Swimming Lessons(6)
“I didn’t make that daffodil,” you said, nodding towards it. A couple of the petals had come off and the others were bent. I could feel the pump of blood around my body, the flush of heat up through my neck, to my cheeks.
“I stole it,” you continued. “When I wasn’t much older than some of you, my mother became very ill. She was rushed into hospital and my father telephoned and told me to come immediately because she wouldn’t last the day. I lived a long way from the hospital and so I left what I was doing—writing or reading, perhaps—and jumped in my car. I had a distance to go, hours of driving, and I went fast without stopping, thinking about my mother, who I was very close to, in her hospital bed. I arrived in the early evening, parked the car haphazardly, and ran in.
“My mother was an old-fashioned woman. She had rules of behaviour that had to be followed—an etiquette that we’ve almost forgotten now—and as I rushed into the building, even on her deathbed I knew my mother would want it done properly. I couldn’t turn up without a gift or some flowers, but the small hospital shop was closed.
“So I went into the first ward I came to: a children’s ward. No one questioned who I was or what I was doing there. I’d hoped to find a bunch of flowers or some chocolates that I could take, telling myself I’d replace them as soon as the shop opened, but of course no one brings flowers or boxes of chocolates to ill children. Just as I was thinking I would have to go to my mother without taking anything, I saw a homemade daffodil alone in a vase on a bedside table.” You nodded towards the flower. “The child in the bed was asleep and he had no visitors, so I took the flower and found my way to my mother’s room. We said our good-byes and she died a few minutes after I gave it to her.”
We were silent, watching you, watching the daffodil. One of the girls opposite me sniffed and wiped her eyes. And what did I think? Your story sounded so true, so heartfelt, that I nearly found myself believing it and questioning whether it was the same daffodil. It took me a long time to work out the truth from the fiction.
I don’t remember what secrets my fellow students offered up in that lesson—none of them have stuck with me. All that remains is the stunned silence when we picked up our bags and coats to leave. I gave you no secrets; I didn’t stick my arm in the mire during that class or any other. It was much later that I made up a story for you. That afternoon, when I told Louise about the lesson, she said, “That man’s an idiot; you should stay away from him.”
Gil, we miss you, please come home.
Yours,
Ingrid
P.S. Whatever happened to your bicycle?
Chapter 3
Richard’s Morris Minor was the only car on the last ferry. Before Flora set off, he had given complicated instructions about how much choke she needed to get “the old girl” started, how the clutch was a “little sticky,” and how Flora mustn’t put the car into first gear when it was rolling or she might break a tooth. Flora imagined one of her canines cracking and splitting up the middle. But the car, even if it wasn’t practical, was pretty and smelled of raspberry-coloured warm plastic.
The ferryman, wearing fluorescent-yellow oilskins, waved Flora on and told her they would be closing the service because of the bad weather.
“High winds, my love,” was what he actually said.
“But my sister is coming across tonight,” Flora shouted through the small gap she had wound in the car window, although now she couldn’t remember what Nan had said about when she was coming home, and Flora thought perhaps she should have gone to the hospital after all.
“Not tonight she isn’t. She’ll have to go the long way round. Got your hand brake on?”
Flora got out of the car, although the ferry only took ten minutes to cross The Pinch, to the curl of land shaped like a beckoning finger where she had grown up. She stood at the front barrier, pelted by slanting rain, while the engine strained and vibrated as it pulled the ferry across the short stretch of water on its chains. Flora’s stomach pitched and rolled with the boat. This night there were no lights on the opposite bank and they might have been sailing out to sea. She had never been the last passenger—the only passenger—and she wondered whether her mother had recently stood here to cross The Pinch, and whether they would recognise each other when they met. As the boat juddered and struggled, Flora imagined that each clank was the chains snapping, setting the little car ferry free to follow the rushing tide. The waves would roar over the ramp until the car deck was awash and the water flowed through the gap in the window of Richard’s Morris Minor. She would climb the ferry’s steps to the viewing platform and lean over the railings as the boat listed and its lights were extinguished one by one until the last, beside the navigation station, stuttered and was swallowed by the sea. Black waves would lift the boat up and roll it with the swell, like mountains rising where there had been no mountains before. The air would escape from each of the cavities and pipes and human lungs, and bubble to the surface while the ferry upended, nose first into the water, and she and Richard’s little car and all the yellow-jacketed men would sink to the bottom.
It took two or three goes for Flora to start the car while the man waited impatiently on the ramp. He took a couple of steps towards her, but Flora swore, pulled the choke out, and with a jerk the car started and kept on going. The tollbooths on the road were unlit and the barriers were up; a free ride. The car’s headlights appeared to be weaker than when she had set off, and the rain drummed on the thin roof. The wipers were unable to cut through the blur fast enough, so Flora leaned forwards over the steering wheel to where the dim beams showed the road disappearing in black and white. Even with the heater going full blast, every few minutes she had to swipe at the windscreen with the side of her arm.