by Libby Page
As she makes her way to the ladder she watches the other swimmers: a pool full of arms breaking the surface. Only the breaststrokers have faces that you can recognize.
Lowering herself down the ladder Rosemary feels like a tree in the wind. Her branches creak. She lets go and is taken by the water, letting its coldness surround her and getting used to the temperature before kicking smoothly off the side. She begins her steady swim into the mist. She can’t see the deep end but knows that if she keeps kicking she will eventually reach it. Rosemary is eighty-six but in the water she is ageless.
Rosemary has lived in Brixton all her life. Even during the war she was one of the few children who stayed behind. Apart from times when the water was being siphoned by the fire brigade to put out local fires, the lido remained open, and she swam whenever she could. At first she felt guilty for being in the water while her father and her friends’ fathers were fighting. There were close calls, too, like when the bombs fell at night on the park just beyond the lido and on Dulwich Road that ran alongside it. She remembers visiting the park the day after the hit and seeing families stumbling bleary-eyed among the rubble trying to salvage any possessions, and hearing the cries of a woman who’d lost her sister to the blast, some neighbors comforting her, others turning their heads the other way and allowing privacy for her grief.
But despite it all, the lido was there. And as the months passed it became impossible to remain somber all the time—it was like sitting for too long in her Sunday best. Eventually she just had to fidget and untuck her blouse and scuff her shoes and be a teenager again. During those years the lido was quiet; Brixton’s children were mainly evacuated outside the city to the safety of the countryside, and with the men away and women working, lifeguards were hard to come by. Rosemary often had the cool blue water to herself.
Over the wall of the lido she hears a bus pulling away from a bus stop. There is train noise, too, a pause at Herne Hill before chugging round the corner to Loughborough Junction. Rosemary’s life has been built inside the walls of these names. There are all the hills: Tulse Hill, Brixton Hill, Streatham Hill, Herne Hill. Then the “villages”: Dulwich, West Noorwood, Tooting. The names taste as familiar as toothpaste in her mouth. She knows the bus numbers by their shape and the road names by their sounds—App-ach, Strad-ella, Dal-keith, Holling-bourne, Tal-ma.
She used to know all the shop fronts, too, but they are becoming harder to remember. Sometimes she thinks someone is playing tricks on her. Every time somewhere she knew gets replaced with something she doesn’t she has to scratch the old place off the map inside her head and replace it with the new estate agents or coffee shop. It is hard to keep track, but she tries. If she doesn’t know these places, she would be lost in a new city that is no longer hers. She wishes that there were some kind of recognition for all this information she has amassed in her life. If she emptied her mind of all the stored numbers and names and streets, then perhaps she could learn something useful, like a new language or how to knit. Knitting could certainly be useful in the winter.
Rosemary swims a steady breaststroke, dipping her head in and out of the water and letting her ears fill with pool. She can see her fingers ahead of her wrinkling in the water, although she can’t tell how much is the water and how much is just her age. Her wrinkles always surprise her. Young girls don’t have wrinkles. She is a young girl swimming in the morning under the watchful gaze of the big old clock and the lifeguard who twiddles his whistle in his hand. She is swimming before heading to her job in the library—she will have to get changed quickly if she is to make it on time. Her hair will drip behind her as she makes her way up and down the shelves of books.
“Have you swum the Channel yet, Rosy?” George will say when she gets home in the evening.
“Still working on it.”
Now, though, the library is closed and George isn’t here. Rosemary stops in the shallow end and leans against the wall before walking slowly to the ladder. She imagines this lido as a private, residents-only gym, and although she is used to the cold water, a shiver runs through her. When she climbs out she is painfully aware of the existence of her knees. She never noticed that she had knees when she was young; like her free bus card, it is a part of her life now that she resents. She still always pays for her bus ticket, on principle.
CHAPTER 4
Kate’s walk home from work takes her through the housing estates that wrap around the main street. Every now and then as she walks past flats and down residential streets she glances up from the ground and into the windows of flats, imagining the stories inside the buildings.
A family have dinner in their front room, the glow from the television flashing on their faces. Two floors above, a young girl practices on a secondhand violin, the surprising sound of Bach drifting from the high-rise.
One floor below the violinist, a couple passes a joint between them on the balcony. They are fully dressed but their bare feet are almost touching. The sweet smell is the first thing that the woman in the flat next door notices when she arrives home from work. She opens the balcony door, throws her coat on the sofa, and lies down on top of it, hands crossed over her stomach, breathing deeply.
In a ground-floor flat, an elderly couple finish eating dinner, holding hands beneath the table. Both look out the window at a fox making its way across the communal garden.
As Kate walks she imagines that somewhere in the city, someone like her sits in their room alone and eats peanut butter from the jar. She wonders if any of these strangers she passes would understand that some days she doesn’t want to get up at all and that she has forgotten what it feels like to be happy.
