The Swimming Pool Season (14 page)

Dr. O. is very used to the white hills and grey hollows of Bernice's body. It's a body quite unblemished by time, untouched by sun, a lapping loving landscape, contentedly heaving. In all his years of knowing it, he has never and she has never admitted desire. Though Dr. O. and Bernice spend their days toiling over words and ancient meanings, language plays no part whatsoever in their love-making. Neither asks. Neither offers. They give silently. The only sound is the suck of their flesh. Dr. O., so easily accommodated and satisfied between Bernice's snowy mountains of hips, has no idea whether the movements he makes give her the pleasure she seems to strive for. He doesn't ask. She doesn't say. Sometimes when he lies still on her, satisfied, heavy and sleepy, he feels her belly continue to move under him, her little mound still thrusting at him. He likes this. He presses down on her as she breathes and pants. He wants to suck her breasts, but she holds him fast in place above her, presses her lips to his. Then she lies still and opens her eyes, and her arms relax and gently stroke his back. Was that good? Is what we do enough? He doesn't ask. She doesn't say. He concludes he satisfies her. She never refuses him. Sometimes in the night, she wakes him and starts fondling him again and he feels her huge soft breasts pouring over his arm. He doesn't like his sleep broken. It's difficult for him to make the gestures of desire. She rubs and rubs his prick. He feels old. But then she kneels and kisses him, her mouth hot with sleep, her tongue lively as an animal. Her hair falls on his face. He is enveloped and borne away. He turns and tumbles into her, rocking in the darkness. He can't deny this gift of her, slippery and silent. I can't deny you, Bernice, says the feeble jet of sperm she wrings from him. And she smiles knowingly. My happiness is his. His is mine.

Now, watching this long, sad film, Dr. O. trembles with the thought that he may betray her. “I wish I understood Swedish,” she suddenly whispers to him. He stops looking at her and turns back to the screen. Liv Ullman's grandmother shows her into a little child's room, decorated with pink castles. He forgets to look at the subtitles. The Swedish dialogue goes on like a jaunty train; yoni-oni – yeni-meni – rhude-hude . . . He closes his eyes. The language is beautiful, he thinks, its cadences so gentle, you could prise meaning from it without understanding a word. Yet it journeys at the very edge of his thoughts, thoughts which keep doubling back and doubling back into the five minutes of that very day when he held Miriam's head against his cardigan and found in his sturdy English heart foreign orchards of craving and desire. They invade him and bloom. He's dizzy with their perfume, hard with their fruit. He doesn't recognise himself, the quiet Dr. O. in his habitual place at Bernice Atwood's side. He wants to lean across to her and confess, I've fallen in love with Miriam Ackerman. I was denied her once. Now I'm going to have her. He has no plan, however. He knows he may let Miriam go back to France without ever telling her that he loves her. So momentous does his desire for her seem that he doesn't know how or when or with what words or gestures to approach her. It's so easy to love Bernice in silence. So easy not to answer what she doesn't ask. But in Miriam's orchard, words will surely be needed. She's Leni's daughter. That family can colour whole rooms, whole houses, whole streets and skies with words. Yet in love-language he's a naif, a pupil, an innocent. Bernice has never taught him. He's never taught her. The embrace was enough. Movement was enough. He craves some manual or dictionary. All his life, he has looked for answers in books. He's not certain if the book exists that can help him now.

Bernice, having eaten almost the whole block of Toblerone without noticing it, pushes the few segments left into Dr. O.'s hands. The chocolate feels warm. Dr. O. isn't hungry after his lunch with Miriam, but he eats the Toblerone out of simple obedience to Bernice's gifts. Already, he feels frightened for her. If he withdraws his own gift of acceptance, what will she do with all the tender offerings she stores? The warm chocolate slides guiltily into his stomach. He swallows and sighs. Bernice turns momentarily from the film and stares at him.

“What's the matter?” she whispers.

“Nothing,” says Dr. O.

Liv Ullman swallows Nembutal, handful after handful, and lies down on the child's bed to wait for death. Bernice Atwood tucks her hand into the warm crease of Dr. O. 's arm.

