Authors: Esther Freud
Ginny had a map spread out on her knees and occasionally she paused at a crossroads and glanced down, but she seemed quite amazingly efficient, confident of the way, and so Lara closed her eyes and listened to her telling Lambert how she’d done a cookery course in this region and more often than she could remember had come to cook for English families summering out here.
‘One family, can you imagine, just a married couple and their friends, brought a masseur out with them.’ Lambert must have nodded because she carried on. ‘I was allowed to take advantage of his services, once a week on my day off.’ There was a sharp intake of breath. ‘And it was ever so nice.’
Lara didn’t dare open her eyes in case she saw any hint of laughter in her father’s shoulders. Instead she held the image of Ginny, her golden body spread out on a towel, the strong hands of a man pummelling her soft expanding flesh.
‘Have you cooked for Caroline before?’ Lambert asked, and Ginny said no, she’d never met her.
‘But . . .’ She lowered her voice. ‘I’ve heard she’s a very dignified lady.’
Dignified. There was silence in the car, and Lara kept her eyes closed for so long she must have fallen asleep because when she woke they’d left the flatness of the plain and were climbing along twisting roads into the hills.
Ginny was chatting again. She was quite well known among a certain circle for her green tomato chutney. ‘If you’d be interested,’ she said, ‘I could add you to my list for orders.’
‘Yes.’ Lambert was unusually gallant. ‘I would be interested. Thank you, very much.’
It was late afternoon when they came to a stop in a shaded driveway, and were greeted by the sound of water trickling. Ginny climbed out and stretched and walked round to open the boot.
‘Darling Lamb,’ Lara heard, as her father eased himself out of the car.
A tall, slim woman was standing in the doorway. ‘You actually came.’
Lambert put his arms out and they embraced. Caroline was wearing a pleated skirt, belted at the waist over a cream blouse, and Lambert had to stoop only very slightly to kiss her below the brim of her straw hat.
‘Well done,’ she said, eventually stepping back. ‘You made it.’ And she looked towards Lara.
‘Hello,’ Lara nodded. ‘It’s very nice to be here.’
She waited while Caroline appraised her, looking from Lara to her father, checking for a likeness, trying to square the Lambert Gold she knew with the man who could suddenly have produced this grown-up child.
‘So we finally get to meet you.’
Caroline’s gaze was not entirely friendly. It seemed she was still searching, forcing Lara to check herself against her father too. Was there a likeness? Her mother always said there was. Always said it made her laugh how Lara moved like him, made small fluttery movements of frustration, even as a child, even when she hardly saw him.
By now Ginny had all her bags out on the path. ‘Hello,’ she said.
Caroline turned towards her, putting out a pale and slender hand. ‘Virginia. So very nice to meet you. Thank you for collecting my guests.’ She looked at her multitude of bags. ‘If you’re ready,’ she said, ‘I’ll show you your room.’
Ginny stood up straighter as if she’d remembered she was there as staff. ‘Right then.’ She waved. ‘Toodle-oo.’ And she trotted after Caroline down some steps and around the side of the house.
Lara stood on the path, watching the tiny bubbling fountains of the irrigation system, as Caroline’s cool voice floated away on a list of instructions. She breathed in deeply. It smelt so good here, the air, rich enough to drink, scented with rosemary and lavender and the cool smell of watered stone. She thought of her back garden at home, in a dilapidated row above Finsbury Park station, and how their tangle of lilac acted as a shield against the flat, burnt air of the main road. Three weeks! She gulped down another mouthful, and she followed her father into the house.
The house was tiled and new, inside at least, with pale-wood doors and creamy sofas. It was built for summer with a small stark kitchen lined with cupboards and a tall, loudly humming fridge. One wall of the living room was made of glass, a section of which slid back on to a terrace where a round table stood scattered with Caroline’s correspondence, peach-coloured sheets with ‘La Forestella’ printed across the top.
