The Swimming Pool

by Louise Candlish

  ‘A barbecue?’ she asked, and the thought of Miles Channing tending chicken thighs over smoking coals made me chuckle.

  ‘We don’t even know if it is dinner,’ Molly told her. ‘Mum hasn’t got a clue.’

  ‘I’m sure Mum has a perfectly good clue,’ Sarah said. ‘Where are you off to?’

  ‘It’s Lara Channing’s place,’ I said, ‘just on the other side of the park.’

  ‘You mean that actress we talked about?’

  ‘Yes.’ Again, I couldn’t help being gratified by the astonished reaction. It seemed a lifetime since I’d flipped through Sarah’s magazine and made those ignorant comments about Lara; I rather pitied the old me. ‘Ed’s tutoring her daughter and we’ve got to know the family a bit.’

  ‘That’s why Mum’s wearing that weird top,’ Molly said. ‘She’s trying to look cool.’

  When do they learn tact? I’d asked Gayle not long ago, but untypically she’d had no answer ready, had just pulled the same hopeless face she’d worn when I’d wondered about wet towels left on the bathroom floor or snacks discarded in the foot well of the car. ‘I’m not sure they ever do,’ she’d said eventually.

  Arrival at La Madrague felt different in the evening. Though it was still light, a trail of copper lanterns burned along the pathway, lending the place a seductive, adult air. This, in spite of the appearance at the door of Everett, still in clothes dusty from the park or garden, a sprig of turf attached to the toe of his trainer. ‘Molly!’ he said, as if she were there on her own.

  ‘Evening, Everett,’ Ed said, and I guessed he was thinking, as I admit I was, that at his age he should probably have been in bed by now, or at least bathed and in his pyjamas. As the boy scampered off to alert an adult, I sensed Ed’s impatience.

  ‘Sorry we had to abandon your debate with Sarah about the new slip road,’ I said, but it sounded sarcastic when I’d meant only to be humorous and, unsurprisingly, it failed to raise a smile. No matter: I was confident that Lara, as last time, would work her magic on her reluctant guest.

  We assembled once more on the terrace, Angie and Stephen comprising the rest of the ‘gang’, along with their children and dog, a miniature greyhound named Choo. We were serenaded by what I already thought of as the Channings’ signature music, all creeping piano chords and crackling, moan-like vocals. In the soft evening light, the greens of the park swarmed like a billion butterflies and I felt immediately connected, powered by light and colour.

  ‘Hard liquor coming your way,’ Lara said, as she and Georgia distributed the promised Martinis. They were both dressed in white and I thought once more of those pictures of famous actresses and models posing with their daughters. How did it make you feel, when you were adored for your beauty, to watch yourself wither as the other bloomed? How much fun was that? Conversely, to remain always in the other’s shadow, even at your youthful peak, how did that feel?

  Better to be ordinary, perhaps.

  ‘I hope you’re paying your daughter for her waitressing service,’ Stephen said to Miles. ‘Does she work for tips?’

  There was a lascivious undertone to his comment, exacerbated presumably by the very alcohol the girl dispensed, but Miles did not react. His composure was not only enviable but also a little mysterious. I had decided by now that, of this group, Stephen was not my favourite. There was something about him that made me nervous.

  It was pleasing that Lara and Angie complimented me on my new top. When Georgia gave it a second – and a third – glance, I really knew it must pass muster.

  The Channing home cinema, on the ground floor, was quite an indulgence. The screen was almost as large as the smaller ones in our local multiplex, the seating comprising three tiers of red-velvet sofas, and there was a gleaming wheel of a drinks trolley, presumably an art-deco original, with a thicket of bottles and a tray of polished crystal. There was even a little cloakroom wallpapered with vintage maps of Hollywood.

  As Miles took care of technical requirements, Lara called over her shoulder and up the stairs to the children: ‘Are you guys coming for the movie?’

  Ed objected before I could, though I would not have physically raised a palm, as he did, in the manner of a lollipop lady. ‘Not Molly, if you don’t mind, Lara.’

  She halted, stricken. ‘Goodness, I didn’t think! Does she not like to see swimming pools on screen?’

  As a matter of fact, she could tolerate it well enough, but that, I knew, was not Ed’s primary concern. Earlier, I’d seen him look up La Piscine for just this purpose.

