The Deep End

In my seventh year at the pool, the woman in the yellow cap learned to float on her back. For months she had kept one finger hooked over the edge, looking outraged by the possibility of sinking. Then one Thursday she let go. I was beside the ladder, without a shape, and watched her drift past with her eyes closed. She wore small gold earrings. Underwater, they looked like enormous coins.

I had a weakness for the beginners. The fast swimmers broke the light into scraps, but a hesitant foot entering the water could carry a whole window down with it. Between classes I sometimes gave myself hands and caught those wavering rectangles on my palms. My hands stayed clear; blue tiles showed through the knuckles. A passing swimmer would have seen the outline, so at the first approach I let it go.

I was only my own small quantity of water. The rest of the pool was cool against me, or warm where the sun had lain, and a vigorous kick could send me tumbling. I could move myself out of its way. I could do nothing about the children who jumped in too close to each other, though I worried, and had come to appreciate a well-used whistle. Voices blurred below the surface; I had to rise to make out what people were saying.

There were many pleasures besides the light. The little thunder of running feet. A dropped locker key revolving slowly toward the floor. Winter mornings when steam rose off the swimmers and the glass roof held a white square of sky. While I remained water I needed neither food nor breath; I slept in the quiet corner beyond the ladder and woke to the first splash. Seven years passed with an ease I would once have thought indecent.

I had been a queen for nineteen years before that. I had enjoyed the first few, including the clothes, and I still remembered a particular velvet coat with longing. Later I used to imagine a day without being looked at. I tried to resign twice. Both times my advisers persuaded me to wait until after some anniversary or visit, and both times I consented. Finally I left the seal and a letter on my desk and went abroad with a bathing costume under my dress.

My cousin was crowned that autumn. I watched some of it through the glass of the pool’s empty lobby, where a television had been left on. He looked comfortable. Afterward I went back into the water.

On the morning the new lifeguard found me, the building had not yet opened. Sunlight had reached the deep end. I made myself flesh and floated face up, enjoying its warmth on my eyelids. Flesh was particularly good at warmth. I had begun to sneeze when I heard a shoe squeak on the gallery above.

I dissolved, and the uncompleted sneeze went with my nose. Footsteps crossed the gallery, descended the stairs, came along the tiles. By then I lay at the surface beside the ladder.

The new lifeguard knelt at the edge of the deep end.

“Your Majesty,” he whispered.

For a while I waited for him to address someone else. His shadow lay across me. One of his shoelaces trailed in the water, and I disliked it with the old, immediate irritation I had felt at a crooked line of soldiers.

“I saw you from upstairs,” he said. “Just now. I’m sorry. I didn’t know what to do.”

I drew myself together and raised my head, making it flesh above the surface.

“Who are you?”

He sat back hard on his heels. I knew his face then, though its new angles took a moment to fit over the boy I remembered.

“Hewlin. I carried the music for your lessons.”

“You were seventeen.”

“Yes.”

“And now you’re a lifeguard.”

He glanced down at his red shirt. “I was doing it at the coast. This is my first day here.” He looked at my face again, much more intently than anyone had been allowed to look at it when he was seventeen. “Are you all right?”

“Very well.”

“You’ve been here?”

“Seven years.”

He put a hand over his mouth. I could not tell whether he was about to laugh or be sick. Then he lowered it and said, “We thought you must have died somewhere.”

“I left a letter.”

“We heard about the letter. Then nothing. All this time.”

Water lapped against the flesh of my chin. I could have let that go too. Instead I waited, and he rubbed his face with both hands.

“There’s a memorial on Sunday,” he said. “At home, I mean. But we’re having one here as well. Some of us. I said I’d go.”

I pictured the cathedral, its tremendous lilies and unmerciful benches. I had attended fourteen memorials there, in shoes chosen by somebody who never stood through a service.

“For me?”

“Yes.”

A door swung open at the shallow end. Hewlin stood. The woman in the yellow cap came out of the changing room, pulling at the strap of a sandal, and my face softened into the water before she could look our way.

“Will you be here later?” he asked, scarcely moving his lips.

I had no mouth to answer with. After a moment he went to his chair.

All morning the old address kept returning, in his voice. I had liked the way he used to carry my music: flat on both palms, as solemnly as a cake. Once, when rain ruined a garden concert, he had helped me take apart the sandwiches and feed the bread to the wet peacocks. There had been good afternoons. I had not needed to forget them to be happy here.

That evening I waited until the last swimmer had left, then came up beside the ladder. Hewlin was on a bench putting on his socks. At the sight of me he tried to stand with a sock hanging from his toes and had to catch the bench.

“Please stay where you are,” I said.

“Right.” He sat. “I’ve got something.”

