Learning to Swim

by Clare Chambers

  The house which was our destination was a short walk from the common, and the last part of the journey was made on foot over the grass. As we minced along on tiptoes trying not to let our heels sink up to the hilt with every step, I noticed a familiar car crawl down the road bisecting the common and pull over into a parking space.

  ‘Isn’t that your dad?’ asked Frances, squinting, as I ducked behind a tree, dragging her with me.

  ‘Yes, I think so,’ I said, embarrassed and fearful that I had caught him out in some appalling deception.

  ‘What’s he doing?’

  ‘I don’t know. Keep still. What if he sees us?’

  ‘He won’t recognise you anyway,’ said Frances, reasonably. ‘Let’s just hang around here and see what happens.’ To my intense agitation she kept bobbing back and forth from behind the tree to give me progress reports. ‘I think he’s reading a book,’ she said, baffled. ‘He must be meeting someone.’

  After half an hour or so of this, with nothing incriminating having come to light, Frances’ enthusiasm for detective work began to wane. The cold evening air was turning our legs a blotchy purple, and I felt some stirrings of remorse about my navy school overcoat.

  ‘He doesn’t seem to be waiting for anyone,’ Frances finally admitted. ‘He’s not looking up and down the road or anything. He’s just reading.’ As she said this there was the cough of a car starting and the Vauxhall Viva edged out and was soon lost in the traffic. Frances was flummoxed, but I thought I understood. When father vanished it was not because he had somewhere to go or someone to see. He just had to get away – from the house, from mother, perhaps even from me – and to sit alone and read his book in the privacy of his car was the finest freedom he could achieve.

  18

  Rad’s performance as Benedick was treated as an event of some importance in the Radley household. A whole row of seats was booked to accommodate a growing party of friends and relations, including myself, Lawrence, Clarissa, Bill and Daphne and Lexi’s widowed mother, Cecile, who brought along a sort of inflatable cushion. Even Mr Radley had taken a night off from guarding the nation’s biscuits to attend, but in the event his seat, like Banquo’s, remained empty.

  ‘Where’s your dad?’ I whispered to Frances as we waited for the curtain to rise. All around us parents and friends of the actors were fidgeting expectantly, discharging their last coughs, and rustling programmes. I had turned to the cast list in mine straight away. Benedick – Marcus Radley. Strange to think that there might be people here who knew him as Marcus. I would keep the programme in a shoebox of other important mementoes under my bed – even his printed name was precious.

  ‘He didn’t feel too well at the last minute,’ she said. ‘He’s in bed at home.’

  I knew she was lying, not just from the lack of conviction with which she offered the explanation, but from the demeanour of the whole Radley party. Lexi, flanked by Lawrence and Clarissa, was sitting rigidly in her seat with the expression of someone determined to enjoy herself in the teeth of a thoroughly bad temper. Every so often Lawrence would reach over and squeeze her hand encouragingly and she would reward him with a twitch of a smile. Before I could challenge Frances further the house lights dimmed and she turned away from me.

  I suffered a moment’s anxiety before Rad’s first entrance. Would he be any good? Would my infatuation withstand a public display of mediocrity? Fortunately my loyalty was not put to the test: from his opening lines it was clear that he was a natural. The most ornate lines of poetry were delivered as if they had just that moment occurred to him; it didn’t seem like a feat of memory. All around me I could sense people sitting up, alert, attentive, relieved whenever he came on. His accomplishment had the regrettable side-effect of making the rest of the cast look rather workmanlike in comparison. He showed them up for what they were – schoolboy actors, diligently playing their parts, while he was just Benedick, being himself. It was curious to witness the transformation of the reclusive and monosyllabic Rad into this confident and swaggering character. Surely, I reasoned, if he could act the lovestruck hero so convincingly on stage, he must feel some sympathy with the type in real life?

