Desert Fish Read Online Free Page B

cram myself into a T-shirt and some elasticised trousers and I was relieved Pete was out of the room. Now I can feel my skin pressed against the fabric of my clothing and the sun burns through them.
    I picture my mother in the chlorinated ripple of the pool. She never swam in the river like I did. She preferredto take a magazine to the swimming baths. She liked the lawn there, it was clipped and bright, and there were hardly any ants if you lay your towel down near the path. Ron the pool manager spread Antrid on anything that crawled within inches of his tightly edged lawn.
    My mother liked the striped umbrellas and the hot concrete floor of the dressing rooms. There were no puddles of water anywhere. Whatever wasn’t in the pool dried out quickly. There were hooks for towels and benches for bags and cubicles to get changed in. Everything had its place, and I belonged beside her.
    Soon after Pete moved in, she came to find me.
    â€˜C’mon, Gilly. Get your towel. We’ll go for a swim.’
    â€˜I don’t know what bathers to wear,’ I said, trying to care. You had to have several for the summer. In a hot year you’d wear them every day. To the river, or the pool. Or under a sundress, just in case an opportunity for swimming arose. My mother always wore a bikini, despite the stretch marks on her stomach. They were masked by her tan. I wore a one-piece. If I had chosen it, it was in a solid colour, with perhaps a contrasting trim, but if my mother had brought it home for me, she’d have got me a print, nearly always floral.
    On this day, we walked over the bridge. You could see the thirsty river through the railed fence.
    â€˜It’s drying out,’ I said to my mother. ‘Look.’
    She shuddered. ‘Too far down for me, Gilly.’
    â€˜I saw an eel the other day,’ I told her. ‘It was in a rock pool that had dried out. It must have got stuck.’
    â€˜Well I hope you didn’t touch it,’ she said.
    â€˜No,’ I told her, even though I did. I turned it over with a stick and examined its shrivelled belly. It must have been there a few days; there was a powerful stink about it. I wondered how it had got caught in the pool, how the river had shrunk away and forgotten it. Did it lie there for ages, sensing the current close by but unreachable, hoping for a brief wash of water from up in the catchment to flush it out?
    â€˜Do you think it’ll rain sometime soon?’ I asked her as we lay our towels out.
    â€˜Yeah, I guess. It’s got to.’ She didn’t really care though, and I was just trying to make conversation. She stretched her legs out in front of her and shifted them, knees together, from side to side, smoothing her palms along her thighs. ‘Don’t worry, love,’ she said. ‘They’ll keep some water in the pool, even after that river dries out.’
    â€˜I reckon this Pete is going to work out just fine,’ she said a bit later, drowsily.
    â€˜I suppose so.’
    â€˜He’s quite tidy. Have you noticed? And very well mannered.’ Her eyes stayed closed but she left a space for me to nod and agree. ‘And I think he might …’ She paused and I felt her searching for the right thing to say. ‘I think he might even things out.’
    Almost imperceptibly she sighed and then she turned her head away from me, into the sun.

    My mother always spoke to me like this, even when I was a little girl. I was her only one and for as long as I can remember I was her confidante. Once, when I was maybe ten, my father went out and didn’t come home. I could see her watching the clock as she peeled potatoes and cooked the meat. Distracted, she washed the pans, chewing her lip. She was quite short with me until I asked, ‘Where’s Dad?’
    â€˜Oh, his social life’s much more important than us, Gilly.’ She spat her briny words at the sink. Then she clunked a pan onto the rack