East Wind

Julian Barnes East Wind

The previous November, a row of wooden beach huts, their paintwork lifted and flaked by the hard east wind, had burned to the ground. The fire brigade came from twelve miles away, and had nothing to do by the time it arrived. “YOBS ON RAMPAGE,” the local paper decided, though no culprit was ever found. An architect from a more fashionable part of the coastline told the regional TV news that the huts had been part of the town’s social heritage and must be rebuilt. The council announced that it would consider all options, but since then had done nothing.

Vernon had moved to the town only a few months before, and had no feelings about the beach huts. If anything, their disappearance improved the view from the Right Plaice, where he sometimes had lunch. From a window table, he now looked out across a strip of concrete to damp shingle, a bored sky, and a lifeless sea. That was the east coast: for months on end you got bits of bad weather and lots of no weather. This was fine by him: he’d moved here to have no weather in his life.

“You are done?”

He didn’t look up at the waitress. “All the way from the Urals,” he said, still gazing at the long, flat sea.

“Pardon?”

“Nothing between here and the Urals. That’s where the wind comes from. Nothing to stop it. Straight across all those countries.” Cold enough to freeze your knob off, he might have added in other circumstances.

“Oorals,” she repeated. As he caught the accent, he looked up at her. A broad face, streaked hair, chunky body, and not doing any waitressy number in hope of a bigger tip. Must be one of those Eastern Europeans who were all over the country nowadays. Building trade, pubs and restaurants, fruit picking. Came over here in vans and coaches, lived in rabbit warrens, made themselves a bit of money. Some stayed; some went home. Vernon didn’t mind one way or the other. That’s what he found more often than not these days: he didn’t mind one way or the other.

“Are you from one of them?”

“One of what?”

“One of those countries. Between here and the Urals.”

“Oorals. Yes, perhaps.”

That was an odd answer, he thought. Or maybe her sense of geography wasn’t so strong.

“Fancy a swim?”

“A swim?”

“Yes, you know. Swim. Splash splash, front crawl, breaststroke.”

“No swim.”

“Fine,” he said. He hadn’t meant it, anyway. “Bill, please.”

As he waited, he looked back across the damp concrete to the shingle. A beach hut had recently sold for twenty grand. Or was it thirty? Somewhere down on the south coast. Spiralling house prices, the market going mad: that’s what the papers said. Not that it touched this part of the country, or the property he dealt in. The market had bottomed out here long ago, the graph as horizontal as the sea. Old people died, and you sold their flats and houses to people who would get old in them in their turn, and then die. That was a lot of his trade. The town wasn’t fashionable, never had been. Londoners carried on up the A12 to somewhere pricier. Fine by him. He’d lived in London all his life until the divorce. Now he had a quiet job, a rented flat, and saw the kids every other weekend. When they got older, they’d probably be bored with this place and start acting the little snobs. But for the moment they liked the sea, throwing pebbles into it, eating chips.

When she brought the bill, he said, “We could run away together and live in a beach hut.”

“I do not think,” she replied, shaking her head, as if she believed he meant it. Oh, well, the old English sense of humor — takes a while for people to get used to it.

He had a few rentals to attend to — changes of tenancy, redecoration, damp problems — and then a sale up the coast, so he didn’t return to the Right Plaice for a few weeks. He ate his haddock and mushies, and read the paper. There was some town in Lincolnshire that was suddenly half Polish, there’d been so many immigrants. Nowadays, more Catholics went to church on Sundays than Anglicans, they were saying, what with all these Eastern Europeans. He didn’t mind one way or the other. Actually, he liked the Poles he’d met — brickies, plasterers, electricians. Good workers, well trained, did what they said they would, trustworthy. It was time the good old British building trade had a kick up the arse, Vernon thought.

The sun was out that day, slanting low across the sea, annoying his eyes. Late March, and bits of spring were getting even to this part of the coast.

“How about that swim, then?” he asked as she brought the bill.

“Oh, no. No swim.”

