Swimming Home

by Mary-Rose MacColl

  One evening, just before she left, Michael had gone swimming alone. A dolphin had swum with him, he said. ‘I asked Bid to watch over you. He said you’ll come back.’ Michael leaned in. They hugged one another.

  ‘We could run,’ he said. ‘Take a boat up to Saibai. They’d never find us.’

  But Catherine knew that would be wrong. She felt it was her duty to go with Louisa now. Here was an opportunity to go to a school, a real school where she would learn the ways of the wider world. Louisa was right. Catherine’s future for now lay in London. If she was to come back to the island, if she was to have power over her own life, she needed to go with Louisa and learn how.

  Michael looked upset then. ‘You do want to go,’ he said.

  She didn’t answer him.

  ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Go. But don’t expect I’ll wait around for you to come back.’

  She looked back towards the jetty once more now, and there was Michael. He ran down past Florence towards the end of the jetty. ‘Waapi!’ he called out. ‘Come back to us, you hear? You come back to us, or I’ll come get you.’ He waved then and grinned. She didn’t call out but waved back, tears streaming down her cheeks. He turned and went back to Florence, put his arms around his mother.

  After she left the island, after she was all those thousands of miles across the sea, it would be Florence who Catherine would think of at night before she slept: Florence’s soft kind voice, her smile, her smell, which Catherine never smelled after she left Thursday Island, of coconut and frangipani, luscious and safe. She’d think of her last swim with Michael, his laugh, and she’d remember that view of the two of them, Michael and Florence, together at the ferry as Catherine sailed away from them.

  9

  BY THE TIME LOUISA FINISHED WORK, IT WAS AFTER NINE. She’d seen her list of patients in the rooms, and then visited her post-operative patients at the hospital. On the way home, she’d dropped in to visit the boy with scarlet fever she’d seen early that morning. She’d been relieved beyond measure to discover that he’d turned a corner.

  ‘Oh, Doctor, do you think he’s going to be all right?’ the mother said.

  ‘He’s better,’ Louisa replied. ‘Much better. The fever’s broken. He’s not out of the woods but he can see his way from here with a bit of help. Chips of ice, if you can get them; a washer to suck, if not.’

  The woman let out a breath and her shoulders relaxed. The frown that had seemed permanently etched on her face was gone suddenly.

  ‘How can we thank you, Doctor?’ she said as Louisa was leaving. She went out through the back door and came back in carrying a dead animal of some sort, a bird by the look of it, a chicken. ‘Fresh plucked today,’ she said kindly. ‘Will you not take it, Doctor?’

  ‘That’s very thoughtful of you. But can I suggest you make him a broth with that bird? I’ll warrant by about lunchtime tomorrow he’ll be ravenous and his throat will be sore but he’ll take a warm broth.

  ‘And it’s you who saved him,’ Louisa said. ‘Not me.’ She was never comfortable with praise and, anyway, it was true. If ever a boy was healed by a mother’s love, this one was. ‘I just came and watched you do it. It’s you who sat up through the nights and hoped. It was your care, your strength, that saved your boy. Now, go sit with him a bit while he’s awake and I’ll pop in early tomorrow.’

  Louisa had always liked coming home to her little house in Wellclose Square. She could walk to and from the clinic with ease, and whatever might be happening in the world outside, she always felt safe here. Even though she knew Catherine and conflict were within on this particular evening, the house was still home.

  Louisa unlocked the door and went inside, hung her coat and hat on the stand in the entry and put her bag on the little table. There was a narrow central hallway with rooms on either side. She passed the formal sitting room—or parlour, as Nellie called it—such as it was: a sofa and two large chairs, velvet drapes, a fireplace, f lowers on a little table that were looking tired by the end of the week, a rug on the floor, a tiger skin that someone in some branch of the Quick family had shot on safari. Louisa wasn’t quite clear how the tiger had come to rest in Wellclose Square, but that was where he lay.

