The Swim Club

by Anne De Lisle

  ‘My mother died when I was still at primary school, so really I grew up with just my dad. He had a heart attack at fifty-three. Playing a game of tennis.’ She falls silent. It’s clear the words are still hard to say. I’m aching for her, and thinking, Here’s another to put my own dramas into perspective.

  ‘How long ago did it happen?’ I ask.

  ‘Four years.’ She glances at Karen. ‘It gets better, you know. Heaps better. Especially when you’ve got someone else in your life.’

  Karen smiles. ‘And you have Pete.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Well I hope he’s a long-term fixture in Macclesfield,’ says Wendy, stripping off her togs and squeezing them out. ‘We don’t want you moving away, you’re a bit of an inspiration to us old girls you know.’

  ‘Definite danger of slacking if you weren’t here,’ I add.

  Cate’s got her feet up on the bench, drying those lovely long legs of hers. ‘An inspiration, am I? Thanks. But don’t worry. There’ll be no chance for you to slack off. Pete’s here to stay and so am I. And I’d never give up learn-to-swim. I love it. In fact I’d like to up my qualifications. Do what Sean does. Train adults.’

  ‘You can practise on us,’ suggests Karen.

  ‘That had crossed my mind. But I don’t want to step on Sean’s toes.’

  Of us all, Karen’s the most determined not to let up on our fitness and new skills. She’s our driving force, the positively charged nucleus of our little group. Her enthusiasm is contagious: we’re all putty in her hands, humbled by her courage. ‘Maybe in winter when the pool closes,’ she says. ‘Sean won’t be anywhere in sight when we’re driving down to the coast for our winter training.’

  ‘I’d love to,’ says Cate, and slips her dry feet into her sneakers. ‘Not that I’d charge a fee,’ she hastily adds. ‘I mean, you’d be doing me a favour, letting me hone my training skills. I’m keen to have another interest, something to get my teeth into.’ She goes on to explain that Pete is a widower with grown children not much younger than her. ‘He had his first family very early on – when his daughter was born he was still at university, which makes Sarah only five years my junior. It’s been a bit confronting for her.’

  ‘Sometimes you hear of stepmothers being even younger than their stepchildren,’ Wendy points out.

  ‘But seeing your dad with a woman who’s practically your own age must be hard. We’re all still adjusting.’

  I can’t imagine Cate having trouble adjusting to anything or anyone not after everything she’s been through. ‘I bet you take it in your stride better than most,’ I say. ‘She’s probably a bit jealous too. You don’t exactly look your age, Cate. Closer to twenty than thirty. Daddy’s little girl wouldn’t like to see her daddy with another pretty lady in his life.’

  ‘Thanks,’ says Cate.

  ‘For what? Being honest?’

  ‘For saying another pretty girl. I never thought I was pretty.’

  We all roll our eyes.

  She pulls on a singlet. No bra. Oh, to go bra-less. Something I haven’t been able to do since the age of twelve. ‘A situation like this does bad things to your confidence,’ she tells us. ‘I used to be a much more secure person. Now I find myself swamped with self-doubt. Could we have handled things differently? Were we wrong to ignore the eighteen years?’

  ‘Well you can stop thinking that as of this minute,’ declares Wendy firmly. ‘I’m sure you and Pete did everything you could. Besides, your problem is not so much the eighteen years, it’s more that Pete had his children far too young.’

  ‘That’s right,’ I’m quick to agree. ‘If Pete had had kids at a normal time of life, you wouldn’t be so close to them in age.’

  We’re rewarded with a grin. ‘So it’s Pete’s fault.’

  ‘Absolutely. Should have kept his fly zipped.’

  ‘Can’t blame yourself for that.’

  Cate’s smile widens. ‘Thanks girls.’

  Cate’s story has me thinking about how it was when I came out from England and married Alec. Miles from my own family, plunged into the unaccustomed and destabilising situation of hoping to fit in, hoping to be liked and accepted. Luckily for me, Alec’s parents were alive to my feelings and welcomed me, so my insecurities didn’t last for long. But it’s not something I’m likely to forget and the memories are quick to ignite sympathy in me for Cate. ‘I hope the rest of his family are nice to you,’ I say.

