Chapter Three

 Darrell Goes for a Swim 

They played classical music through the gramophone speaker in the baths, but on Saturdays they played songs. When Darrell had gone to the baths on a Saturday, last year, she had found she had had an utterly dissatisfactory swim. She had decided that she would swim on Mondays and Thursdays this academic year. Darrell liked routine and exercise. 
    She had spent the weekend stuck in her new rooms with Sally and the two new girls, Mildred, and Mildred’s schoolfriend Samantha. It was good to swim. It gave her time to think. It seemed that Mildred was a rather slow girl with a round face, and Samantha hadn’t said much at all, but she seemed rather sickly. Darrell tried not to make her mind on people after a first meeting, because her impressions of people at Malory Towers had often been misguided. She could not see herself spending time with Mildred or Samantha. They were not her type of girls. She wanted this year to be like the last, even if her first year at St. Andrews was far from perfect, it was at least uneventful, apart from her getting to know John. 
    ‘Yes,’ Darrell thought, starting her breaststroke, ‘it will be much the same, only we will live with new girls, and we’ll live in a new place. Oh, good,’ she thought as she emerged from the water. ‘Vaughan Williams. I will have a good swim with Vaughan Williams.’ Darrell did not realise it, but she would have disliked Mildred and Samantha no matter what they were like, because she was being forced to share Sally with them. 

    She had the pool to herself for five minutes; she kept an eye on the clock on the wall by the deep end. During those five minutes, Darrell plunged herself into the water. She touched the tiled floor with her small feet. She swam right to the floor and tried to press her slight chest against it. She decided that when she put her head above water, she would make her mind about whether she should meet John that night. 

He took her to the Bucket and Moon. 

    It was the only pub Darrell knew. She had poked her head into a couple before, but this was the only one she liked. She found their spot in the corner by the window. She looked out onto the shore, as John bought their drinks. Her hair was still damp from the swimming baths. She’d put it in a ponytail. When she’d left Malory Towers, one of the first things Darrell decided to do to herself was grow her hair. She had been forced to wear it in a certain way at school, but now she had, or so she thought, autonomy over her hair. She wished she had been blessed with straight hair, like Sally, instead of her frizzy mop. 

    She tried to smile when John sat opposite her. She lifted her drink to her mouth and took a sip of bitter. John drank the same. Bitter was the first thing she had drunk when she had been let loose in Scotland, a year ago, and she’d decided, then, that there wasn’t much point in drinking anything else. ‘So,’ Darrell started. ‘How was your summer?’ 

    John scoffed. ‘Fucking boring. Shite weather, shite parents, generally just shite. Yours?’ 

    ‘I went to stay with Sally and her aunt in Cornwall.’ 

   She told John about her walks alone on the cliff edge. She thought it would make her seem enigmatic. She went on to describe Aunt Mary. She painted for John a rather cruel picture of Sally’s aunt. When John smirked at what she said, Darrell felt immediately guilty, but she was also pleased that John seemed to be having a good time with her. They had another pint of bitter each, before leaving the pub. ‘I want to get you back to my room.’ Darrell asked sarcastically if he’d redecorated. John scoffed again. He had wangled his way into living on the historic campus for another year, unlike Darrell, who had chosen to stretch into Fife. 

    ‘Are you still living with the Screw?’ 

   ‘You know I am,’ Darrell said, as they walked to his room. ‘She was rotten all summer. All she wanted to talk about was school.’ 

    The Screw was John’s nickname for Sally Hope. 

    ‘You’re her prisoner,’ he’d said last year. When Darrell had reprimanded him for calling Sally names, he’d laughed heartily. It was simpler to allow him to talk about Sally like that; she would never know. The stony campus was always chilly after sunset. 

    ‘And your new girls? Are they any better?’ 

    ‘Oh,’ Darrell exclaimed, ‘Mildred. Samantha. Don’t get me started.’ 

   ‘Are they good looking?’ 

