Read The Swimming Pool Season for Free Online

feels panicky. Yes, he minds. Winter’s coming. The bed, without her, will be a tomb.
    â€œWhen?”
    â€œAs soon as possible. I’d get a flight from Bordeaux, if we can afford it. Or, if not, the Thiviers train to Paris, then on to Boulogne and the ferry. I thought you might fix it tomorrow, Larry.”
    â€œYes. I’ll fix it.”
    â€œNadia offered to come with me, but I don’t want anyone.”
    Larry recognises this statement for what it is, a warning. He understands. If Leni must die, then Miriam wants to be the sole custodian of that death.
    â€œWhat’s she dying of, Miriam?”
    â€œHeart. Her heart.”
    â€œIs she being cared for?”
    â€œYes. There’s a nurse. And Gary will be there.”
    â€œOh, Gary, Still calls Leni ‘Mother’, does he?”
    â€œI don’t know, Larry.”
    â€œI suppose it flatters her. What a trial he must be to live with, though. Worse than a house plant.”
    â€œShe’s fond of Gary.”
    â€œIs she? I’m amazed. Still, better, old Gary at her bedside than me, I suppose.”
    He didn’t mean to say it. Christ. Why couldn’t she have died one spring? It’s the winter that makes it bad.
    â€œSorry, Miriam. Sorry.”
    â€œI know you don’t like me going. For anything else, anyone else I wouldn’t.”
    â€œI know. Yes, I know . . .”
    â€œI couldn’t live with myself if she died and I wasn’t with her.”
    â€œI know , Miriam.”
    â€œI may only be for . . . quite a short time.”
    â€œYes.”
    Useless. He feels useless. When they talk about Leni, it’s as if there’s some faceless higher authority, some Politburo kind of thing slamming them each in separate cubicles. Leni waits in the corridor, listening, knowing. It’s so lonely in his cubbyhole, he could die.
    â€œHow did Nadia get to know?”
    â€œShe called in. She saw I’d been crying.”
    â€œHave you cried?”
    â€œOf course I’ve cried.”
    There’s silence in the small room outside, Larry can hear one of Gervaise’s guineafowl screech.
    â€œBest if you fly, Miriam. I’ll telephone Air France from Nadia’s.”
    â€œThank you, Larry. How were the pool people? Helpful?”
    He’d forgotten Ducellier Frères . He feels too anxious to reveal the subtle ways in which this firm showed its mistrust of him.
    â€œSo-so. I’ll work something out with them.”
    â€œOh, I meant to ask you, have you got a name for the new company?”
    â€œOh, Aquazure again. I’ll stick with that. No danger of anyone here pronouncing it ‘Aquaisha’.”
    â€œI think you should change the name altogether.”
    â€œWhat’s wrong with Aquazure ?”
    â€œIt’s tainted.”
    â€œWith what?”
    â€œWith the bad luck.”
    Larry gets up. He must go and pour himself a gin. He’s seasick with this day. Up, down, up, down. God Almighty. He could kill Leni Ackerman. Stick a knife in her bony chest. He hopes, as he goes down the stairs, that she’ll die quickly, before Miriam can reach her bedside.
    That evening, towards six o’clock, the wind settles and dies and the air seems suddenly warm, like a summer night. Gervaise watches the pale, bulky shapes moving slowly in the dark field and feels grateful that time has brought her to this meadow, to this September.
    Larry sits alone on his terrace. Thoughts slide and slip. This is his third gin. He feels flushed and breathless, his face a pink lamp in the quiet descending dusk. He’s trying out the solitude to come. Wearing it. He admires the slow declining of light. His silly, shiny face like a beacon embarrasses him. He’d like to decline with the dusk. Become weightless, invisible. Slipslidin’ away  . . . Damn Miriam for loving her mother. Why had there never been a daughter, his daughter, who