“I’m guessing you might be Polish.”

“My name is Andrea,” she replied.

“Not that I mind whether you’re Polish or not.”

“I do not also.”

The thing was, he’d never been much good at flirting — never quite said the right thing. And since the divorce he’d got worse at it, if that was possible, because his heart wasn’t in it. Where was his heart? Question for another day. Today’s subject: flirting. He knew all too well the look in a woman’s eye when you didn’t get it right. Where’s he coming from, the look said. Anyway, it took two to flirt. And maybe he was getting too old for it. Thirty-seven, father of two, Gary, eight, and Melanie, five. That’s how the papers would put it if he was washed up on the coast some morning.

“I’m an estate agent,” he said. That was another line that often hampered flirting.

“What is this?”

“I buy and sell houses. And flats. And we do rentals. Rooms, flats, houses.”

“Is it interesting?”

“It’s a living.”

“We all need living.”

He suddenly thought, No, you can’t flirt, either. Maybe you can flirt in your own language, but you can’t do it in English, so we’re even. He also thought, She looks sturdy. Maybe I need someone sturdy. She might be my age, for all I know. Not that he minded one way or the other. He wasn’t going to ask her out.

He asked her out. There was little enough choice of “out” in this town. One cinema, a few pubs, and the couple of restaurants where she didn’t work. Apart from that, there was bingo for the old people whose flats he would sell when they were dead, and a club where some halfhearted Goths loitered. Kids drove into Colchester on a Friday night and bought enough drugs to see them through the weekend. No wonder they’d burned down the beach huts.

He liked her at first for what she wasn’t. She wasn’t flirty; she wasn’t gabby; she wasn’t pushy. She didn’t mind that he was an estate agent, or that he was divorced with two kids. Other women had taken a quick look and said no. He reckoned women were more attracted to men who were still in their marriages, however fucked up those marriages were, than to ones who were picking up the pieces afterward. Not surprising, really. But Andrea didn’t mind all that. Didn’t ask questions much. Didn’t answer them, either, for that matter. The first time they kissed, he thought of asking if she was really Polish, but then he forgot.

He suggested coming back with him, but she refused. She said she’d come the next time. He spent an anxious few days wondering what it would be like to go to bed with someone new after so long. He drove fifteen miles up the coast to buy condoms where no one knew him. Not that he was ashamed or embarrassed; just didn’t want anyone knowing, or guessing, his business.

“This is a nice apartment.”

“Well, if an estate agent can’t find himself a decent flat, what’s the world coming to?”

She had an overnight bag with her; she took off her clothes in the bathroom and came back in a nightdress. They climbed into bed and he turned out the light. She felt very tense to him. He felt very tense to himself.

“We could just cuddle,” he suggested.

“What is cuddle?”

He demonstrated.

“So cuddle is not fucking?”

“No, cuddle is not fucking.”

“O.K., cuddle.”

After that they relaxed, and she soon fell asleep.

The next time, after some kissing, he reacquainted himself with the lubricated struggle of the condom. He knew he was meant to unroll it, but found himself trying to tug it on like a sock, pulling at the rim in a haphazard way. Doing it in the dark didn’t help, either. But she didn’t say anything, or cough discouragingly, and eventually he turned toward her. She pulled up her nightie and he climbed on top of her. His mind was half filled with lust and fucking, and half empty, as if wondering what he was up to. He didn’t think about her very much that first time. It was a question of looking out for yourself. Later you could look out for the other person.

“Was that O.K.?” he said after a while.

“Yes, was O.K.”

Vernon laughed in the dark.

“Are you laughing at me? Was not O.K. for you?”

“Andrea,” he said, “everything’s O.K. Nobody’s laughing at you. I won’t let anyone laugh at you.” As she slept, he thought, We’re starting again, both of us. I don’t know what she’s had in her past, but maybe we’re both starting again from the same sort of low point, and that’s O.K. Everything’s O.K.

The next night, she was more relaxed, and gripped him hard with her legs. He couldn’t tell whether she came or not.

