When Eleanor and Benedict fight, Conrad is sometimes called upon to intervene if he is unfortunate enough to be at home at the time. Marcia would knock and enter his study in the same beat, without waiting for his imperious, ‘Come!’ as she usually would. He knows it would be unreasonable to bar her from his study altogether but he wishes he could somehow explain that having her there sets his teeth on edge and makes him feel as if all the calm, rational molecules in the room have been shaken about and are now whirling around in pointless circles.
‘It’s the children,’ she’d say. ‘You have to do something. You can’t hide in here all day. Come out and be a father for once!’
Conrad would physically separate them, direct them to chairs on either side of the room, then deliver what amounted to a sermon on whatever he felt to be the heart of the matter.
‘Every human being has these base impulses,’ he says on one occasion after an especially ferocious battle. ‘It is entirely natural to want – at times – to hurt, punch, strike, even kill, another person. I am not asking you to pretend to be a saint when you are not.’
‘How on earth is this helping?’ Marcia appears in the doorway. ‘There’s a time for philosophical deliberations, darling, and a time for laying down the law surely?’ She sighs and returns to polishing her family’s silverware.
‘My point,’ he continues, ‘is that one of the key characteristics that distinguishes humans from other animals is our capacity to make conscious choices. We may desire to kill our sibling; we are able to choose not to do so. I leave that thought with you.’
Benedict, who has been rolling his eyes and making faces at his sister throughout, slouches off, leaving the words unabsorbed behind him.
Eleanor sits in silence for a while, then asks, ‘Is it really all right that I sometimes think my life would be nicer if Benedict didn’t exist?’
‘Ye-e-e-e-s.’ Conrad wonders if perhaps his wife is right and he should simply have given them both a sharp smack and told them not to do it again. ‘But…?’
‘But it would be wrong to try to harm him?’
‘That’s correct.’ He looks at her, trying to read her. She is a funny little thing, rather serious and sort of… opaque. Self-contained. ‘Do you understand why?’
‘Is it because I could be sent to prison?’
‘Well. That’s one very good reason, certainly. But not the only one. And I think most prisoners would tell you that going to prison has ruined their lives. But also, if you hurt another person, you might injure them irrevocably and—’
‘What’s irrevocably?’
‘Irreversibly. Something you can’t undo.’
She nods and he sees that she has squirrelled it away for future use, a word worth saving, like a beautiful shell found on the shore.
‘Also, you would be lessening yourself.’
‘Why would I?’
‘Because…’ He draws up a chair and sits down close to her. ‘Because if you act in a way that is… hmm… not just bad but significantly worse than your own idea of yourself, you will sacrifice your self-respect, your sense of yourself as a worthwhile, decent person. I believe self-respect is very important and it is not something I would choose to give up just to satisfy a passing whim to hurt someone else.’
A little frown crosses her face and he can tell that she is mulling it over, turning it around in her head to see it from all sides.
Then she gives a small nod and says, ‘I see.’
The children are absolutely forbidden to come and bother Conrad in his study if the door is closed, as it usually is. Nor are they to enter if he is not there. There is, he reminds them, nothing they could need that could not be obtained elsewhere in the house. Scissors, pencils, paper, sticky tape, interesting books, etc. – all are available for their use but not from his study.
Early one Saturday morning, however, he comes across Eleanor sitting in his office chair, twisting this way and that, gazing into one of the drawers in his desk. She doesn’t seem to be looking for anything in particular and when he asks her what on earth she thinks she is doing, what part of the word ‘private’ does she fail to understand, she looks up at him with puzzled brows and a sad mouth.
‘But I want to know what it feels like to be you.’
Although this is clearly just a fanciful childish notion, her words surprise him and defuse his anger, so he simply nods and tells her to run along now and not to come in again without permission. Afterwards, he sits in his chair and looks into the drawer at the jumble of pens and paperclips, as she had done. He regrets having barked at her and wishes instead he had thought to pause and observe her. The thought strikes him that she is really quite an interesting child. No. An interesting person. It has not occurred to him before that children might be intelligent, amusing or diverting companions, people with whom you might choose to converse or spend time. He looks down into the drawer again, and twirls playfully this way and that in his chair. He shuts his eyes and suddenly spins the seat in a complete circle. For a few moments, he lets his mind spin, too, and wonders what on earth it might feel like to be Eleanor.
