Free Swimming to Ithaca by Simon Mawer Page A

Nowadays there’s no pressure to have good taste. Vulgarity has become fashionable.’
    Kale returns, glancing at her watch. ‘Going to miss my bus,’ she says. ‘Thanks ever so for the lunch. Really nice.’
    Thomas helps her into her coat and follows her towards the daylight. Has she forgotten his question? Will he have to broach the subject all over again? ‘Next week?’
    ‘OK. If you like.’
    His heart pauses. ‘Or …’ Don’t push your luck, he thinks, and then pushes it: ‘How about sooner?’
    ‘All right by me. I’m in college most mornings.’ She goes out through the door. It has started raining and she stops to rummage in her bag for an umbrella.
    ‘How about an evening? What do you like? Theatre? Music?’
    ‘
Evening?
’ She looks up with an expression of faint surprise. Does evening make it different? ‘S’not easy, is it? Babysitters and stuff?’ She steps out into the drizzle, a slick fish escaping Thomas’ clumsy grasp. But at least she hasn’t mentioned Steve.
    ‘Bring Emma along too.’
    The umbrella erects itself, a complex of levers and hinges. ‘To the
theatre
? In the
evening
? She’s only six for God’s sake.’
    ‘
Cats
,’ he calls after her. ‘We’ll go to
Cats
. A matinée.’
    On the brink she stops. A bus sweeps by, throwing spray out of the gutter and across her legs. ‘Fucking bastard!’ she shouts. Then she looks back at him and grins. ‘If you can get tickets.’
    ‘When?’
    ‘Whenever. Thanks again for the lunch. See you.’
    *
Dear Tom,
    How unhappy I was at the news about your mother. Darling, darling Dee was one of the people I loved the most – she has been coming to see me at least once a month, and make me laugh, and was such a faithful and reliable friend. I don’t really know how I’m going to get by without her. Sorry this is short, but typing is not very easy. I have to use some silly little gadget in the only hand I can still move. Did she tell you about me? Anyway, I’m wheelchair-bound and that’s why I won’t be able to get to the funeral. I would love to have been able to say goodbye to her properly, but I will certainly say a prayer, and one for you and dear little Paula. I don’t expect she is any longer, is she?! Little, I mean.
    With love and all my sympathy,
    Marjorie

Six
    At Cyprus, the ship dropped anchor offshore. Apparently the port at Limassol wasn’t deep enough for large ships and they all had to do this, wait in the roads for lighters to come out. Dee stood with Paula on the deck, much as they had stood to wave goodbye to her parents at Southampton, except now the view across the water was smudged with heat, and coloured ochre and white and buff. She could see sheds and warehouses, a line of concrete buildings, houses with shallow-pitched tiled roofs, palm trees, dust. And the domes of churches, and the pencil points of minarets. Byzantium, she thought. The young in one another’s arms. There was a heat haze beyond the town, but somewhere there – fifty miles away – were the mountains. She heard someone say the name, pointing as though they could be seen through the blur of heat: Troödos. She slipped her daughter’s grip and patted her hand against the thin cotton of her dress. Might the cloth become transparent with the sweat?Might she be revealed, standing there at the rail, as though in her underwear?
    ‘Where’s Daddy?’ Paula asked.
    Dee pointed to the quayside, where you could see people waiting at the water’s edge. ‘Over there somewhere.’
    ‘I can’t see him.’
    ‘You will soon. We must be patient.’
    ‘We’ve been patient for weeks.’
    ‘Twelve days.’
    The smell of the land reached her, a whole complex of scents, mingled, grappling with each other, some of them identifiable – dung, sewage – others quite beyond her experience. What were they? The putrefaction of the Orient. That’s what Damien said. She thought of him with something like shame, how he had walked with her along the