  I get a wry smile. ‘Most. There’s one or two who were a bit suspicious of me, especially in the beginning.’

  ‘They should have been pleased,’ says Laura. ‘And damned grateful that he’d found someone.’

  ‘It was a bit disappointing,’ Cate admits. ‘You see, Pete has all these brothers, sisters, cousins, kids, whereas I’m on my own. Pete’s big extended family was a very attractive part of the package.’ She sits down to do up her trainers.

  ‘And?’ Laura prompts.

  Cate’s silent, fiddling with her laces.

  Her silence doesn’t stand a chance. When Laura’s onto something she’s like a dog with a bone. ‘So it didn’t turn out quite as you hoped?’

  ‘Not really,’ Cate admits. ‘But then perhaps my expectations were a bit high.’

  ‘What did they do? Ignore you?’

  ‘Ignore me? No, they did much better than that. When we first got engaged, one of his sisters wrote me a letter. God, I can’t believe I’m even discussing this, I mean it’s nonsense really.’

  But Laura’s not to be shaken off. ‘What sort of letter?’

  Again Cate hesitates.

  ‘Not a welcome-to-the-family sort of letter, I take it?’

  ‘She wrote and told me that she and various other relatives – goodness knows who they were – thought Pete and I weren’t right for one another.’

  We’re all stock-still, like someone has hit the pause button. I realise my mouth is wide open and quickly shut it.

  ‘She also found it necessary to tell me that Pete and his first wife enjoyed a deep level of closeness in their marriage that he couldn’t possibly hope to achieve again. With me, that is.’

  I notice Wendy’s mouth is hanging open too. Unlike Wendy to be so slack about her body parts.

  Laura starts stuffing things into her overfilled bag. I think I need to buy her a bigger one for her birthday. ‘Do you think she was being malicious or is she just intellectually challenged?’ she asks.

  Cate smiles at Laura’s words. ‘Maybe she thought she was giving me helpful advice.’

  ‘People do that,’ says Karen. ‘Remember how I was advised to masturbate?’

  Laura raises one eyebrow. ‘More likely she felt threatened and had a need to show you where you stood.’

  ‘I expect it was a bit of both,’ says Cate. ‘It’s true there’s not much between her ears – in fact sometimes I wonder how she and Pete could have come from the same gene pool – but I think there was also an element of wanting to put me in my place.’

  Which has me wondering whether all this training and dedication to fitness, this wonder-woman stuff that Cate is so brilliant at, is fuelled by her need to be acknowledged, a way of saying, Look at me, look what I can do. Aren’t I worth admiring, worth loving too? I’d never have guessed that there was so much pain and hurt beneath that cheerful youthful face.

  ‘Didn’t Pete sort her out?’ I ask.

  ‘Well, no,’ Cate admits. ‘Not in so many words. Pete is brilliant, loving and caring in every way, but he’s not very good at confronting his family.’

  ‘At your expense.’

  ‘I guess so. But all that’s in the past. It’s history now.’

  Despite her emphatic words, I feel outraged on Cate’s behalf. Perhaps because I know what it is like to feel isolated. ‘They should all have been delighted that he’d found someone to share his life with,’ I tell her. ‘What kind of person would want their brother condemned to a wretched, lonely future? Men are heaps worse at being on their own than women.’ />
  ‘Especially when they’re older,’ says Laura. ‘It’s not unusual that when a man outlives his wife, he doesn’t hang around much longer himself. They lose the will to live.’

  ‘Pete’s not that old,’ laughs Cate.

  ‘How old is he?’

  ‘He’ll be fifty next year. I’m going to have a surprise party for him. You’ll all come, I hope.’

  ‘We’ll be there,’ I say. ‘Remember, you have four new sisters now.’

  ‘More like four mothers,’ says Wendy.

  Summer wears on and I grow fascinated with the occupants of the fast lane. Those bronzed, muscled bodies slicing up and down the pool are rumoured to be human beings, just like us.

  ‘They look pretty good, don’t they?’ says Laura. We’re together in the shallows, catching our breath between sprint sets.

  ‘They certainly do,’ I agree. ‘But I’m torn between thoughts of, if they can do it, so can we, and the depressing suspicion that some people are handicapped by the less efficient bodies they inhabit.’

