Learning To Swim - Softcover

Chambers, Clare

 
9780099277637: Learning To Swim
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0099277638 ISBN 13: 9780099277637
Verlag: Arrow, 1998

Inhaltsangabe

From the highly-acclaimed author of SMALL PLEASURES - winner of the 2022 British Book Awards Page-Turner

Abigail Jex never expected to see any of the Radley household again.

The Radley's were extraordinary, captivating creatures transplanted from a bohemian corner of North London to outer suburbia, and the young Abigail found herself drawn into their magic circle: the eccentric Frances, her new best friend; Frances' mother, the liberated, headstrong Lexi; and of course the brilliant, beautiful Rad.

Abigail thought she'd banished the ghost of her life with them and the catastrophe that ended it, but thirteen years later a chance encounter forces her to acknowledge that the spell is far from broken...


Praise for Clare Chambers:

'Modern, intelligently observed and highly original' Daily Mail

'This delicious novel is a joy from beginning to end - a perfect novel' Lisa Jewell

'Charming - A funny and moving story with a great deal of style' Sunday Telegraph

'A spirited account of growing up and falling in love' Good Housekeeping

'An intelligent and escapist read - well written, and very funny' Daily Express

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Clare Chambers was born in south east London in 1966. She studied English at Oxford and spent the year after graduating in New Zealand, where she wrote her first novel, Uncertain Terms, published when she was 25. She has since written eight further novels, including Learning to Swim (Century 1998) which won the Romantic Novelists' Association best novel award and was adapted as a Radio 4 play, and In a Good Light (Century 2004) which was longlisted for the Whitbread best novel prize.

Clare began her career as a secretary at the publisher André Deutsch, when Diana Athill was still at the helm. They not only published her first novel, but made her type her own contract. In due course she went on to become a fiction and non-fiction editor there herself, until leaving to raise a family and concentrate on her own writing. Some of the experiences of working for an eccentric, independent publisher in the pre-digital era found their way into her novel The Editor's Wife (Century, 2007). When her three children were teenagers, inspired by their reading habits, she produced two YA novels, Bright Girls (HarperCollins 2009) and Burning Secrets (HarperCollins 2011).

Her most recent novel is Small Pleasures (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2020).

She takes up a post as Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the University of Kent in September 2020.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Loyalty never goes unpunished. My father said that once when he was passed over for promotion at work and I've never forgotten it. I went to visit my parents on the Saturday afternoon just before I was due to play in a big charity concert, having received a summons from my mother. She was having a clear-out ready for the decorators and could I come and pick up a box of my belongings or they'd end up in the church jumble sale? My mother likes to invent a practical purpose to my visits so she doesn't feel she is making frivolous, self-indulgent demands on my time.

She was in the process of sifting through a cardboard box of old, uncatalogued photographs when I arrived, and had clearly been at it for some time. All around her lay empty packets, slippery strips of negatives and neat piles of pictures sorted according to subject matter, date and quality.

'Blurred, blurred, duplicate, awful bags under my eyes, don't know who that is,' she intoned, tossing a series of rejects into the bin. I reached past her and picked up an old school photograph from the box. It was of the netball teams. There I was, standing on the end, second reserve for the B team. And there was Frances, captain of the A team, seated, holding the county trophy on her lap, that usual defiant expression on her face. I was assailed by a sudden, over-whelming sense of nostalgia — my memory has a trigger that's easily sprung — and I started leafing through the loose prints in search of other ghosts.

'Don't rummage,' mother said crossly. 'I've been at this all morning.'

'One thing I always hated,' I said, looking at my thirteen-year- old self, long hair scraped back off my face into a ponytail, my spindly legs ankle-width from plimsolls to knickers, 'was being the thinnest person in the class.'

'You weren't thin,' she said defensively. 'I would never have underfed you.' My mother can take the oddest things personally. She twitched the photo out of my hand. 'That's never my Abigail,' she said, screwing up her eyes, and then, realising that this line of argument was not going to be sustainable, said with a snort, 'Well, I don't call that thin.'

In the kitchen, my father was unpacking a new toy: a large, shiny black and chrome cappuccino machine which took up half of one work-surface. Ever since he gave up smoking his pipe — after realising that he could no longer keep up with mother's cracking pace around museums and art galleries without wheezing — he has become increasingly addicted to modern gadgetry: anything that keeps his hands busy.

'Hello,' he said, blowing dust from the glass jug, before setting it on its stand. 'Can I get you anything to drink?'

'I'm dying for a cup of tea,' I said, without thinking.

'Coffee, I mean.'

