by Libby Page
“I’m not sure I can do it,” she says quietly. “I just write about missing cats and dogs for a local paper.”
She thinks about the first day of her journalism master’s program and how confidently the other students had spoken about their achievements—and how many achievements there had been. To them the world was something to conquer and they were determined to get from it what they wanted, what they deserved. They were each confident of their own name and its right to be printed: Kate never felt certain of hers. She remembers the classes where they would critique each other’s work. Comments and opinions flowed easily from her classmates but she struggled to take their words as a comment on something she had created outside of herself, rather than a personal attack. It was impossible for her to untangle what she wrote from who she was.
“Oh, no, you write about much more than that, Kate,” says Rosemary. She walks slowly to the bookshelf.
“Tell me this is just about cats and dogs,” she says, handing Kate a scrapbook. It has a plain red cover and Kate can see the edges of newspaper poking out from inside. She opens it and sees her words staring back at her: all her articles about the lido are carefully stuck on the pages. Her other articles are there, too—all the stories she has written since Phil gave her a chance and she started writing real stories for the paper. She imagines Rosemary cutting out each page from the newspaper; the slightly jagged edges of each page failing to hide the shaking of her hands. Jay’s photographs are there too. Kate looks at the pictures of Rosemary and the other swimmers smiling at her or staring defiantly into the camera.
“You can do this, Kate,” says Rosemary. “Tell our story.”
“Only if you help me,” replies Kate.
Jay clears his throat.
“I think I should leave you to it,” he says.
He looks at Kate for a moment as though he is going to say something more, but instead he nods at them both, realizing that the most important thing now is for Kate to write her article.
After the front door clicks shut quietly behind him, Rosemary and Kate sit next to each other on the sofa and Kate takes her laptop out of her bag, trying not to think about Jay and the kiss.
“I don’t want to just write about why I love the lido,” she says. “It should have your story in it, too—yours and George’s.” Rosemary nods and smiles, taking a quick glance at the photo of her and George on their wedding day, the two faces smiling at them.
As Rosemary talks, Kate writes and feels herself relaxing as she does so, as though she is drinking a hearty soup and getting stronger sip by sip. They drink wine and talk about the lido and George and the people they have met there. When the article is eventually finished Kate saves it as “The Lido” and emails it to Jay before she can change her mind.
CHAPTER 48
After Kate goes home, Rosemary chooses a record and puts it on the player. She rarely listens to music on her own but tonight she lets it fill her apartment. She imagines her neighbors pricking their ears up in surprise. Perhaps they will wonder if their old neighbor has died and a new young couple has moved in—it would seem the only reasonable explanation for the sound of the Beatles coming through their walls.
She places the sleeve of Please Please Me on the table, looking at the faces of the four young men staring down from the top of a flight of stairs.
George’s love of the Beatles had surprised him. He didn’t like the fuss around them—he didn’t like fusses in general. But he did like the Beatles. He bought the record on his way home from the fruit and vegetable shop one day, the album and a bag of carrots under his arm. They listened to it and danced together.
As she listens Rosemary remembers Brixton as it was then. She remembers the old red double-decker buses, nothing like the imitation ones on the streets today. She remembers Granville Arcade bursting with color and flavors: it was where she and George discovered sweet potatoes and okra for the first time. George didn’t think of the stallholders, like Ellis’s father, Ken, as competition—he talked with them like old friends, his kindred spirits who loved the earth and its bounty as much as he did. He was as excited as a puppy as he sniffed the skins of mangoes and examined the tough flesh of wrinkled pumpkins. As he discussed the vegetables she wandered among the other stalls looking at the bright West Indian fabrics that hung like folded sunshine. The newspaper headlines always surprised her at the time: she wondered if the journalists who wrote about “The West Indian Problem” had ever tasted a sweet potato.
