by Gillian Best
I couldn’t help myself, the laugh that burst out was not a premeditated comment on his obvious ineptitude; it was merely a physical reaction, which I hid by covering my mouth.
‘It’s just that, I, uh, I saw you, out there,’ he said, pointing to the water.
‘I was out there.’
‘Have you got a deal with another paper or something? I don’t want to get you in trouble or anything, it’s just, uh, I was hoping that, if you are a Channel swimmer and you aren’t already sponsored by one of the other papers, maybe you might have time to talk to me? About the swimming,’ he said.
‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I have no intention of swimming to France. When I go, I’ll take a more traditional means of transportation.’
I watched as he scribbled something in his notebook. ‘Can I quote you on that?’
‘Sorry?’
‘I have to file five hundred words by tonight and no one will talk to me.’
‘Do you make it a habit of lurking? Perhaps that might have something to do with the reluctance.’
He smiled awkwardly and stared at his shoes. I waited for him to make his excuses and leave but he did nothing and I was getting cold so I dried myself off as best I could and put my jumper and shorts back on. I hated wearing a wet swimming costume under dry clothes – so clammy and cold, never mind the fact that I would drip the entire way back to my parents’ house.
‘Why not?’
‘Excuse me?’ I said as my head popped out through my top.
‘Why aren’t you going to swim the Channel? Don’t take this the wrong way, but I was watching you out there and you look pretty strong. Stronger than some of the other girls.’
‘I’ve no interest in it.’
Which was of course a lie. Channel swimming was everywhere you looked that summer and in the back of my mind, where I kept my most secret of secrets, I had imagined swimming all 21 miles of it. And that’s where it had to stay. It was safer there, in my thoughts.
What would it have proved anyhow, I found myself thinking at the end of every indulgent fantasy I entertained. What would it change? A few minutes in the limelight would have no bearing on my life here, it would simply bring greater disappointment, and that’s if I managed to complete it at all. My life was laid out in front of me in the same way that my wedding dress would soon be laid out on my childhood bed: it was tailored to me, all I had to do was put it on. What would the sense be of changing my mind now, of dreaming of a different future? As much as I struggled with the confines of the life I had accepted, I knew that it was better to try and be grateful for what I had, instead of hoping for something different.
‘Don’t you think you could make it?’
‘Of course I could.’
‘Then why aren’t you gonna try?’
I smiled curtly. ‘I’m sorry, but I have to be going.’
His question was so American, I thought, as I picked up my things and stuffed them in my bag. And I remembered a conversation I had overheard between my mother and one of her friends when I was younger. There had been a woman they had been friends with who had taken up with an American solider after the war. She had been taken out and shown off, carrying on to a degree my mother and her friends found shameful. This woman had talked of going to America, of getting out of Dover, and had made no secret of how small and provincial she thought their lives were. Then out of nowhere – to hear them tell it – the soldier had up and left, abandoning this woman, and leaving her with nothing to show for it. This woman had decided that she wanted more, that what was available to her here was not good enough, which had been a snub that had rubbed raw nerves. I knew better than to publically bet on something that wasn’t a sure thing. Harbouring dreams was fine, but to keep them whole, they had to remain private.
I heard his footsteps on the pebbles behind me. ‘Where you going?’
I had never before met such an intrusive person. There had been no small amount of grumbling that I had overheard from the local people about how impertinent the Americans were but I had decided to disbelieve it, until now.
‘I don’t see how it’s any business of yours.’
‘So you’re not going to meet your pilot?’
‘What?’ I stopped dead in my tracks.
‘Your pilot. You don’t really think I’m buying the idea that you’re not in training with the rest of them. How do I know you’re not some English wringer, some secret weapon the Brits have to show the rest of us up?’
His flattery was well placed and I’m sure I blushed. ‘I’m going to see my dressmaker.’
‘Dressmaker?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, I suppose you’d have to.’
‘And why is that?’
‘It’s a tiny little town you’ve got here. Not that it’s not pretty, a castle overlooking the sea, that’s impressive. And the White Cliffs, they’re beautiful. But there’s not much else going on. Not like New York City.’
‘I’m sure it seems small in comparison.’
‘Everything does.’
I continued to walk towards home and he continued to follow me. ‘Look,’ I said. ‘I don’t mean to be rude, but as you’ve noticed, this is a small town. I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to stop following me.’
He shrugged. ‘If you change your mind, I’m at the White Horse Inn.’
I hadn’t thought about that day in years but standing there, on that early spring day as the froth covered my boots and the sea wrapped itself around my ankles, my body remembered that time in my life more acutely than my mind did. My body wasn’t hindered by what my mind knew to be fact. There were the habits I had developed over the years spent in the water: shaking my hands to loosen my wrists as I waded in, rolling my shoulders to unlock the muscles that would inevitably tighten once I was back on dry land. I found myself unconsciously repeating those movements as if the sea had some kind of hold on me that I was helpless to resist.