Miriam tiptoes up to Leni's room. The curtains have been drawn and sunlight falls on Leni's bed. Leni is awake with her glasses perched on her nose and the Sunday papers spread around her. Replenished with sleep, she seems alert and strong.

“Leni. You're awake.”

“Well I heard voices. What are you up to, Miriam?”

Miriam sits down among the papers.

“Up to? I had Dr. O. for lunch.”

“You mean you
ate
him?”

“No. He gobbled a lot of chicken.”

“Is he still here?”

“He's gone to the Bergman film with Miss Atwood.”

“Silly him. We could have entertained him better. So he asked himself over, did he?”

“No. I invited him.”

Leni peers at Miriam over her glasses.

“And he didn't want to come up and see me?”

“He did. But you were sleeping. We didn't want to wake you.”

“Oh.”

Leni takes off the glasses, which hang on an ugly chain round her neck. Her eyes seem bright, full of curiosity.

“Are you hungry, darling?” asks Miriam, getting up. Leni's stares she has always found discomforting.

“I'd like some of that soup you made yesterday. I'm glad you invited Oz, Miriam. I think that was very clever of you.”

“Clever of me?”

“Yes, you'll have a proper companion, now, for your stay here.”

“I'll go and heat the soup.”

“Was he nice to you?”

“Of course.”

“I don't want much soup. Don't give me too much.”

Miriam is on her way out of the bedroom when the telephone rings. Leni picks it up and stubbornly states a long out-of-date telephone number.

“Oxford 7815.”

Close in her ear, ragged with its pierced hole heavy jewelled earings have pulled to a slit, she hears Larry's voice, so close that her first thought is the dismayed one: Larry's in England.

“Leni,” says Larry quietly.

In Leni's mind, he's at Dover, standing on the windy front with his baggage. But he's in Nadia's room, tracing a line in the condensation on her window.

“Where are you, Larry?”

Miriam stops, her hand on the door. Not today, she thinks. I'm not ready for Larry today. Yet the France brochure opens. Pomerac sits on its hill in the sunshine. Gervaise stares at her with reproachful eyes, calling her back.

“Where am I?” asks Larry. “I'm in Pomerac. Can I speak to Miriam, please?”

No courtesies for Leni today. No enquiries after her health. If she's dying, Larry thinks impatiently, let her get on with it.

Leni holds the receiver out to Miriam. “It's Larry,” she says, “he's in Pomerac.”

“I'll take it in the study.”

“Yes. Very well.”

Leni says nothing more to Larry, just rests the receiver on her eiderdown. Miriam closes the door on her mother and goes down to the telephone she used only a few hours ago to summon Dr. O. Between that moment and this so many emotions have pecked and pulled at Miriam she feels in need of bandaging.

When she lifts the receiver, Larry, puzzled by the silence, is calling her: “Miriam? Miriam?”

“Hello, Larry,” she says softly.

“Oh, I've got you.”

“You're at Nadia's.”

“Yes. I wanted to ring yesterday, to say happy birthday, but Nadia was out and I didn't feel I could ask Mme. de la Brosse.

“No. Well, how are you?”

Cold, Miriam thinks. I am so cold with him.

“Coping all right, but missing you. I thought of you yesterday. Was it all right?”

“What?”

“Your birthday.”

“Oh yes. All right. Just quiet. Leni got up for a while.”

“She's getting better, then?”

Miriam listens. There's been no click of Leni's receiver going down. Often, when colleagues telephoned David, she'd listen in.

“Yes,” says Miriam wearily, “she's a lot better.”

“She's not dying then?”

Miriam listens again. Now it comes, like a sniff of disgust, the click. “She's very weak. I've been trying to get her to eat, but she won't.”

There's a brief and troubled silence before Larry says: “When are you coming home?”

Home, thinks Miriam. Pomerac. Home?

“I don't know, Larry. I can't possibly leave till Leni's on her feet.”

“How long?”

“I can't say.”