“Gosh, you’re strong,” he said afterward.

“Is strong bad?”

“No, no. Not at all. Strong’s good.”

But the time after he noticed that she didn’t grip him so hard. She didn’t much like him playing with her breasts, either. No, that was unfair. She didn’t seem to mind if he did or didn’t. Or, rather, if he wanted to, that was fine, but it was for him, not for her. That’s what he understood, anyway. And who said you had to talk about everything right away?

Now he was glad neither of them was any good at flirting. Flirting was a kind of deception. Whereas Andrea was never anything but straight with him. She didn’t talk much, but what she said was what she did. She would meet him where and when he asked, and be standing there, looking out for him, brushing a streak of hair out of her eyes, holding on to her bag more firmly than was necessary in this town.

“You’re as reliable as a Polish builder,” he told her one day.

“Is that good?”

“That’s very good.”

“Is English expression?”

“It is now.”

She asked him to correct her English when she made a mistake. He got her to say “I don’t think so” instead of “I do not think,” but, actually, he preferred the way she talked. He always understood her, and those phrases that weren’t quite right seemed part of her. Maybe he didn’t want her talking like an Englishwoman in case she started behaving like one — well, like one in particular. And, anyway, he didn’t want to play the teacher.

It was the same in bed. Things are what they are, he said to himself. If she always wore a nightie, perhaps it was a Catholic thing — not that she ever mentioned going to church. When he asked her to do stuff to him, she did it, and seemed to enjoy it, but she didn’t ask him to do stuff back to her — didn’t even seem to like his hand down there much. But this didn’t bother him; she was allowed to be who she was.

She never asked him in. If he dropped her off, she’d be trotting up the concrete path before he’d got the hand brake on; if he picked her up, she’d already be outside, waiting. At first this was fine, then it began to feel a bit odd, so he asked to see where she lived, just for a minute, so he could imagine where she was when she wasn’t with him. They went back into the house — nineteen-thirties semi, pebble dash, multi-occupation, metal window frames rusting up badly — and she opened her door. His professional eye took in the dimensions, furnishings, and probable rental cost; his lover’s eye took in a small dressing table with photos in plastic frames and a picture of the Virgin. There was a single bed, a tiny sink, a rubbish microwave, a small TV, and clothes on hangers clipped precariously to the picture rail. Something in him was touched by seeing her life laid out like that in the minute or so before they stepped outside again. To cover this sudden emotion, Vernon said, “You shouldn’t be paying more than fifty-five. Plus services. I can get you somewhere bigger for the same price.”

“Is O.K.”

Now that spring was here, they went for drives. They drove into Suffolk and looked at English things: half-timber houses with no damp courses, thatched roofs that put you in a higher insurance band. They stopped by a village green and he sat down on a bench overlooking a pond, but she didn’t fancy that, so they looked at the church instead. He hoped she wouldn’t ask him to explain the difference between Anglicans and Catholics — or the history behind it all. Something about Henry VIII wanting to get married again. The King’s knob. All sorts of things came down to sex if you looked at them closely enough. But, anyway, she didn’t ask.

She began to take his arm, and to smile more easily. He gave her a key to his flat; tentatively, she started leaving overnight stuff there. One Sunday, in the dark, he reached across to the bedside drawer and found the condom packet was empty. He swore, and had to explain.

“Is O.K.”

“No, Andrea, is bloody not O.K. Last thing I need is you getting pregnant.”

“I do not think so. Not get pregnant. Is O.K.”

He trusted her. Later, as she slept, he wondered what exactly she’d meant. That she couldn’t have kids? Or that she was taking something herself, to make doubly sure? If so, what would the Virgin Mary have to say about that? Let’s hope she isn’t relying on the rhythm method, he suddenly thought. Guaranteed to fail on a regular basis and keep the Pope as happy as Larry.

Time passed. She met Gary and Melanie; they took to her. She didn’t tell them what to do; they told her, and she went along with it. They also asked her some questions he’d never dared, or cared, to ask.

