Swimming Pool Sunday (3 page)

‘That’s unfair, Barnaby.’

‘It’s perfectly fair!’ Barnaby’s voice was getting louder and louder. ‘If you want to go swimming with lover boy, then I don’t want to get in your way.’

Louise’s eyes swivelled, before she could stop them, towards a new shiny photograph, freshly pinned up on the notice-board behind the door. Barnaby’s gaze followed. His heart gave an unpleasant thud. The picture was of Louise, smiling, standing next to an elegant young man with smooth brown skin and glossy dark hair, on the steps of some grand-looking building that Barnaby didn’t recognize. They were both in evening dress; Louise wore a silky blue dress that Barnaby had never seen before. The man wore a double-breasted dinner jacket; his patent-leather dress shoes were impeccably polished and his hair had a confident well-groomed sheen. As he stared, unable to move his eyes away, Barnaby’s chest grew heavy with despair and loathing. He scanned the picture bitterly, as though searching for details, for clues; trying not to notice the excited happy look in Louise’s face as she stood, with a strange man, in a strange
place, smiling for a strange photographer.

Abruptly, he turned to Louise. ‘You’ve had your hair cut.’

Louise, who had been expecting something more aggressive than that, looked surprised.

‘Yes,’ she said. Her hand moved up to her neck. ‘Do you like it?’

‘It makes you look … sexy.’

Barnaby sounded so gloomy that Louise smiled, in spite of herself.

‘Isn’t that good? Don’t you like me looking sexy?’ She was moving on to dangerous ground, but Barnaby didn’t take the bait. He was staring at her with miserable blue eyes.

‘You look like someone else’s idea of sexy, not mine.’

Louise didn’t know what to say. She took a sip of coffee. Barnaby slumped in his chair as though in sudden defeat.

For a few minutes they sat still, in almost companionable silence. Louise’s thoughts gradually loosened themselves from the current situation and began to float idly around her mind like dust particles in the sunshine, bouncing quickly away whenever she inadvertently hit on anything too painful or serious. Sitting, sipping her coffee, feeling the sunshine warm on her face, she could almost forget about everything else. Meanwhile Barnaby sat, in spite of himself, blackly imagining Louise in a pair of strong dinner-jacketed arms; dancing, whirling, laughing, being happy, how
could
she?

Suddenly there was a rattling at the back door. Louise looked up. Katie was beaming in through the kitchen window, triumphantly clutching a shiny can. The door opened and Amelia bounded in.

‘We had a lift,’ she said breathlessly, ‘from Mrs Seddon-Wilson. She said, were we going to the swimming?’

‘And we said, yes we were, nearly,’ said Katie. She danced over to Barnaby. ‘Are we going, Daddy? Are we going swimming?’

‘We haven’t talked about it yet,’ said Louise quickly.

‘You
must
have!’ said Katie in astonishment. ‘You were talking all that time, when we went to the shop and got our drinks … They didn’t have any Sprite,’ she added sorrowfully, ‘but I got Fanta.’ She offered her can to Louise.

‘May you open my drink for me?’

‘In a minute,’ said Louise, distractedly.

‘Are we going swimming, Mummy?’ asked Amelia anxiously. ‘Mrs Seddon-Wilson said it was going to be tremendous fun.’

‘
Tremendous
fun,’ echoed Katie, ‘and I told her about my new swimming-suit and she said it sounded lovely.’

‘What about it, Barnaby?’ Louise adopted a brisk businesslike voice. ‘Can they go swimming?’ Barnaby looked up. His face was pink.

‘I think the girls and I should go fishing as planned,’ he said stoutly. He looked at Katie. ‘Come on, Katkin. Don’t you want to use your new rod?’

‘Yes, I do,’ said Katie simply. ‘I want to go fishing, but I want to go swimming, too.’

‘But you go swimming every week at school,’ said Barnaby, trying not to sound hectoring.

‘I know we do, Daddy,’ said Amelia, in an attempt to mollify, ‘but this swimming is different. It’s the Swimming Day. It only happens once a year.’

‘Well, tell you what,’ said Barnaby, giving her a wide smile. ‘I’ll speak to Hugh, and get him to invite us over to swim another day; just us. How about that?’ Amelia looked down and swung her foot.

‘It won’t be the same,’ she said in barely audible tones. Barnaby’s good humour snapped.

‘Why not?’ he suddenly bellowed. ‘Why is it so important that you go swimming today? What’s wrong
with the lot of you?’ Louise’s eyes flashed.

