The Swimmer

It was Eric who eventually talked to me about what had happened. All through the summer when I was fourteen we would go out eeling while my uncle grumbled that he wanted to make me a farmer not a fisherman. Eels were Eric’s passion. We would go out in his boat on the hot summer nights, mooring up in places where the water curled around the base of a willow tree. Then, after we had eaten the delicious supper of fresh fish he had cooked on his little camping gas stove, Eric would tell me eel stories. It was he who introduced me to the Sargasso Sea.

‘Imagine, Ria,’ he would say, ‘a sea without shores, without waves, without currents. That’s the Sargasso for you!’

I listened mesmerised as he talked about a place of utter darkness, where starfish and sea cucumbers crept. My imagination was fired by a place full of weed-harbouring monsters.

‘The eels swim there, Ria,’ he told me. ‘They are programmed to swim three thousand miles in order to remain faithful to their ancestral life in the matter of reproduction!’

I had no idea what he was talking about, but the stories fascinated me, nonetheless.

‘And then,’ Eric said, getting into his stride, ‘after they finish reproducing, spent and exhausted, far away from home, the fire of life goes out of them and they die. That’s life, Ria.’

We would sit staring at the night sky with its Milky Way running in a silent ribbon above us. And it was on such a night as this, without fanfare or fuss, that he began to talk about my father’s death. The conversation slipped in easily like oars dipping into the water. All conversations with Eric were like that. He told me that death, whenever it came, was always sudden, always a shock. You could not prepare for it, he said, no matter how hard you tried.

‘Your Ma was only trying to protect you both,’ he said. ‘She wasn’t being wicked, just foolish, maybe. We’re all foolish at some point or other. Don’t listen to other folks.’

We sat in companionable silence. For the briefest of moments I felt a kind of peace.

‘How’s Jack been?’ he asked, finally.

I shrugged and Eric looked at me sharply.

‘You’re both out there in the dark, aren’t you? It’s too much for you to have to deal with on your own.’

Then he talked of other things too. He told me about the brother he had lost years before and he told me that having been born on the farm meant his roots were firmly buried in this little patch of land.

‘The land you are born on is so important, Ria,’ he said. ‘People take it for granted these days because travel is so easy. But it never was in my day and I have never wanted to be anywhere else.’

I had no idea how old he was.

‘You’ll come back, luv, when you’ve grown,’ he said, nodding his head, certain. ‘Your dad loved it here and this place belongs to you, you’ll see.’

I nearly began to cry but I took a deep breath and looked at my hands and then the tears went away again. Only the lump in my chest stayed where it was and I remember thinking I would have to learn to breathe with it always there.

One day Eric gave me a photograph that my father had taken of me. In it I was sitting on the steps at the back of Eric’s farm, holding a doll. I must have been about five at the time, because I still had my hair in long blonde plaits. Later, as an adult, I had the photograph enlarged. It sits on my desk now, that figure of a little girl, smiling up at the sun with her father’s shadow across her face.

‘He’ll always be with you, Ria,’ Eric told me, busying himself with his eel-traps. ‘You mustn’t fret. Time is the famous healer.’

As I grew older, even after I moved away from him, and first my aunt and then my uncle died, it was Eric I loved the most. When the will was read and it turned out that the house had been left to me, it was Eric who wrote first.

I love Eric. Always in the background of my life, his presence nevertheless underpins it completely.

I had walked the length of the beach and was now on Main Street. This stretch never fails to remind me of those long, lonely years after Dad’s death. I was going to call them the barren years, but in fact barrenness came later. The breeze blew unstoppable and fresh, straight off the North Sea. Today it was warm, but in winter it could be very cruel. I bought my fish and returned home.

Looking back, that day proved to be one of the most productive of the summer. I finished the poem and later even managed to do a bit of weeding in my vegetable patch. The sun had given my tomatoes an intensity of flavour. I picked a few and some runner beans, too. I decided to grill the fish with dill and parsley. It was all planned. The basil-soaked olive oil, the fresh bread. The pudding was to be apricots, halved and stoned and tossed with slices of watermelon and late strawberries in a dressing of my own invention. I had a bottle of wine chilling in the fridge but then, remembering how my swimmer had drunk his beer so thirstily, I put the last of Jack’s cans to cool. I was excited. It was years since I had cooked for a man. At six o’clock the phone rang. It was Heather. I sighed. Heather is my only friend left in Orford. As a child, Heather hated her own mother. She used to want to be part of our family and our mother was very fond of her. Later, when everything went cold at home, Heather would still sometimes visit us. Occasionally she even used to cook for us, making cakes that she knew Mum and Jack liked, fussing over them and bringing presents from the farm. I remember after one such visit Mum saying Heather should have been her daughter. I think I stopped believing that Heather was my special friend after that.

‘How’s the visit going?’ she asked me now.