  ‘The film’s a certificate fifteen, Lara,’ he told her, ‘and it looks like it could be quite adult. She’s only thirteen.’

  ‘And Everett will need keeping company,’ I added, before Ed could imply that our hostess planned to expose her own eight-year-old to sexual themes.

  ‘Quite right, Edward!’ And Lara clutched his arm with delight, as if it were a rare treat to be in the presence of such a law-abiding creature. ‘Georgia, you take the younger ones back up to watch, I don’t know, Freaky Friday.’

  With this, she drew Ed to the front-row sofa and placed him between Angie and herself. More to my amusement than concern, she proceeded to swing her legs across him to rest her feet on Angie’s lap.

  ‘Isn’t this just heaven?’ Angie said, as Ed shrank visibly from the contact. ‘Choo and I like to pretend we’re on a private plane when we’re in here.’ She settled the dog next to Lara’s feet, the wriggling toes attracting an immediate licking. Ed’s hands went to his glasses to remove and wipe them with his shirt-tails, something he did when uncertain. But there was nothing I could do to help him: he was out of my jurisdiction, a child strapped into a theme-park ride more thrilling than any he’d braved before.

  I took one end of the middle row and Miles, when he was ready, chose the opposite end of the sofa behind. I presumed that Stephen, in the loo and the last to settle, would join his good friend, but to my surprise he opted for me, sitting very close, almost but not quite touching. Having smirked at Ed’s plight, I was immediately discomfited, unable to concentrate properly on the opening credits of the film. Then a close-up of Alain Delon appeared and my attention was riveted, for there was a likeness to Ed. It was not in facial feature so much as general physicality, a slightness, an elegance. Ed, however, did not stare at people as if he didn’t know whether to seduce or kill them.

  In front, the women were exclaiming at the resemblance. ‘Look what you could be doing instead of teaching!’ Lara cried. ‘You’re wasted on our children, Mr Steele.’

  ‘She’s right, sir.’ Angie laughed.

  Alain, Edward, sir: there was no end to their pet names for him and, far from being threatened by this, I felt the new girl’s delight in having her lunchbox treats accepted as tribute by the popular crowd.

  ‘You so could be a nineteen-sixties matinée idol,’ Angie added, ‘not toiling in some south London school in special measures.’

  ‘All Saints is not in special measures,’ Ed protested. ‘And, anyway, I can’t act to save my life, so your theory’s dead in the water.’

  I had an absurd vision then of Lara offering him lessons, of the two of them performing together in some am-dram production staged on the lido sundeck. A Streetcar Named Desire, perhaps.

  ‘Shush, you lot,’ Stephen was telling them, and I felt his breath on my skin. Had he inched my way a fraction? I decided I might casually relocate to the sofa behind after a bathroom break.

  The movie played on, Delon and Schneider soon joined by Jane Birkin and an actor I didn’t know. Miles rose to mix and distribute more of those lethal Martinis. I was learning that at La Madrague glasses brimmed no matter how quickly you sipped from them; it was like The Magic Porridge Pot. (Water was not served.) At last I lost myself in the sun-drenched visuals, the careless, brittle dialogue, the sexual tension between the four characters so excruciatingly real we might have been voyeurs watching through the hedgerows.

  It was only when the action turned sinister t
hat I became aware of my own environment again and found I was now the only female in the room, Lara and Angie having slipped out without my noticing. To check on Everett, I guessed, for how easy it was to forget the children in this deluxe adult cocoon (I knew better than to embarrass Molly by actively supervising her). Ed, marooned in the centre of the sofa, had been left with Choo on his lap, the little thing alert for the return of his mistress. Was it as hard for him to watch the scenes unfolding as it was for me? To watch a man drown another? Was he remembering, too, how casually permissive Lara had been about the children joining us?

  Beside me Stephen shifted, his thigh touching mine, and I felt suddenly overcome by unease, by the sense that variables were at play in this room – many of them new and alien – that removed the outcome from my control.

