‘When are you fetching Stella?’ said Gabriel.
‘About five.’
Stella, detained in hospital, was today coming to stay with Brian and Gabriel. Gabriel had suggested. Stella had agreed. It was significant that Stella was not going back to her own house. This significance, on which no one had yet commented, frightened Gabriel. George had still not been to see his wife. Although she wanted Stella to come, Gabriel felt afraid with a tremor which vibrated in harmony with the guilty thrill inspired by the steaming water. She wanted now to swim, quickly, quickly, quickly.
‘There’s Sylvia Blacken,’ said Brian.
‘Oh yes — ’ Gabriel waved her little wave to Adam, waggling her fingers. Adam did not like this wave and frowned. Gabriel went out through the door and turned along the edge of the pool toward the changing-rooms.
‘Twelve o’clock,’ said Brian to Adam, meaning they should meet in the Promenade at twelve. The McCaffreys went their separate ways at the Baths. That was part of the pleasure of the place, as if each one’s enjoyment was especially private. It was an aspect of what Gabriel felt as its ‘dangerousness’.
Adam inclined his head. He walked a little way away and stopped, to signify that he had withdrawn from society and was now alone.
Brian followed Gabriel out of the door.
Adam was small and compact, a dark McCaffrey, round-headed, round-faced, with dark straight short hair, resembling Alan, indeed slightly resembling George. He had none of his father’s wolfish Viking look. He had brown intent eyes and rarely smiled. He went to a private preparatory day school, Leafy Ridge School, in a suburb of that name, not the Comprehensive where Jeremy Blackett taught. His father was uneasy about this, but he wanted Adam to learn at least two foreign languages, and the Comprehensive was not very successful in teaching one. Gabriel wanted him to be protected from rough boys. (In fact there were rough boys at the prep school too, but Adam did not tell his mother this.) She also liked the uniform, brown knee breeches and long sky-blue socks. Adam did not like boys. He did not like girls either, though he rather wanted to be one. The awkwardness which separated him from his parents made him solitary at school, where he was also conspicuously small for his age. His mysterious refusal to grow seemed to signal a quiet hostility to any public role. Of course he loved his parents, and sympathized silently with their attempts to communicate with him. Sometimes they seemed to him almost grotesque in their efforts to behave naturally. He often looked at his mother and when she looked at him he would smile and go quickly away. He rarely looked at his father, but he sometimes touched him encouragingly.
He stood now a while staring at nothing. He was wondering what Zed was doing with himself at home. He often wondered this. Occasionally he had managed to spy on Zed, to see the little animal playing all by himself in the most imaginative way. But Adam was never sure that Zed did not somehow know that he was being watched and had put on a show for his master’s benefit. Wittgenstein says that a dog cannot be a hypocrite or sincere either. Adam, who had not yet read Wittgenstein, considered Zed to be quite capable of hypocrisy.
He did not follow his parents through the outside door. Unlike his mother he was in no hurry to swim. He enjoyed the special before-swim tension which made everything look vivid and strange and somehow slow. He went back across the Promenade vaguely aware that there were one or two people whom he knew (or rather who knew him, Mrs Osmore for instance) sitting at the tables, but he did not look that way. He dreaded conversation, even the catching of an eye. He passed through a communicating door into the area of the Indoor Bath. Adam very much wished to bring Zed to the Baths, only dogs were not allowed, except in the Promenade. He kept imagining how it would be, just Zed in the Indoor Bath, breaking the smooth silky surface of the water with his quiet confident rat-like motion. Zed swam well. Adam had often swum him in the river, only now this was not allowed either because of something the doctor said.
The Indoor Bath was a peaceful scene on weekdays, since a notion persisted among the older Ennistonians that it was a rather ‘sissy’ place, even unhealthy. However it had recently been ‘taken over’ by the ‘jeunesse dorée’ of Ennistone, who used it, at weekends, as a rendezvous. This jeunesse, it should be said, tended to be women, at present most notably Valerie Cossom, the Eurocommunist, and Nesta Wiggins, one of the Women’s Libbers who had tried to befriend Diane, Olivia Newbold, one of the Glove Factory Newbolds, and Anthea Eastcote, great-niece of William Eastcote. Gavin Oare, editor of the Ennistone Gazette, who liked to hang around these ladies, was treated with a certain disdain. On the other hand, Michael Seanu, a cub reporter, a little scamp just out of school, was a current pet, and Maisie Chalmers (daughter of the Institute Director) who did the Women’s Page on the Gazette, was a valued recent recruit to right ideas. At the moment of Adam’s entrance there was a great deal of splashing in the pool which he felt ought to be so quiet and water-ratty, as Valerie was racing lengths with Peter Blackett. Peter was Jeremy Blackett’s son, not very much older than Adam, but as tall as Jeremy. Valerie’s father, Howard Cossom, was a dentist who lived in Leafy Ridge and was famous for being unable to swim. Valerie and Nesta were studying sociology at the Ennistone Polytechnic. On the steps, their feet in the surging water, sat and stood a group of young women in very scanty swim-wear, their long wet hair streaked in darkened tresses over their necks and shoulders. Their slim soft bodies were faintly tanned by a winter of daily outdoor swimming. They were as tall and lithe and pleased with themselves as young Spartans. Above them upon the slippery wet marble, his shoes splashed, his glasses misted, stood Hector Gaines. They were discussing The Triumph of Aphrodite which was to be played, with Hector’s shocking new material, at the Ennistone Midsummer Festival. Hector and Anthea were to direct it. Valerie Cossom was to be Aphrodite. The set and costumes were to be designed by Cora Clun who was studying dress design at the Poly. Hector was confused and excited, partly because he was in love with Anthea, and partly because, among so many delightful naked figures, he still had all his clothes on. This dejeuner sur l’herbe effect positively made his head swim. The central part of the Indoor Bath, the pool itself and its surround and the double row of Corinthian columns, were made of white black-webbed marble, but the outer area, covered with potted plants, was merely tiled. The place had its own peculiar smell, thrilling to devotees, compounded of warmth and water and chemicals and healthy wet green foliage. Adam loved this smell. He did not approach the pool but went in among the plants. He touched their strong shiny powerful leaves. The girls noticed him, and Anthea and Nesta waved. Adam waved back. He did not mind the jeunesse dorée as he knew that, with the tact or indifference of youth, they would not want to talk to him. He stood a while, smelling the plants and looking with satisfaction at the wet marble and hugging the private thrill of his own soon-to-be-swimming sensations. Then he turned slightly and looked across the pool and saw George McCaffrey, who had just entered on the other side.
George gazed at the pool and the scene. He was not especially interested in the almost-naked young women, the sight of whom did not produce in him the mechanical excitement which it would have aroused in his brother Brian. It was the place and the smell which he liked. He paused and sniffed. Anthea Eastcote, who had known George all her life, called out ‘Hello!’ Valerie Cossom, who was secretly in love with him, stopped swimming and rose silently in the shallow end, revealing her beautiful body.