The Swim Club

by Anne De Lisle

  The pool gates are still locked when I arrive the next morning, so early I’ve beaten Sean and Cate. When I think of Sam with his needles and pethidine, I know I’m lucky that my addiction is as benign as the need to feel the calming flow of cool water across my skin.

  A car door slams, I hear footsteps on the path and Lee appears, towel and goggles in hand. ‘Locked out, are we?’

  ‘Not for long. My watch tells me we have five minutes to go.’

  He’s bright and breezy, like he’s been up for hours. Not at all like a crumpled, desperate addict hanging out for a fix. ‘You look like you’ve just woken up,’ he says.

  Waking up is not something that happens when you haven’t actually been to sleep. But I nod and smile, run a hand through my hair. ‘Not feeling very energetic this morning. The water will get me going for the day.’

  ‘It has that effect, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Mm.’ We sit on the steps together.

  ‘They’re late,’ I say, after several more peeks at my watch.

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, it does.’

  He casts me a penetrating look, hesitates, then says, ‘Charlie, would it be out of line for me to say that you look as though you’re about to burst into tears?’

  I nod. ‘Definitely out of line.’

  ‘Then I apologise.’

  I bite my lip. Falling apart in a public place is not something I intend to do. Especially not in front of Lee who, for all his kind concern, I’m barely acquainted with.

  There’s a crunching of tyres on the gravel of the car park, another car door slams, and I jump up. ‘Here she is.’

  ‘Morning folks!’ Cate sings out in habitual cheeriness, taking the steps two at a time. ‘Sorry I’ve kept you.’

  She unlocks the gates and suddenly everyone’s arriving. I dump my things in the changing room and fall into the water with a great sigh of relief. I find my rhythm, and with each stroke the tension eases out and resignation creeps in. It’s clear I’m going to have to come to terms with the fact that this has not been an isolated incident. Dealing with Alec and the boys’ reaction to him is my new norm and I’d better get used to it.

  CHAPTER 16

  THE GIRLS AND I train hard all summer, and improvement creeps upon us until we’re knocking seconds off the clock each week. It’s exhilarating, the more so because it’s a shared victory. We’re in this together, motivating one another, surging on the crest of a wave. There are no more calls from Alec and I dare to grow complacent. The boys don’t mention him and neither do I, having made a private decision to give it six months, then talk to them again.

  Towards the end of summer Cate takes us out on the road to test our running skills. We’re physically fit from the bike and the pool, but running, we discover, is a whole new ball game. Wendy, lean and lithe, is the best. Whereas Laura, Karen and I shuffle, Wendy’s style is something of a natural lope. She tries to slow down to run beside us, but our lack of speed doesn’t suit her stride and time and again she takes off ahead with Cate.

  Running, jogging, shuffling, call it what you will, Laura, Karen and I decide that pounding the bitumen is the most hateful activity known to humankind. It jars our knees and ankles, blisters our feet and bounces our breasts most painfully, especially when we’re pre-menstrual. We have grown increasingly aware that our monthly cycles are coinciding – which is a weird but proven phenomenon among women who spend so much time together. Cate has to dig deep into the reserves of her motivational skills when faced with the misery of the menstruating triplets.

  All too soon the winter months are upon us, the pool closes and it’s down to the dam for our swims. With the Mid-Coast Triathlon only six months away, we drag out our bikes and cycle twice a week. We also continue the despised program of jog-walk-jog twice a week. Mondays and Thursdays are our reward. We fall into the once feared waters of the Lochiel Dam with exhilaration, and gratitude that we are not astride our bikes or on our feet. Mostly we round the buoys, but now and again we swim over to the other side and back. And on Thursdays there is always the joy of the picnic.

  With fewer swimming days, I get stuck into my book. The writing of it has almost reached two years now which is appalling, and I know that if I don’t use this winter to sort Antonia and her adventures out once and for all I’ll be looking for another job.

