The Swimming Pool (11 page)

As both men hooted, I could see Ed eyeing them as exotic creatures, imagining they must be in musical theatre, and I wanted to laugh when they gave their professions as anaesthetist and solicitor.

Further small-talk revealed that Angie and Stephen had followed Lara and Miles to Elm Hill from Battersea, where all offspring continued to attend Westbridge. They referred to the Channings as pioneers, as if no one had set foot in the postcode before, and to Lara as a Glenda Jackson figure on account of her campaigning zeal (I could imagine Gayle's response to
that
). ‘The lido was a big draw,' Angie explained, ‘because of Josh's swimming. He trains with his club down in Surrey, but it's good to have somewhere so close for him to go every day. We bought the house before it was public knowledge that the pool was reopening, but Lara had tipped us off.'

‘Insider trading – is that allowed in property?' Andrew asked.

‘Who cares what's
allowed
?' Lara said, and the phrasing reminded me of Mel, whose unwelcome cameo I dismissed from my mind's eye at once.

Upright now in her web, Angie began listing the many training sessions and expeditions required for Josh's swim team and complaining about ‘bloody diving trips'
to the Caribbean with the school, information that predictably offended Ed's sense of social equality.

‘Compulsory, are they?' he mocked. ‘The trips to the Caribbean? I wasn't aware there was a GCSE in scuba diving.'

‘Not GCSEs, just the various PADI certifications,' Angie said, smartly choosing not to acknowledge the sarcasm. I tried to transmit to Ed that if he didn't lighten up soon we'd be queuing to push him over that railing. At least he was draining his Negroni: that could only help.

‘Does Lara still act?' I asked Douglas and Andrew.

‘Twenty-four hours a day, darling,' Douglas said, ‘but not professionally any more.' He called out to interrupt the tête-à-tête our hostess was having with Stephen: ‘What d'you call yourself these days, La? A roving ambassador for the aquatic arts? No, that's to do with fish, probably. A humanitarian?'

‘I have many hats,' ‘La' said, and her hand went to her head as if expecting to find one there. Eyes wide with surprise, she forked startlingly long plum-coloured fingernails through sun-fired hair.

‘Not as many as you have pairs of shoes,' Douglas drawled, which of course drew everyone's attention to Lara's feet, bare, fine-boned, presumably highly flexible after her years of synchronized swimming; I wondered if anyone else was imagining them as I was, emerging from the water with the upper arches stretched flat and the toes pointed skywards.

The
voice drifting from inside was a new one, both soulful and charged, over what sounded like the trombone. ‘Who is this singing?' I asked Angie.

‘Bessie Smith,' said Georgia, who had reappeared for waitressing duties. I couldn't imagine many other fifteen-year-olds knowing that.

‘Not the same Bessie of Yorkshire pudding fame?' Douglas led another gale of laughter and below, in the street, a pair of passing faces turned in surprise.

I wondered what the temperature was up here in the golden glare of the sun; it felt like several degrees above that at ground level.

‘Can we get Molly to help with drinks?' I offered, even though Ed and I did not approve of children serving alcohol. ‘Or can I?'

‘No, no,' Lara said. ‘Georgia likes doing it. And Marthe is here somewhere. Talking of which, we
will
eat soon, I haven't forgotten …'

So vague was this promise that it was a surprise half an hour later when a lunch of roast chicken and summer salads was served by a cheerful soul I gathered to be Everett's nanny, though the boy himself was at a friend's for the day. The teens joined us for food, clustered on a rug as if at a picnic, Molly in a straw hat borrowed from the Channings that made me think of Lucy Honeychurch in
A Room with a View
. It jolted me to see her like that, as a stranger might.

Lara had squeezed next to Ed on a rocking loveseat. ‘How did you and Natalie meet?' she asked him. ‘I'm
dying to know. Was it at
teacher training
?' This she enunciated comically, as if it were some vaguely rude foreign term, which set off more cackling from Douglas and Andrew, and caused Miles and Stephen, who'd been talking together, to fall silent. As Ed set aside his plate to reply, Molly lowered the brim of her hat in horror.

‘Actually, we were undergraduates,' he began.

