The Swimmer

by Roma Tearne

  I closed the window and began to dress, folding and pleating my sari, slowly. My hands looked black against the unnatural snow-light. Come back, come back, come back, my heart cried. I did not hear the soft knock on the door.

  ‘Can I come in?’ Ria asked from the other side of the door.

  I could not speak.

  ‘Anula?’ she opened the door a fraction. ‘I’ve brought you a cup of tea.’

  She hesitated. We both stood looking at each other. For the smallest fraction of a moment I think we might have embraced, but then the moment passed, unattended. We are, I suppose, proud women. That is what we have in common. I took the tea from her, nodding my thanks. Unwilling to speak.

  ‘I have a friend downstairs.’

  She sounded uncertain.

  ‘I’d like you to meet. His name is Eric. He’s…’

  Again she hesitated. She was nervous.

  ‘He knew Ben.’

  I could feel my ability to act politely slipping away.

  ‘Well, come down when you want,’ she said finally. ‘I’ll be in the kitchen.’

  And she left quickly, with a downward sweep of her eyelashes. Wearily, for what else could I do, I washed my face of tears and went down. Outside the kitchen I hesitated, listening to the voices.

  ‘There’s ice on the car,’ Ria was saying.

  A man’s voice answered, softly. I was startled to hear it. The cold rushed around my ankles, my sari was thin like tracing paper. I opened the door and went in, and instantly there was a scraping of chairs as they both got up.

  ‘You must be freezing,’ Ria said.

  Was she trying to sound concerned to impress the man?

  ‘Let me get you something warm to put over…that.’

  The man was very tall and he stooped slightly. He was watching me silently. I remember thinking I liked his face. It was bright with a kind of terrible sympathy. I noticed he had very sharp blue eyes and I had the strangest feeling of having met him somewhere else, long before. Confused, I felt he had stepped off the pages of the Hardy novel I had once loved and the title of which now escaped me. When he spoke, his voice was very soft and a little slurry. I could not guess his age.

  ‘I am Eric,’ he said. Holding out his hand. ‘I would have known you were the lad’s mother, anywhere.’

  I couldn’t trust myself to speak.

  ‘He was like a photocopy of you!’

  Stunned, I could only stare at him.

  ‘Yes,’ Ria said. ‘Ben’s mother, Anula. That’s right.’

  She gave me a cardigan to wear and a pair of socks. There was a pause while she took three mugs from the dresser. There was a basket at Eric’s feet.

  ‘What d’you want me to do with this?’

  I could tell by the way she spoke they were comfortable with each other.

  ‘It’s for the lady,’ he said. ‘It’s hers.’

  And he gave me another sharp, bright look. He reminded me of a sprightly bird.

  ‘What sort of basket is it?’ I asked faintly.

  It had been woven with some sort of green twigs. I wondered what kind of basket could be so long and thin and with such a small, narrow opening.

  ‘Not a basket,’ he corrected me. ‘It’s an eel-trap, made of willow. I was teaching your lad how to make them, so he could give it a go in the spring. As it was, there was no use for that,’ his voice trailed away.

  We were silent.

  ‘But he’d started to make one,’ Eric said. ‘This is it. Never finished, but I reckoned you’d like to have something. And the willows, you know, weeping willows…Do you have them, in your home?’

  I looked at him. Something moved the hard lump in my chest. A fragment of stone fell away. It was too small to make a difference, but still, I felt it happen. We were silent together and then spoke at the same time.

  ‘I’ve never seen snow before.’

  ‘I’ll get you a pair of thick shoes,’ Ria said.

  ‘The river’s frozen over. No eels today!’

  Eric smiled faintly.

  ‘It’s what January used to be like,’ he said. ‘No proper winter weather. The sort we used to have. When the milk froze in the bottle and the icicles formed on the inside of the lavatory!’ Icicles were not something I knew anything about.

  ‘We haven’t had this kind of bitter weather for a long time,’ he said, getting out a pipe and tapping it. ‘Ten years or more, maybe. There’s just been warm winters, with the forsythia coming earlier and earlier. Shouldn’t happen, but it does.’

