The Swimming Pool Season (6 page)

Larry thinks of pink bird necks and dead laughter and shivers.

“So sparkling, no?”

“Yes.”

“Like my Claude. So beautiful sparkling eyes. I'm sorry you're not seeing them.”

“I'm sorry, Nadia.

“And I am never seeing those swimming pools. But I imagine.”

“Can you?”

“Oh yes, yes. Like those David Cockney painting, this loops of brightness and all the lying people in their skin reflected. I can imagine very good. No?”

Larry is silent. Nadia pours more tea, waiting for him to yield up the dark confusion that came with the collapse of his dream. But, oddly for Nadia, she has said it all for him: the phrase “loops of brightness” ransacks his mind like a lost song.

Miriam sorts paintings and folds clothes. Now that her flight is booked, she does no more crying for Leni, but meticulously prepares herself for her re-entry into what is left of her mother's life. She remembers the house, the street, the neighbours, the smell of autumn in North Oxford. Her desire to be there now is like a sudden home-sickness. She wants to talk about it all, reminding herself that she can still belong there. It's just a question of arriving. She packs her tin of watercolours and her box of pastels. The act of closing the lids on these and putting them in the suitcase gives permanence to her stay in England. She looks up guiltily at Larry's anxious, grizzled head. “It's no use,” she says, “wondering if you'll be all right. I know you'll have the moments of loneliness. You'll just have to telephone me from Nadia's. And I'll write. Of course I'll write. But I have to go. You understand this.”

“Yes.”

He's never felt so distant from her. Miriam. His chestnut woman. His careful wife. The daily monitoring of what makes her happy, this is a habit he's never asked himself to break. Even when he was ill and depressed, he tried to “get on” with each bitter day as she instructed him. He dreaded losing her then, when he had so little to give her. He had nightmares of Leni, then, waiting with her disdainful eyes, waiting to snatch Miriam from him. That he survived that time, that Miriam helped him so lovingly is a kind of miracle to him. He's never thanked her. The way he yearns to show his gratitude is by getting
Aquazure, France
started. He could do it, surely? The summers are long. Thousands come from England – and from Paris – to holiday homes. The public pools and lakes are overcrowded in July and August. He can beat
Piscines Ducellier Frères
at their own game, because he's not merely a pool builder, he's a pool
artist
. Consider the St. Front idea; no mere pool installer would have found inspiration in a Roman-Byzantine basilica. He pictures the St. Front pool installed beyond the terrace for Miriam's return, his gift for those months of patience.

“Have you packed up all the paintings yet, Miriam?”

“No. Not yet.”

“Harve asked me, could he see some before you go. He'd like to buy one for his niece's room.”

“His niece?”

“Yes. She's arriving on Monday, to help out.”

“Well I can't sell a painting. I need everything for the exhibition.”

“Just a small one, he said. A little still life or something.”

“No, Larry.”

He's begun to hear Leni's voice in hers. He thinks, she's hardening her heart. He can't bear to stand and watch her packing, yet he wants the comfort of her. He feels desolate, humble.

“You may be away for your birthday, Miriam.”

“Yes. Never mind.”

“I mind.”

“Why?” Leni again. Hardness. Curt questions.

“I wanted us to have a proper celebration this year. A party, even.”

“Who would we invite?”

“Nadia . . . Harve and his niece . . . Mme. de la Brosse . . .”

“And the Mallélous, I suppose. Watch Gervaise eating with her mouth open.”

Larry ignores this, though it worries him. Miriam brought them here to live. Now, she's found an excuse to leave Pomerac and run back to Oxford.

“I thought we'd get Thomas out here for once . . .”

“Well, I'll be seeing Thomas.”

“I won't.”

“No. That can be my birthday gift then: seeing Thomas.”

She's packed two suitcases: almost all the clothes she owns are laid gently in. Left in the wardrobe are just the soft summer things. She's also bought Leni's favourite peach jam, sachets of
tisane somniflor
and a tin of Perigord fois gras. Larry imagines Leni's fragile lips opening and closing on this delicacy, her heart stopping as its poisoning richness enters her blood.