‘There’s nothing wrong with the girls,’ she said icily, ‘just because they want to spend a nice hot day swimming with their friends.’ She put a proprietorial hand on Amelia’s shoulder. Amelia looked at the floor. Suddenly Katie gave a sob.

‘I’ll go fishing, Daddy! I’ll go fishing with you! Where’s my rod?’ She fumbled with the back door and rushed out into the garden.

‘Oh great,’ said Louise curtly. ‘Well, if you want to blackmail them into going with you, that’s fine.’

‘How dare you!’ Barnaby drew an angry breath. His cheeks had flushed dark red, and his forehead had begun to glisten. ‘It’s nothing to do with blackmail. Katie wants to come fishing. So would Amelia, if you hadn’t …’

‘If I hadn’t what?’ Louise’s grip tightened on Amelia’s shoulder. ‘If I hadn’t what, Barnaby?’

Barnaby looked at the two of them, mother and daughter, and suddenly a defeated look came into his eyes. ‘Nothing,’ he muttered.

Then the back door opened and Katie was in the kitchen again. She was holding her rod in one hand and a piece of tangled elastic in the other. ‘I nearly couldn’t find my French skipping,’ she said breathlessly.

‘Are you sure you want to go fishing?’ said Louise, ignoring Barnaby’s glance.

‘Yes, I’m
quite
sure,’ said Katie grandly. ‘And anyway, I’ve got my swimming-suit on under my dress, so I can go swimming with the little fishes.’ Barnaby began to say something, then stopped.

‘All right,’ said Louise. ‘Well, we’ll see you later, then.’ She looked at Barnaby. ‘Not too late.’

Barnaby looked at Amelia. He gave her a friendly smile.

‘How about you, Amelia? Want to come fishing?’
Amelia blushed. She looked up at Louise, then back at Barnaby.

‘Not really,’ she said in a small voice. ‘I want to go swimming. Do you mind, Daddy?’ Barnaby’s cheerful expression barely faltered.

‘Well,’ he said slowly, ‘of course I’d love you to come with us, but not if you’d rather go swimming instead. You should just do what you enjoy the most.’

‘I enjoy
fishing
the most,’ announced Katie, brandishing her rod. ‘I hate nasty old swimming.’

‘You love swimming,’ objected Louise.

‘Not any more,’ retorted Katie. She looked up at Barnaby. ‘Me and Daddy hate swimming, don’t we, Daddy?’ Louise’s lips tightened.

‘Well, Katie,’ she said, ‘you’re a big girl now, you can make your own decision. I just hope you don’t regret it.’

‘What’s regret?’ asked Katie immediately.

‘It’s to look back on something you’ve done,’ said Barnaby, ‘and wish you hadn’t done it. You won’t do that, will you, Katkin?’ But Katie wasn’t listening. She had begun to do her birdcage dance around the kitchen, using the fishing-rod instead of her birdcage. As she danced, she began to hum the tune.

‘We won’t regret going swimming,’ said Amelia bravely. ‘Will we, Mummy?’

‘No,’ said Louise, ‘I shouldn’t think we will. Katie, stop dancing, and go with Daddy.’ Katie stopped, foot still pointed out.

‘I don’t regret going fishing,’ she said.

‘You haven’t been yet,’ pointed out Amelia.

‘So what?’ said Katie, rudely.

‘Come on,’ said Barnaby, impatiently. ‘Go and get in the car, Katie.’ He grinned briefly at Amelia. ‘I’ll see you this evening,’ he said, ‘and we’ll tell each other about our day.’

When he had left the kitchen, Amelia’s chin began to wobble. She suddenly felt very unsure of herself. The
kitchen seemed empty and silent now that Daddy and Katie had gone, and she wasn’t sure that she’d made the right decision. She looked up at Mummy for a comforting glance, but Mummy was staring at something on the notice-board. Amelia followed her gaze. It was a photograph of Mummy and Cassian.

‘Is Cassian coming swimming, Mummy?’ she asked, falteringly. Louise’s head whipped round.

‘No!’ she said. Then, at the sight of Amelia’s anxious face, her voice softened. ‘No,’ she repeated, ‘he’s in London.’

‘Oh.’ Amelia wasn’t quite sure why, but this piece of news made her feel a bit better about going swimming with Mummy instead of fishing with Daddy. ‘Oh,’ she said again. Louise suddenly smiled.

‘So we’ll have a lovely day, just the two of us,’ she said, ‘swimming and getting brown. Mummy and Amelia. What do you think?’

Into Amelia’s mind appeared a blissful image of a blue swimming-pool glittering in the sunlight, herself floating effortlessly in the middle of it. She looked happily up at Louise.

‘I think, yes please,’ she said.

