CLARE COUNTING
[EXTRACT]
She swims sixty lengths a day or thereabouts. Thereabouts because however Clare counts, she becomes unsure whether she is on length thirteen or eleven or maybe fifteen, or if on an even length - fourteen, sixteen or twelve.
When she started swimming again Clare tried bending back a finger for each length, but rolled like a stroke victim so counted every two lengths rather than one, then tried imagining beads on an abacus, but she always lost count around twelve, again round twenty-six, the mid thirties, early forties. So some days she may well swim six or eight extra lengths, or two or four less than she set out to, though this is unlikely as she is anxious not to cheat herself.
Clare tries a new technique, darkening the grout under each tile with water every turn across the three lanes roped off for medium pace. She swims a slick cap and goggled crawl, but is sick of being mown through in the fast lanes by men who don’t look up.
If anyone were to ask her what was the most important thing in her life, Clare would say this swim every week day at six a.m. then laugh - of course Eric her partner and their daughter Lia were more important - but having forced their move from the hills to live scrunched up on top of each other in the middle of the city, she knew she would break apart without a daily thrash of water and counting.
So, the end of their first week in the new apartment, Clare sat Eric down at their tiny glass table set into the wall of the galley kitchen and said, “I will go mad unless I swim.” He surprised her, agreeing to get Lia up, ready and to nursery in the mornings, saying “Fine, no problem, we don’t want you going mad on us.” and did the thing he does when something seems obvious to him and he wants to move on, twisting round his wrist with forefinger and thumb as if tightening a seal.
*
Two months into their new life, learning how to live in a city for the first time, Eric still feels as if he is on holiday. Just before the move he completed a contract big enough for him to spend six months looking for work he wants rather than has to do. So he pushes Lia to her nursery in the basement of a converted chapel, buys a paper. The boyish blond barista with a pierced cheek and tattoos has his black coffee poured before he reaches her station, hovers her plastic pincers between the plain croissant and the iced swirl, knowing he has begun to worry about his weight.
From his table in the window Eric still gets a buzz looking up at their apartment, like a green glass cube accidentally left on top of an eight storey Victorian conversion. Their space is big floor to ceiling but small in square footage, just three rooms, in two of which - Lia’s and the bathroom - he is conscious of his elbows, the other a great open space: living area, kitchen, Eric and Clare sleep on the mezzanine, cubby holes for wardrobes. All their clutter from the cottage is in charity shops or stored in containers stacked in a mid Pennine mill. Eric feels sleek despite his waistline, feels focussed even though he has no idea what exactly he is going to do next.
Every morning since the move Eric has delayed going back to the dry putty and new wood smells, back to his desk tucked under the stairs. Today, as usual, he grazes among the shops, finds a postcard of their block in the nineteenth century and, seduced by wide greens and blues, buys a book of photographs looking down on the world. After wandering into a leather boutique to check out their marble floor, he follows a couple into a jewellers next door where he remembers Clare needs a watch. The display cabinets contain only fronds of blue and scarlet dried grass, artificial birds of paradise perched on dead branches. When a girl in a dark trouser suit asks what he is interested in, he realizes this is not a jeweller for browsing, but one where they bring out trays from the back of the shop and all the sales people have clear plastic earpieces.
Eric wants to damage things, be rude. He leaves and makes for home gently humiliated, overwhelmed with love for Lia. On Saturday, the day Lia is two, Eric will be forty-four. The mathematical symmetry seems a good omen, he feels less good thinking the day she is eighteen he will be sixty.
Buzzed on caffeine he stands in the thin rain trying to get his keycard to swipe. He presses through the buzzers until he finds a neighbour home to let him in, takes the stairs rather than the lift, resents how they always fool him – the times he is tired there is suddenly one more flight to their door, but when he dashes up, Eric arrives at their apartment a flight early, still full of running.
*