  ‘Ed,’ I murmured, but he didn’t turn. Instead, Stephen did, his breath on my cheek once more, and I sensed rather than saw the smile on his lips. That was when my mind took a peculiar turn: I began to feel an awful fear that I was in danger – and that he was the reason. Turning wildly to the door in the hope of seeing Lara or Angie come through it, my eye met Miles’s and his gaze lowered from my face to my shoulders, their psychedelic swirls spot-lit by sudden daylight from the screen. His expression was quite fascinated, as if I were a specimen presented for clinical observation. Now, with both men unnerving me, I sprang to my feet and fled to the cloakroom, my breath strained and dry. Focusing on the whir of the fan overhead, the faint thuds from two floors above, I ran the cold tap over my wrists and counted to twenty, silently intoning the names on the old map in front of me: Sunset Boulevard, Plaza Hotel … Why was I experiencing this irrational turn? Was there some ingredient in the drinks that had caused me to hallucinate (and hadn’t I had a similar suspicion during the lunch party)? Or was it the unexpected sight of watching a drowning, albeit acted, make-believe? I’d have done well to do my homework, as Ed had; I could have prepared myself.

  Recovered, a little sheepish, I returned to my seat and tried to forget the episode. Lara and Angie were back on either side of Ed. Stephen, wedged now into the far corner of our sofa, acknowledged neither my frantic flight nor my slinking return. Behind me, Miles had sunk deeper into his sofa, eyes on his phone, fingers engaged in discreet messaging.

  Afterwards, we climbed to the terrace. Below, the park was in darkness, only the railings and near wall of the lido lit by the streetlights on The Rise – you could just make out the silver lettering at the entrance. The temperature had scarcely dipped, the scent of freesias – or was it jasmine? – full and heady. We were quiet at first, steeped in that half-present mood of film-goers withdrawing from a powerful netherland.

  ‘Well, that was an interesting love triangle,’ Ed said, as if starting a discussion with his class. He sounded sober; I guessed he had found a way to evade those relentless refills. I should have done the same, perhaps.

  ‘I think it works because they were real-life partners years earlier,’ Lara told him, and after my odd reaction to the men her earnestness was comforting. ‘Alain and Romy. They were the love of each other’s lives and had that tension, that knowledge. Your body doesn’t forget, does it?’

  Ed nodded, from politeness as much as recognition.

  ‘And then the daughter,’ Angie sighed. (You’d never have guessed she had missed half the film.) ‘What a terrible act of revenge, seducing a man’s daughter.’

  ‘You can hardly blame him when the daughter’s Jane Birkin,’ Stephen said. ‘Eh, Ed?’

  ‘She was very beautiful,’ he agreed, with a trace of reluctance. ‘Though not a child. In her twenties then, I would guess.’

  ‘But playing a teenager,’ Miles said, and his gaze raked Ed’s person as if alert to small clues unknowable to others.

  It struck me that the two men had not accepted Ed and me as willingly as their wives, and that this might have contributed to my earlier agitation. Perhaps it bothered them to see Lara and Angie paying Ed so much attention.

  ‘I read that Delon can’t watch that film any more,’ Lara said. ‘His co-stars, the director, they’re all dead. It’s like the thing was doomed.’

  ‘Well, it was forty-five years ago,’ Miles said, in his cool, phlegmatic way. ‘None of us lives for ever.’

  ‘What did you think, Natalie?’ Lara asked, noticing my silence.

  ‘I found it unsettling,’ I admitted. ‘It made me a bit scared.’

  ‘Scared?’ Stephen mocked. ‘You must be of a very nervous disposition, then.’

  ‘Stephen,’ Angie warned, but I laughed off the remark, not looking at him.

  ‘Maybe I am. I can see why you love it, Lara. A swimming pool is a great stage. It’s such a symbol of pleasure, yet you can never escape the potential for danger.’ Again, I could think only of Molly.

  ‘Did I tell you I thought we could do some open-air cinema over the road next summer?’ Lara spoke of the lido as if it were an extension of her own property. ‘This would be a perfect one to screen.’

  ‘You’ve got to be kidding! It’s a terrible choice,’ Stephen told her. ‘It’s like choosing Alive for your inflight entertainment.’

  ‘Why? Just because someone drowns? Come on.’ She scoffed at the idea that someone might not be able to separate art from life. ‘No one’s going to drown over the road. Not with our crack team of lifeguards. Wouldn’t you say, Georgia?’

  That was when I realized Georgia was sitting in the hanging chair; to do so without it swaying even a fraction seemed to me a rare feat. Had she been there before we arrived or had I missed her joining us?

