Swimming Lessons(17)

Flora and I aren’t designed for sleep. Our eyelids are too thin, our bodies too light to stay weighted down in a bed, and our ears too sensitive. We wake at any noise, whether it’s real or imagined: the rain on the roof, the creak of the floorboard in front of the cooker, or the rattle of the window frames already dulled by chocks of ripped-up beer mats. When the windows are opened, scraps of card with the words “Old Speckled Hen” and “Henry’s Original IPA” litter the floor under the sills.

Your letter had arrived in my university pigeonhole a week after I’d run out of the café. Although I carried it with me everywhere and tried out all sorts of replies in my head, the letter was too huge to know how to respond, so I never did. And I didn’t tell Louise any of it (the tutorial, the café, the near kiss), and I didn’t show her the letter. I knew she’d have warned me off, made a joke about older men, initiated a conversation about children and why neither of us would be having any. I went to your class sick with excitement but didn’t say much and you didn’t ask me any questions, avoided my eye. Like when you’d lent me the book, I lingered just long enough for you to ask me to stay behind, but you didn’t. I found out where you lodged in London when you were teaching and I walked past your house, guessing which window was yours. I scanned the streets for a mustard-coloured Triumph Stag, but didn’t see one. When I was supposed to be writing, or working, or revising, I found myself doodling the words “Gil Coleman” and would have to black them out with my pen, pressing hard enough to mark the desk with tiny oblongs of redaction. I joined my nearest public library, but the only books I borrowed were the two you’d written. I sat on a bench in St. George’s Gardens and consumed them both in a day, trying to tease the author out from the words on the page like a winkle from its shell. I’ve never told you that I loved them. I loved them.

For that week I replayed our time in the café so often the memory became grey through overuse, and I thought you must have given the letter to the wrong person (the wrong Ingrid). Then, in my pigeonhole I found my short-story assignment about a girl, a boy, and a box of matches. You’d marked it, underlining the words “now and again he would glance at the undulation of her top lip and imagine pressing his thumb into that narrow channel,” and in a scrawled hand you’d written, “Please see me.” Reading your handwriting brought you back into Technicolor, and so I told Louise.

She said the things I’d been expecting her to say: that you had a reputation, that you were a misogynist, an old man preying on young students; that it was sick, I should report you, the letter was an outrage, and I would be more of a fool than she ever could have imagined if I saw you again.

One wet Saturday lunchtime on the way back from Levitt’s, my bike got a puncture. I was worrying that the jarring of the flat tyre against the pavement would prematurely crack the two eggs wedged into the corner of the bike’s front basket with four rashers of streaky bacon wrapped in greaseproof paper. Louise and I had slept in late and I’d volunteered to go and buy breakfast. When I looked up, you were leaning out of the window of your car.

“Hello,” you said.

I carried on walking, the bicycle limping through the puddles.

“Ingrid.” Your voice was raised. “Don’t be so fucking difficult.”

I stopped and pushed back the hood of my raincoat with the inside of my wrist. Trickles of cold water ran over my cheeks and dripped from my chin. “Just get in the car,” you said. “So we can talk.”

I indicated my bike and made to carry on walking, although we were beside the railings outside my house.

“Ingrid,” you said more quietly, “I want to wind up the window, I’m wet. Please get in.”

I propped my bike against the railings, taking a long time about it and trying to look nonchalant. When I got in the passenger’s seat you turned on the car’s ignition and for a moment I thought you were going to drive us away, but instead you stretched across and adjusted the vent until warm air blew over me.

“Are you ill?” you said. “You shouldn’t be out in the rain. You’re so pale.” Your fingers touched my cheek, but I continued to look straight ahead at the blurred shops and houses of Goodge Street while trying to work out what I should say about your letter. “Let’s go and get a drink,” you said. “We can talk, that’s all. I promise.” You smiled your winning smile, which was already chipping away at the cold, hard core of me.

You put the windscreen wipers on to clear the glass and peered out at the Jekyll and Hyde. “How about that place? Come on,” you said. I’d never been inside before, but I’d heard the drinks were overpriced and I already knew the clientele were cheap; I’d often sat at my top-floor window opposite, watching the drunks fighting, groping, or vomiting their wages into the gutter at closing time.

Eleven men’s heads twisted towards us as we went in. They sat in a line at the bar on top of their owners’ necks while their hands alternately lifted pints of beer and cigarettes. A watery sun slanted in through tall Victorian windows, highlighting eddies of smoke that swirled into the pub’s brown corners. You bought me a port and lemon. Did you have a whiskey? I don’t remember, but I can still recall the smell of cigarettes mixing with the greasy odour of pastry kept for too long in a pie warmer on the bar. A yellowing sign taped to the side of the glass read, “Topless Bar Maids Every Wenesday Lunchtime.”