Swimming Lessons(70)

I didn’t look at the girl as she spoke. I watched you on your black swivel chair, legs crossed in the grey slacks I’d ironed, wearing the socks I’d washed and hung as a pair on the line outside the kitchen. Even the interviewer was laughing, unable to get his questions out coherently. I remembered our first summer, lying in the long grass outside the Swimming Pavilion, your head on my lap as I read to you, holding the book high to block out the glare of the sun.

“Did she take him up on his offer?” I said. “Your friend?”

“I can’t blame her,” the production assistant said. “He’s pretty old, but God, I would. Wouldn’t you?”


I waited until we’d driven off the ferry, paid the toll, and were on the dark straight road heading home.

“I met a girl tonight,” I said, “who told me you’d fucked her friend.” I said “friend” in the way that people write to agony aunts about their friends who have slept with their boyfriend’s brother and want some advice.

“What?” You gave a short laugh, like a yap.

“So you didn’t?”

“What?” you said again.

“Fuck her?”

“Fuck a friend of a friend of a friend?” You said it like it was a joke.

I didn’t answer, and when the silence became uncomfortable, you said, “Come on, Ingrid. It’s a silly girl gossiping. She probably knew who you were and was hoping for a reaction.”

“So you’re denying that you fucked her?” I said.

“I thought it was her friend I was supposed to have fucked,” you said. “And when exactly was this meant to have happened? I have been very busy, you might have noticed, earning us money.”

“Pull over.”

“We’re nearly home. Let’s talk about this later.”

“Pull over,” I repeated sharply.

You drew up on the sandy edge of the road. A couple of cars passed us, their headlights moving over our bodies like lighthouse beams sliding across rocks. “I’m not going to do this all again,” I said.

“Do what?” You took your hands from the steering wheel and clasped them together in your lap.

“Be made a fool of!” I shouted. “Be the last to know!”

“You’re no fool, Ingrid.” You wouldn’t look at me.

“And yet you treat me like one,” I spat out.

“This is about the book, isn’t it? You think I went too far.” You turned towards me and put a hand on my arm. You didn’t blink. “You don’t need to worry that Nan or Flora will read it. We won’t keep a copy in the house.”

“For God’s sake, not everything is about your work, Gil.” I pulled my arm out from under your hand.

“There’s no need for you to be concerned. You’re the mother of my children—it’ll always be you and the girls I come home to. I’d never desert any of you.”

“So you did take some stupid book groupie to your hotel and fuck her!” My fingers found my seat-belt button and the strap flew loose with force.

“It didn’t mean anything, Ingrid. It just happened.”

Without thinking I reached out across the gap between us and struck your face with the flat of my hand. It wasn’t hard, but you flinched and knocked the side of your head against the driver’s window. You said nothing, still looking ahead, as if punishment was something you wanted, something you deserved.

“It means something to me!” I said, pushing your head with both hands and slamming it into the window. I grabbed at the handle beside me, yanked the door open, and stumbled out of the car.

“Ingrid!” I heard you call. “Ingrid, I’m sorry!”

But without looking back, I ran into a gap in the gorse by the side of the road, slipping and tripping across roots and through sharp grass, sobbing as I ran. I kept running until my heart was pumping and my breath painful, and I had to slow to a trot. After a few minutes of walking, I recognised the path and found my way over the dunes to the sea. Behind a bank of clouds, the moon glowed and sprinkled its light across the moving water. The wind whipped my hair around my head. I considered wading in, thought about what would happen and whether I’d be missed, and although I believed I knew the answer, I took off my shoes, tied the laces together, slung them around my neck, and walked towards home on the firm sand that the retreating sea left behind. The car was on the drive when I got back, but you must have been in your writing room because you weren’t in the house. I paid the babysitter, sent her home, and went to bed.

In the morning, I telephoned Louise and she arranged everything for me. Two days later I went to a clinic and aborted our fifth child.


Ingrid


[Placed in Brilliant Creatures, by Clive James, 1983.]





Chapter 39



Gil went to bed when they returned from the beach. Nan gave him some water and one of the tablets he kept beside his bed. Flora sat next to him on her mother’s side, and Nan, still in her pencil skirt and top, in the chair.

“I’m sorry, Dad,” Nan said, “but Viv doesn’t have that book, the one you were holding when you fell. She asked what it was called, though, because she might be able to get you a copy, or she thought there could be another in the shop. Sometimes Viv has duplicates.”