Swimming Lessons(76)

When I’d dressed, we walked up the chine rather than the zigzag path, Flora running ahead, still in her swimming costume, plucking the flower heads out of the marsh thistles and leaving a trail of purple petals behind her.

“Are you going to have any more children?” he said.

I laughed. “I thought that was one of those questions you weren’t meant to ask, like how much are you paid or whether you’re happily married.”

“Are you?” he said.

We were both silent a fraction too long. And then I said, “Gil always wanted six children.”

“And you ended up with two.”

I wanted to tell him about George and the others, but I didn’t trust myself. Then Flora came running down to us.

“Can I have some chips? The van’s at the top of the lane. Come on!” It was Gabriel’s hand she grabbed, not mine, and he let her tug him around the corner.

He bought three bags of chips, drawing the money out of the back pocket of his jeans—a screwed-up five-pound note. I wondered if it was his last. I bought two more packets for you and Nan, and when we got home I put them in a low oven to keep warm. Despite the swimming and the afternoon, or perhaps because of it, it still didn’t feel right to invite Gabriel indoors, so the three of us sat around the table on the veranda and ate chips straight from the newspaper, and I didn’t care that our appetites would be spoilt for dinner, or, indeed, that I hadn’t finished the cooking. Your book was on the table where we’d left it.

Gabriel picked up his guitar again when he’d finished eating. He wiped his fingers on his jeans and played the song he’d been playing earlier, singing about the moon and the rain and lovers, teaching Flora the lyrics. I watched his fingers pluck the strings and his eyes close as he sang. Strange to think this was only ten months ago; it feels like years.

It was Flora who saw you first. She leapt from her chair and ran to you, shouting, “Daddy! Daddy!” I don’t know how long you’d been standing on the drive, listening.

Gabriel stopped playing, and I stood up guiltily, although there was no reason.

“What happened to the car?” I said, leaning over the veranda railing.

Flora was jumping, pulling on your shirtsleeve. You’d taken off your jacket and had slung it over your shoulder. “Daddy, I’ve got chips. Look, chips!” Flora took her last one out of the soggy paper and held it up to you. You bent and opened your mouth, Flora put the chip inside, and you pretended to eat her fingers.

“I need some fish fingers to go with my chip,” you said, and Flora shrieked with pleasure. And to me, “The bloody thing broke down. Luckily, Martin was passing and gave me a lift.” You started on Flora’s other hand.

“We’ve got a visitor,” I said. Gabriel stood and moved towards the top of the steps, looking at you crouched on the path. He held his guitar by its neck. Slowly you took Flora’s thumb out of your mouth and stood up.

“Hello,” Gabriel said, and your smile faded. Flora stopped laughing and turned to stare at our visitor.

“This is Gabriel,” I said. Convention, I suppose, made me introduce him.

“I know who he is; I just don’t know why he’s here,” you said. Flora slipped her hand into yours.

Gabriel took a step. He raised his hands to chest height, the guitar with them, a gesture of surrender, as if you were pointing a gun at him.

“Dad,” Gabriel said.

“Get out,” you said, and Flora buried her face in the cloth of your shirt.

The rest, of course, you know; you were there.


I woke at a quarter past three alone in the bed; in my nostrils, the acrid smell of burning. I traced it to the kitchen: in the oven, the packets of chips which I had bought for you and Nan were still waiting to be unwrapped, the newsprint singed and smoking. I took them to the bin outside and sat on the veranda, tucking my feet beneath the blanket. The light in your room was out. I’d asked you to tell me Gabriel’s birthday. You’d said you didn’t know it, that you weren’t even sure he was yours, but I remembered his smile and knew where I’d seen it before. It was your smile; Flora’s too. Later I learned from Jonathan that Gabriel had been born during the first summer we spent together and that his mother wrote to you, but you destroyed the letter (remember?) and denied the boy was yours because the woman refused to marry you. Would you have done the same to me and Nan if I’d said no? It should be funny how you reverse convention, Gil, but it isn’t. Gabriel is only nine and a half months older than our first child.

But that evening, I had worse things to discover than your sixth child (an illegitimate son you wouldn’t acknowledge). A Man of Pleasure lay on the table, left behind by Gabriel, and when I saw it, I wondered if he’d buy another copy so he could finish reading.

I unfolded his turned-down corner and opened the book at the very beginning—the endpapers, the flyleaf, the title page, the copyright information, and opposite it, the dedication you’d written. The one that had been printed in all the books on all the shelves in all the bookshops across the country: For Louise.


Ingrid


[Placed in Good-bye, Mr. Chips, by James Hilton, 1934.]





Chapter 41



Flora sat once more by her father’s bed. His breathing had changed to a rumble like an approaching Underground train. She stared at his collapsed face, trying to reimagine Gil into a womanizer, someone who had slept with “whoever he could get his hands on.” A man who took women to his writing room while his wife and children slept a few yards away. The image didn’t come. The knowledge, if that’s what it was, also changed the way she thought about Ingrid—made her more concrete, a real person with thoughts and feelings, decisions to make and an understanding of their consequences. Flora would have liked to ask her parents why the words “to father” have such a different meaning from the words “to mother.”