by Libby Page
As she steps out of the front door she is greeted by a blue sky that promises a good day. The door of the neighboring house opens and two children in too-big school uniforms waddle out like ducklings, followed by their mother who is carrying two sports bags and has a book bag slung over her shoulder. She nods at Kate, who nods back and smiles.
“We like yellow,” says the older child, pointing at Kate’s cardigan. Kate suddenly realizes that apart from school uniforms and funerals you very rarely see children wearing black, and she wonders why she ever wears it herself. Black clothes never bring compliments from small children. She thinks about the outfits that she used to wear when her mother first started letting her choose her clothes in the morning: tartan leggings and floral T-shirts, bright pink shorts and a lime green jumper, and her frog wellies even in the summer. It took her a long time to realize that her clothes didn’t add up to something that made sense, or that it was even possible for clothes to have a right answer like a complicated math formula.
When Erin had started college she no longer had a school uniform and her morning routine suddenly became a lot longer and more complicated. Kate could sense the stress coming under Erin’s door like the sliver of light she usually checked for when she went to bed at night.
“Mum, where’s that shirt?” Erin would shout down the stairs, wearing her jeans and bra and clutching a towel to her chest.
“It was on your floor so I washed it. It’s still drying.”
“But I need to wear it!”
“Can’t you just wear another one?”
“No, because then I’d have to change my jeans and my shoes.”
Sometimes Kate would see Erin sitting at her desk in the morning drying a piece of clothing with a hair dryer.
“Why is your top wet, Erin?” Kate would ask at the breakfast table.
“It’s not wet, it’s nearly dry. And it’s Mum’s fault.”
“Can’t you just wear another one?”
“Oh, don’t you start.”
The memory makes Kate smile. Erin is still just as concerned with her clothes, but she has relaxed a lot too. Since they spoke at the protest Kate and Erin have been texting each other most days. Kate called Erin the night before to wish her luck at the fertility clinic and Erin asked if there had been any progress with the campaign. It feels good to be speaking more honestly with her—as though Kate has finally found a friend who was always there but whom she just never noticed before.
Kate locks the front door and starts her walk to the lido. A fox crosses the road in front of her and gives her a sheepish glance, making her think of someone heading home after a night out passing people on their way to work. The bins need collecting and the air smells of rubbish. A purple buddleia blooms outside one of the houses on her street, radiating a heavenly smell. As Kate passes she thinks that this is what her city is: the sweet and sour next to each other.
The lido is empty. The morning sun makes the pool’s surface look like a sheet of tinfoil. A fleece is flung over the back of the empty lifeguard’s chair.
As Kate approaches the reception desk she wonders if Ahmed passed his exams. He won’t know for another few months, and she remembers the painful wait after she did her A-levels. The summer was heavy with anticipation and her friends drifted apart, not wanting to see one another and be reminded of their own worries. When August finally came round she was too nervous to open the brown envelope herself. Erin did it in the end. She ripped the top of the envelope like she was a child tearing the paper off a Christmas present, but she was surprisingly gentle when she told Kate the results (lower than she’d hoped, but good enough to get into university). Kate wonders how Ahmed will approach that brown envelope. Will he open it himself? Will he do it straightaway or nurse the envelope for a while before tentatively peeling at the corner, his bedroom door firmly closed and his family trying to hide the sound of their breathing on the other side?
She wants to tell him that she knows how he feels but he is not at the reception desk. Neither are any of his colleagues. The desk is empty apart from a rubber duck sitting by the till. It’s been there since the protest photoshoot but it is the first time that Kate has noticed it. With the absence of people it is as though the rubber duck is the guard of the lido. Kate nearly asks it where everyone is, before remembering that it is made of plastic.
That’s when she spots movement in the café and hears voices inside. The last time she was in there was for Frank and Jermaine’s wedding. She thinks about the paper flowers and the bow on Sprout’s collar as she pushes open the door.