He took a folded sheet from his bag. I climbed out, becoming solid enough to bear my weight. My black bathing costume returned with my skin. I sat a little distance away; after a day without joints, bending my knees felt unnecessarily elaborate.

The paper was a program for the local gathering. Beneath the name Queen Madelon and my dates was a picture from my coronation, with the cheeks narrowed and the crown enlarged. I had asked for neither improvement. The younger woman in the picture looked as if she could comfortably sleep in pearls.

“They’ve left a question mark for the second date,” I said.

“Nobody knows. Well. Nobody did.”

Inside were a reading, reminiscences, refreshments, and three songs. The account of my life occupied less space than the refreshments notice.

“A gifted musician.” I looked up. “That’s generous.”

“You practised a lot.”

“You had to listen.”

“Mostly I waited outside.”

I remembered him standing by the lesson-room door with the folder against his stomach. I had always assumed the music reached him. Perhaps he had been thinking about his lunch.

“Do you remember the song about the miller’s wife?” I asked. “My teacher wouldn’t let me learn the last verse.”

“I don’t think so.”

“She hides her lover in a flour sack.”

“Oh. My dad sings that. He knows about nine verses.”

“Nine?”

“Depending how late it is.” He smoothed the folded edge of the program. “Did you always mean to stay away?”

I read the line about my devotion to music again. “I meant to have a fortnight to myself. Without anyone coming to fetch me. Then I thought I’d stay until winter.”

“Your letter said you wouldn’t return.”

“It was easier to write that than to arrange a fortnight.”

He made no reply. I ran my thumb over the paper, where a drop had blurred part of the border. Each year, as winter came, I had looked forward to seeing snow through the roof. That had been enough to keep me for another season. Said aloud, it would have sounded like a poor excuse for something I had loved.

“Who is organizing this?” I asked.

“A woman my aunt knows. She does most of the things for people from home. The spring supper, the children’s dancing. She asked me because I worked at the palace.”

“Will you have to speak?”

“I said no.”

I turned to the back of the sheet. There was no mention of him. “You could tell them about the peacocks.”

“I don’t want to speak.”

This time I looked at him. His wet hair had dried into a ridge on one side. He had a cheap watch with a handsome face, and a pale mark where a ring had been. I had been asking him questions as though he were still standing outside a door, waiting for me to finish.

“Have you lived here long?”

“Nearly three years.”

“Do you like it?”

“Yes. I liked the coast better, but the work’s seasonal.” He pulled on his other sock. “My aunt’s here. And I used to live with someone. We still see each other sometimes.”

I wanted to ask whether that pleased or hurt him. He was putting his shoes on, however, and I folded the program along its old crease.

“May I hold on to this?” I asked, lifting the program.

“Of course.”

“Where can I put it so it stays dry?”

He considered, then pointed to the spectators’ gallery. “Under a seat? Nobody goes up there except on Saturdays.”

I spent two evenings in the gallery reading about myself, then slid the paper back under the seat before returning to the pool. The short account had made my reign sound uneventful, which pleased me, although I wished it had mentioned the theatre. I had worked for years to persuade people that performances might begin before nine. On the third evening, I took the paper downstairs to find Hewlin.

He was waiting on the bench. Beside him was a paper bag.

“My aunt made these,” he said. “You used to have them after your lesson.”

Inside were three little pastries folded around plum jam. I ate one standing up, scattering crumbs down my front. The jam had baked to a chewy dark edge, the best part. My mouth filled with saliva so suddenly that it hurt.

Hewlin watched me eat. “I asked her for the song as well. She only knew four verses.”

“Is it one of these three?” I held up the program. “They’ve only printed the first lines.”

He looked. “The second one. They’ve put down the proper title.”

I knew the title. I had known it all along. I simply wanted to keep talking about the evening, close enough to the question that he might ask it for me.

“I’d like to go,” I said at last. “To the memorial.”

He brushed a pastry flake off the bench. “With me?”

“If you don’t mind.”

“No. I’d like that.” He started to smile, then looked at the coronation portrait. “People might know you.”

“You did.”

“I saw you most days for two years.”

I studied my younger face. “I don’t look much like her.”

“No,” he said, and then, “Sorry.”

“I shall need some clothes.”

He laughed then, briefly and with relief, and asked what size I took. I had never known.

On Sunday he brought a loose dress and a cardigan borrowed from his aunt, and sandals whose straps I could adjust. He had told her that a friend needed them. I went into a cubicle with a bundle in my arms, like any swimmer, and came out with my bathing costume in his bag.

We walked to the hall. I was used to making myself flesh for a few minutes at a time, and at first the pavement seemed to rise too sharply to meet my feet. Hewlin shortened his stride. He offered his arm once, and I took it, then kept it when my legs remembered what to do. Beside the ordinary movement of our walking, I could feel his pulse through his sleeve.