  Laura pulls off her goggles and starts adjusting the strap. ‘I think it’s a bit of both really. Some people have much more natural aptitude, but anyone can improve with practice. Look how far we’ve come already.’

  ‘Guess it would be unrealistic to expect to do what they can do before the end of our first season. But that doesn’t stop me envying them.’

  ‘Me too. We must channel our envy into incentive.’

  ‘Come on, ladies …’

  Sean’s shadow looms over us.

  ‘Ten fifties. On the minute. Go! Go!’

  Goggles down, we push off.

  As I swim I think about the decisions we make and how some people drift through life while others choose to seize each day and reap everything they can out of it. The driftingalong path is obviously the one I’ve chosen – no prizes for predicting the likelihood of that – Charlie Tarrant, turning her back on obstacles, dodging hurdles. Safe and Cushy. Unchallenging. That’s me. But I’m starting to wonder where that path leads. To mediocrity? Or even worse, regret? I imagine myself lying on my deathbed thinking, I wonder what it would have been like to … If only I had … How much better to know you’ve grabbed life, tasted everything, discovered your full potential. To die with the satisfaction of knowing you did your best.

  Learning to swim’s made me realise that for far too long I’ve been mourning a loss of belief in my ability to make things happen. Swimming has changed my outlook, as though a seed has been planted in me, and its starting to sprout. I wonder about the other girls. Do they feel it too? Karen does, I’m sure, and the source of her drive is no mystery. Karen is hellbent on becoming a powerful swimmer whose survival no quirk of the tides could possibly threaten, a swimmer well able to save another in peril.

  Then there’s Cate, hungry for love and security. It’s easy to believe in her determination to do something so well, so worthwhile that no one can dismiss her or look straight through her ever again.

  Wendy’s harder to fathom. She’s here as a prop for Karen, of course, but her quest for perfection, that tireless precision work on the quality of her strokes, has me wondering what’s made her so in control as to be almost obsessive.

  Laura, I suspect, finds peace in her swimming as I do. The meditative, rhythmic stroking and breathing that drives out thoughts that can snarl and tangle heads. To and fro, to and fro, through the elongated shadows of the cocos palms that recede from the water as the sun creeps higher. It’s clear I’m hopelessly addicted, and I realise I’m going to have to keep doing this for life.

  CHAPTER 8

  IT’S NINE O’CLOCK AT night. The boys have just gone to bed and I’m sitting cross-legged like a buddha in my pyjamas, watching a SeaChange video.

  The phone rings. It’s Laura. ‘Can I come around?’ she asks.

  ‘Of course.’ My response is automatic. But Laura’s words are clipped and abrupt. She’s never called me this late, never needed to come around out of the blue. A cold slither of fear coils through my guts. ‘What is it? What’s happened?’

  ‘I’ll tell you when I get there.’

  Laura’s place is almost twenty kilometres of winding mountain roads from mine. She arrives in fifteen minutes flat and must have driven like a maniac to get here so fast. She’s white-faced and wild-eyed.

  I usher her in. Something’s happened, something big. I’m terrified for her and don’t know what to do. ‘Do you want a drink, a cup of tea or anything?’ I ask.

  She shakes her head.

  ‘Sit down then.’ I lead her to the sofa. ‘Over here.’

  She nods, opens her mouth, then starts to weep. It gets noisy and I hear Mikey’s bedroom door unlatch. His face appears at the end of the corridor. ‘It’s okay,’ I call out, ‘it’s not me, it’s Laura, go back to bed.’

  We settle into the deep cushions of the sofa and I put my arm around Laura to draw her close. She’s a dear friend who means the world to me, but I’ve never held her like this before. Never smelled her hair, her soap, her subtle fragrance, never felt the pliant womanliness that is Laura. I’m used to hugging the twins’ wiry, restless bodies. And there are, of course, still the memories of their father: hard and lean, restless as the boys. Holding Laura feels strange, yet comforting.

  I think of something my hairdresser once said about the necessity of touch. She told me that many of her clients, elderly ladies, widows, come in to have their hair done regularly because it is the only physical contact they have with another human being: her hands on their hair, a massage to their scalp, as well as the usual cup of tea and a chat.

