Swimming Upstream

22

September 2012

We live in a town called Eaubonne, just to the North of Paris. It has everything we need, including the forest where we run and walk the dog by the lake and, in summer, have lazy picnics. There is a modern competition-sized swimming pool right by the rail station, from where it is only a twenty minute hop into the Gare du Nord.

Like me, my daughter Helena is a keen swimmer - in fact she is a much stronger swimmer than I, and an able all-round athlete. She attends the Association Sportif, a sports college nearby where she is studying for the International Baccalaureate but is also in training in earnest for the Pentathlon Moderne. She gets up at five each morning to run and then swim, and I join her at least twice a week. The pool is quiet most of the time. There is just one diving board in the middle, at the end, and the lanes are marked out. Along the other side is a wall of windows with doors opening out onto a terrace. I have never swum in a lovelier pool.

Eaubonne is our home now, and has been for many years. I moved out of Paris when Helena was a baby, seeking a bigger house for less money along with the beauty and tranquillity of the countryside. I never went travelling; I had no need. I found what I was looking for in Paris, in Helena, in myself. I found a job translating journals and publications for a small agency located in the tenth arrondissement and I have been there ever since. The nature of what I do for a living means that I can work from home and it is a life that suits me well.

The town is really friendly; I can't go to the market without meeting friends on the way and a few more while I'm there. There is a stall which sells olives and tapanade, candied fruit and nuts. There is an Arabic couple who make their own patisseries. They are beautiful and delicious, made of honey, nuts and “brick” (I can’t find a word for this in English). The lady is incredibly fat but absolutely beautiful. Her skin is smooth and glowing like honey and her eyes sparkle. She always serves mint tea free of charge to anyone who buys her cakes.

There is a beautiful forest nearby: the Foret de Montmorency. It is busy at weekends, but less so during the week. Early in the morning, or indeed whenever we get the chance, Helena and I take off with Lily, our dog, running through the forest and alongside the lake, then up the hill to a prairie with a big oak tree in the middle. It is rare to see anyone there. We run up a big hill onto a shingle road with chestnut trees on both sides. In the winter there are big Alexander beetles and big red slugs on the road. In the summer there is pale coloured sand. The forest floor is very leafy and there are lots of chestnuts and mushrooms. There are wild purple foxgloves growing there and soft springy leaf mould which then becomes sand. There are snakes in the banks, which scare me, and my fear makes Helena laugh.

She is an audacious girl, and there is not much that fazes her. She has the indulgent and entitled air of many of her generation; she is a normal eighteen year old, in fact. I am happy to see that she is so confident and headstrong and, although it’s true that I also envy her this, I am pleased that she is so comfortable in her own skin, that she feels she has the intrinsic right to be here, in this world, in our house, in the lives of those around her. I am glad she challenges me and demands to be heard. I am glad that she feels safe enough to do so.

For the first time in many years, though, she has been asking about her father. She wants to know everything about him and I don’t know where to begin. How much do I tell her? How much does she need to know? The whole truth? Or a half truth, a white lie? What, I am wondering, is the right thing to do? When she was little it somehow wasn’t an issue. Along with Father Christmas or the Tooth Fairy, it wasn’t that difficult to pass him off as a creature of myth. And later, as she grew older, she just seemed to accept without question that he was to remain remote and invisible, not entirely unlike the one up in heaven. (“My Father, who art in England,” she used to joke irreverently during the Lord’s Prayer). But now she is eighteen, a student of the International Baccalaureate, and she is being taught to enquire. Her mind is opening up to new possibilities and it is right that, before she ventures out into the world, she should want to know where she came from. How can I blame her for that?

When I first moved to Paris I took with me the copy of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Essay on Self-Reliance that Uncle Silbert had given me. Heavily pregnant with Helena, I spent a long time in the Bibliotheque Nationale searching through dictionaries, study notes and archives, and preparing my own translation of the essay into modern English. I have found a lot of comfort and guidance from it over the years. Its inherent irony, however, is not lost on Helena, for whom I dug it out last night.