It was around that time that George started to teach at the lido. On Sunday mornings he would head to the pool, a towel slung around his shoulders and a tune on his lips. Rosemary came with him and swam in the free lane and then sat on the decking, watching George show the children how to doggy paddle or front crawl or dive depending on their age. The younger ones would beg him to show them a swan dive. He would stand on the side of the pool and suddenly pretend to trip, turning it into an elegant dive as he fell. It made the children scream with laughter.
There was one girl, Molly, who was afraid of the water. Her mother wanted her to learn how to swim, so she sent her along with her older brother every Sunday. Her brother would jump into the pool and immediately start swimming a splashy front crawl, but Molly would stay by the steps, frowning seriously in her flowery swimsuit and gripping onto the ladder.
But one day she did make it into the water. George cheered and held on to her, keeping her afloat. Rosemary asked her after the lesson what had changed.
“I’m still a bit afraid,” said Molly, “but the swimmers looked like they were having fun. I didn’t want to be left out. So I told my afraid to go away.”
Rosemary wonders if Kate’s panic will ever stop chasing her, or if she will learn how to tell it to leave her alone. And what is Rosemary afraid of? She thinks of the lido and George breaking the surface with his body as he dove into the water. She is terrified of waking up one day and feeling lost—the places she and George loved having all gone for good.
CHAPTER 49
Seeing her own name, “Kate Matthews,” printed alongside her article in the Guardian feels surreal but thrilling. Kate looks at it again and again, rereading her words about the lido, its potential closure, and Rosemary and George’s love affair with it (and each other). Her phone rings twice, both early in the morning. Her mum and Erin have been out to buy copies as soon as their local shops opened.
“I’m still in my pajamas,” says Erin on the phone. “I explained to the shop assistant that I was buying five copies of the same paper because my talented sister has an article in it! I even showed her the page.”
That morning Rosemary greets Kate at the pool waving a copy. She has already asked Ahmed to pin a cutting to the noticeboard and has attached copies herself to the mirrors in the changing rooms. Rosemary’s pride, and the excited morning conversations with her mum and Erin, cheer Kate up, making her forget for a moment the argument with Phil and the fear around the closure of the lido. She can’t stop smiling.
Over the course of the week, Kate’s article and a heat wave bring more swimmers to the lido. Brixton swelters. On Saturday, several people tell Ahmed that they read about the lido in the paper and have made the trip there specially. He hands out leaflets to everyone who comes in. Geoff is interviewed on the local radio, and then on Radio 5 Live. Soon the “Save Brockwell Lido” Facebook page has hundreds of likes and the petition has been signed by nearly nine thousand people.
A queue tangles into the park.
“We’ve been waiting for hours,” moans a teenager, scuffing her shoes on the pavement and hugging her swimming bag across her chest.
“What would be the point in doing something people didn’t want to queue for?” says her father. “A long line shows you something must be good. You just need to be patient. Cheer up.”
Telling a teenager to cheer up is like telling a plant to water itself. It would if it could.
The teenager waits in the line, focusing all her energy on hating her
father. Later on when she is inside the gates she will have to focus on not having fun. Every now and then she dares a smile and then checks around her guiltily in case anyone spotted her mistake.
For many children, the lido is the only beach they know. They lie on towels stretched out on the concrete and imagine they are dozing on beds of sand. They don’t know that salt water doesn’t taste the same as chlorine.
“Don’t let them catch you,” says a little boy. “You’ll get eaten.”
Adults are sharks and children are fish. It’s so obvious that the children wonder why the adults look so confused as the children splash screaming away from them. A little girl squeals. She is littler than the boy and he suddenly remembers his position as Older Brother.
“It’s okay,” he says. “You’re just a fish but I’m a dolphin. Sharks don’t bother with dolphins because they don’t taste good and besides a dolphin is as big as a shark. If you ride on my back, you’ll be safe.”
Little Sister grabs tight around Older Brother’s neck and is the safest person in the pool.
