The Swim Club

by Anne De Lisle

  ‘What Alec did has nothing to do with Doug.’

  ‘I know. I’m not sure why I’m assuming the worst of Doug, he’s done nothing to deserve it – just some inner sense I have that sends out little warning beeps when I’m in his presence.’

  ‘I don’t think Doug’s responsible for those warning beeps. I think you’re creating them. Have you ever thought that your meeting Doug might fall into the meant to be category. You’re both single parents, similar ages, love swimming, you’re motivated by your careers, successful, attractive –’

  ‘He’s attractive.’

  ‘Charlie, don’t be an idiot. Just because Alec preferred the charms of a seventeen year old doesn’t mean that you’re some kind of a leper. Don’t you ever look in the mirror?’

  ‘When I brush my teeth.’

  She slumps back in her chair. ‘God, you’re stubborn sometimes.’

  I’m instantly contrite. ‘Sorry. Yes, of course I look in the mirror.’

  ‘And doesn’t it occur to you that Doug might like what he sees?’

  ‘When I look in the mirror, or when he does?’

  Despite herself, Laura can’t help laughing. ‘You are the most exasperating creature alive, Charlie Tarrant, and I pity the poor bloke who ends up with you.’

  ‘Then maybe I should keep to myself, spare the men of the world.’

  But Laura, growing serious once more, says, ‘You’re blaming Doug for things he hasn’t done. You should be a tad less judgemental and give the man a chance.’

  We’re picnicking after our Thursday swim in the dam, warming ourselves with cups of tea and Wendy’s home-made croissants. I’ve never had a home-made croissant before, and am hugely impressed by Wendy’s devotion to the welfare of our stomachs. They are melt-in-the mouth succulent, and luckily Wendy has made loads so there’s no need to hold back.

  I’ve never understood why eating is such the comfort that it is. Sure, like sex, taking in food needs to be enjoyable to ensure the survival of the species. But the degree of gratification food gives me is above and beyond what’s necessary to ensure that I’ll eat to survive. Thus I am almost drowning in pleasure when Cate asks Laura how long ago she made the decision to remain childless.

  I nearly choke on my mouthful of croissant. Given the sudden silence that’s thick in the air, I imagine it’s a reaction shared by Wendy and Karen.

  Laura takes her time, finishing her croissant, licking her fingers. ‘Can’t say there was a precise moment of decision,’ she says at last. ‘It just sort of happened.’

  ‘You mean you didn’t plan it one way or the other?’ asks Cate.

  ‘Something like that. I was always busy with work. Preoccupied, you might say. And suddenly here I am past forty. You’ve seen that cartoon – Oh my God, I forgot to have children.’

  And I’m thinking what a cowardly, lousy friend I am to have never been game to risk the question.

  It’s like not asking someone what they do for a living in case you get a look of despair and the words, Actually I was made redundant six months ago … Or, How many children do you have? In case they reply, Well I used to have three, but one died last month … Or, Are you married? In case it’s, Well I was, until my husband ran away with a seventeen year old …

  Being too afraid to ask a question for fear of the response.

  But this is Laura, trusted and loyal friend and confidante. I’m disgusted with myself that it’s taken the courage of a new friend to ask her such an important question.

  ‘I’ll be thirty-two next year,’ says Cate, reaching for another croissant, and full understanding clunks into my brain.

  ‘Plenty of time,’ says Laura.

  ‘How does Pete feel about it?’ I ask.

  Cate looks down at the uneaten croissant in her hands. ‘We haven’t exactly discussed it in depth,’ she admits. ‘Just kind of in passing. Breezed over it. But it’s pretty clear he’s not interested.’

  ‘But you are.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He’s not worried about his age, is he?’ asks Wendy. ‘He shouldn’t be.’

  ‘I don’t know. I suppose he feels that he’s already done the baby thing. Why would he want to bother again?’

  ‘Because of you,’ I say. ‘Especially as you have no close family of your own. Especially as he’s eighteen years older than you and statistically you’re likely to end up spending twenty-three years as a widow. It would be nice if there was someone to visit you in the nursing home.’

