Page 14 of Wild Swimming at Croftwood Lake
‘Oh. I imagine she’s around our age. Pretty.’
‘I see. Pretty.’ Seb smirked. ‘And very friendly? You like her.’
‘I do like her,’ Archie said, missing Seb’s emphasis on the wordlike. ‘She was lovely.’
‘Arch. If I were you I’d go down there in the morning in my trunks. How often do you meet a woman who you could ask out?’
‘Hold on there. I’m not propositioning her, I barely know her. She’ll be married, I’m certain.’
‘Well at least find out before you write her off. It’s about time you had some fun. If I can’t drag you to the pub with me and Oliver, perhaps she can tempt you out of the grounds once in a while.’
Archie was well aware that his social life was a tragedy. He told himself that he didn’t have time to socialise. That it wasn’t fair to leave his mother alone when Ursula and Mrs Milton were off duty. She was quite capable of looking after herself, but with him out of the house during the day, he liked to keep her company in the evenings. But the reality was that his mother went out more than he did and he was desperately out of the habit of maintaining friendships. Seb was the first person he’d had a proper friendship with for years and Archie loved chatting to him. He enjoyed hearing Seb’s ideas, his mind constantly whirring with plans. If he could have sat in a pub with Seb, he’d feel quite comfortable that they’d have a pleasant conversation. But bring anyone else into the mix, like Oliver who Archie had only met a few times, who was confident beyond belief, successful and also friends with Seb, Archie knew he would feel small. He was protecting himself from it becoming obvious that he was the less interesting friend.
‘What were you doing up there?’ Archie said, changing the subject.
‘Just trying to get a good look at the space. I dumped everything in here in such a rush in the summer, it needs a good sort out. I was wondering whether to use the mezzanine for storage or for an office. What do you think?’
‘I think we might need to speak to someone at the Council if you’re thinking about having an office here,’ Archie said. ‘We’d need to apply for change of use.’
‘Let’s get a planning officer down here. See what’s possible because we could do something with the building on the other side of the courtyard too. It needs repairing but it’s wasted using all this space as storage. It could be another income stream if we put our minds to it.’
Seb would make a far better estate manager than he did. Archie blundered from one day to the next, feeling he had no time to look beyond what each day presented to him. ‘That’s a good idea. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it.’
‘It’ll take some sorting out and you’ve got enough on your plate worrying about the roof of the house, let alone the roof of an empty stable block.’
Archie nodded gratefully at Seb. ‘I’ll start looking into the lake idea properly,’ he said. It was the least he could do when Seb was taking care of so many other things for him. And it was the excuse he needed to see Nora again.
That evening, his mother was heading out to her usual book club. She had a standing arrangement to share lifts with two friends and because she didn’t drive, Archie acted as taxi driver every third month, which he didn’t mind at all. But not tonight. So he was planning to light a fire, pour himself a whisky and do some research on swimming in lakes.
‘I do wish you’d come to the book club, darling,’ his mother said over dinner. ‘I thought you’d enjoyed it after we did it at the festival in the summer.’
This was a standard conversation he had to sit through once a month on book club evening. Actually, he had enjoyed the festival enormously, but the idea of accompanying his mother to a book club seemed desperately tragic. Almost a confirmation of what his life had come to: tagging onto his mother’s social life.
‘I did enjoy it, but I never have time to read. Anyway, at Seb’s suggestion I’m doing some research tonight.’ Dropping Seb’s name in would give some credibility to what he was doing. His mother loved Seb.
‘Researching what, exactly?’
‘You know we saw that woman on the lawn the other morning? I bumped into her again and as it happens, she swims every morning.’
‘In our lake?’ his mother said indignantly.
‘Yes. I don’t think it matters,’ he said weakly, knowing that she wouldn’t agree.
‘Of course it matters, Archie.’
‘Seb thinks we could use the lake as a swimming lake,’ he said, not sure whether in this instance, even dropping Seb’s name in would help. ‘Charge people to come and swim.’
‘Well, I suppose if the woman’s swimming anyway, the least she can do is pay. Surely there’s no call for swimming in a lake. There’s a perfectly good municipal pool in Croftwood. And do we want to encourage people traipsing around the estate?’
‘The people who traipsed around over Christmas bought our new heating system, Mama.’
‘Don’t be impertinent, Archie,’ she said, suppressing a smile.
‘I’m only looking into it at this stage. Seb and I won’t do anything on the estate without talking to you first.’
His mother laid down her knife and fork and dabbed at her mouth with a cloth napkin. ‘Archie. You must run the estate as you see fit. It’s of no consequence what I think.’ She laid a hand on his and squeezed it. ‘I’m just a cross old woman.’
‘Mama…’
