The pilot boat, a 30-foot launch, was being run by a navigator who was keeping the swim on course to Toronto. They'd started on the opposite shore, the American side at Niagara-on-the-Lake, because a swim that was south to north followed the lake currents and the wind. The conditions were ideal, Joe had said with satisfaction when they started, and the weather forecast was good. But Geoff was well aware, as they all were, that the lake was unpredictable and the winds around it were erratic. A north wind could spring up seemingly from nowhere churning the small ripples into waves and causing the temperature of the water to plummet. But no one on the team talked about that—what they had discussed was the clarity of the night sky, only an occasional wisp of cloud passing over the moon, the warmth of the water, the benevolence of that lovely, south wind.
Although Geoff had known about the arrangements for the swim, he'd still been amazed when the equipment and all the members of the team had been assembled. In addition to the pilot boat, there were two pace boats and a boat behind. There was radar equipment, huge blankets, ropes, safety and first-aid equipment. And the team comprised a doctor and nurse, the navigator, the drivers of the other boats, two members of the Ontario Solo Swim Association who were to make sure that all regulations were being met, Joe and another trainer, and several swimmers who were to pace Petra throughout the swim. The anticipated time of the swim was seventeen hours, and Petra would be swimming into daylight. At first, it had seemed odd to Geoff that lake crossings began at night, but now he could see the logic. No swimmer liked to swim at night, but a seventeen-hour crossing required some hours of darkness, and it was safer at night when the swimmer was fresh than when she was tired.
'Five miles,' Joe said, 'and she's going great.'
Geoff looked up from his cup of coffee to see that Joe was exactly where he'd been minutes before, standing at the side of the boat, his eyes glued to the water. Geoff followed his glance to where Petra was swimming. It wasn't hard to keep track of her. She wore a fluorescent tube on her back and one of the boats had an arc light beaming down on her. She was also wearing a light-coloured bathing suit so that her slender figure was visible against the back-drop of black waves. He couldn't see her face though—she was wearing two bathing caps and a huge pair of goggles. He could tell nothing about her except that she was swimming strongly, her pace steady and confident.
He looked back behind them and saw that the American shore had disappeared over the horizon, its lights no longer winking at them. For the first time, it came to Geoff just how isolated they were, out in the middle of Lake Ontario with eighty fathoms of water beneath them, miles of water around them and the vast dome of black sky above them. Their only lifelines were the ship-to-shore radios, slender threads connecting them to the Canadian shore.
'Yeah,' he said, 'she's looking good.'
'And the best conditions for a swim I've ever seen,' Joe went on, rubbing his hands together in triumph. 'It's like a bathtub out there. I can't see any reason why she won't make it nice and easy. She's mentally psyched for it and in the best physical shape of her life. A piece of cake, that's what I say, a goddamn piece of cake.'
'But her training sessions have only been for twenty miles and the lake crossing is almost double that. Won't she get tired?'
'Tired? Oh, sure, she will, but that's where my job comes in. I'll talk her in to shore, don't worry.'
But Geoff wasn't worried about the swim, which as Joe had said seemed to be a piece of cake, he was worried about other things, none of which he could voice to Joe or anyone else, so he sat hunched up in his seat, the coffee slowly cooling in his hands, his eyes watching that small, beloved figure.
'Tea break.'
Petra stopped swimming at the tap on her shoulder. Through the blurred plastic of her goggles, she could see the face of Don, one of the swimmers who would pace her. 'What?' she yelled. Her ear plugs blocked out almost every sound.
'Tea!' He gestured towards Joe's boat and she saw the pole coming at her with the plastic cup dangling from the hook at its end. In it would a mixture of strong tea and honey, her only form of sustenance during her swim. She didn't feel thirsty, but Petra knew that her body was using up fluid at a rapid rate and, if she didn't drink regularly, she'd become dehydrated. Treading water, she reached for the cup and drank deeply, inhaling its steam and feeling the tea's warmth flow inside her.
'How're you feeling?' Don yelled.
'Great.' She gave him a V-for-victory sign with her fingers.
'You're on hour six.'
She'd thought as much. It must be getting close to five in the morning, because the first glimmers of daylight were showing in the sky to the east, lightening the sky and dimming the stars. She looked forward to daylight. Although she was feeling wonderful, Petra didn't like swimming in the dark. Too much darkness, too much the feeling that she could slip below those black waves into some endless night and never emerge into the light again.