  The parlour wasn’t a room that welcomed the visitor, Louisa had often thought, although she never understood quite why, the tiger notwithstanding. She herself would become gloomy if she sat too long in the room, although the dogs liked it well enough, or at least Sooty did. He spent his days in front of the grate hoping for a fire, lying on the tiger’s backside. Marble was always more particular, preferring the kitchen where Nellie spent much of her day and scraps could be had. Louisa had inherited the dogs from Millicent when she was no longer able to care for them. Sooty did as he pleased but was mostly happy. Marble was more cantankerous, withdrew affection unless treats were forthcoming, barked at flies or the moon or rocks. Louisa had been glad of the dogs after Millicent died. They were a link to her mother, and until Nellie arrived they were the only creatures there to talk to in the evenings; unlike everyone else in her life, they didn’t talk back.

  On the right, further along the hallway, was the dining room. It was so far from the kitchen Louisa didn’t bother eating in there unless there were visitors, and the dining table was spread now with her papers, along with Catherine’s school books. She wouldn’t be needing those for a while, Louisa thought bitterly.

  At the back of the house, Louisa had had a carpenter add a small room with a bath, which was glorious and by far Louisa’s favourite room. There was a family story about baths, Millicent’s father demanding that when his three daughters went off to boarding school they be allowed to have a weekly bath. It was unheard of, but the school acquiesced. ‘So you see, hot baths run in the family,’ Louisa had told the carpenter, who was less interested in the story that she thought he ought to be.

  Upstairs were two bedrooms. Nellie and Catherine shared. Nellie had offered to move to the back of the kitchen—really a pantry where she’d have been on a mattress on the floor—after Catherine arrived but Catherine insisted she stay in the room. ‘So long as you don’t mind company,’ she told Nellie. ‘It will make me less lonely.’

  Louisa found Nellie at the back of the house in the kitchen now. Louisa looked a question. ‘In bed,’ Nellie said quietly. Nellie had come to collect Catherine from the clinic after the swim. ‘I think she’s sleeping.’ There was beef and boiled potatoes, Nellie said, taking down a plate for Louisa.

  ‘I’m not hungry,’ Louisa said. ‘I’ll take it for lunch tomorrow.’

  ‘You must eat,’ Nellie said.

  ‘Just not tonight.’ She sighed. ‘God, Nellie, what are we to do with her?’ Louisa took a bottle of scotch from the pantry and sat down at the table against the wall. She poured herself a dram and drank it down. She took a big breath into her lungs and exhaled.

  ‘It’s not been easy for her,’ Nellie said.

  ‘No, I suppose it hasn’t. But if I compare her to you, Nellie—look at what you’ve done with your life.’ Dear Nellie had endured so much more than Catherine had. She’d lost her entire family to the influenza in 1919 and had spent a year or more on the street before she’d come to Princes Square. She’d come through so courageously. ‘Catherine’s had so many opportunities. Harry just adored her, lavished everything on her. Now she’s in a very good school. Or at least she was in a very good school. She’s got you looking after her. I do what I can.’

  ‘I think that’s the thing, Louisa. You’re just so busy, and she’s of an age where a girl most needs her mother.’

  ‘Well, she hasn’t got a mother.’

  ‘I know, but you’re in that role, if you don’t mind my saying. You’re her guardian.’

  ‘Are you saying I haven’t done enough?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ Nellie said—carefully, it occurred to Louisa. Nellie was not normally careful with her words. ‘But, Louisa, I don’t quite understand it. It’s like you keep her at a distance.’

 
; ‘What do you mean, Nellie?’

  ‘You’re easier with me than with Catherine. She’s your blood, Louisa.’

  ‘But she’s just so very different from me, Nellie. How can she be so …’

  ‘So what?’ Catherine said then. Louisa turned around to find her niece standing in the doorway. She was dressed in a baggy flannel nightdress, but Louisa could make out the powerful frame beneath. And if you didn’t notice the outline of muscle and sinew in her frame, the fire in those eyes told a story. The dark skin might have paled to a grey in the London winter, but those blazing green eyes demanded attention.

  ‘Ungrateful,’ Louisa said flatly. It wasn’t what she meant but it would have to do at short notice. She looked away and then back at the girl. She tried to be more reasonable. ‘Catherine, I just can’t imagine doing something like that—swimming the river. Something I’m very sure you knew you shouldn’t do.’ This wasn’t what she meant either.