Of course, she won’t admit to anyone that she is lonely. You’re not supposed to be lonely in your twenties. Your twenties are for making friends for life and having inappropriate boyfriends and reckless holidays where you drink shots off each other’s stomachs, having the Best Time. On Facebook it’s as though all the life has been served up to other people having the time of their lives and there are no scraps left for her. Or at least that’s how it feels. She doesn’t tell anyone that often she feels like a matted teddy bear you might see forgotten under a bench on the underground. She just wants someone to pick her up and take her home.
Kate rents a house with four other people—two students and two who do something but she’s not quite sure what. They come in at different times and shut their bedroom doors, occasionally passing on the way to the (one) bathroom. They are people that she has heard grunting in the heat of sex (thin walls) and whose hairs she has untangled from the shower plug, but she doesn’t know where they all came from before arriving here in this house, or what their favorite films are. She doesn’t really know them at all.
And they certainly don’t know her. But what is there to know really? Siblings: yes, one older sister, Erin. Parents: a mother, a stepfather, and a father who lives in Antigua with his girlfriend and who only phones on special occasions (birthdays, Christmas, and graduations).
“Happy birthday, K.”
“Thanks, Dad. Still sunny there?”
“You bet. Still rainy there?”
“You bet.”
“I miss you.”
“Okay. Bye, Dad.”
“Bye, Kate.”
Kate and Erin grew up in the Bristol suburbs with their mum and stepdad, Brian. Their mum worked at a creative agency; she dressed in a riot of colors and liked to tell jokes. Brian was always much quieter. He was an academic specializing in a specific time frame in medieval history that Kate could never quite remember. He wore heavy wool sweaters and round glasses that he was very amused to hear had become popular among her school friends. Brian had moved in when Kate was seven and she was too young to question anything: her life then was something that happened to her. Erin, six years older, had been more wary, like a cat giving a visitor a wide berth and dashing under the sofa at any sudden movement. But over time the four of them had settled into the comfortable ease of family. They had thei
r established roles and played them well: Kate’s mother taking them to new galleries and asking them questions about what they thought of the pictures, how they made them feel; Brian reading aloud from the newspaper, offering to help with homework, and occasionally slipping Erin some money so she could go out with her friends. Kate and Erin had their roles, too: Kate the shy younger sister with her head in a book, Erin more aloof, bossing Kate about and handing her affection occasionally like biscuits given to a well-behaved dog. On Kate’s first day at secondary school her older sister showed her how to adjust her uniform just the right way so she wouldn’t display “nerd” or “mischief” in the length of her skirt or the number of stripes on her tie.
Kate stayed in Bristol for university because it was cheaper to live at home, but also because she didn’t feel ready to leave. After her degree she left for London to do a master’s in journalism and then found a job at a local paper in Brixton.
Kate assumed she would meet lots of people when she moved to London. But she has been here for over two years and it still hasn’t happened. All she has are housemates who leave dishes to pile up like a game of Jenga in the kitchen and think black mold is the perfect decoration for a bathroom.
Her friends in Bristol never wanted to come to London—too expensive and they didn’t see the point. They were right about it being expensive, but Kate couldn’t afford to keep visiting Bristol. About a year ago she’d stopped. Not one of her friends seemed to notice. She hasn’t spoken to them since.
Kate’s loneliness sometimes feels like indigestion; at other times it is a dull ache at the back of her eyes. When she must take the tube, she tentatively flicks through the London magazine Time Out, imagining the things that she could be doing—perhaps going speed dating in Shoreditch, or dancing at a silent disco on the top of a building in the city, or learning how to crochet an ironic pair of underpants at a cocktail bar that is also a retro events venue. But then her anxieties put her back in her place and she remembers that speed dating is just repeating your name and occupation to thirty strangers, that silent discos are less fun on your own, and that ironic underpants are less ironic when it’s only you laughing at them.
So instead after work each evening she heads straight home, unless the fridge is completely empty; then she’ll make a quick stop at the local supermarket, picking her favorite prepackaged meal and whatever wine is on sale. She comes home, waits three minutes for her food to heat up in the microwave, and then shuts her bedroom door.
Her bedroom is not big, but it is large enough for a double bed and a small desk. She doesn’t have bookshelves, so piles of books are balanced precariously against one of the walls. On her desk there is a laptop and a scrawny potted plant that her mum bought her when she moved in. “Bee happy in your new home,” reads the tag still attached to the flowerpot, on a card shaped like a bee.
Once inside she opens the wine and sits on her bed watching documentaries with names like The Boy Who Wants to Cut Off His Arm. And she cries, because weirdly she knows exactly what it feels like to want to crawl out of your own body, or failing that, to chop it off and float away. Or maybe that’s just the wine. Each night she drinks one glass too many, because it makes her head feel foggy, which is better than being conscious of fear sitting on her shoulder and the cloud above her head.
She stays up late, staring into the glow of her laptop screen, hoping to find some comfort there, to feel a connection to people whose faces are also lit up by their computers. When she grows too tired of searching, she closes the laptop and puts it next to her bed. Sometimes she keeps on crying, her pillow growing wet around her face. She tries to stay quiet so her roommates don’t hear, but sometimes she finds herself gasping for air as though she is drowning. When she cries loudly like that, she wonders whether part of her does want someone to hear: to knock on her door and scoop her up and tell her it will be okay. But no one ever does. Once she is empty of tears she lies in the dark with her eyes wide open, feeling completely numb. Eventually she falls asleep.