  Every day I settle on one of the rattan chairs on the verandah, manuscript on my knee, and prop my feet up on the balustrading. Working through the story over and over has left me so familiar with every sentence I’ve written that it’s getting hard to look at the words objectively, and I just can’t seem to settle on the right ending. I’ve grown attached to Antonia, and want to make her future satisfying and secure. She’s been clever, resourceful, loyal and brave. She’s had her bodice ripped and her passions aroused. She’s lain to rest the ghosts of her past, and she’s succumbed to the allure of the Black Douglas. But clearly she’s not going to end up with him. The Black Douglas dies on the battlefield at Teba. I must have been mad to have steered her in his direction in the first place.

  Leaving Antonia to fend for herself all alone in the cold, dangerous world of fourteenth century Scotland is out of the question. Mm. There’s always her mother in Aberdeen. Safe haven there. But this is supposed to be a romance. I can imagine what my editor would have to say about a heroine who goes home to her mother. It’s a tricky one, but I know that I need to wrap it up, and soon.

  With each passing week the six months’ grace I’ve given myself with Alec and the boys shrinks. In the beginning it seemed like so much time, but now whenever I look at Dan and Mikey I’m aware of the rapidly approaching need to make them face the issue again. Hopelessly distracted by both my own and Antonia’s woes, I’m having a frustrating day, getting nowhere with my book, when the phone rings. I snatch it up, afraid, as is usual these days, that it will be Alec. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Charlie, hi.’

  ‘Hello Doug.’

  I haven’t seen Doug since the pool closed for winter. As for his vague interest in me, I’d assumed it was long gone, that he’d moved on to other, more fruitful pickings by now.

  ‘How have you been?’ he asks.

  ‘Pretty good, thanks.’ Steady, Charlie, not too chirpy. Don’t want to be asked out again, do you now. ‘Actually, struggling a bit with work, trying to wrap up a troublesome book.’

  ‘And I’m interrupting you.’

  ‘No, not at all. I mean yes, you are, but it’s welcome.’ Whoops, did that sound a bit keen? ‘That is, an interruption should help untangle my thoughts. You know how it can be when you get too close to a project.’

  ‘I do,’ he says, somehow interpreting my chaotic explanation. ‘That’s when you need to take a step back.’

  ‘Exactly. Swimming is the best for that.’

  ‘So you’ve been swimming through winter?’

  ‘We sure have. Down in the dam twice a week.’

  ‘I thought you might have. That’s why I’m ringing.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I was talking to Lee the other day and he’s keen to do a swim across the dam. We wondered if you ladies would like to meet up. Go on the same day.’

  ‘Sure,’ I say. ‘Make it a Thursday and we’ll even feed you.’

  ‘Great. How about this week?’

  ‘That’ll be fine. I’ll let the others know. We start early. Six o’clock.’

  ‘We’ll be there.’

  I ring Laura, suddenly concerned that I’ve let two outsiders muscle in on our precious Thursday swim and picnic without consulting the team.

  ‘They’ll be delighted,’ she says. ‘You know how much everyone’s hoping you’ll show Doug a bit of mercy one of these days.’

  ‘He was quite cute on the phone,’ I admit. ‘But the trouble is, for every time he’s cute, there’s a time when he’s a jerk of a show-off.’

  ‘Look, he’s a man, Charlie. You have to make allowances for strutting and bragging now and aga
in. Some men can’t help themselves.’

  ‘You’re right. I’m an impossible-to-please judgemental cow.’

  Laura laughs. ‘Only sometimes.’ And hangs up.

  Thursday dawns clear and cloudless. One of those amazing mornings when the dam is like black polished marble, so perfect you can see specks of dust and pollen floating on the surface. It’s a stunning sight, though the air is sharp and chill enough to sting our skin as we peel off our fleecy tracksuits. There’s no sign of Doug and Lee.

  ‘Guess they’ve chickened out,’ says Cate.

  ‘It is a bit crisp this morning,’ Wendy concedes. ‘Might be off-putting to the uninitiated.’

  ‘You’re too kind,’ says Laura. ‘They’re nothing but a fickle pair of wimps.’

  ‘They do compete in a lot of events that aren’t exactly wimpy,’ I feel bound to point out, though I’m not sure why I’m defending them. Maybe I haven’t quite shaken off my groupie feelings yet.

  ‘In warm tropical waters,’ says Karen. ‘It’s the cold they’re afraid of.’

