The Heath is empty. Just a few grim-looking dog lovers, who stand apart from one another watching their shivering pets run off leash, chicken-bone legs covered in mud, having fun at their owners’ expense. It’s raining. Not a lush, fertile deluge, but that endless drizzle from a leaden lowering sky specifically designed to make you pull your socks up. A black dog charges across the field chasing a red ball through the mizzle.
I’ve moved into Peter’s Hampstead flat, with its grand, soaring ceilings and plaster cornices. Bookshelves line the walls, filled with leatherbound volumes on shipbuilding or Agrippa that Peter has actually read. At night, when he gets home from the City, we build a proper fire in the fireplace, curl up together on the sofa under feather duvets while he reads aloud to me from the most boring book he can find, until I beg him to stop and make love to me instead.
The flat would be heavenly if it hadn’t been decorated by his mother in austere velvet sofas with lion’s paws for feet, and prints of hunting dogs carrying limp dead fowl in their mouths. Peter has taped a Clash poster over one particularly heinous Br’er Rabbit death scene, and thrown kilims over the backs of chaises. But I can still feel her here, spying through the eye of the formidable-looking ancestor whose portrait hangs above our bed. I know she wasn’t happy when I moved in. A young American girlfriend is acceptable as long as it ends when she returns to her ghastly country.
On days like today, when Peter is at the office and I’m alone at home trying to finish my thesis, pacing the rooms, eating Nutella from the jar, getting nothing accomplished, I can feel her staring back at me from the walls, the ceilings, as if she has skim-coated them with her disapproval. If only she knew how right she is.
At the bottom of our street there’s an old pub with a hopeful outdoor terrace for sunny days. Beyond it is the vast Heath, its wild, reckless fields and forests smack in the middle of the city. The woods here are gnarled, druidic, their roots extending out around them like fingers seeking blindly for a past they still remember. Little paths lead between them, worn trails that disappear into deep hollows, fecund, rotting, overgrown, hiding fox dens and the men who come here to cruise for blow jobs after dark.
Most afternoons, I walk on the Heath, letting my mind air out after too many hours staring at a typewriter. I’ve planned to take a proper long walk this afternoon, from Parliament Hill to Kenwood House, but the rain starts coming down, heavier now, waterlogging the world, so I change course and make a diagonal cut across the field toward home, past the men’s swimming ponds.
Two old men in matching blue rubber bathing caps and baggy trunks stand at the edge of the public pond, their white, crepe-paper skin translucent, dull rain pattering their backs. I see them here almost every day. It’s a British thing—taking pleasure in duty, maintaining a citizen’s right to swim in a cold, unappetizing pond in the middle of a public park because one can. The same reason Peter’s mother insists on walking directly through her neighbor’s garden or the farmer’s pigsties, ducks and geese scattering as she climbs a wooden turnstile: because it is a public right of way, and the pleasure in walking through, legally trespassing, is so much purer than the ease of walking around.
Now, as I hurry past the swimming pond, I can see the old men laboring across the water, strokes in perfect synch; two bright blue snapping-turtle heads in a dreary sea. It must be freezing.
I’m almost out of the park when I hear shouts behind me. A woman with a small dog is waving her arms, screaming. A man on the far side of the field hears her, breaks into a run, but I am closer and reach her first.
“He’s drowning,” she screams, pointing to the pond, frantic. “I can’t swim.”
Down below in the pond I see only one blue head.
“He was over there.” She points. “He was right there, calling for help. I can’t swim.”
“Call 999,” I shout.
I’m in the pond before I have time to think, kicking off my sneakers, leaving my raincoat and heavy sweater somewhere on the ground behind me. The water is warmer than I expected, fresher. I surface six quick strokes from the old man. He is treading water, shivering with shock. His terrified eyes search the surface for a sign of his friend.
“It was our third lap,” he says. “We always do six laps.”
“Get back to shore,” I say.
I go under, eyes searching the gloom for a spot of inconsistency, of color. I break surface for air and dive again, deeper this time, down to the reedy bottom. Ahead of me, I see a hint of blue.
The paramedics arrive just as I reach the shore, breathless, dragging the old man’s limp weight. Two of them wade in to pull me out, but I shake them off. “Save him,” I gasp. “Please save him.”
His friend stands shivering on the little wooden dock. The woman has wrapped her coat around him. We watch the paramedics pummeling his sad white chest, breathing into him. I hold my breath, wait for that sputtering of water to cough from his lungs, his eyes opening in surprise, as if he has just spat out a live frog. In the muddy shallows, his blue rubber cap laps the shore.
Peter is already home when I come in, lying on the uncomfortable sofa, reading. He must have just gotten home, because there’s only one cigarette butt in the ashtray and his mug of tea is still steaming. I stand in the doorway, barefoot, dripping a puddle onto the coir mat.
“You got caught in the rain,” Peter says, putting his book down. “I’ll light the fire.”
I’m frozen in place, my heart a sodden heavy thing.
“C’mon then,” Peter says, coming over to give me a sloppy kiss, “let’s get you out of those wet things.”
“An old man drowned in the swimming pond.”
“Just now?”
“He swims there every day. With his friend.”
“And you saw this? Poor possum,” he says.
I am numb, too numb to feel. “He hadn’t even reached the bottom of the pond. He was still floating down when I got to him.”
“Hang on a minute,” Peter says. “Wait. You mean to tell me you went in after him yourself? Into the men’s swimming pond?”
“The water was dark, but I saw his bathing cap.”
“Christ, Elle.” Peter fumbles for a cigarette, lights it.
“The paramedics were already there when I got him to shore. He looked like a fetus—one of those things they keep in formaldehyde.”
“You could have drowned. What the hell were you playing at?” he says, his voice gruff with love and worry.
I look away from him. I wish I could tell him, explain it. I needed to save him. A drop in the bucket. But I can’t.
He wraps me in his arms, holds me tight. “Let’s get you into a hot bath.”
“No. No water.”
Peter peels my wet clothes off where I stand, carries me to our bed. He climbs under the covers with me, fully dressed, spoons me. I like the feel of his shirt, his belt buckle, his pants, so cloth-like, so concrete, pressing against my naked flesh.
“You should take off your shoes,” I say.
“I’ll go make you a cup of tea. Don’t move. In fact, I’m never letting you out of this flat again.”
My skin refuses to warm. I pull the covers closer around me but my body keeps shaking. I can’t stop thinking about his body drifting down, the amniotic embrace of death, how graceful he looked as he fell. I listen to Peter filling up the electric kettle, the jangling of silverware as he opens a drawer. I imagine every little movement he is making: carefully choosing a teacup he knows I will like, dropping in two PG Tips bags instead of one, steeping the tea forty seconds longer than I would, pouring in enough milk to make it the correct shade of pinky-beige, not too pale, stirring in a heaping teaspoon of sugar.
“Whiskey in or on the side?” he says, bringing me my tea.
“I need to go home,” I say. “I’m sick of the rain.”
“What rain?” he says.