    ‘How would I know?’ Darrell said. ‘Mildred has a rather round face.’ 

   There were butterflies in her stomach, as they walked through the university’s ancient stone corridors. 

    When Darrell went into John’s bedroom, she felt his hands immediately clutch her waist. He pressed her against the wall and put his lips against her neck. She whispered his name demurely. She was surprised by how easily she slipped into her old routine. It was like the holidays had not happened. John maneuvered Darrell to his bed. She lay on her back. John threw his brogues into a dingy corner. He put a hand on Darrell’s leg and fingered her tights. But there was something she needed to say, before they started down this path. ‘You do like me, don’t you, John?’ John leaned over her and smiled. His teeth were white and straight. Before he could lean in any further, Darrell pushed her hands against his chest. ‘I want an answer. I would like to hear you say it.’ 

    ‘Darrell Rivers,’ he said softly, ‘your eyes are like two saucers.’ 

   ‘He’s done it,’ Darrell thought to herself, as he started to unbutton her cardigan to reveal her white shirt. ‘He’s wangled his way in again.’ 

    It took about ten minutes for it to be finished. 

   Darrell thought it would take a few nights, maybe a month, for them to get back into the swing of things. There had been moments last year when she had had a jolly good time in John’s room, but maybe it was too much to expect to reach those same heights on their first evening together since the end of June. She rested her head on his chest. 

   ‘Do you think I’ve got more hair on my chest, since I last saw you?’ 

   ‘Have you been eating your brown bread?’ She turned her head and looked to the ceiling. She noticed those familiar patches of damp. She thought they’d widened, but she may have been mistaken. She coughed throughout the night when she stayed with John, as it was often so cold. It reminded her of some of the more decrepit classrooms at Malory Towers. She had always shivered her way through French classes in her fifth year, because they moved to a different part of the building, for some reason. Darrell went to the door. John asked where she was going. Darrell left the room and went to the loos at the end of the corridor. 

    She had thrown on her white shirt and skirt and slip on shoes. 

   Darrell Rivers looked at herself in the glass. She looked at her wristwatch with the black strap. They had not spent long in the pub and the business in John’s room hadn’t taken long at all, to Darrell’s chagrin. She wondered if her eyes were really like saucers. Moreover, she couldn’t decide whether she wanted her eyes to be like saucers. She took a bobble from her wrist and tied her hair into a ponytail. 

   When she went back to the room, John was putting on his coat. He told Darrell he was going to meet some friends. 

    ‘But it’s so late,’ she said.

   ‘You can stay here and wait for me, if you really want to, but I don’t know when I’ll be back.’ 

   John kissed her forehead and left his room. Darrell sat on the bed and wondered what to do. 

  She started to stroll back to her new home. She lingered a moment on the stony beach. She spied a hidden cove behind her, and thought she’d tell Sally about it, so they could explore it together one morning. 

    Darrell unlocked the door to her new building and climbed the stairs to their floor. She noticed a boy walking ahead of her. Darrell crept slowly up the staircase. The boy carried two cardboard boxes. Darrell’s heart sank when she realised he was stopping at her door. He knocked on the door. Darrell stopped on the staircase. Sally Hope answered the door for the boy. She wore her purple pyjamas. Sally smiled broadly on seeing the boy with the boxes. ‘Michael, is it? Samantha said you’d be coming.’ Michael confirmed his identity and slipped through the door. Darrell was about to walk back the way she came, but Sally spotted her on the staircase and called her name. Inside, Samantha greeted Michael and kissed him on the cheek. 

    ‘You’ve been out a long time.’ Sally stood firmly in the doorway. ‘It’s half-past eight.’

    ‘Really, Sally, is it past my bedtime?’ 

    ‘You’ve been with him, haven’t you?’ 

    ‘I went swimming, Sally,’ Darrell said, ‘I needed some exercise.’ Darrell went to her bedroom. ‘Sally the Screw,’ she thought.