“He wants us to think for ourselves, to be original, to refuse to follow the crowd. So why should we listen to him?” she asked.

We were sitting in the kitchen drinking coffee with my friend Suzanne.

“C’est vrai, c’est un paradoxe,” laughed Suzanne. “Comme toi. Like you,” she said. Helena responded by sitting down heavily on Suzanne’s lap and wrapping her arms tightly around her neck. Helena is tall, and way too heavy for Suzanne’s petite frame.

“Stop it, Helena, you’re suffocating her,” I reprimanded.

Suzanne laughed and waved her hand. “Ca va.”

“But isn’t it selfish?” Helena persisted. “To put your needs before others, in the way that he recommends?”

“Au contraire,” said Suzanne. “It is by having respect for yourself and your own feelings that empathy for others is born.”

Helena thought about that for a moment. “What are you like if you have no empathy?”

“Antisocial,” said Suzanne.

“You mean like people who commit crimes, hurt other people?”

“Yes, that’s right. They can be very charming, give the outward appearance of being interested in you. But in reality they don’t have that capacity. These people are cut off, disconnected from their own feelings, and if they don’t know how to feel for themselves they can’t feel for anyone else either. In the extreme, they are psychopaths.”

“So why don’t we just teach them how to feel instead of locking them up?”

Suzanne smiled. “Have you ever thought about running for President?”

“No,” said Helena. “I have only thought about running.”

I smiled at my daughter and went to the stove, poured more coffee. Suzanne patted Helena’s knee. “You are a true philosopher, mademoiselle.”

“I think his essay is like anything else you read,” I said, setting the coffee cups down on the table. “You have to take the parts that resonate with you and leave the rest.”

Helena nodded. “Okay. Well, I certainly agree with him that you have to be who you really are. And you must tell the truth, even if it hurts, absolutely. Living a lie, living in denial, it’s not fair to anyone, least of all yourself.”

I turned to face her. “You really believe that?” I asked.

“Of course” she said. “Don’t you?”

Today has been one of the first real days of autumn after a few hot weeks of summer and there was that chill in the morning air which always stirs something inside me, reminding me of new school books and new beginnings; of childhood walks in the forest and crunching fallen leaves followed by hot cocoa, drop scones and chilblains by the fireside. I got up at dawn with Helena and we ran with Lily, through the forest and past the lake, where Lily always goes for a dip before running on to catch us up. The lake is beautiful. It is grey-blue and glistens white. From a distance the seagulls look as if they are part of the sparkle until Lily arrives and the birds get frightened and suddenly fly off. There are bulrushes and tall soft grasses near a little castle, with ducks and their babies nesting amongst them. In the summer there are a few coots and lots of little turtles, which come out of the water to lie in the sun.

I watched Helena as she ran ahead of me round the lake, dipping through the bulrushes and up the hill, and I came to a decision: I must tell her the truth. She may despise me. She might not understand. But it’s a risk that I must take.

It’s now evening, cool and dark. It’s Friday night and we are at home in the kitchen, preparing a supper of the food that we both love: salad with endives and avocado and a garlic vinaigrette, goat’s cheese, fat juicy olives and delicious crusty baguettes from the Boulangerie on the corner at Place Aristide. Helena is setting out glasses and cutlery on the table and pouring thick red wine and she is telling me about her day. I watch her from where I am standing near the stove. She is very beautiful. Of course, I would say that. I’m her mother. But it’s true and I can never quite believe that she is mine.

“What?” Helena asks, churlishly. “Why are you looking at me like that?” She shrugs a pile of ironing off the kitchen chair and onto the sofa, sinks down onto it and picks up her fork.

So where to begin? I contemplate this as Helena tips a pile of dripping leaves onto her plate and pushes a piece of bread into her mouth. I sit down at the table beside her and fiddle with the stem of my wine glass.

“I’ve got something to tell you,” I hear myself say.

