The Swimming Pool Season (18 page)

In her mind, as she switches off her heavy old radio and puts her coat on, Bernice rearranges Dr. O.'s bedroom as a sickroom, making space on the bedside table, putting weights on the scattered papers, drawing the dusty curtains, warming the bed with a bottle, bringing disinfectant and water, a thermometer and oranges. Then she sits – not on the bed as Miriam sits in Leni's room – but in an armchair, near enough to the patient for him to reach out and touch her if he wants to, and reads to him quietly till he sleeps.

Dr. O. also switches off his radio. As Bernice starts to walk alone to her madrigals, he sits with a sigh of trepidation on the bed so recently prepared in Bernice's mind for his illness and opens The Book. He stares dumbly at the pictures. The men and women depicted are young and muscular and serene. His hands are trembling. He turns again to the front, where there are no pictures and reads, deliberately at random: “Orgasm is the most religious moment of our lives, of which all other mystical kicks are a mere translation. Men are apt to growl like bears, or utter aggressive monosyllables like ‘In, In, In!' The wife of the Leopard in the novel used to yell out ‘Gesumaria!'” So already the learning has begun: Dr. O. understands from the very first lines he reads that he and Bernice have failed each other in bed by their silences. Why couldn't she have taught him to whinny or trumpet or snort? What prevented her alabaster throat from choking out a saint's name? He makes himself more comfortable on the bed, removing his shoes and propping his heavy innocent's head with cushions. He tries – and fails – to quell the anxious beating of his heart.

In vaulted St. Mary's, a single tear rolls down the cheek of Bernice who sits with her hands and heart folded on the music. The little group of singers – so serious the faces, straining for their complex counterpoints – moves her as much, if not more than the ancient lovesick songs given this Church-dignity. She would like to take the madrigal singers home to Cattle Street, make them mugs of cocoa, tell them how greatly she admires their singing and ask them to sign their names in her favourite books of love poetry. She would make them as comfy as she could on her floor and in the morning they could sing, just for her:

  ‘Love in my bosom like a bee

  Doth suck his sweet:

  Now with his wings he plays with me,

  Now with his feet . . .'

She invents humble ordinary names for them: Sidney, Mary, Alan, Roger, Kathleen. And she presses her tummy with her little quiet hands. If a child is growing inside her, let it grow up to be a singer of madrigals.

She looks about her at the rest of the audience. The middle-aged couple on her left sit arm in arm, their heads held high at identical angles. In front of her two students with thick tangled hair lean gently towards each other. On her right is an empty seat. She wonders tenderly whether Dr. O. is eating his supper in bed.

He has in fact, reached a section of the manual called
Main Courses
and reads distractedly: “If you haven't at least kissed her mouth, shoulders, neck, breasts, armpits, fingers, palms, toes, soles, navel, genitals and earlobes, you haven't really kissed her,” sighs and puts the book down. He feels exactly like a schoolboy, horny, excited, full of longing, knowing nothing. How much learning stands between him and the taking of Miriam in his bed? Will he practise his newly learnt techniques on the accommodating body of Bernice? He doesn't think he can make love to Bernice any more; Miriam s large bones and radiant hair have eclipsed her swoony whiteness, her little-girl nails, her dimpled knees. These things repel him and invite him to set aside as a foolish mistake his years of loving her.

So in the dark, she leaves St. Mary's and walks home by herself. So in the dark, Dr. O. stares at the yellowy moon, envying Larry Kendal his summers and winters of Miriam's palms and navel and earlobes.
You haven't really kissed her. Now with his wings he plays with me
. Each in a separate language, Dr. O. and Bernice Atwood examine the past and toy with the uncertain time ahead.

Thomas leaves for London, promising to stay in touch. With his departure, Miriam seeks the shelter of her old room and makes up the narrow bed where once she lay awake with the house wrapped in the fortunate silence of the winter fog and Dilys Weston's vacant future whispered to her from the Zedbed.

