Swimming Lessons(39)

“I’d rather stand, thank you,” I said, although my knees were shaking.

“May I offer my congratulations on your expected arrival?” He nodded at my bump. “When is the little bundle of joy, as they say, due to arrive?”

“The week after next,” I said.

I was pleased to see a brief expression of shock pass across his face before he composed himself. “My goodness.” He came around to hold out the chair. “Then please do sit. I wouldn’t want anything to start in my office.”

I remained standing, and he let go of the chair and went back to his own.

“Have you thought of a name yet?” The dean was all smiles.

Do you remember, Gil, our weekends by the sea when I was so pregnant I couldn’t move? You would stuff me into the car in London on a Friday afternoon and drive south, your hand on my stomach whenever you weren’t changing gear. At the Swimming Pavilion I undressed and collapsed on the bed. My skin was stretched tight over my belly, which you said sat like a white beach ball caught in the branches of an aspen. My tummy button popped out and I developed the faintest linea nigra (as you told me it was called)—the ghost of a ginger line—as if you could have peeled me open to reveal six babies packed together in segments. My areolae darkened to salmon pink and enlarged as my breasts swelled. You said the new constellations scattered over my nipples were called Montgomeries, and I didn’t question how you knew all the words. You crouched between my knees, pressing your lips up against my distended stomach, whispering to our unborn child, telling it stories about sea horses, cuttlefish bones, and the tangled nets of fishermen. Or you opened my legs to gaze at me, exclaim at the width of my boyish hips, and wonder how our baby would make it into the world through that narrow passage. When I tried to pull you up and into me, you said it wouldn’t be right now I was almost a mother. You wanted to look but you no longer touched. Instead you lay beside me, reciting names to see which one would stick: Fyodor, Saul, Wallace. Don’t you know any female writers apart from Shirley Jackson?

“We haven’t decided,” I said to the dean. I knew what he was trying to do. “I want to talk to you about Professor Coleman’s job,” I said.

“I’m afraid I can’t discuss the personal information of an employee of the university. That’s private.”

“He’s my husband.”

“So he told me.” The dean straightened the blotter in front of him. “The information about his employment is still confidential.”

“But we need that job.”

“Perhaps something he should have considered earlier.” The dean looked at my stomach. “Actually, Miss Torgensen,” he said pointedly, “it’s rather useful that you’ve come to see me now.”

“So you’ll reconsider?”

The dean put his head on one side and frowned. “No, no; it’s your own position I’d like to discuss. I was hoping to invite you in for a chat next week, but since you’re here . . . Are you sure you wouldn’t like a seat?”

My belly tightened again and I shook my head.

“It’s a question of standards, you see. I’m sure you understand that the university has a reputation to uphold. You might think we can turn a blind eye to relationships between professors and students, but I’m afraid that isn’t the case. It’s a matter of trust. Expectations are changing . . .” The dean continued, his voice a monotone. I swayed on my feet, his words coming back into focus when he said, “I’ve already had a word with the head of English and he’s happy for you to take some time off from the university, get some rest, or whatever it is mothers do.”

“But my finals start next week,” I said.

“You shouldn’t worry about those. No, no. I suggest you go home and look after your husband and your baby. That’s where your place is now.”

“My place is here. I want . . . I need to finish my degree.”

The dean pushed his chair back from under his desk and smiled. “Perhaps something you also should have considered earlier.” He stood, his arm extended as if herding me out. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve another appointment.”

I turned and left, marching past his secretary and slamming the door behind me.

And that was the end of my education, in the dean’s office, one week before I would have finished anyway.


Yours,

Ingrid


[Placed in Advice to a Wife: On the Management of Her Own Health, and on the Treatment of the Complaints Incidental to Pregnancy, Labour and Suckling, by Pye Henry Chavasse, 1913 edition.]





Chapter 21



In the afternoon, when they returned from collecting Gil’s car, Flora took Richard down to the beach. A breeze was blowing in from the sea, a tang of military-green weed and things half-buried. A group of gulls circled the up-currents, banking and turning, waiting for something. She’d found a pair of old swimming trunks in the airing cupboard but Richard had refused them. He sat on his towel, running the fine dry sand through his fingers. Flora pulled her shirt over her head; she was wearing a bikini underneath. Goose pimples rose across her legs and arms.

“Are you coming in?” she said.

“With a skeleton inked on me? That’d get your neighbours talking.”