Swimming Lessons(38)

“I want us to make love in your writing room,” I said, although I was perfectly happy with your office, the Swimming Pavilion’s bed, or the dunes. “I want to lie back on that velvet cover. It’s night and the window’s open.” I was beginning to enjoy myself. “We can hear the sea lapping at the sand. I want you to kneel between my legs and push my thighs apart.”


“Only Professor Coleman is allowed in, miss,” the porter said, blocking my entry to the administration building with his suited bulk. He was more like a bouncer than a porter, and I reckoned if I couldn’t match him pound for pound, our waist measurements would be similar.

“Mrs.,” I said.

The man would look me only in the eye.

You, Gil, placed your hand against my neck. “I’ll be fine,” you said. “What’s the worst that can happen?” You smiled a brave smile.

Louise was standing behind me, and I knew she would have that concerned expression on her face—the one where her eyebrows met below her wrinkled forehead. That morning during a “chat,” she’d pulled the same face and said, “Someone has to be there for you. This isn’t all about Gil.” I’d told her I was perfectly capable of looking after myself, but she’d insisted.

You pushed through the glass swing door into the university while Louise and I waited, leaning against the wall like schoolgirls skiving school. In front of us was that famous metal sculpture: tubes and beams crisscrossing each other and a circular plate resting at the end of a pole.

“What do you think it’s meant to be?” Louise said, tilting her head.

“The skeleton of an arthritic elephant,” I said.

“A line drawing by a left-handed octopus.”

“A climbing frame for rectangular children.”

A porter had been posted sentry by the door, as if the dean were worried we might storm the building. (A pregnant girl and her skinny friend rushing past him and demanding that Professor Coleman be allowed to keep his job.) After a while, he went inside and came out with a chair. I was determined to refuse it, although I could feel the downwards pull and stretch of things inside me. But the man set it beside the door and sat on it himself, tilting it back, waiting for the show to begin. He stretched out his legs and rolled a cigarette, lighting it in the cup of his hand even though there was no wind, and smoking it with the lit end tucked under his fingers.

You came out of the building smiling, with bravado, I suppose.

“So,” I said when no one spoke. “What happened?”

Louise read your face faster than I did. “Have you considered adoption, Ingrid?” she said with a laugh.

“Just shut up,” you said. “I’m not even sure why you’re here.”

“I’m here to look after Ingrid’s best interests.” She folded her arms across her chest.

“Stop bickering,” I said, “and tell me what happened.”

“Listen.” You took me by the elbow as if to lead me away. “Fuck Louise, fuck the dean. In fact, fuck the lot of them.” You put your arm around me. “My next book will sell. I know it.”

I stepped away. “But surely you apologised.”

“It’s a bit late for that.”

“They can’t throw you out. Don’t you have tenure or something?”

“They haven’t thrown him out,” Louise said, still leaning against the wall. “I think he’s saying he’s resigned.”

“Not exactly,” you said.

“Why?” The muscles of my stomach contracted and hardened painlessly. Braxton Hicks contractions, you told me later. “Why would you do that?”

“I wasn’t really given an option. The dean blabbered on about avoiding a scandal in the papers and an imminent visit by the university funding committee, blah, blah, blah.”

“Perhaps he’s behind on the payments for his modern art collection,” Louise said.

“But you can get another job, can’t you?” My hand was on my stomach, as hard as a rock. “At a different university.”

“I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of letting him recommend me. He can fuck his job and any other up his arse.”

The porter dragged on his cigarette, listening and watching, a smirk on his face.

“No, Gil, tell me you didn’t.”

“Come on,” you said, taking my arm again. “It’ll be fine.”

“I’m going to speak to him,” I said, pulling away. “You need that job—we need that job.”

The porter jumped up as I approached and threw his cigarette on the ground to open the door for me. He gave a little nod of the head as I passed, perhaps with some respect for the angry pregnant woman.

I walked straight past the dean’s secretary sitting behind her desk. Despite my size I was too quick for her, and I was in the dean’s office before she’d even stood up.

He was older than I’d expected. I’d seen him from a distance of course, from the high seats at the rear of the main lecture theatre when he gave us a five-minute pep talk at the beginning of each year about not letting the university down, or our parents, or, most important of all, ourselves.

“Miss Torgensen,” he said, as if it were he who’d requested a meeting. “Please, take a seat.” He indicated the chair in front of the desk he was sitting at. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised that he knew my name.