  Catherine didn’t respond, just stood with her arms folded, that fierce look in her eyes.

  Nellie sat down across from Louisa. ‘I do think she’s been very unhappy at the school.’ She was frowning hard, as if she were trying to make Louisa understand.

  Louisa felt a flash of anger. She had so much on her plate already and Catherine had done something entirely stupid. ‘Unhappiness doesn’t lead the rest of us to jump in the river.’ She looked up and saw the girl’s face. Catherine looked so young, and the fierceness in her eyes looked more like fear now. ‘You knew you shouldn’t,’ Louisa said more gently.

  The girl gave a small nod. ‘I wanted …’ She sobbed suddenly, an awful noise.

  ‘What?’ Louisa said, standing up, moving towards Catherine without thinking, putting her hand up near the girl’s head, which was bowed now, not quite making contact. ‘What did you want, Catherine?’

  Catherine looked up, her face distraught, but didn’t respond.

  ‘Very well,’ Louisa said. ‘Back to bed and we’ll talk more tomorrow. Perhaps Helen Anderson will have calmed down by then. We can but hope, my dear.’ Louisa tried to smile encouragingly, but the look on Catherine’s face when she raised her head, the sadness there, just about broke Louisa’s heart.

  ‘I don’t ever want to go back there,’ Catherine said then, her voice shaky. ‘I just want to go home, Aunt Louisa. I hate it here. I hate school. I hate everything.’

  Nellie had tried to warn Louisa about this, Louisa recalled now, over breakfast in the kitchen a week ago. Louisa was reading a letter from the new health inspector. They were sending an official to inspect the clinic and Louisa had just read their list of requirements. She would have laughed if it hadn’t been so serious. Sooty waddled up—they were getting so fat; she wished Catherine would walk them—and she threw him a biscuit. ‘Who’s a good boy?’ she said distractedly and gave him a little pat.

  ‘She’s unhappy,’ Nellie said.

  ‘What about?’ Louisa said, still reading the letter.

  ‘The school.’

  ‘What’s wrong with the school?’

  ‘Ask her.’

  So when Catherine came downstairs in her uniform a few minutes later, Louisa said, ‘School’s going well?’ without looking up from the notes she was making about the health inspector’s letter.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Catherine said.

  Louisa looked at Nellie, who said to Catherine, ‘Go on, ask her.’

  Catherine shook her head.

  ‘Ask her what?’ Louisa said. She took off her spectacles and looked at Catherine.

  ‘I …’ Catherine said, then stopped.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Just, I was wondering if I might swim now that it’s coming into summer.’

  ‘Swim,’ Louisa said, putting down the letter. ‘What for?’

  ‘I just … I’ve always been able to swim.’

  ‘Oh,’ Louisa said. ‘I suppose you have. The chaps swim up at Hampstead Ponds, don’t they, Nellie?’ Nellie had mentioned the ponds the week before on Catherine’s birthday. This must have been why.

  Nellie nodded enthusiastically.

  ‘I don’t see how, dear,’ Louisa said. ‘Can’t you run in the park?’

  Louisa regarded her niece now. Catherine looked desperately unhappy. Louisa hadn’t listened. Nellie was right. Things had gone very wrong for Catherine, and Louisa hadn’t listened.

  Louisa was a surgeon. What she loved most about surgery, what she’d loved from the beginning, was its clarity. You cut or you didn’t. Staring at Catherine now as she stood unmoving in the kitchen, Louisa felt at a loss.

  Nellie broke the silence. ‘Come, child, let’s go to bed. Your aunt’s right. We won’t sort this out tonight.’ Nellie always knew exactly the tone to take with Catherine. Where did she learn that? It must have come from having younger siblings, although Louisa had Harry. Perhaps Nellie was just better at it. At any rate, it was clear that everything Louisa did when it came to Catherine was wrong.

  What would they do now? Louisa wondered. Find another school, start again? Louisa had hoped Catherine would settle in, that her memories of the island would fade and she’d come to love London, to love Louisa too. She grimaced. Love was not what her niece felt for her, that was certain. If anything, Catherine had become more unhappy in the months since they’d arrived in London. And rather than forget the island, it was all she thought about.