  Cate laughs. ‘I know, I know.’

  ‘You need to raise the subject properly,’ says Laura. ‘Sit him down and tell him how much it means to you to have children.’

  ‘You’re right.’

  ‘Older men can be very set in their ways,’ I warn her.

  She laughs again. ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘And younger wives often too eager to please.’

  ‘Do you think the letter-writing sister has been in his ear?’ asks Laura.

  Cate hesitates a minute. ‘It’s possible she might have said something to him along the lines of doing nothing to upset his kids – Sarah and Leo.’

  ‘At your expense?’

  ‘Yes, well I expect that wouldn’t weigh. I could be wrong, of course. Pete’s quite capable of developing notions of his own.’

  ‘I’m sure he’ll come around if you state your case honestly,’ Karen tells her. ‘I mean, men can be a bit slow. Sometimes they need things pointed out loud and clear.’

  ‘Ban sex until he agrees,’ suggests Wendy.

  There’s general agreement to this plan, but Karen, laughing, says, ‘And that from the one who’s really good at saying no.’

  ‘You’re so right,’ admits Wendy with a sigh.

  ‘Actually, I think a lot of women do use sex as a reward,’ says Laura. ‘I had a patient once who used to control her husband with a points system. Ten points and she’d take him to bed.’

  I’m astounded. Fascinated. ‘You’re not serious.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘More detail,’ demands Karen.

  Laura’s quick to oblige. ‘Cooking dinner was three points. Walking the dog, one point.’

  ‘What about washing the dishes?’

  ‘Two points.’

  ‘Cleaning the windows?’

  ‘Five. It was a big house. Lots of glass.’

  ‘Any tens?’

  ‘Mowing the grass. They had the neatest lawn in town. Like a bowling green.’

  Amidst our laughter, I say, ‘There you go, Cate. Making a baby’s got to be worth thousands of points. He can have sex as often as he likes.’

  Cate’s given up on her breakfast altogether. Looking from one to another of us, she says, ‘Thanks girls. You do wonders for putting things into perspective.’

  ‘It’s what we’re here for,’ says Karen. ‘By the way,’ she adds, almost as if it’s an afterthought, ‘I’ve decided to go back to preschool teaching.’

  We are speechless, riveted by these few, short, fabulous words. Karen’s smiling a little, brushing bits of scone from her lap, well aware that she has struck us all dumb. But it doesn’t take long to regain the power of speech and suddenly we’re all sitting up, congratulating her.

  ‘That’s great!’

  ‘When … When?’

  ‘How many days a week?

  ‘I start in September,’ she says. ‘Three mornings a week. I couldn’t manage if Mum and Dad weren’t doing everything at home. Financially I don’t really need to work because Adam was so careful about being properly insured, but I want to do it. I need an extra sense of purpose, and it will have been nearly a year. I feel ready.’

  ‘How secretive you’ve been,’ I say, ‘planning all this without telling us.’

  ‘I wanted to present you with a fait accompli, not me drivelling on with weeks of indecision.’

  ‘As if we’d have cared about that. You are a wonder.’

  ‘You’ll keep swimming?’

  ‘Of course. A
nd I’ll still be able to picnic – I’m not working Thursdays and Mondays.’

  We slip into a companionable silence, and there’s a sense that we’re basking, almost gloating. We have the sun on our backs, warm tea and croissants in our hands and our bellies, our bodies are alive in the afterglow of our swim, and now this. It’s the icing on the cake, and a great conclusion to our winter dam-conquering efforts, when I think how Karen’s frailty and need was the catalyst to get us started in the first place. Not that her frailty lasted long. She’s gone from strength to strength with a velocity that makes me dizzy

  ‘Now that you’re all pumped up,’ says Cate, breaking the silence and looking from one to another of us, ‘I think it’s time to discuss serious business. I believe you’re going to be ready for a triathlon this spring.’

  Suddenly my croissant doesn’t taste quite so delicious. I feel a quickening in my pulse: excitement tinged with fear. I look at the others. There is a stillness about them: a sense of rapt, nervous attention.

