine and with you for not knowing I had, I wore the yellow dress again.

Like before, the window to your office was flung wide, but this time you weren’t leaning out. Upstairs, your office door was ajar, and when I knocked on it, it opened farther but you weren’t inside. I stood on the threshold, smelling you, and looking at your disorder.

“Ingrid,” you said from behind me. I turned; you held that coffee jug full of water and you smiled. You were wearing espadrilles and creased linen trousers that you’d rolled up to reveal your ankles and a bit of tanned calf. Your big-collared short-sleeved shirt with its wide, off-centre stripe was open at the neck. You looked like a rich American from the 1950s, holidaying on the Italian coast. If I’d gone to the window and glanced out, I’d have seen a beautiful woman in a head scarf and sunglasses waiting for you in an open-topped sports car.

“I wasn’t sure you’d come,” you said. “You’ve missed some classes.”

“I haven’t missed any,” I said.

“Well, sit down.” You manoeuvred past me into your office and set the coffee machine going. I sat on the edge of one of the armchairs.

“So.” You spun your desk chair around to face me. “How’s it been going?”

“Fine.”

“Well, that’s good.” Behind you the percolator’s stomach rumbled. Neither of us looked at each other. “So, I suppose we might as well get straight to it.” You slapped your thighs and pushed off against the floor with a foot so that the wheeled chair slid along a well-worn track in front of your desk. You stopped it at a stack of papers, which you searched through until you teased out my assignment from halfway down. My first name was trapped inside the brown circle of a coffee-cup stain. “Did you bring your own copy?”