Swimming to Ithaca Read Online Free PDF Page A

you wonder?’
    ‘What it was. That made her feel she deserved punishment.’
    ‘Isn’t that her business?’
    ‘She’s dead now. She’s not there to have any business.’
    He pressed the advance button and the house slid back into place, and pressed once again to move the house on.
    A family group stumped through the cold across the top of some mountain plateau. ‘That’s Troödos,’ Paula cried.
    ‘And that’s Geoffrey, isn’t it? With Mother.’
    He pressed the advance again and there once more were just the two of them, Dee and her little girl, crouching in some field amongst poppies, dozens of poppies around them so that it looked as though they were crouching in a bleeding graze, the kind of thing you get on your knees when you fall on gravel, the blood bubbling up in a dozen little gouts. The pain. ‘I remember that,’ Paula said. ‘That picture, I mean. I remember it being taken …’
    She paused, watching the figures as though something was about to be enacted there in that distant view of a field bleeding with poppies. But nothing and nobody moved.
    They had lunch in the pub across the road, and afterwards went for a walk along the desolate waterfront. The river was flowing against the wind so that the wavelets had their tops blown into smithereens, like smashed glass. There were sailing boats moored in ranks, their rigging vibrating in the wind like the rattling of snare drums. Are they called ratlines because they are always rattlin’, or are they called ratlines because rats run up them? One of Geoffrey Crozier’s jokes. The riverside path ran along the top of the sea wall. And at the end, below the level of the path and therefore at sea level more or less, there was a house. White-painted weatherboards and a wooden porch. He stood looking down at it for a moment. ‘That’s the blinking woman’s. You know. Janet What’s-her-name.’
    ‘You mean the woman who fancies you?’
    He ignored the taunt. ‘I’ll bet she gets in a flap when there’s a flood warning out. I’ll bet her eyelids go like bloody gnats’ wings. She’s almost below sea level.’
    ‘So’s most of the town.’
    As they watched, the side door of the house opened and someone came out. Her brown woollen skirt and loose-fitting shirt were visible from where they stood. There was a brief altercation with what appeared to be a dog, and then the woman went back inside. ‘That’s her. Blinking Janet.’
    ‘She’s a potter,’ Paula said. ‘That’s what she told me.’
    ‘Obviously she’s a potter.’
    ‘What do you mean, obviously?’
    ‘Looking like that. Obviously she’s a potter. She’s probably a vegan as well. And a firm believer in homoeopathic medicine. And practises Zen Buddhism.’
    ‘You’re a bigot.’
    ‘I’m a historian. Historians see the patterns in things.’
    They turned and made their way back along the path towards the town. ‘Perhaps it was Geoffrey Crozier,’ he suggested.
    ‘What do you mean? What was Geoffrey Crozier?’
    ‘That made her feel guilty. Perhaps they had an affair.’
    ‘Don’t be daft.’ She looked round at him. ‘For goodness’ sake, Tommo, what’s the matter with you? On no evidence whatever you’re accusing Mummy of having a sneaky fuck with a friend of the family forty years ago. I mean, what’s your problem?’ Her anger was real.
    ‘He was always around, wasn’t he? And she always talked about him. And that letter, you’ve read that letter.’
    ‘That’s bugger all. You need facts, hard facts.’
    ‘But there’s no such thing. Facts die, just like people. All that remains are scraps – and we have to do our best with those.’
    ‘This is the historian speaking again, is it?’
    He smiled at her anger. ‘Never anything else.’
    They paused at the far end of the main street, looking down the row of houses towards the clocktower and the Ship Hotel and the row of one-time fishermen’s cottages. Graham’s Volvo had just drawn up and the children