The Swimming Pool Season by Rose Tremain Page A

mouth, is shiny with spittle. When he sees Gervaise, his owl’s eyes take fire and he holds out his arms to her. She stoops and plants a little gobble of a kiss on each of his papery cheeks, then unwraps her gift to him, a roasted guineafowl. He looks at it in surprise, grabs the pipe out of his mouth.
    â€œIt’s not a Feast Day, Gervaise.”
    â€œNo. She needed killing, that one. She was a screecher.”
    â€œVery kind of you. Very kind . . .”
    Gervaise sits opposite the Maréchal. She reaches out and touches his knee.
    â€œI’ve not just come with the bird. I’ve come with a favour to ask.”
    â€œGood. You ask, Gervaise.”
    â€œMy Xavier’s in trouble. I’m ashamed. And sad. I’m so sad for him.”
    â€œWell, a child is heartbreak. I told you, Gervaise . . .”
    â€œYes, you told me.”
    â€œMy children are dead. I’ve outlived them, eh?”
    â€œI know.”
    â€œOutlive your children! You don’t imagine that.”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œPerhaps you’ll outlive your sons. With your strength, Gervaise . . .”
    â€œWho can say. I think people die younger in the cities.”
    â€œThey like the city?”
    â€œYes, they say they do. They got used to it when they were small.”
    â€œI’ll eat that bird, some of it, this evening.”
    â€œYes. You enjoy it.”
    The Maréchal eats, sleeps, lives in one room now. Upstairs, the old bedrooms are shuttered. Down here, he shuffles between the range and the small table and a tumbled, smelly cot. Outside, on the other side of the wall is a wash-house and a damp privy. On winter nights he pisses in a china pot rather than endure the cold. He has a saying: “Winter’s got me licked, where many women failed.” This one room hugs him and keeps him alive.
    â€œXavier’s in prison, Maréchal.”
    â€œXavier?”
    â€œYes.”
    The Maréchal puts his pipe back in his mouth, sucks on the embers. To him prison is wartime. Eating your own misery and loss, living on these until it was over. Like being kept alive on vomit. He’s not sure how he survived it. He thinks part of his brain died, to save the rest.
    â€œWhere?”
    â€œBordeaux.”
    â€œYou need the bail money.”
    â€œWe have two thousand put away and Klaus has offered us three thousand. We need another three thousand. As a loan of course, Maréchal.”
    The Maréchal gently lifts the basket off his knee. He remembers the day Gervaise was born. He got drunk with her father and they walked back from Ste. Catherine wearing their trousers round their necks like scarves. After the two sons, the birth of a girl was a quiet miracle. And thank God for that stupefying, joyful night. Thank God for that baby, Gervaise.
    He kneels down and from under his bed tugs a canvas bag, like an army kit bag. He leans on it for a moment, then pushes it towards Gervaise.
    â€œYou know the old tin where I used to keep maggots, in that time of the pike fishing?”
    She knows the tin. Once, when she was a girl, it had a yellow and red label on it saying Biscuits Chérisy Fils Paris . She didn’t know where or how the Maréchal had come by these delicacies, but gradually the label faded and peeled off, the tin grew dull and rusty and smelled of river slime. Now she holds it in her lap and it feels light. It’s rusty, but clean. No trace of the maggot smell.
    â€œYou take out what you need.”
    It’s not the first time. She’s borrowed from the Maréchal before. She pays him back slowly, over months and months. The hens and vegetables she brings are the interest still owing.
    She takes out three thousand francs and folds the money in the crease of her small breasts. She closes the tin and pushes it back into the bag, where it’s padded out with ancient bits of clothing, some the Maréchal’s, some his dead