The mist and rain of Saturday linger on Sunday. The dampness quells the stench of the septic tank. Larry examines the Granada for signs of rust. Pomerac inhales moisture into its old stones and the interiors of rooms are dark and cold. Larry, wearing the Burberry, surveys the site of the new pool. A casualty of the pool will be the walnut tree Miriam is fond of and which now reproaches Larry with an exemplary crop of bright green fruit. Miriam wanders out and stands near him by the tree. She looks shabby, he thinks, in her bulky mac, and he touches her shoulder tenderly. At least she doesn't have Leni's sharp bones. Miriam reaches up for Larry's hand and presses it tightly. She, who is running, running to the bedside of her mother, feels in this moment like a mother to Larry. His blue eyes have a helpless look.

“Start the pool if you can. If the weather's good.”

“Yes. We'll need some building, though, to house the filter plant.”

“A shed?”

“Yes. Or I thought we could run a driveway by the wall, curve it round to a garage, there.”

“Too expensive, I would have thought. And we don't really need a garage.”

“Well, handy though. And I'd fit the plant at one end of it. Nice short run from there to the skimmers.”

“Our trouble was we always did things too grandly. Why build a garage?”

“You must conceive grandly! Or not bother.”

“A hut would do.”

“No. Not for me.”

Miriam lightly tugs away her imprisoned hand. “You've got to stop dreaming, Larry.”

And she walks away from him slowly towards the house; the mother withdraws her love, slaps the child awake. Larry sighs. His heart is throbbing.

By the time her plane leaves on Monday, he's ready to feel relief at her going. On Monday morning, he sees the eagle again. It stares at him with an eye so flint-hard, he senses a challenge and he feels his spirit lift. When the eagle takes off, he knows it will return. What he dreads is to see its mate come, the pair. Only in its isolation does the bird inspire him.

At Bordeaux airport, it is still raining. In Miriam's mind, Oxford is cloudless, the stones yellow in afternoon light. All light has gone from the tarmac as she follows the crowd to the plane. Unseen by her, Larry waves, but she doesn't turn. As he climbs wearily back into the Granada he thinks of Agnès hurtling south on the Paris train, to be met, at last, by Nadia's waiting gabble. Travel. Change. Arrival. Loss.
Hello Mary-Lou. Goodbye heart
.

News of Gervaise's youngest son, Xavier, comes to Pomerac.

At twenty, Xavier Mallélou kissed a bitter goodbye to his job on the railways, told his boss, in fact, that he could stick this particular job (the laying of sleepers on a new stretch of the Bordeaux-to-Biarritz line) up his grandmother's cunt, and went to work for a certain Mme. Motte who ran a cheap restaurant for long-distance truckers in Bordeaux. Neither Gervaise nor Mallélou had ever met Mme. Motte, nor seen the small premises where she offered a five-course set meal (soup, cold hors d'oeuvres, hot dish, cheese, sweet) for thirty-five francs, but Xavier had written one letter to say he had some responsibility in this new work. He wasn't just waiting tables: he was negotiating with a new wine supplier and was “getting to know properly” the regular customers. He'd also convinced Mme. Motte to get little cards printed with the name and address and the price of the menu on them. Business was brisk. On winter days, he was warm by the chip-fryer instead of freezing to death on that bitch of a line. Mallélou shrugged, remembering the signal box and the coffee and the thighs of the ashtray. He didn't blame his son for wanting to be warm, but he considered the railways to be “a fair master”, whereas a widow running a café, what kind of boss was this for a young man? Klaus reassured him. He'd worked for a woman once, learning the bread business. They could treat you fair. Yet Mallélou felt disappointed in Xavier. He wrote to his son and advised him never to trust Mme. Motte and never to do her favours, sexual or otherwise.

Now a letter comes from the police. Xavier is accused of stealing seventeen cases of wine, and three hundredweight of potatoes from Mme. Motte over a period of six and a half months. Bail has been set at eight thousand francs. The accused is being held in custody until this sum has been raised. The accused has no visible means of support.