Heather knew all about Jack. She knew I dreaded these annual visits and she knew about the long-running battle over Eel House.

‘They’ve gone away for a few days.’

Instantly I regretted telling her.

‘Poor Jack,’ she said. ‘Have you driven him away?’

‘Of course not!’

I was back on the defensive.

‘How about supper over here, then?’

‘I’d rather not, if you don’t mind. I haven’t done any work for ages and I’m on a roll now.’

‘Of course, of course…um…well, never mind…’

She made a sound as if she was gulping down some food and all the irritations of the past few days gathered in me. I could tell she was hurt by my refusal of dinner. The hurt was constantly in her voice and the more she tried to hide it, the more distant I became towards her. But, I suppose living alone had made me waspish.

Why am I friends with Heather? When we were children her parents ran the farm on the other side of Orford, along the Unthank Road, the unfashionable side of town. We met each summer but then, after Dad died, apart from the odd visit, we went our separate ways, I to Cambridge and Heather into marriage to a difficult man, another farmer. She had three children in quick succession. The process aged her. We kept in touch spasmodically, but never met up again until my mother died. Then she tried to resurrect the friendship with the absence of the years lying unspoken between us. As a reunion, it was not successful. Mother had just died after a long and rambling descent into dementia. I had been the one to look after her, until Ant put a stop to that and I was forced to put her into a home. More guilt. The transfer killed her; of that I remain certain. We had about two months before the end when I tried belatedly and unsuccessfully to address the past, and then she died. Heather came to the funeral and fussed over Jack even though he had done nothing for Mother for years. She blamed me for the feud over Eel House, telling me that, as we only had each other now, I should try to sort out our differences. I never forgot that remark, made on the steps of the crematorium.

‘Try to understand him, Ria,’ she had said, in her kindly voice.

I had been too shocked to defend myself. Looking at Jack’s handsome face, I suspected him of complaining about me. I never really forgave her after that.

These days, now that her children have grown up and left home, Heather has drifted away from her monosyllabic husband and started throwing herself into local politics. She has a large circle of acquaintances to whom, when I first arrived in Orford, she introduced me. I think she hoped I would meet a suitable man. It was kind, but the ploy didn’t work. Neither her male friends nor I were interested. After a while she gave up and we continued our lukewarm relationship, regardless. The trick of intimacy evaded us both.

There was a short, awkward pause.

‘Did you get the local paper?’ she asked.

‘No, I forgot. Why?’

‘You know about the calves that were killed?’

‘Probably a fox,’ I said.

‘A fox can’t slit throats,’ Heather said quickly. ‘Anyway there’s been an attack at the circus. Did you hear about that?’

‘You think it’s related?’

Heather loved a good crime story. In this, as in so many other things, she and my mother were similar.

‘Of course! The woman’s passport was stolen, you know.’

‘So? What are you saying?’

‘Well, obviously it’s worrying. Clem has become paranoid. He thinks there are terrorists in Suffolk. Muslim terrorists!’

Clem was the husband. Paranoia was his speciality. I laughed.

‘So the terrorists go around slitting up animals? What for? Doesn’t make sense.’

She was silent.

‘Yes, I agree. So what are you doing this evening?’ she changed the subject.

I had the feeling she wanted to catch me out, and this both annoyed and made me nervous.

‘I’m really exhausted, Heather. And I simply must work.’

She rang off a few minutes later, her disappointment hovering like cigarette smoke in the air. To dispel it, I tuned in to the local radio station. There was nothing new. They were still talking about the animals that had been found with their throats slit. There was also speculation that the woman who was attacked had been part of a drugs ring. There was no mention of Heather’s terrorist theory. I went back to my cooking.

My swimmer arrived just as I was pouring a glass of wine. The halibut, creamy white and melting at the touch, was almost cooked. He entered the kitchen silently, lifting up the latch. With the practised hand of a burglar, was my first ironic thought. He was wearing a clean T-shirt and had a folded piece of paper in his hand.

‘I have brought some music,’ he announced.

I could see straight away that he was keen to play the piano, so I took him into the drawing room. As I set the table in the garden, music drifted out through the open window like wisps of scent. All my irritation over Heather, the vague anxiety she had induced in me, evaporated instantly as I listened to Ben playing French jazz and managing somehow to make the piano sound both unfamiliar and mellow. Confused, I felt the light from this summer evening fall sweetly through the tangle of trees. Roses bloomed. I stared at the old garden table set for two and, as if on cue, the phone rang, and rang again, insistently. The music faltered, almost stopped, then continued regardless as I hurried into the kitchen and closed the door. I picked up the handset and moved towards the small scullery.

‘Yes, yes, I’m fine. I was listening to some music,’ I said.

‘You’re out of breath,’ Miranda remarked.

I took a deep breath.

‘I didn’t hear you ring,’ I said as calmly as I could. ‘Are you having a nice time?’