Their mother watches and wonders at the fragile world her children live in. What does it look like to them? She holds her book open on the pool deck but can’t remember any of the story; she is too involved in peering over the top at her children playing in the water. Will they remember playing here when they are older? And will she be able to give them a childhood that they remember as having blue and sunny skies?
A man lies on the edge, his arm trailing into the water. Sunglasses balance on his face and he looks through them at the sepia sky. He drags his arm slowly through the water, feeling the ripples that his fingers create on the surface. He is dreaming of Jamaica. He has never been, but he remembers the stories that his grandfather told him when he was young. When the sky is particularly blue in Brixton he likes to look up and imagine he is looking at the same sky that guarded his grandfather when he was a little boy.
On the decking Rosemary leans back in a metal chair and tilts her head to the sky. The sun is warm on her face and chest and she lets a sigh escape her. Two birds chase each other and a plane waves its jet trail behind it like a streamer. She wonders where it is heading: perhaps it is carrying Frank and Jermaine off to their honeymoon. They have left a member of staff in charge of the bookshop and Sprout, the window filled with love stories this week.
Rosemary tries to imagine what it would be like to travel in an airplane. Would her ears pop as the plane took off, and would she feel terrified to leave the ground beneath her? What would her home look like from the air? Would she even be able to spot Brixton and the blue of the lido? She grips the arms of her chair and taps her bare feet on the decking to reassure herself of where she is. A splashing sound comes from the pool as a group of children jump in at the deep end.
“Will you pass me the sunscreen, please?” Rosemary asks, opening her eyes and turning to Kate, who is sitting in the chair next to her. Kate is wearing a swimsuit and has a towel around her waist, sitting with her legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles. A magazine is balanced on her lap. Her face is a poster of contentment.
For once, as well as swimming, they let themselves just relax by the pool. It is an unusually hot Sunday, and it seems as though all Brixton is here lounging by the water. Kate had suggested it to Rosemary, who remembered all the summers she had spent by the lido throughout her life and agreed. She had also been surprised by Kate’s suggestion of doing something so indulgent as lazing in the sun and thought it would be very good for Kate.
Rosemary takes the sunscreen bottle from Kate and rubs the lotion into her face and onto the tops of her shoulders. She loves the smell. In the summer she would rub it into George’s back, enjoying the feeling of his firm body under her hands. When she finished she would kiss his shoulder blades, tasting his sweat and the sunscreen and the tang of chlorine.
“Pass me one of those,” says Rosemary, pointing at the pile of magazines next to Kate’s chair. Kate looks at the pile and back at Rosemary.
“Really? They’re rubbish, I’m sorry,” she says.
“I need some rubbish,” says Rosemary, reaching for the magazine that Kate passes to her. “It’s too sunny for Shakespeare.”
She takes the magazine and sinks back into her chair, flicking open its glossy cover. The two women sit for a while until Rosemary breaks the silence by snorting loudly. Kate looks up at her.
“What is it?” she asks.
“Nothing, nothing, I’m sorry.”
But after a few minutes Rosemary snorts again, and this time her snort turns into laughter that she can’t control.
“What’s so funny?” asks Kate, rolling up her magazine and lightly batting the side of Rosemary’s chair with it.
“Is this what you young people care about now?” asks Rosemary, pointing at the magazine in her hands.
She picks it up and reads out loud: “Are you too self-obsessed? Turn to page thirty-four. Eight flawless foundation tips every woman MUST know. These three stars wore the exact same dress to a party. Stuff you think he wants in bed, but really doesn’t. The ‘superfood’ that is actually making you gain weight. Fear of missing out could be ruining your life. What your social media profile says about your love life . . .”
There is something about Rosemary’s serious voice reading out the words that sounds absurd.
“Stop it, stop it,” Kate says. “I get it.”
“Honestly, though,” says Rosemary once Kate has stopped laughing, “I’d give anything to have my good knees back, but I wouldn’t want to be your age again now.”
