George smiled vaguely, not looking at Anthea, turning his head and narrowing his eyes, and was about to pass on in the direction of the Promenade when he saw Adam. As soon as their eyes met, Adam sat down. He did not hide, but sat down among the plants, holding his knees, his head emerging from among the leaves. With intent unsmiling eyes, he stared at George. George (who was fully clothed) stared back. Once, some time ago in Adam’s short life, when he had been looking thus at his uncle (it was in the garden at Belmont), George, turning towards him, had suddenly, silently, winked. This episode had made, for the boy at least, a curious bond, intimate yet menacing. The ambiguous signal was never repeated, and yet, Adam sometimes felt, it still flashed, magically, frightfully, in any exchange of looks between them.
George stopped in his tracks at the sight of Adam as abruptly as a Japanese might be stopped by a badger. He did not want to pass his nephew, nor did he want to impede his progress should Adam want to proceed to the changing-rooms by the interior route. George receded into the corridor and turned off it into the clinical chamber of the Infants’ Pool. This room, which seemed small by contrast with the Indoor Bath, was by other standards quite large. It was a remnant of the Institute arrangements which predated the Ennistone Rooms. The Infants’ Room, as it was also called, was early Victorian hospital style, unadorned, with plain tiles and dark linoleum. Its only charm was the pool itself, white-tiled, round and breast-deep, sunk into the floor and filling most of the room. It had been intended for the genteel dipping of rheumatic patients or of persons recovering from injured limbs, sufferers who were later accommodated in the Rooms. Now the famous waters, tinted blue, contained, as George entered, a number of cooing smiling mothers and as many swimming, splashing or floating infants. The aquatic infants were indeed an amazing sight. Tiny children, some less than six months old, who on land crawled with awkward sprawling arms and legs, took to the water in the most uncanny way, like funny little animals of some quite other species. Ivor Sefton was extremely interested in the whole phenomenon and had published an article about it in The Lancet. This practice, pioneered in Ennistone, and now occasionally to be met with elsewhere, has had to make its way against prejudice and misunderstanding. Adam longed to ‘swim’ Zed and was joyful to see a walking running dog become a swimming dog. (Adam and Rufus had both swum in the Infants’ Pool when scarcely larger than Zed.) Most dog-owners share this instinctive urge, which is discussed in Sefton’s article. But the Ennistone mothers had not felt any instinctive desire to swim their infants, and had to be taught, and to see many successful demonstrations, before they believed it desirable or even possible. Many outsiders still regard this aspect of ‘growing up in Ennistone’ as dangerous or slightly scandalous. (Special attention must be paid to the chemicals in the water.) It was originally proposed that the Infants’ Room should be ‘Mothers only’, but the reasonable wishes of fathers had to be met too, and the Room was eventually opened to all. An attendant controls the numbers of spectators, and only women are allowed in the water.
Standing in the middle of the pool, offering quite unnecessary help and encouragement, amid the tiny naked swimming forms and wet protective arms, was Nesta Wiggins. She was drawn to the place because it was a rendezvous of women. The sound of excited exclamatory voices, rebounding from the domed tiled roof, made a shrill cacophony, pleasant as bird-song to Nesta’s ears. Nesta hoped to indoctrinate some of the cooing mammas. But, in spite of her disapproval of matrimony and child-bearing, she could not help being delighted with the scene, to which she often returned.
There was a slight lull in the chatter when George appeared. Ennistone had few tourists in March, and the mothers had had the place to themselves that morning. Indeed fully clothed males always seemed out of place, and were duly shy. Most of the women knew who George was; but even those who normally felt a secret indulgent sympathy for him were here affronted. Some deep female solidarity drew them together against George as he lounged, staring. Nesta, who really hated George, sensed this communal emotion with satisfaction. George sensed it too, also with satisfaction. Nesta, tall and large-breasted in the midst of the bubbling cauldron of wet ample female flesh and slithery babies, glared at George. George, who knew her by sight and found her physique vaguely pleasing, did not meet the glare. He looked instead, with an amused thoughtful face, at the splashing infants and thought, How I’d like to drown the little beggars! He imagined pressing a large firm hand down upon those little pink faces.
Alex had arrived with Ruby. Ruby could not swim, never had swum, never would swim, she hated water. However, she attended Alex to the Baths, and had done so ever since they were girls together, when (so remote were those days) she had come as a chaperone. Now she came because she always had, to see people and hear the gossip (she rarely uttered any herself) and to look after Alex’s clothes. The changing-rooms, strange wet slippery smelly places where people padded nervously, consisted of four areas: in the first one disrobed in a cubicle, in the second one placed one’s clothes in a locker, in the third one placed the key of the locker in a numbered cubby-hole, in the fourth one took a shower; then one emerged to swim. Alex, who never trusted the security of the system, preferred to put her clothes in a bag which she handed to Ruby waiting outside. This she did now as she came out, slim, handsome, wearing her green-skirted costume (she deplored bikinis) and no cap (caps were not worn at the Institute). The chill air coated her warm body and made her gasp. She tiptoed cautiously across the sparkling frosty pavement and dived gracefully into the cloud of steam which hid the pool. She swam beautifully in the warm kind water under the merciful white cloud.
Diane had swum earlier and now, wearing a smart woollen jersey, a smart woollen cap, matching gloves, woollen socks pulled up over her trousers, an overcoat, scarf and boots, was sitting in Diana’s Garden. On the side farthest from the pool and separated by a fence were the Roman excavations, a few low walls and some holes, very significant no doubt but not picturesque. At one end of the garden was the little spurting hot spring known as Lud’s Rill, or ‘the Little Teaser’ which had caused such a scandal some time ago by suddenly hurling its jet of water high up into the air. The water of the Rill was extremely hot, at boiling point as it emerged, but its normal intermittent spittings were not dangerous since they only reached a height of about three feet, and the basin into which they fell was now surrounded by an unsightly railing which excluded the darting youngsters whom the Little Teaser used chiefly to tease. The basin was rugged and massive and unadorned, made of the brownish-yellowish local stone. It was about five feet in diameter and three feet deep, with a hole or crack in the middle where the scalding spitting water jetted up and ran away. The general belief was that the water came up ‘on its own’ from deep in the earth and was not ‘laid on’ from the main system. The official guide-book is, perhaps deliberately, unclear on this point.
Beside the basin there were some wooden seats, and on one of these, having flicked the frost away with her copy of the Ennistone Gazette, Diane was sitting with Father Bernard and Mrs Belton. Mrs Belton was the ‘Madam’, now very old, who had inducted Diane many years ago into her present profession. Diane usually avoided her because she was a reminder of horrible things and because she affected a grand and irritating ‘knowingness’. She, like Diane herself, had risen in the trade. Mrs Belton, who had been good-looking and no fool, had indeed realized one of Diane’s former ambitions, and acquired a fine house where (so it was said) artists and intellectuals resorted for drink and talk. It was at one time the height of chic to go to Mrs Belton’s not for sex but for conversation. (However this may have been a myth; I never myself went along to see.) Mrs Belton’s glory was past, however, and even Diane could now feel sorry for her. After a police raid (there was talk of drugs) she had sold the fine house, and had now the air of a shaggy neglected old woman. Diane had sat in the garden hoping to catch a glimpse of George whom she was at that moment very anxious to see. George’s rule was that at the Baths they never spoke or gave any recognition sign; but he might now, she felt, break the rule if he saw her alone. However, Mrs Belton had promptly arrived, and then the priest.