We are each allocated one of the assorted bikes. Wendy rides Adam’s; Cate has her own: a real racing bike with twelve gears, a digital speedo check and clock, and a water-bottle holder built into the framework. In contrast, Laura rides Wendy’s bike, which is pink and has a little basket in front of the handlebars. I ride the one we’ve picked up at the local pawn shop, which is of a similar calibre to Wendy’s but without the basket.
The showgrounds have a circular bitumen track almost a kilometre long which never sees a car except during show week. One day we will have to run the gauntlet of the open road, but for now, until our confidence builds, we can train in traffic-free safety.
With the exception of Karen, who’s done this more recently, each time we straddle our bikes and transfer our feet from terra firma to the pedals, our bikes slump sideways and we have to get our feet back to the ground fast to save ourselves. Cate is almost speechless with disbelief.
But not quite.
‘My God, you can’t even start!’ she sputters.
We hang our heads in shame.
She circles us like a sergeant-major about to rip into a useless band of recruits. ‘Don’t tell me, please don’t tell me you didn’t ride bikes as kids?’
Laura, Wendy and I look at each other, then back at Cate. ‘I did,’ says Wendy.
‘It’s been a long time,’ says Laura. ‘Thirty years.’
‘I believe mine might have had trainer wheels,’ I confess.
Cate throws up her hands. ‘Okay. Okay. I can see I’ll have to get you going one at a time. Laura. You first. Astride please.’
Laura obediently straddles the pink bike, feet square on the ground. Cate grips the rear of her seat. ‘Now I’m going to hold you steady, so you won’t fall. I’ll even give you a push. Ready?’
Laura nods.
‘Feet on pedals. Go!’
Laura is off. It’s a wobbling progress along the narrow strip of bitumen, but she’s upright and she’s moving.
‘Charlie. You next. Astride please.’
I straddle the bike, my heart pounding. The bike feels tall, the bitumen looks hard. Why does the passing of years seem to increase one’s sense of vulnerability? I can remember flying down steep gradients on rollerskates as a child, heedless of the possibility of losing large chunks of skin. No helmets, wrist guards and knee pads in those days. I can remember waterskiing flat out as a teenager, sometimes coming off at such speed I’d aqua-plane along the surface for yards before sinking: bruised and stunned, but happy.
And now I have a thudding heart and sweaty palms because I might fall a metre to the ground. It’s pathetic.
‘Ready?’
I nod.
‘Go!’
To my amazement I’m moving forward with minimal wobbling. I open my mouth to exclaim the simplicity of bikeriding, then Cate lets go and I’m all over the place.
‘Pedal faster!’ she yells.
I pump the pedals.
‘Hold the bar straight!’
Hard to steer and pedal simultaneously. It’s like learning to swim all over again: patting your head and rubbing your stomach. But I’m trying oh so hard, and I’m not falling. I see Laura way ahead and follow her, relaxing a fraction of my body at a time as I discover a rhythm.
After a few minutes, Cate zips up next to me on her wonderbike. She’s all smiles. ‘Well done! You’re improving already. A few kilometres under your belt and you’ll be fine.’ She lifts an arm to wave and is off. No doubt to deliver the same bracing words to Laura. I hope we’ll be over our need for a push start by the time we enter the triathlon.
We train at the showgrounds three times a week, and by the end of the second week are able to do circuits in a fairly respectable formation. Cate warns us that in events we are not allowed to race in a tight pack, that officials will order us to break apart if we ride too close to another competitor for more than a few seconds.
There’s a general consensus among us that bike riding is not much fun. It’s tough, sweaty and scary, not in the least bit soothing for the soul, and it’s always a relief to get back to the caressing buoyancy of the pool: the weightless, sweat-less relaxation of the water. But we know there’s no dodging cycling in the lead-up to the triathlon.
