Free Swimming Home by Deborah Levy Page B

Sometimes he sat in his study in west London with the radio on and listened intently to what the weather was going to be like in Scotland, Ireland and Wales. If the sun was shining in west London, it comforted him to know it would be snowing in Scotland and raining in Wales. Now he was going to have to sit up and not lie down. Worse, he was going to have to stand up and search the master bedroom for Kitty Finch’s poem. In the distance he could hear Mitchell shooting rabbits in the orchard. He knelt on the floor and grabbed the envelope he had kicked under the bed. He held the battered envelope in his hands and found himself staring at the title written in the neat scientific handwriting of a botanist used to making precise drawings of plants and labelling them.
     
     
    Swimming Home
    by
    Kitty Finch
     
     
    When he finally prised out the sheet of paper inside it, he was surprised to feel his hand trembling in the way his father’s hand might have trembled if he had lived long enough to mend kettles in his old age. He held the page closer to his eyes and forced himself to read the words floating on the page. And then he moved the page further away from his eyes and read it again. There was no angle that made it easier to comprehend. Her words were all over the place, swimming round the edges of the rectangle of paper, sometimes disappearing altogether but coming back to the centre of the lined page with its sad and final message. What did she hope he might say to her after he had read it? He was mystified. A fish van had pulled up outside the villa. The voice bellowing through a loudspeaker was shouting out the names of fish. Some were grand , some were petit . Some were six francs and some were thirteen francs. None of them had swum home. They were all caught on the way. The Sellotape that had sealed the lip of the envelope reminded him of a plaster on a graze. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. He was going to have to busk it at lunch with her. He checked the inside of his jacket pocket to make sure his wallet was there and kicked the envelope under the bed, telling himself once again how much he hated Tuesdays. And Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, etc.
    et cetera
    A Latin expression meaning ‘and other things’ or ‘so forth’ or ‘the rest of such things’. The poem, ‘Swimming Home’, was mostly made up of etcs; he had counted seven of them in one half of the page alone. What kind of language was this?
     
     
My mother says I’m the only jewel in her crown
But I’ve made her tired with all my etc,
So now she walks with sticks
     
     
    To accept her language was to accept that she held him, her reader, in great esteem. He was being asked to make something of it and what he made of it was that every etc concealed some thing that could not be said.
     
     
    Kitty was waiting for him on the terrace of Claude’s café. To his displeasure he noticed that Jurgen was sitting at the table opposite her. He seemed to be playing with a piece of string, weaving it between his fingers to make a spider’s web. It was becoming clear to him that Jurgen was a sort of guard dog to Kitty Finch, not exactly baring his teeth at all intruders but he was protective and possessive all the same. He seemed to have forgotten that it was she who was the intruder. All the same Jurgen was obviously there to make sure anyone who came near her was a welcome visitor and not a trespasser. He did not seem to elicit much affection from her. It was as if she knew he must never be patted and cuddled and made to feel anything less than alert on her behalf.
    ‘Hi, Joe.’ Kitty smiled. Her forehead looked as if she had pressed it against a hot iron. She was a redhead and the sun had been brutal to her pale skin.
    He nodded, jangling the coins in his jacket pocket as he sat down. ‘You should use sun block, Kitty,’ he said paternally.
    Claude, who knew he looked more like Mick Jagger every day and worked quite hard on this happy genetic