‘Beware a story that starts with those words,' Andrew said, but Lara shushed him and urged Ed to continue.

I held my breath slightly. My husband was a chronicler rather than a raconteur, not one to let a good story get in the way of the facts. I hoped he would at least be brief.

‘We met at a house party. We were the only sober ones there. The whole thing had been taken over by this crazy fast set –'

‘“Fast set”? Was it the nineteen twenties, then?' Angie cut in, giggling.

‘Sounds marvellous,' Lara said.

‘I'm afraid it wasn't our scene at all,' Ed said. ‘You could say we bonded over our condemnation.'

‘Stop, Dad,' Molly pleaded, and Eve placed a consoling hand on her shoulder.

‘Condemnation?' Stephen said, in his bold, bombastic way. ‘That's a bit strong, what were they doing? Speedballing?'

‘I don't know what that is,' Ed said, ‘but I guess it was standard student debauchery.'

Two
things struck me: one, he sounded a little pompous; two, this must be how I normally spoke too.

‘Oh, wow, louche behaviour,' Lara said, curling her legs against Ed and enjoying herself immensely. ‘I hope today isn't bringing back bad memories for you both. So you got together at this student bacchanal, did you? Who made the first move?'

I decided to wrap this up. ‘To cut a long story short, some guy insulted me and Ed shot him down and rescued me.' But the crude finality of my tone didn't deter anyone: they clamoured to know both the nature of the rude remark and just how Ed had responded. I drained my glass. ‘He asked me what was wrong with my face and Ed told him to shut up. He said why should he shut up, to give him one good reason, and that was when Ed quoted Abraham Lincoln.'

Molly groaned and placed her palms over her face. Georgia and Eve giggled. The three made a picturesque tableau.

‘Abraham Lincoln?' Angie's brows were raised so high they were visible above the top of her sunglasses. ‘This is getting surreal.'

‘What was the quote?' Lara demanded, fingers pawing Ed's arm. ‘I
love
a quote.'

Ed cleared his throat, though thankfully did not attempt an accent: ‘“'Tis better to be silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.”'

‘Ooh, I like that,' Lara said. ‘I'm going to use it myself at the next opportunity. Girls, could you get that into a philosophy paper or something?'

Georgia
and Eve exchanged pitying looks. It was reassuring to see that even Lara suffered the condescension of her youngers.

‘I don't understand,' said Douglas. ‘What did he mean about your face, Natalie? It looks perfectly all right to me.'

‘And he
is
the only one of us who's a medical doctor,' Angie pointed out, chuckling.

‘It's my birthmark,' I said. ‘It was hot at this party and my make-up must have melted. I'm like the Phantom of the Opera under my foundation.'

‘You're not, Mum,' Molly protested.

‘She's exaggerating,' Ed confirmed.

‘Well, I am a bit.' Looking up, I saw that Stephen was watching with an interest that was faintly cruel. I had the sense that he might be one of those people drawn to others' frailties.

Through all of this Miles had been silent. My eye had strayed to him often during the afternoon; though not loud or insistent in his speech like Stephen, he had the power to draw your gaze and hold it. Compared to the rest of us, who were animated or agitated or drunkenly unsteady, he sat quite composed, swivelling his left ankle sporadically as if easing an ache, an old injury perhaps. A question about his job had drawn an indescribably dull answer that confirmed my snap judgement that what he brought to the table was material in nature. The Channings were, I assessed, the classic Daddy's rich/Momma's good-looking union,
she the prize, he the winner. Cordial though he was (that blank welcome notwithstanding), he lacked Lara's ability to lubricate the dry spells in a conversation and, with her by his side doing the talking, had had no reason to develop the skill.

As the conversation moved on, I escaped to the bathroom – an assemblage of black marble and stainless steel that might have graced the suite of a transatlantic liner – where I studied myself in the mirror. I could see at the edges of my make-up a rare drunken flush; the skin at my neckline and on my bare arms burned hot too. Had Ed and I really just shared that story? I had a terrifying and pleasurable feeling that when I re-emerged I might say anything.

Passing back through the sitting room, I lingered by a wall of art, mostly full-colour photographs of swimming pools. There was the famous one of Faye Dunaway the morning after the Oscars, newspapers scattered at her feet, and another of two blonde women lying by a pool, hazy purple mountains in the background.

