The Oberon Anthology of Contemporary Irish Plays

by Thomas Conway

  And you watched with a different look on your face as the very presence of the ocean opened up to them a world of seaside indulgence that you had never known: a world of ices, lemonade and picnics, afternoon tea and high tea, pink biscuits and clotted cream scones. Your mother never spread a blanket on anything other than a bed. You ate indoors around the table, on the floral table cloth. There was no sand in your sandwiches. (Using the picnic things I have made a sandwich: when I lift it up, sand leaks out)

  You do not remember the first time you felt the sea swirl around you, but you do remember the first time you swam.

  You were still small and not allowed to wade in without an adult. But many of your friends had been swimming for years, had been taught by their fathers. You thought that you had seen enough to know what to do but didn’t wish to skip procedure. For weeks Heinrich had been promising to teach you but he was a busy man: a journeyman baker. So you waited – you are good at waiting – and you played with Jimmy from number one hundred and twenty-five who had toy soldiers. (A toy soldier is placed amid the landscape of the picnic)

  (During the following more soldiers emerge) Together you had been employing his mother’s washing bucket in an attempt to recreate your new favourite Bible story: Moses parting the waves, over and over again. Those soldiers who were usually the goodies became the Israelites and managed to stay dry. Those soldiers who were usually the baddies became the Egyptians and were given a drenching. (I drop a soldier in my tea) Some of them were never the same again. (More soldiers are taken out and two opposing armies dot the landscape) As you watched them float down the gutter and into the hairnet Jimmy had stretched over the drain to prevent unnecessary loss of life, you wondered if this would happen to you when you swam. If Papa let go would you just be swept away? The secret was kicking, Jimmy said. He said you had to kick against the water and that’s what kept you going. He administered a kick to your backside to illustrate his point.

  You practised in bed, on your stomach. It bunched up the sheets but it made you feel better.

  It always made you feel better to be prepared.

  When the fateful day arrived, you set your seven-year-old face into the best Moses grimace you could manage and you waded in until the water was waist high. Before your father could even put his hands out to cradle your small body in this new posture, before he could coach you to keep your head up for now, before he could again give a warning about jellyfish, you were off.

  (The sound of breathing) She lifted her feet, she took a deep breath, she half dived half fell into the water, and she began moving her arms and legs the way she had practised. Rather than punishing her arrogance, rather than spitting her back out, rather than invading the little girl’s body, the sea made room for her, embraced her and allowed her travel through it. Heinrich had trouble keeping up. He jogged alongside making encouraging noises and wondering, yet again, at the ability of this child to surprise.

  The picnic things have been tidied away. I close the lid of the basket and hold it like a suitcase. Only the toy soldiers remain on the landscape created by the cloth on the table.

  When the war broke out in 1914, your father, like 30,000 other German nationals, was interned. Your mother returned the rest of the family to Germany but you were desperate to go back to the country you now called home. The first time you thought about swimming the English Channel was when you hatched a plan to walk and swim back to England during World War One. You simply looked at a map and resolved to walk to Holland, cross that country until you reached the sea’s edge and then follow the Dutch coastline south until you encountered that part of the French coast where the Channel is at its narrowest. Then you would simply swim home. Your teenage self had no concept of the true measure of that distance which looked so manageable on a map. You just knew which side of it you wanted to be on. Why was that? Where did that fierce, seemingly unwarranted loyalty come from? You made it as far as an island off the coast of Germany but the idea of swimming the Channel remained. A decade later, you were still trying.

  4.

  I return the picnic basket to the pile of objects upstage. During the following I gather the soldiers, one by one:

  In 1875 Captain Mathew Webb became the first person to swim the English Channel and he is, in a way, responsible for so many failures. The portly possessor of a fine handle-bar moustache, he swam the channel in a costume of red silk while smeared in porpoise oil. Afterwards, his presence at the London Stock Exchange brought business to a close. A triumphal arch was erected in his home of Shropshire, he embarked on a lecture tour and licensed his name for merchandising. A spendthrift who liked to show his friends a good time, he often found himself short of money and was forced to perform a number of commercial stunts, including floating for sixty hours in the whale tank at the Royal Aquarium in Westminster. Fortunately, there were no whales in there at the time. Eventually, in poor health and running seriously low on funds, he decided to swim across the top of Niagara Falls. He was rowed out to midstream wearing the same silk trunks as he had when swimming the Channel. He dived into the river and was instantly grabbed by the force of the current. He held his own for a while but was eventually dragged under. His last words to the boatman were: ‘If I die, they will do something for my wife.’

  I drop the soldiers into the bucket of water.

  In 1909 his elder brother unveiled a memorial. The inscription it bears reads: ‘Nothing great is easy.’

  I unfold the table cloth, revealing a map of the channel which falls to the floor.

  5.

  I bring out a rope knotted throughout at small equal intervals.

  (The sound of breathing and the sea) There is always something unnatural about finding yourself standing on a beach at two o’clock in the morning and realising that you are about to take your clothes off and wade in, but particularly in October, on the north coast of France. I won’t put my feet down again for many hours, but putting my feet down will mean success.