18
Deep Water
Sunday was usually a pottering sort of day. Sometimes Eleanor went to a farmers’ market or an antiques fair, with Hannah tagging along when she’d still been at home, or with Sarah if she were free, while Roger stayed at home to work on the garden. Periodically, Eleanor helped in the garden, too, attending to the tasks Roger disliked: dead-heading the spent flowers, clipping the dwarf box hedges that flanked the path in the front garden, tying in the clematis and roses to the trellis – a fiddly job more suited to someone with patience and fine fingers. Today, however, Roger said he really ought to put in a couple of hours at the gym. Then he might go to a pub for a pint while he checked his emails before heading home for lunch. Eleanor fancied a swim. The chicken was already prepared with lemon and herbs, sitting in its roasting tin, and the potatoes were peeled and par-boiled ready to roast, so it would be easy to shove it all in the oven when she got back. She dashed upstairs to put on her swimsuit under her clothes.
Eleanor usually swam a couple of times a week in a public pool, but on a Sunday morning, it was likely to be very crowded. Today, the sky was bright and the temperature mild, almost spring-like. The bare trees looked as if they might be about to burst into leaf rather than ready to hunker down for the winter. Suddenly, the prospect of the pool seemed less inviting: the tang of chlorine in her nostrils; the antiseptic footbath you had to walk through between the showers and the pool, which always made her feel like a ewe being corralled through a tank of sheep-dip; the men hogging the fast lane even when they were poor swimmers. How lovely it would be to swim outside today, to hear birdsong and feel fresh air on her face. She didn’t want to plough up and down a soulless tiled rectangle.
She started the car and drove to the narrow, tucked away side road where those in the know parked for the eastern side of the Heath and the swimming ponds.
Some time ago, she and Sarah used to swim once a week here at the Ladies’ Pond on Hampstead Heath, but on every occasion Roger had made such heavy weather of it, asking what was so special about swimming in that muddy hole anyway, for God’s sake, and wasn’t it all just a bunch of men-hating dykes, they might as well call it the Lesbians’ Pond and have done with it? And then a woman had died of a heart attack at the pond and Roger had put his foot down and forbidden her to go again, saying it was ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous, this obsession with the pond, it was far too cold for a normal person. Sarah, never quite as keen in the first place, hadn’t wanted to carry on without her.
Now Eleanor took out her mobile and sent Sarah a text:
Sorry I haven’t called. At the heath now. Going to swim in our pond. Wish you were here. Come if you can. Much love – E x.
In the past, she had first swum in summer, then as the water gradually cooled through autumn, it prepared you so that you could carry on right the way through winter, if you had the w
ill and the nerve to do it.
She hovered outside the entrance to the pond for a minute. It was silly really. What did it matter either way? Eleanor felt almost guilty, as if Roger might be observing her via some hidden CCTV camera. She darted a look along the path in each direction, then took a breath and went towards the changing room.
There were three or four women there already. Eleanor quickly took off her clothes down to her swimsuit and pinned her hair up. She didn’t bother with goggles here because the water was rather murky and you couldn’t really see anything. Anyway, it was a pleasure to swim with your head above the water, so you could see and hear the pond and its environs: ducks waddling along the bank, the occasional heron poised absolutely motionless, the sound of women talking and laughing by the steps.
She checked the water temperature, which was chalked up each day on a blackboard by the changing room: 11°C. Much colder than a swimming pool, of course, but by now she was determined to go ahead. Eleanor sat on the edge of the platform by the metal steps and inserted one foot. Yikes! Still, after the first shock, the hideousness as the cold hit your waist, your breasts, your shoulders, if you got in and got moving you soon warmed up.
