Graham Swift - Learning to Swim - And Other Stories

Mother and Father ate their steaks. Their cutlery snipped and scraped meticulously. “Gorgeous,” my father said after the second mouthful, “beautiful.” My mother blinked and drew back her lips obligingly. I noticed that, despite her puffy dress, her chest was quite flat.

Gabor caught my eyes. Some sorrow, some memory of which none of us knew, could no longer be contained. Father intercepted the glance and turned with sudden heed towards Gabor. For the first time that evening something like animation awoke in his eyes. I could imagine him, in a moment or so, pushing aside the remainder of his steak, rejecting with a knitting of his brows the bottle of Barsac, the bowl of roses in the middle of the table, grasping Gabor’s hand and saying: “Yes, of course, this is all nonsense …”

But this was not to be. I was determined, if only to defy father, that Gabor would not cry. There was something in our experience of that afternoon, I recognised, for which tears were only one response. Gabor relowered his head, but I pinned my gaze, like a mind-reader, on his black mop of hair, and now and then his eyes flashed up at me. A nervous, expectant silence hung over the dinner table, in which my parents resumed eating, their elbows and jaws moving as if on wires. I saw them suddenly as Gabor must have seen them — as though they were not my parents at all. Each time Gabor looked up I caught his eyes, willing them not to moisten, to read my thoughts, to follow my own glance as I looked, now at my father’s slack jowl, now at Mother’s thin throat.

Gabor sat in front of the window. With the evening light behind him and his head bent forward, his infant moustache showed distinctly.

Then suddenly, like boys in church who cannot restrain a joke, he and I began to laugh.

I learnt that I was to be accepted at a new grammar school. Gabor, by some inept piece of administration, was granted a place at a similar, but not the same institution, and arrangements were made for continuing his private tuition. The whole question of Gabor’s future, whether or not he was to be formally adopted into our family, was at this stage “under review.” We had till September to pretend we were free. We watched for the couple on their motor-bike. They did not reappear. Somehow the final defeat or destruction of the last remnants of the German army, accomplished that summer, did not compensate for this. But our future advance in status brought with it new liberties. Father, whose face had become more dour (I sometimes wondered if he would be glad or sorry if the authorities decided that he could legally be Gabor’s father), suggested that I might spend a day or two of our holiday showing Gabor round London. I knew this was a sacrifice. We had gone to London before, as a family, to show Gabor the sights. Gabor had trailed sheepishly after my parents, showing a token, dutiful interest. I knew that Father had had a dream once, which he had abandoned now, of taking Gabor by himself up to London, of showing him buildings and monuments, of extending to him his grown man’s knowledge of the world, his shrewdness in its ways, of seeing his eyes kindle and warm as to a new-found father.

I took Gabor up on the train to London Bridge. I knew my way about from the times Father had taken me, and was a confident guide. We had fun. We rode on the Underground and on the top decks of buses. In the City and around St. Paul’s there were bomb-sites with willow-herb sprouting in the rubble. We bought ice-creams at the Tower and took each other’s photo in Trafalgar Square. We watched Life Guards riding like toys down the Mall. When we got home (not long before Father himself came in from work) Father asked, seeing our contented faces: “Well, and how was the big city?” Gabor replied, with the grave, wise expression he always had when concentrating on his English: “I like London. Iss full history. Iss full history.”

I REMEMBER THAT DAY FOR two things. It was a bright, keen day in mid-September. Autumn had come. Everything was sharp and conspicuous …

Firstly, it was that day that my wife and I learnt that she was pregnant. She gave me the sample in the morning. I took it myself to be tested at the hospital. Perhaps it is strange for a doctor to be clinical even with his own wife. I handed the sample to McKinley in the lab and said, “I’ll wait for this one — it’s my wife.” A little while later McKinley returned: “Positive.” But even before this my wife had known — those early intuitions are often right — that she was really pregnant. We ought to have been glad. When I’d left that morning with the sample I looked at her lingeringly — to see, perhaps, if her intuitions went any further. The sun was dazzling in our kitchen. She turned away, and then I kissed her, lightly, on the top of the head, as one kisses an unhappy child. When McKinley said, “Congratulations,” it took an effort to make the usual display of pleasure …

And then it was that day that I first saw M. He was the last on my list for evening surgery, and I knew somehow, as soon as he entered, that he was a fake. He spoke of headaches and vague pains in the back and chest. He was a slight, bland, dull-looking youth of barely twenty. You can tell when someone is describing a pain that isn’t really there.

“What sort of pain?”

“A kind of stabbing.”

“Are you getting it now?”

“Oh yes — it’s always there.”

“A constant stabbing pain?”

I sounded his chest, took his pulse and went through a few other motions just to please him. At length I said to him: “I’d say you’re a perfectly fit young man. You’re physically sound. Are you worried about anything? I think this pain of yours is quite imaginary. I think you’ve imagined it enough to make it actually exist. But that doesn’t mean it’s anything.” I said this kindly enough. I really wanted to say: “Oh go away.” I wanted to have finished surgery and be alone. I ushered him to the door. He had this pale, ineffectual face which I disliked. At the door he suddenly turned and said: “Doctor, the pain’s quite real”—with such earnestness that I said hastily (this was a mistake), “If you’re still worried come and see me next week.”

Then he was gone down the gravel path leading from my waiting room.

I hadn’t seen my wife since the morning. I’d phoned her from the hospital. I said, “It’s positive — congratulations,” just to see if she would react as I had done to McKinley. She said, “Well I knew.” Then I had matters to attend to at the hospital, a meeting with the radiologist, some calls in the afternoon; and when I returned I got straight on with my evening surgery without even going into the house. This is not unusual. My surgery and waiting room are an annexe of the house, but my wife and I look upon them as distinct zones. My wife never enters my surgery even out of surgery hours; and there are times — that evening was one — when I feel more at home at my surgery desk than in the house which is only the other side of a door.

I said good-night to Susan, my receptionist, and pretended to be busy with some record cards. It was not quite seven. The sun which had shone all day was low, but bright, crisp and ruddy. Through my surgery window I could see the apples swelling on the apple trees in our back garden, the orange berries on the pyracantha, the virginia creeper turning red on the house wall. I have always been pleased by the way the garden is visible from my surgery and presses in on it as if on some sort of conservatory. I think my patients find this reassuring. Often they remark gladly on the view. I sat for some time at my desk looking at the garden. I didn’t want to think of my wife. I thought of my Great-Uncle Laurie. Then I looked at my watch, got up and locked the outer doors of the waiting room and surgery, and passed through the connecting door into the house. As I did so I put on a cheerful, earnest face, as I do for my patients. My wife was in the kitchen. She is twenty-nine, young enough to be my daughter. I took her in my arms but with scarcely any pressure, the way one touches something fragile and precious. She said: “Well, we will have to wait and see.”