Swimming to Ithaca (8 page)

They edge away from the bar and find a fortuitously empty table with two low stools where she perches awkwardly, her knees together, her skirt as tight as a drum, a glimpse of white visible in the shadows. She sips her drink and looks at Thomas. ‘So tell me, why did you show us that picture last week? The one of your mum. I mean, Freudian or what?’

He tries to shrug it off. The truth is, he doesn’t really know himself. ‘I was looking through family photos, trying to understand my own history. The idea just occurred to me.’

She sniffs and sips. ‘Mid-life crisis or something?’

‘Thank you. Actually, she just died. A fortnight ago.’

‘I’m sorry. You didn’t say that bit.’

‘I didn’t think it mattered.’

‘Doesn’t it? Did you love her?’

‘I adored her.’

‘That’s different.’

‘How is it different?’

‘Adore is worship? Love is between equals?’ Her speech has an upward, interrogative lilt.

‘Very philosophical.’

‘So which is it? Love or adore?’

Summoned by a voice from the bar calling ‘Tom!’, he goes over and collects their food. ‘Adore
and
love,’ he says on his return, putting her plate in front of her. ‘Both those things.’

‘That’s nice then, isn’t it?’

‘Very nice,’ he agrees.

She eats, and talks. Thomas watches her mouth, its complex of movement. How could one be skilled enough to apply colour to that compound shape, those curves, that arabesque? He pictures her doing just that, with a pencil of lipstick, pouting her lips at the mirror. Her jaw seems delicate, like a cat’s. He imagines the touch of her teeth – small, white, sharp – and the contrasting pliancy of that fugitive tongue. She explains why she has joined the history course, why she didn’t go directly to college when she left school, what she does and doesn’t do. She has worked in an office, works in the local library at the moment, worked as a tourist guide for a while. ‘Hidden London and stuff like that. That’s the history, I guess. I had to learn it all, like a taxi driver almost. But I loved it.’

‘And so you signed up to the course?’

‘More or less.’ She lives south of the river and she is, it is no surprise to discover, a mother herself. ‘Emma. Six. She’s at school – in fact I mustn’t be late ’cause I’ve got to go and pick her up. Actually, that’s why I joined the course. I found this kind of grant? For single mothers who’ve never been to university? I thought perhaps, I don’t know, I might become a teacher or something.’

‘And Emma’s father?’

She shrugs, a neat little lift of those narrow shoulders, but says nothing.

‘And what about the boyfriend? The one last week?’

Another shrug. ‘Steve.’

‘Are you … together?’ Is his probing getting too obvious? But you need to reconnoitre the battlefield, see where the enemy lies in wait. She chews, swallows, takes a further mouthful, picks delicately from her mouth a piece of chicken tendon and places it on the side of her plate, looks up at him.

‘Sometimes. What about you?’

‘I’ve got a son, called Philip. Phil. He’s thirteen.’

Is there a flicker of concern in her expression, a narrowing of the eyes, a subtle shift of attitude? ‘You’re married?’

‘We split up. One of those amicable divorces.’

A nod. ‘That’s what happens with marriage.’

‘Not my parents’. Till death them did part.’

‘It’s a generation thing, isn’t it?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘I read somewhere that nowadays marriages last about the same time as they used to in Tudor times; only then they were finished by the death of one of the partners. Sorry, that’s a bit nerdy.’

‘Tell me,’ he says encouragingly.

She shrugs again, embarrassed. ‘It’s just that most times the survivor got married again. But now it’s divorce that finishes them. If you see what I mean. So actually people have the same number of partners, more or less, whatever era.’

‘That might be right.’ The noise of the bar intrudes. Someone pushes past, heading towards the lavatory. ‘I think she had a love affair,’ he tells her. ‘My mother. About the time of that picture.’ It surprises him to say it out loud like that, to a complete stranger, but Kale merely sniffs.

‘I expect she did. What’s the big deal about that? I expect she had lots of offers.’

‘Do you get lots of offers?’

She looks at him thoughtfully. ‘Some.’

‘And you think my mother would have had lots, even in the nineteen-fifties?’

‘Was it any different then? Didn’t people fuck, just like they do these days?’

The word ‘fuck’ brings its little tremor of shock, even now. Someone at the next table glances round to see who has spoken.

‘Perhaps not quite as often. Not with different people at any rate.’

‘Isn’t there a report? That’d tell you. Masters and Johnson, isn’t it?’

‘Kinsey. Masters and Johnson was the sixties.’

