Read Online Swimming to Ithaca by Simon Mawer - Free Book Online Page B

a modicum of privacy. The Spigot and Firkin, it’s called, a place of noise and crush, populated by office workers on their lunch break. Thomas orders a pint of beer for himself and lager and lime for her and they stand side by side to examine the menu chalked on a blackboard behind the bar. Simultaneously they decide on the same thing: chicken tikka masala. That provides some amusement, a further fragile bond. Shared danger overcome, shared taste expressed.
    ‘Is Britain the only country in the world where you are expected to pay for your food and drink before you actually get them?’ he wonders aloud as he hands over the money.
    The barman appears unmoved by comparison with other nations, other cultures. ‘What name’s that, mate?’
    ‘Thomas.’
    He writes
Tom
on the order slip.
    ‘It’s Thomas,’ Thomas insists, and watches while the manmakes a correction:
Tomass
. Is that a joke? Kale seems to find it all funny, this expedition to the pub in his company, this choosing of the same lunch, this complaint about the way the bill works, this insistence on his full name. It is as though he is the student and she the teacher, and she is patronizing him – or maybe that is just the Auden illusion at work.
    They edge away from the bar and find a fortuitously empty table with two low stools where she perches awkwardly, her knees together, her skirt as tight as a drum, a glimpse of white visible in the shadows. She sips her drink and looks at Thomas. ‘So tell me, why did you show us that picture last week? The one of your mum. I mean, Freudian or what?’
    He tries to shrug it off. The truth is, he doesn’t really know himself. ‘I was looking through family photos, trying to understand my own history. The idea just occurred to me.’
    She sniffs and sips. ‘Mid-life crisis or something?’
    ‘Thank you. Actually, she just died. A fortnight ago.’
    ‘I’m sorry. You didn’t say that bit.’
    ‘I didn’t think it mattered.’
    ‘Doesn’t it? Did you love her?’
    ‘I adored her.’
    ‘That’s different.’
    ‘How is it different?’
    ‘Adore is worship? Love is between equals?’ Her speech has an upward, interrogative lilt.
    ‘Very philosophical.’
    ‘So which is it? Love or adore?’
    Summoned by a voice from the bar calling ‘Tom!’, he goes over and collects their food. ‘Adore
and
love,’ he says on his return, putting her plate in front of her. ‘Both those things.’
    ‘That’s nice then, isn’t it?’
    ‘Very nice,’ he agrees.
    She eats, and talks. Thomas watches her mouth, its complex of movement. How could one be skilled enough to apply colour to that compound shape, those curves, that arabesque? He pictures her doing just that, with a pencil of lipstick, pouting her lips at the mirror. Her jaw seems delicate, like a cat’s. He imagines the touch of her teeth – small, white, sharp – and the contrasting pliancy of that fugitive tongue. She explains why she has joined the history course, why she didn’t go directly to college when she left school, what she does and doesn’t do. She has worked in an office, works in the local library at the moment, worked as a tourist guide for a while. ‘Hidden London and stuff like that. That’s the history, I guess. I had to learn it all, like a taxi driver almost. But I loved it.’
    ‘And so you signed up to the course?’
    ‘More or less.’ She lives south of the river and she is, it is no surprise to discover, a mother herself. ‘Emma. Six. She’s at school – in fact I mustn’t be late ’cause I’ve got to go and pick her up. Actually, that’s why I joined the course. I found this kind of grant? For single mothers who’ve never been to university? I thought perhaps, I don’t know, I might become a teacher or something.’
    ‘And Emma’s father?’
    She shrugs, a neat little lift of those narrow shoulders, but says nothing.
    ‘And what about the boyfriend? The one last week?’
    Another shrug. ‘Steve.’
    ‘Are you