I took my boots off and threw them beyond the tidal line and let the icy water chill my toes to the point where I no longer felt them and consequently no longer felt tied to the earth. I felt the waves falling over me, beckoning me into the frigid depths with the offer of a promise made long ago.
Later that summer, as my wedding date grew nearer, I had put common sense to one side and gone to the White Horse Inn with the intention of striking a deal with the journalist’s newspaper. I would grant them exclusive coverage and they would pay for the costs associated with my crossing – the pilot, the federation’s fees for overseeing an official attempt, the petrol – but the girl on the front desk said he had checked out weeks ago. I had lost my chance and I was reminded of it each time I passed the White Horse, and some days when I caught sight of my reflection in the window I was reminded. We are not all destined to be tall poppies.
Fully clothed, I walked into the waves and was knocked down almost immediately. I had forgotten the power they held. The air was knocked out of my chest and I went down hard, my knees hit the shifting stones on the seabed, water churned as though it were angry with me for getting in its way, or maybe it was upset that I had been away for so very long. My heart pounded and echoed in my ears as my hands searched through the flood, desperate to grab hold of something, of anything that might save me.
I did not feel safe in the sea then, instead I felt the same way I had when I had first fallen off the pier so many years before: terrified, choking with fear. My chest was tight and I fought the urge to open my mouth and cry for help. I tried to remain as calm as possible and planted my feet to stand up, bracing myself against the next set of waves. My head breached the waterline and I gasped for air, only to be knocked down again by another surge of the sea, throwing me on the ground.
It was a fight, a test.
I dragged myself forward – half crawling, half swimming – out of harm’s way, but it was a battle and the sea would not let me go easily, pulling me away from the shore. It was violent because years ago I had ma
de a choice and the sea could not tolerate being second place. That wrath also came because I had picked John right here, while the sea licked our feet.
That summer I had been given all the things one is told to aspire to: the problem was that in saying yes I had also said no. I had said yes to John, after he had waited here, on this beach, for me to finish my swim. He had asked me to come out of the water for him and though he had not used those exact words, the results were the same.
It had been a beautiful afternoon. I had not known with certainty that he would ask me then but it had been in the air. It was the logical conclusion to the months we had spent together and it was expected, never questioned. There I was, having only just finished school about to embark upon a wonderful life and I didn’t question it. It did not occur to me that I would have ever had to choose between loves or that I ever could.
I waded in and swam but instead of moving parallel to the shore, I headed eastwards, making my way towards France as the question the journalist had asked me echoed in my ears.
Gliding through the water almost completely submerged had been a retreat to a different world for me because it allowed me to focus inwardly by blocking everything else out, which in itself was a happy by-product of swimming front crawl – but the absolute quiet it afforded was unique. If I had gone to the library, or the park, or sat on a bench by myself the solitude would not have measured up and my mind would not have been able to wander freely, roaming the wilds of my fantasies and the hundreds of other lives I imagined for myself. It was something I could only ever do when properly wet.
That afternoon I had not intended to think about the Channel, I had only meant to clear my head and enjoy an hour or so by myself, but I lost my sense of time and there was something inspiring about going towards a destination. With every stroke I got a little bit closer to France and with every breath the idea that I could swim the Channel began to seem possible. It began to feel necessary.
I don’t know how long John waited for me that afternoon, as I indulged in my fantasies and he in his worries because he has never told me, but I do know that when I had waded out of the sea that the look on his face was sheer relief. He came out as far as he could and we met when we were both knee deep.
He had put his arm around my shoulders to guide me back onto dry land.
‘Martha,’ he had said. ‘Come out of the water.’
I did that day, I came out of the water for him and I had stayed on dry land for nearly ten years, though it was not as if I hadn’t wanted to go back in but life got in the way, as is its habit. A wedding, a house, a baby and then another, and soon enough a decade had passed.
But on that bitter spring afternoon as I sat in the foam, watching the water seethe around me I knew it had been too long, and that the beating was punishment I deserved.
The easiest thing to do would have been to go home and pretend none of it had happened. My skin was dead chicken white, my fingertips were blue and my teeth had stopped chattering and I knew that to stay any longer was as dangerous as it was reckless. I couldn’t feel anything but in another way I felt it all.
It was impossible to explain. I didn’t know where the urge came from, if it was the hope of the trees as I had heard in our church service, but I knew I felt it strongly in my arms, shoulders and hands. To swim required physical strength, but the act itself provided mental energy.
The beach was empty and I tore off my sopping wet clothes and stripped down to my bra and knickers and for the first time in years, I went swimming. My body moved through the water as it always had done and in some ways I felt as though I had been in only yesterday. I listened to the familiar sloshing in my ears, tasted the salt as it stung my tongue and burned my eyes and let the strength of the sea cradle me.
What I felt more than the cold and more than the aching burn of unused muscles was that I was free here.
When I arrived home I followed the sound of voices into the lounge where my husband was sitting with his manager Charlie and greeted them, looking as if I had just been drowned, with the giddy smile one might more reasonably associate with an addict who has finally got the fix they craved.
‘Where have you been? John asked.