'I'm going to be staying with you for awhile,' Don said.
'How come you're so lucky?'
'That's the breaks,' he said, and she could just make out his grin in the darkness.
Petra let the cup go, waved at Joe and then started out again. She could sense Don swimming alongside her and matched herself to his strokes. One and two and three and four and ... the rhythm set again, she slowly forgot his presence and never even felt him leave her after a mile had passed. She had once again fallen into an oblivion where she saw nothing, heard nothing and felt nothing, her arms and legs moving automatically, her mind slipping into the warm and soothing place.
The first sign that the second half of the swim was going to be far different from the first half occurred at around 9:30 that morning when a dark bank of clouds appeared on the northern horizon. At first, they merely looked like land when seen from miles away, but it was soon apparent to everyone that they were far less innocent. A cold breeze sprang up, and the lake turned choppy with one small wave crashing into another, sending little plumes of spray into the air. Petra forged ahead in it, seemingly oblivious of the changes, but two of the pace swimmers came out, shaking their heads and saying that it was getting tough. Joe began to check the water temperature every half-hour but the drop in temperature was minuscule, and he'd scowl at the thermometer and then breathe a sigh of relief. 'It's okay,' he'd say to Geoff. 'This shouldn't bother her in the least.' By 10:30, the bank of clouds had grown to a mass that covered the sun, casting a shadow miles wide which darkened as the day went on. Geoff had to remove his sunglasses which had protected his eyes from the reflection of sunlight on water, because he could no longer see well enough through them. Like everyone else in the four boats, his worried glance was on Petra. She hadn't faltered yet in the regularity of her strokes, but she had slowed down as the water grew even choppier. When she was stopped for another drink and asked if she was tired or cold, she merely shook her head. Joe had said, 'That's a girl,' but Geoff had felt his heart tighten. He watched Petra grab the cup of tea, drink it down and then start swimming again. What he sensed was that she hadn't spoken because she couldn't, because she had no energy left to utter even a word. He hunched down at the side of the boat and zipped up his slicker against the increasing strength of the wind. For the first time since the crossing began, he was now swimming with Petra, feeling each stroke in his arms, feeling each kick in his legs, feeling the onset of fear.
Waves battered and buffeted her; water filled her mouth occasionally when she opened it to breathe. Time and time again, Petra was rudely dragged out of her meditative state to confront the fact that the swim was getting harder and harder, that her muscles were protesting against the increasing coldness of the water, and that it was taking more and more energy to swim. For hours, she had merely glided through the water, now she was fighting it to maintain her balance, her course and the need to take an unimpeded breath. Like some large dormant animal, the lake had rested quietly, but now that it was aroused, it had turned angry, jumping out at her, hitting her with cold
slaps. Spray filmed her goggles, and she choked once as water forced itself up her nose. She stopped swimming for a second and vaguely heard the yelling from the boats before starting off again. Easy, she said to herself, easy, Petra.
And she sang to herself, Christmas carols, the little songs she taught her grade three children, the few pop hits that she knew, folk songs from the sixties. I want to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony… Arm over arm. Up, around and over. Legs on a steady beat. Kick. Kick. Kick.
At 1:45 the rain began. At first it fell lightly, a mist over the lake, but soon it was a steady downpour, the drops making little circles on the waves, and a pattering sound on the decks of the boats. All the members of the team had pulled hoods over their heads, their edges framing faces that looked on with worry, concern and dismay. The temperature stabilised and grew no colder, but Joe was now taking the temperature of the water every fifteen minutes and muttering to himself constantly. 'Not so bad,' he'd say, or, 'It could be worse,' or, 'Come on, give us a break now.' Geoff didn't know what deity Joe was talking to, each of them had his own private god to bargain with at times like this. Geoff himself was praying that Petra would simply manage to get through the crossing. He knew how much it meant to her; he knew that if she had to quit, she'd force herself to try again. And he sensed that nothing in her life would move forward until this goal was achieved. She was too stubborn to give up it up on one try. Far too stubborn.
