Chapter Four Water Is a Cure
On Sunday morning Danny woke with a hangover, convinced that he had made a fool out of himself at the garden party.
That his role was either clown or carer.
Wrapping himself in a blanket he sat on the balcony, his bare feet nestled among the plant pots, dozing in the sun.
His intermittent dreams incorporated a miscellany of summer sounds including music from an ice-cream van and the laughter of children playing in the nearby park.
After a time, he went inside where Luis was reading the international print editions of El País and El Mundo, a fixture of his weekends.
Danny lay on the sofa, resting his head on Luis’s legs, listening to the crinkle of the pages.
Danny decided to shake off his malaise by swimming at the Hampstead Ponds.
He was a regular at the Men’s Ponds ever since he moved to London from Bude.
Water was a big part of Danny’s childhood.
In the summer months he would swim in the sea, enjoying the sensation of being underwater, his fingertips brushing the seabed, holding his breath for as long as possible, sheltering from the world above.
As a teenager he read obsessively about mermaids and mermen, from the historical accounts of explorers who spotted them at a galleon’s bow to their fictional incarnations, longing for an invitation to join their underwater society.
In search of a replacement for the sea, Danny discovered the Ponds.
Over time he developed an appreciation of them as a place in London like no other.
Some swimmers showed up for the exercise, the Orthodox Jews and fitness fanatics, others for fun, boisterous groups of straight friends intermingling with gay guys who turned up to talk, hang out, hook up, sunbathe nude and generally treat the Ponds as an outdoor social club, spending hours with a book or embroiled in conversation.
It was a space free from indicators of money or status, with everyone sitting on their small patch of sun-baked concrete swapping stories over handfuls of berries.
Unofficial chairman of this social club was Chris, a retired civil servant in his early seventies, a man with an encyclopaedic mind who had devoted his professional life to the service of his country and who now spent his summers by the Ponds and his winters by the fire.
As lean as a competitive swimmer with a deep tan, cropped silver hair and a silver beard, his appearance resembled a handsome desert-island castaway who, despite being stranded, somehow managed to keep up appearances.
He wore sapphire blue Speedos with a white trim and sat among an ever-changing court of miscellaneous men discussing anything from travel plans to politics, flipping from the frivolous to the sincere.
One enduring topic of discussion was the looming fear that the council would regulate the Ponds, installing ticket barriers and tearing down the nude sunbathing area, forcing them into well-behaved conformity with every other humdrum municipal swimming pool across town.
Out of habit Danny would sit within Chris’s orbit, answering questions but posing few of his own, acknowledging his position as a junior member of this queer social club.
Today was different. During three brisk laps, circling beneath red kites and grey herons, Danny plucked up the courage to ask Chris a personal question, breaking an unwritten rule that intimate information should be volunteered and never solicited.
‘Was there ever someone?’
Putting aside his book Chris scrutinized Danny, trying to figure out whether he should make a joke or answer honestly.
‘Someone special? Yes. A long time ago. He was a teacher. One of those inspirational types. Thought he could make the world a better place. We were together for two years. The best years of my life. He wanted to move in with me. And I said no.’
Chris studied Danny’s face.
‘You can’t imagine it, can you? Saying no to a man you love?’
Danny couldn’t imagine it. He would do anything for Luis.
And he was sure Luis would do anything for him.
Chris continued, ‘I was working in the Foreign Office at the time. The Sexual Offences Act was the law. If they found out that I was living with a man, it would’ve been the end of my career.
And I was ambitious so I kept him on the side.
But being on the side wasn’t enough for him.
He was fearless. I was not. By the time I realized what a terrible mistake I’d made, he was sick.
The only place he could survive was in a hospital.
When I shared my regrets, I saw disdain in his eyes – that it was easy for me to offer my home now that it was impossible for him to accept. ’
Almost talking to himself, Chris concluded, ‘On the side is all I could offer. On the side is all I knew. On the side is all I’ll ever know.’
With that he returned to the pages of his book, signalling that the conversation was at an end. Danny packed up his things and rather than catch the tube, decided to walk all the way home, down Primrose Hill and through Regent’s Park.
That evening Luis prepared a dinner of buttery scrambled eggs, heaped on slices of toasted sourdough. Out of nowhere, Danny declared, ‘What if we sold the apartment and bought a boat and sailed around the world?’
Luis helped himself to more scrambled eggs and talked about the sail boats he used to watch depart from the port of Cádiz. Danny wanted to tell Luis he was being serious except of course he didn’t know the first thing about boats despite having grown up on the coast.
Before going to sleep Danny changed the bed linen, a habit of his when he hankered after the psychological sensation of a fresh start. In the shower, quite inexplicably, he wept.