The water stung her body. She shuddered as she slipped below the surface, her skin like goose flesh as the cold moved through her.
A flat, slow-moving river, still except for the ripple and splash of each stroke. She felt the cool wet-coarse cotton of her nightdress against her nipples as she dug deeper.
She thought of her mother and how much she hated, no, feared the water. A trip to the seaside a rare treat, the children kept close to the shore, allowed only to paddle along the edge of the water, the waves cresting mid-shin before Mother called them back. Audrey taunting her by dashing into the water, a quick glance back, watchful eyes willfully ignored, a few feet farther in the shallows, her bathing costume now wet, then the voice calling her back, reining her in.
Audrey pushed forward. Hard, strong strokes that took her upstream, her shoulders tensing from the exertion. Then, the river bend and she made for the willow tree that reached across the water. The tree blackened the river here, casting it always in shadow.
Her heart beat a pace that was a reminder she was no longer young.
Under the willow tree the water eddied, and the river was shallow enough that she could stand. She felt around for the flat rock, her toes curling against it for balance.
A rook swooped near, gave her a twitching glance as if admonishing her.
But this is my place, too, she tells him silently, the river is mine, too. I have claimed it.
A lifetime ago, just a child then. The sun like a giant sweet in the sky, the sea a shimmering turquoise. A seagull on a beach.
Her bathing costume was the colour of plums. A sandwich and a cake are wrapped in a basket, and the seagull senses the booty. But she does not know this, or even suspect it. It is the light and sparkle of everything, the sand, the quietly lapping sea, all there to bring her joy, nothing else. The seagull is part of it, too, this happiness, wildly soaring across the beach, veering out to sea then swooping back. Until half an hour later, when it plucks the cake from her hand.
Barely breathing, her hands held out in front of her, fingers still curled around cake that is no longer there. That instant, when the breeze seemed to still, the sea gone quiet, her body rigid from the shock of it, that this bird, so close, so large and looming, could come into her space, where it was just her and the cake and the sea. Then the whoosh of its wings, ruffling her hair, the movement swift, mean, treacherous.
Her body shaking, her hands flapping, her lungs emptying as she wailed; she struggled to catch her breath then released another wail that caught the attention of sunbathers. Her body vibrating with each gulping breath, the torment increasing as if the bird was still there, plucking the cake from her over and over again, she tried to stand up as if to chase her attacker but only toppled sideways. Her hands that had so recently been covered with icing now had a layer of sand on them, and she held them before her as if they were things to be rid of, her cries escalating so that her face was solidly red, tears streaming down, and her hands with their sticky, sandy coating, unable to wipe them.
The sunbathers looked uneasily at her, a few made as though to come to her, looking around for a parent or guardian as the child righted herself, still sobbing but less so, her emotions dwindling, wrapped up as a sour lozenge to drop into a rubbish bin later, knowing its taste would linger for years. This swift giving, then taking, a hard lesson, well-learned.
The river was narrow and she could have swum across it with three or four strong stokes, but it had a depth that surprised.
She did not mind the cold as she’d become acclimatized at the swimming pools at boarding school. That girl, Charlotte, in the changing room, Audrey tolerated her, yet she could barely speak to her. Audrey’s body, like a sapling, a colt, all faint-kneed, strong but easily bent, her strength reserved for the water. Why did Charlotte intimidate her so? Sliding past Audrey, Charlotte’s breasts, which had inconceivably blossomed in the past few months, brushed against Audrey’s arm, and Audrey, not used to being touched, had recoiled in a way that had made Charlotte giggle in nervousness.
That girl of her youth long gone, Audrey understood her body now, fleshy, her skin changing.
Her nightdress chafed her breasts. She clutched a handful of material, pulled it away from her skin, and thought again of Charlotte and that encounter, how abashed Audrey was, to be touched like that.
