Swimming Lessons(69)

“Because I say so.” My voice was raised.

Our youngest daughter bumped her hip against the glass of Rio Carnival, girls with coconut-shell bras cavorting alongside the sliding plates of two-pence pieces. A cascade of coins dropped into the crevice at the side and disappeared.

“Bugger,” Flora said.

I could see the woman behind the change counter watching us, eyes squinting. “Now, Flora.”

“What if I don’t want to?”

“I don’t care what you want. We’re going.”

Then Nan was there. “Mum,” she complained. “I’m hungry.”

“OK, Nan,” I said, surprising myself at the volume, and she backed away from me.

I grabbed Flora’s wrist and yanked her. She became limp and silent under my hand, and I dragged her along, negotiating the blaring machines.

“Mum! Let her go.” Nan was crying, tugging on my arm. The lonely men with their plastic pots of 50p’s and the women with their blonde hair and cigarettes stared. Bad mother, they were thinking. Bad mother. Nan, pleading with me to let her sister go, was thinking, Bad mother.

When we got outside, Flora ran to the steps down to the beach and huddled against the promenade wall as if I’d beaten her. It took Nan half an hour to talk her round so we could catch the bus home, without doing any more shopping or having fish and chips. The girls sat together and I sat alone near the front. And it was while I pressed my forehead up against the bus window, and with the warm smell of dusty upholstery in my nose, that I wondered if my children might be better off without me.


In September 1990 you delivered A Man of Pleasure to your editor and the advance was larger than we could ever have imagined. Previously he’d taken a month to return your phone calls, but now you were in demand for London lunches, deals, and meetings. You phoned to speak to the girls every night you were gone, but I was left explaining to Flora why her father wasn’t here to put her to bed, and to Nan why she no longer had to worry about switching off the lights so I wouldn’t cry when the electricity bill arrived. It took me weeks to get used to the idea that I didn’t need to tally the prices in my head as I walked around the supermarket and that I could take a taxi home from Hadleigh rather than the bus.

You gave me the manuscript of A Man of Pleasure only after I’d repeatedly asked for it. You handed it over in a brown envelope and warned me to read it when the children were in bed and to hide it afterwards. And when your novel was printed, you wouldn’t allow a copy of the book in the house. I wasn’t shocked or disgusted at the story; I knew it already from when I’d whispered the whole book to you in bed at night. But the final draft you gave me to read that autumn was missing one crucial element, wasn’t it, Gil? The one line that was more terrible than all the lurid scenes of debauchery I’d invented and you’d copied down in such arousing detail.

The book was as controversial as your publisher and agent had hoped, and the reviewers who looked beyond the subject matter said your third novel was “lean and understated,” “measured and poetic,” “from a writer at the top of his form.” Jonathan didn’t see it like that, of course, especially since you hadn’t even bothered to change his name. I agreed with all the things he shouted when he came that final time, and I’d have liked to tell him the truth of who the real author was but I was too afraid of what he’d think of me, too afraid I’d never see him again. Neither of us ever told anyone whose head the real story of A Man of Pleasure had come from.

You were keen to point out to interviewers that it was your fourth book, and I’ve always thought how I’d like to have been that brave. What did I reply when a hairdresser or a new neighbour asked how many children I had? I curled my fingers into fists, pushed my nails into the palm of my hands, and answered, “Two.” I always answered “Two,” and hated myself for it.

You were delighted with the book’s success, and the money rolled in. You gave interviews on radio and television where you were jokingly coy about your private life. You were handsome and charming. Isn’t it ironic that the publicity focused so much on the book’s author? No one, not even you, was interested in its readers.

I was usually too busy with the girls to go with you to many of your literary events. “You won’t like them,” you told me. “They’re full of boring, bookish people standing around talking about themselves for too long.” But I went up for one of your television appearances: ten minutes in an armchair on an arts chat show with a tumbler of whiskey in front of you.

In the television studio I stood in the margins, amongst the cables and the cameras, to watch you in the spotlight. You mesmerised us—studio crew, audience, interviewer (and me); we were alternately laughing and hushed, listening to everything you had to say. I was so proud. They loved you, your book, your stories, and your looks. I loved you, too.

I loved you and nodded when the production assistant, standing beside me, whispered, “Isn’t he great?” And I smiled when she said, “He’s a bit of a rogue, though.” I still loved you when she continued, “Apparently he’s got a wife and children in the country. Keeps them there out of harm’s way, I suppose.” I said nothing. “He took my friend out for drinks a few weeks ago,” the girl whispered. “And then he asked her to stay the night in his hotel room. ‘Aren’t you married?’ she said to him, and he said, ‘What the eye doesn’t see and the mind doesn’t know doesn’t exist.’”