  I nodded, not knowing what to say. We sipped our tea.

  ‘Have you heard about the warming, in your part of the world?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. We know all about what’s happening to the rainforest and the desert in Jaffna. But there is a war on in my country.’

  Killing is what preoccupies us, I wanted to say. We’ll think about the world later.

  There was a pause. The telephone rang and Ria went out. I felt the atmosphere lighten.

  ‘It’s happening here, too; here in Suffolk,’ Eric said. ‘The sea is moving in, year by year, inch by inch. No one in the government does anything much. This summit and that summit, but the sea doesn’t care. We’ve got freak tides and the rivers are changing. We don’t get many eels any more. This was the place where the old eel catchers used to live. There’ve been eel catchers here for two hundred years. Now I’m all that’s left!’

  We sipped our tea.

  ‘And the winters that I knew as a lad are gone,’ Eric said. ‘Now and again, things go back to how they were and we get a real winter, with snow and such like. And then we’ll have a spring that isn’t silent. It’s a joy when that happens.’

  He finished his tea.

  ‘It’s the earth’s way of saying goodbye,’ he said unexpectedly. ‘It knows there is no future. It’s nature’s way, slowly, looking backwards, like Persephone.’

  I was suddenly alert, mesmerised by his voice. Ria came back in. Then she made fresh tea.

  ‘Only people take it to mean there is no crisis, no warming,’ Eric continued. ‘But I tell you, there is!’

  ‘Eric has lived over at Fruit Tree Farm for ever, haven’t you, Eric?’ Ria said.

  I was startled by the change in her voice. She likes him, I thought, and then I decided. So do I.

  ‘I was born there. All of us were. I had six brothers and sisters. Not all of them survived childhood. My older brother and I took over the farm. The rest are all dead now, of course. I was the youngest.’

  He held out his mug. I could see he was a frequent visitor here.

  ‘There were Bessie and Dick and Ted, and one that died young. And then there was Franny, she was the wildest, and Marge. And last of all, me.’

  His eyes twinkled and I was distracted.

  ‘You come from a large family?’ he asked. ‘Over the way? Where you’re from?’

  Ria laughed. It was the first time I had heard the sound in months and this, too, startled me. It was the first conversation that I was involved in that didn’t feature Ben. The laughter brought on a different kind of pain. Ria was watching me.

  ‘There were two of us,’ I said. ‘I was the oldest.’

  I too am all that’s left.

  ‘Eric has an extraordinary local knowledge,’ Ria volunteered. ‘He knows all about the tides, the winds and the weather histories in the whole of his patch.’

  Eric nodded. He looked faintly pleased.

  ‘I’m sixty-two,’ he said.

  ‘He knows the stories of the inhabitants, living and dead, and the birds and fish that lived and thrived here, or died throughout the twentieth century, don’t you, Eric,’ Ria said. ‘Distance doesn’t mean the same to Eric as it does to most people.’

  I know all this, I thought with sudden anger. I can sense it. I felt disturbed. The conversation had moved away from Ben. As if already he was no longer part of the landscape, already a ghost. But strangely, I felt comforted by Eric’s presence. I didn’t want him t
o go away, I did not want him to leave me alone with Ria. As if he understood, he looked directly at me and then turned to Ria.

  ‘What’s happening, Ria? What has to be done?’

  ‘Nothing today. We’ve got to wait until Monday morning to see the solicitor and…the other things.’

  I swallowed.

  ‘So there is a space to breathe, then?’

  Ria nodded.

  ‘Why don’t you both come over to the farm for lunch?’

  ‘I can’t,’ Ria said. ‘I’m waiting for a phone call from Jack. He might be visiting, briefly.’

  Eric frowned.

  ‘Hasn’t he said enough?’ he asked. ‘Hasn’t he meddled enough?’

  He looked suddenly angry. There was tension between them I didn’t understand.

