Weakly I hoisted the umbrella onto my hip, and slowly, pressing myself as far into the hedge to my right as I could, began inching my way along the path. As soon as I was past the body, I broke into a crazed, awkward run and heard a preternatural shriek stream from my lips. I scarcely felt the weight of the umbrella as I dragged it, still running, around the corner and on to the back lawn. Somehow I managed to lift it above my head and slot it into its hole. The thud it made as it fell into place provided a ghastly echo of Roy’s collision. I wrestled, whimpering, with the sprung mechanism which raised the canopy, and finally collapsed into the white plastic garden chair beside me.
For a while my thoughts thrashed about, trying to find some escape from the unalterable fact of Roy’s demise. It was becoming steadily more clear, in the oblique fashion of something profoundly denied, that I was going to be unable to do anything about the situation. My hand sought the bottle of champagne which sat before me on the table. The reminder it provided of the insignificance of my earlier crime was comforting. I drank some of it down. It was warm, having been sitting in the sun, and my empty stomach shifted queasily. After a few mouthfuls I got up again and returned to the corner of the house, where it met the gravel path. Peering around it, I saw to my disappointment that the black heap remained exactly as it had been. So incredible did the episode seem to me, and so forceful was my denial of it, that I had honestly expected to discover that I had imagined it, or at least that it had been negated by some greater and more rational force. I was troubled by the abject appearance of the body. It looked smaller than it had before. Also, something had happened to Roy’s fur. It was suddenly all rough and mangy. I wondered if this were an effect of the strong sunlight, and whether I should cover him up lest he actually begin to decompose. I went and sat down again. There was nothing else, marooned as I was in misfortune, that I could do. Tears of frustration filled my eyes and I banged my hand on the table, causing the bottle to leap in the air so that I had to throw myself forward to catch it. I broke into a fresh sweat. My bare thighs slimed grotesquely against one another, and I could feel the lagoons of moisture beneath my arms. I raised the bottle of champagne to my lips and drank thirstily from it.
Just then, the inviting turquoise of the swimming pool on the other side of the lawn caught my eye. It may seem curious that the idea of swimming had not suggested itself until that moment; but the ceaseless postponements to which I had been subject over the course of the past week had instilled their discipline in me. I had become servile; and was by now so used to regarding the pool as a mere feature of the landscape that I had more or less forgotten its purpose. I gave a yelp of joy and rose from my chair. My current dishevelment, combined with all the memories of this longed-for but withheld pleasure that I had accrued, stirred up in me an almost painful feeling of anticipation. My skin prickled and gushed at the thought of its imminent immersion. My scalp burned, yearning for the cool water. Having thought of it, it seemed unbearable that I would have to delay swimming by even one more minute; and given that any expedition in search of a costume would necessitate an encounter with Roy, not to mention trespassing into the mysteries of Pamela’s bedroom, I decided to eschew the appropriate attire and swim in my underwear. Who, after all, would see me? And even if they did, it would be with accusations of a far more serious nature than indecency that they would regale me.
With this cavalier thought, I removed the cut-off trousers and T-shirt and streaked across the lawn towards the water. As I hovered for a few seconds on the tiled brink of the pool, my certainty that in a very short time I would be in it drove my longing to such a pitch that I thought I would burst. In that charged interval, every anxiety and regret seemed to rise from viscera to skin with the expectation of being discharged and washed away. A momentary despair, like pain felt through sleep to which one briefly awakes, suffused me; and then I jumped.
How can I convey the glory of that transition from desire to fulfilment that I felt as the water closed over my head? One minute I had been diffuse, soiled, porous; the next I was purged, contained, that which had been widely strewn and trampled folded and zipped back into the bag of my body. I stayed under for a long time, flapping sideways with my arms to prevent myself from floating, until the advancing cold of the water succeeded in quenching me to the core; and then I surfaced, sleek and gasping, to feel the sun brilliant on my wet face. The Maddens’ pool was smaller than it looked, unsuited to serious swimming, and so after gliding blissfully to and fro on my side for a while I lay on my back and felt the cool tide lap against my scalp. I glimpsed the deep blue of the sky rearing above me, closed my eyes as the watery cradle bore my weight. The thread of my time in the country seemed all at once to snap, and I drifted away from the closely knitted stump of the past week, up to some higher region from where all the things of life appeared visible but remote, as the swimming-pool floor was to me now.
Presently, as is in the nature of even the most pleasurable experiences, I felt the compulsion to conclude my swim; if only so that I could swim again at some future point. I heaved myself dripping over the side of the pool and made my way back across the lawn. Roy was as I had left him when I went to the side of the house to look. A blackbird was pecking at the gravel beside his body. I felt a sense of frustration at the resilience of this obstacle to my happiness, for again I had entertained the curious hope that the incident would have been erased, and indeed might still be if I waited long enough. Returning to the table, I sat down and drank some more of the warm champagne. The taste of it in my mouth released a memory, which moved elusively around my thoughts, just out of reach. Even in the shade, I was already beginning to get hot again. The sun had moved a considerable way to the left, so that blocks of shadow were advancing across the lawn, but its heat did not appear to have abated. I was dimly aware of my strange appearance, which was mostly owing to the extreme variations in skin colour on different parts of my body, but seemed exacerbated by the peculiar sight of my underwear in such a public setting. Anxieties began to stir and scuttle about my mind. I wondered what time it was and when Pamela would appear, whether I should return the umbrella to the shed immediately so that I would not forget to do so later, what I should do about Roy, how I was to manage the lesser concealment of the champagne; until all in all I began to feel fraught with worry, adding the curdling of my afternoon idyll to my catalogue of problems.
It required a considerable effort of will to drive these concerns from my mind, for their power was merely enhanced by the fact that I recognized the pattern of their invasion from my previous life and regarded it with fear. It was precisely to escape this kind of anxiety that I had come to the country in the first place. I determined to think about nothing whatsoever until I had at least had another swim. Drinking down the last of the champagne, which by now tasted really rather disgusting, I got unsteadily to my feet and made my way across the lawn to the pool. The combination of alcohol and heat immediately had a stunning effect on me, and I stood swaying by the side of the pool for some time, my toes gripping the edge to prevent myself falling in. The sun pounded on my shoulders and the back of my neck. I was beginning to feel distinctly unwell. My eyes sought some object on which to focus, but when I looked up the garden seemed to take a great tilt. I staggered to one side, the blood pounding in my ears, the fuzzy outlines of trees spinning about me, and everything seemed suddenly to rush upwards at an impossible speed as I lost my balance and plunged head-first into the water.