CHAPTER 5
The swimming club children are fearless. Rosemary watches them wriggling like tadpoles up and down the lanes. They are young enough to be completely unselfconscious as they stand on the edge waiting to dive in. Jostling each other, they pull their brightly colored swimming caps tighter over their heads.
As she watches from the café she spots the natural athletes: the ones with bodies that are too long for them and torsos that taper to look the shape of ice cream cones. Some of the children are smaller and have little tummies that make hills of their swimsuits, but their bravery still surprises her when they jump into the water. When the instructor blows his whistle, they dive one after the other like knocked-over bottles, ever trusting in the water and in the fact their bodies will know what to do once submerged. Rosemary wishes she had that confidence in her body—she can’t always rely on it doing what she tells it to.
“Are you Rosemary?”
Rosemary turns away from the pool and looks up at the small young woman standing next to her. She is holding a notebook and pile of papers. Her clothes, in various shades of gray and black, look like they have fallen on her, and her hair is tied back in a messy ponytail.
“I hope you don’t mind me joining you?” asks the young woman. “I was told at reception that you would be a good person to speak to about the lido?”
“I am Rosemary, yes. What do you want to know about the lido?”
“I’m Kate Matthews; I work for the local paper. We’re interested in writing about the potential closure of the pool. Did you make this?”
She holds up the “Save our lido” leaflet.
Rosemary blushes. She feels embarrassed about the handwriting and the photocopying—she can see now that it looks amateurish.
“I did. But I’m not sure if I can help you.”
There is a scraping of metal on stone as Kate pulls out a chair and sits down. She follows Rosemary’s gaze into the pool.
“They’re so cute,” says Kate. “And good too.” Together they turn to watch the children following the instructor shouting to “pull” or “kick harder.” Despite being so small they are quick as fish.
“I wanted to help.” Rosemary watches the pool for a moment, the water white and frothing with busy feet and arms that are eager to please. The class is coming to the end of one set of lengths and the fastest children are already pulling themselves out and hopping up and down on the side. The last swimmers continue to the end, kicking even harder than their faster classmates.
“I couldn’t just sit here and do nothing. But I hear that Paradise Living is offering a lot of money, and that the council just can’t afford to say no.”
Rosemary pauses, looking across at the water. The sun catches the surface and shines on the children as they swim eagerly up and down.
“Paradise Living.” Rosemary laughs. “They clearly don’t know anything about paradise.”
“I’ve heard about them,” says Kate. “Our paper has written about them before—some swish new high-rises they’ve built.”
Kate pauses.
“I’d like to interview you, Rosemary,” she says.
“What do you want to interview me for?” replies Rosemary.
“It’s for the paper. I think it would be nice to have a profile of you alongside the news story. It would make a great addition to the news piece to have a human story, too—to hear from someone who’s been coming here for years about what the lido means to them. I was told by the manager that you are the lido’s most loyal swimmer.”
Rosemary smiles, thinking about Geoff, the lido manager whom she has come to know well. She then looks at Kate, wondering whether to trust her. She is naturally wary of reporters, although she has never actually spoken to one before. This young woman doesn’t look like how Rosemary imagined a journalist to look. She looks like a child.
“How long have you been coming to the lido?” Kate asks gently.
“Oh, forever.”
Rosemary can’t remember a time when the lido wasn’t in her life—it is as much a part of her daily routine as the cup of tea she drinks on her balcony.
“Do you swim?” Rosemary asks Kate.
“Oh no, I don’t really, I mean I . . .” Kate’s voice trails off and she shrinks farther into her chair. At the deep end a man does a perfect swan dive into the water. Rosemary watches Kate anxiously watching the man. Her scruffy ponytail looks in need of a wash, and there are dark circles under her eyes. She sits low in her chair, her shoulders slightly sloped forward as though they are trying to protect the rest of her body from something. Rosemary’s previous wariness breaks like the surface of the water beneath the diver’s splash.
“I’ll do the interview if you go for a swim,” Rosemary says.
Kate looks startled, her brown eyes darting uncertainly. For a moment she is silent, but eventually she nods.
“Okay,” she says slowly. “When would work for you for the interview then?”
“No,” replies Rosemary. “Swim first—then we’ll sort a date. Here’s my email address. Write to me once you’ve been for a swim.” Then she adds, “And don’t worry. It’s like riding a bike. You don’t forget how to do it.”
As Rosemary heads back to her flat after saying goodbye to Kate she wonders why she forced the poor woman into the agreement. But there was something about Kate that made Rosemary think she was in great need of a swim.
CHAPTER 6
At the lido a pregnant woman gets changed. Her body amazes her. She is a beach ball, a taut balloon, a planet, a world. She pulls the tankini over her bump. Only it isn’t a bump anymore—it is a mountain. She can feel him kicking in the core of her earth.