“One two three!” I hear Pam shout, arms above her head, ready to dive from a high tree. But the Gores are not looking at her. They are watching Flora wading up the bank: her bathing suit has risen up, revealing one round buttock, the color of milk top cream. It suddenly feels like the whole afternoon will be about my sister’s pale bare bottom, held in thrall to it. That there is nothing else left to happen.
I start swimming again, faster now. Only after a bend in the river, the others obscured, do I drift again and seek refuge in noticing things: the water vole’s tunnel; the way a pond skater taps ludicrously over the water’s surface like a man on stilts. It occurs to me that the world of the river reveals itself fully only when you inhabit it, leave the safety of dry land, lower yourself to its level, and maybe this is also true of the past. I am right to spend time in Audrey’s room, letting a little of her siphon into me.
“You don’t look like a girl who needs help.”
Harry’s unexpected proximity makes me splutter. Where did he come from so silently? “I’m fine,” I manage breathlessly.
He smiles, circling me, treading water. “Pam said you were the type to swim off on your own and go too far without realizing, so I grabbed the opportunity to be a hero. The river looks peaceful, but it does get quite knotty in places.”
“I know the river.”
His eyes dance. “Ah, you sound like a modern girl who might object to being saved.”
“I’m perfectly capable of saving myself, thank you,” I say primly, sounding like a peculiar new version of myself. I swim away quickly. To my surprise, Harry follows—his stroke splashless, the muscles in his arms bunching as they lift—rather than returning to ogle Flora on the bank.
Nothing about the river is tranquil now, and it has nothing to do with the current. Harry’s presence heightens everything, the heat of the sun, the pull of water against my skin. Another gentle bend and the river widens. Everything slows here, the current, my heartbeat. The hot air balloon, directly above, seems barely to move, holding the afternoon perfectly still.
He grabs my arm. “Look!” In the time it’s taken him to say that word, it’s already happened: the bomb of blue piercing the water, out again. “Kingfisher, did you see it?”
His hand is still on my arm. This moment—the balloon, the kingfisher, his hand—already feels like a small disloyalty, and something else, something thrilling I haven’t got a word for yet.
“You know, you remind me of someone, Margot.” He stares at me intensely, making me blush.
“People say I look like my cousin. Like Audrey,” I say, breathless again.
He removes his arm and frowns. “Ah, yes. I’ve been wondering what it is about you.” His easy charm is held in tension with something else now, something darker, deeper, like the pond skater’s feet on the filmy surface of the water.
“You were friends, my aunt says.” I tread water a little faster, scattering the tiny silver fish. I can still feel his warm hand on my arm, the spread of his fingers.
Harry twists onto his back, very still, as if there were a hidden plank under the water, a conjurer’s trick. “We’d knock about, the first couple of weeks of the summer, before my family went to France. I was the poor substitute—she was excitedly waiting for her marvelous cousins to arrive.” He turns to me and grins in a way that makes something inside me tighten. “Now I get to see what all the fuss was about.”
I smile and swivel onto my back, too, gaze up at the sky. It is easier to talk not looking at him. And when he moves his hands, I feel them as ripples up the side of my body. “Can I ask you something, Harry?”
“Anything.”
“Are my aunt and uncle not liked around here?”
“Liked?” he repeats with a small laugh, apparently puzzled that anyone should give two hoots if they are liked or not. Or maybe he’s just surprised that I’ve asked such a direct question. I always forget people never expect it, that it’s politer not to say what you mean.
“It’s just, well, they don’t have much to do with anyone now. It’s odd.” I turn my head to face him, my ear filling with water. “Sybil is scared of leaving the house. She can’t bring herself to do it.”
“Nothing’s stopping her, Margot,” Harry says softly. “You have to force yourself to do the things you’re most scared of. You have to face your darkest fears, don’t you?”
I try not to look too impressed. But his words ring true, and wise. I make a note to relay their message to Sybil, coax her out of the house one day.
“Only then can you survive yourself,” he adds with sudden poetical intensity.
I climb into these words in wonder. Harry doesn’t talk like other men. I’m hit by the injustice that Flora will not appreciate him for this, yet I would love him for it.
“Anyway, it’s like the Stone Age here.” Harry flips onto his front puppyishly, and something about this gesture lightens things again. “They believe in Little Folk. Spirits in the stones. And, you know, bad luck is contagious. Missing children, too. No smoke without fire, all that.”
The water feels colder now. “So did . . . did people assume . . .”
“That your uncle and aunt had something to do with it?” he says abruptly, surprising me by finishing the question. I start to sink inelegantly and have to kick myself back to the surface. “Bloody stupid, of course they didn’t,” he adds.
Something feels different, like we’re in a new level of conversation. I check that the hot air balloon is still in the sky. That everything is as it was. The taste of river drips down the back of my throat, a cow-dungy grassiness. This could have been the last thing Audrey tasted, not apple pie or a pork chop or honey cake, but river. “What did your parents think? They are . . . educated people.”
“My parents?” He laughs hollowly. “Educated? Using the term loosely. My parents prefer not to think, Margot. They simply decide on a course and stick to it, like ocean liners.”
I’m not sure if I’m allowed to laugh, too, and decide it is safer to say nothing and keep my face solemn.
“All the reporters were crawling everywhere. They hated their names mentioned in the papers. So they left and didn’t want to be around here much, not after that. Then they just got used to sticking in France all summer, I suppose. The sun. The wine. They’re simple creatures of habit, my parents.”
“Why did you want to come back?” The moment the words are out of my mouth, I feel it might be one question too many. He double-takes, like people do when they realize someone is leading them somewhere they don’t want to go.
“Because they’ll sell Cornton soon, and when I was a boy this was my special place, synonymous with summer.” I nod, understanding this completely. He grins. “Really, Margot, all that matters is that I have the keys to Cornton. There are four beautiful sisters at Applecote Manor. It’s divinely hot. Elvis Presley is on the wireless. There’s not much wrong with the world, is there? We’re so lucky, aren’t we, to live here, now—I mean, at this point in history?”