Leni, stern in her plaster cast, is wheeled on a trolley to a private room which Gary, in the full blossoming of his love affair with Gabriel, has ostentatiously filled with flowers: carnations, though it's October, asters and chrysanthemums and little pots of African violets. Miriam is instructed to fill in more BUPA forms. Leni, in her bower, fed with fish pie and sponge pudding, seems to rally. In her commandments to the tireless nurses, Miriam detects some returning strength. The Leni of years ago, with all her beauty hurtling in her blood, begins to shimmer back.

Her child's bed smooth and tidy, her possessions in place on the old chest-of-drawers smelling of mothballs, Miriam now approaches her father's attic, turns on his radiator and here begins at last to work. She feels suspended, closed in and safe. Here, neither Leni nor Larry can touch her. She stares straight at her fifty years of life and sees the survivor she has become, the castaway who stayed sensible among the island cruelties that came after the shipwreck. There's a look of exhaustion and of triumph. It's time, she says to the dead surfaces of her father's study, to do something for yourself – without the reproaches of Leni, without the weeping of Larry. Something which is outside them both – a deliberate exclusion.

And so when she paints, it isn't Pomerac or the wooded hills behind Ste. Catherine, it isn't Oxford or the rolling downland where she once lived; it's herself. In the space of a morning, a pastel portrait is finished. She signs it but decides pastel is the wrong medium: she looks too young, too soft and indistinct. She wants to capture the hard edges of her own stare. She begins an ink drawing – simple, purposeful lines like black thread. Now she feels excitement come. What she boldly reveals is a face pared of its craven compassion. The eyes have a proud set like the eyes of an ancient Indian chief. She ties a bandana round her thick hair, starts the drawing again with her brow bound. The afternoon arrives and darkens. Leni is unvisited. When she thinks of Larry, as she does when the evening comes on, it is to imagine him alone for ever in Pomerac, watching the walnut tree being carted away, digging out his hopeless loss of her from his mind with the making of a swimming pool. He is, the fierce Indian decides, a futile man. Yet she's waiting, she knows, for something to happen. Or someone. Someone to give her permission not to go back to France. A sudden absence of love, though it has invaded her utterly, isn't sufficient, she senses, to set her free. She and Larry have given, taken, shaped side by side so many years.

Larry was – and remains – her one defiance of Leni. With this stranger from outside the charmed Oxford circle, she decided to grow up. It was Larry's sturdy health that attracted her. He was uncloistered, energetic and free. He kicked life like a ball. With him in the Oxfordshire summers she
ran
. She knew he wasn't clever or even wise. She knew he had a small man's dreams. She knew Leni would pout and scold.
Intellectually he's very weak. He's too physical for you, Miriam
. David Ackerman kept quiet. Leni's disapproval was enough. And when Miriam married Larry in secret in the year of Suez, her father merely recognised that the world did, and would ever, behave in ways inimicable to him and returned to the sanctuary of the room where Miriam now stands staring at the new severity of her face. She remembers David always with quiet pleasure, with a sense of loss so familiar, it has become comfortable. As for Larry's courtship of her and their wedding, these, too are precious memories. What she feels now doesn't corrupt or destroy what she felt then. Larry was a passionate and brave bridegroom. Having won her love, he began his long fight to make himself worthy of her. Now, it's precisely this struggle that she's weary of. She knows, as she finishes her drawing, that the sun has gone from the Pomerac garden, that Gervaise is leading her cows past their door to the milking barn, and that in this rural twilight Larry is bitterly alone. But she feels no guilt or pain. She refuses to feel these. He'll come to accept it, is what she whispers aloud.

She hurries late to the hospital. A don and his wife, friends of Leni's she doesn't know, are with her. So she stays only long enough to note the dabs of healthy colour in Leni's face and to admire Gary's flowers. When she returns to the empty house (Gary is not seen these nights, even though today is Wednesday) she sees an unfamiliar car parked behind the Mini. At the wheel, patiently waiting, is Dr. O.

As soon as she and Dr. O. are out of their cars, she hears herself apologising: “Dr. O. I should have telephoned you. I'm so sorry about what happened the other day. I feel so stupid . . .”

“Oh no,” Dr. O. says hastily, “don't say that.”