I’m sorry to have to tell you this
, Lara read, she couldn’t help it,
but I didn’t want you to hear it through some idle gossip
,
which as it turns out you are
. . . She looked round quickly in case she’d been observed, and finding she hadn’t she glanced back down.
They say fresh air and sunlight . . . and I say what the hell, may as well throw in the odd cigarillo
. . .
She forced herself away to join her father as he leant over the railings of the terrace. The house was built on a hill, something you couldn’t tell from the front, because below them the land dropped away in a steep garden of ferns and reeds and flowering oleander, a crooked path of flagstone winding down to a flat basin below, where, like an oasis, lay a bright-blue kidney-shaped pool. Lara wanted to fling off her clothes, run down the steps and throw herself in, but just then Caroline appeared.
Her arms were slim and cool as they rested on the railings between them. ‘Now.’ She took a breath. ‘I’ve told Ginny she can swim between eight and nine, so as not to disturb anyone, and I like to swim first thing, before breakfast, but apart from that, you can use the pool whenever you like.’
Lara gazed down at it, so clear and tempting, the turquoise water dazzling in the sun.
‘But now.’ She turned. ‘I expect you’d like to freshen up.’
When Lara stepped out of the shower she could hear the telephone, then Caroline’s slow, serious voice, followed almost immediately by the bubble of her laughter. The sun was still hot, beating through the open window, and anxious to get to the pool before the afternoon cooled, she began to rifle through her bag. She had a swimming costume somewhere, a bikini, borrowed at the last minute from her mother, but once she’d pulled it on and fastened it, she realised it was a horrible mistake. The bikini was striped, purple and white, the top tied at the neck with ribbon, the pants held high on the thigh with bows, but since the last time she’d borrowed it, her body had changed. ‘Oh my God.’ She stared into the full-length mirror, tucking in a crescent of protruding breast, adjusting the narrow strip of cloth that only half-covered her bottom.
She couldn’t even blame her mother. It wasn’t her fault that at the last minute she’d discarded her all-in-one black costume and started rummaging through Cathy’s clothes. And anyway, she’d never actually known Cathy wear it. Maybe it didn’t fit her either, although that was less likely. Cathy was slight and sinewy with narrow hips, and fine long hands and feet. She had a mass of caramel-coloured hair that she tamed with flowery-smelling products, camomile and calendula, and occasionally – accepting defeat – a headscarf. Lara was nothing like her. Taller and darker. She must have inherited her curves from somewhere else.
Ruefully she moved to the window to check the pool was still in sunshine, and there to her surprise she saw her father, naked except for a pair of bright-blue swimming trunks. He stood at the near end of the pool, his shoulders heavy with a sort of down, his legs comically white, and there on the back of his head, she’d never noticed it before, a distinct hollow in the thick grey of his hair.
She shouldn’t be watching, she told herself, but the shock of seeing him, unimaginably out of his dark suit, made it impossible to look away. Where, she wondered, did he get those swimming trunks, did he get any swimming trunks at all? But these were tight, electric-blue, a pair of Speedo trunks. She was cringing. She caught herself. She was cringing at her father! She had to tear herself away, but just then he raised his arms and made a perfect dive into the pool. Lara looked back at her room. It was spare and plain. A bed, a chest of drawers, a table with a lamp. She couldn’t stay in here for ever, and so wrapping herself in the largest towel she could find she made her way downstairs.
By the time she reached the pool Lambert was sitting, dripping, on a lounger, and before he’d had time to look up she’d dropped her towel and plunged in. The water closed around her, contracting every pore of her body, sending each tiny hair rigid with shock. Down she went, grasping with her feet for tiles, keeping herself under, the water, already warming, holding her body, easing out the kinks and aches in her bones. She opened her eyes, swam along the blue surface of the bottom, marvelled at the strange amphibious nature of her legs, and when she could hold her breath no longer she burst up to the surface, and lay with her eyes shut against the glare. She lay still as a starfish, legs and arms outstretched, and forced herself to see how long she could last. The sun beat through her eyelids, whisked over her nose and cheeks, scorched the white caps of her knees until she was forced to roll over and swim to the side.
