Swimming Lessons(71)

“It doesn’t matter,” Gil said. “It was that particular one I wanted.” He coughed, his jaw clenched against the pain.

“Shall I get the doctor?” Nan stood up and plumped his pillows.

“No more doctors,” Gil said.

“Did the book have something in it, Daddy?” Flora asked.

“Just another note. Too late now.” He coughed several times, his head bending with the effort.

Nan held a glass with a straw up to his lips for him to suck on.

“You don’t want to see this, you girls. An old, sick man.”

Nan looked accusingly at Flora as she held the water.

“Better to be remembered like your mother—still young, still beautiful.” His eyelids dropped slowly, and Flora wondered if he saw Ingrid wearing her wide-brimmed hat and pushing a garden fork into the sandy soil or standing in the sunlight on the veranda.

They were silent for a while, Gil’s mouth falling open, his bottom jaw slack. Flora thought he was sleeping until, still with his eyes closed, he said, “Ambiguous loss.”

“What?” Nan said.

He opened his eyes. “I went to the library and they looked it up for me on a computer.”

“What did they look up?” Flora said.

“It’s when you don’t know if someone is dead or not and you can’t mourn. No closure.” He paused, as if gathering strength to continue. “Apparently I once told your mother that it was better to live without knowing, because then you could always live with hope.”

“You told me that, too,” Flora said.

“Dad, it doesn’t matter,” Nan said. “You should sleep.” She tugged on the side of the bedcover, straightening a wrinkle which wasn’t there.

“I was wrong,” Gil said. “Reality is better than imagination. Your mother is dead. I know that now.”

“No,” Flora said. “You saw her.”

“An apparition.”

Nan crossed her legs, said nothing.

“I don’t believe you,” Flora said.

“I used to think I needed a body, some kind of proof; I didn’t. It’s all in here.” He lifted a hand halfway to his head and pointed. “It’s not possible to live in limbo. You need to accept it, Flora. Bury her, say good-bye. All of us need to say good-bye.”


Two swimming costumes and a bikini hung limp over the bath-curtain rail. They were still damp, and sand was clumped in the gussets where Flora hadn’t bothered to rinse them out. She opened the airing cupboard crammed with old sheets, towels, blankets, and stained and flattened pillows—coloured layers of cloth like the tinted sand in the tiny bottles sold by Hadleigh’s tourist shops. Somewhere in the mass of fabric would be more swimming costumes and trunks like the ones she had found for Richard—left behind by long-gone summer visitors and stuffed amongst the linen. Only the top third of each shelf was ever used—washed, ironed, folded, and returned by Nan. Flora wormed her arms into the dense bottom layers, her fingers searching for smooth, slippery material. When she was immersed up to the elbows she grabbed a piece of cloth from the rear of the cupboard and pulled it forwards. A corner of a towel appeared. She hauled it out and recognised the faded sandstone colour, the bald patches where the nap had worn away, and the hole on one edge where the towel had been jammed over the peg on the back of the bathroom door. Flora held it up to her face, closed her eyes and inhaled; it smelled grey, the odour of fabric that has lain too long without being washed. Still, the image of her mother came, forever turning away in the pink dress, the scent of coconut from the gorse, the colour of golden honey, a book in her hand.

Flora went into the kitchen, where Richard was washing up the breakfast plates. Nan, standing beside him, was scooping a pot of sour cream into a glass mixing bowl. A large salmon was flopped in an oven dish, and salad ingredients and a bag of new potatoes were scattered on the counters.

“Do you remember this?” Flora said, holding out the towel.

Nan looked around. “What do you mean, remember it?” She blinked. “Flora, please put some clothes on. It’s not right.” She dolloped another pot of sour cream on top of the first and added a handful of chopped parsley.

“Richard’s seen it all before, haven’t you, Richard?” Flora said.

He smirked over Nan’s shoulder.

“It was Mum’s towel,” Flora said to Nan.

Nan stared down at the bowl in the crook of her arm as if she couldn’t bear to see her sister’s body. “I don’t recall any of us having our own towels, although that would be preferable. It’s always a free-for-all in this house, as far as I can see.”

“No, I mean the day she disappeared.”

“Put some clothes on, please.”

Flora wrapped the towel around her, tucking it in under her armpits. “Well?” she said, and sat at the table.

Nan picked up a spoon and stirred the parsley into the white cream. “It might be; I don’t remember.”

Richard filled the kettle, lifted cups from the cupboard. “Tea or coffee?” he said.

“If she took this towel to the beach that last time”—Flora tucked it more tightly around her chest—“how did it get to be in the airing cupboard?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Nan snapped. “Where else would it be?”