The Swimming Pool Season by Rose Tremain Read Free Book Online

Hervé disbelievingly repeats her name a few times more while his fingers caress the box lid: Alain Dunoyer . . . Yves Bonnetard . . . Slowly, he replaces his receiver. He remembers angrily that the night he broke his legs, Nadia’s high and sorrowing voice had somehow entered his dreams.
    Nadia puts on her old beige raincoat. Claude used to puddle about in this garment and it still smells faintly of the tobacco he kept in its pockets. She blows her nose on a piece of kitchen paper, picks up her key and goes quickly down her stairs out into the silent, shapeless day.
    At Gervaise’s barn, she pauses. Klaus, a heavy black mackintosh over his head, is shouting at the cows bumping and slipping down the lane. Nadia calls good morning but the little greeting is lost in the mist. Klaus doesn’t see her and strides on, slamming the animal’s rumps with a long hazel-switch.
    Nadia picks her way between new cow-flops to Larry’s door. She knocks with a little fist still clutching the piece of kitchen paper. Before she’s withdrawn her hand, the door opens and Larry, also wearing a beige raincoat, collides with her.
    â€œNadia! I was just coming up to see you.”
    â€œOh Larry. I’m talking now just to Hervé.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œHe’s not trusting me with his niece in the car.”
    â€œWhat, Nadia?”
    â€œThis Agnès or what her name is.”
    Larry glances back into his house which is dark on this morning of drizzle. Upstairs, Miriam is still sleeping after a wakeful night spent mourning Leni. Too drunk to comfort his wife with more than sighings and belchings, Larry had stumbled off to bed and slept soundly, dreaming of his own face, round and luminous like the moon, up there in the firmament.
    â€œMiriam’s asleep, Nadia. Can we go on up to your flat? I need to make a telephone call to Air France.”
    â€œOh you were coming?”
    â€œYes.” Larry moves Nadia out into the lane and closes the door behind them.
    â€œI think it’s best if Miriam flies to London. I don’t know how ill Leni is, but neither of them would ever forgive me if I didn’t get her there in time.”
    â€œWell, forgive you! If Leni is knocking up the daisies, she can’t forgive you or not!”
    â€œNo. That’s quite true.”
    â€œYou are so nervous of women, Larry.”
    â€œNervous? Am I? I don’t like Leni Ackerman, that’s all it is.”
    â€œSuch a dreadful beauty, isn’t she?”
    â€œYes. That about sums her up.”
    â€œI know this kinds of woman. My Polish mother is being like this: very beautiful and all the men’s heads are coming off in the street and they’re spreading the red carpet over the puddles like Sir Raleigh, but then at home we have no carpet and my mother is always complain, look at this bloody puddles, and I’m not putting my foot in it.”
    Larry giggles. He thinks of Claude in his prison. He hopes the poor man is granted some silence there on those buried battle fields.
    â€œWhy do you laugh, Larry? She isn’t like my mother, this Leni?”
    â€œWell, I don’t know your mother, Nadia. Leni is probably quite all right with people she likes. She never liked me, however, and she’s chosen, over the years, to make this very plain.”
    â€œOh what did you doing, Larry! Some practical fun? You put a whoopee pillow on her seat?”
    â€œMetaphorically, yes. She thought the noise of my conversation was beneath her.”
    They are almost at the doorway to Nadia’s stairs now. The other houses in the village are still shrouded and no one moves in the lanes. Even the dogs are chained up, under cover. Nadia takes a key from her pocket.
    â€œWell, you know Larry, I am so most upset about Hervé.”
    â€œWhat’s he done, Nadia? I didn’t understand what?”
    â€œWell this bloody niece or what she is. I say I will go for