  During the interval we were funnelled out into the school foyer for refreshments: bitter coffee and knobbly home-made biscuits which Frances pounced on as though they were a delicacy. From all sides I could overhear snatches of conversation: ‘… that leading boy …’, ‘… stage presence …’, ‘… marvellous …’, ‘… maturity …’, ‘… drama school, surely? …’ and felt myself glowing with the pride of association. The director of the production, Rad’s drama teacher, a short, youngish man in a black leather jacket, pushed his way through the crowd, fielding words of congratulation, to where we were standing. He introduced himself to Lexi, whom he said Rad had pointed out from the wings, and then had to be introduced to us, which took rather longer. He was evidently somewhat in awe of Lexi, who had a significant advantage in height, for a faint blush rose up his neck as they shook hands and failed to recede all the time they were talking.

  ‘I’m enjoying the production very much,’ said Lexi, giving him her finest smile. She had managed to quell her bad mood.

  ‘It’s all down to your son – he’s exceptionally talented. I was hoping to see you this evening because I’ve been trying to talk Rad into applying for drama school, but he seems a bit dubious. I wondered if you might be able to persuade him.’

  ‘Oh, I would never persuade my children to do anything they felt dubious about,’ said Lexi firmly, but still smiling. ‘I respect their judgement too much for that.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ The blush deepened a shade. ‘I just don’t want him to waste his talent – he is really exceptional.’

  ‘But he’s exceptional at so many things,’ interrupted Cecile, rattling her bracelets which kept snagging on her lacy cuffs. She had a strong German accent, even though Frances said she had lived in England for over fifty years. But then I wouldn’t have expected Lexi’s mother to have adapted her behaviour just to blend in with the surroundings: it wasn’t a family trait. ‘English, French, History, Mathematics, Rugby, Swimming, Chess, Acting, Singing …’ She was getting carried away. Rad couldn’t sing a note. I glanced sideways at Frances to see how she was taking all this public adulation of Rad. That sort of thing could erode your confidence. She looked unperturbed: she was accustomed to hearing his many talents expounded. Her concentration, besides, was taken up with looking around for Nicky. She spotted him at last, standing with his parents, Obs and Solic, and stared at him with great intensity as though the force of her will could make him turn his head. Which it did eventually. He raised his coffee cup in greeting and she blew him a kiss which made him duck, embarrassed.

  A bell rang for the end of the interval and the crowd began to shuffle back into the auditorium. Lawrence and Clarissa had slipped out for a cigarette. I could see them through the glass in the darkness beyond, robed in their private fog. As an entr’acte, a group of musicians in the orchestra pit was playing ‘Greensleeves’ on traditional Elizabethan instruments.

  ‘What’s that funny-looking thing?’ whispered Frances, pointing to a sort of etiolated trombone.

  ‘That’s called a shagboot,’ said Lawrence gravely, which sent the three of us into peals of laughter which were only stifled by the sudden blackout and the creak of the curtain opening.

  I leaned against the unforgiving back of my wooden chair, felt every vertebra making contact, and began to wish I had Cecile’s inflatable cushion. I concentrated on the luxury of being able to stare at Rad without constraint – something not permissible in everyday life – and enjoying that particular warmth that comes from watching someone you love excel themselves. This intensity of contemplation was hard to maintain as every so often Frances would jab me in the ribs with her elbow and whisper ‘shagboot’, and start shaking and snorting all over again.

  There was a momentary frisson of excitement towards the end when on the line ‘Peace I will stop t
hy mouth’, Rad leaned forward and kissed Arlington on the lips. A tremor rippled through the audience and was instantly subdued as the dialogue rolled on, inexorable and reassuring.

  After the final curtain Rad took his applause, which had grown from a patter to a roar as each successive rank of the cast came forward, with the faintest of smiles. Frances had to be restrained from putting two fingers in her mouth and whistling. ‘Damn Michael,’ I heard Lexi mutter to Lawrence through the clapping. ‘He should have been here. Damn him.’

  We loitered in the foyer waiting for our hero to emerge from the changing rooms, while Lawrence went off to find a seat for Cecile. He ended up commandeering a swivel chair from the secretary’s office, on which Cecile perched like a little bejewelled gnome on a toadstool. The crowd had thinned out considerably by the time Rad appeared, clad in his familiar tatty jumper and jeans. Traces of black were still visible between his eyelashes and there was a smear of tan make-up under his chin from ear to ear. He was at once set upon by the family, kissed by the women and slapped between the shoulder blades by the men. Cecile’s lipstick left two cyclamen crescents on his cheek.

