This Time Next Year(81)
‘Oh shut up.’
‘The heath has inspired many poets: Keats, Wordsworth, Coleridge, now Cooper,’ Quinn said in a lofty, English-teacher voice.
‘I’m certainly not a poet,’ Minnie said with a sniff, biting into her bacon bap. She knew he was only joking but, when Quinn said things like that, it made her acutely aware that he had gone to university and she had not.
‘“My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains my sense”,’ he said.
Minnie turned to look at him with startled eyes. She stopped chewing mid-mouthful.
‘Keats. “Ode to a Nightingale”. Written here, I think. I can’t remember any more of it.’ He blushed, perhaps realising she hadn’t registered he was quoting from a poem. ‘He died at twenty-five, what a waste.’
‘Is this how you usually try to impress girls, quoting poetry and Wikipedia at them?’ Minnie asked, turning her focus back to her coffee.
‘No,’ Quinn leant back in the grass, resting his weight on his elbows. ‘Why, are you impressed?’
‘I’m not supposed to be being impressed, this is just a friendly post-swim blap chap – bap chat.’ Minnie stumbled over the words. ‘That’s hard to say – Post. Swim. Bap. Chat.’
Quinn turned on his side, resting his head on one hand as he looked up at her. ‘You think that’s my modus operandi, do you? Dropping in poetry where I can?’
‘You just dropped in Latin. What do you want from me, Quinn, a B plus?’
Quinn lay back in the grass and laughed, a deep chesty laugh.
They talked for over an hour – about everything and nothing. Minnie felt that warm hum of contentment as she sparked into life. She felt relaxed and fun, interesting and interested – it was the version of herself she most enjoyed being. They strolled the long way back around the heath down to the Tube.
‘Thanks for the post-swim bap chat,’ he said, hands in his pockets as they stood outside the station.
‘No problem,’ she nodded, combing a hand through her tangle of curls.
‘I guess I might see you next time,’ he said. The train roared into the station. ‘I’m going to get this one south.’
‘I’m going north,’ she said, indicating the other platform with her thumb. The train doors opened and Quinn got on. He turned around to look at her as the doors slid shut and he held his hand up, in a motionless wave. Their eyes connected and he gave her a little smile. She stayed on the platform watching his train pull away, their eyes locked on to each other until the tunnel pulled him out of view.
8 August 2020
‘So you just talk?’ Leila asked her.
‘Yes, we just swim, walk, talk and eat bacon sandwiches,’ said Minnie.
‘And nothing in between? No texts, no emails, not even an emoji?’ Leila looked confused.
‘No, no emojis. What emoji would I send? Swimming man, bacon and a wavy hand?’
‘Oh, there’s this cute little baker emoji, I always think of you when I see it.’
Minnie and Leila were sitting in the audience of a fashion show Leila had helped produce. Minnie was there as her ‘plus one’. They sat in prime position on the front row watching outlandish outfits parade past. There were models dressed in giraffe-print hot pants, wearing huge elongated hats with giraffe’s heads on the top. The fashion show was taking place in a converted church near Aldgate. The pews had been turned inwards towards the raised catwalk and the church ceiling was alive with light projections pulsing in time to the DJ’s music. The whole event had a very cool east London vibe.
‘Are these all animal-themed outfits?’ Minnie asked. ‘I’m not sure I could pull off a giraffe-head hat.’
‘It’s sustainable, animal-friendly fashion – one designer’s been a bit literal,’ Leila explained.
Leila was dressed in her usual demure style – a 1950s-style cocktail dress in silky silver fabric, with a superhero-style cape made of what looked like pink candyfloss. On her head she wore a small top hat with a placard attached to it, which read, ‘It’s a hat, deal with it.’ Minnie felt conspicuous wearing black jeans and a simple blue cotton blouse.
‘Anyway, tell me more about these swim dates. Are they as fuelled with sexual energy as the banana role-play situation?’ Leila said, turning back to her friend.
‘They aren’t dates, that’s the whole point; we’re just friends,’ Minnie explained. ‘And no, nothing as weird as the banana scenario.’
After that first Sunday on Hampstead Heath, a new routine had evolved between Minnie and Quinn. Every Sunday they would meet at the ponds at seven thirty. They didn’t arrange it, they just both started going when they knew the other would be there. They swam for half an hour, sometimes longer, they got breakfast and coffee at the van, they walked, talked, and then circled back to the train and said goodbye.
Minnie didn’t want to question what they were doing. She never wanted to leave when they reached the station, but she couldn’t bring herself to ask him to go on somewhere with her. Outdoor swimming was a hobby they both shared; having a coffee afterwards was casual, friendly. Anything more and it might verge into ‘date’ territory. If he suggested it, fine, but he never did.
She looked forward to Sunday mornings every minute of the week. She dreaded Sunday afternoons when it would be a whole week until she could see him again. She turned down invitations from other people to do anything on a Sunday morning: swimming was an immovable fixture in her calendar, just as it had been when she was a child.