Sprout bounds out of Kate’s thoughts and across the room to her, brushing white fur against her legs.
“Hello, lovely,” says Kate, taking the dog’s silky ears in her hands and stroking them. Sprout’s tail thumps heavily against her calves. Kate senses that people are watching her before she sees them. She looks up.
Everyone’s clustered around the café tables, some sitting and some standing or leaning against the coffee bar: Frank and Jermaine (just back from their honeymoon), Hope, Ellis, Jake, Ahmed, Geoff, and the rest of the lido and café staff as well as the other faces that frequent the lido like the weather. The teenage boy with his jumper zipped high up to his chin; the new mother with the sleeping baby resting on her chest, its mouth slightly open and a patch of dribble on its mother’s shirt. The backstroker and the yoga swimmer, the woman who wears her nudity like a ball gown in the changing room, the friends who share shower gel and gossip, the man who wears the wetsuit and the snorkel. And in the middle of them all is Rosemary.
“I wondered when you’d get here,” she says. Her hands are wrapped around an empty mug of tea. Ellis has his hand on the back of her chair.
“What’s happened?” asks Kate, standing up and letting Sprout go. The dog weaves between Frank’s legs and lies down on his feet.
“It’s over,” says Rosemary. “They’ve won.”
“What do you mean?” asks Kate.
“We have four weeks,” Rosemary says, too loudly. Her voice is shaking. “Four weeks.” She almost shouts her last words and a baby starts crying. The young mother stands up, holding her child closer to her chest and swaying her gently. Kate has never heard Rosemary shout before and is shocked by it.
“I’m sorry,” Rosemary says quietly. The mother shakes her head and smiles kindly. She bounces her baby as she walks, making “shh” noises. She reaches the other side of the café and pushes open the door and the sun splashes her in gold as she paces alongside the pool. For a moment Kate imagines that everything is fine. The lido is still there, looking just as beautiful as ever. Perhaps there has been a mistake, and there is still something they can do.
“Who told you?” Kate asks Rosemary, turning back to face her. She meets her eyes and barely recognizes them, they are so full of anger and sadness.
“I got a letter from the council,” Rosemary says. “They sent one here, of course, but they sent one to my flat too. I wish they hadn’t done that.”
Kate meets Rosemary’s eyes.
“I know I should have called you,” says Rosemary, “but I knew I would see you here for your morning swim. I didn’t want to tell you on the phone.”
Rosemary looks down at her feet.
“They’re fucking bastards,” says Ellis, turning away from the group and leaning against the coffee bar.
“What are we going to do?” says Kate.
“Nothing,” says Rosemary. “It’s over.”
“It can’t be over,” says Kate. She looks around the room at the faces that are written with disappointment. As she watches them the Panic creeps out of its box inside her.
“I read the letter too,” says Jermaine. “And I’m afraid I think this time it really is. The council members have decided to accept the offer from Paradise Living. They say they tried to find alternatives, but in the end there were none. The lido has four weeks left and then it will close. And then as soon as the sale is completed, Paradise Living will be the leg
al owners. From then, they can do what they like with it. Which we all know means closing it to the public, turning it into a private club for their tenants. Filling in the pool and turning it into tennis courts.”
Kate’s stomach churns. The cloud that she has managed to chase away for so long comes to rest above her head and a numbness flows through her. She hates herself for promising to help, for caring, for failing.
No one knows what to say so they say nothing, looking down or out at the lido. Kate watches Rosemary in the middle of them all, her face pale and her eyes turned to the table. After a while Rosemary starts to speak again, her voice softer now and shaking.
“I just wanted to say . . .” Her voice wobbles and she coughs quietly and then starts again.
“I just wanted to say thank you.”
She looks up at Kate, fixing her with her bright blue eyes, shiny with tears. Looking at her, Kate’s eyes fill too. She brings a hand to her face. Then Rosemary turns and looks at the others, too, the sad huddle of misfit friends who came together to try to save their lido.
