Tressa asked Elian to come swimming with her, and left her son’s name out of the invitation. She wanted an hour beside him that nobody could mistake for looking after somebody’s mother.
He had his coat over one arm. Through the open kitchen window they could hear Selwyn reversing out of her drive, the familiar squeal where he always turned the wheel too hard. Elian had walked over for supper. There had been nothing to prevent him leaving ten minutes ago except Tressa’s increasingly implausible account of the dishwasher.
“Tomorrow?” he said.
“The late session. It’s adults only. Half past seven.”
“Do you usually go with someone?”
“Is that relevant?”
He smiled at the edge in her voice. Not the indulgent smile people gave her when she surprised them by disagreeing. Something smaller, which suggested he had been waiting to see what she would do.
“I wondered whether you were asking me to join a party.”
“I am asking you.”
There. At sixty-two she could still make three ordinary words feel like taking off a coat in a room where everyone else was dressed.
Elian put his coat down again.
“I’d like that.”
She could have stopped. The invitation had been issued and accepted. Instead she picked up the pepper mill and put it on the other side of the table, where it had no more reason to be than before.
“It’s heated,” she said.
“That helps.”
“You don’t need to be particularly fast.”
“You haven’t seen me swim.”
“I’ve seen you arrive at things.”
His laugh was low and immediate. He was seldom late, but he had a way of approaching her house as if the last few yards were worth taking separately, looking at the plant pots, noticing something under a hedge. Selwyn called it drifting. Tressa had begun to stand at the window when she expected them.
She stopped moving the pepper mill.
Elian was forty-nine. She knew because Selwyn had bought him a walking map for his birthday and left it on her table while he went to find wrapping paper. She had met him fourteen months ago, at her son’s house, a fully grown stranger with a sunburned neck and an opinion about the terrible chair he had been given. Nothing had happened then. She had liked his opinion. She had since found too many reasons to remember it.
“What do I bring?” he asked.
“A towel. A pound for the locker. Your own capacity to be disappointed by the tea.”
“I can manage two of those.”
He picked up his coat. At the back door he paused, one hand on the frame, leaving room for her to come through if she wished. She did not. The kitchen was bright behind her and she felt, absurdly, as if moving closer would announce something the invitation had already announced.
“I’ll see you there,” he said.
“Yes.”
He went. She watched him take the narrow path between her rosemary and the neighbour’s fence, then shut the door before she could start pretending she was checking the latch.
Selwyn rang while she was filling the dishwasher.
“Did Elian take that last bit of pudding?”
“No.”
“Coward.”
“I seem to recall you taking two bits.”
“I was protecting you from having to eat it tomorrow.”
She listened to her thirty-nine-year-old son describe a delay on the way home, his voice easy and affectionate. She had heard that voice from railway stations, rented rooms, a hospital car park when her former husband had broken an ankle years after their divorce. Her son had never had to prove he loved her. He was good at coming when she asked, and less good at believing she might sometimes prefer not to ask.
She nearly mentioned the swim. The words would have been harmless, offered now: Elian’s coming to the pool tomorrow. Selwyn would have said something about wet towels and told her to make him hurry.
That was why she did not say them. She did not want the first account of tomorrow to be the one that made it smallest.
Scene break
At seven twenty-eight the following evening, Tressa stood beside the ticket hatch and considered leaving her hair dry.
It was an undignified consideration. For seven years she had come to this pool to put her face in the water and stop talking. She owned two practical swimsuits and had never before spent twelve minutes deciding between them. The blue one was now under her dress. Her swimming cap made every choice about her hair irrelevant.
Elian came through the gate carrying a striped towel under one arm.
“You look as though you’ve found out something terrible,” he said.
“I was deciding whether to tell you about the tea before or after you paid.”
“After. Let me have the anticipation.”
He bought his own ticket. She liked that he did not turn her invitation into a small contest over who owed what. They arranged to meet beside the steps and went into the separate changing rooms.
The evening session had already begun. Two lanes held people going earnestly back and forth; the third, marked for recreational swimming, was nearly empty. Lamps were coming on beneath the water. The attendant sat high in a red chair with a whistle and a book closed on one knee.
Tressa was in the water when Elian arrived. For a moment she looked straight at him and then away, annoyed with herself for looking away. There was nothing immodest about a man dressed for a public pool. The difficulty was that he was this man, coming towards her because she had asked.
“Cold?” he called.
“You will have to find out.”
He came down the steps without theatrics. When the water reached his waist he stopped and looked at her.
“That was unkind.”