The hall was above a shop that sold beds. A young man was carrying a mattress through the delivery door as we arrived. He asked us to wait, said thanks when we did, and went on struggling with it. Upstairs, someone had set out thirty chairs. Sixteen people came, counting us, and an infant slept through the whole observance in a basket on the table intended for flowers.

I had expected more. I was ashamed of expecting more. Then I was annoyed because my chair rocked whenever I shifted my weight, and for several minutes I thought chiefly about that.

The organizer welcomed Hewlin and gave me a program. “You’re from home too?”

“Yes. I’ve been away a long time.”

“Well, sit anywhere. There’s tea already, if you’d rather not wait.”

Her cardigan was held closed with a brooch shaped like a pair of cherries. When everyone had settled, she stood by the flowers and read the official account. She had trouble with the name of my first school. I thought of the schoolroom’s apple trees, and of sitting on a low branch with my dress pulled over my bare knees. The account moved on to my marriage and my husband’s death. Two lines for the thirteen years in which I had known the sound of him blowing his nose in the next room.

I gripped the program until it curved around my fingers. Hewlin sat quietly beside me. He had been a child when my husband died; he had no memory to lend me.

After the reading, a man at the front got up without waiting to be asked.

“I never met her,” he said. “My sister did. At the exhibition. She entered a cake. Didn’t win anything, but the queen stopped and asked her about it. She always remembered that.”

He remained standing, looking toward the organizer, who nodded with an encouraging smile.

“It was a fruit cake,” he added, then sat down.

I could not remember the cake or his sister. I remembered, with great clarity, the pain behind my right eye on those exhibition afternoons, when the lights stayed on though the roof was glass. Perhaps I had asked her about it because I was interested. I hoped I had.

A woman with a knitted bag across her knees said she had gone out to see my coronation procession. She had been six, lifted onto her father’s shoulders. All she’d seen of me was a glove.

“White,” she said. “It had buttons all the way up. I wanted gloves like that for years.”

I moved my bare hand beneath the program. I had loved those gloves too. My seamstress had sewn one cuff too tightly, and after the procession we had cut it off me, laughing because I was married to a kingdom and defeated by a sleeve.

The woman beside her leaned forward. “I thought she was badly advised. When they closed the little theatre, she should have said something. They said she supported it.”

“The theatre reopened,” someone said.

“As a cinema.”

I drew breath to explain that I had spoken about the closure, twice, privately, to a minister who had agreed with every word and done nothing. Then the woman began describing the Christmas play she had taken her children to, and I listened. She remembered the paper snow and a donkey that would not go offstage. I remembered the minister’s carpet. Explaining would not have given her another play.

There was a small, clumsy pause after that. The organizer asked whether anyone else would like to say something. Hewlin shook his head when she looked at him, and she went on to the music.

We stood for the first song. I caught my cardigan on the back of my chair and tipped it against the one behind. I apologized to the woman there. She held it steady while I freed the wool from a splinter. Across the room the infant slept with both fists beside his face.

The first song was the anthem. I knew every word, but had never been expected to sing it with other people. I entered late and kept my voice low. Nobody turned. The man who had spoken about the cake sang loudly enough for three of us, with an earnest wobble on the long notes.

Then the organizer said we could sit down. Someone had brought a mandolin, and there was a search for a plectrum, a little tuning, a false start. I had time to wish I had taken tea.

The miller’s wife began sweetly, as it always did, with her waiting for her husband to come home. The room knew the tune. In the second verse she welcomed a traveler; in the third she hid his boots beneath the bed. I sang with the others, hearing the unused breadth of my own voice. My teacher had said I swallowed the low notes. Apparently I still did.

The fourth verse was where we had always stopped at court. The husband came back, found the boots, and asked whose they were. An unanswered question, a neat musical finish, applause. Here the woman with the knitted bag sang straight into his wife’s reply, and half the room followed her.

I knew it. My husband used to sing it while dressing, in a voice so poor that I had begged him to stop. All this time I had been thinking of my teacher and the closed music book, and I knew it.

I came in on the line about the boots belonging to a saint. Hewlin turned toward me. I sang the next line louder. I remembered the fool sitting on our bed with one boot on, waiting for me to laugh before he would put on the other.

By the end of the verse I was crying. I could hear it spoil my voice. The woman behind me leaned forward and pressed a tissue into my hand without missing more than a few words.

“There’s more,” Hewlin whispered. “Do you know the next one?”

I shook my head.

He bent the program out of our way and began, singing close to my ear so I could follow. He was no better than my husband had been. I wiped my nose and watched his mouth, coming in a word or two behind him, and when the miller opened the flour sack I was ready with everyone else.