  ‘I can drive Anula over, though,’ Ria said. ‘If you want?’

  I was extraordinarily pleased but didn’t want to put them both to such trouble.

  ‘I could walk,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t be silly. I’d drive you.’

  She seemed galvanised, suddenly.

  ‘It isn’t far. Eric’s farm is worth seeing. It will be a good thing for you to do.’

  She was trying to be nice, I thought, but then she added:

  ‘I’ll come back and wait for my brother Jack.’

  Ah! I thought; it isn’t like that at all. She just wants me out of the way. Well, it suited me, too. I did not want to see her brother. Eric looked from one to the other of us.

  ‘Good,’ he said, standing up.

  Then he began to put his hat and coat and gloves on. He wound his scarf around his neck and slipped on some large rubber boots.

  ‘I’ll see you at one, then,’ he said.

  And he left with a wave of his hand.

  Eric’s farm was not far but Ria had a steady stream of phone calls which delayed us and it was past one before we left. I had spent the morning staring blankly out of the window at the snow, waiting. The light hurt my eyes. At one point Ria handed me a newspaper with the report of the shooting, but I didn’t want to look at it. I had heard somewhere that after a stillbirth a woman was given tablets to dry her milk. Perhaps tears were like mother’s milk and the tablets Ria had got from the doctor were drying my tears.

  I could have walked to the farm, but Ria insisted on driving me anyway. I noticed the snow had flattened the appearance of the fields, making them similar, removing all distinguishing features. As we drove up to the farmhouse a dog began barking and rushed towards us in a flurry of kicked-up, powdery snow. A moment later Eric appeared, walking slowly, along the side of his house. When he saw us he raised his arm in greeting and headed towards the door, holding it open for me. Ria would not stay.

  ‘I’ll be back in a couple of hours, if that’s okay?’ she said. ‘Ring me when you’re ready to come back.’

  I sensed her desire to be gone. The dog followed her back to the car, wagging his tail, no longer barking. Then when she had driven off it came back and whined to be let in.

  ‘Will you take a bowl of soup with me?’ Eric asked when he had hung up both our coats.

  I was busy looking around his kitchen. It held traces of the woman who must have once lived there. A pair of faded curtains that had seen better days, an embroidered picture on the wall, a wedding photograph of a young man and a girl. The girl was laughing up at the camera, the man, no more than a boy, looked solemn. I felt my heart flex unaccountably. Hanging over the stove, which was very old and blackened, was a cloth heart tied with a colourless ribbon. Be My Valentine, it said in faint stitched letters. A saucepan simmered. I remembered him saying he had been born in this house. Continuity presented itself to me without preamble, the blessedness of it, the simplicity. Eric held two dove-white bowls in his hand. His expression was unreadable. Everything in the room was yellowed with age. I had a sudden, clear picture of the green curtain that separated Ben’s room from the rest of our small bungalow. Sunlight filtered down through the trees and a monkey screamed with the piteous sound of a child. The day shifted gear. The blinding light from the snow outside was adding to my sense of unreality.

  ‘It can only get easier,’ he said, so softly that I barely caught the sense of his words.

  There was something terribly sweet about his voice. I trembled. He put another log on the fire and we both sat quietly for a few moments.

  ‘In Sri Lanka,’ I said, ‘when I was a child, we used to cook in clay pots on an open fire.’

  The saucepan on the stove grumbled and bubbled. A black-and-white cat was curled up on the brick ledge nearby. Eric bent his head towards me. He still had a full head of curly hair. It was white but once it would have been black. The watch on his wrist was beautiful, I thought irrelevantly.

  ‘Did you live in the countryside?’ he asked.

  I could hardly catch what he was saying.

  ‘Yes.’

  We continued to sit watching the flames. At last I broke the silence.

  ‘You knew my son…well?’

  ‘I did. Not straight away. He was working at the next farm over, but one day I saw him swimming in the inlet near Ria’s house. I was checking my eel-traps, we got talking, you know…’

  He picked up a bottle from the shelf behind him and poured wine into tiny, beautiful glasses. The liquid was golden.