“Thank you for trying,” says Rosemary. “It means a lot to me that you cared that much. And I know it would mean a lot to George too.”
Kate notices Rosemary’s voice catch as she says his name, and it makes her eyes swim with tears again. Kate pictures the photograph of Rosemary and George on their wedding day that she saw in Rosemary’s flat, and George’s black recipe book that now stands proudly on her shelf. She remembers the first image she saw of the lido on the front of the flyer Rosemary made: an image of a man diving into the still water.
The lido started as part of Kate’s job, but it has become so much more than that. She has learned to swim again, but more than that, she has remembered how to live. Helping Rosemary Peterson save Brockwell Lido was a way of proving something to herself. But now that is all over. She has failed.
“We did our best,” Rosemary continues, “and I really appreciate that. But sometimes our best is just not good enough.”
Kate listens to Rosemary and feels something inside her break.
Around her, the others try their best to offer comfort. Hope moves her chair closer to Rosemary and rests her head on her shoulder, but Rosemary doesn’t move—it is as though she is frozen in her chair, facing out and watching the water.
Eventually the group reluctantly loosens: the swimmers have to go to work or school or home. They leave the café quietly. Frank says a sad goodbye then links arms with Jermaine, calling Sprout to follow them. Ellis, Jake, and Hope do the same, moving close to Rosemary and trying to find some soothing words, before disappearing quietly. Rosemary ignores them all, unable to meet their eyes. Kate doesn’t want to leave Rosemary alone but is late for work.
“Please,” says Kate, fighting back tears as she looks at Rosemary, “can I at least walk you home?”
Rosemary shakes her head.
“I just want to be on my own,” she says.
So Kate steps out into the park. The day doesn’t look so beautiful anymore. She walks with her head down.
Once she is alone Rosemary sits at the table looking out at the lido. She watches the light on the water and the clock that kept on ticking even after time stopped. The lifeguard goes back to his spot and the pool gradually fills with people. In the late morning a school group arrives, the children giggling as they fill the colorful lockers with their schoolbags and scramble into the water, energetic because of the prospect of the school holidays starting next week. A few use the ladder but most jump, sending droplets exploding into the air like fountains. The schoolteachers watch from the side, arms heavy with towels and trouser legs wet from the splashing. For now the lido is just the way it has always been. The way Rosemary thought it would always be.
As she sits, she tries to remember it all. The day it opened, the way it felt to swim there during the war, and then George and everything that happened after they found each other in the park on the edges of a glowing bonfire.
The café gets busy around lunchtime, full of prams and groups of women who ask about the vegan brunch, and elderly couples who sit and read the papers. But the waiters don’t ask Rosemary to move, instead they leave her at her table with her empty mug and carry on their work around her, seating groups and asking others to wait on the decking. She barely notices anything around her; she is too lost in the past. As she watches the pool she sees herself scrambling over the lido wall at night with George; remembers him proposing in his swimming trunks; pictures him jumping into the water as he taught swimming classes on Sunday mornings, her watching him proudly from the side.
When the afternoon turns into evening the café staff sweep the floor and bring in the chairs from the deck, stacking them upside down on tables. The barista takes the coffee machine apart and cleans it, carefully wiping the shiny metal pieces. Finally Rosemary stands up slowly, stretching her stiff back and wincing at the pain in her knees, before making the short walk to her flat. It might be where she lives, she thinks as she walks, but her home is behind those brick walls and in that perfect rectangle of blue water.
As Kate returns home from work and lies on her bed, Rosemary arrives back in her flat, turning the key in the lock and quietly shutting the door behind her. She drops her keys on the chair and heads to her bedroom, kicks off her shoes, and climbs into bed. On two sides of Brixton the two women stare at their ceilings and cry.
“I’m sorry, George,” says Rosemary as she cries.
“I’m sorry, Rosemary,” says Kate.
