‘Then it’s a happy occasion,’ says Cate, putting an arm round her shoulders.
Mine slips around her as well. ‘You’re bound to think of him on momentous occasions,’ I tell her. ‘Whenever you do something amazing. Whenever the kids do.’
‘I know. Guess it’s something I’m going to have to carry through life. Like when Jeremy won last semester’s art prize.’
I remember the day well. The poor kid had almost been crying when he’d gone up to accept his award in front of the school. You could have heard a pin drop. ‘Adam was really proud of Jeremy’s talent, wasn’t he,’ I say, giving her a squeeze.
‘He and I couldn’t paint to save ourselves. It was so exciting to have produced a creative child.’
‘My dad used to love to watch me swim,’ Cate says. ‘He’d be there yelling for me every inch of the way when I was competing. It still feels unnaturally silent sometimes when I’m in the pool.’
Karen turns to face her. ‘But it gets better?’
‘Of course.’
‘Maybe one day it will become an energising tool rather than something to drag you down,’ suggests Laura.
‘Yes,’ I add, addressing both Karen and Cate. ‘Think of them giving you fins in the water.’
‘Lifting your pedals.’
‘Wings on your heels.’
Suddenly we’re turning into the long, palm-lined driveway of the resort. The moment upon us, our banter evaporates and the air in the car grows oppressive. We remain silent while we find a parking spot and unload our gear.
Then, led by Cate, we head for the transition area to stash our bikes. At the entrance to transition, we have to don our helmets and stand for a gear inspection. A course official raises his eyebrows at Laura, who’s wheeling Wendy’s pink bike, and says, ‘Is that your vehicle, lady?’
Laura nods. I try not to giggle. There’s a short pause before he lets us through. He’s either dumfounded or too polite to comment further. Clearly he’s never seen a hot pink bike with a little basket in front of the handlebars enter a triathlon.
There are hundreds of women milling around, also a lot of husbands and children who have come to watch. Some of the competitors are young and lithe, some are strappingly athletic. Others look like us, some are even older. I notice a few of the middle-aged ones are wearing lipstick, sporting gold chains round their necks, bangles at their wrists and am relieved to discover that this is not an event catering for dead serious athletes. There are mums and grannies, young and old, plump and trim. It starts to feel like a Sunday outing. Next we go to the registration and numbering tent and emerge with black figures drawn on our arms and legs. I am number eighty-three. We strut about. Marked as a competitor, I feel like a champion.
We locate the portaloos near the transition area. I’ve been a bit worried about needing to go mid-event, so seize the opportunity while I can. Waiting while the others follow suit, I almost feel like I need to go again. Nerves. Ignore the impulse, Charlie, you’ll soon be too distracted to care. But as I’m bound to swallow a lot of water in the swim leg, when the others emerge I suggest that I can fit in another quick portaloo visit between the cycle and the run. ‘If there’s not queue,’ I add.
‘Go to the loo mid-race?’ Cate is incredulous. ‘You’re not serious. Please tell me you’re not serious.’
‘Well, you know I swallow a lot of water.’
‘You’re going to have to work on your breathing,’ admonishes Wendy. ‘Learn to lift your chin and clear the water properly when your mouth’s open.’
‘Bit late for that now,’ says Karen. ‘But no visits mid-race. Can’t you do one in the lake while you’re swimming?’
‘I don’t think so. I tried that once in the Lochiel Dam, but in order to let your bladder go, you have to relax your pelvicfloor muscles, and mine just don’t seem to want to relax when I’m swimming.’
‘I wonder what marathon runners do,’ says Wendy. ‘They run for hours.’
‘Perhaps they dehydrate enough not to need to go,’ suggests Laura.
‘Or wee down their legs,’ says Cate. ‘No one would notice, what with all that sweat.’
As I don’t much fancy weeing down my leg, I resolve to abandon my water bottle and dehydrate instead. After all, who needs a water bottle when they’ve sucked in gallons of lake water?
Cate has to leave us. She’s doing the long-course event: fifteen hundred metre swim, forty-kilometre cycle and tenkilometre run, which starts from a different point. We farewell her with kisses and wishes of good luck, then make our way to the sandy edge of the lake. Ten minutes to go. Nerves are kicking in, pulses quickening, muscles getting the wobbles. Loudspeakers keep making announcements. Suddenly I’m not enjoying myself any more. In fact I can’t believe I’m here at all. How can someone born without a competitive streak willingly line up and wait for a starting pistol to go off?