  I don’t survey the vista, or scan the horizon or any of that because it’s pitch black and there’s a heavy drizzle falling. From my vantage there’s no way to tell where the sky ends and the sea begins.

  I feel ready. For the first time in all of my attempts I am going to allow myself to go further than is actually safe for me to go. I feel prepared to push myself to the edge of my capabilities, beyond what is reasonable.

  But I don’t know how long I can keep this feeling up, and now this misty rain has swept down from nowhere… They ask me if I’m sure. I say, ‘This is the weather we’ve got. It’s neap tide. It’s calm. The currents are good. It’s already October. We need to go now because soon it’s going to be too cold again, and I can’t wait till next year.’

  ‘I know the way,’ I think, ‘I’ve traced it seven times before.’ And the porridge I had for supper last night tugs at my stomach and says, ‘Not quite.’

  At 2.55 a.m. I begin.

  I step onto the cloth and into the map.

  There’s nobody to see me off: Mr Allan – the guide in charge of charting the course – and the fisherman – who will steer it – are both on board the boat. I gave the signal for Allan to start the clock and walk in; the most unnaturally natural thing I know to do.

  I push the rope through my hands, a knot at a time.

  The first few hours are difficult. There’s always a gnawing anxious feeling and that isn’t helped by the strong currents off the French coast. They’ve been my downfall when I’ve tried swimming in the opposite direction. Sometimes it’s like swimming but standing still. You can be five hundred yards from shore and find it impossible to make it. Or you can be swept towards Belgium, or south towards Brittany. Swimming in the opposite direction I’m trying to use these tides to my advantage, but it means I have to push hard from the beginning. I don’t like going out strong.

  It’s like being back in those early days of training in the Thames. I’m not really in my body. I’m not travelling from limb to limb and from organ to
organ, checking status, giving pep talks. I’m in my head, going over each of my seven previous attempts, remembering what went wrong, agonising over stupid mistakes and feeling the weight of exhausted disappointment. ‘Remember to pace yourself or you will get too tired by the end.’ ‘Don’t allow the currents to beat you, swim through the waves.’ ‘If the weather changes the weather changes, there’s nothing you can…’

  Dry mouth, no hunger, can actually hear the clock ticking even though Allan’s got the stopwatch on the boat. Last year Gertrude Ederle came over from America and became The First Woman. She did it in fourteen hours and thirty-nine minutes on a second attempt, and she was only nineteen.

  And I catch myself in these moments: ‘Thinking like this isn’t going to help. The more you agonise the more likely you are to make the same mistakes all over again, or different ones, and you won’t even see them coming because you’ll be too busy failing.’

  At intervals Allan allows me to catch up to the boat. He bends over the side muttering times and tides and instructions. Careful not to disqualify me by touching me, he throws me grapes and honey, or strong tea, or cocoa. Stretching out on my back, I feed like some performing seal. I struggle to push the liquids down. I feel no hunger but I know I need to eat. I don’t usually taste anything, but I feel the warmth and I feel the food, feel what it does.

  The rain seems to be closing in around me. I no longer have any sense of where I’ve swum from and where swimming to. I’m in the middle of nowhere and it seems like the most ridiculous thing in the world. The rain falls heavier. An ambivalent dawn is breaking.

  It’s light now and I do begin to slow and I do begin to hurt, as I knew I would. My arms have gone completely numb. The water temperature is dropping. My lungs are burning and the cold is beginning to invade my marrow. I need to sprint to bring my temperature back up. ‘Take it easy.’ ‘You can do this.’ ‘Just one last concentrated push that’s all you need.’ ‘Stroke, pull, stroke…’ I am so wrapped up in an anxious attempt to compose myself that I don’t hear the fisherman’s signal, or the shouts from the guide boat. I lift my head to breathe and from out of the rain there’s the prow of a steamer only five feet away. I stop. (I drop the rope) I barely remember to tread water and I swallow a gulp full of the Channel, but somehow it passes me by, just. Its swell knocks me backwards. I shout, ‘I’m alright!’ and start swimming again.

  I begin again to pull the rope through my hands.

  I’m losing a lot of fluid. The sea is salty and my sweat is salty and it’s mixed with the lard and Vaseline on my skin. In the shipping lanes it’s choppy and I begin to feel sick. I swim through what seems like a universe of jellyfish, trying not to hold my breath with fear. One of them stings me on my left calf. It doesn’t hurt, which is to say the cold hurts more. I feel like a machine. I feel out of control.

  And then I am suddenly aware of the presence of something else out there besides myself. It’s a sound, or sounds. At first I think I’m hallucinating and then I realise that it’s coming from the guide boat. They must have brought a gramophone on board and now they’ve wound it up for this final stretch.

  (I sing)

  Show me the way to go home.

  I’m tired and I want to go to bed.

  I had a little drink about an hour ago

  And it’s gone right to my head.

  I pick up speed. I shift gears from breaststroke to over-arm and I begin the sprint towards the shore which I can just about make out in the distance.

  (Singing)

  Show me the way to go home

  Show me the way to go home

  Show me the way to go

  Show me the way to go

  Show me the way

  Show me the way

  Show me

  Show me

  Show

  Show

  Show

  The last knot has passed through my hands.

