Swimming to Ithaca (16 page)

‘About coming.’

‘It’s strange, that’s all. You know what I mean? Going with you.’

‘Why strange?’

‘Different.’

‘From what? From Steve?’

‘I don’t want to talk about him.’

‘And if I want to?’

She shrugs and looks out of the window. ‘He’s my business.’

‘And me? Am I your business as well?’

‘Not really business, is it?’ She smiles fleetingly. ‘Contingency.’

‘Like being hit by a bus?’

The smile flickers again. At him or with him? Her upper lip has a curve to it, a strange vulnerability, as though it is bending under pressure. It is almost painful to sit like this, opposite her. He wants to touch her, that’s the ridiculous thing, just touch her. He would be happy to kiss her as well of course, on the mouth, on the eyes, wherever her body is open to the world, wherever the devil can get in. If he kisses her on the mouth, he wonders, will he be able to feel the places she has nibbled, the small shreds of torn and clipped membrane on the inner surface of that lip? But just a touch of her hand would be enough.

The train, the bickering of the couple near by, time itself, go on.

From the railway station it is a short walk into town, down the main road that passes the public library, the cinema (closed), a video-rental shop, a pub and a DIY centre. There’s a scrawl of
paint on one wall.
NINJA
, it says. ‘Just like Brixton,’ Kale remarks. But along the riverfront it isn’t a bit like Brixton, and even Kale admits as much. ‘Pretty,’ she judges it. She doesn’t hit the Ts – pri’y, she says. ‘Reelly pri’y.’ And it is pretty enough, the houses made of old red brick and fronted with white weatherboard. Quaint, certainly. There are bay windows with bric-à-brac for sale, there is the lounge bar of the Ship, an ice-cream parlour called Swallows and Amazons, a small restaurant advertising fresh crab, a shop selling disposable cameras and souvenirs, a tourist information kiosk. Over the sea wall the tide is out, leaving a glistening stretch of mud where sailing boats lie despondently on their sides, like beached whales. Gulls dip and swoop over them, laughing and jeering as though they are responsible for this practical joke. In the stream beyond the flats, a gleaming cabin cruiser escapes towards the sea.

Kale laughs with delight. ‘It’s all right,’ she decides, as though there was the looming possibility that it might not be. They buy a pint of winkles at Shipton’s Shellfish and Kale remembers how you use a pin to uncurl the flesh out of the shell. She eats and laughs and squeezes his arm for a moment, then lifts herself up to kiss him on the cheek. There’s the faint scent of fish. ‘We should buy funny hats. And what about postcards?’ And then: ‘We should have brought Emms, shouldn’t we?’

‘Next time,’ Thomas agrees. ‘Next time.’

The plan is to have a look over the house after lunch. Arrangements are vague. Are they going to stay the night? Is that understood? ‘For the weekend’, that was what they discussed on the phone, so of course it means they’ll stay the night. Saturday night and Sunday morning. So what are the contents of that bag that she has slung over her shoulder, the same one she brings to college? A change of underwear? A washbag? A clean T-shirt? Impossible to tell. The inscrutable arrangements of women.

They have lunch in the lounge bar of the Ship – the Binnacle Bar, distinguished by a large, phallic binnacle that occupies pride of place beside the electronic pinball and the Exterminator console. The landlord greets Thomas by name and asks how it’s going, how his sister is, are they going to put the house on the market?, all that kind of thing. He eyes Kale curiously, trying to work out whether this is Thomas’ wife. But surely this one is too young. A niece? A girlfriend? ‘Just down for the day, are you, dear?’ he asks, trying to find some way to interrogate her. She smiles a flat smile that may be yes, may be no, probably is ‘Mind your own fucking business.’

They take their drinks over to a far corner. ‘I don’t want much,’ she says, glancing at the menu. ‘Perhaps the Dover sole.’ She looks at him thoughtfully. ‘It used to be easy when you were a kid, didn’t it? You know, going out and that. But it gets more difficult as you get older.’

‘I suppose it does. But it needn’t be difficult. Just be happy.’

‘Happy?’ She considers the idea for a bit. Thomas feels daunted by her silences. ‘Your mum?’ she asks. ‘Was she a happy person?’

‘Not really.’

‘I’m not surprised. Not many people are.’