A hush falls over our little group and I know the others are as anxious as I am. I look at Laura and give a bit of a gasp. ‘Are you all right?’
She nods.
Laura’s face is swelling up, her eyes diminishing into slits.
‘Nervous oedema,’ she says.
‘Nervous what?’
‘Oedema. Swelling.’ She touches her face. ‘Can’t think of another explanation. Expect it’ll go down once we get started.’
I remember reading an account of a fifteenth century battle where the men lined up on the hillside, waiting for the order to brandish their swords and charge at the enemy, their faces ‘contorted like beasts’. I’d always imagined this to mean they were fierce with anticipation, that they were really excited about the blood-letting to come. Perhaps it was more. Perhaps fear had them swelling up with nervous oedema.
I’m shocked that Laura is the one reacting physically to her nerves. Confident Laura, full of bravado, denying weakness at every opportunity. It scares me a bit too. I mean, if Laura is capable of blowing up like an airbag, what popping, rupturing exploding disasters could be going on inside me? But there is no time left to worry about her. Competitors are jostling for position, clustering at the water’s edge, toes are in the water. I spot one of the Lipstick Ladies right at the front, a disturbing look of determination settled over her painted face. Is the lipstick a red herring, a ploy to make others believe this is just a picnic, a stroll in the park, when really, truly, she’s loaded with killer instinct? I feel panic bubbling and scan the surrounding pack. Are all the others the same? Amazons disguised as mothers and grannies? Are we going to get pummelled and shoved into oblivion?
Laura puts a hand on my arm. ‘It’ll be all right,’ she says from between fattened lips. ‘Let them go. It won’t make any difference in the end.’
We adjust our caps, lower our goggles. Laura’s dig into her puffy cheeks. The gun goes off and I forget my friends, forget everything but the need to hurl myself into the nearest gap in the water, to swim harder than I’ve ever swum before. I pound the water with my legs, my secret weapon, feel a satisfying surge forward, then remember Cate’s warning. Leg muscles are bigger than arm muscles, they use up more oxygen. You’ll get tired faster, too breathless to maintain a rhythm. Save your legs for the bike and the run.
The water is a white frothing mass of humanity, flailing limbs, caps of all colours. I’m blind to the direction, trusting that the pack will carry me along to the correct point of exit. It seems an eternity. I forget all about trying to relax my pelvic floor, I’m not even aware of taking breaths, but I must be snatching a few, because I make it, at last, staggering out of the water for the short turn to the transition area. I hear clapping and realise I’m running through a corridor of spectators.
It’s a defining moment in my life. Never before have I been cheered on for a physical activity. No one has ever clapped when I’ve run or swum or tried to catch a ball. Mostly they’ve just laughed. Euphoria renders me oblivious to my wobbling thighs, my jiggling breasts, and I achieve what I hope is a sprint, ripping off my cap and goggles as I
go.
The pink bike with its basket has gone, so I know Laura’s ahead of me. There’s no question that Karen and Wendy are too. I mount my bike and start to pedal. My legs are jelly. I’ve been warned about this, warned that changing from one muscle rhythm to another is tough, takes a few minutes for your body to adjust. But I’m happier now, more relaxed. The competitors are strung out, less likely to collide than in the water. Buoyed by the cheering crowd, relieved to have the terror of the blind swim over, I cycle on as hard as my crippled legs can manage.
Orange cones guide us along the correct course. I estimate I’m about three-quarters back in the field. Not last. The words repeat like a tattoo in my head. Not last. Not last. I’m waiting for the jelly to firm, for my legs to adjust to the cycling rhythm. It’s not happening. My thigh muscles are totally AWOL. I reach the halfway point. Five kilometres to go. Not far, not on a bike.
A few people pass me. I pass no one. When I make it back to the transition area and dismount, my legs feel like peeled wicks and almost give out beneath me. I curse my stupidity for kicking too hard in the swim leg. I have a two-kilometre run to endure. Walk it, a little voice tells me. It doesn’t matter if you’re last. I set out doing a shuffling jog, Think of Cliff Young, Cliff who at more than sixty years of age, shuffled all the way from Sydney to Melbourne.
