Ted Never Goes in the Water

All summer long, Clarissa has been studying the Longford boys. She is determined to marry one of them. She just can’t decide which. The eldest, Art is by far the most handsome. He has his mother’s fine chin and his father’s high forehead, sandy blond hair and a strong Roman nose. He could be a barrister, or at very least an actor portraying a barrister onstage. Clarissa is attracted to Art, so long as he doesn’t speak. Miles, the middle brother, is the intellectual. He reads. He writes. He can hold forth at length on most subjects, politics being his chosen field of expertise. He is not ugly. He is not particularly good looking either. His face is Art’s face, slightly diluted, as if left too long in the rain.

The youngest brother Ted is a wild card. Clarissa can’t make head nor tail of him and watches him constantly, looking for some small insight into his personality. She is paired with Art for tennis and Miles for bridge and sat next to one or the other of them at dinner every night. She is never paired with Ted for anything. Not even charades. It is almost as if the Senior Longfords have conspired to keep him from her. Once Clarissa has got this idea in her head it is impossible to shake. Being a Carlton, and therefore given to stubbornness in the extreme, Clarissa determines that it is Ted Longford she is in love with; Ted she wishes to marry. She does not, for a moment, wonder whether Ted Longford will wish to marry her. The thought of being turned down is inconceivable. She is a Carlton and Daddy Carlton has brought his girls up safe in the knowledge that they always get exactly what they want.

 Clarissa is determined to be engaged by the end of the summer. This will take some conniving on her part, for she has not yet exchanged more than a few pleasantries with Ted. It is not, however, beyond her capability. Clarissa can be most convincing when she puts her mind to it. She has a plan. It is not a complex plan. It involves donning a rather daring yellow two-piece and cavorting round the pool’s edge in a most winsome manner. Clarissa has followed this sort of plan before and it has never failed her.

The problem isn’t Clarissa or the yellow two piece. The problem is Ted Longford. Clarissa has been watching him all summer and she knows that Ted never goes into the water. When the others go down to the beach for a dip or lie by the pool sunning themselves, Ted stays indoors, fully clothed, reading the paper or playing solitaire. Clarissa knows he has no aversion to sunlight for he is swarthy skinned and, in the afternoons, sometimes takes long hikes across the moors, with only his father’s hounds for company. Perhaps, she surmises, he is self-conscious about his body. She scrutinises the shape of him through his dinner shirt and can see no reason for shyness. If anything, Ted is in better shape than his brothers. In the end, with all other possibilities exhausted, she decides that he must be afraid of the water. Some men are: her cousin Tony, for example. Daddy Carlton soon knocked that out of the boy. He’d thrown him in the duck pond, fully clothed and refused to let him out until he learnt to swim. Something similar would need be done with Ted, or he’d never approach the pool to see Clarissa in her fetching two-piece.

With more than half the summer gone and no sign of an engagement forthcoming, Clarissa determined to take the situation in hand. It was a sunny afternoon. Miles and Art were heading beachwards with a picnic lunch, when Ted announced he was off for a ramble with the hounds. Though she’d have much preferred to sunbathe, Clarissa announced that she would accompany him. She rose to change into her tweeds before he could raise any objections. They hiked for almost an hour in perfect silence before they came anywhere near a body of water. Without a substantial amount of water it would be impossible to drown and if Clarissa didn’t look as if she were drowning, Ted would never jump into save her and if he didn’t jump into save her, he’d never get over his fear of water, or come to the pool to be knocked out by the sight of her cavorting in the yellow two piece. Clarissa was just beginning to despair when the river came into view.

Her first impulse was to dash over and pitch herself in, but she managed to control herself. The whole thing would have to look like an accident if it were to seem believable. Clarissa waited ‘til the path grew particularly muddy then, faking a tumble, she let herself slide down the riverbank into the water. She heard her stockings rip as she fell and cursed the waste, though it would be worth it in the long run. The water was colder than Clarissa was anticipating and the current remarkably strong. “Help, help,” she cried, first with a certain level of theatricality and then with genuine desperation as the river began to tug her under. Ted did not move. Clarissa shouted louder, “help me, Ted, I’m drowning!” Ted stepped a little closer to the riverbank and peered down furtively, “good,” he said, “once you’re gone, I’ll be able to swim in peace again without you staring at me all the time.” He turned and walked back towards the hotel. It was a blisteringly hot afternoon and he fancied a dip before dinner.

Inspired by a line from Agatha Christie’s 1944 novel, Towards Zero