She slowed her breathing, then turned and lowered herself in. The first thirty seconds or so were always a bit of a horror, more so these days as she so rarely swam outdoors other than that time in Suffolk with Sarah a couple of weeks ago. Just as she was thinking – well, maybe Roger was right; this is daft really; I should just go to the swimming pool as usual – she noticed another woman, who looked familiar, hovering by the steps. Ah, yes, the swim-cap lady! She was wearing a plain navy swimsuit and a memorable swimming cap absolutely covered in three-dimensional unashamedly clashing fake flowers: yellow and pink and lime green and orange.
‘How hideous is it today?’ she called down to Eleanor.
‘It’s just balmy! Practically like a bath.’
The woman laughed.
‘Oh, well, nothing ventured, I suppose…’ She climbed down via the steps with a sharp intake of breath then trod water next to Eleanor. ‘You look familiar – didn’t you used to swim here?’
‘Yes, I’m sure I’ve seen you before. I do love your hat.’
‘Thank you. Why did you stop? Just too grim when it’s cold?’
‘Hmm. No, it wasn’t that. Shall we swim to warm up?’ They struck out side by side in a steady breast-stroke. ‘Actually, my husband got freaked out by that awful case of the woman who had a heart attack here and he forbade me to come again.’
‘Forbade you? What’s it got to do with him? And anyway, she had a pre-existing heart condition, you know. If you’re healthy, you should be fine.’
Eleanor glanced across at her and said nothing.
‘Sorry, I’m very blunt. It’s always getting me into trouble.’
‘No, it’s fine. You’re right, though. I’m not sure that it is to do with him really.’
The woman smiled.
‘And so what will the husband say when you tell him you swam in the forbidden pond today? Is he like Bluebeard? “Wife, you have broken the sacred eleventh commandment: Thou shalt not swim in the Ladies’ Pond. I shall lock you up in the attic with the bodies of all my previous wives! Heh, heh, heh!”’
Eleanor laughed.
‘I was thinking of getting round the problem by not telling him I’ve been here.’
The woman made a face but said nothing.
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
‘No, go on. You said you were blunt. What do you think? I’d like to know.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. I’m… well, I’m not good at this sort of thing. With conflict, I mean. I hate arguing. I kind of had my fill of shouting and door-slamming when I was growing up and I can’t bear it.’ Funny how effortless it was at times to be truthful to a stranger. ‘If I think he won’t like something, I usually try to get round it somehow…’
‘By doing it in secret so he won’t know?’
Eleanor thought of the novel she was reading, now tucked in right at the back of the airing cupboard in the middle of a stack of laundered bedsheets.
‘Yes.’ She felt tears prick her eyes and she turned away for a moment. ‘I realise that must sound awfully silly. It’s just that I’ve got used to it being that way so I do it automatically, but now I hear myself saying it out loud, it sounds ridiculous.’ Eleanor smiled at her. ‘So, tell me then?’
‘Well, you said it yourself. It is a little ridiculous. You’re an adult. You’re not seven years old. Presumably, he’s not actually going to lock you up in the attic, is he? If I were you, I’d be asking myself if this was really how I wanted my life to be.’
Eleanor met her gaze, then looked away.
They swam one more circuit in silence. The trouble with other people is that they didn’t understand. It was all very well to stand on the sidelines, making judgements about people and their lives and their marriages, and telling them how to make it better, but it wasn’t the same as being in it.
‘I’m sorry, I fear I’ve offended you.’ The swim-cap lady said, following Eleanor as she pulled herself out. ‘I really am a bull in a china shop.’
‘No, it’s fine. I was just getting too cold.’
‘Me, too. I’m going for a hot chocolate to warm up. Care to join me?’
‘Thank you.’ Eleanor grabbed her towel to head for the showers. ‘But, well, I should be getting back, really. I have to get the lunch on.’
‘Right. Of course. Well, sorry again. I enjoyed talking to you.’
In the shower, Eleanor heard someone call out from the doorway of the changing room.
‘Yoo-hoo! Are you in there?’
‘Is that the swim-cap lady?’
‘Yes. I just wanted to say, I’m really sorry I’m such a clod and I hope you come back soon. Whatever Bluebeard thinks.’