When we feel ready to take to the open road, we split into two groups. Wendy and Karen, who are more confident than Laura and I, are allowed to head off together a hundred yards in front. Cate accompanies us wobbly ones, to keep us safe and lend support. Just when I thought I’d got the hang of cycling. What a delusion. It’s a jungle out there, of aggressive, tooting, abusive motorists who hurtle past so close I get sucked along in their slipstreams. Occasionally a driver winds down his window to yell abuse. When I express concern that it is the hopelessness of my cycling that attracts such insults, Cate assures me that these are common occurrences. She tells me that she has even had litter thrown at her from passing cars. I’m shocked at the rage cyclists seem to incite, and am ashamed at the teeny bit of impatience I might have felt toward cyclists myself in the past. Silently I vow to respect and revere all cyclists from now on.
But our biggest problem by far is the local dog population. We get barked at and nipped at every time we go out. Why is it that dogs see cyclists as such tempting prey?
It is our third time out in the open. We are cycling along Valley View Road early one idyllic morning. The sky is clear and the air is soft. We pass farms and cattle and rolling green paddocks dotted with fig, camphor laurel and coral trees: a peaceful bucolic scene made awesome by the stunning views of the mountains in the distance.
Wendy and Karen are ahead in their usual position, sweeping effortlessly along the curving open road, when a blue cattle dog propels itself forth like a cannonball of fury aimed at their wheels. Cate accelerates forward, yelling at the dog. Karen and Wendy teeter and wobble all over the place before Karen loses balance altogether and she falls off onto the road.
We all dismount and rush to her side. There’s blood, but not much. She’s lost a bit of skin on her elbows and knees.
‘Remember to release your feet from the peddle straps if you feel yourself falling,’ reprimands Cate. ‘That way the bike won’t land on top of you.’
Karen’s feet are both still firmly strapped in. ‘Well I don’t know how I’d have time to do that,’ she says, wincing as Cate unclips her feet and lifts the bike off her torso and legs.
‘A few more falls and you’ll soon learn how.’
I hear the implication in Cate’s words that falls are normal and we should all expect plenty of them. I don’t much like the sound of this, but am distracted from my worries by the sight of Wendy heading into the garden, home of the disagreeable dog.
‘What are you doing?’ I call out to her.
‘It’s illegal to let your dog out onto the road. Karen could have been badly hurt. I’m going to give the owner a piece of my mind.’
‘The dog could be in there,’ I remind her. ‘It might go for you.’
‘I don’t care. They’ve got to be made to control their animal.’ Wendy, most delicate-looking of us all, is displaying nerves of steel.
‘Then let’s all go,’ says Laura. ‘Safety in numbers.’
So five helmeted women of questionable age in tightfitting lycra outfits enter the garden.
We hear low growling from the shrubbery.
‘I think he’s over to the left,’ I whisper.
But it’s hard to tell, the garden is a dense cluster of colourful, scented shrubs and flowers: a surprisingly mature garden for what is obviously a newly built house. We wander up the garden path, mount the stone steps to a front porch dotted with neatly clipped camellias in giant terracotta pots, and knock on the door. The house looks very smart, rendered brick that has been flawlessly whitewashed. It has been built to take advantage of the views of the mountains, but is well shielded from the road by the thick bushy shrubbery the dog has disappeared into. Said dog is behind us now, grumbling, stalking, but not quite brave enough
to attack such a determined crowd.
The door opens.
If the lady of the house is surprised to see a gang of helmet-wearing, sweaty women on her immaculate doorstep at seven in the morning, she masks it well. She’s very glamorous for so early in the day, very chic: slate-grey pants, no creases, crisp white shirt open to reveal a hint of goldenbrown décolletage, fair hair perfectly confined by a neat clip at the back of her head. I suspect this is a woman who does not need to swim two kilometres and cycle ten every morning to keep her hips trim. I hate her immediately.
‘Yes?’ she says, looking us over. ‘What may I do for you?’
‘Your dog …’
‘Karen fell off her bike …’
‘If you don’t …’
‘You should fence that …’
We’re all talking at once: an undisciplined rabble. It gives the woman the upper hand.
‘Ladies … please. One at a time.’ Her smile is insincere, her tone condescending. I bristle. It’s hardly rocket science to deduce that we are cyclists, and that the snarling, lip-curling creature behind us is the source of both our grief and the blood on Karen’s knees.
Wendy takes control. ‘Your dog,’ she says, ‘is a public menace. We were cycling past when he came hurtling out. Karen fell off her bike. If there had been a car coming, it could have caused a serious accident.’