‘Well, go and get your things, then,’ said Louise brightly. ‘We want to make all we can out of the day.’

Amelia clattered out of the kitchen and thudded up the narrow cottage stairs. And Louise followed at a more leisurely pace, humming gaily to herself and wondering which sun-hat she should take with her, and trying as hard as she could to dispel from her mind the lingering image of Barnaby’s indignant, angry, wounded face.

Hugh and Ursula Delaney had first opened their swimming-pool for charity more than twenty years ago, when their two sons were children and the people at Melbrook Place – the largest house in the village – were refusing to hold a village fête. Devenish House, the Delaneys’ own house, was not in quite the same league as Melbrook Place, but it was the second biggest house in the village – and it had a swimming-pool.

The first Swimming Day had been on a blisteringly hot day, at a time when the nearest public swimming-bath was thirty miles away in Braybury, full of chlorine, and housed in an unpleasantly green-tiled building. Parents and children alike, unused to the luxury of an outside heated pool, had thrown themselves into the blue water like joyous seals, tumbling and splashing with the determination of those who know they have a limited amount of time for pleasure. Pictures of the occasion in the Delaneys’ photograph album showed women and men in baggy pre-Lycra swimming-suits emblazoned with orange flowers and purple swirls, leaping from the diving-board, or floating on their backs, or sitting round the side of the pool, legs dangling in the depths, unwilling to relinquish the water for a moment. And all around them – in the water, under the water, jumping and diving and ducking and shrieking – were the children. Some, unable to swim, clutched in fearful delight to the edge of the pool, while parents coaxed them further in, others floated in pleasurable torpor, buoyed up by shiny rubber rings
and arm-bands. Some had proper bathing-suits; many did not. Many had never been swimming before in their lives.

In the two decades since then everything had changed. The people of Melbrook now benefited from a shiny new leisure centre in nearby Linningford, complete with indoor and outdoor pools, Jacuzzi, steam-room and sauna. All the children of the village could swim as a matter of course. The appeal of a simple swimming-pool – by now rather old, and with no accompanying exercise bikes or health bar – had rather diminished. Meanwhile, new people had moved into Melbrook Place and declared themselves more than happy to reintroduce a Melbrook Place fête. There was really no need for the Swimming Day to happen any more.

But the people of Melbrook were both loyal and conservative. When Hugh and Ursula had tentatively suggested, six or seven years ago, that the Swimming Days had outlived their function, there had been a general outcry. People whom Hugh and Ursula had never met; people who, as far as they were aware, had never even been to one of the Swimming Days, had accosted them in the street, and asked anxiously whether the rumours were really true. The residents of the new development just outside the village had drawn up a petition. One young woman, who had only been living in Melbrook for a few months, had waited for Ursula outside church one Sunday, and proceeded to berate her soundly for eroding the character of the village.

In the end it hadn’t been worth the struggle. Hugh and Ursula had capitulated and agreed to carry on; now it seemed as though the Swimming Days would go on for ever.

There was only one year in which they had not held a Swimming Day. Three years before, Simon, their
younger son, had died, suddenly, of a brain tumour, at the age of twenty-eight.

He died in February, on a cold grey day, and the coldness stayed inside Hugh and Ursula all year. After the funeral they stayed inside their house, avoiding the world, while outside the blossoms opened and the air grew warm and the sun played on the water of their swimming-pool. Then, when the leaves began to turn and the air grew cooler, they packed up and went to their little house in France. Hugh left his wine-importing business ticking over in the hands of his assistant. Ursula told people not to expect them back for Christmas.

They spoke to nobody. Matthew, their elder son, was in Hong Kong, working hard and coping with his grief as best he could on his own. Their own families, based respectively in Derbyshire and Scotland, were both too far away to have known Simon properly and too close to provide dispassionate comfort.

The only one who understood was Meredith. Their daughter-in-law; Simon’s widow.

He had met her at a gallery opening; she was an artist from America, via most cities in Europe. She was slightly older and slightly cleverer than him, and quite a lot richer. Hugh found her fascinating; Ursula found her frightening. The wedding had been at a register office in London; Meredith had worn a black tailcoat and top hat and at the reception had decorated, in dark-red ink, the shirt-back of Simon’s enchanted managing director.

After Simon’s funeral, Hugh and Ursula looked at Meredith’s blue-white face, her long lank hair and shaking hands, and pressed her warmly to stay with them for a while. Ursula filled her room with flowers and pot-pourri, and ran her hot baths; Hugh poured her deep glasses of whisky and offered her cigarettes. But after two days she disappeared. They received a postcard
from the airport; Meredith had returned to her native San Francisco.