So now it’s late and I’ve told her the whole story. The bread, cheese and wine are gone and the salad bowl is empty. The blinds in the kitchen are still open and the empty blackness of the sky framed by the window above the stove reminds me of a photograph that is yet to develop.

It seemed right to begin that day, that wet spring day in 1992, the day that Catherine walked back into my life. That was the point, it seems, that my life began to unravel. And that, of course, is the day that I met him for the very first time. I wonder briefly, for the millionth time, how different things might have been if the pool had been shut, say, that day. A power failure. Heaters, or something. Or if, on the way home, I had crossed the road at the traffic lights as I should have done, instead of running into the road. But then I would be living in a world without her in it, and my imagination stops right there. I can’t see my past, or my future, without Helena. It just isn’t a place that I would ever want to be.

Helena is sitting still, looking at the table. She is silent for several minutes. Finally, she says, “So he raped you.” Her voice cracks slightly as she speaks.

“Yes. In law, he did. If you believe that, of course. That I didn’t give consent. Remember that this is my story. He may tell it differently.”

“How? How could he tell it differently? How could you have given consent? You were knocked out by that punch. The punch that Catherine made. Everybody saw that - Zara, Shelley, everyone, including him. That’s why he did what he did. He took advantage. It’s obvious.” She shakes her head.

I nod and look up at her, both grateful and full of admiration for her certainty, her lack of doubt. I study her face. She has the same tall, athletic body as her father, and has inherited his hazel eyes and sandy hair. Other than that there has never been any obvious connection between the two of them, and I have never felt his presence in her at all.

“So, that’s it?” asks Helena sadly. “I’m the product of a rape?”

“A gift. The one good thing to come out of it,” I tell her. “You know how much I love you. You changed my life.”

Helena is silent again.

“Look, I considered telling him,” I say. “But I knew that if I did it would be irreversible. I just didn’t know what would happen - to me, to you, to Catherine.”

“I didn’t say that you should have told him.” Helena fiddles with the stem of her empty wine glass, rolling it between her thumb and forefinger, twisting it first one way, then the other so that its base rolls in a heavy semi-circle across the table top, threatening to topple over and break.

She hesitates. “So, what was he like?”

Of course I didn’t know him well. So all I can tell Helena is the little about him that I do know - snippets that had mostly come from Catherine. I know that he liked cars, he liked sport, and that he had had to give up his swimming career because of a sports injury. He was bright, interested in politics. And he had a good sense of fun. It’s hard to explain the nice things about him in terms that don’t contradict what I have just told her. But nothing will alter what I know to be true: that my life, and Helena’s - and Catherine’s too - would all have been altered immeasurably by his knowledge of her existence and not for the better, I am sure of that.

“So that’s why you left England?”

I nod. “The main reason, yes, in the end. I could have stayed. With Zara and Tim. But I was never sure if Catherine would try and get in touch. Or him. I couldn’t live like that, never knowing when I was pushing your pram down the street, or leaving the house, if he was going to pull up outside or knock on the door and put two and two together.”

Helena sets her wine glass down on the table and looks up at me in silence.

“But you’re an adult now,” I continue. “It’s your call.” I take a deep breath. “So, do you want to find him? Do you want to meet him?”

Helena pauses, looks at me, then shakes her head. “Non,” she says. “Ca ne vaut pas la peine.” It’s not worth it.

Or, as it translates literally, it’s not worth the pain.

I heard once that all stories end with one of three things: forgiveness, revenge or tragedy. I have spent some time lately pondering which my ending is, or will be.

Forgiveness, so it’s said, is the Christian thing to do. But I don’t believe you have to forgive to be happy. Why forgive, just for the sake of it? That seems like a cop out to me, a betrayal of the self. Not forgiving changes things for ever. But not necessarily for the worse. Non-forgiveness is my shield against the loss of self. It is something that I will carry with me always.