I stood there dripping. ‘Swimming,’ I said. I couldn’t help but grin.
He took me by the arm and led me into the kitchen. ‘Won’t be a minute, Charlie,’ he said.
He shut the door. ‘Do you have any idea how this makes me look?’ He fingers curled tightly around my arm.
I didn’t say anything. I looked around the room and noticed that he’d shoved all the clean clothes I had intended to iron into the hamper.
I pulled my arm away from him. ‘These are clean,’ I said, as I gathered them up.
‘It’s bad enough that I brought Charlie home to an empty house with no dinner and not even the faintest hint at an explanation, but I was not about to let him sit here surrounded by washing.’
‘You didn’t have to put them in with the dirty clothes.’
‘I hope you have a good reason for this,’ he said, gesturing at my mermaid-like state. ‘Please tell me you have just saved someone from drowning.’
I was about to say no, but then it occurred to me that maybe I had. ‘Actually,’ I said. ‘I did save someone this afternoon.’
His expression changed instantly. ‘Really? Who?’
I was about to speak when he cut me off.
‘No, never mind, go and change and then come and tell us both at the same time. That might be the only thing that can turn this night around.’
‘I saved myself, John,’ I said just before he opened the door to the lounge.
‘Say again?’
‘I saved myself.’
‘Martha, I have had a long day and don’t care to play games. Now, either you’ve saved someone or you haven’t. Which is it?’
It was not the right time to have this conversation but there were things that needed to be said and things that needed to be heard.
‘The Channel, John. I’m going to swim the Channel.’
‘What has that got to do with anything?’
‘I have made dinner every night for the past ten years, and lunch and breakfast. That’s,’ I paused to do the calculations. ‘That’s nearly 11,000 meals.’
He looked puzzled.
‘I have scrubbed and swept and hoovered and washed and dried and ironed. Every day for ten years.’
He looked over his shoulder anxiously. ‘And you decided to stop, without warning, today? My manager, Martha, that man in the next room should be considering how he’s going to tell me I’ll be getting a promotion as we share a glass of Scotch while digesting a very good meal. As it is, he’s probably starving and wondering how I was ever hired in the first place.’
I wrapped my arms around myself, suddenly unable to focus on anything beyond how cold I was.
‘I’ve had enough, John. I have.’
‘Enough of what?’
‘Of being a wife and a mother and a housekeeper.’
‘What are you getting at?’
‘I need more.’
‘More of what? What could you possibly want for? I have given you a nice house, two children. We have all the mod cons.’ He pointed at the washing machine. ‘That, that right there is brand-new top of the line. Who else do you know who has a machine like that?’
‘I don’t make a habit of asking after other people’s appliances.’
‘You have everything you could possibly want or need, right here.’
‘There’s something missing.’
‘For God’s sake, what could that possibly be? Beyond the obvious, which is the dinner you were meant to prepare?’
‘I’m trying to have a serious conversation.’
‘I can see that, but it’s neither the time nor the place.’ He shook his head.
And then his tone dropped, the anger was sucked out of his voice and he turned what I loved against me.
‘You told me once, on the beach
, after a swim, you told me about how important the timing was in your breathing. How you had to get it right, go with the rhythm of the waves in choppy water. Otherwise you’d get a mouthful of water, not air. Do you remember?’
I nodded. And I remembered an account of a tsunami in Hawaii that I had read about as a girl. How the water had been sucked out to sea, away from the shore, before the great wave hit.
‘We can have all the serious conversations you want, but not now. We can talk until we’re both blue in the face about whatever you feel you’re missing in life – we can discuss it, in full, tomorrow.’ He gripped the back of chair in front of him tightly. He was exasperated, frustrated – all the things I was feeling. ‘When my manager is not sitting in the next room wondering what in the hell is going on in here,’ he said.
There was something in his tone that cut through the cold and exhaustion. ‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘It’s entirely inappropriate to have this very important chat whilst Charlie’s sitting in the next room. The timing is all wrong.’ I locked eyes with my husband. ‘Perhaps you ought to ask him to leave. I don’t feel up to entertaining this evening.’
His eyes widened and he grabbed my arm and I winced as he pulled me close. It would’ve been romantic if it hadn’t hurt. ‘Whatever you’re upset about will have to wait. Go fix yourself up and I will try and salvage what is left of the evening you’ve seen fit to ruin.’
It was believed to have been an underwater earthquake that set the Hawaiian tsunami in motion, the grating of earth plates against one another, vying for dominance.
‘At least it’s only one dinner,’ I said.
‘One dinner? It’s the most important dinner we’ve ever had. Our entire future rests on me getting this promotion and you’ve managed to ruin that beyond all repair.’
His grip on my arm tightened and his fingertips dug into muscle that used to be strong.
‘What about my promotion?’
‘Promoted? To what? You don’t have a job, Martha.’
‘I don’t want to be known only as Mrs John Roberts. Or Mummy.’ My voice was rising with each word, gaining speed and height like a wave, and his face screwed up into a scowl of incomprehension.