At the far point of her upriver swim it was shallower. She flipped over to her back when she got there, dipping her hair deep so that it drifted like fronds around her, then she floated downstream, releasing herself to the river, her nightdress billowing around her. She saw the magpie she’d named Maudie high in the trees and worried for a moment that she’d left her pen outside on her lap desk, the silver one that might attract Maudie’s attention. She didn’t want to lose that pen, given to her by Frank.
The life of magpies: to collect shiny things. She closed her eyes and thought of Robert and his collection of shiny things, the young women he found irresistible. She’d been his shiny thing once, but that had been so long ago she’d hardly believed that version of herself had ever existed.
But she didn’t want to think of that time anymore. History could reveal too much, she knew, especially the frail inadequacies of a younger self. Even now she suffered a pang of embarrassment when recalling that period, when their relationship broke down, the expected marriage proposal never materializing.
She brushed up against a tree branch that had fallen into the river and pushed herself away, turning over again in order to swim the last bit back to the caravan. Her mind like the willow tree, calm, lifting to the breezy thoughts that called her attention. She was reaching, it seemed, in all directions. Her arms and legs taut, a mild ache from the strain. She would relish her nap in the caravan later.
Her caravan. Her refuge. How many years has it been? Six now. That day she’d been out driving with Frank to a family luncheon and seen the caravan abandoned in the field, heard it call to her. She was not looking to shock when she told them she wanted to live in it, though her family would differ on this. She was always trying to shock they’d say. Those days in the war, what was she doing driving an ambulance, they prattled on at each dinner she attended, each wedding, funeral, Christmas, as if talking about it would undo the past. There was no way to tell them about the men, so badly burned, especially the pilots who, she learned, removed goggles and gloves in flight so they could see peripherally, so they could feel the machine gun button. This is what one had told her, a whispered voice that would be his last.
Her motorcycle. That, too, an affront. How she missed those days, roaming the countryside, getting cups of tea from roadside workmen when she was on the brink of freezing to death. Such a fine machine, a James. And that suit. A plug-in motorcycle suit that kept her warm. The war was over, so what else was she to do? That day she showed up to see her brother at university. He was mortified, though he was always mortified by her actions.
These days she only left her caravan to campaign. How did that spirit that allowed her to ride a motorcycle come to an end, how did she become the person she was now? A recluse, as her brother liked to call her. But he was only interested in the life of financiers and bankers. He struggled to label her: An activist? A woman who liked to think, to read, to be alone, to have a glass of sherry in the afternoon and an occasional whisky in the evening? Who swam in the river and wrote letters to Members of Parliament?
She kicked hard for a few strokes to prove to herself that she did have strength, that this was not beyond her, none of it, not the river, not the living alone in the caravan, nor the campaign that was losing ground as the threat of war increased. This thought rankled, and she tried to push it away. She was losing the battle for reproductive rights. People were shifting their focus, thinking about a war that kept lapping up on their doorsteps as if a spring flood, unwanted, unexpected. A ghost that lay in wait in all their lives.
Robert and his shiny things. The child. These memories would never leave her.
She was too old for love now, she thought, and this thought just formed, made her stop mid-stroke.
Is love what she needed? Wanted?
She was frightened of the coming war.
She swam harder now, pushing herself, her heart pounding, her legs fighting the stifling nightdress wrapping itself around her as she kicked, the weight of the material a force against her. She should have left it onshore, changed into her bathing costume. But she’d been too impatient. She gulped in air and took in water and was soon sputtering, coughing as the caravan came into view.
She felt the rush of water ballooning her nightdress, felt it fill and collapse around her, tugging against the natural flow of the river, as if a harness. She dived deep and flung her arms forward, releasing herself from the hindrance, letting the river take it. When she surfaced, it floated beside her, and the exhilaration of it, of swimming naked, caused her to swirl downstream, floating, drifting, her arms and legs loose, the nightdress following her like an obedient soul.
No, it was not love she needed. It was something more. Forgiveness.
She made her way crab-like to the launching place and lifted herself from the water her feet firm on the riverbed, her arms so spent from the swim she could hardly emerge. She grabbed a branch, swung one leg up to the shore, and stepped out of the water.