She’d been curious, nothing more, when she asked Audrey about the river swim. This is something you do, she’d said when she had come by the caravan early to a meeting for tea the week before, but why? Miriam had come upon her as Audrey emerged from the river, her swimming costume clinging to her as she reached for her dressing gown. But “why” was the question she wouldn’t answer, couldn’t answer, she told Miriam. Miriam would have to go in herself to understand.
Now here they were, upstream from the caravan, Miriam’s arms already tired as they flailed against the mild current. The river was not deep, so she pushed off the ground when her foot found it. She had not yet relaxed into it, her memory of swimming so far in the past, it was like starting anew. The water, brisk against her skin, felt like heat when she’d first stepped in, but now that her heart was pumping, her skin prickled, the hot and cold sensations another layer, a pelt that held her.
“Here—over here,” Audrey called to her. She’d drifted to an eddy where a tree had fallen and had taken hold of a branch. “We can rest here for a bit.”
Miriam paddled over, splashing Audrey as she neared her, her breath quick and shallow.
“Keep kicking to keep warm,” Audrey instructed, holding out a branch to Miriam.
They let their bodies move to the current of the water, and soon Miriam was taking longer, more measured breaths.
“Does Edmund know where you are?”
“That I’ve gone swimming, you mean. Yes, he knows. He can’t swim, so it worries him.”
“A worrier. That carries its own weight.”
Miriam shifted position, glancing to Audrey because she had something on her mind, something she wanted to ask her but did not know how.
“Was Robert a worrier?”
A flash of surprise, then irritation. “So this is where you want to take the conversation.” Audrey filled her lungs as if she were about to dive under but instead took a long deep exhale. “A worrier? No, I would not say that of him. There are other qualities that better describe him.
“He was the most intelligent man I knew. He had a special interest in the war poets, yet could discuss politics of the day as if he were part of the inner circle. That’s what drew me to him, what kept me attached long after I should have released myself from him.
“It was his great talent to be something to everyone he met. A chameleon. I only saw this later. One can feel terribly good in these circumstances, having someone shape themselves around you.
“It was the chameleon part of him that I loved, then later came to hate.”
Audrey pushed away from the branch and began swimming upstream. “We need to keep warm,” she called back to her. When Miriam had caught up, and when they had reached a point where they could nearly stand, they treaded water with faces tilted to the sun.
“He was such fun to be with. He was open to doing anything—a picnic by the river, an impromptu game of charades after dinner, a mad dash down a country road as if he were in a rally. He was unlike anyone I ever knew.
“He was ten years older than I was, which accounts for a lot when you’re twenty-one.
“Everyone liked him immediately, but he did not have many friends, people he confided in, argued with. He told me once that he was a loner. I never met his family. They were abroad, he told me.
“I had not been alone with a man before, not spoken to one on my own, away from family. I talked to him as I’d been taught, with a small smile and an interested manner. He asked me who I read, thus disarming me immediately. This was something other than what I’d been used to, so I couldn’t say, not knowing if he’d approve of my novel-reading habit.
“In the beginning when he took me to parties, I could hardly breathe for the first hour, to have moved from being a child at such events to an adult seemed a strange leap for me. My life was less open as a child. Growing up I felt the isolation of a country house. Guests, infrequent, came to see my mother and father, and I was often presented and released only to sneak back, listening in doorways, adjoining rooms, pretending to be reading. I was curious about the world but starved of it.
“Perhaps it was going to the party with Robert that made the difference. It somehow gave me an identity that I hadn’t considered before. Rubbing up against the kind of people Robert associated with, the glamour, the style, the sense of self-actualization they all portrayed taught me what I lacked, what I hadn’t considered, an identity of my own. He introduced me as ‘the lovely Miss Wentworth,’ which made my cheeks burn. No one had considered me lovely before, let alone presented me as such.
“It was much later that I overheard someone refer to another woman as one of Robert’s lovelies.
“When he broke my heart, he did so slowly, unknowingly, with all the charm he had practised over the years. He told me he was the luckiest man alive to have met me. I think even he was surprised by how much I loved him.”
Audrey scooped up water in her hands and spilled it over her face. She looked at Miriam. “So, a worrier? No. Robert was a lot of things, but not a worrier.”
She jumped then dived under the water, surfacing several feet away.
“Come, time to head downstream,” she called after Miriam.
Their bodies drifted like abandoned logs, swirling as the current took them. Miriam’s mind on Edmund, on Robert, and the Audrey she hadn’t known in those years when her heart was soaring, then breaking. Things had been steadier with Edmund, the love never extravagant or showy, it was one of attention, of tending to, of seeing. This is why her secret felt all the more like a betrayal. Every gesture seemed one of knowing, his care, his noticing when she thought he wasn’t looking. Did he know her condition? Did he see the changes in her body? This a thought she could not bear.
They reached the place in the river by the caravan, and they lifted their bodies out of the water once they’d crept toward the bank, but the river seemed to hold them, such was the weight of air. The weight of air, the lure of water. That’s what Audrey could not explain when Miriam had asked her about her river swims.
“It turned out that Robert did not approve of novels,” Audrey said, handing Miriam her dressing gown.