  When I crawl up the beach I don’t feel anything but relief. Fifteen hours and fifteen minutes. I have just become the first British woman to swim the English Channel. I collapse and can’t be woken for two hours. It’s a dreamless sleep.

  6.

  I step out of the map and fold the cloth.

  (The sound of a typewriter) Like a lot of us, before she finally succeeded Mercedes found it necessary to be held down by a day job. She worked as a bilingual shorthand typist in Westminster, and trained to be a long distance swimmer in the Thames. For a while now I’ve been working for a property development company in Glasgow, and staring at my laptop in my bedroom in the student district. The symptoms of such a life include: a lot of looking out the window when you should be doing something else, a lot of talking about Channel swimming to people you meet on social occasions and a lot of clock watching and becoming obsessed with time, figures, distances, feats…

  I sometimes imagine us as colleagues, Mercedes and I, fellow working girls in the typing pool; sitting at opposite desks and covering for each other in front of some smarmy boss who calls her ‘Toots’ and me ‘Ginger’. When nobody else is around, I ask her how the swimming is going and tell her that I’m sure she’ll make it across eventually. At elevenses, she asks me how the writing is going and tells me that she’s sure I’ll figure her out eventually. The rest of the time we both keep our heads down and dream of the sea. She keeps herself to herself, slightly wary of my interest in her. I am afraid to ask too many questions; afraid that what I have already concocted will be ruined by the truth.

  Of course once she had her first big success, Mercedes left it all behind for a life of sponsorship, touring and endorsements.

  After her Channel crossing, for reasons that we will come to, Mercedes kept detailed logs of all further swims and asked locals to sign declarations and write accounts of her accomplishments. These testify that she became the first person to swim the Straits of Gibraltar twenty years before the first recorded crossing by a man took place.

  During the following, I waltz around the stage referring to the swimming logs I have gathered from the table.

  (Fairground music)

  She also swam:

  – The Wash: a square-mouthed estuary on the northwest margin of the east coast of England.

  – Lough Neagh: the largest freshwater lake in Ireland, fifteen miles wide, known for its extremely rough and windy conditions and formed, according to legend, when Fionn Mac Cumhaill scooped up a portion of land to fling at a Scottish rival.

  ‘There was a dense fog which made conditions very difficult… During the route selections were played by a gramophone kindly provided by Mr McCully the jeweller of Antrim and the people who came by boat to witness what is Miss Gleitze’s crowning triumph discoursed a lot of popular songs and otherwise encouraged her. She swam absolutely unprotected and unaided…and landed without any assistance.’

  – From Port Stewart in Northern Ireland to Moville in the Republic, across the mouth of Lough Foyle: the only place in the world where The South is north and The North is south.

  – Between the Aran Islands where:

  ‘the night was one of the most beautiful which has been witnessed on the Bay this year… She commenced with the trudgeon stroke and having got well clear of the land, changed to the breast stroke which is the most favoured by her for long swims… Miss Gleitze suffered very much in the early hours from the cold and occasionally complained of pains, and at one point her husband considered the advisability of taking her out of the water. However, she would not hear of this, the suggestion seeming to act as a spur, and she increased her pace… About 10 a.m. the crew of the pilot boat, rowing boat and Miss Gleitze herself, joined in a decade of the Rosary, the effect being most impressive.’

  Around the Isle of Man in stages: a distance of over 100 miles. Legend has it that the Isle of Man is in fact the lump of earth Fionn Mac Cumhaill threw at his Scottish rival.

  The Hellespont from Europe to Asia Minor, famously swum by that other champion of sea swimming, Lord Byron.

  ‘A
chilly dawn, with the north wind chasing the smoke-like clouds across a grey-blue sky, a ruffled sea, that wonderful crispness in the air which put fresh life into our veins, this was the morning that greeted us as we assembled to act as witnesses to Miss Gletize’s swim.’

  – Wellington Harbour in New Zealand.

  – from Cape Town to Robben Island both ways; becoming the first person to complete the double.

  And The Firth of Forth where:

  ‘At 11.53 she entered the water…wearing a rosary round her neck… She wore no goggles or bathing cap but had a veil over her face to keep back her long hair and to protect her eyes from the salt spray… The local police did splendid work but were hopelessly outnumbered by the frenzied crowd numbering some 12,000. Thus ended the greatest of all Forth swims, accomplished by a mere girl of twenty-seven years… She came, she saw, she conquered.’

  7.

  During the following I gather all the objects still left downstage – the table, the rope, the stones etc – and return them to the pile. Only the ladder and bundled up cloth remain.

  The first few days after you finally make it pass quickly. You sleep a lot. Your limbs ache and you are hungry almost all of the time, but in between are these moments of absolute elation, absolute joy and a feeling of proving yourself. That you have been right to keep trying; that all that time training and trying and failing and training harder and trying and failing again haven’t been wasted. You are already looking for the next challenge and have your eye on the Gibraltar Straits, principally because it hasn’t been done, not by anybody. At this moment you feel you could accomplish anything.