‘Slim Aarons.' Lara had appeared by my side, close enough for me to feel the heat of her skin, though she was not flushed like me. ‘He's my all-time favourite. He understood about pools and how they make people feel. You know how he described his job? “Photographing attractive people doing attractive things in attractive places”. See? I told you I like quotes.'

‘That's fun,' I said. And however rarified her status, her lifestyle, it seemed to me that Lara was in fact very
inclusive. She made you feel like
you
were one of the attractive people and Elm Hill one of the attractive places, that just by being with her you were doing an attractive thing.

Our eyes locked. ‘Lara, I haven't had a chance to thank you for recommending the hypnotherapist. Molly's had two sessions already and says it's really useful.'

‘Oh, I'm so pleased.'

‘Not that I have any idea what they've actually done,' I added. ‘She won't tell me a thing about it.'

‘Well, from what I gather it's about the power of suggestion. Like brainwashing.' She said this as though brainwashing were the most marvellous thing, something to which we should all aspire to be subjected. ‘So when the fear or the temptation itches, the suggestion overrides it.'

I giggled, not an appropriate response when musing on my daughter's chronic psychological difficulties and the very opposite of the one I'd experienced in Bryony Foster's waiting room. Clearly, I was not quite in control of myself, but if Lara noticed, she didn't mind. I peered at a framed photograph of a girl in a blue tracksuit, recognized my hostess in a teenage shot. She held a trophy, but for a girl posing in triumph there was an odd sense of sorrow in her expression that stirred some memory in me. ‘Have we met before?' I blurted. ‘I mean before this summer?'

‘Not that I know of.' Her gaze followed mine to the photograph. ‘Not unless you were on the south-east
synchro circuit or in showbiz or at one of the kids' schools.'

I admitted I was not.

‘I often get that,' she said, shrugging. ‘People think they know me from their childhood. Or they come up to me in Waitrose and ask if I used to be a BBC weather girl. But you get used to the double-takes.'

‘I've had a few of those,' I told her. ‘At least yours are because people
like
how you look.'

There must have been unintended self-pity in my voice because Lara seized my hand, brought her face so close that I could feel her breath on my cheek. ‘You don't actually care about some old
blemish
, do you?'

I blinked, not yet used to her abrupt displays of fervour. ‘Not now, no. But I used to.' It was strange: I'd gone months without giving my birthmark a thought, and here I was, drawing attention to it twice in the space of an hour. What would a psychologist say? That I was casting myself as Beast to Lara's Beauty, perhaps. ‘Now I bare all quite happily,' I added lightheartedly.

‘Talking of which, let's get some more sun!' Lara declared, dropping my hand. To my astonishment, she wrenched her kaftan over her head to reveal a black swimsuit with plunging lines. Her skin was the glossy caramel the media had taught us to desire above all other hues. ‘Come on, Natalie, don't look so appalled, join me!'

I gaped. ‘Oh, no, I'm not wearing swim stuff, just ordinary underwear.'

‘Anything
goes here, darling.' And, flinging the kaftan on to the nearest chair, she took my hand once more and led me back out to the terrace. The teenagers had scattered and the adults made no comment about her having stripped, Angie absently removing her vest to reveal a bikini top. Seated, I pulled up my skirt an inch or two. As if in response to the bared skin, the sun grew hotter; it seemed to me to be almost at the point of eruption.

During my absence, Ed had once again become the centre of attention, Douglas and Andrew in particular seeming very struck by him. I imagined Lara telling them before our arrival, ‘Just you wait, boys. He's
so
like Alain.'

If ‘Alain' had considered views on the shockingly erratic grading of GCSEs.

‘I'm fascinated by those big comprehensives like All Saints,' Andrew was saying. ‘Is it like on that TV series? Do the kids
really
speak to the teachers like that?'

‘And are they always having sex with each other?' Douglas asked. ‘If you believe what they say in the papers, it's
Lolita
in every classroom.'

Sozzled as he was, Ed was quick to object to this remark. ‘That depends which papers you read. Believe it or not, the idea is not to have an affair with your pupils, but to teach them your subject and get them through their exams.'