The piano stopped and I heard footsteps approaching the kitchen but Miranda was still talking. I suspected she was trying to make amends for Jack’s brusqueness, but I could have done without it just at the moment. On and on she went; how wonderful the weather was, how dreadful the children were, how they squabbled, how crowded the Broads were, the ghastly day-trippers. I listened, saying as little as I could, not wanting to prolong the conversation, wanting her to finish.

‘Jack’s meeting someone in the pub,’ she said. ‘Honestly, Ria, sometimes I think he’s trying to take over the world!’

I had no idea what she was talking about.

‘You know what he said this morning? How nice it was not to see any black faces on the Broads!’

I felt my jaw tighten but managed to say nothing. Finally, thankfully, she rang off. My hands were sweating.

Ben was sitting quietly at the kitchen table, waiting for me.

‘If you give me a screwdriver I’ll fix your light,’ he said.

‘That was my brother and his wife on the phone.’

There was a pause.

‘You don’t like them?’

‘Oh no,’ I said. ‘It’s not that…’

I was rummaging for a screwdriver and when I turned around he was staring at me with a puzzled look. I was aware of the velvet brownness of his eyes. I looked away abruptly.

‘Actually, you’re right,’ I said. ‘I don’t much get on with him. We are…quite different.’

He nodded and said no more, just fixed my light.

Later, as we lingered over the halibut, I asked him tentatively about himself. How had he learnt to play the piano so well? The last light flickered on the leaves. I felt detached as though a part of me had been severed sharply from my body. The evening drew together as he spoke.

‘In my town, before I left,’ he said, ‘people were nice to me. They told me I had a talent.’

He shook the hair from his eyes and smiled. He needs a haircut, I thought.

‘They said it sadly, as if they were really thinking, What a pity he’ll never get anywhere in this place. He’s just a Tamil boy. There are thousands of them.’

‘Is that why you left?’

Again he shook his head. He had left, he told me, because of the war. Why else would anyone want to leave their home?

‘I am the only child of my mother,’ he said. ‘I have two cousins from my father’s side of the family. The cousin closest to me in age was in the year above me at medical school. One day he was asked to leave his course. We think it was because someone saw him talking to a journalist. After that, he worked as a male nurse at the hospital. No one dared teach him any more.’

Ben paused and sipped his beer. I waited. His eyes had darkened.

‘One morning, my cousin went to the hospital to work as usual. He didn’t know the army had arrived to begin an offensive in the area. As he cycled up to the entrance, an army officer shouted to him to stop. So he stopped and started taking out his ID. The officer shouted at him to raise his arms above his head. My cousin tried to get his hand out of his pocket but wasn’t quick enough and the soldier shot him in the face. At point-blank range. Some of his friends saw it happen.’

Ben stopped speaking and for an immeasurable moment the evening too became suspended in the spaces left by his words. I felt a small shock, like electricity, jolt through me.

‘At the same time this was happening, my cousin’s younger brother was at school. He knew nothing about it. An air raid started and planes began dropping bombs. No one had been able to get a message to my uncle’s house after the shooting. My aunt still had no idea her eldest son was dead. The head teacher at the school told the children to leave the building. The teacher decided to take them out the back way into the countryside, where he thought it would be safer. He urged them to go quietly and quickly, with him walking ahead and the children following in single file. But an army helicopter spotted them and started firing. The children broke into a run, heading for cover. My little cousin was the smallest child. He couldn’t keep up with the others. The teacher was screaming at them to hurry, but my cousin slipped. He must have been petrified. He was hit. They left him where he had fallen and when the air raid was over the teacher went back and found him. He was not dead. But when they brought him to my uncle’s house, he was senseless and this is how he has remained. I don’t think he will recover, and my aunt has lost her mind.’

Shocked, I didn’t know what to say. Remnants of food lay on the plates.

‘And you?’ I asked, finally.

He nodded and finished his beer. I had no more left, so I offered him a glass of wine instead. When he smiled his thanks a small dimple appeared in his cheek.

‘I am a qualified doctor,’ he said. ‘I trained during the short space when they dropped the restrictions, but after what happened my mother didn’t want me to stay in Sri Lanka. I had witnessed too many things. I knew how the innocent civilians were treated, how medical aid was withheld from the hospital doctors. I witnessed the way children had their limbs amputated, without anaesthetic, using only a kitchen knife. I had seen too much and because of this our family was marked. It wasn’t easy for me to leave. There were money difficulties too.’

He hesitated.

‘It cost twenty thousand euros for the flight to Moscow. Then another ten thousand for the overland trip by lorry.’

I was staring at him. What he was telling me seemed disconnected from what he was: a refugee-medic who played French jazz. And now, he told me, he would wait for asylum status. He had applied to the Home Office, two weeks ago.