  ‘I have the perfect event,’ continues Cate, apparently oblivious to our stretched-taut nerves. ‘It’s in November at the Royal Palms Resort. Two months after the pool reopens. It’s a ladies-only event and is designed for novices. The swim is only five hundred metres, which you can all do standing on your heads. The cycle is ten kilometres, the run two. We need to get you cycling.’

  Wendy swallows, clears her throat and asks, ‘Is the swim in the ocean?’

  ‘No. Across a lake. Don’t wear your white togs. The lake has a clay base. You’ll come out orange.’

  ‘I don’t have a bike,’ I say. Pathetic, last-ditch attempt to be get out of it.

  ‘Neither do I,’ says Laura, and I throw her a grateful, conspiratorial smile. Perhaps there will be two unable to participate in this latest, most daunting of ventures.

  ‘I’ve got an old bike someone once gave me for Sophie, though it’ll be years before she’s big enough to ride it,’ says Wendy, which sounds dangerously close to agreement.

  ‘I have two,’ says Karen. Whole-hearted, enthusiastic consent, which is pretty much what I’ve learned to expect from Karen. ‘You should probably ride Adam’s, Wendy,’ she adds, ‘your legs are longer than Charlie and Laura’s.’

  ‘Then we’re one short,’ says Cate. ‘We’ll pick up a second-hand one.’

  Thus, it seems, we are committed.

  When I drive home, I realise my hands are sticky on the steering wheel. The event is months away and already I’m nervous. Nevertheless, I recognise that every step we take, every hurdle we jump is successfully stretching the circumference of my comfort zone. When I look back at myself in the pre-swimming days, my sphere of existence seems very restricted; a tight little bubble that encompassed myself, the boys, my home and my pen. With only the occasional foray into the scary outside world.

  With this depressing picture in my mind, there’s no way I’m going to stop jumping the hurdles. God, when I think of the old Charlie, I want to run away from her as far and as fast as I can. But my legs aren’t very long, and I can’t help wishing that the hurdles weren’t always so high.

  When the pool reopens on the first of September, we begin training in earnest. We’re fired up, excited, and our sessions in the water are attacked with new vigour. One year on, and we are unrecognisable as the bobbing milk-bottle ladies. Sean is impressed by our progress, by our dam-swimming efforts, and a degree of respect replaces the thinly veiled contempt of earlier days. When he hears of our triathlon ambition, he grows quite helpful, teaching us to lift our heads sometimes when we swim, to look forward.

  ‘No lane ropes there,’ he says. ‘It’ll be a real free-for-all.’

  We’ve seen footage of triathlon swims on TV resembling nothing less than the feeding frenzy of a million assorted marine carnivores. Free-for-all sounds like something of an understatement.

  ‘We can always hang back,’ suggests Laura. ‘It’s not like we’ll be trying to win the event.’

  ‘I’m with you,’ I’m quick to add. ‘Let the pack go and get sucked along. Maybe we won’t have to swim at all if their slipstream’s strong enough.’

  Our playful enthusiasm falters the next Monday morning when Karen arrives at the pool looking bleak. I haven’t seen her like this since the first harrowing weeks of her venturing out, and there is a mutual determination amongst the girls to sit her down before we swim.

  It’s a cool, grey dawn. This early in the season little light makes it through the slatted windows of the ladies changing room. But even in the half-light, the misery on Karen’s face is plain to see.

  ‘I probably shouldn’t have come,’ she apologises. ‘The last thing I want is to spoil everyone’s swim.’

  We cluster round her in our various stages of readiness: Cate all togged up with her cap on, Laura naked from the waist down, Wendy and I naked from the waist up. ‘Not showing up would have been a surer way to spoil things,’ Wendy tells her. ‘We’d have been worried to death about you.’

  ‘Nothing’s happened,’ Karen says to our unspoken question. ‘It’s just that with the passing of each day, reality sets in more and more. Some days it sets like concrete.’

  ‘And today’s one of them.’

  She nods and lowers herself to sit on the bench. ‘Probably triggered by the weekend. Mum and I decided it was time to sort out Adam’s clothes.’

