The Swimmer. Roma Tearne
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already.’
And he laughed.
‘I’ve got seven mosquito bites,’ Sophie complained.
‘Aunty Ria, have you seen how weird the spiders are in this house?’ Zach asked. ‘They’re enormous, like in the Caribbean!’
‘That’s global warming for you,’ Jack said.
He was eating and drinking with an odd, manic speed. Miranda seemed not to notice.
‘I read somewhere that the insects in Britain will become more like Mediterranean ones as the place hots up.’
‘Ugh, how will they get here? By swimming the channel?’
‘No, Sophie, I think they’ll just evolve differently. Like your Aunty Ria has!’
‘Mum!’ wailed Sophie. ‘I hate spiders.’
Go, I thought. Just go. We’ll never get on.
‘Stop winding her up, Jack,’ Miranda said. ‘There was some bacon in the fridge, Ria. I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve used it.’
I nodded, not wanting the subject of bread to be brought up again.
‘Of course, help yourself.’
In all, my swimmer had appeared three times. Last night the images of him had played themselves over and over again. His visits were a puzzle, I was becoming mildly obsessed by them. Perhaps, I thought, I ought to write a poem about the mysterious way in which he visited and then vanished. I yawned. I had meant to wake at six, begin working, but not having managed this all I wanted to do now was sit in the sun. Miranda was probably right and I needed a holiday. The coffee was lukewarm. Could it be, I frowned, returning to my earlier train of thought, that I had imagined some of it? The facts were few. At some point in the night the outside light had come on and the bread was missing. That was all. I had no proof the swimmer had taken it. I had no proof that he had come into the house, even. I glanced at Jack, but he was concentrating on the map spread out in front of him. My baby brother has a round, slightly chubby face. Curiously unlined. Empty, Eric always said. Like a man who could not comprehend what was lost. I yawned, again, distracted. Hmm, I thought, but had I actually seen the swimmer?
Miranda was looking at me, quizzically.
‘You’re out of it, aren’t you!’ she said. ‘Would you like me to do the shopping before we go?’
‘Oh no, I shall go into town a bit later on.’
Tonight I would try a small experiment.
‘We could go through Bury,’ Jack was saying. ‘On the A14, that’s probably the quickest way.’
‘Are you sure you won’t come with us, Ria?’ Miranda asked.
I felt a certain desperation on her part. Fleetingly, I was sorry for her. Neither of us understood the preoccupations of the other.
‘My sister lives in a time warp,’ Jack declared, to no one in particular.
I ignored him. There was an electronic beeping and he started searching his pockets wildly. Miranda watched, expressionless. When he finally located his phone it had stopped. The air was filled with transparent light.
‘Damn,’ he said.
I laughed. He was frantically searching through his numbers.
‘Damn!’ he said, once more.
In his pixelated, globally driven life every eventuality depended on electronic devices. His iPhone, his iPod, his chargers, his cables; modern-day worry beads, all of them. Poor Jack. Was this the only way to survive what had happened to us as children? So no, I didn’t want to spend a few days with them on a river.
‘What time are you leaving?’ I asked, instead.
‘We have to pick the boat up by four at the latest, and we’ve got to find moorings before dark…so let’s say we leave around eleven?’
I would go shopping, I decided. A delicious sense of freedom brought on by their imminent departure spread over me. And I would buy bread.
By midday the house was mine again. The silence settled slowly like dust on the sunlit surface of the furniture. I tidied the detritus of the last few days in a desultory, half-hearted way, and went out. Orford is much smaller than Aldeburgh, a village really, with one main street. In reality it is an island, surrounded by marshland and the estuary running into the sea. For the past two years the heavy rains have brought extensive flooding to the area and house prices were going into a decline. Those who could had begun to move away. Others, like me, who chose to live close to the river, kept a supply of sandbags at the ready for the next deluge. As Orford has no tourist attractions it seldom gets crowded even at the height of summer. The smart London visitors come for the festivals and are interested only in Aldeburgh. They hardly ever venture as far as us. Which suits the xenophobic residents of Orford perfectly.
I went to the fishmonger’s and picked up the fresh crab I had ordered. The greengrocer was selling samphire and watercress, so I bought some. Next I went to the bakery. I bought a loaf of bread, hesitated for only a moment and bought some scones.
‘Your family’s arrived, I see,’ Eileen said.
I nodded.
‘How’s the politics?’ she asked.
I frowned. Jack’s semi-right-wing political party was of no interest to me. Eileen’s face was studiedly blank.
‘He thinks we should stop campaigning against the developers building the marina.’
If the marina and the proposed block of flats alongside the riverbank were built, apart from the flood risk they would face, the lanes in Orford would become completely clogged with cars.
‘Oh, does he!’ I said.
So Jack was talking to the locals now, was he? Poking his nose into things that were nothing to do with him.
‘Don’t worry. The builders won’t get permission,’ I said.
I didn’t tell Eileen, but I had written a piece for the local newspaper on the subject. So far, it didn’t look as though they would run it. The circus and the assault that had followed used up all available column inches.
Eileen packed up my scones. She nodded a little grimly, I thought. Then she slipped a pot of cream into the bag. I knew she would talk about me later. Everyone in Orford is like that. The landscape collects conversations as effectively as a bucket. I have known most of the people here since I was a child. They all know what happened to us. They know about our fight over the ownership of the house, and that I had come back to bury my secrets. I knew there were those who thought of me as the woman who had everything; there were others who felt sorry for me, but in either case I no longer encouraged friendship. In my experience, those who extended the hand of friendliness usually gave out private information at the drop of a hat and I trusted no one.
‘The children have grown a lot,’ she ventured, and I agreed, they had.
It was one o’clock. I bought some apples and a small pork pie and drove across the bridge to the other side of the riverbank in the direction of Orford Ness. When I was a teenager I used to sit for hours staring at this shingle desert of military ruin. The horizon remains the same through one hundred and eighty degrees. I used to love its other-worldliness. From here it is possible to catch a glimpse of Eel House as a faint smudge in the distance. Over time, the National Trust volunteers had grown used to seeing me sitting on the edge of its desert-like landscape, lost in thought.
The sun had become very hot while I walked and, because of the lack of rain, the marshland had taken on a brittle aspect. The smell of rotting vegetation in the dykes mingled with a drift of sea-air. All around me the reeds gave off a dry, hollow sound. By now I was lightheaded with hunger and something else. There was a strange suppressed anticipation in the air. At the edge of the marshes, there was a small hollow in the ground where I always sat and slipping into it now