Revenge? Not necessary. I have learned to live with injustice. I have wondered, in passing, if my revenge has been my absence, my stand, my decision to deny Martin his child. But I know that if that were true, then it is only a small strand of what happened; my primary motivation has always been the desire to protect my child and, yes, to protect myself, too. As Uncle Silbert said, it’s all about knowing your own truths, and not needing a defence, or a second opinion.

Tragedy? On the contrary. Mine is certainly not an unhappy ending. And, in spite of the losses that both Zara and I have endured, we have been left with our friendship. That is something I will always cherish.

We see her often. Sometimes when she is well, she will get herself to Waterloo and onto the Eurostar and she will stay for weeks at a time. Other times when she can’t face the journey we will go to her. She still lives in London, in Clerkenwell, in a supported housing scheme just of Goswell Road. It’s a little crowded when we are all there together but none of us mind and Helena is used to Zara’s ups and downs.

The illness is there for life, it seems, and Zara is unlikely to work again, although she remains somewhat sceptical about the theory of a chemical imbalance that can’t be cured with diet, sunlight and exercise, and that still remains her dream. For now, though, she is still dependent on the drugs that keep her mood stable. She’s not bitter, although at times she says that she feels as though life is passing her by. Mostly, she just feels relief at being allowed to avoid the battlefield that is the real world and to be able to take things at her own pace. She has her paintings. She can afford new clothes and makeup every now and again, and she doesn’t have to sell her soul and her sanity to get them. I remain hopeful for her. She may be vulnerable but she is not a victim; on the contrary she is determined, courageous and strong. It seems we all have to find our own medium between security on the one hand and freedom on the other and for some, like Zara, the balance must be more finely tuned. I have come to realise, though, that we can’t have hope without a degree of uncertainty in our lives; and that those things that induce fear and discomfort in me are the very same things that make me feel truly alive.

Now, after all that’s happened, I am inclined to agree that everything was meant to be. Catherine would be pleased. Do I believe in fate? Possibly. Maybe there is no such thing. Or perhaps the way our life unfolds is a complex equation, made up of many things: a pre-destined trajectory combined with our own character, plus a smattering of random, accidental happenings. No-one can possibly know for sure.

But this is my story. These are my truths. This is what happened. Of that, I am certain.





Hello Readers

Thank you so much for reading my debut novel. A number of people have commented that they would like to see a sequel. I can tell you that I certainly have plans for a second novel. I can’t say more than that just yet!

So, a little bit about me… I was born in South London and studied in Cambridge and London (surprise, surprise!) where I gained a bachelors degree in French and Spanish and a post-graduate diploma in Law. For several years I worked in the publishing industry before leaving my job, my relationship with my long-term partner and my home to travel and also to write the first draft of Swimming Upstream. I then put my writing career on hold for several years while I retrained as a lawyer.

Like Lizzie, I was a singleton for many years until I finally met and married my husband. We now live in Oxfordshire with our two children. I still practice as a lawyer and juggle that with writing and raising the children. Sadly, my eldest child was born in 2002 with a severe learning disability, which means that he is also physically disabled (the two often go hand in hand) so it’s been a tough time! I’m very interested in the subject of how differently we all survive life’s challenges and I’ve written about my son, about surviving life’s knocks, about relationships and about friendship on my website. If you want to read more just click on this link: http://www.ruthmancini.com/blog/ My contact info (and photo!) is also there on my website – if you have any questions, suggestions or would simply like to get in touch I’d love to hear from you.

One last thing… when you turn the page, Kindle will give you the opportunity to rate the book and share your thoughts via a feed to your Facebook and Twitter accounts. If you believe your friends would enjoy this book, I’d be honoured if you’d post your thoughts. If there is no page that follows, here is the link to my book on Amazon: http://viewbook.at/B00A8J10UM I’d be so grateful if you could share the link with your friends and also click on it to rate Swimming Upstream and leave a review. Even just a line or two would mean so much to me. Thanks again for reading.



Ruth Mancini, February 2013