  There’s general agreement to this as we wander down to the water’s edge, pulling on caps and goggles with a smug sense of being bolder than two strapping blokes who could cover the distance in half the time it’s going to take us. There’s something of an Amazonian feeling in the air. The appearance of two cars zipping into the car park is not, therefore, an altogether satisfying sight.

  Doors open then slam shut. Doug and Lee sprint down to join us. ‘Apologies,’ says Lee.

  ‘Misunderstanding,’ says Doug. ‘About cars.’

  Laura looks at her watch. ‘Only six minutes late. We can forgive six minutes.’

  If tension were visible, like lightning, it would be a bold, luminous spark arcing between Doug and Lee. They look as though they have just had a very heated argument. Testosterone, I muse, adds a complexity to life I can well do without. ‘We thought you’d chickened out,’ I say lightly.

  Doug catches my eye and smiles. ‘No chance.’

  Lee is silent, fury oozing from his every pore.

  I glance at Laura, then the other girls, sure they are all reaching the same conclusion as me: a four-kilometre swim through frigid waters should cool their blood and sort them out.

  We all pause at the shore line, bare feet in the toe-numbing dew, and take a moment to look out across the water. As Doug and Lee’s first dam swim, we want to give them time to appreciate the beauty of their surroundings, to taste the thrill of what they’re about to do. Assuming they are capable of appreciation in their present mood.

  The water laps at the edge: an almost repellent black mass. Yet I can’t wait to plunge in. Remembering some words of Karen’s, I say into the silence, ‘Up until now you’ve been running on a treadmill, you’re about to take a walk through virgin rainforest.’ For a while no one speaks. I hear the distant call of a whipbird and, closer by, the grating screech of a black cockatoo that’s ripping bark from a dead wattle tree. There’s no evidence of human habitation – only ourselves – and I know it’s a feeling I’ll never grow blasé about.

  Watching the two men enter the water brings a smile to all our faces. They’ve never encountered the squelching mud and clinging weed before, and remind me of my mother’s cat walking in the snow, lifting its feet, giving a little shake of the paw with every step.

  ‘Don’t swim too fast,’ Laura warns them, ‘or maybe swim a few circles, otherwise you’ll have a long wait for your cup of tea.’

  We set off. The cold is a shock as always, but I soon warm up and, embraced by the water, slip into a rhythm side by side with Laura. It takes us some forty minutes to reach the far side of the dam and we find the others waiting, which is our system: to stop and stretch and let the slow catch up with the fast before turning for home.

  I worry that Doug and Lee have been here for ages, and ask them if they’ve grown cold.

  ‘Too beautiful a morning to feel the cold,’ says Doug.

  ‘We’ve only just arrived,’ admits Lee. ‘We swam over in an arc instead of a straight line.’

  We loll in the shallows for five minutes, stretching our limbs, wallowing in the luxury of the moment, then turn and head for home.

  Divesting ourselves of wet togs is not quite the carefree affair of other days. There’s much shuffling beneath towels and crouching behind open car doors. I catch a gleam of amusement in Lee’s eye when we emerge. ‘I believe we’re cramping your style,’ he says.

  ‘A little,’ I admit, and hand him and Doug a mug for their tea. I’m thankful to sense a loosening up of the air, an easing of earlier antagonism. Lee and Doug have been partners for years, I can only assume they’re used to arguing now and again.

  Relaxing on the grass, cups of tea in hand, our conversation is not as free as usual for there are men among the Amazons, silencing our most private words. I wonder if Doug and Lee would feel vulnerable were they privy to some of the conversations that have taken place on the shores of this dam. I think we’ve covered everything from penis size to the inability of men to multi-task, to remember dates, to perform duties as simple as tying up their own shoe laces – the young ones, at least. I catch Laura’s eye, a twitch of her smile, and swear she’s thinking the same.

  Doug asks, ‘You do this every week? I’m impressed.’

  ‘You know how to live,’ adds Lee. ‘Too many people never take the time to do anything like this.’

  ‘It wasn’t always easy,’ Karen admits. ‘There were hurdles to cross.’

  ‘You had the biggest hurdles,’ I tell her. ‘You put the rest of us to shame with the height of your leaps.’

