Insight by Mike Fox
‘How do you know I swim?’
‘Your hair tells me.’
The barber looks down at my reflection. For the first time I realise he has the eyes of a mystic. They are grey, soulful, knowing. Although I have attended his shop a good few times by now, this is our first significant exchange.
‘You’re right,’ I say, ‘you’re quite right.’
He nods, or it could be a slight bow, in affirmation.
On a hook by his glass, sign-painted door hangs my rucksack. It contains my towel and trunks, and the tang of chlorine transmits itself to where I sit and he stands. Perhaps he’s not that mystical after all. But he has touched on something.
The outdoor pool re-opens today, as it does on the first day of March every year. In the winter months I swim in its indoor counterpart, where most diseases known to the Western World find their natural home. On short, dark days I grope my way past dyspraxic back-strokers and long to be outside. And now, once again, that is possible.
I view myself in the mirror. I feel recognised. I am a swimmer. The barber could tell. I give him a larger than usual tip and head for the sports complex. The outdoor pool will be available at 8.30am and I want to be at the poolside ready.
The pool is supposed to be heated, but I know the heating won’t yet have kicked in. As ever, only six of us are willing to swim so early in the year, and we grin to each other at our virtue. We immerse ourselves in the clear silent water step by livid step, before standing on tiptoe while our erectile tissue finds various ways to register its shock.
I look round as I try to stabilise my breath. The fields of early spring grass that surround the complex still shimmer with dew. Algae, as ever, forms a grey-green margin where the pool sides meet its sloping floor. A sparrow hawk hovers then dives. I gradually lower myself until only my head is above the water.
Maria and Ellen, splashers both, plunge suddenly and begin to make their ungainly way up the medium lane. Eric, born in the Hebrides, seats himself waist-deep on the steps as if they are an armchair, his walrus chest expanding and contracting slowly and comfortably. His eyes are on some distant moment known only to himself, perhaps an Atlantic horizon from childhood. ‘Salt water’s never really cold,’ he murmured to me once, ‘and neither is this.’ I pull on my goggles, crouch, and push away from the bottom step. Suddenly I’m fabulously aware of the entire surface of my body.
Swimming is not the effortless thing it was when I was forty, but I know there will be a point somewhere between fifteen and twenty lengths when I will begin to feel some of the old fluency, and that it will last a while until fatigue cuts in. I hear the sound of strokes behind me, and know that all of us have now recommenced our ritual.
In particular I can hear Phil’s breathing. He always brings his inhaler to the poolside, his eyes defying us to comment as he sucks and gasps. But he will swim further than anyone, deeply immersed in his own private battle.
Annie swims alone in the slow lane, her thick grey hair streaming behind her. Her daughter’s family are in Australia, her son’s in America, and we understand that there was once a husband. Annie is the one who phones if you haven’t shown up for a while. She never asks the reason.
I’m not sure how it happened, but over a period of time we became our own particular sub-group: even when the pool crowds in summer we remain a quorum with a distinct identity. You could argue that we are very different people, unified only by the medium of water. But slowly other factors have crept in and drawn us close.
We have witnessed the gradual ageing of our bodies and we have each had periods of absence. Maria was away for nearly a year, and when she finally returned wore a bathing cap for the first time. The next day Ellen wore one too, the same colour, until on a day in late September both emerged from their poolside booths with short, discrete auburn curls.
Eric passes me, his effortless crawl hardly disturbing the water. He is the most quietly spoken of us all, and yet I’m always aware of his presence, his mildness in inverse ratio to his physical power. He is a silent man whose silence is inclusive of others. He told us of his wife’s death in two simple sentences, then never referred to it again.
Today is sunny and the water is full of early spring light. The cold is penetrating but no longer sharp. It’s like an organism that seeks a place inside me, making my body fully known to itself. Gradually, as my temperature synchronises with the water, I become the rhythm of my breath: the gulp of inhalation, the sense of renewal as my lungs are briefly sated with air, then the slow release, face in the water, following the sweep of my arms.
This is the blissful time, the time of mindfulness and forgetfulness. I’m here but I’m elsewhere, my past as weightless as my floating body. Then, as I begin to tire, I wonder, as I did last year and the year before, how long I, or any of us, will be doing this. How long I will be amongst these people who know me in this one area of my life? How long I can be a person who calls himself a swimmer?
Forty-eight lengths, the metric mile, and I stand and climb the steps to get out. Eric, who will have completed eighty, is heading for his booth, as are Maria and Ellen. Annie still swims with quiet dignity in the slow lane, and Phil continues to gasp his way up and down the centre, as he will do for some time yet. As I take my final step out of the pool the cold air bites and all effort and weariness leaves me. I look round briefly at my fellow swimmers. I am affirmed by their presence.
My booth, like all the others, is a relic of a former time: tongued and grooved panels under chipping sky-blue paint. It has survived at least two site renovations. The thumb latch drops into its keep as I close the door and I slide the barrel bolt into a locked position. I peel off my trunks and sit on the plain wooden seat to dry myself. As I do so I notice some graffiti written in small, slanted lettering on the lowest door brace, and find myself staring at it.
If life seems calm you’re not looking hard enough. Or perhaps you’ve decided not to look.
I think of Maria, and Ellen, and Eric, and Phil, and Annie. I think of myself. All six of us, I know without needing to ask, share the understanding that it’s not always necessary to look.
………………..
Mike Fox’s stories have appeared in journals in Britain, Ireland, America, Australia, India and Singapore. His story Breath (Fictive Dream), and Blurred Edges (Lunate Fiction), gained Pushcart Prize nomination. His story The Homing Instinct (Confingo), was included in Best British Short Stories 2018 (Salt). His story The Fun Police (Fictive Dream) was listed in Best British and Irish Flash Fiction (BIFFY50) 2019-2020. His story Voices (Ayaskala) was nominated for Best of Net 2020. His story, The Violet Eye, was published by Nightjar Press as a limited-edition chapbook.
Twitter: @polyscribe2