Deborah Levy - Swimming Home

Nina watched Kitty Finch press the palms of her hands against the walls of the spare bedroom as if she was testing how solid they were. It was a small room looking over the back of the villa, the yellow curtains drawn tight across the only window. It made the room hot and dark, but Kitty said she liked it that way. Upstairs in the kitchen they could hear Mitchell singing an Abba song out of tune. Kitty told Nina she was checking the walls because the foundations of the villa were shaky. Three years ago a gang of cowboy builders from Menton had been paid to patch the whole house together. There were cracks everywhere but they had been hastily covered up with the wrong sort of plaster.

Nina couldn’t get over how much Kitty knew about everything. What was the right sort of plaster, then? Did Kitty Finch work in the construction industry? How did she manage to tuck all her hair into a hard hat?

It was as if Kitty had read her thoughts, because she said, ‘Yeah, well, the right sort of plaster has limestone in it,’ and then she knelt down on the floor and examined the plants she had collected in the churchyard earlier that morning.

Her green fingernails stroked the triangular leaves and clusters of white flowers that, she insisted, wrinkling her nose, smelt of mice. She was collecting the seeds from the plants because she wanted to study them and Nina could help her if she wanted to.

‘What sort of plant is it?’

‘It’s called Conium maculatum. It comes from the same family as fennel, parsnips and carrot. I was really surprised to see it growing by the church. The leaves look like parsley, don’t they?’

Nina didn’t really know.

‘This is hemlock. Your father knew that, of course. In the old days children used to make whistles from the stems and it sometimes poisoned them. But the Greeks thought it cured tumours.’

Kitty seemed to have a lot to do. After she’d hung up her summer dresses in the wardrobe and lined up a few tattered well-thumbed books on the shelf, she ran upstairs to look at the pool again, even though it was now dark outside.

When she came back she explained that the pool now had underwater lighting. ‘It didn’t last year.’

She took a brown A4 envelope out of the blue canvas bag and studied it. ‘This,’ she said, waving it at Nina, ‘is the poem your father has promised to read tonight.’ She chewed at her top lip. ‘He said to put it on the table outside his bedroom. Will you come with me?’

Nina led Kitty Finch to the room where her parents slept. Their bedroom was the largest in the villa, with an even larger bathroom attached to it. It had gold taps and a power shower and a button to turn the bath into a jacuzzi. She pointed to a small table pushed against the wall outside their bedroom. A bowl stood in the centre of the table, a muddle of swimming goggles, dried flowers, old felt-tips, postcards and keys.

‘Oh, those are the keys to the pump room.’ Kitty sounded excited. ‘The pump room stores all the machinery that makes the swimming pool work. I’ll put the envelope under the bowl.’

She frowned at the brown envelope and kept taking deep breaths, shaking her curls as if something was caught in her hair.

‘Actually, I think I’ll slip it under the door. That way he’ll trip over it and have to read it immediately.’

Nina was about to tell her that it wasn’t his bedroom, her mother slept there too, but she stopped herself because Kitty Finch was saying weird things.

‘You have to take a chance, don’t you? It’s like crossing a road with your eyes shut … you don’t know what’s going to happen next.’ And then she threw back her head and laughed. ‘Remind me to drive you to Nice tomorrow for the best ice cream you’ll ever taste in your life.’

Standing next to Kitty Finch was like being near a cork that had just popped out of a bottle. The first pop when gasses seem to escape and everything is sprinkled for one second with something intoxicating.

Mitchell was calling them for supper.

‘My wife is having her shoes mended in Nice,’ Joe Jacobs announced theatrically to everyone at the dinner table.

His tone suggested he was merely giving information and required no reply from the audience assembled for dinner. They concurred. It was not mentioned.

Mitchell, always the self-appointed chef, had spent the afternoon roasting the hunk of beef Joe had insisted on paying for in the market that morning. He sliced it gleefully, pink blood oozing from its centre.

‘None for me, thank you,’ Kitty said politely.

‘Oh, just a morsel.’ A thin slice of bloody meat dropped from his fork and landed on her plate.

‘Morsel is Mitchell’s favourite word.’ Joe picked up his napkin and tucked it into his shirt collar.

Laura poured the wine. She was wearing an ornate African necklace, a thick band of plaited gold fastened with seven pearls around her neck.

‘You look like a bride,’ Kitty said admiringly.

‘Strangely enough,’ Laura replied, ‘this actually is a bridal necklace from our shop. It’s from Kenya.’

Kitty’s eyes were watering from the horseradish, which she spooned into her mouth as if it was sugar. ‘So what do you and Mitchell sell at your “Cash and Carry”?’

‘“Emporium”,’ Laura corrected her. ‘We sell primitive Persian, Turkish and Hindu weapons. And expensive African jewellery.’

‘We are small-time arms dealers,’ Mitchell said effusively. ‘And in between we sell furniture made from ostriches.’

Joe rolled a slice of meat with his fingers and dipped it into the bowl of horseradish. ‘Furniture is made from ostriches and horseradish is made from horses,’ he chanted.

Nina flung down her knife. ‘Shut the fuck up.’

Mitchell grimaced. ‘Girls of your age shouldn’t use such ugly words.’

Her father nodded as if he entirely agreed. Nina stared at him furiously as he polished his spoon with the end of the tablecloth. She knew her father had a lot of time for what Mitchell called ‘ugly’ words. When she told him, as she regularly did, that she was sick of wearing totally sad shoes to school with the wrong colour tights, her father the poet corrected her choice of words: ‘Next time say totally sad fucking crap shoes. It will give your case more emphasis.’

‘Ugly words are for ugly thoughts.’ Mitchell briskly tapped the side of his bald head and then licked a smear of horseradish off his thumb. ‘I never would have sworn in front of my father when I was your age.’

Joe shot his daughter a look. ‘Yes, my child. Please don’t swear like that and offend the fuckers at this table. Especially Mitchell. He’s dangerous. He’s got weapons. Swords and ivory revolvers.’

‘Ac-tu-ally’ — Mitchell wagged his finger — ‘what I really need is a mousetrap, because there are rodents in this kitchen.’

He glanced at Kitty Finch when he said ‘rodents’.

Kitty dropped her slice of beef on the floor and leaned towards Nina. ‘Horseradish is not made out of horses. It’s related to the mustard family. It’s a root and your father probably eats so much of it because it’s good for his rheumatism.’

Joe raised his thick eyebrows. ‘Whaat? I haven’t got rheumatism!’

‘You probably have,’ Kitty replied. ‘You’re a bit stiff when you walk.’

‘That’s because he’s old enough to be your father,’ Laura smiled nastily. She was still puzzled why Isabel had been so insistent that a young woman, who swam naked and obviously wanted her middle-aged husband’s attention should stay with them. Her friend was supposed to be the betrayed partner in their marriage. Hurt by his infidelities. Burdened by his past. Betrayed and lied to.