  ‘We all had them,’ she says. ‘Of course there was Adam – big one for me – but there was also the discipline of getting up every morning. Not to mention enduring swimming lessons with Sean.’

  ‘And the cold,’ says Wendy with a shudder.

  ‘Fear of drowning.’

  ‘Facing Sharon.’

  Doug looks up at this. ‘Who’s Sharon?’

  I avert my eyes and stir my tea, wishing I’d kept my mouth shut. ‘Long story,’ I say.

  ‘Fear of eels,’ says Laura, getting us back on track.

  ‘And the overflow,’ adds Wendy.

  ‘Cycling.’

  ‘Dogs.’

  ‘Running.’

  ‘Finish lines,’ says Laura, giving me a nudge.

  ‘But the rewards have been abundant,’ says Karen.

  Lee closes his hand over a second scone. ‘Tell us about the rewards.’

  ‘Friendship.’

  ‘Undreamed-of energy.’ Wendy says this with a wicked gleam in her eyes.

  ‘Confidence. Self-esteem.’

  ‘Invincibility.’

  ‘Like Amazons,’ adds Karen.

  There’s a lull, smiles from Lee and Doug. Clearly they don’t know that Amazons only used men as sperm donors.

  ‘Food,’ I say before anyone can tell them. ‘Wendy’s homemade croissants. Though all food tastes better after a swim.’

  Doug smiles at me. ‘You enjoy your food, don’t you, Charlie.’

  ‘We all do,’ says Karen, selecting another pain au chocolat. ‘It’s one of life’s great pleasures.’

  ‘And what is life about,’ says Doug, ‘if not for the seeking of pleasure?’

  It’s a bit surreal to watch Doug and Lee lolling on the grass, mugs of tea in hand, munching on breakfast as we have done weekly for a couple of seasons now: a pair of powerful, long-limbed cuckoos in our nest. But it’s something of a pleasure too, because emerging in me there’s a sense – embryonic, but impossible to ignore – of feeling not at all like a mother or an unwanted wife, but a woman. A mature woman in control of her destiny, which is a feeling I never achieved when Alec was in my life. Perhaps I should be grateful that he went. Perhaps if he’d stayed around, I’d never have come of age.

  When the pool reopens in spring, we are straight into five days a week of training. We’re also still doing two sessions on the bike an
d one reluctant, foot-dragging effort at a run. It’s a shock to the system after only two weekly swims through winter, but Cate reminds us that the heaviness in our limbs will soon lift.

  One morning, after our swim, she wanders into the changing room. There is no sign of her habitual uplifting grin.

  ‘I’m having a surprise fiftieth birthday party for Pete,’ she tells us. ‘I hope you’ll all come.’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘It’s not till the end of December. Pete was a New Year’s Eve baby.’

  How could plans for a party have brought such a long face? Watching Cate carefully, I say, ‘I remember last summer you told us you might do that.’

  Wendy bends down to pick up her shorts. ‘Do you need help with the preparations? We could all bring plates of food so you wouldn’t have too much to hide from him.’

  ‘We could cool the grog in our own fridges,’ suggests Karen, ‘and bring it along in eskies, so Pete wouldn’t get suspicious.’

  ‘Thanks girls,’ she says, ‘but those are the least of my problems.’

  Obviously there’s been no progress with the baby issue.

  ‘Sometimes,’ she says as she strips off to prepare for her own swim, ‘it’s hard to feel like throwing Pete a party. I finally had that big talk to him.’

  ‘And what happened?’ asks Laura gently.

  ‘He says he feels for me, but that he’s already had his family and he doesn’t want a second one.’

  ‘That’s incredibly selfish!’ says Karen. ‘Is this only about him? What about you? You have just as much right to a family as he did his first one.’

  ‘He thinks it will upset Leo and Sarah too much to see him start a second family.’

  ‘That’s doubly selfish,’ I say. ‘He’s not only putting his own desires before yours, but he’s putting his children’s before yours too.’

  ‘Slamming you down to the bottom of the pecking order.’

  ‘Do you think he genuinely doesn’t want a baby, or has he had a little encouragement from The Sister?’ asks Laura.