White Bodies(4)

2


On Wednesday, my sister phones and invites me to supper. I’m surprised because I thought she might be angry about the bathroom bin incident; but she doesn’t mention it, and on my return to Curzon Street, I discover that Felix has made venison stew with juniper berries and red wine, and also a lemon tart.

“You’re a genius!” I say, and he rewards me with a sexy Get me! grin.

“Felix did the pastry himself,” Tilda says. “He has pastry-making fingers, long and cold.”

He flutters his fingers while we assure him that we’ve never attempted pastry in our lives, that we always buy ready-made. I notice that Felix has a knack for cleaning up the kitchen as he works, so that when I go to help out after the meal, there’s nothing to do. The surfaces are clearer and cleaner than I’ve ever seen them—all the pots and pans dealt with and back in the cupboards. “How do you do that?” I ask. “It’s like magic.”

“It comes naturally. . . . Now Callie, forget about cleaning, and tell Tilda that it would be a romantic idea to take a boat down the Thames on Sunday. Up towards Windsor and Bray, where the swans are.”

“What sort of boat?”

“Something simple and wooden. Kinda English.”

“It’s okay,” says Tilda. “I’m sold.”

She’s looking at him upwards through her hair, a soft dewy gaze, and I feel a stab of pain, realizing that she’s totally in love with him. She notices me watching her and says, “You should come too, Callie. Won’t it be lovely?” This sort of sentimentality is entirely unlike her, and I can’t help making fun of her as I reply, “Oh yes, it will be very lovely . . . very lovely lovely.”

? ? ?

Felix hires a sporty red Peugeot, and on Sunday we pack a picnic to take to Berkshire. It’s not far, an hour’s drive, and when we arrive we’re in another world—the river so wide and brooding, the tangled woodland coming alive with buds and the first tiny leaves of spring. The boat is just as Felix wanted, a little wooden tub, chipped red paint on the outside, all open, with a motor on the back. “It’s perfect,” I say, admiring the way it’s bobbing on its rope, checking out the three benches, the emergency oars. We clamber in and chug along the river, turning our faces to the sun, and it’s glorious to feel the fragile warmth. One minute a golden caress, then gone again. I lean over the side, trailing my fingers in the black water, and shiver, “God that’s cold!”

We pass by open fields and then Windsor Castle, by whitewashed suburban mansions with lawns that run down to the water, and I spot a heron on the far bank.

Felix is steering from the back, and he says, “Let’s swim.” We’re on a wide part of the river now, dense woodland on one side, a flat, empty field on the other. I look around, for people, but there’s no one.

“It’s too cold!” I protest. “And not safe. Don’t people drown in the Thames?”

But Felix and Tilda aren’t listening. Instead Felix ties the boat to an overhanging branch, and the two of them are ripping off their clothes, frantically, like they’re in a race. Then they’re standing up, totally naked, the boat rocking madly as they position themselves to jump out. Two spindly white bodies, Tilda gripping Felix’s arm and screeching, “I’m bloody freezing already! I can’t do it!”

“Oh yes you can!”

In a sweeping move, he scoops up my sister, holding her across his chest in his arms, which I now notice are muscular and strong. She yells “No! No!” and scissor kicks as he flings her overboard, into the water, then leaps in himself. For the briefest, heart-stopping moment, they both vanish into the black; then they are swimming and splashing about, Tilda screaming, and I can’t tell whether she’s exhilarated or furious. But she calls out, “Come on in, Callie! It’s amazing.”

“You know you want to!” Felix reaches up, pulls the side of the boat down into the water, as though he’s a monster coming to get me, grabbing at my ankle.

“I won’t!”

My mind is racing, though, trying to figure out what to do. I don’t want to strip off my clothes in front of them—I’m embarrassed about my roundish pinkish body, and afraid that they’ll laugh at me. At the same time, I’m thinking how wonderful it would be to sink to the bottom of the river, swallowed up by the icy water. Also, I’m intoxicated by the compliment of being included, and, for some reason that I don’t quite understand, I want to impress Felix. So I sit on one of the benches and take off my parka coat and my sweatshirt and jeans and socks. Then I jump in wearing a T-shirt, bra and knickers, sinking down, just as I had wanted, shocked, numb and frozen, unable to think because my head is pounding. My feet touch the bottom, a thick slime with hard edges jutting out. I flinch, and float to the top, where I find that Felix is standing next to me, water up to his chest, and he leans into me, his hands gripping my waist. “I have you in my power,” he says, raising me out of the water, while I pretend to struggle, my hands on his shoulders. Then he throws me backwards; in again, and under, right down to the bottom. When I emerge, I find myself screaming and laughing just as Tilda had done. I want to say, “Do it again! Do it again!” like a child would.

But Felix has turned to Tilda, and I see that he can lift her thin body much higher than mine, and can throw her into the water much harder. Then, when her head appears, it takes only a swift push with one hand to force her back down, so cleanly that she has no chance to protest, and there is no sign of her, no arms flailing, no disturbance in the water, and I worry that he’s holding her down at the bottom far too long, forcing her into the hazardous mud. “Stop it! It’s too much,” I yell.