Swimming Lessons(33)

“Morning,” Flora said, bending to kiss her father on the top of his head. Gil patted her cheek absent-mindedly. As she sat, Nan put a plate in front of her—a fried egg flipped once but with the yolk still soft, two slices of crisp bacon, and a piece of toast, each with their personal space intact. She tried to catch Richard’s eye so she could frown at him, but he was concentrating on Gil.

“Take this, for example,” her father was saying. Gil tilted his chair to stretch for a slim volume from the top of a stack of books beside the cooker.

“Careful, Dad.” Nan stopped squirting kitchen cleaner over the cleared surfaces and passed the book to him.

Gil moved it backwards and forwards, squinting to try to focus. “God knows what I did with my glasses. I couldn’t find them in the bookshop either.” His hand stopped. “By the way,” he said to Nan, “did that book ever turn up, the one I was holding when I . . .” he paused “. . . fell?”

“No one mentioned it,” Nan said. “I don’t remember seeing it in the hospital.”

“Perhaps you could call them for me?”

“About a lost book? Surely it’s not that important?”

“Maybe Viv has it,” Flora said, in a way that made Nan glance at her. Flora raised her eyebrows, smiled, and gave her sister a private nod.

“I’ll give the hospital a ring,” Nan said.

Gil adjusted the book in front of his face again. “Rood-Lofts and Their Remnants in Our Churches Including Dorset by E. Z. Harris,” he read.

Richard patted the papers on the table, moving books. A pair of glasses with black frames appeared from under the side of a plate. He picked them up, opened the arms, and Gil bent forwards so Richard could slip the glasses over the old man’s ears. The action was like a familiar habit, as if they had known each other for years. With her knife, Flora worked at freeing her egg yolk from its white without breaking it or having it touch the bacon. Gil let the book fall open at a page marked by a scrap of newspaper. Flora ate a piece of egg white with an edge of toast.

“This writing was done by a woman,” Gil said, waving the pages.

“How do you know?” Richard said, peering at it upside down.

“Purple ink, for a start.”

“Spending their pensions on brandy and summer gloves?” Richard said.

“Setting a good example for the children.” Gil and Richard laughed together. “It’s women who underline and write words in the margins,” Gil continued. “Men doodle and scribble obscenities.” Gil handed the book over to Richard, who examined the writing, turning it sideways to decipher it. Now he had an attentive audience, Gil leaned backwards for another book.

Nan topped up everyone’s coffee.

“Thanks,” Richard said, and Flora saw that her sister was wearing an apron that had belonged to their mother and she had put on lipstick.

“Oh, yes, thanks,” Flora said to Nan. Gil picked up his cup and drank, still looking at the book.

“I can’t read it,” Richard said. “What’s this word?” He squinted.

“Now this is wonderful,” Gil said. He pressed the book against his chest so he could open it one-handed, and Flora saw the cover: Queer Fish by E. G. Boulenger.

“A first edition?” Richard said. Flora and Nan made eye contact and smiled.

“Richard,” Gil said, as if he were teaching a five-year-old. “Forget that first-edition, signed-by-the-author nonsense. Fiction is about readers. Without readers there is no point in books, and therefore they are as important as the author, perhaps more important. But often the only way to see what a reader thought, how they lived when they were reading, is to examine what they left behind. All these words”—Gil swung his arm out to encompass the table, the room, the house—“are about the reader. The specific individual—man, woman, or child—who left something of themselves behind.” With Richard’s help, he opened the book and revealed a paper napkin lodged in the pages. It was folded into a square—yellow and brittle with age. Flora looked over his arm. The napkin had an emblem on the front with an M in the middle, and underneath in an ornate font, Hotel Mirabelle, Salzburg. Below that some handwriting.

“Suzannah, room 127,” Flora read aloud. With her knife she spread egg yolk over the now crustless toast and ate it together with the bacon, using her fingers. Nan tutted.

“A whole story is contained in those three words,” Gil said, stroking the text with his thumb as if to pick up some smell or particles of Suzannah. “Did she write her own name and room number, or did a man overhear it?”

“Maybe he visited her in room 127 and had to pay for her services,” Nan said.

“Or perhaps it wasn’t a man who visited her, it was a woman.” Flora raised her eyebrows again at her sister.

“I’d rather know the truth, though,” Nan said. “I’d like to know what really happened.”

“Not knowing is so much better, isn’t it, Daddy?” Flora said. Gil took his eyes off the napkin and looked at her as she continued. “I don’t want to discover that the writer was actually the chambermaid and Suzannah was just a guest in room 127 who needed fresh towels. Or that room service got Suzannah’s request for eggs on toast but couldn’t find the order pad.”