I can see Laura’s bright red sun visor way ahead. It’s a drug-company freebie and has the word VIAGRA emblazoned across the front. She’s doing well, must have conquered the oedema. I walk for a spell, a cluster of women pass me. I think they must be in the veterans’ category, they all look at least thirty years my senior. I could swear one’s almost ninety: wizened and shrivelled but with an iron rod of stamina up her bent spine. She shuffles past me with a chirpy grin and a wave of one hand. Her pace is a crawl, yet she’s overtaken me. Am I really going even slower than that? Too late I regret not having practised. Any fool can run a couple of kilometres, especially fools as fit as us. Who said that? Karen, I think. All right for her and the others, I mutter darkly to myself. They’re not handicapped by bodies designed for eating and reading. What a complacent, deluded twit of a creature I am. As a schoolgirl I couldn’t run a lap of the hockey pitch. Whatever made me think I could do it now? I’m nearly at the finish line when I realise there is a ute on my heels, inching along, a man picking up the orange cones as I pass them, tossing them onto the tray. A course official approaches and says, ‘Are you all right, lady?’
‘I’m fine,’ I say, ‘just catching my breath a bit.’ He looks unconvinced. If my face is as purple as I suspect it is, no wonder. He’s probably wondering whether to call an ambulance. But I can see the line ahead. I’ll be damned if I’m going to walk over it. I start the shuffling jog again and cross the line into the arms of Laura, Wendy and Karen.
Post-race euphoria is something. That I finished last in a field of two hundred and twenty-three is irrelevant. No need to think about the ninety year old. The others have done brilliantly. Laura’s beaten the ninety year old, finishing fifteen places ahead of me. Karen and Wendy were even faster. We are invincible. We are wonderwomen. We can do anything. Anything. We get party bags: a swimming cap, a water bottle, a muesli bar. We devour our muesli bars while waiting for Cate to finish her long-course event, then tumble into the car and head home.
We don’t wash our numbers off for days, wear them with pride. We are drunk on our triumph.
That night we reward ourselves with a naked, moonlit swim in the dam. I dare to leave Mikey and Dan for an hour and meet the others at Cate and Pete’s house, which is closest to the dam.
None of us have met Pete before. His dental surgery is down on the coast, so he’s not about town much. Cate introduces us and I try not to think of him denying her babies, or not defending her against his family.
He looks like a guy not to be messed with: tall and solid, like a rugby prop, but then they’re often the soft ones. Seeing his eyes on Cate now, I can sense the love he has for her. He’s lucky to have her and he knows it. I like him better for having spotted this.
With everyone assembled, we head for Cate’s car. Pete calls out that he’s a bit anxious about us swimming in the dark, that he’s worried if one of us gets into trouble, the others might not notice. He volunteers to come down with a spotlight to keep an eye on us. Cate cuffs him over the head with her towel.
Down by the dam, we strip off our tracksuits and, giggling like schoolgirls, tiptoe into the shallows. Our bodies gleam pale in the moonlight then are swallowed up by the inky water. We swim about two hundred metres offshore, the water parting like black satin before our even strokes. The sensation is exquisite. I don’t understand why water seems softer by night. Perhaps it is our nakedness, and the feel of the water sliding over our bare flesh.
Well offshore, we lie back, suspended in nothingness, staring up at the glittering sky. I realise I’m not afraid of the void any more. I’m no longer daunted by my smallness in the universe. Now I feel that I’m taking up just the right amount of space.
We’re floating in a circle, feet pointing inwards. If we touched feet and opened our legs, we’d look like a pentagram, which seems appropriate when you think of a pentagram’s associations with Venus. It’s a positively pagan thought.
The moon is enormous and low on a horizon cut by the silhouette of steep hills. Watching the night sky, floating with these four women, I feel utterly, blissfully at peace. Truth, love and loyalty bind us. No one expects anything of one another, no one judges. No one is unfaithful or abusive. It is a relationship based on nurture.
‘Maybe,’ I say, ‘life would be less complex if we were all lesbians.’
‘Never a truer word spoken,’ says Laura, and her voice sounds strange, foreign, drifting into the vastness. ‘What a pity it’s a matter of inclination not decision.’
