The Swimming Pool Season by Rose Tremain Page B

peculiar endeavour from the low wall separating Larry’s garden from the edge of Gervaise’s first meadow and eventually asks, “Ich help, Larry?”
    Larry glances up. “ Nein, Danke ,” he says. But he senses Klaus’s continuing large presence and his bewilderment, so when all the pegs are in and he has led the rope up the south side of the St. Front nave, past the Didron window, round the vaulted apse where the steps will be, into the apsidal chapel, past the fourth cupola, back along the north wall of the nave and west into the vieille Eglise where the diving board will be, he straightens up and gestures at his handiwork. “Schwimbad,” he announces.
    Klaus stares for a moment at Larry, then smiles a broad disbelieving smile.
    â€œ Schwimbad ?” Klaus questions. “In Pomerac ?”
    â€œ Ja ,” says Larry, then struggles with what he thinks may be a German sentence: “ Alles Personnen in Pomerac kann geschwimmen here .”
    But Klaus is laughing now, the deafening laugh of a monarch at a banquet: “ Ich kann nicht schwimmen, Larry! Ich Kann nicht schwimmen !”
    Larry shrugs, joins in the laughter. An image comes to him of the well-fleshed Klaus floundering in the new pool, his legs floating hopelessly down towards the drain. He, Larry, stands by, terrified, doing nothing. It is Gervaise who leaps in and bears Klaus to safety on her sinewy back.
    Klaus stops laughing and points in Larry’s direction.
    â€œ Aber der Baum. Fällen sie den Walnuss Baum ?”
    â€œ Was ?” says Larry.
    â€œ L’arbre. Vous allez couper l’arbre ?”
    â€œ Oui ,” says Larry, “ malheureusement .”
    â€œA great damage,” says Klaus.
    Larry looks guiltily at the tree. It stands well within his blue perimeter. He wonders how much trouble the roots will be. At Aquazure he had a JCB operator who was a skilled root man, but heaven knows what kind of labour they send with diggers in France.
    When he looks up again, Klaus has gone. Oddly, Larry realises that he likes the German. He always seems so healthy and pink and free from any of his native angst. As if he’d come steaming hot like a cake from God’s belly, before Eden and sin, before women and toil and Sodom. He wonders if Klaus will stay in Pomerac or whether he’ll pack his bags one day and go back to wherever he came from and leave Gervaise weeping and wailing for him in her milking shed. You don’t imagine change in Pomerac. Even the Maréchal shows signs of eternity. Yet change must occur. The swimming pool is change.
    Leaving the rope and the pegs in position, Larry gets into the Granada which smells of upholstery shampoo. Since Miriam’s leaving he’s cleaned it thoroughly inside and out and its tomato body glistens.
    At the waterfall, he drives straight past Hervé’s drive, denying himself the tempting possibility of lunching in Hervé’s dining room with Agnès sweetly smiling over a tidy and delicious meal and heads instead for a café in Périgueux and an afternoon of difficult purchasing from Ducelier Frères . He also plans to seek out a tile-maker capable of designing Byzantine tiles. The vision of his pool is strong now. Next summer – on May Day perhaps, when the Pomerac women exchange their little bunches of lilies of the valley – there will be some official opening. Champagne even. And all the people will cluster round and see themselves for the first time reflected in what Nadia has so fortuitously called “loops of brightness”. Even the Maréchal will come, to see a new chapter added to the English comedy unfolding before his cataracted eyes. And Mme. de la Brosse; she will be quietly ashamed that a house in Pomerac other than hers has installed a pool. She will take Larry aside from the marvelling throng of villagers, and ask him to quote for a pool of her own – “Like this one, Larry, but