“Andrea, are you married?”

“Can we watch TV as long as we like?”

“Were you married?”

“If I ate three, would I be sick?”

“Why aren’t you married?”

“How old are you?”

“What team do you support?”

“You got any children?”

“Will you take me to the toilet?”

“Are you and Dad getting married?”

He learned the answers to some of these questions. Like any sensible woman, Andrea wasn’t telling her age. One night, in the dark, after he’d delivered the kids back and was too upset for sex, as he always was on those occasions, he said, “Do you think you could love me?”

“Yes, I think I would love you.”

“Is that a would or a could?”

“What is the difference?”

He paused. “There’s no difference. I’ll take either. I’ll take both. I’ll take whatever you’ve got to give.”

He didn’t know how it started, the next bit. Because he was beginning to fall in love with her, or because he didn’t really want to? Or wanted to but was afraid? Or was it that, deep down, he had an urge to fuck everything up? That’s what his wife — ex-wife — had said to him one morning over breakfast: “Look, Vernon, I don’t hate you, I really don’t. I just can’t live with you because you always fuck things up.” Her statement seemed to come out of the blue. True, he snored, and dropped his clothes where he shouldn’t, and watched the normal amount of sports on TV. But he came home on time, loved his kids, didn’t chase other women. In some people’s eyes, that was the same as fucking things up.

“Can I ask you something?”

“For sure.”

“No, ‘for sure’ is American. English is ‘yes.’ ”

She looked at him, as if to say, Why are you now correcting my English? “Yes,” she repeated.

“When I didn’t have a condom and you said it was O.K., did you mean it was O.K. then or O.K. always?”

“O.K. always.”

“Blimey, do you know what a twelve-pack costs?”

That was the wrong thing to say, even he could see that. Christ, maybe she’d had some terrible abortion or been raped or something.

“So you can’t have children?”

“No. Do you hate me?”

“Andrea, for God’s sake.” He took her hand. “I’ve got two kids already. Point is, is it O.K. with you?”

She looked down. “No. Is not O.K. with me. It makes me very unhappy.”

“Well, we could. . I don’t know, see the doctor. See an expert.” He imagined that the experts over here were more clued up.

“No, no expert. No expert.”

“Fine, no experts.”

He thought, Adoption? But can I afford another, with my outgoings?

He stopped buying condoms. He started asking questions, as tactfully as he could. But tact was like flirting: either you had it or you didn’t. No, that wasn’t right. It was just easier to be tactful if you didn’t care whether you knew things or not, harder when you cared.

“Why are you now asking these questions?”

“Am I?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Sorry.”

But he was only sorry that she’d noticed. Also sorry that he wouldn’t stop. Couldn’t stop. When they first got together, he’d liked the fact that he didn’t know anything about her; it had made things different, fresher. Gradually, she’d learned about him, while he hadn’t learned about her. Why not just continue like that? Because you always fuck things up, his wife, ex-wife, whispered. No, he didn’t accept that. If you fall in love, you want to know. Good, bad, indifferent. Not that you’re looking for bad things. That’s just what falling in love means, Vernon said to himself. Or thinking about falling in love. Anyway, Andrea was a nice person — he was certain about that. So what was wrong with finding out about a nice person behind her back?

They all knew him at the Right Plaice: Mrs. Ridgewell, the manageress; Jill, the other waitress; and old Herbert, who owned the restaurant but only dropped in when he fancied a free bite. Vernon chose a time when the lunch trade was starting, and walked past the counter toward the toilets. The room — more of a cupboard, really — where the staff left their coats and bags was just opposite the gents. Vernon went in, found Andrea’s bag, took her keys, and came back out flapping his hands as if to say, That whirry old hand dryer never quite does the trick, does it?

He winked at Andrea, walked to the hardware shop, complained about clients who had only one set of keys, strolled around for a bit, picked up the new set, went back to the Right Plaice, prepared a line about the chilly weather playing havoc with his bladder, didn’t need to use it, put her keys back, and ordered a cappuccino.