CHAPTER 51
After hearing the news, Kate imagined she might find it too painful to keep swimming at the lido. But when it comes to it, her morning swims are the only thing that get her out of bed. At the Brixton Chronicle she avoids eye contact with Phil, working quietly on her outstanding stories and going back to some pet announcements, too, in order to avoid further conversation with him about her work. She settles back into the routine she knows well, typing at her computer and fixing her eyes on the screen. Occasionally she looks up and catches Jay watching her and she gets the sense that he is looking right inside her and can see exactly how she feels. She wonders if she should talk to him, but thinking he can see her pain is too much to bear.
In the lido’s final four weeks, it is a lifeline. And Kate holds on to it. In the water she pretends that nothing has changed. How can things be bad when the water is so blue and the sun is now in the full swing of summer? As she swims her wonky but peaceful breaststroke it is as though she is protected, sheltered from the future. She knows the lido will close. But when she swims there is nothing but the feeling of the cold water around her and the hot sun above.
It is not just Kate who frequents the lido throughout July—its final month. It’s as if all of Brixton’s swimmers have come to say goodbye.
One morning she spots Frank in the water, and the next day there is Jermaine. They nod at each other as they swim past. Another day Kate bumps into Hope, who has brought her granddaughter, Aiesha. She spots Hope on the side, wearing flip-flops, a swimming cap, and a bright yellow swimsuit that hugs her plump body. She holds the hand of a little girl who Kate guesses is about seven.
“Be careful on the side, poppet; it’s slippery,” Hope says. “Don’t forget to put your goggles on now. Let me help you down the ladder, sweetie. Hold the sides tightly; be careful now, my angel.”
Kate watches as grandmother and granddaughter slip into the water. Aiesha immediately swims away and Hope is left on her own, a look of total love on her face. As Aiesha stops and puts her feet down, Hope looks up and spots Kate. They wave at each other.
On a Sunday Ellis comes with Jake, who Kate notices is a much stronger swimmer than his father, but who slows down so his dad doesn’t get left behind.
As well as the regulars, there are others too. Kate hears them talking in the changing room, saying that they never even knew the lido was there until they read about it in the paper and heard that it was closing. When they say this Kate feels a tightness in h
er heart. Just like her, they found the lido when it was too late.
There is only one person missing. Kate swims on her own without her friend to guide her and correct her corkscrew kick.
Once she has dried off and is dressed again, Kate makes the short walk across the road to the building where Rosemary lives. She looks up at her balcony, spotting it by the pots of lavender. The washing line hangs empty like a bare tree.
When Kate reaches the entrance she presses the buzzer to Rosemary’s flat. As she waits she remembers the meal she shared with Rosemary here, back when hope still existed. The sun is hot on Kate’s shoulders but her damp hair is pleasantly cool around her neck. After a moment she hears the familiar voice on the other end of the intercom.
“Hello?”
“Rosemary, it’s me, Kate.”
“Oh, hello,” replies Rosemary.
The intercom buzzes softly in both of their ears, as though the phone is afraid of silence and hums gently to fill the gaps in the conversation.
“Can I come up?” asks Kate eventually.
The buzzing seems to grow louder.
“Not today, I’m sorry,” replies Rosemary.
Kate doesn’t know what to say. Before she can say anything Rosemary continues.
“I’m sorry, I’m just busy.”
Kate wants to ask her what she is doing, but the hesitance in Rosemary’s voice stops her. Instead, she says, “I missed you at the lido today.”
Kate thinks of the first time she swam with Rosemary: how the old woman seemed to become young in the water, and how she, Kate, felt the unsteadier one. She had felt then that Rosemary’s strength was tucked away beneath her dry-land clothes, a hidden power unleashed not by a cape but by a navy blue swimsuit.
“Yes, well.” Rosemary’s voice is quiet. The intercom chips in with its gentle buzz.
“Will I see you there tomorrow?” says Kate.
“No, I don’t think so.”