Swimming Lessons(44)

“In fact,” Gil said, glancing between Nan and Flora, “there’s something I’ve been talking to Richard about.”

Richard shuffled on his seat, looked down.

“I’ve asked him to burn the books.”

Nan’s head jerked, a mouthful of food in her cheek.

“After I’m dead,” Gil said. “Whenever that may be.” He smiled at Flora.

Nan swallowed. “Which books? What do you mean?”

“All the books in the house,” Gil said.

“And you’ve agreed?” Flora said to Richard accusingly. He didn’t answer.

“You girls aren’t interested in them,” Gil said. “The collection has got out of hand. I know it’s something your mother would have wanted.”

“Mum! How do you know what Mum wants?” Flora kneeled up on the bed, her plate tipping, the quiche crust sliding off.

“But I thought you loved them,” Nan said.

“Why don’t you sell them back to Viv?” Flora shifted on the bed, unaware that her knee was resting on the pastry. “Or give them to her? Viv would take them, wouldn’t she, Nan?”

Gil put his hand on Flora’s arm and she sat.

“You’re sure?” Nan said.

“Absolutely fucking sure.” Gil put his fork on top of his uneaten dinner.





Chapter 24


THE SWIMMING PAVILION, 13TH JUNE 1992, 3:32 AM


Dear Gil,

Jonathan warned me not to go into your writing room because I might find things I wouldn’t like. When I raised my eyebrows, he said, “You know, scrappy bits of paper with bad words written on them, screwed-up pages with everything crossed out, first drafts. Apparently first drafts are always ugly.” We laughed. We were walking over the heath that first summer, the gorse flowers fading to a paper-yellow, the smell of coconut disappearing on the wind that blew in from the sea. Jonathan said you needed to keep your room separate from the house and the people who visited. It was a place for serious writing and thinking.

Once, when I was newly pregnant with Nan, I woke in the night without you beside me. I went outside and looked through the window in the door of your room and saw you resting your head on top of your typewriter. I tapped on the pane but you didn’t move. I wasn’t sure if you were asleep. In the morning you were back beside me, and you pulled me to you and made me promise that if you were ever missing from our bed I mustn’t come to find you. I laughed and you said, “I’m deadly serious, Ingrid. Everyone needs a place to escape to, even if it’s only inside their head.”

“I’ll promise,” I said, “if you promise me the same.”

We were lying face-to-face, separated only by the paisley curl of our baby inside me. Awkwardly, you held out your right hand and we shook on it. Do you remember?

And there was the time, years later—in the middle of the argument where the teapot got smashed—when you shouted that I wasn’t allowed in your room because I was too fucking nosy and asked too many fucking questions. “How’s it going? How many words today? Thought of a title yet?” And you accused me of reading your pages when you were out, of snooping and checking up on you, of dripping my wet hair onto your words when they were still spooling out from your typewriter. It was fucking inhibiting, you said, and the reason you stayed in your writing room was no longer to write but because you needed to fucking protect your intellectual property.

But the reason I wasn’t allowed in there wasn’t any of these, was it, Gil?


4th August 1977: The first time since Nan had been born that I’d gone farther than Spanish Green’s village shop. I’d saved the money for the bus and the train fare a few pence at a time from the housekeeping you gave me, hiding it away in an empty custard powder box. I took Nan (three months and four days old) in the Silver Cross pram, and I was more proud of that baby carriage than I was of the baby. I’d bought it mail order with the little bit of money my aunt had left me. It was a shiny black boat on high white wheels. There was a satisfying pop when I pressed the cover in place, a firm click when the arm mechanism of the hood was locked, and a small bounce from the suspension when I walked. I put lipstick and mascara on for the first time in five months; my back was straight and my head up. I wore my platform sandals, a pair of flared patterned trousers with a comfortable elasticized waist, and a 1940s blouse with a floppy bow at the neck, which I’d found at the village hall jumble sale. I was ready for London. I pushed the pram down the road to the bus stop and let Mrs. Allen coo over the baby, tell me how glamorous I looked, and ask whether I was off somewhere exciting.

“To see my best friend, Louise,” I said.

The bus driver helped me on with the pram and the other passengers smiled and didn’t mind that we were blocking the aisle. At the train station, I stood on the platform as the 9:37 came in, and realised, with the same feeling as if I’d turned up a day late for a school exam, that the pram wouldn’t fit through the carriage door. I contemplated leaving it and Nan on the platform and stepping onto the train without her, but Nan and I, and the Silver Cross, spent the two-hour journey bumping around in the guard’s van amongst the bicycles, guitar cases, and oversized boxes. As the train pulled out of the station, Nan began to cry. I jogged the pram, pushed it to and fro, and picked her up. She cried harder—her eyes crimped shut, face red, and mouth open. She was normally a good baby, contented. Through Winchester and Basingstoke I paced up and down the dirty swaying van, moving her from one shoulder to the other, patting and stroking. She didn’t stop wailing. At Woking I changed her nappy and at Clapham Junction, in front of a group of Boy Scouts with bikes, I undid my blouse and hefted one of my enormous breasts out from my bra. I saw it anew—a huge white udder, larger than Nan’s head. She was having none of it, she carried on crying, her little body tensed and her head thrown back. The boys stared at me as I cried with her, wiping under my eyes, my fingers black with smudged mascara. When the train pulled into Waterloo, we were both sobbing.