‘All right,’ Hal says. ‘I meant to ask—’
But she has already moved beyond him – carefully, so that a good couple of feet of air remain between them – and is striding purposefully toward the house. He watches her all the way up the path, the wrap snickering away from her in the breeze.
He walks down to the jetty, where her wet footprints form a trail on the bleached wood, yet to dry in the sun. He shrugs off his shorts and shirt and, without giving himself time to think about it, dives from the end. Only too late does he realize that he does not know how shallow it is, but he is lucky – when he rights himself his feet don’t touch the bottom. And frigid; very much a spring sea, without weeks of warmth behind it. A sting against the flesh, but gradually becoming bearable. He has swum in the Solent in April; it is nothing compared to that. He has known greater cold, too, cold that steals the breath and binds fast and deadly to the flesh. But he will not think of that.
He lets it surround his aching head; rolls onto his back and kicks away from the shore. The water is still about him. It seems to cradle him, to buoy him up. This is the sea of his boyhood: of childhood trips to the Sussex coast.
They had gone to the beach together: Hal and his parents. East Head had been the favourite, a white spit of land crested with soft dunes. Water, warm in the summer shallows but cold where the bottom shelved into the main channel. It was where he learned to swim – a good place for it, because it was so benign. No, he thinks now. That’s not quite right. Not all benign. The treachery of memory. At the far end of the spit the calm surface hid a secret current, straight out towards France. A woman had been swept into the open sea one summer. A child the next year – and her father had saved her, only to drown himself. He was never allowed to swim at that end of the beach, and there was a flag there, to warn of it. But every summer someone disregarded the warning.
Ah, but those long, drowsy, salty days on the beach eating sandwiches gritty with sand. His mother glamorous in her headscarf and wrapper, her toenails painted with dark varnish. His father still dapper, but running slightly to fat. Never quite her match.
What he would give to return to that place. Not childhood, precisely, but that place of simple pleasures, of unknowingness. That is the problem with home: it reminds him of what he was, what was lost. And the sea has been changed for him forever now.
He pushes harder, driving himself through the water, thinking of nothing but the movement, the labour of his muscles.
Pausing briefly to look back at the shore, he realizes that he has already come some way. He is almost as far from the jetty as he is from the finger of land that curves round in front of the bay. He might as well swim to it, see what is on the other side.
It is further than he had realized, and the sea becomes rougher further out. But finally he reaches and rounds the small spit of land. Revealed on the other side is a yacht, moored a little way off the coast at anchor. It is clear from the relative size of the men visible on deck that the boat is huge. There are two masts, each appearing as tall – perhaps taller – than the boat is long. The hull is dark blue. It seems designed for crossing oceans at great speed. Now Hal understands. This is how they will be making their way to Cannes.
Swimming back is a little harder. The jetty appears very small, a great distance away. His muscles ache. He isn’t worried, but he is bored of it now, fatigued. Perhaps the tide is against him too, for it all feels more difficult. Does the Mediterranean have a tide? He isn’t certain. His hangover intrudes as it did not on the outward leg, his head beginning to ache as though his brain has swollen too large for the skull.
The last forty metres or so are most difficult of all. It feels as though something has wrapped itself around his legs. There is some sort of current, he realizes, one that must have helped him on the way out. Now it is tugging at him, pulling him away from the shore. His muscles ache with the effort and occasionally he swallows a mouthful of briny water. You are meant to swim sideways with a current, he thinks – but if he were to do that he would be taken past the headland and into open sea. For the first time since he learned to swim, he feels something like alarm: a sense of real danger. He does not seem to be getting any closer to the shore, and yet the effort merely to stay in one spot is extraordinary. Will he call for help? Would there be any use in it? He squints up through the sweat and the water fogging his vision, and cannot see anyone in the garden. But just as he decides that he must do it, no matter the humiliation, his final effort propels him further than before. The current’s hold on him seems to slacken, as though an invisible hand has instantly released him. His movements become easy again, he is moving forward. Though he feels his tiredness through his whole body it is difficult to believe now in the danger of a few seconds before.
When he finally pulls himself from the water, his arms are weak, his legs shake. Unable to think of anything else to do, unable to quite make sense of what has happened to him, he lies prone on the warm wood and waits for the sun to dry him.
Her
My hands are still trembling. It took great determination not to run from him: to remain for a few minutes, instead, and talk as civilly as I could manage. I knew that we might be seen from the house. For that reason, I had to act as normally as I could.
I cannot believe it is him. I worked hard afterwards, to put that night in Rome from my mind. Forgetting is something I am adept at. I had almost been able to convince myself that it hadn’t really happened. Not because the memory of it was abhorrent. The opposite, in fact. This was what made it dangerous.
When I get back to the room, to my relief, Frank is in the dressing room, the door closed. He calls to me, through the door.
‘Did you have a good swim?’
I stop. Is there something in his tone? Does he know? Could he somehow know about Rome, and have orchestrated this?… I am being absurd. If he had known, I would have found out long before now.
‘Yes,’ I say, ‘yes. A little cold, but refreshing.’
‘Good.’
I hadn’t swum far. Enough to feel my muscles ache. Off at an angle, to avoid the current the Contessa had warned of: an undertow along this stretch of coast that has been known to sweep swimmers out to sea. The English poet, Shelley, drowned only a little way along the coast from here: it is not so benign as it appears.
I find myself moving, despite my better judgement, to the balcony. I am drawn there in the way one is often compelled to do the destructive thing: to press the bruise.
The view is out to sea and in the broad blue I can make him out. His dark head, the occasional glimpse of a limb, the churned water like a scar about him. It is difficult to tell at first in which direction he is swimming. And then I realize that he is trying for the shore, but is making no progress. Is he in trouble? Frank, I know, has a pair of binoculars. I go to the smallest of his travelling cases and open it. My pulse is thudding in my ears. Because how will I explain myself if he finds me, rooting through his luggage?
I find them in their leather pouch and return to the balcony. I can see, now, that he is in trouble. Some invisible force is preventing him from making any headway, and he appears to be tiring. I understand now: it is the current. I should have warned him. What can I do? If I were brave, I would run from the room, sound the alarm, no matter the attention it would draw to myself. I am a coward …
Such a coward that I am going to let him drown in front of me? I must do something.
But I see that something has changed. He is gaining on the jetty. He has forced himself through the current somehow. The relief leaves me weak.
‘What’s so interesting out there?’
I turn and find Frank framed in the doorway, watching me. He is the picture of relaxed elegance in his powder-blue suit. But he is never quite relaxed – it is the key to his success. If one knows what to look for, one can see the animal alertness beneath the languor.
‘Oh,’ I