‘They haven’t replied yet,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how long it takes.’

He sounded confident and I wondered why it hadn’t occurred to him that his application might be rejected or that he ought to plan for that eventuality. I began asking him.

‘Have you actually been to the Home Office?’

He shook his head. I felt he didn’t want to discuss it. The farmer had sent the letter in for him, Ben said. The same farmer who was paying him a little cash and letting him sleep in the barn. It was all illegal, of course.

‘But how will they contact you?’ I asked, puzzled.

It didn’t make sense.

‘At the farm. The farmer will let me know when the letter arrives.’

‘There are centres where you can stay,’ I told him, tentatively. ‘I think there’s one that’s opened in Norwich. At least you’d have a proper bed and food.’

‘That only happens when you are registered. I have to be patient, to wait.’

There appeared no doubt in his mind that the letter would arrive any day now and meanwhile the only thing he missed was playing the piano. And the chance of a proper shower.

‘That is why I try to swim every day.’

‘Have you been here a lot, then?’ I asked him.

He shook his head sheepishly.

‘I have only been coming here for a week,’ he admitted. ‘Before that I used to bathe in the river further upstream. But it takes longer to get to and there are others there. I wanted some privacy.’

I digested this fact in silence.

‘You can come here any time,’ I said, finally. ‘And play the piano. No, really,’ I added, not understanding the look he gave me. ‘I would like that!’

I wanted to tell him he could have a shower too, but it seemed too intimate a thing and I had an acute sense of his wariness.

‘I would like to clear your garden by the river in exchange. And maybe you would like the grass cut?’

His face became closed. He looked suddenly stubborn. I could see it was necessary for me to accept the offer. Only then did he relax. He told me that he felt as if he had been walking through a page of history. To have his country’s history inscribed on him was a disquieting sensation, he said. I was appalled by his matter-of-factness.

‘How long have you been here?’ I asked.

‘It feels like years!’

In fact it had only been about four months. He was moving in some mysterious current of destiny, quite alone, as alone as a man dying, he told me. And travelling with him was the soul of his dead cousin.

‘It has been a long journey,’ he said softly, folding his hands together, intertwining the fingers. His voice belied the sorrow in the words. His wrists were slender. Once again I began wondering how old he really was when, without warning, he told me another story. That of the journey.

‘The air in the lorry was stale. After a while it became difficult to breathe and some of the women started to cry. We were banging on the sides, begging for the driver to stop, begging for air.’

I shuddered. He had sat in this way for hours as day and night became indistinguishable and the miles fell away unnoticed. It felt as if he were travelling through nothing but unbending time. On and on from one horizon to the other. The truth was, he no longer felt in the world.

‘I tried to imagine the sea,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘But it was useless.’

The darkness in the lorry had blanked out every thought except that of trying to breathe. Even his grief at the last glimpse of his mother’s face had been blotted out, and in this way he had travelled, across endless land, feeling ever more mortal and insignificant as he went. Like the swimmer he was, he had moved further and further from the shore, until at last he understood the meaning of ‘no return’.

‘I have crossed a line,’ he said. ‘Even if my application for asylum fails, I know that I have crossed that line.’

I stared at his young, still unfinished face and saw how his experiences would slip into the fabric of his features. It would happen slowly, unobtrusively at first, but then one day someone would take a photograph and suddenly the change would be noticed.

‘There was not a single one of those miles that was not filled with memories,’ he said, very softly.

He was frequently conscious of not wanting to die. Which was not the same as wanting to live, he said. Then, just as he had thought he was on the brink of death, the lorry began throwing them out, one by one.

England had come to him in this way. Cold air filled with the smell of seawater. He remembered breathing deeply, thinking he would never again take breathing for granted. And, turning, he had seen the sea and his heart had filled with such longing for his home that he realised why it was considered a sickness. All that first day he had walked, keeping the sea in his sights, never knowing where he was until at last he found himself on the outskirts of a town. He had been the only one of the original group in the lorry who spoke English and he supposed this had saved him, although from what, he did not say. He never found what had happened to the others. He walked all night and finally stumbled on the farm. Now all he wanted was refugee status. The farmer had registered his letter and Ben had kept the proof of postage, along with a copy of the letter itself. I didn’t know what to say. It was simply a question of waiting, he told me.

‘I’m not able to earn enough money until I get my papers.’

It worried him that his mother knew nothing of his whereabouts. The farmer had given him stamps and paper and he had written home, but he didn’t know if the letter had even got to her.

‘Look,’ I said, swallowing, ‘you can have some stamps. Why don’t you write, giving this address?’

He glanced at me with a faint smile, shaking his head. Again I sensed an iron stubbornness, lurking.

‘You are kind, but you can’t do this. You don’t know who I am. Let me do those jobs for you, first.’

There was an awkward silence. It was growing dark, he needed to get back, he told me.

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