  ‘I heard music coming from Eel House, another time,’ he said. ‘Blues music. It was drifting out towards the river. Way upstream. Ah! I thought, and I went to have a look. It’d been a long time since I heard music coming from there. Try some of this,’ he added, raising his glass to his lips. ‘It’s red onion wine.’

  The wine was sweet, not a bit like onion. Again we sat in silence. He put his hand out and touched the folds of my sari, curiously.

  ‘I’ve never seen one of these up close,’ he said.

  He smiled apologetically, and in spite of myself I smiled, too. He had the most piercing gaze. I saw a confusion of grief in it, mirroring my own.

  ‘Isn’t it cold, wearing it?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘It’s what I’m used to. It’s what I am.’

  He nodded, as if satisfied by my answer. Then he poured out the soup. He cut two chunks of bread and placed a small square of butter, some knives and two spoons on the table. He wouldn’t let me help him.

  ‘No, you rest,’ he said.

  The dog was whining again but he ignored it. We ate in silence with the only sound being the slight spitting of the fire and our spoons scraping against the bowls. I suspended all thoughts for the moment. Like a pilgrim on the way to Adam’s Peak, in the centre of Sri Lanka, I rested in this oasis of calm.

  ‘He was a long-distance crosser, was your lad,’ he said, finally.

  The tone of his voice was gentle. It was many years since I had heard such an expression.

  ‘Like the geese,’ he said. ‘Or the egrets and the coots. They come from all over the world. Like the eels, too. Beautiful creatures, all of them.’

  He finished his tiny glass of wine. His face in repose was still handsome. It was the same face, I suspected, that had been loved when he was a child. He reached for the bottle and offered me more wine. When I shook my head he poured himself some instead. I felt a confusion of emotion struggle within me. He understands, I thought. He knows how I feel.

  ‘The rivers used to be full of them in the summer—the eels, I mean. Some people didn’t use to like them, they were afraid of the thought of them, I think. But eels are beautiful creatures, you know. Did you know they swim all the way over here from the Sargasso Sea?’

  His voice was a caress. I shook my head.

  ‘They do! All the way. Can you imagine? I used to wonder what the Sargasso Sea was like when I was a lad. Mother used to say, “Well, go, then! Leave the farm and go find it!” But I never did, of course. Too frightened to leave. Little skinny chicken, I was.’

  He chuckled. The sound was startling. Like a bell clearing the air.

  ‘Know what I
mean?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Well, it didn’t stop me dreaming. On spring nights, when it was warming up and the water was still, I used to row my boat along the river, just around here. Not far from Eel House. Ria’s Uncle Clifford used to let me put my traps along his stretch of water.’

  He paused.

  ‘I became an expert at catching them.’

  I was listening properly, now, trying to imagine the river in warm weather.

  ‘They were beautiful when they first arrived. We used to call them glass eels on account of the fact they were so transparent. Like old-fashioned green bottle glass. When they started out from the Caribbean they were quite small. It took them about three years to get here.’

  It was clear that this notion still amazed him.

  He stopped speaking and gave me a curious look which I couldn’t respond to. Then, with a small, modest gesture he put his hand over mine. I sat very still as if my survival depended on it. Since my arrival in this country, touch had been mostly absent. Now, with no warning, I began to cry. Eric sat with my hand covered by his, never moving while the fire crackled and spat, until at last I raised my head and found him looking at me. I wiped my eyes and blew my nose and still he sat without speaking.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, making a useless gesture with my hands.

  ‘I was thinking,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That you must have looked like this when you were small; when you fell over, when you were unhappy. This would have been how you looked. Young and full of despair. Full of passion.’

  I was so taken aback that I didn’t say anything. Then I asked, did he mean childhood unhappiness was preparation for this terrible day? He shook his head.

  ‘No.’ He smiled. ‘I simply meant you would have looked beautiful even then. I hope you don’t mind me saying this.’