The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs by Irvine Welsh

Author:Irvine Welsh
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2010-01-07T00:00:00+00:00

21

Muffy

BOLTING UP FROM under the surface of the pool’s turquoise waters, Caroline ripped her wet, streaming hair from her face. As she filled her lungs with air, taking in the white, cavernous surroundings of the indoor pool, she noted that little had changed since her father took her here as a girl; the big electronic scoreboard dominated one wall, standing over the banks of orange plastic-benched spectator seating. The adjacent diving pool was still there.

For a few moments she was even moved by the notion that she could sense her father’s presence. There was a phantom smell in her nostrils of the pleasantly musty odour he gave off, the scent she would for ever associate with masculinity. She looked around at the other swimmers, but the perception of his proximity slid from her consciousness like waking from a dream.

This was always their time, as she recollected how she’d learned to swim: his big hands ready to steady her faltering progress. She always recalled feeling so safe in their grip. Yet they were ugly hands, almost like claws: burned a withered yellow and angry red at the fingers, stiff at the joints, due to some accident at work he’d never talk about.

She remembered his jet-black hair which he centre-combed to cover the receding ‘V’ at his temples before he gave up and had a functional number-one cut, as it started to meet the ‘O’ at his crown. There was the Desperate Dan growth on his chin, adding to his ever-present aura of strength. It had filled the house, only waning in his sickness, and now that he was gone it had died with him.

At first she gained no empowerment from these memories of him, they only seemed to deepen her sense of loss. It was as if her backbone had been ripped out of her. To find the courage she lacked, she had taken to drinking alcohol in quantities. But this had only increased her sense of jeopardy and disorientation as she had woken up in strange beds with near strangers on a couple of mornings, with little to remember from the encounters.

Gradually realising that what she needed could only come from within herself, rather than the flesh of a partner or the contents of a glass, she slowly began to find strength. I’m my father’s daughter, everybody always said it, became her mantra. What has he left me? she wondered. And she stopped the heavy drinking, and went back to the Royal Commonwealth Pool.

Now she was swimming again. She loved it here: the water, the freedom and abandonment of it. It seemed to bring her closer to her dad, as this was their thing, neither Brian nor Joyce being swimmers. And the tears flowing from her eyes could be lost in the chlorine waters of the pool, and her sobs of grief could meld into the gasps of extreme exertion as she forced herself through the water until her arms and legs ached.

And like her body, her spirit was becoming stronger.

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