Breaststrokes by Margaux Vialleron

Author:Margaux Vialleron
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
Published: 2024-05-09T00:00:00+00:00

15 Mathilde and Sarah

In addition to the beer garden at the back, the Oldfield Tavern has a few picnic tables in front of the building. The division between visitors happens organically: families and those who come with a dog settle in the enclosed back garden while solitary drinkers, and those who don’t want to mix, stay at the entrance. This organisation shows that beneath the apparent chaos of large cities, a set of unspoken rules, visible to the locals only, convey a silent agreement that makes life manageable on an individual level.

After lunch, Mathilde had popped to the bathroom, letting Sarah head out without her. She stayed inside the cubicle for long enough to read the handwritten notes some of the previous guests had scribbled, colourful and messy messages covering the walls. Names of lovers and politicians, football predictions, band names; Mathilde read some of the lines carefully, snapshots of lives and hopes, and pondered what could bring someone to write their thoughts on the walls of a pub toilet. Was her name ever written on one? Would she feel praised or sullied if she had known about it? A vortex of things people had either wished they could say or, the opposite, the ideas shame cancelled. Do the authors bring pens with them to the pub, planning to leave a trace, or are these urges? Mathilde has become scared of her own compulsions over the years, and she has learnt to control them, a skill she attributes to her success, working her way through a demanding career. She had started as a recruiting manager for a bank, then went on to apply her professional calm and strategic mind to a greater cause she cares for: Mathilde works as a legal advisor at a women’s centre. But then there are the moments when, impulsive, a tide propelled by fear and anger hits her, occasions when she tinkers with control. When a child screams loudly and abruptly on the street, a fire or car alarm goes off; the vibrations of boiling water, they melt her armour against her will. If she had a pen, she would write on the wall – I’m drowning. SOS. But Agnes has never shown her daughters how to be humble and to reach out for help. Everyone asked Mathilde the same question – What were you thinking when you decided to pour that pot of boiling water over yourself? – but she doesn’t have the answer. She was surprised when the therapist handed her a questionnaire and told her to answer with numbers on a scale from 0 to 10, an attempt to score her mental health. Her responses were fraudulent, commanded by the ingrained attitude of being a righteous student: Mathilde guessed what an appropriate score would be so she wouldn’t be marked as depressed. There were periods when Mathilde would weigh everything in the house scrupulously, from herself to the bags of flour stored inside the kitchen cupboards. She didn’t have an opinion about

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