The Swimmer. Roma Tearne
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I stood rooted to the spot and watched as, lifting his head, he listened. Then slowly he moved his head and saw me. For a whole minute we stared at each other without speaking. Both of us shocked. He was the first to break the silence, surprising me by holding up his hand, one foot in a shoe. He looked ready to run.
‘Excuse me,’ he said, in perfect, though accented, English. ‘I’m very sorry. Please. I won’t do it again.’
I saw he was terrified and in the light fading from the sky I saw that he was also very young.
‘It’s all right.’
There was a silence. The boy, he was surely no older than eighteen, stood waiting as though he had been stunned.
‘I don’t mind you using this stretch of river. It isn’t private or anything,’ I said. ‘Just filthy, that’s all. And your mother might not be so happy with you swimming in it.’
I was talking to keep him from doing a runner. He continued to stare at me and then he smiled with sudden force and I saw he wasn’t so young after all.
‘Are you from around here?’ I asked.
He shook his head and in one swift movement pulled his wet T-shirt on. I hesitated.
‘Did you come into my house last night and play the piano?’
‘No…I…no!’
‘I think you did,’ I said.
My voice sounded unfamiliar, as if I couldn’t breathe properly. I was stalling for time.
‘I might have called the police, you know,’ I said, conscious of trying to sound amused. ‘You might have got into a lot of trouble. Were you going to steal anything?’
What a ridiculous thing to have said! The swimmer shivered. He stood with his head slightly bowed. Silent, reminding me again of the image of the Roman swimmer I had seen in Naples. I hesitated.
‘You play the piano well.’
He didn’t move.
‘Would you like to come in and play it again?’
He said nothing.
‘You can, if you like.’
He looked at me full in the face. In the growing twilight I could not see the expression in his eyes but I had the distinct feeling he was sizing me up.
‘Are you going to ring for the police?’ he asked.
He sounded Indian.
‘No,’ I said. I looked at him in what I hoped was a stern but friendly and motherly manner. ‘Not if you promise you won’t steal anything. Where are you from?’
One part of my mind was amazed at the ridiculous nature of this conversation. The swimmer hesitated as if he too were thinking something along these lines. Then he seemed to make up his mind.
‘I’m not from here. I’m from Jaffna in Sri Lanka,’ he said, and now I could see he was shivering violently and I thought, he’s frightened. ‘You know where that is?’
A single blackbird trilled a long note into the rain-dampened air.
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Where the tea comes from. Are you on a visit or a holiday?’
‘Neither, miss,’ he answered gravely. ‘I am a refugee.’
Sitting in my kitchen he told me his story in perfect but halting English. He had come to Russia by plane and then overland in a lorry that had been waiting at a pick-up point along an empty stretch of coast road. The conditions had been cramped, the driver had demanded more money than he had and the journey had been terrible. His name was Ben and he was twenty-five years old. He told me this much while he ate the cold chicken I gave him and drank a glass of beer. The driver of the lorry was an aggressive man. Having taken the last of their money he began dropping people off randomly. It had been Ben’s turn halfway along the Unthank Road. It was how he became separated from the people with whom he had travelled from Moscow. Not that they were his friends, but at least he had spent some of the worst hours of the journey with them. Left by the roadside he had walked in circles for five days with no money and no documents, sleeping rough, eating when he could, trying to keep clean. He had been petrified of being picked up by the police. He had heard stories that, if that happened, he would simply be deported. And if he returned to Sri Lanka, he feared he would be killed.
Then he had found a farm and burrowed down in one of the outbuildings. The farmer discovered him one night, but instead of calling the police had offered him the chance to pick sweetcorn. In exchange for a bed and food and, the farmer promised, a work permit. Ben could not believe his luck. This was where he lived for the moment. The work permit hadn’t materialised and he had yet to make contact with his mother to tell her that he was safe.
He finished speaking and drained the glass of beer. He had eaten the small amount of food I had put in front of him with ravenous haste. I wondered when he had last had a proper meal. Under the electric light he looked terribly young and vulnerable. It crossed my mind that he might be lying about his age.
‘I want to get to London,’ he said. ‘I want to find proper work.’
‘What sort of work?’
‘I am a doctor, but because of government restrictions I have never practised…well, hardly at all.’
He moved his head rapidly from side to side. I felt he was withholding something.
‘I began working as a nurse in the hospital in Batticlore. Then an opportunity came for me to leave. It was becoming dangerous for Tamil men of my age to stay. The insurgents were rounding them up for their army.’
He paused, looked around the room, taking in his surroundings for the first time.
‘So I left.’
The light flickered, distracting him.
‘You have a loose connection in your switch,’ he said, finally. ‘I can fix it for you, if you like.’
I had been listening to him, spellbound, and didn’t know what to say.
‘I would like to do that…as payment for this meal.’
I waved my hand.
‘There is no need to pay, it isn’t anything, just a little chicken.’
He stood and picked up his plate awkwardly. I had a feeling he was thinking about the stolen bread. In that moment there was within me a stirring of something exciting, something undefined and exotic. Before he could open his mouth to protest, I took the plate from him and put it in the sink.
‘But if you want to pay me,’ I told him, smiling faintly, ‘you could play a little of the jazz you played last night. Without the soft pedal!’
Instantly he lowered his eyes, embarrassed.
‘I’m sorry!’
‘No, no. I really mean I’d like to hear the piano being played.’
I spoke briskly, turning and leading the way into the sitting room.
When I relive that moment now I am always reminded of a story I once read by Jean Rhys. My swimmer sat gingerly down at the piano. He opened the lid and stared at the notes. Then he placed his hands gently on the keys. I noticed his fingers were long and thin. Confused, there grew in me again the conviction that he was younger than twenty-five. He sat with head bowed, then suddenly he was galvanised into action and he began to play. I am no judge of music, nor have I ever learnt to play the piano, but I was struck by his velvet touch. The piano had not been tuned for years. Apart from the odd occasion when Jack played it, it hadn’t been touched.
For nearly an hour I sat listening, spellbound. Ben played as though he was a blind man who had found sight. He played with no music. I suspected he was going through a memorised repertoire and it made me wonder what journey he had passed through