“Heated isn’t a promise of happiness.”
“I’ll remember that.”
She laughed, and the anxious attention she had been paying to her own face loosened. She pushed away from the wall. He followed without trying to turn their swim into a race or a demonstration. When they reached the other end, she rested her forearms on the tiles and let the water carry her weight.
“How long have you been doing this?” he asked.
“Seven years. Since I stopped working Saturdays.”
“Do you miss the shop?”
“Certain people. Not the telephone.”
“What happened to the telephone?”
“It continued ringing every time I sat down with lunch. I retired before I committed a crime.”
He grinned. “A dignified exit.”
“I was an optician, Elian. People think we spend all day having calm opinions about frames. We mostly explain why they can’t have their new glasses yesterday.”
“You don’t seem very patient.”
She turned her head towards him.
He did not correct himself.
At home people described her patience as if it were an organ she had been born with. Tressa the steady one, Tressa who would understand, Tressa who didn’t mind. There was no accusation in Elian’s face. He appeared to have noticed something and to be pleased with it.
“I’m not,” she said.
“Good. I’m slow. It would be a shame if you suffered politely.”
“Then I’ll go ahead.”
“Please do.”
She swam another length. By the return she had stopped thinking about what her cap did to her face. Her shoulders warmed; her breathing found its comfortable measure. A plane went over, small against the darkening sky. She rolled onto her back for a moment and watched it pass.
Elian waited at the shallow end, not watching in the ostentatious way of someone taking care of her. When she reached him he was rubbing a drop of water out of his ear.
“Which way would you go?” he asked, nodding at the plane.
“If I were in it?”
“If nobody needed collecting at the other end.”
She had an answer. That surprised her more than the question.
“North. Somewhere with a long evening. I’d like to eat supper at ten and have it still be light.”
“You could.”
“I know I could.”
“I didn’t mean permission.”
She looked at him. “No. I know.”
The water moved between them. He was close enough that she could see where his lashes had gathered into wet points. She had a sudden, quite practical wish to touch his cheek. It did not arrive as a memory of being younger. It was new, here, with her hands and his face as they were.
“Where would you go?” she asked.
“Somewhere I haven’t already agreed to go because someone else likes it.”
“That’s a rather long name for a place.”
“Difficult to fit on a map.”
She laughed again. He watched her do it. This time she let him.
They swam until the attendant blew the final whistle. Elian reached the steps first and moved aside. Tressa took the rail, climbed out on her own and collected her towel. She could feel his gaze, though when she looked at him he was looking at her face.
Neither of them said anything about being cold.
Scene break
The tea came in paper cups with lids that refused to settle properly. Tressa bought hers; Elian bought his and a packet of plain biscuits. They sat on the low wall outside the gate, under a lamp that illuminated a council bin much more generously than it illuminated them.
He tasted the tea.
She waited.
“It has aspirations,” he said.
“Not achievable ones.”
He offered the biscuits. She took two.
“You could have warned me.”
“I did. You were determined to have the anticipation.”
“So I was.”
He did not throw the tea away. For some reason that pleased her, until he lifted it again and looked resigned.
“You don’t have to drink it,” she said.
“You’ve bought yours.”
“I’m not applying for joint suffering.”
He laughed, stood and poured his into the drain beside the wall. After a moment she handed him hers. He disposed of it too and returned the empty cup, because there was still the problem of the lid and the recycling.
They sat with the remains of their refreshments and watched two adult swimmers argue mildly about whose turn it was to drive. Beyond the gate the road sloped towards the harbour. Tressa’s car was in the opposite direction.
“Would you like to walk a bit?” she asked.
“Yes.”
He said it before looking at his watch. She had not known she was waiting for that.
They went down towards the harbour, carrying their wet things. The air smelled of chips from a shop that had already turned its sign to CLOSED. Elian walked beside her, his hand sometimes brushing the towel over her arm. She could move further from him. There was room. She did not.
At the corner he asked whether she would mind taking the long way round the harbour wall.
“Why?”
“Because it’s longer.”
She stopped. He stopped too, half a step ahead, then turned back.
For a moment he looked less certain than he had in the pool. Not embarrassed by her. Waiting to find out whether he had said more than she wanted to hear.
“All right,” she said. “But let’s not call it exercise.”
His smile arrived slowly.
“What shall we call it?”
She could have made another joke. They had enough of them now, a little collection they could take out whenever the evening became too clear.
“I haven’t decided yet.”
“Then we have the long way to decide.”
He waited for her to choose the direction. Tressa turned towards the dark water, and he came with her.