'Colombian, Brazilian, Kenyan, Costa Rican, Nicaraguan or decaffeinated,' he asked, producing half a dozen unopened foil packets from the shopping bag in front of him.

'Whatever,' I said, and then thought, oh don't be an old spoilsport. 'Colombian.' And I watched him meticulously measure out the beans into the grinder with a little plastic shovel, and crank away at the handle.

'Have you got a concert tonight?' he asked, spooning the grounds into the metal funnel and tamping them down, a rapt expression coming over his face.

'Yes. A charity do. The Arid Lands, or something.'

'Very poetic. Where would that be?'

'Er . . . Senegal, I think.'

'I meant the concert.'

'The Barbican. Want to come? It's only a hundred pounds a ticket.'

His eyebrows shot up. 'A hundred pounds. That's one whole wall plus ceiling and mouldings. Besides, there's still all this clearing out to do — plus the packing.' They were off on holiday while the decorators moved in: Florence, this time. They never took me to Florence. It had been left to others to introduce me to the pleasures of the Continent.

Over the sound of hawking and spitting from the coffee machine father talked about the trip, which had been planned to the last detail. They would be staying in a cheap hotel — a former convent — some distance from the centre of the city, but it had its own restaurant, so they wouldn't need to venture out after dark. During the day there was a punishing regime of galleries, churches and palazzos to be followed. They were going to do the Renaissance if it killed them. 'Apparently all these museums and so forth are free for geriatrics,' he said, putting a jug of milk under the jet of steam and frothing it to the consistency of uncooked meringue. 'We'll save a fortune. Here.' He handed me a tall cup containing about an inch of coffee topped with a stiff peak of milk. I could see my thirst was going to remain unslaked. 'Oh, wait. Let's do the thing properly.' He took it back again. 'Cinnamon? Nutmeg? Grated chocolate?'

I glanced at my watch: I still had to pick up my sub-fusc from the dry-cleaner's. 'Whichever's quickest.'

As I left, carrying my box of salvaged possessions - mostly old schoolbooks, elementary sheet music for the cello, letters, badminton and tennis racquets, and a collection of wooden, glass and pottery elephants of different sizes, amassed over many years — I noticed a pile of library books on the hall table. Background reading. Where normal people might take Where to Eat in Florence, my father had Machiavelli, and Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Artists as his guides.

I nearly didn't make it to the concert because of a burst water-main at Blackfriars: on such mundane contingencies our fates hang. Part of Embankment and the underpass was closed and the traffic was gridlocked. I was forced to abandon my car on a double yellow line and take the underground — something I would never normally do because of the rough treatment meted out to my poor cello by other tube travellers, but it was just that bit too far to carry the thing on foot.

It was crowded on the platform and I could see that no one was going to give an inch. I was already dressed in my performance gear — a precaution in case I was late — and I had to keep hoisting my long skirt up to stop it getting trodden on. When a train blew in there was a surge back and then forwards like a wave breaking and I found myself being sucked through the doors with the crowd and shoe-horned into a corner, my feet straddling the cello case.

By the time I emerged at Barbican I was convinced the poor instrument had been reduced to firewood. A few flakes of snow were starting to fall. I must be getting old because I immediately thought, Oh bloody hell. Snow. I've caught myself out like that once or twice lately. A few months back I had a desperately unflattering haircut but I found I was completely unperturbed. In fact I tipped the hairdresser handsomely. And at the last party I went to which was in Bristol, when the prospect of a hundred-mile drive home at 2 a.m. was beginning to look intimidating and it was suggested I might like to 'crash out' on the sofa, I suddenly realised how very far I would be prepared to drive to sleep in my own bed. Finally, the other day I used the expression 'all the rage' in all sincerity. This wasn't even acceptable currency when I was at school, but I couldn't think of any modern equivalent. The person I was talking to didn't seem nonplussed. Perhaps it's come round again. Perhaps it's all the rage.

I hardly had time to do more than check that my cello had survived the journey, and was in my seat a matter of seconds before the first violinist swept on to the stage. Grace, next to me, shot me a questioning look as we tuned up, and I raised my eyes ceilingwards. I could feel sections of my hair working loose from the clip at the back of my head. It doesn't matter, I thought, as another hank swung down in front of my eyes. No one will be looking at you.

There was a reception...

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Verlag
Arrow
Erscheinungsdatum
1998
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0099277638
ISBN 13 
9780099277637
Einband
Taschenbuch
Auflage
1
Anzahl der Seiten
384
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Penguin Random House Ireland Limited
productsafety@penguin.co.uk

Morrison Chambers, 32 Nassau Street
Dublin
Irland

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