The first time he went, it was the sort of drizzly afternoon when no one looks at anyone who’s passing. A chap in a raincoat goes up a concrete path to a front door with frosted-glass panels. Inside, he opens another door, sits on a bed, gets up suddenly, smooths out the dent in the bed, turns, sees that the microwave isn’t rubbish, actually, puts his hand under the pillow, feels one of her nightdresses, looks at the clothes hanging from the picture rail, touches a dress she hasn’t worn before, deliberately doesn’t let himself look at the pictures on the little dressing table, sees himself out, locks up behind him. No one did anything wrong, did they?

The second time, he examined the Virgin Mary and the half-dozen pictures. He didn’t pick anything up, just went down on his haunches and looked at the photos in their plastic frames. That must be Mum, he thought, looking at the tight perm and big glasses. And there’s little Andrea, all blond and chubby. And is that a brother or a boyfriend? And here’s somebody’s birthday with so many faces you can’t tell who’s important and who isn’t. He looked again at the six- or seven-year-old Andrea — just a bit older than Melanie — and took the image home in his head.

The third time, he eased open the top drawer; it stuck, and Andrea’s mum toppled over. There was mainly underwear, most of it familiar. Then he went to the bottom drawer, because that’s where secrets are normally kept, and found only sweaters and a couple of scarves. But in the middle drawer, under some shirts, were three items he laid on the bed in the same order, and even the same distance apart, as he found them. On the right was a medal, in the middle a photo framed in metal, on the left a passport. The photo showed four girls in a swimming pool, their arms around one another, a lane divider with cork floats separating one pair from the other.

They were all smiling up at the camera, and had wrinkles in their white rubber caps. He instantly picked out Andrea, second from the left. The medal showed a swimmer diving into a pool, with some lines of German writing on the back and a date, 1986. How old would she have been then — eighteen, twenty? The passport confirmed it: born 1967, which made her forty. It said she’d been born in Halle, so she was German.

And that was that. No diary, no letters, no vibrator. No secrets. He was in love — no, he was thinking about being in love — with a woman who’d once won a swimming medal. Where was the harm in knowing that? Not that she swam anymore. And now he remembered how she’d got all jumpy when Gary and Melanie had tried to make her go to the water’s edge and splash around. Maybe she didn’t want to be reminded. Or perhaps it was quite different, swimming in a competition pool versus having a dip in the sea. Like ballet dancers not wanting to do the sort of dancing everyone else did.

That evening, he was deliberately jolly when they met, even a bit silly, but she seemed to notice, so he stopped. After a while, he felt normal again. Almost normal, anyway. When he first started going out with girls, he’d found there were moments when he suddenly thought, I don’t understand anything at all. With his second girlfriend, Karen, for instance: they’d been jogging along nicely, no pressure, having fun, when she’d asked, “So where’s all this leading, then?” As if there were only two choices: up the aisle or up the garden path. Other times, with other women, he’d say something, just something ordinary, and — splash — he’d find himself in deep water.

They were in bed, Andrea’s nightie pulled up around her waist in the fat roll he was quite used to feeling against his belly, and he was going it a bit, when she shifted her legs and crushed him with them, like a nutcracker, he thought.

“Mmm, big strong swimmer’s legs,” he muttered.

She didn’t answer, but he knew she’d heard. He carried on, but could tell from her body that her mind wasn’t on things. Afterward, they lay on their backs, and he said some stuff, but she didn’t pick up on anything. Oh, well, work tomorrow, Vernon thought. He went to sleep.

When he dropped by the Right Plaice to pick her up that evening, Mrs. Ridgewell said Andrea had called in sick. He rang her mobile but she didn’t answer, so he texted her. Then he went around to the house and tried her bell. He left it a couple of hours, phoned again, rang the bell, then let himself in.

Her room was quite neat, and quite empty. No clothes on the picture rail, no photos on the little chest of drawers. Something made him open the microwave and look inside; all he saw was the circular plate. On the bed were two envelopes, one for the landlord, the other for Mrs. Ridgewell. Nothing for him.

