Deborah Levy - Swimming Home

Kitty stood up and fumbled with her purse. He told her not to worry. Please. He wanted to buy her lunch. She insisted she would pay her share. He saw her purse was flat, empty, there was nothing in it but she was searching for coins all the same. He insisted. It meant nothing to him. Please would she leave the bill for him to sort out? She was shouting too while her fingers frantically searched inside the purse, shouting at him to shut up shut up shut up, who did he think she was, what was he thinking she was? Blushing and furious, she at last found what she had been looking for, a grubby twenty-franc note folded in two as if it had been saved for something. She unfolded it carefully, her hands shaking as she slid it under a saucer, and then she ran down one of the cobbled streets. He could hear her coughing. And then he heard Jurgen’s voice talking to her and realised the caretaker must have been waiting for her. She was asking him in French why the pool was so cloudy and he was asking her why she was crying. He heard Jurgen say forget forget, the sun is shining, Kitty Ket. It was a sort of song: forget forget Kitty Ket forget forget Kitty Ket.

Joe searched for his silk handkerchief and buried his face in it. Silk was used to make early bulletproof vests. It was a second skin and he needed it. What was he supposed to do? What was he supposed to do with her poem? He was not her doctor. She didn’t want him to shine a light in her eyes. Should he tell Isabel the young woman she had invited to stay had threatened to do something?

He would be in Poland soon. Performing in an old palace in Kraków. His translator and guide would talk him through tram routes and menus. She would take him to rest in the Tatra Mountains and show him the wooden dachas built in the forest. Women in headscarves would tend their geese and invite him to taste their jams and cheeses. When he finally departed from Warsaw airport and customs asked him if he was taking any caviar out of the country, he would say, ‘No caviar. I’m taking my black oily past out of the country and it belongs to us both. It goes like this. My father said goodbye, etc. My mother said goodbye, etc. They hid me in a dark forest in western Poland, etc.’

Someone was patting his shoulder. To his surprise, Claude had placed a glass of cold lager on his table. What had brought on this kind fraternal gesture from the Mick Jagger of Wurzelshire? Joe drank it down in one long thirsty gulp. He picked up the note Kitty had left under the saucer and poked it into his shirt pocket before Claude swept it up to pay his hair stylist. He would find a way of returning it to her. She was going in two days’ time, thank God. It would be over. To his dismay, just as he was beginning to feel elated at being on his own, he saw his daughter walking down the hill towards the café.

Nina was carrying a fishing net and a bucket. Oh no. Bloody hell. He began to moan to himself. Here she is. My daughter is wearing mascara to go fishing. And earrings. Big gold hoops that will be caught on the branches of trees. Now he would have to hike with her all the way to the river in the afternoon heat as he had promised her. Two kilometres.

No one seemed to understand he was fifty-seven years old. He would have to scramble down the slope of the river bank and try not to slip on the stones. He waved unenthusiastically and his daughter shook the fishing net in his direction. When she finally slumped down on the chair opposite him, he took her hand and squeezed it. ‘Congratulations. Your mother told me you’ve started your period at last.’

‘Shut the fuck up.’ Nina rolled her eyes and stared in rapt fascination at the bucket.

‘OK, I will. Why don’t we cancel fishing and just sit here and drink lager together?’

‘No way.’

Joe cleared his throat. ‘Um … have you got everything you need … you know, for a girl who has just started…?’

‘Shut up.’

‘OK, I will.’

‘Where’s Kitty?’

‘She’s … um … I don’t know where she’s gone.’

Nina stared at her father’s hair. He had actually brushed it for a change. She had to admit he was quite handsome even though he was repulsive. He had made an effort to look good for Kitty whatever he said.

‘Did you like her poem?’

What was he supposed to say? Again he did what he did best, which was to lie.

‘I haven’t read it yet.’

Nina punched his arm as hard as she could.

‘She was so nervous about you reading it she nearly crashed the car. With ME in it. She practically drove us both over the mountains. She had to summon all her courage to see you. She was SHAKING.’

‘Oh, God.’ Joe blew out his cheeks.

‘Why “Oh, GOD”? I thought you didn’t believe in God?’ his daughter snarled and turned her back on him.

He banged the table and it jumped.

‘Don’t EVER get into a car with Kitty Finch again. Do you understand?’

Nina thought she sort of understood but didn’t really know what it was she had agreed to understand. Was Kitty a bad driver or what? Her father looked furious.

‘I can’t stand THE DEPRESSED. It’s like a job, it’s the only thing they work hard at. Oh good my depression is very well today. Oh good today I have another mysterious symptom and I will have another one tomorrow. The DEPRESSED are full of hate and bile and when they are not having panic attacks they are writing poems. What do they want their poems to DO? Their depression is the most VITAL thing about them. Their poems are threats. ALWAYS threats. There is no sensation that is keener or more active than their pain. They give nothing back except their depression. It’s just another utility. Like electricity and water and gas and democracy. They could not survive without it. GOD, I’M SO THIRSTY. WHERE’S CLAUDE?’

Claude poked his head round the door. He was trying not to laugh but looked at Joe with slightly more respect than usual. In fact he was thinking about asking him in confidence if he might see his way to paying the tab Mitchell was running up in the café.

‘Please, Claude, bring me some water. Any water. A bottle will do. No. I’ll have another beer. A large one. Don’t you do pints in this country?’

Claude nodded and disappeared inside the café, where he had switched on the television to watch the football. Nina picked up the fishing net and waved it in her father’s face.

‘The whole point of this afternoon is we are going fishing, so stand up and start walking, because you are boring me shitless.’

Shitless was her newest word and she said it with relish.

‘I know I don’t bore you “shitless”,’ her father growled pathetically, his voice now hoarse.

Nina did not dare say it again because every time he took her out with the net and bucket she was always excited at the horrors he somehow managed to scoop up.

Claude brought out the beer, ‘a large one’, in a pint glass and explained to Nina that he was taking no more orders from her father because he was watching the semi between Sweden and Brazil.

‘Fair enough.’ Joe threw some money on the table and when Claude whispered something in his ear, he slapped a bundle of notes into his hand and told him he would pay for anything Mitchell ordered at the café but he must not know, the fat man must not be told that his endless pastries would be paid for with the royalties of the rich arsehole poet.

Claude tapped his nose. Their plan was safe with him. He glanced at Nina and then snapped a branch of the purple bougainvillea growing up the wall. He looped the flowers into a bracelet and offered it to her with a small bow. ‘For the beautiful daughter of the poet.’

Nina found herself brazenly holding out her arm so he could wrap the violet petals around it like a handcuff. Her pulse was going berserk as his fingertips touched her wrist.