“I actually seldom cry,” Miriam explains, “and I don't really know why I did except that I seemed to feel so tired all of a sudden . . .”

“I don't
want
you to apologise, Miriam,” says Dr. O. with emphasis. “The incident allowed me . . . to get to know you better, and I'm so grateful that it did . . .”

“Come in, Dr. O.,” says Miriam, opening the front door. The moon is up and the air is very cold. She wonders if the first frost is coming. “If you've got time, I'd like to show you the work I've done today. You can tell me if it's good or if I'm wrong in thinking it is.”

In the yellowy light of the hall, she turns and smiles at Dr. O. She notices that under his familiar overcoat he's put on a dark, well-cut suit. In this, he seems leaner and younger. The thought flits across Miriam's mind: he's wearing a corset.

She leads him up to the attic without asking him why he's called on her. She assumes he wants news of Leni. He follows her up, a little breathless by the time they reach the attic door. She remembers Leni's instruction:
You have to get these men up and dancing
!

The ink drawing is shown to Dr. O., who holds it with awe, as if it were a Carthusian Breviary.

“Yes,” he says. “Yes, yes, yes.”

“I don't often do portraits,” says Miriam, “and I'm not sure my technique is right for them. What do you think?”

“Oh
yes
,” says Dr. O.

“You like it?”

“Yes, yes, yes, yes.”

“I look stern, I think. This is what I'm pleased about.”

“Superb.”

“Oh, I'm glad.”

“One can't take one's eyes from it.”

“Well. Would you like tea, or a drink perhaps?”

“
Is this the face
 . . . ?”

“What, Dr. O.?”

“You're very beautiful, Miriam.”

“You're very kind. It isn't true of course, but you're kind to say it.”

“I say it because I believe it. I would very much like to buy this portrait.”

“Would you? I think I might do others of myself and they may turn out better.”

“I'd like to buy this one.”

“Well. Come and have some tea.”

“And I'd very much like . . .” Dr. O. lays down the Breviary with shaking hands, “to take you out for dinner tonight . . . if you're not otherwise committed.”

He swallows. Miriam stares at him. Her thought is, he put the corset on for
me
! She feels embarrassment and shame but chooses to set these feelings aside in favour of a quiet tableau her mind makes up: she sits with Dr. O. in a warm and pretty restaurant. They talk about David and Oxford and books, and the coming exhibition. All is comfortable and civilised and easy. And there is no ambiguity. They're old friends. Dr. O. was like a son to the Ackermans in his youth. They're brother and sister.

“Are you sure,” she asks calmly, “that you want the expense? You don't have to pay me back for the lunch, you know.”

“No, no. It's not that at all.”

“Well. I don't know what to say, Dr. O.”

“Say you'll accept. I've booked a table at a rather pleasant French restaurant.”

“You've booked a table?”

“Yes. I took the liberty . . .”

The restaurant is not unlike the imagined tableau. The tablecloths are pink and the lighting warm. Dr. O. 's wide face gazes serenely at her over a red candle. He seems anxiously happy – like a boy out on a treat. The food is excellent and the restaurant busy and cheerful. Miriam feels rewarded for her day of good work – spoiled and fortunate. She wants to talk about the recovery she has spied in Leni, the death postponed, but Dr. O. seems for the first time almost uninterested in Leni and uncharacteristically concerned to tell her about his own life.

“I expect,” he says, looking away from her and rearranging the napkin his large hands have already creased, “I expect word has got around Oxford that Miss Atwood and I have been, how shall I put it, ‘fellow travellers'.”

There is silence. Again Miriam thinks of Leni:
Atwood keeps the customers away so she can have Oz to herself
.

“I don't belong to Oxford any more,” says Miriam, “so I don't know what people say or think about each other.”

“No, quite,” says Dr. O. Momentarily, he seems filled with melancholy.

“I wouldn't care a jot about the gossip,” says Miriam, gently. “It's your life. Oxford was always gossipy. You just have to ignore it and get on.”

“I agree, I agree.”

“And you and Miss Atwood have so much in common. I used to think – at the time when I married – that this wasn't very important, but of course it is, and sharing your shop the way you do . . .”