It was on just such a night that he stayed up late and found himself alone with her. She was rolling a joint in her worn fingers.
‘So tell me, Nathan,’ she said, without looking up, ‘what is it you’re running from?’
He smiled. It was the kind of cliché you expected from her, but it was also the one question he’d always been asked and never answered. And so he smiled. Because he recognised it. Because he knew that, this time, he was going to answer it.
He began to talk. He didn’t know where the talk was taking him, he only felt that it was flowing, and knew that things which flowed were clean. And came quickly to one particular night, a night that had always been a secret.
He was sitting out by the pool at home. It was after eleven, a still, warm night. A tree had blossomed near the water, its white flowers breathing a perfume that was like magnolias. A faint click came from behind him. He looked round. Someone was standing on the terrace, a silhouette against the french windows. It was Harriet. She must’ve thought she was alone because she stretched in a way that seemed unfettered, private. Then she noticed him, he could tell because she went motionless, then she pushed herself forwards, hips first, into the moonlight.
She came and sat down beside him. ‘What are you doing out here, Nathan?’
‘Oh, just sitting,’ he said, ‘thinking.’
‘That’s the trouble with you. You think too much.’
He laughed softly. Maybe he did. But it was kind of ironic, really. He wouldn’t’ve spent half as much time thinking if she hadn’t been around.
‘I thought you were in bed,’ he said.
‘I stayed up to watch a show on TV.’
‘Any good?’
‘It was just a show. You know, music and dancing.’
She’d thrown the words out lightly into the darkness. But there was a wistfulness, a nostalgia. He remembered a letter that she’d written to Dad. Something about being tired of the bright lights. Even back then he’d thought it sounded strange; she was only twenty-one, after all.
‘Where’s Dad?’ he asked her.
‘He went to bed hours ago.’
A bird called from a tree at the end of the garden. A low, brooding murmur. Harriet stood up and began to unzip her skirt.
‘I’m going for a swim.’ She was laughing at her own impulsiveness.
‘Now?’
‘Why not?’ She looked down at him, the lower half of her face masked by her shoulder. ‘Join me?’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t really feel like it.’ But he did. He could already feel that dark water creeping up over his body as he lowered himself in.
Harriet stepped out of her skirt. Then, crossing her arms in front of her, she lifted her blouse over her head and dropped it on top. She’d been lying in the garden all summer, and her skin looked almost black against her white silk underwear. He knew it was silk. She’d told him once in the car; she’d said she couldn’t wear anything else. He tried not to look at her. He didn’t want her to think he was interested. When he did look at her he concentrated on the flaws, the slightly swollen thighs, the stomach rumpled by childbirth.
Still, he thought she felt his eyes on her, he thought she liked the feeling, because she lingered at the edge of the pool, staring into the darkness, before she moved down the steps and into the water. She waded out of the shallow end, trailing her fingertips across the surface, then she gave herself, the water rustling as it accepted her, like a present being unwrapped. Halfway up the pool she turned and swam back towards him. ‘It’s so beautiful. Are you sure you won’t come in?’
It seemed so intimate, this invitation, with her face tipped up to his and Dad’s curtains closed behind her, but it was only a swim, what harm could it do? He stripped down to his shorts and slid over the side. He sighed as the water closed round him like a glove. Floating on his back, he stared up into the sky. The moon was sinking, yellow now. A plane droned overhead, one red light on its wing-tip winking. Trees bloomed dark at the edges of his vision. He’d almost forgotten that he wasn’t alone. Then the water rustled and a voice breathed into his ear. ‘I told you, didn’t I?’
Harriet was standing beside him. He twisted sideways and his feet found the bottom. Now he was standing too. She took her hair in both hands and, looking at him, began to wring it out. Her bra had become transparent, and her breasts showed clearly below her arm, the nipples sharp beneath the wet cloth. She let her arms drop. The insides of her wrists knocked against her hips. She moved a step closer to him and seemed to lose her balance in the water. She put a hand on his chest, as if to steady herself, but then she left it there and reached up with her mouth. He felt his mouth drawn down to hers, he felt one of her thighs edge forwards, wedge between his legs. He pulled away from the kiss. Small waves scuttled to the side of the pool.
She seemed surprised. ‘What’s wrong?’
What’s wrong? He wanted to shout, but couldn’t. Those closed curtains. The man sleeping so lightly behind.
‘Don’t you like it?’
‘No,’ he hissed.
He could tell she didn’t believe him. But maybe when he turned away from her and swam to the edge of the pool and hauled himself out, maybe she believed him then. He didn’t bother to look round and find out. Snatching up his clothes, he walked back into the house and up the stairs to his room.
The next day, at breakfast, Dad said, ‘There was water all over the floor when I came down this morning.’
Harriet smiled. ‘I went swimming with Nathan in the middle of the night. I forgot to tell you.’
‘In the middle of the night?’
Harriet smiled. She’d known that Dad would seize on that particular aspect of the story. If something wasn’t part of his routine, he found it unimaginable, hugely eccentric, almost humorous. She’d known that. She was much shrewder than Nathan had given her credit for, and he now trusted her even less.
From that time on, she cooled towards him. Those sweet looks she’d always specialised in, they suddenly became barbed, like chocolates injected with poison. She was constantly asking him why he never brought girls home. She began to accuse him of having love-affairs with the other lifeguards. ‘I think homosexuality is a disease,’ she’d say suddenly, at breakfast. ‘What do you think, Nathan?’