  ‘Ah,’ we all chorus.

  ‘To be honest, I wanted to do it ages ago. It didn’t seem right to have all his things still lying around after so long – I felt like I was turning into Miss Haversham – but everyone, including Mum, kept saying, No need to do it yet. So I didn’t. I guess she was right. It was so much harder than I expected. Every time I picked up an empty shirt, or sock or shoe, I remembered it being filled by Adam, all warm and alive. And there were so many of them. So many empty items.’

  Laura sits her bare bottom on the bench beside Karen. ‘I helped my dad do it when my mother died. It was the hardest thing. Putting her entire life into cardboard boxes. And it makes you think, How can someone just vanish like that?’

  ‘And it makes you think about stopping the vanishing, about turning back time. If only you could go into reverse, do something different that day. Not go to the beach at all. Do you remember what Superman did when Lois Lane died?’

  We shake our heads.

  ‘He flew round and round the world in the opposite direction to its natural rotation. He flew so fast that he began to slow then reverse the spin, so that time went backwards.’

  ‘And when he reached the moment just before Lois died, he flew in and saved her!’ I say.

  ‘That’s right! You remember it too!’ For a second, Karen’s face grows animated, but the light quickly dies. ‘Stupid, aren’t I? A stupid film.’ There are tears in her eyes and she presses her fingers to them. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘No need,’ says Laura.

  ‘That’s why we’re here,’ says Wendy. ‘Lord, it’s scarcely been a year. You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t have relapses.’

  ‘Ladies … time!’ Sean’s voice bellows like a lion on the rampage.

  ‘You don’t have to,’ says Wendy.

  But Karen stands up and starts pulling off her clothes. ‘It’ll buoy me up. It always does.’

  I know she’s right. All that physical exertion in the pool tends to drive the demons out. Endorphins, we’re told. But I believe it’s also because we’re left too exhausted to think. It’s not a cure, of course, but it’s a brilliant anaesthetic that can last for hours after the swim’s over.

  Later, under the showers, Karen is noticeably brighter. She tells us that she’s due to start at the preschool soon. ‘It’s going to be a big few weeks.’

  ‘Lots of new beginnings,’ I say, squeezing conditioner through my hair.

  ‘I like beginnings,’ she says. ‘They’re much more appealing than endings.’

  I froth up my conditioner, working it through every strand before rinsing it off. ‘It seems to me
that life’s just like the plot of a book.’ Head under the water, I’m probably shouting a bit. ‘Every story has a beginning, a middle and an end. The beginning is exciting, the end is inevitable, but the middle, well … it’s easy to have a lull in action, to get bogged down in detail.’

  ‘A sagging middle,’ puts in Laura, and we all laugh.

  I turn off the taps and reach for my towel. ‘And that’s exactly where my new book’s at: sagging so badly it needs a dose of Viagra. I need to sharpen my wits, find some fresh inspiration. It’s so important to build on the promise of the beginning, to add layers to a story: exciting, fulfilling layers. Aristotle called it the rising action.’

  ‘Which is what we’re doing,’ says Wendy.

  ‘You bet.’ I start rubbing myself dry. ‘I never imagined the action in my middle life would rise half as much as it has.’

  ‘Talking of rising action,’ says Karen with a wicked grin, ‘how is the Black Douglas?’

  ‘Oh, I haven’t seen him since lunch at Marc’s last month.’ There’s a short silence and I know they’re all disappointed. ‘Which I’m happy about,’ I add, reaching for my T-shirt. ‘So there’s no need for the long faces. Action doesn’t always have to involve a man. I’d rather keep my energy for learning to cycle. Doug can be gathered up by some other woman who appreciates him more.’

  CHAPTER 12

  IT’S SIX O’CLOCK IN the morning and we are dressed in tightfitting singlets and lycra bike pants at the Macclesfield Showgrounds. There’s a sense of reluctance in the air, an unspoken feeling that we’d all far rather be in the pool. I eye the bikes with fear and loathing, and try to ignore the distressing effect my feminine curves are having on my lycra.