“I thought if someone was dying, they died.”

“They do in the end, Larry.”

“Yes. I'm sorry. It's always been hard for me to understand . . .”

“Understand?”

“Why you love her.”

“She's my mother, Larry.”

“What, the Jewish mother. That?”

“Not only. It's not just duty.”

“What then?”

“A stubborn love that won't go away. And I like it that she . . .”

“What?”

“She needs me. For once. She's never needed me. Now she does.”

“I need you.”

“I know, Larry. How's Nadia?”

“Nadia's here. Do you want to talk to her?”

“Yes. I'll say hello.”

Nadia rather than Larry.
Anyone
. Miriam waits. I must ask him not to call any more, she decides. Letters are better, less painful.

“Hello my darling!” Nadia's high voice flies, unchanged, down the wires.

“Nice to hear you, Nadia. How are you?”

“Well, I'm so sorry, my darling.”

“What, Nadia?”

“I'm not here on your birthday. Larry is coming and coming. Till ten o'clock. He think I am arrested and sent home packing to Poland! But I was at a very good At Home party from some old friends of Claude's. They have some uncle or what in a wine house, so Nadia is absolutely pissing all day and today my God the bloody hangover, you don't know!”

“Oh, I'm sorry, Nadia. But it was a good party?”

“I don't remember! I'm so pissing, Miriam, I don't know what I eat or say or who is kissing me or what, but actually everyone is pissing, even the uncle from the wine house, so we are all not knowing what we're doing. Maybe I dance with someone. I don't know.”

“How's Larry, Nadia?” Miriam says gravely.

“Oh Larry. You want to talk again?”

“No. Just tell me how he is.”

“Well. He is so kind to me, Miriam. I am crying one evening and telling him my bloody life is so and so, and if I was Larry I tell Nadia, look, this so moaning gets out my nose, but he is not telling this and comforting me. So kind, you see?”

Autumn comes. Women getting old start sobbing like children.

“Oh I'm glad, Nadia.”

“But of course he is sad for you.”

“Sad?”

“Yes. And your mother? She isn't kick the bucket?”

“No.”

“So you come back to Pomerac, Miriam?”

“Not yet.”

“I think you leave this old mother and come home.”

“This was my home once.”

“Well so. Poland was mine. Cockroaches on my bloody floor. Some lavatory they make before the First War. My neighbour on the landing with one leg . . . You think I go back there?”

“No. But in my case it's different.”

“But you don't stay so long, my darling, for this Leni.”

“Why?”

“Well if I have some husband so kind as Larry I'm not staying in Poland with my mother and queue for her fucking bread . . .”

“But you know what I feel about Leni, Nadia.”

“I know, my darling, I know. But I say you don't stay there.”

“I have to stay until Leni's well.”

“But you're saying me she was kick the bucket, my dear.”

“She may. I don't know.”

“So if she kick, then you go back for the funeral and so and so and make the white wreath, but you don't forget Larry.”

“Of course I haven't forgotten him, Nadia. Don't be stupid.”

“Well, so I'm stupid. I'm getting pissing yesterday and stupid but today not. I don't know why if I say this of your Leni's death I'm so stupid,”

Miriam sighs. She sits down at Leni's desk which has not been used since her illness. Bills and correspondence are piled up, waiting for Miriam's attention.

“I'm doing my best, that's all,” says Miriam, “Of course I don't mean you're stupid, Nadia.”

But it's Larry who comes back to the telephone.

“Miriam, I wanted to tell you, I've begun the pool.”

“Good, Larry, good. I'm glad.”

“How fast I can get on depends on the weather. At the moment it's glorious.”

“Is it? Yes, it's fine here this afternoon.”

“Cold, mind you. You've got to stretch the imagination to remember summer.”

After this, there seems little more that either Larry or Miriam want to say. Miriam considers for a moment asking about the walnut tree but decides quickly that it's too late and it will have been felled by now. Larry wants to ask whether Miriam has seen Thomas but her coldness to him cuts the question off before it's uttered. They say a solemn goodbye and leave it at that.