We all sit up for a while, treading water.
‘Perhaps we could just take vows of celibacy instead,’ says Wendy. ‘Live like nuns.’
We all laugh and lie back again, floating, floating. Somebody says, ‘Not likely in your household.’
‘But it wouldn’t work,’ says Karen, her voice hollow in the infinite space above the water. ‘You miss having someone who thinks you’re more special, more beautiful, more valuable than anyone else in the world.’
Her words are sad, haunting, and I know she’s right. Besides, I’m not feeling at all nun-like right now, floating on my back, naked under the night sky, skin caressed by the gentle lapping of satin water. There’s something decidedly sexual about it.
At the pool the next morning we are triumphant, and cluster chatting in the changing room so long Sean yells out, ‘Are youse gonna spend the whole day in there?’
We emerge, shame-faced, but Sean, who’s obviously chuffed with his protégés, congratulates us and lets us do an easy work-out. Not that he’d ever admit it, but I think he’s gob-smacked and a little smug about our metamorphosis. It might be the camaraderie between us girls that’s driven us to leap the hurdles, but without Sean’s instruction, without his constant attention to detail – the angle of an elbow here, the tilt of a head there, forever demanding greater efficiency in our catch, our pull, our kick – we would never have progressed this far. We are grateful, and tell him so.
It seems to be a morning of all-round congratulations and back-patting. Doug and Lee insist on taking us for breakfast at Marc’s.
We’re all wet-haired, and dressed in our shorts, T-shirts and trainers. I feel like a member of an exclusive club: the Wet, Scruffy and Proud of It Club. Though Wendy manages not to do the scruffy of course. We order a decadent breakfast of coffee and cheesecake, and sit at a table on the edge of the deck overlooking the main street.
‘So,’ says Doug as soon as we’re settled, ‘how was it?’
‘Brilliant.’ Karen, radiant, is the first to respond. ‘I loved every minute.’
It strikes me that she’s looking better than I’ve seen her since Adam died. She’s tanned, and trim fro
m the constant exercise, with a hint of muscle definition in her arms and shoulders. I wonder if she and Doug would make a good couple. They’ve all ear-marked Doug for me, but Karen is so sweet and full of energy, and surely she’s the more needy. I’ve grown used to being on my own, learned to appreciate the independence.
Doug, seated directly opposite me at the table, leans forward and asks, ‘Which leg did you find the hardest?’
‘The run,’ I say, ‘because it was the last. But the swim was the scariest.’ I’m tempted to mention the old ladies, but bite my lip. I don’t want to appear totally hopeless in front of Lee and Doug.
‘There can be a sense of lost control in the swim,’ says Lee.
‘That’s it. Face down. Blind.’
‘No idea if someone’s about to bash you on the back of the head as they shoot past.’
‘Exactly. And for me that’s most of the field.’
He laughs, and I wonder how I could ever have thought Lee’s smile less attractive than Doug’s. His face lacks the perfect symmetry of Doug’s: his nose is a bit on the large side, but when he smiles his eyes melt away the hard lines of his face.
‘I thought the bike leg was the worst,’ says Wendy. ‘The swim disorients you, then you’re supposed to cycle in a straight line.’
Laura licks her spoon. ‘Bit like drink driving.’
‘Hard to miss the orange cones.’
‘Well I thought the whole thing was great,’ says Karen, and everyone beams at her. ‘When’s the next one?’
Music, no doubt, to Cate’s ears. ‘How soon can you be ready?’
‘You two are both still on a high,’ I tell them.
‘And we don’t want to come down.’
‘Exercise does that,’ says Doug. ‘Those endorphins linger on.’ He smiles at Karen with real compassion in his eyes, and I decide it’s impossible not to forgive him for mentioning our body fat or for discomposing me on a regular basis. Not only is he openly excited about our triathlon achievement, which must seem minor to him compared to the serious events he and Lee enter, but he is being kind to Karen. Perhaps Laura’s right: I’ve been judgemental. I’ve assumed that because Doug’s handsome he has to be conceited too. Maybe I’ve also subconsciously tagged him as an abandoner, given his two failed marriages, which I suppose is a little unfair, seeing as I have no idea of the circumstances.
The Swim Club Page 16