  ‘What?’ she said to her mother, not so much insolent as indifferent, before answering with a sigh a question that hadn’t been asked: ‘They’re all fine. Everett’s asleep, the others are still watching the movie.’

  ‘Freaky Friday?’

  ‘No. They wanted Mermaid.’

  ‘Mermaid on Mulberry Street?’ Lara, momentarily startled, began laughing. ‘Oh, you haven’t put them through that ordeal, have you?’

  ‘They’re enjoying it,’ Georgia said, quite matter-of-fact. ‘Kids like a bit of old-school.’

  ‘How awful to be described as old-school,’ Lara said, and I couldn’t tell if she was offended or just affecting to be. In any case, she’d lost her daughter’s attention because Georgia was staring at me, a dawning clarity on her face.

  ‘Mum, I’ve just realized!’

  Lara reached theatrically for her daughter’s hand, squeezing the tips of her fingers between her own. ‘What? That your parents are dreadful lushes who should be reported to Social Services?’

  ‘No, I realized that a long time ago.’ Georgia smirked and, to my discomfort, her gaze returned to me. ‘No, I mean Natalie’s top. Isn’t it from that bag you threw out?’

  There was a bewildered silence as everyone turned to look at me and then Lara’s laughter rang out again. ‘I think you might be right, darling. And it wasn’t thrown out, it was donated.’

  ‘I did buy it from the charity shop on the high street,’ I said, annoyed with myself for flushing. I’d thought myself loosely inspired by my new friend, but now it looked like I was stalking her for her bin liners of old clothes. Well, it explained Miles’s fascinated attention, if not Stephen’s.

  ‘What an extraordinary coincidence,’ Angie said.

  ‘Not at all. We obviously have the same excellent taste,’ Lara said easily. I knew then that she must have recognized the garment the moment she saw me, and I felt sure she would have made no comment had Georgia not brought it up. That was kind, I thought. Far from being the vain creature supposed by Gayle, and perhaps others who didn’t know her, she was in fact very sensitive to people’s feelings.

  Below, a car pulled up. ‘Our taxi’s here,’ Ed told me. ‘I thought it was a bit late for Molly to walk.’

  I hadn’t realized he’d ordered one, but had no choice but to follow. I was relieved that Stephen was once more using the bathroom and I was able to avoid saying goodbye to hi
m.

  ‘What did you think of the film?’ I asked Molly in the taxi. ‘Was Lara good in it?’

  ‘Yeah, it was fun. She was fine.’

  Fun, fine: high praise from that age group. The heightened colour in her face did not escape my notice: the evening had meant something to her.

  ‘I’ve seen photos from it,’ I said. ‘Lara’s more glamorous now, if you ask me.’

  ‘She’s not glamorous,’ Ed said, ‘she’s just rich.’

  ‘Oh, come on,’ I protested, ‘that’s unfair. Glamour is about confidence and experience. Wasn’t it Marilyn Monroe who said it can’t be manufactured?’ Then, having reached the level of intoxication at which such things got muddled: ‘Or was it the other way around?’

  ‘All glamour is manufactured,’ Ed said. ‘It’s dependent on products of one sort or another. Haven’t you noticed that no one ever thinks a homeless person is glamorous, however good their bone structure?’ He was being a little humourless, I thought. ‘Anyway, we’re far too old to have our heads turned by someone like Lara Channing. Don’t tell me you actually believe all that stuff ?’

  ‘What stuff ?’ As the car sped along the curve of the park towards the high street, I felt quite nauseous.

  ‘The whole bohemian set-up. The impression they like to give that their lives are so free-spirited and spontaneous. You must see that it’s all being funded by a City job – and City jobs are the opposite of free-spirited, believe me.’

  ‘Maybe. Well, personally, I find Miles quite enigmatic,’ I said.

  ‘In my experience, enigmatic usually just means dull,’ Ed said, and I frowned at him, not appreciating his negative stance, especially in front of Molly.

  Evidently she agreed. ‘That’s really rude, Dad. You were just his guest.’ Which succeeded in silencing him where I had failed.

  Once home, Molly safely in her bedroom, I suggested a nightcap in the kitchen. The blind was up, the lights on, and our figures reflected in the black window. All I could see was the patterned top, once worn by Lara. My skin tingled with fresh embarrassment, yet I knew I wasn’t going to throw it away.