Mrs. Ridgewell asked if they’d had a quarrel. No, he said, they never quarrelled.

“She was a nice girl,” the manageress said. “Very reliable.”

“Like a Polish builder.”

“I hope you didn’t say that to her. It’s not a nice remark. And I don’t think she was Polish.”

“No, she wasn’t.” He looked out to sea. “Oorals,” he found himself saying.

“Pardon?”

You went to the station and showed a photograph of the missing woman to the booking clerk, who remembered her face and told you where she’d bought a ticket to. That’s what they did in films. But the nearest station was twelve miles away, and it didn’t have a ticket office, just a machine you put money or plastic into. And he didn’t even have a picture of her. They’d never done that thing couples do, crowding into a booth together, the girl sitting on the man’s lap, both giggly and out of focus. They were probably too old for that, anyway.

At home, he Googled Andrea Morgen and got four hundred and ninety-seven thousand results. Then he put her in quotes and cut it down to three hundred and ninety-three. Did he want to search for “Andrea Morgan”? No, he didn’t want to search for someone else. Most of the results were in German, and he scrolled through them helplessly. He’d never done languages at school, never needed them since. Then he had a thought. He looked up an online dictionary and found the German for “swimmer.” It was a different word if you were a man or a woman. He typed in “Andrea Morgen” and “Schwimmerin.”

Eight results, all in German. Two seemed to be from newspapers, one from an official report. And there was a picture of her. The same one he’d found in the drawer: there she was, second from the left, arms around her teammates, big wrinkles in her white swimming cap. He paused, then hit “Translate this page.” Later, he found links to other pages, this time in English.

How could he have known, he asked himself. He could barely understand the science and wasn’t interested in the politics. But he could understand, and was interested in, things that, even as he looked out at the sea from a window table in the Right Plaice, were already beginning to change his memory of her.

Halle was in what used to be East Germany. There had been a state recruiting scheme. Girls were picked out when they were as young as eleven — only four years older than that chubby little girl in the photograph. Vernon tried to put together her probable life. Her parents signing a consent form, perhaps a secrecy form as well. Andrea enrolled in the Child and Youth Sports School, then in the Dynamo Sports Club in East Berlin. She had some school lessons, but was mostly trained to swim and swim. It was a great honor to be a member of the Dynamo: that was why she’d had to leave home. Blood was taken from her earlobe to test how fit she was. There were pink pills and blue pills. Vitamins, she was told. Later, there were injections — just more vitamins. Except that they were anabolic steroids and testosterone. It was forbidden to refuse. The training motto was “You eat the pills or you die.” The coaches made sure she swallowed them.

She didn’t die. Other things happened instead. Muscles grew, but tendons didn’t, so tendons snapped. There were sudden bursts of acne, a deepening of the voice, an increase of hair on the face and body; sometimes the pubic hair grew up over the stomach, even above the navel. There was retarded growth and problems with fertility. Vernon had to look up terms like “virilization” and “clitoris hypertrophy,” then wished he hadn’t. He didn’t need to look up heart disease, liver disease, ovarian cysts, deformed children, blind children.

They doped the girls because it worked. East German swimmers won gold medals everywhere, the women especially. Not that Andrea had got to that level. When the Berlin Wall came down and the scandal broke, when they put the trainers, doctors, bureaucrats — the poisoners — on trial, her name wasn’t even mentioned. In spite of the pills, she hadn’t made the national team. The others, the ones who went public about what had been done to their bodies and their minds, at least had gold medals and a few years of fame to show for it. Andrea had come out with nothing more than a relay medal at some forgotten championship in a country that no longer existed.

Vernon looked out at the concrete strip and the shingle beach, at the gray sea and the gray sky beyond. The view was pretending that it had always been the same, for as long as people had sat at this café window. Except that there used to be a row of beach huts blocking the view. Then someone had burned them down.