“I’m going to swim,” says Kate, standing up and dropping her magazine and towel onto the chair. “Can I get you anything?”
Rosemary shakes her head and waves Kate away. She places the magazine back on the pool decking and watches as Kate turns and slips into the water in the shallow end, ducking underwater before she begins her slow breaststroke.
As Rosemary watches Kate she wonders what keeps her up at night and what she worries about as she falls asleep. And what was she like at Kate’s age? She was already married, living in her flat with George. But she remembers the insecurities. It was rare that she got dressed up and went out, but each time a dinner party or the Christmas dinner with the other library staff came round she would stand in front of the mirror asking George to tell her if the dress was too short or too long, whether her makeup was okay, and if her hair looked fussy or too plain. He always smiled and told her she looked beautiful but she didn’t believe him. She would believe him now—she was beautiful. She hopes Kate realizes it before she is eighty-seven.
Rosemary closes her eyes, the sun pink behind them. She listens to the familiar sound of splashing and voices and a train on the other side of the park until the noises don’t sound like noise anymore.
When she wakes up Kate is climbing out of the pool.
“How was the water?” asks Rosemary, picking up the magazine again and trying to pretend she wasn’t sleeping. The magazine is upside down.
“Lovely, of course,” says Kate, smiling. They watch the water together for a moment.
“You’re burning on your shoulders, Rosemary. Let me help.”
Kate squeezes some sunscreen onto her hands before Rosemary can object. She stands behind Rosemary and places her hands on her shoulders, rubbing the cool lotion gently into the bare skin between the straps of her swimsuit where Rosemary cannot reach.
The feeling of Kate’s hands on her skin makes the hairs on Rosemary’s arms stand up on end. She feels warmth spreading up her neck and down her spine. Kate’s fingers rub gently and Rosemary blinks quickly, the feeling of hands on her bare skin making it hard to breathe. She closes her eyes. Droplets of cold water from Kate’s hair fall onto Rosemary’s shoulders and make her skin tingle. A warm breeze tickles her toes and the sun kisses her face. Her body feels like it is smiling, singing, and weeping all at once.
“I’m just going to put on a little more, I don’t want you to burn,” says
Kate, squeezing more sunscreen onto Rosemary’s shoulder blades and continuing her gentle massage.
Rosemary relaxes into her chair. She is finding it hard not to cry at the feeling of being touched on her bare skin.
“There we go,” says Kate, gently holding Rosemary’s shoulders with both hands for a moment before removing them.
“Thank you,” says Rosemary, taking a deep breath.
“I’m just going to change into some dry clothes, I’ll be back in a minute,” says Kate, picking up her bag and walking toward the changing room. As she walks away Rosemary looks up and notices a burned patch between her shoulder blades.
CHAPTER 50
When Kate wakes up it is already bright outside. She opens her window while she gets ready. She can hear two children playing in the next-door garden before school; she imagines them muddying their school uniforms while they play, or perhaps they are still in their pajamas. They giggle and shriek like drunk monkeys until their mother calls them in for breakfast. The sound makes her think of Jay, remembering his face lighting up when he first spoke to her about his nieces and nephews. They haven’t spoken about the kiss. Every now and then since it happened she has caught him looking at her in a way that makes her feel self-conscious, but not in a bad way. Like there is a bright, warm light shining on her. He hasn’t brought it up, so she hasn’t either. Instead they have carried on as before. She can’t decide whether she minds or not. She has thought about calling Erin to talk to her about Jay, but her own indecision stops her. She needs to work it out in her own head first.
A car backfires in the road, a garbage can lid clatters, and someone shouts, “Fuck you.”
Kate dresses quickly, putting her swimsuit on first. It now feels a normal way to start the day: pulling the tight fabric over her bare skin and scrunching up a pair of pants and a bra into her bag.
She pulls on a dress and a black cardigan, and then changes her mind and swaps it for a yellow one.