Swimming Lessons(54)

“Poor Ingrid. There’s nothing to be sorry about. We can be happy again now.”

I was pleased for you. But I didn’t feel the same.

“Promise me you won’t tell anyone yet,” I said.

“I promise.” You kissed my forehead.

“There’s no point in both of us staying in. Not on our first evening. Let me sleep and in the morning we’ll go out together.”

You had the decency to be silent for a moment or two.

“Go,” I repeated.

“If you’re sure?”

“I’m sure. Find a nice restaurant and have some dinner.” I sat up against the pillows, drew in my legs, and wrapped my arms around my calves. A merman’s tail had been imprinted into the skin of my ankle where I’d kneeled on the bathroom floor.

“Can I get you anything?” you asked before you left.


In the way that sickness will pass quickly, when I’d rested for ten minutes I felt full of energy and not at all tired. I got up and sat again in the open window, my feet pressing against the frame, watching the mopeds in the street below bounce along the cobbles.

I washed my face, brushed my teeth, chose a dress (the one with the sailor collar), and strode out into the city. I walked without any sense of direction, taking in the Italians promenading through the squares. I was excited to be alive.

I stopped in a crowd to watch a man playing Für Elise by running his wet fingers around the rims of water glasses set out on a table. It was then, when the crowd was clapping, and he was bowing, and I was feeling maybe even happy with the thought of something new starting, that I saw you sitting alone at a table outside a restaurant, the yellow light from the windows spilling over your shoulders. I stayed within the crowd and spied on you, watching with a stranger’s eyes and playing with the fantasy of going up to your table and introducing myself. You were so handsome, so self-assured, watching the people walking past, and I was prepared to forgive everything.

You called the waiter over for the bill, I supposed, but the conversation was whispered and although the man brought a piece of paper and took some money, you continued to sit and wait. The crowd around me applauded the water-glass musician again, threw coins into the suitcase he had open in front of his table, and moved on, another group of tourists replacing them. I must have listened to that music five or six times before the waiter came to your table again, this time with a woman. She was about my age but taller, or tall in her high heels and miniskirt. Even from a distance I could see her eyes were ringed in kohl and her lips garish. She sat at your table and crossed her legs. You shook hands with the waiter and the woman leaned in towards you, and when you said something she laughed, so that a couple walking past the restaurant turned to look. When you stood, the woman held on to your arm—proprietorially, I thought with a stab. You walked towards the Medici Chapel and I followed. What else would you expect me to do?

She took you to an apartment building behind the empty market stalls on the Via del Canto dei Nelli. I don’t know why I’m telling you—you must remember. Please let me believe that you remember, because if you’ve forgotten, it means this prostitute who you bought on a Thursday night in Florence was only one in a long list of women on trips to London and wherever else you went. I never expected to be the kind of jealous woman who lets her imagination run away with itself.

I sat on the steps of San Lorenzo, hugging my knees, and saw a light come on in an attic window. Of course it might not have been yours (hers), but I imagined it was. I thought about you ducking your head in a room where the walls sloped, where the wooden floorboards were flecked with paint from slapdash decorating, and where there was one low window which overlooked the red-tiled roofs of Florence.

“Do you live here?” you might have asked in English, just to say something. Her skin was the colour of caramel, her black hair poorly cut, and although she’d laughed at your joke at the restaurant table, she didn’t understand what you said and might have been from any number of countries. She didn’t answer, or maybe she shrugged and you were relieved you didn’t have to make conversation. It was a transaction. You were buying and she had something to sell; it was no different from the dinner you’d eaten. She was another digestif you allowed yourself because you had something to celebrate.

In the attic room (small but clean), maybe the woman undressed and you took off your own clothes, looking around for somewhere to place them that wasn’t the bed or the floor. There, I have made a chair appear for you to save getting your trousers or white shirt dirty. She took a condom from a bedside drawer, and although you shook your head and offered her more money, you relented when she insisted. (I have convinced myself that she insisted.) Your erection didn’t flag when you protected the three of us; I don’t think it’s the loss of sensation you worry about; it’s the missed opportunity of insemination.

You had sex with her first on the bed, vigorously. You were only forty-one. Then, through gestures and manoeuvring, you had her lean forwards on the windowsill so you could come while looking out over the floodlit Duomo.

I was back in the hotel bed, pretending to be asleep, long before you returned. The next day you described in detail the antipasto (salami, grilled asparagus, tiny peppers stuffed with soft cheese), the pasta e fagioli, the sublime agnello dell’imperatore with its wreath of bay and rosemary, and how afterwards you’d strolled across Ponte Vecchio for a grappa in a bar in Piazza della Passera. I never challenged your story.