To the Back of Beyond(3)
As Astrid went into the bathroom to blow-dry her hair, she wondered about maybe going to the pool today. She had to do the laundry, finish unpacking, shop. She drew up a plan. The next time she thought about Thomas was when she left the bathroom. She called his office. His secretary said he hadn’t arrived yet, and asked if they’d enjoyed the vacation. Oh, lovely, yes. Would you mind checking in his desk diary for me. No, said the secretary after a pause, there’s nothing here. The first thing he has down is this afternoon, a meeting with a client. Will you ask him to call me quickly when he gets in then, said Astrid.
She bicycled off to the shops, hung the washing out to dry, and finished unpacking the suitcases. One of them contained a plastic bag full of shells that the kids had picked up on the beach. When Astrid tipped them onto the table, sand trickled out of the bag. She put the shells and snail shells in a flat basket, and carefully brushed the sand together, avoiding scratching the table. Then she stowed the suitcases in the attic. It was hot up there, the air had a consistency almost of cotton wool. Astrid thought a little ruefully of the past two weeks they had spent by the sea, the heat that she loved, the Spanish street markets, the wonderful fruit and vegetables, the astonishing array of fish and seafood you could get. Let’s just stay here, Thomas had said flippantly on one of their last days. She had laughed and then they had stopped and considered it, spending the whole year by the sea. It was only a game, but in Thomas’s eyes and the kids’ Astrid could see a gleam of enthusiasm. And what would we live off? We could make jewelry out of shells and sell it on the promenade. What about school? Papa can homeschool us. Finally Astrid had said, But home is nice too. The sea would stop being special if it was always just outside the front door. And I’m sure they have winter storms here and the house would get damp, and there’s not even any proper heating. She had always been the voice of reason in the relationship, and in the family. Sometimes she asked herself if Thomas would have chosen a different sort of life if they hadn’t been a couple.
Thomas did not call. Perhaps he had tried while she was in the shops and hadn’t wanted to leave a message. Or he had just plain forgotten. He was bound to have a lot on his plate after the vacation, and would have a hundred and one things to think about. Astrid felt too embarrassed to call the secretary again. She decided she would go for a quick swim after all. While on vacation she had resolved to take more exercise, to swim while the weather held, and then to take up jogging again.
On the radio they had predicted showers and falling temperatures for the afternoon, but there was little sign of that. Even so, the pool was practically empty. To Astrid it felt like a privilege to be able to go swimming in the middle of the day, even as she felt excluded by the more active world in which Thomas featured, and the children as well now, sitting at school racking their brains about math problems or writing an essay about what they had done on holiday. She had a guilty conscience, but that twinge of guilt had something pleasing too. The changing rooms were dirty, there was rubbish everywhere, and the pale blue concrete floor felt sticky underfoot. It must have been very busy here yesterday, the last day of summer, maybe the last warm day all year. After two weeks of swimming in salt water, she felt particularly heavy in the pool, as though something were dragging her down. She stopped after ten lengths and lay in the sun for a while, until her swimsuit felt a little dry. By half past eleven she was back home.
She took in the mail, glanced at the paper, and hung up the last of the wash. She had promised the kids their favorite meal, pancakes with applesauce and Nutella. While she mixed the batter, she had the radio on, though she only ever got mad at the chirrupy hosts who talked nothing but nonsense and treated the callers who rang in with the answer to some quiz question as though they were idiots.
The kids were late back. For five weeks they hadn’t seen their friends, and they would have had a lot to talk about on the way home. Ella gave her a curt greeting and went into the living room. As Astrid set the table, Ella sat on the sofa, reading. What was school like? Ella mumbled something incomprehensible. In the kitchen, Astrid caught Konrad just tearing off a strip of pancake and pushing it in his mouth. Hands off! she called. Can’t you wait? Where’s Papa? asked Konrad. He won’t be back for lunch today, he’s got too much to do. All the more pancakes for us, then, said Konrad.
Over lunch the children talked about what their classmates had got up to during vacation. Astrid listened absently. She wondered what the story was with Thomas. She managed to calm herself down. What was it going to be? The evening before he’d been the way he always was. It wasn’t as though anything unusual had happened during vacation either, on the contrary, the two weeks had been unusually harmonious. Most of the time they’d been on the beach or in the holiday rental. The drive back had been a strain, twice they’d been caught in traffic in France, but Thomas wasn’t one to get too worked up about things like that. He was pretty even-tempered altogether, just a regular Joe, as he sometimes said himself. There was bound to be some perfectly ordinary explanation for his absence. Astrid didn’t even feel worried.
That afternoon the kids went back to school, and Astrid did some work in the yard. After weeks of neglect, the garden looked pretty wild, the weeds ankle-high and the tomato plants tangled like nobody’s business. Astrid weeded and tied the tomatoes, and pinched some of the buds. From the west some dark clouds were approaching and covered the sun. Astrid mowed the lawn. The sound of the mower was unusually loud and echoey, almost as though she was in some enclosed space. She hadn’t quite finished when she felt the first drops of rain. Hurriedly she took down the wash and carried it indoors. She put the lawn mower away in the basement, and threw open the shutters all over the house. In Konrad’s room she stopped and looked out at the rain, which was falling diligently and almost noiselessly. It had grown cool; she shivered and closed the window. The house still felt warm, but it was no longer oppressive.