Gervaise weeps. That wasteland, that no-man's-land, poisoned the heads of her sons. Everything they touched was foul. They played football with old cans, they made swings with worn tyres, they fished in a dead river. And the language. That language of the hard, mucky wasteland boys.
Fuck and suck. Cunt. Arseholes. Nigger-lovers. Kill the Socialists
. She weeps for all of that which was, or should have been, their childhood and which, in its own bitter words, fucked them.

She goes up to the Maréchal's house. The mist and damp are still heavy on the village. The Maréchal sits by his range with a half-made basket on his knee. The pipe, barely alight in his mouth, is shiny with spittle. When he sees Gervaise, his owl's eyes take fire and he holds out his arms to her. She stoops and plants a little gobble of a kiss on each of his papery cheeks, then unwraps her gift to him, a roasted guineafowl. He looks at it in surprise, grabs the pipe out of his mouth.

“It's not a Feast Day, Gervaise.”

“No. She needed killing, that one. She was a screecher.”

“Very kind of you. Very kind . . .”

Gervaise sits opposite the Maréchal. She reaches out and touches his knee.

“I've not just come with the bird. I've come with a favour to ask.”

“Good. You ask, Gervaise.”

“My Xavier's in trouble. I'm ashamed. And sad. I'm so sad for him.”

“Well, a child is heartbreak. I told you, Gervaise . . .”

“Yes, you told me.”

“My children are dead. I've outlived them, eh?”

“I know.”

“Outlive your children! You don't imagine that.”

“No.”

“Perhaps you'll outlive your sons. With your strength, Gervaise . . .”

“Who can say. I think people die younger in the cities.”

“They like the city?”

“Yes, they say they do. They got used to it when they were small.”

“I'll eat that bird, some of it, this evening.”

“Yes. You enjoy it.”

The Maréchal eats, sleeps, lives in one room now. Upstairs, the old bedrooms are shuttered. Down here, he shuffles between the range and the small table and a tumbled, smelly cot. Outside, on the other side of the wall is a wash-house and a damp privy. On winter nights he pisses in a china pot rather than endure the cold. He has a saying: “Winter's got me licked, where many women failed.” This one room hugs him and keeps him alive.

“Xavier's in prison, Maréchal.”

“Xavier?”

“Yes.”

The Maréchal puts his pipe back in his mouth, sucks on the embers. To him prison is wartime. Eating your own misery and loss, living on these until it was over. Like being kept alive on vomit. He's not sure how he survived it. He thinks part of his brain died, to save the rest.

“Where?”

“Bordeaux.”

“You need the bail money.”

“We have two thousand put away and Klaus has offered us three thousand. We need another three thousand. As a loan of course, Maréchal.”

The Maréchal gently lifts the basket off his knee. He remembers the day Gervaise was born. He got drunk with her father and they walked back from Ste. Catherine wearing their trousers round their necks like scarves. After the two sons, the birth of a girl was a quiet miracle. And thank God for that stupefying, joyful night. Thank God for that baby, Gervaise.

He kneels down and from under his bed tugs a canvas bag, like an army kit bag. He leans on it for a moment, then pushes it towards Gervaise.

“You know the old tin where I used to keep maggots, in that time of the pike fishing?”

She knows the tin. Once, when she was a girl, it had a yellow and red label on it saying
Biscuits Chérisy Fils Paris
. She didn't know where or how the Maréchal had come by these delicacies, but gradually the label faded and peeled off, the tin grew dull and rusty and smelled of river slime. Now she holds it in her lap and it feels light. It's rusty, but clean. No trace of the maggot smell.

“You take out what you need.”

It's not the first time. She's borrowed from the Maréchal before. She pays him back slowly, over months and months. The hens and vegetables she brings are the interest still owing.

She takes out three thousand francs and folds the money in the crease of her small breasts. She closes the tin and pushes it back into the bag, where it's padded out with ancient bits of clothing, some the Maréchal's, some his dead wife's and some, though he's forgotten what's what, belonging to his dead sons.

Gervaise's heart lifts. Tomorrow Mallélou will go to Bordeaux. By Wednesday Xavier must be released. And in this case the Judge must be lenient – a young man too big for his boots, a first offence . . .