  ‘Well done, young man. I suppose it will be the West End next,’ said Uncle Bill, who had, if truth be told, found three hours of Shakespeare an experience not to be repeated.

  ‘Excellent performance,’ said Lawrence.

  ‘Well done, Marcus,’ said Cecile. (He didn’t hit her, I noticed.) ‘You take after your mother in the acting.’

  ‘Rubbish. He’s far better than I was,’ said Lexi. ‘I’m proud of you,’ she added.

  Nicky wandered over. ‘Congratulations,’ he said, pretending to fawn over Rad’s hand.

  ‘You were the best,’ I said.

  ‘What was it like kissing that boy?’ Frances wanted to know.

  ‘Where’s Dad?’ said Rad, and then seeing Lexi hesitate, his eyes narrowed and he snapped, ‘Oh let me guess,’ and strode out to the car.

  19

  My mother left the piece of paper propped on the mantelpiece like a suicide note. It was an advertisement torn from the Times Educational Supplement for a Head of Classics job at my father’s old school in Bristol.

  ‘You’d stand a good chance, wouldn’t you, as an old boy – a scholarship boy, too?’

  It was a Sunday morning; mother had come back from church and put the lunch on and the three of us were in the sitting room reading the papers. It was my first weekend at home in months; Frances was in bed with flu.

  ‘Oh no,’ said father from behind the Arts section. ‘I haven’t got the right pedigree at all – especially not now that we’ve gone Comprehensive.’

  ‘Not the right pedigree?’ mother echoed. ‘But you’re one of them.’

  ‘Would you like me to apply for it, dear?’ my father said wearily, laying down his paper and staring at her through the top of his bifocals.

  ‘Well, of course. Wouldn’t you like to move back to Bristol? Get away from here and all its …’ Even without looking up I could sense her glancing at me before she petered out. I had only been half listening to the exchange which had just taken place, but at the mention of ‘Bristol’ I was all attention.

  ‘What do you mean move to Bristol?’ I said stupidly. ‘You mean leave here?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Your father couldn’t very well commute. It’s a beautiful city – there are some lovely shops in Clifton. Good schools for you too.’

  ‘But we wouldn’t know anyone,’ I said, panic rising in me like bile.

  ‘Oh, you soon make friends,’ said mother dismissively, forgetting that it had taken me a full eleven years to meet the one friend I had.

  ‘What about my cello lessons?’ I knew this would carry more weight with mother than trivial concepts like friendship. I had just passed my seventh grade with distinction; my teacher was pleased with me, and had gone to some trouble to find me a place with a local youth orchestra that met every Monday evening. It was the moment when you either gave up or started to take it all seriously.

  Mother hesitated. This was a tricky one, but there was no weakening now. ‘There will be other good teachers in Bristol. There are probably schools which specialise in music. We wouldn’t let the move jeopardise your cello-playing. Don’t worry about that.’ Opposing one of mother’s sudden enthusiasms was rather like trying to escape the jaws of a shark: the more you struggled, the deeper the bite.

  ‘But I don’t want to move. I like it here.’

  ‘We couldn’t very well go without you,’ said mother.

  ‘You could – I could stay with Frances.’

  This made her flare up. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. I dare say it’s not as exciting here, but we happen to be your parents, and I don’t suppose it’s ever occurred to you that everything that goes on here is for your benefit. I couldn’t even begin to explain what sacrifices have been made for your happiness.’ Mother’s cheeks were crimson and her eyes as close to tears as they ever got. She would have a migraine tomorrow and it would be all my fault.

  Father intervened. ‘The argument is academic. I haven’t even applied for the job and if I did I wouldn’t get it. Can we consider the subject closed?’

  That night I lay awake for some time worrying. I knew my parents: if mother was determined that father apply then he would. As for his not succeeding, I couldn’t entertain that hope. He was my father – how could any other candidate possibly be preferred? Some time after eleven I heard voices from their bedroom. My mother always kept the door ajar so that she would hear the phone if my granny should be the subject of some medical emergency overnight. I crept on to the landing.