‘Kinsey, then. Anyway, good luck to her, if she did. Why should you worry?’

Why indeed? But it is his mother they are talking about. It was she who lavished (the word has a wonderful, expansive feel about it) her love on him, who made him who he is, and who he is not. And there is also the disturbing fact that when he looks at the photos of her as she was then, he sees her through the sphinx-like eyes of an adult, the riddled gaze of Oedipus.

They order coffee. ‘I’d love a ciggy,’ Kale confesses. ‘But I’m trying to give it up. For Emma’s sake, really.’

‘Perhaps we can do this again?’ he asks when her cappuccino has been drunk and it’s time to go.

‘Do what?’

‘Have lunch.’

‘P’raps.’ She’s looking for her bag underneath the table, rummaging among her things. ‘Sorry, I must go to the toilet.’

He watches her make her way through to the back of the bar. ‘Toilet’ was one of his mother’s hates. She insisted on ‘lavatory’, the rationale being that ‘toilet’ is a genteel euphemism. But so is ‘lavatory’. So is everything, really, except shit-pit. One generation’s euphemism is another’s vulgarity. One generation’s ‘making love’ is another’s ‘fuck’. What would his mother have thought of Kale? The word ‘fuck’ expressed with no more import than if she had said ‘eat’; and speaking with food in her mouth; and going to the toilet; and showing the line of her knickers beneath her skirt. And being called Kayley. ‘No, Mother, it’s spelled K-A-L-E.’

‘Well, I don’t see why. It’s just a vulgarism. Might as well call her Kylie and be done with it.’

‘People can’t help their names. It’s the parents you’ve got to blame.’

‘It’s not the parents, it’s the social climate. Nowadays there’s no pressure to have good taste. Vulgarity has become fashionable.’

Kale returns, glancing at her watch. ‘Going to miss my bus,’ she says. ‘Thanks ever so for the lunch. Really nice.’

Thomas helps her into her coat and follows her towards the daylight. Has she forgotten his question? Will he have to broach the subject all over again? ‘Next week?’

‘OK. If you like.’

His heart pauses. ‘Or …’ Don’t push your luck, he thinks, and then pushes it: ‘How about sooner?’

‘All right by me. I’m in college most mornings.’ She goes out through the door. It has started raining and she stops to rummage in her bag for an umbrella.

‘How about an evening? What do you like? Theatre? Music?’

‘
Evening?
’ She looks up with an expression of faint surprise. Does evening make it different? ‘S’not easy, is it? Babysitters and stuff?’ She steps out into the drizzle, a slick fish escaping Thomas’ clumsy grasp. But at least she hasn’t mentioned Steve.

‘Bring Emma along too.’

The umbrella erects itself, a complex of levers and hinges. ‘To the
theatre
? In the
evening
? She’s only six for God’s sake.’

‘
Cats
,’ he calls after her. ‘We’ll go to
Cats
. A matinée.’

On the brink she stops. A bus sweeps by, throwing spray out of the gutter and across her legs. ‘Fucking bastard!’ she shouts. Then she looks back at him and grins. ‘If you can get tickets.’

‘When?’

‘Whenever. Thanks again for the lunch. See you.’

*

Dear Tom,

How unhappy I was at the news about your mother. Darling, darling Dee was one of the people I loved the most – she has been coming to see me at least once a month, and make me laugh, and was such a faithful and reliable friend. I don’t really know how I’m going to get by without her. Sorry this is short, but typing is not very easy. I have to use some silly little gadget in the only hand I can still move. Did she tell you about me? Anyway, I’m wheelchair-bound and that’s why I won’t be able to get to the funeral. I would love to have been able to say goodbye to her properly, but I will certainly say a prayer, and one for you and dear little Paula. I don’t expect she is any longer, is she?! Little, I mean.

With love and all my sympathy,

Marjorie

At Cyprus, the ship dropped anchor offshore. Apparently the port at Limassol wasn’t deep enough for large ships and they all had to do this, wait in the roads for lighters to come out. Dee stood with Paula on the deck, much as they had stood to wave goodbye to her parents at Southampton, except now the view across the water was smudged with heat, and coloured ochre and white and buff. She could see sheds and warehouses, a line of concrete buildings, houses with shallow-pitched tiled roofs, palm trees, dust. And the domes of churches, and the pencil points of minarets. Byzantium, she thought. The young in one another’s arms. There was a heat haze beyond the town, but somewhere there – fifty miles away – were the mountains. She heard someone say the name, pointing as though they could be seen through the blur of heat: Troödos. She slipped her daughter’s grip and patted her hand against the thin cotton of her dress. Might the cloth become transparent with the sweat?
Might she be revealed, standing there at the rail, as though in her underwear?