Lambert was still there, reading now, making occasional notes in the margins of his book. She watched him for a while and then, pushing off with her feet, she swam, thrashing back and forth across the pool in breast stroke, pausing at each side to catch her breath.
Lambert put down his book. ‘Who taught you to swim?’
‘No one.’ She’d swallowed some water and had to cough for several minutes before she could go on. ‘I just learnt.’
‘Hmmm.’ Lambert was appraising her.
‘We had a lake . . .’ But she didn’t go on.
Every year, on those rare hot Scottish days that smelt of raspberries and heather, they’d walk down the hill to the lake. It lay in a dip of land, far enough off the road to be invisible, shielded on one side by Christmas trees, surrounded on the other by fields full of rabbit droppings and mole hills. It was their lake. That’s how they thought of it, although occasionally others would join them there, farmers’ sons, and later, Buddhist families who’d come to the valley to be near to Samye Ling. They’d bring bedspreads and batches of home-made scones, hunks of cheese and slippery green apples, and they’d spend whole days ducking and splashing and daring each other to go in. But even on the hottest days the lake was still so cold it paralysed you, cut a ring of ice across your scalp, so that once you were in there was never time to do anything more graceful than beat your arms and legs in a frantic effort to keep warm.
‘You’re putting too much work in,’ Lambert advised, and he got up and came and sat on the side of the pool. He placed his hands together, pointed like two leaves, and then, his muscles taut, he pushed his arms away.
Lara did the same, almost sinking as she forgot to use her legs, and when she came up she found he’d climbed into the pool beside her.
‘Keep your hands together, then only at the last minute turn them, and push the water away.’
‘Right.’ She put her hands into position and placing her nose in the water like an arrow she kicked away with her legs.
‘Slowly,’ Lambert called, and as she floundered he waded after her and slipped one hand under her belly.
Lara froze. She tried to draw herself up and away from him but he kept his hand against her skin.
‘Stay relaxed,’ he said, ‘hold your legs straight, concentrate on your arms.’
The fingers of his left hand were seconds from the flimsy elastic of her pants. Arms, she told herself. Arms.
Lambert was moving her slowly forward, walking beside her as one would lead a horse, urging her to point her hands, turn them, push the water away. ‘Now join in with your legs,’ he encouraged, and in her effort to free herself she pushed away so vigorously that she slipped out of his grasp and sped off across the pool. ‘Good,’ he said when she reached the other side.
It was clear he wanted her to turn and swim towards him. Lara pointed her hands, took a deep breath and with such serious determination to get it right she moved through the water like a professional, her face half submerged, every sinew in her body flexed.
‘Do you feel the difference?’ He was heaving himself out.
She smiled at him, the water glistening in drops before her eyes. ‘Yes.’ She felt quite euphoric with relief. ‘I do.’
All through the early evening Lara practised her stroke until the air began to cool and she saw Caroline on the terrace above, dressed in pleated trousers, a drink in her hand. Supper, it must be nearly time, and almost weak with the thought of it she ran, dripping in her towel, up the steps to get changed.
The table was laid for three with side plates, glasses and a double setting of knives and forks. Ginny had made them a dish of thick spaghetti, heaped with basil sauce, creamy and rich with nuts and cheese. I’d eat this every day, if I could, for the rest of my life, Lara thought, the flavours mashed together, but still separate, the texture of each one intact.
Afterwards there was steak, a strip of rare meat along the centre, and a bowl of peppery salad. Lara looked down at her plate. She should have mentioned she was a vegetarian. Had been one for two years – since a trip to the zoo where the sight of the polar bear, tracing a figure of eight the length of his yard, throwing himself on the last arc into the stagnant pool, had pained her so deeply that she’d felt compelled to do something to help. But had it helped? Recently Lara had been back to the zoo and the polar bear was still there, a little thinner, even more desperate, and she couldn’t pretend, even to herself, that her protest had worked.