Swimming Lessons(83)

“It is,” Flora said. “I can almost smell it. And I can hear music.” She sat still, listening. On the wind there was the beat of a distant song.

“I can hear it, too,” Gabriel said.

It was then that Flora turned her head to glance up the steep bank beside the chine, where, if you knew what to look for, the outline of her mother’s zigzag path remained. The house was too near the lane to be glimpsed from sea level, and the writing room was out of sight, too. Only the nettles at the top were visible, and beyond them, in the grey sky, plumes of a darker grey billowing upwards. Smoke.





Chapter 44


THE NUDIST BEACH, 2ND JULY 1992, 2:17 PM


Gil,

I’m sitting on the beach. I’ve been delaying writing my final letter, and thinking about all the others already written and hidden in your books.

Remember your first class, with the jam jar and the daffodil? You asked for our darkest, most private truths. And so here at last, in all these words, have been mine.

When you find this letter, when you find the rest of them, don’t forget that you must destroy them all, tear them up, throw them away, burn them; don’t leave them for the girls to read.

I know you’re on your way home; Jonathan rang to tell me. I’m sorry, but this time I won’t be there.

This morning Nan promised to make sure her sister got on the bus and went to school. Flora has her packed lunch (two slices of bread buttered up to the edges and a piece of Red Leicester, but the cheese mustn’t be inside the bread or she won’t eat it). You need to keep an eye on her; she’s spirited and that’s a good thing. I think she’ll be OK—Flora has you, and you have her. Nan, too, will be fine, I’m sure. Just don’t let her become the carer, the do-er, the little mother, a role I know she could slip into so easily. Let her go off and be free.

Weed the garden for me now and again, mow the lawn. And don’t forget your other children, Gabriel and George, and the two others, unnamed and unknown. Six. You were right, in a way.

So, one last swim out, level with the buoy, or maybe a little farther.


I.


[Placed in Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead, by Barbara Comyns, 1954.]





Chapter 45



Flora remembered being ahead of Gabriel running up the chine, but then she was behind him, watching his arms pump as he sprinted into the lane. When she ran onto the drive, the music was so loud it was distorted, unrecognizable, but even through that there was the sound of water splattering on tarmac and her first thought was that everything was all right because it was raining again. But it was the noise of flames eating wood.

Gabriel was already at the door of the Swimming Pavilion. The window of the front bedroom glowed orange and a lick of flame crept out from under the roof.

Flora stood on the bottom step. “Daddy!” she shouted, and “Jonathan!” The glasses and the cups were still on the table with the whiskey bottle, empty now. One of the chairs had tipped against the railing and there were tiny drifts of sand under the table, and she knew Nan would want her to sweep them up. With a high-pitched crack, the glass in the front door crazed and fell out. Gabriel ducked as flames belched through the hole. Flora heard the music even louder: Townes Van Zandt singing about rain and roses, and then it stopped. “Daddy!” she screamed.

“Get back! Get back!” Gabriel ran off the veranda in a crouch. “Call the fire brigade,” he shouted. Black smoke billowed from the door and through the tin panels on the roof where they were joined together, high into the air, blowing over Spanish Green, away from the sea. The windows in the sitting room shimmered. Flora patted her shorts pockets, searching for her phone, but only finding the soldier and the unlit joint.

“I haven’t got my phone,” she shouted as she followed Gabriel, who was running around the side of the house. The bedroom windows popped and shattered when he passed them, as though a sniper were following him and firing.

“Get mine!” he yelled. “In the car! It’s in the car.” He put his arm up over his face and went closer to Flora’s bedroom window. She ran to the car, pulled on the door. Locked. She stared at the house. The flames roared and crackled, pouring out of the burst windows like liquid, as if gravity or the whole world had turned upside down. Inside the house she heard an explosion and yellow fire surged up through the apex of the roof. Flora took two steps away from the heat, and then Gabriel came running back.

“The keys, Gabriel,” she shouted. “Where are the keys?”

“Shit.” He pulled them out of his pocket, aimed the fob at the car and pressed, pressed again until the car beeped.

And then Jonathan was there with Louise.

“Oh, thank God,” Flora said. “You’re safe.” She clung to him. “You’re all safe. I thought Daddy was in the house.” She almost laughed.

“Fuck!” Jonathan shouted, shoving Flora towards Louise and running forwards, tripping, righting himself. “Fuck!” The front of the house was a leaping, curling rush of fire, each strut and beam in the veranda backlit by dancing, crackling orange.

“Where’s Daddy?” Flora said. “You must have Daddy with you.” Louise put her phone back in her pocket. Flora grabbed her jacket. Yelled in her face, “Where’s Daddy?”

“I’ve called the fire brigade,” Louise said. “They won’t be long. I promise you, Flora, they won’t be long.” She held Flora up under her arms. “We were in the pub,” Louise said. “Just for a quick sandwich. Ten minutes. Twenty at the most.”