‘I will!’ Eleanor called out. ‘I’m Eleanor, by the way.’
‘Good to meet you! See you soon. I’m Cecilia.’
On the way back to the car, Eleanor’s skin felt tingly and alive, her whole body fizzing as if her veins were rushing with clear lemonade. She had forgotten this feeling, how amazing you felt a few minutes after you got out of such cold water, as if every cell were dancing at the thrill of simply being alive.
She tugged out her mobile from her bag. There were a couple of texts: one from Sarah and one from her son, Daniel – a simple ‘hi’ followed by a question mark, his usual shorthand to see if she was free for a quick chat. They usually ate lunch quite late on a Sunday so there was no desperate rush to get the chicken on. Daniel almost never phoned home these days, in case his father answered. There had been a falling-out over his choice of degree: Roger had tried to steer him towards science, whereas Dan had wanted to study history. ‘What’s the use of it, for God’s sake, Daniel? You’re young – you should be looking to the future, not the past. Or go and do accountancy training. Something with some sort of relevance to today’s world, at least!’ In the end, Daniel had stuck to his guns, taken out a student loan rather than accept any money from his dad, and the two – never close at the best of times – were now stuck in a stand-off.
‘Hey, Mum. How are you doing? And how’s the Gauleiter behaving without us there to look out for you?’
‘Now, now. He’s fine. Anyway, tell me what you’re up to and when will you break up for Christmas?’
‘Oh yes, I can give you my dates and all that, but first, do you promise me you’re really OK?’
‘Of course I am. I’m absolutely fine.’ Her conversation with Cecilia in the pond rose to the surface. If I were you, I’d be asking myself… Well, you’re not me. Eleanor pushed the thought back down. It really wasn’t at all helpful. ‘We pootle along together in our middle-aged way perfectly well.’
‘As long as he’s not bullying you?’
‘That’s a bit harsh.’
‘Is it? Really?’
‘Well, I think it’s just that y
our dad doesn’t handle… dissent terribly well. He can’t understand it when other people don’t see things exactly as he does. It’s more of a slight shortage of imagination and empathy, perhaps, than a deliberate intention to bully.’
‘That’s complete crap, Mum, and you know it. Only you could possibly put such a generous spin on it. He absolutely has an intention to bully. Look how you always end up going on holiday to hot places even though you hate the heat!’
‘That’s not true. We went to Yorkshire once.’
‘Exactly – once!’ And I remember he moaned about the weather almost the entire time we were there, so he spoiled it for the rest of us anyway.’
‘Well, never mind that now. Tell me what you’ve been up to.’ And then they talked happily about Dan’s current flatmates, his fabulous girlfriend, Alice, and the band he’d just joined as a singer. At the end, he rang off with a cheery, ‘Love you, Mum!’ and left her feeling happy.
She opened the text from Sarah then, wondering if she might be annoyed as they hadn’t spoken for a couple of weeks.
Nothing to be sorry for. I’ve missed you. Can’t swim now but supper next week? Much love, S x
At lunch, Roger asked briefly if she’d had a nice swim and she said yes, then the conversation inevitably turned back to him and his workout at the gym and how he’d talked to one of the personal trainers about devising a targeted programme because honestly, darling, he didn’t know if she’d noticed at all but he was really getting quite a paunch these days. Then he detoured onto assorted inadequacies of the gym, shocking, given how extortionate the membership fees were, how the lockers should include those fixed-in hangers, given that some members, such as himself, obviously wanted to hang up their jacket properly, and then onto how disgusting some men were, failing to wipe their sweat off the machines with their towels after use even though there were clear, laminated signs indicating that you should do precisely that. Eleanor agreed that it was certainly a very poor show and indeed people so often didn’t follow reasonable standards of behaviour, did they, while wondering if she might have some laminated signs made herself to pin up around the house: ‘Please hang up your towel after use’, and ‘The dishwasher is not merely ornamental – feel free to put your dirty dishes in it’, and ‘Please rinse out your cafetière before I hurl it at your head’, and offered him some more roast potatoes.
Growing Up for Beginners Page 12