  ‘… hadn’t brought up all that business about sacrifices in front of Abigail. What was she supposed to make of that little outburst? It was very unfair.’

  ‘All right, all right. I regret it now. It just came out: I thought she was being unfair to us.’

  ‘But could you really face the upheaval of moving?’ This was father.

  ‘Yes. This place has associations. It would be nice to go somewhere completely new.’

  ‘Happy associations, too?’

  ‘Oh, yes, Abigail and so on.’

  ‘The thing is, Monica, I don’t know if I could cope with a new job. I’m not very good at change.’

  ‘But don’t you have any ambition?’

  ‘You talk as if it’s a virtue.’

  ‘It is, isn’t it, in a man? Aren’t you frustrated stuck where you are with all those youngsters getting promoted over you?’

  ‘Mildly, I suppose, but …’

  ‘Well then.’

  ‘If you really want me to apply for it, dear, I will.’

  ‘I don’t want you to apply for it. I want you to want to.’

  ‘I shall try my best to want to.’

  As predicted mother had a migraine the next day. I knew this the moment I turned into The Close on my way home from school. Her bedroom curtains were closed – a signal as unmistakable as a quarantine flag on a ship. As I dropped my bag in the hallway she called down the stairs. ‘Abigail, can you bring me some more frozen veg?’

  I climbed the stairs, ice-pack in hand. Mother was lying in the gloom with a wet flannel on her forehead and a bucket by the side of the bed. This was a bad one, then. Her skin had a familiar grey tinge. She unpinched her eyes a fraction as I approached and reached out for the peas. The room smelled musty and stale as if all the air had been recently exhaled. I propped the door open, admitting a wedge of light from which mother shrank back fearfully like Count Dracula.

  ‘Here, before Dad comes in,’ she rasped. Her migraines were often accompanied by a semi-paralysis of the vocal chords. I was never entirely sure whether this was a genuine symptom or whether, feeling rotten, she couldn’t help assuming the cracked tones of an invalid. ‘I just wanted a word about this Bristol business. I know how strongly you feel about moving, but I want you to promise not to put any pressure on Daddy. He wants this job so badly. Success is very important to a man, you see. Sometime
s it’s hard for us women to understand things like ambition …’

  I nodded dully. It was a shock to have caught my mother out in a piece of vicious dishonesty, but I couldn’t very well challenge her on the basis of my shabbily acquired knowledge. Liar and eavesdropper, we faced each other across the bed.

  ‘I don’t see why you couldn’t stay the odd weekend with Frances if it came to it. Or have her to stay with us. And there’s always the telephone …’ She reconsidered quickly, remembering my frequent hour-long calls to Frances, ‘… or rather the post. You wouldn’t have to lose touch.’

  Lose touch. She had no idea. Didn’t she realise that our friendship was proof against separation, conflict, change? I wasn’t afraid of losing touch. I was just miserable at the thought of not seeing Frances every day, of missing her and Rad and Lexi and even Mr Radley; of no longer being part of their everyday lives.

  ‘You do promise, don’t you?’

  ‘All right,’ I said ungraciously.

  And so father spent the next couple of evenings composing a letter of application. He would emerge occasionally and read out a paragraph or so for mother’s approval and comment; if she ventured to suggest an improvement he would defend the original at some length and then retire to his study with a martyred air to make the alteration.

  A week later he reported that references had been taken up. His headmaster had passed him in the corridor and said he had recommended father in the most extravagant terms. ‘He’s desperate to get rid of me,’ was father’s interpretation. The letter inviting him for interview arrived while he was at work. Mother, seeing the school’s crest on the envelope, felt it, shook it and held it up to the light to try and divine its contents. ‘It feels too short to be a simple rejection,’ she said, weighing it in the palm of one hand. She pressed it against the glass of the front door. ‘“Dear Mr Onions, Thank you for your letter of application for the post of –” Oh bother! There’s a sort of fold.’ She would not have dreamed of opening the envelope: that would have been altogether too crude.