Graham Swift - Learning to Swim - And Other Stories

“Well Turkey then — Istanbul,” she said — we had the brochures open on the table, with their photographs of the Blue Mosque—“that’s not the Middle East.” I remarked (facetiously perhaps: I make these digs at my wife and she appreciates them for they reassure her that she is not being treated like something fragile) that the Turks made trouble too; they had invaded Cyprus.

“Don’t you remember the Hamiltons’ villa? They’re still waiting to know what’s become of it.”

“But we’re not going to Cyprus,” she said. And then, looking at the brochure — as if her adventurousness were being tested and she recognised its limits: “Besides, Istanbul is in Europe.”

My wife is beautiful. She has a smooth, flawless complexion, subtle, curiously expressive eyebrows, and a slender figure. I think these were the things which made me want to marry her, but though they have preserved themselves well in eight years they no longer have the force of a motive. She looks best in very dark or very pale colours. She is fastidious about perfumes, and tends devotedly our garden in Surrey.

She is lying now on the bed in our hotel bedroom in Istanbul from which you can see Asia, and she is crying. She is crying because while I have been out taking photos, in the morning light, of the Bosphorus, something has happened — she has been interfered with in some way — between her and one of the hotel porters.

I sit down beside her. I do not know exactly what has happened. It is difficult to elicit details while she is crying. However, I am thinking: She only started to cry when I asked, “What’s wrong?” When I came into the room she was not crying, only sitting stiller and paler than usual. This seems to me like a kind of obstructiveness.

“We must get the manager,” I say, getting up, “the police even.” I say this bluffly, even a little heartlessly; partly because I believe my wife may be dramatising, exaggerating (she has been moody, touchy ever since that accident we witnessed: perhaps she is blowing up some small thing, a mistake, nothing at all); partly because I know that if my wife had come out with me to take photos and not remained alone none of this would have occurred; but partly too because as I stare down at her and mention the police, I want her to think of the policeman with his dark glasses and his half-smiling lips and the man with his legs crooked on the road. I see that she does so by the wounded look she gives me. This wounds me in return for having caused it. But I had wanted this too.

“No,” she says, shaking her head, still sobbing. I see that she is not sobered by my remark. Perhaps there is something there. She wants to accuse me, with her look, of being cold and sensible and wanting to pass the matter on, of not caring for her distress itself.

“But you won’t tell me exactly what happened,” I say, as if I am being unfairly treated.

She reaches for her handkerchief and blows her nose deliberately. When my wife cries or laughs her eyebrows form little waves. While her face is buried in the handkerchief I look up out of the window. A mosque on the Asian side, its minarets like thin blades, is visible on the skyline. With the morning light behind it, it seems illusory, like a cut-out. I try to recall its name from the guide-book but cannot. I look back at my wife. She has removed the handkerchief from her eyes. I realise she is right in reproaching me for my callousness. But this process of being harsh towards my wife’s suffering, as if I blamed her for it, so that I in turn will feel to blame and she will then feel justified in pleading her suffering, is familiar. It is the only way in which we begin to speak freely.

She is about to tell me what happened now. She crushes the handkerchief in her hand. I realise I really have been behaving as if nothing had happened.

When I married my wife I had just landed a highly sought-after job. I am a consultant designer. I had everything and, I told myself, I was in love. In order to prove this to myself I had an affair, six months after my marriage, with a girl I did not love. We made love in hotels. In the West there are no harems. Perhaps my wife found out or guessed what had happened, but she gave no sign and I betrayed nothing. I wonder whether if a person does not know something has happened it is the same as if nothing had happened. My affair did not affect in any way the happiness I felt in my marriage. My wife became pregnant. I was glad of this. I stopped seeing the girl. Then some months later my wife had a miscarriage. She not only lost the baby, but could not have children again.

I blamed her for the miscarriage. I thought, quite without reason, that this was an extreme and unfair means of revenge. But this was only on the surface. I blamed my wife because I knew that, having suffered herself without reason, she wanted to be blamed for it. This is something I understand. And I blamed my wife because I myself felt to blame for what had happened and if I blamed my wife, unjustly, she could then accuse me, and I would feel guilty, as you should when you are to blame. Also I felt that by wronging my wife, by hurting her when she had been hurt already, I would be driven by my remorse to do exactly what was needed in the circumstances: to love her. It was at this time that I realised that my wife’s eyebrows had the same attractions as Arabic calligraphy. The truth was we were both crushed by our misfortune, and by hurting each other, shifting the real pain, we protected each other. So I blamed my wife in order to make myself feel bound towards her. Men want power over women in order to be able to let women take this power from them.

This was seven years ago. I do not know if these reactions have ever ceased. Because we could have no children we made up for it in other ways. We began to take frequent and expensive holidays. We would say as we planned them, to convince ourselves: “We need a break, we need to get away.” We went out a lot, to restaurants, concerts, cinemas, theatres. We were keen on the arts. We would go to all the new things, but we would seldom discuss, after seeing a play for instance, what we had watched. Because we had no children we could afford this; but if we had had children we could still have afforded it; since as my career advanced my job brought in more.

This became our story: our loss and its recompense. We felt we had justifications, an account of ourselves. As a result we lived on quite neutral terms with each other. For long periods, especially during those weeks before we took a holiday, we seldom made love — or when we did we would do so as if in fact we were not making love at all. We would lie in our bed, close but not touching, like two continents, each with its own customs and history, between which there is no bridge. We turned our backs towards each other as if we were both waiting our moment, hiding a dagger in our hands. But in order for the dagger thrust to be made, history must first stop, the gap between continents must be crossed. So we would lie, unmoving. And the only stroke, the only wound either of us inflicted was when one would turn and touch the other with empty, gentle hands, as though to say, “See, I have no dagger.”

It seemed we went on holiday in order to make love, to stimulate passion (I dreamt, perhaps, long before we actually travelled there, and even though my wife’s milky body lay beside me, of the sensuous, uninhibited East). But although our holidays seldom had this effect and were only a kind of make-believe, we did not admit this to each other. We were not like real people. We were like characters in a detective novel. The mystery to be solved in our novel was who killed our baby. But as soon as the murderer was discovered he would kill his discoverer. So the discovery was always avoided. Yet the story had to go on. And this, like all stories, kept us from pain as well as boredom.