  If she’d known Catherine would be so unhappy, would she have acted differently? Should she have left the girl in Australia? Of course not. Should she have picked a different school? Was the change just too severe?

  She poured a second dram of scotch and took herself off to her study to go over the day’s reports. Who was it who’d said that scotch was the antidote to all fear? Louisa couldn’t remember. Although she hardly knew herself why she felt so angry with Catherine, she couldn’t overcome her feelings. Nellie was right. She had pushed the child away. And she’d been unfair. Underneath the anger was a feeling she knew well, even as she tried to push it back down: it was fear; deep gut-wrenching fear that only hard work or strong drink would keep at bay.

  What happened to her had not become any more clear in the intervening years. She could not construct a memory that made sense. As time went by, she settled on a story she told herself, the story Jonathan had told her the next day. But now, on nights like this, she wondered whether there was another story, a story she must know in some part of herself. A true story.

  He offered to walk Louisa home and she was thrilled. They’d both worked late, an emergency occasioned by a rail accident—a boy who’d gone under a train and had survived, miraculously. The boy had lost a leg but Jonathan had saved his arm. Louisa was so happy to have been the one selected to assist, and then elated by what surgery had achieved for the patient.

  Jonathan Pyne was handsome and clever and, of all the Edinburgh surgeons, he was the only one who was supportive of women. He was training Louisa and three others, two from Scotland, one from France. Ruth Luxton, who had done her general surgical training with him, had urged Louisa to seek him out when she wanted to specialise. ‘You were born to surgery, and so was he,’ Ruth said. ‘You’ll hate him, though. I know I did.’

  But Louisa had liked him from the start. He was witty and self-deprecating, and everyone except Ruth had a crush on him, Louisa quickly learned. If he hadn’t been married—his theatre nurse; three sons—then any one of the women training with him would have accepted him as a suitor.

  At her door, he said, ‘I’ll see you inside.’ Louisa knew he was married, knew he had children. If she’d thought about it at all, she’d have said she knew it made her safe.

  It was from here that her memory of the night’s events refracted into single sensations, unrelated to one another, that never collected themselves into a whole experience. She might recall a smell of sweet fruit, dark hair on a wrist, or a damp chill in the air, but not put these individual sensations into a context. This was what was most unnerving.

  The next morning, Jo
nathan himself gave her a version, and for many years it was easier to accept his view. It seemed so sure. ‘How are you today?’ he’d said, just before he was to go into theatre, a sly smile on his face, his hands in the air in front of him, clean. He’d winked. As if they had been lovers. That’s what his smile said, the wink. Was that what he believed? she wondered. Was that what he believed they had been to one another?

  Now, with the intervening years, she blamed memory entirely. She told herself of course she wouldn’t be able to summon the details. Of course they would be blurred. Still, the incomplete images came to her, harmless ones and some that were not harmless, and she would do her best to remain calm until they passed. They always passed. And for that, she could be thankful.

  Part II

  10

  CATHERINE WOKE TO THE SOUND OF A BIRD IN THE BACK garden. It was the one she’d heard before, and she’d been meaning to ask Nellie what it was. Its song was so long and sweet, nothing like the parrots back on the island that screeched and squawked the morning awake. This one was a well-mannered bird, the kind of bird her aunt would like Catherine to be. But Catherine was more a screecher and squawker, she thought, however much she wished she could be a quiet little singer.

  She got up from her bed and looked out the window for the little bird but all she could see were the motor cars on the street and people hurrying along the footpath on their way to work. A soft rain fell. It would be cold on the way to school, she thought.

  This was Catherine’s life now: the city, the school, her aunt and Nellie. At first, she’d been able to conjure up the smells of the island—the kelp growing near the rocks or drifting in after a storm, the coconuts the boys threw down from the trees and cracked, the sun itself, which had a smell like hot linen—but all that was gone now. And she couldn’t remember the colours, only that they were much brighter.

  Catherine opened the window wide and put her head outside. It was cold. To her right, the construction noise on Commercial Road had started up. It was later than she’d thought, the morning sun hidden behind clouds. But at least she’d been wrong about the rain. Catherine jumped down the stairs two at a time. Why hadn’t Nellie called her?