The lady of the house casts a critical eye over the sweaty mob of us. ‘As cyclists you must realise that cycling excites a dog’s instincts. One of the hazards of the sport.’ She gives a low whistle and the dog slinks back into the shrubbery.
‘If your dog harbours such instincts then you should fence your garden,’ says Wendy. ‘In fact, I’m sure it is illegal not to fence your garden if you own a dog. My dog –’
‘I have no interest in your dog,’ interrupts the lady of the house. There’s no hint of colour on her face and throat, no flicker of uncertainty in her eyes. She’s utterly cool, one hundred per cent in command of herself.
Wendy falls silent before such rudeness, but I push to the front, aware that there’s plenty of colour and uncoolness about my person. ‘And we have no interest in pursuing this conversation. As there seems to be no point in appealing to your better nature, we will lay our complaint before council.’
And with that we all troop off.
‘What a cow,’ whispers Laura as we exit the gate.
‘She must have seen that you were injured,’ I say to Karen. ‘Anyone else would have offered first aid.’
We sneak furtive looks back towards the house. The woman is gone, the front door closed.
Karen stoops to pick up her bike. ‘She probably just had an argument with her husband and is in a foul mood.’
‘You’re too charitable,’ says Wendy. ‘Are you really going to report her to council, Charlie?’
‘Oh you know me,’ I shrug, swinging one leg over my bike. ‘All idle threats. I couldn’t be bothered really, unless you want to, Karen? I’d rather just arm myself when I’m cycling.’
We set off amidst talk of weapons. Karen suggests a catapult.
‘Too hard,’ says Laura. ‘You’d need both hands free. Maybe just a pocket of stones.’
‘Your bike would be good for that,’ I tell her. ‘You could fill your little basket with them. Maybe we should all get baskets.’
‘How about a whistle?’ suggests Wendy. ‘One of those whistles that’s silent to humans, which only dogs can hear.’
‘But that might attract it.’
‘Mace,’ says Cate. ‘That’s what I’d use. I could carry a can of it in my water-bottle holder.’
‘As long as you don’t forget and end up trying to drink it.’
There’s laughter as we string out along the road, the ugliness of the incident already forgotten.
The next week Karen starts teaching. We fall on her the minute she appears in the changing room the morning after her first day.
‘Well?’
‘How was it?’
‘Are you exhausted?’
‘How many kids were there?’
‘Did it all come back to you straight away?’
She holds up her hands. ‘Goodness, what a battery of questions, children.’
We grin, and fall silent before the voice of authority.
She dumps her bag on the bench and turns to face us. ‘It was wonderful. Full on. Twenty kids. Flat out busy. But wonderful. I got home covered in paint and glue, with my ears ringing and my head spinning. Thank God for Mum and Dad. All I could do was fall into a chair.’ She meets my eyes. ‘I don’t know how you’ve done it, Charlie. Earned a living as well as raising two kids on your own with no family nearby.’
‘I won’t pretend it isn’t hard,’ I admit, and start to strip off. ‘But remember that I work from home and usually writing is a quiet, restful activity. I can sit down, feet up, sipping cups of tea while I work. It’s mental gymnastics sometimes, but that doesn’t leave you physically spent the way teaching would.’
‘Except on those occasions when it’s not going well and you start fretting,’ Laura is quick to remind me.
‘Well yes, there are those moments. But not so often. The biggest problem,’ I confess, wriggling into my togs, ‘would be the unhealthy proximity to the comforts of the larder and the fridge.’
Karen laughs. ‘I can imagine.’
‘But as for teaching, I can remember with gruesome clarity how knackered I’d be after my mornings of being “duty mother” at the kindergarten for three hours twice a year. I’d be crawling in the front door when I got home, thudding headache, reaching for a brandy.’
‘I’m with you,’ says Wendy, tucking her short hair into her cap. ‘I used to dread my turn on the roster. The only way I could cope was to book in for aromatherapy straight after.’
‘I bet the kindy teacher didn’t actually need you mothers to help,’ says Laura, sifting through her bag for her hat and goggles. ‘It would have been an exercise in showing you how rugged it was having to entertain so many kids all day.’