‘I am. Sometimes.’ He hesitates, on the edge of confession. ‘Now,’ he admits. ‘I’m happy now. With you. I’m completely and pathetically happy. There, I’ve said it.’ It’s a late-twentieth-century version of a confession of love. Love is spelled L-U-R-V-E and only happens in pop songs.

Kale smiles. ‘That’s nice then.’

After the meal they go out of the other door, on to the High Street. Thomas points across the road to the row of houses on the far side, red brick and weatherboard, the doors picked out in blue and yellow. ‘There it is. The yellow door.’

Just as they are about to cross the street, someone calls out his
name. He stops and turns. It’s the blinking woman, Janet What’s-her-name, advancing on them down the street. ‘Thomas!’ she’s calling. ‘Thomas!’

‘They all seem to know you here,’ Kale remarks.

‘Hardly anyone knows me.’

Janet comes up to them with outstretched hands. For a moment it seems that an exchange of kisses is expected. ‘I haven’t seen you since the funeral. How have you been? Are you getting over it?’ Her blinking eyes pass quickly over Kale, down to her narrow feet, up to her face.

‘This isn’t …?’

‘Kale,’ Kale says, holding out a narrow hand. ‘Pleased to meet you.’

‘A friend,’ Thomas explains.

‘I knew it wasn’t your wife—’

‘Well, it wouldn’t be, would it? I mean, we’re not married any longer, are we? So she wouldn’t be my wife even if it was her, which it isn’t.’

Janet smiles. ‘No, of course not. Dee showed me photos.’

‘What of? The divorce?’

She blinks, as well she might. ‘The wedding. Gilda, wasn’t it?’

‘Was. Very much past tense.’

‘And your son? Philip, isn’t it?’

Is she doing it deliberately? Thomas agrees that Phil’s name is, indeed, Philip, and he’s fine, just fine. And, yes, they are planning to put the house on the market, once they’ve sorted things out. And Janet tells them both how much she misses Dee. She was such a good
friend
. They had such good
talks
together; they got on so
well
.

Is she, Thomas wonders, about to ask for something? It’s then that he decides to make an offer. Perhaps one could call it hush money. ‘Is there anything you would like, to remember her by?’

Janet blushes. ‘Oh.’ She blinks, and considers. Her eyes seem
to brim with tears. ‘Well, yes, maybe there is. There’s a shepherd and shepherdess. Meissen, she always said—’

‘Then you may have it.’

‘That’d be kind of you.’

‘It’ll save Paula and me arguing over it.’

‘How wonderful. Look, are you staying?’ She glances at Kale once again, as though assessing the relationship, trying to work out whether they fuck yet, or whether this is an affair at its very infancy, or worse, whether this young woman, a mere girl with a coarse London accent, is nothing more than a pick-up. ‘Why don’t you drop by? For a cup of tea or something? This afternoon? Later, if you like. A drink?’

He shrugs, not finding it in him to refuse.

‘About six? You know where I live, don’t you?’

He admits that he does. They watch her walk away. ‘How bloody awful,’ Thomas says.

‘Who is she?’

‘Some woman my mother befriended. Local potter or something.’

Hand temporarily in hand – her fingers are cold to the touch – they cross the road to advance on number 37. He turns the key in the lock and pushes the front door open, on to the silence and shadows of the hallway. ‘Here we are then.’

Inside, the air is still, almost as though the place is holding its breath and waiting. ‘Sort of spooky,’ Kale says. They step over a scattering of letters on the doormat. Bills, circulars, missives to the dead. Floorboards creak and flex under their feet. He opens the first door on to the gloom of the sitting room. Nothing has changed since he was last here. The armchairs are untouched, the Chesterfield sofa, the side tables, the odds and ends that cluttered up her life, all these things are unmoved. Only dust has settled. And memory. He draws the curtains to let daylight in. The room is made manifest by daylight.

‘Nice place,’ Kale says.

He can hear his mother’s voice: ‘nice’ is small and precise. It’s a good word for distinction and discrimination. It is not a synonym for pleasant or attractive or good. ‘It’s all right. But there’s a lot of maintenance to do. The roof, the guttering, the bloody weatherboards.’

‘Wish I could live in a place like this.’

‘It’d be a long drag into college.’

She looks at him. This is a moment of strange freedom, each assessing the other, neither knowing what the other is thinking, each trying to work it out. It occurs to him that this is the first time they have ever been truly alone together, unless you count his office in college. Every other encounter has been in a public place.