‘Where’s Daddy?’ Paula asked.

Dee pointed to the quayside, where you could see people waiting at the water’s edge. ‘Over there somewhere.’

‘I can’t see him.’

‘You will soon. We must be patient.’

‘We’ve been patient for weeks.’

‘Twelve days.’

The smell of the land reached her, a whole complex of scents, mingled, grappling with each other, some of them identifiable – dung, sewage – others quite beyond her experience. What were they? The putrefaction of the Orient. That’s what Damien said. She thought of him with something like shame, how he had walked with her along the deck after dinner last night – after they had all signed each other’s menus and promised to meet up again once they had landed. He had put his arm round her waist and she hadn’t stopped him. It had been warm in the night air, with a cool breeze that only came with the way of the ship. The water rustled like silk along the sides of the hull and there was a moon, of course there was a moon, hanging low in the night sky and burnishing the surface of the sea. They had stopped in the shadow of a lifeboat and he had pulled her towards him and bent to kiss her on the mouth.

‘Damien! What are you doing?’ The papery touch of his lips. Very fragile they had seemed, while he was big and strong and smelling faintly of cologne and cigarettes. ‘Damien, please.’

He had released her. ‘I’m sorry. I really don’t know …’ Apologies and embarrassment. ‘I thought perhaps you—’

‘I what?’ She hadn’t been angry. Flattered slightly, but also something else: ashamed.

He had regained his composure, taken out a cigarette case from inside his jacket and offered her one before lighting up
himself and staring out into the darkness. ‘I thought perhaps you liked me. I’m sorry that I was mistaken.’

‘But I do like you, of course. Just not in that way.’

‘You must think me a cad.’

And she had laughed. She couldn’t help it. The word ‘cad’. She’d never heard it outside the cinema. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude.’ But the laughter was still there, bubbling up inside her breast.

‘Don’t you have cads in Sheffield? I’ll bet there are lots. Yorkshire cads.’

‘It’s not that.’ She had looked away into the night, at the phosphorescent wake streaming out behind the ship, at the faint brush-strokes of silver cloud lit by the moon. It was almost impossibly beautiful, more beautiful than the moonlight on Ladybower Reservoir, more beautiful than anything she had known. She had so few reference points. The bloody Pennines. She’d never
say
that, ‘bloody’. Instead she said, ‘I’m thirty-three years old; I’ve got a daughter asleep in our cabin, a son away at boarding school and a husband waiting for me in Cyprus. It’s all that. And you’ve got a wife and children as well.’

‘You mean if it weren’t for all that—’

‘It
is
rather a lot.’

He laughed. She watched the glow of his cigarette as he inhaled. ‘But still, I’d have had a chance. I think I’m falling in love with you, you see.’

Her laughter was sympathetic now, under control. ‘You don’t
know
me. You don’t know what you’d be letting yourself in for. It’s just a silly shipboard infatuation.’

‘That’s the literal Yorkshirewoman speaking, is it?’

‘Don’t keep going on about that.’

‘But it’s there in your voice. I love it.’

‘Don’t be daft.’

‘There you are. “Daft”, not “darft”.’

‘Well, I wish it weren’t.’

‘Why?’

‘Because it labels me.’

‘There are other things that label you.’

‘What are those?’

‘Your beauty.’

‘Flattery.’

‘Your Yorkshire prudery.’

‘There you go again.’

‘Your legs.’

‘You can’t tell much by the shape of a woman’s legs.’

‘Oh yes, you can.’

She was not quite sure on what terms they had parted. He’d bent to kiss her chastely on the cheek, and squeeze her hand, and whisper ‘Good-night,’ and then they’d gone to their separate cabins – Paula was still fast asleep, Marjorie was nodding over her book – and that had been that. Dee had undressed and lain in her narrow bunk for a long time awake, thinking. Of Edward, of Damien, but of other things, too. The excitement of the coming morning. The heat. The plain fact of her body, damp with sweat; her daughter in the bunk across the tiny box of a cabin; and her son, all those miles away in some anonymous prep-school dormitory. And Charteris. Before Edward there had only been Charteris. Charteris had gone away to the war, on the Russian convoys, and had not returned. She had only been eighteen years old at the time but his memory lingered, and shamed her: often, when her husband lay on top of her, it was not his penis but that of her dead sailor that slid inside her.