  A great wave of sorrow for the lonely of the world sweeps over me, until it is challenged by the frightful suspicion that I might be one of them. I swiftly slam the door shut on such an unbearable thought and concentrate on Laura. How disturbing it is to see her like this: rock-solid Laura who everyone leans on, a quivering, hiccupping mess in my arms.

  ‘Is Sam okay?’ I ask.

  She pulls tissues out of her bag and starts mopping her face. ‘Yes and no. He’s alive.’

  The coil of fear twists tighter. ‘He’s had an accident?’

  ‘No, no. Nothing like that. The stupid, stupid prick.’ She blows her nose violently, then turns to face me, her lovely fringed eyes reddened slits. ‘I got home from work early. A difficult day. Lots of upsets. You know, bad news to deliver to patients, angry patients, distressed patients, that sort of thing.’

  I nod. Laura’s days are often like that.

  ‘Usually by the time I’m home, Sam’s making dinner, but I couldn’t find him in the house and went outside. His car was there, so I knew he’d be around somewhere. A light was on in his studio but some instinct, some sixth sense, made me not call out. I just went in. He was standing by the light with a needle in his arm.’

  ‘A needle?’ I have no idea what she means.

  ‘A needle. Narcotics. Sam has been using pethidine.’

  I’m totally stunned. Gob-smacked. Speechless.

  ‘I suspected something’s been going on. He’s been cagey, secretive. I thought he’d been having an affair, but the only love affair he’s been having is with drugs.’

  If it weren’t steady, honest, reliable Laura telling me this, I wouldn’t believe it. The whole idea is totally alien, as far up the scale of weirdness as my husband seducing a schoolgirl. I’d always imagined, I say now, that people sticking needles in their arms were street kids and prostitutes, not forty-something artists.

  ‘You’d be surprised,’ Laura tells me. Having to explain lets her slip into the familiarity of the doctor–patient role. Briefly, her voice grows stronger and the shivering settles down. ‘Pethidine makes you feel so good – body and soul – all your troubles melt away. But it’s such an idiot, idiot, moronic thing to do. God I’m so angry with him. The stupidity. The dishonesty. Why couldn’t he have just hit the bottle or smoked a bit of dope? I could get into trouble for this,’ she adds, fixing her eyes on mine.


  ‘You? Why?’

  ‘Because, innocent Charlie, they are my narcotics, for my patients, kept under my lock and key, and I’m a slack, lousy doctor for not noticing that someone’s been dipping into my supplies.’

  I’m silent a minute, the enormity of the problem sinking in. ‘Where do you keep the stuff?’

  ‘Two places. In a combination safe at the surgery, also a few vials in my doctor’s bag which has be to kept locked at all times – by law.’

  ‘So what happened? Did you forget to lock your bag or does he know the combination?’

  ‘He knows the combination. And it’s the same one at the surgery.’

  Suddenly I’m afraid for her. ‘How does he know the combination?’

  Laura drags one hand through her wild hair and looks away. ‘A couple of years ago I needed his help on a weekend call-out. A patient had had an accident at home, fallen off a ladder. Bad cuts. Loads of blood. We were waiting for the ambulance, me trying to control the bleeding, but there was a lot of pain too. Sam had to get some pethidine out of my bag for me.’

  ‘No one would blame you for that.’

  ‘No, but I should have changed the combination afterwards.’

  ‘But why would you even think of it?’

  ‘Unless I had reason to suspect my own husband might turn into an addict and a thief?’

  I put a hand on her arm. ‘Laura, don’t blame yourself. It was his choice. His move.’

  ‘I should have predicted it. He’d been down, depressed, in a ripe state for grabbing at the nearest crutch which I, unwittingly, provided. I’m going to leave him,’ she adds and starts crying again.

  After a few minutes of mopping and nose blowing, she regains some control and says, ‘It’s such a massive abuse of trust. He’ll never know how violated this has made me feel. And he’s been an absolute nightmare to live with. Yelling as though trying to get some kind of upper hand over me.’

  I’m stunned. I thought they had the ideal marriage. Laura, driven and dedicated to her career, too busy to devote much time to the home front. Sam, laid-back and creative, working from home, running his art classes, exhibiting his work, and always happy to keep the home fires burning. ‘He yells at you?’ I say, incredulous. This is not the Sam I know.