Kale takes her denim jacket off –
GLAMOUR
, it announces in glittering imitation diamonds across the shoulder panel – and hesitates a moment before tossing it on to one of the armchairs. Her shoulders seem fragile; on her right arm, just visible below the sleeve of her T-shirt, there is a smoky blue tattoo of a butterfly. ‘That’s her, isn’t it?’ she says, taking the wedding photo from the mantelpiece. ‘I recognize her from that slide you showed us. So this is your dad.’

It is, indeed, Thomas’ father. Was.
Was
Thomas’ father: Flight Lieutenant Edward Denham, DFC, AFC, as he was then, young, hopeful, uncertain of what he should do after the end of the war, finding nothing else but to continue flying. He has stepped down a rank in the post-war reduction in forces, but at least it’s a job.

‘What happened to him? You never talk about him. Always your mother.’

‘He died in a plane crash, shortly after his retirement. A lifetime flying and he gets killed in a private aircraft.’

‘How terrible.’

‘The contingent event again, like being hit by a bus. As though someone suddenly tore up the script and cancelled the performance.’

She looks at the photograph thoughtfully. ‘I could have fancied him.’

‘What about his son?’

There is a smile somewhere behind the curve of her mouth; but she doesn’t say anything, doesn’t rise to the bait, just puts the picture back where it belongs and picks up something else, the shepherd and shepherdess that his mother always thought might be Meissen, original Meissen, whatever that means. She turns the piece over in her hands. The shepherdess’ expression makes it clear what she is after: she may be laughing and pulling away from the shepherd, but it is plain enough that she’s expecting him to follow. ‘This what you offered to that woman?’

‘That’s it.’

‘Pretty.’ Carefully she replaces the figurine where she found it. ‘You know, there’s something weird about all this? As though it’s still her house? And she’s just gone out for a while?’

‘It’s not hers any longer, it’s mine. Ours. Paula’s and mine.’

‘But that’s not what it feels. She’s all around, isn’t she? Don’t you feel that? You know, once when I was a kid I went into a neighbour’s house when they’d all gone out. Me and my boyfriend. I mean, we were fifteen or something, not a big deal. We got in round the back and through the kitchen door. This feels a bit like that. Somehow you could sense that they were still there, even though we’d seen them leave.’

‘What happened?’

‘Nothing really. It was doing it rather than anything else. The excitement. We looked round a bit, and then we were, you know, fooling around—’

‘Fooling around?’

She makes a face, lips pinched. ‘You know what I mean. And
we heard their car stopping out the front so we had to get out the back door quick. It was a laugh. No harm done.’

Does this visit feel like that to her? he wonders – are they like children on a dare, evading the adults, fooling around? She is looking at the portrait of his mother hanging on the wall above the fireplace. ‘What was she like, your mum? Nice old lady? Kind to kittens?’

‘She didn’t like animals, and she was never old. And she could be quite cutting when she wanted.’

‘You’re a bit obsessed, aren’t you?’

‘I don’t think so. Just honest. When you lose your mother …’ He is at a loss for words. Unusual for him who lives by words, lives by explanation and exposition, by lies. ‘It does something,’ he says finally. ‘Something inside breaks.’

‘Your heart?’

‘Not that. Some much more fundamental part of the machinery.’

She crosses the room and peers out of the window on to the street, as though looking to see if the owners are coming back unexpectedly. When she turns and leans against the windowsill all he can see is her silhouette against the daylight, the shape of her. ‘What would she have thought of me, then?’

Now there’s a question. He has practised it over and over: What do you think of her, Mother? he asks. She says ‘nice’ and ‘toilet’ and ‘Gran’ and all those words that you despised. She’s got an illegitimate child, which isn’t a term we use any more but one that you wouldn’t give up, would you? That fact alone would condemn her in your eyes. And yet … she’s sharp, isn’t she? And disturbingly honest. In yer face; up front; characteristics that you used to claim for your Yorkshire background. No flannel. What do you think?

‘She’d have thought me a common little tart, wouldn’t she?’ Kale says.

He can’t really see her expression against the light. Is there some quality of anxiety that he hasn’t seen before? Does she look vulnerable for the first time? ‘Don’t be bloody silly. You mustn’t think anything like that.’

‘But would she have thought it?’

‘She’d have found you … interesting. She’d have liked your style, your guts.’

‘And how do you feel about me, Professor Denham?’