‘Very likely,’ I agree. ‘And it worked. I’ve had a healthy respect for kindy and preschool teachers ever since.’
Karen, still smiling, says, ‘You just didn’t do it often enough to get used to it.’
Laura pulls on her cap and heads for the door. ‘Bit like cycling. I’ve no intention of doing that often enough to grow used to it. Give me the pool any day.’
On this mutinous note, a popular decision is made not to bother with running training at all. There’s a general feeling that any fool can shuffle a couple of kilometres. Especially fools as fit as us.
On the Friday before the triathlon, Cate lines us up like a seasoned coach and gives us a pep talk. ‘You’ve come a long way,’ she pronounces, strolling along our ranks like a general inspecting his troops. ‘I’m proud of you. The swim will be easy, five hundred metres – a distance you could swim six times over – but remember to save your legs. Especially you, Charlie,’ she emphasises, wagging her finger at me. ‘Swim it as though you’ve got a pool buoy between those impressive quads, otherwise you’ll have no legs left for the cycle and run. Make a swift transition. No chatting. No mucking about with powder and lotions. Especially no drying between toes. Take the cycle steady, and if you’re done in at the end of it, walk the run. There’s no shame in that. I’ve seen it happen often.’ She pauses, scanning our rapt faces. ‘Good luck, and remember to enjoy yourselves.’
This moment, we realise, is the point of no return.
I spend Saturday morning fidgeting around the house. Writing is impossible, having a head overloaded with fear, excitement, doubt, dread and pride in myself. I’m like a butterfly, flitting from one room to the next, straightening cushions, sitting down, getting up, rearranging flowers that are already arranged.
When the boys emerge and wander, bleary-eyed, down the corridor in their pyjamas, I seize upon their appearance to regain some sense of purpose. ‘How about a cooked breakfast this morning?
Sausages, bacon, the works.’
They look at me as though I’m mad. ‘You hate doing cooked breakfasts,’ says Mikey, his eyes dark with suspicion.
‘Only when it’s a busy morning. We’ve heaps of time today.’
‘Why do we have heaps of time?’ asks Dan, reaching for the TV remote.
‘Because we do. Hey, don’t put that on. Let’s talk while we cook.’
They both look longingly at the TV, then at each other, and I get the feeling, as I so often do, that there’s silent communication between the pair of them. Today I suspect it’s something along the lines of, Mum’s finally lost her marbles, better humour her.
They join me in the kitchen and I put them to work. Soon the whole house is filled with a mouth-watering aroma of sizzling grease: bacon, sausages, mushrooms and eggs. When it’s ready, we take our plates to the verandah table and devour our feast.
Then I lie back, full as a tick, vaguely troubled by the idea that it might not be such a good idea to distend yourself with mountains of greasy food the day before a sporting competition.
‘Let’s do this every weekend,’ says Dan.
‘Fat chance,’ says Mikey. ‘Mum’s only being nice this morning because she’s compensating …’
‘… for dumping us at Ben Jackson’s tonight.’
Two pairs of accusing eyes shift my way.
‘Hey, dumping’s a bit mean,’ I say, struggling upright in my chair. ‘Sleeping over at Wendy’s will be fun. You’ll get to play with Ben, Luke and Sophie, and they’re not that much younger than you. In fact Ben’s almost the same age.’
‘He’s in Grade Five.’
‘That doesn’t mean he’s incapable of thought and speech.’
Wendy has kindly volunteered to have the boys overnight, seeing as we have to be on the road before six in the morning and probably won’t be back till lunchtime. Mikey and Dan are not quite at an age where I’m willing to leave them unattended overnight. I’m grateful to Wendy, therefore, for offering, and even more so to her husband, Graham, who’s going to have five children to entertain all Sunday morning.
Later, packing their overnight bags, the boys are dragging their feet. It’s not that they’re unused to sleeping at other people’s houses – there are always overnight comings and goings among their friends – but today they are aware that I need them gone, which is a very different matter to going visiting for their own pleasure. I realise that having a single parent who works from home, it’s been all too easy for them to take for granted the fact that I will place their needs before my own. Such a fine line between creating a life of stability and making them selfish.
The Swim Club Page 14