She was caught in a nightmare, a dark and damp nightmare that didn't want to quit. Cold rain beat down on her back, water poured in her mouth, every time she opened her eyes she saw a greyness around her. She no longer knew whether it was morning, afternoon or night. She no longer knew how long she'd been swimming. Every ounce of her concentration was focused on her arms and legs. They felt like lead weights that she could move only in the slowest of motions. Up… around… and over. Kick, one, two… kick, one, two, three… kick… try to kick.
She wondered in her few moments of clarity why she had ever thought it possible to swim Lake Ontario. What arrogance had possessed her? What hubris had made her think she could conquer the lake? She was nothing in this vast expanse of wave and spray, nothing but a speck, a small and struggling speck—a piece of debris tossed on the back of an angry lake. And why was she doing it? What was she aiming for really—a thin segment of land on the empty horizon? Or something else? Something far different. Swim, push, kick, pull—again and again and again. Her body was numb from the cold, from the effort of moving. The ache had subsided, but Petra knew that the numbness was only the forerunner of something far worse. When it wore off, she would be in agony. If I only knew why, she thought helplessly. If I only knew why.
By 3:30 the rain had angled sharply as the wind picked up again. All around them was a heavy fog, and the small entourage of boats and swimmer seemed to be in a world of their own, walled in by the grey mass of air on every side. Joe was pacing the small length of the boat, cursing, muttering, and hitting one opened palm with a tightly clenched fist. Geoff was crouched on a seat, unable to take his eyes off that tiny figure in the water. Occasionally a gust of wind would blow the rain into his eyes and he wouldn't be able to see Petra, or a wave larger than the others would splash over her, concealing her beneath its foam. Then he'd jerk upright, his heart in his throat, its pounding so loud that he couldn't hear anything but the sound of his own terror.
A shout caught his attention, and he saw Joe picking up the megaphone.
'What!'
The radio operator in the lead boat was standing at its stern end and hollering through his hands. 'Land! Two miles to land!'
Joe dropped the megaphone and turned to Geoff in triumph. 'Two miles. She's going to make it.' He laughed and threw his arms out wide. 'Goddamn it, but she's going to make it!'
Those in the other boats had also heard the news and Geoff could hear a faint cheering and see fingers raised in victory signs, but somehow he couldn't share the joy around him. Those final two miles were going to be the worst in Petra's life, he could tell by the way she was stroking, by the slow turning of her head, by that tired kicking. He felt her exhaustion deep within him, his arms and legs bone-weary, his head aching with the effort to keep going.
One of the pace swimmers dropped into the water and swam to Petra to tell her the good news, but no one was sure that she caught his words, because she seemed not to notice that he was there. Doggedly, she just kept on swimming.
In the nightmare, in the horrible, unending nightmare, there was a distant shore. Just as she was close to it, the shore would recede, slipping away from her, falling back into the line of the horizon, a darker grey shadow disappearing into a lighter one. Like love, it had no substance. She couldn't touch it; she couldn't get close to it. Try as hard as she might, Petra couldn't reach it. Love is a distant shore, she thought tiredly, too far away for me. All her life she had been swimming towards it, running towards it, trying to find it, but she couldn't. It had never been there for her. What arrogance had ever led her to believe that she would be one of the lucky ones? She couldn't reciprocate the feelings of the man who loved her. The love she felt for her mother, buried beneath layers of sadness and anger, had not even been able to rise to the surface at her death. Petra tried to understand why she was here, in this nightmare, trying so hard to reach that distant shore, but she no longer could find any reason for it. The shore was a mirage, that's all, an illusion, a fake.
Without even being quite aware of what she was doing, Petra stopped swimming. She came upright so that the rain beat directly into her goggles, and she couldn't see anything around her, not even the boats on all sides or the grey mass of sky and water. Taking a deep breath, she tore off her goggles and threw them away, pulled out her ear plugs, and wrenched the caps off her head. Like a living thing, the water grabbed each item as if fell, tossed it into the air, pulled it to and fro and then sucked it into the depths. Within seconds, there was no sign of any of them.
'Petra! Petra!' Joe was screaming through the megaphone. 'There's only two miles to go! Toronto is two miles away!'
Geoff's hands were clenched on the side of the boat. 'She's too cold, Joe. She can't go on.'
'The temperature is at 65,' Joe barked at him. 'That's not too cold. If it went below that I'd pull her out in a minute.' He lifted the megaphone again. 'Come on, Petra! Don't give up now!'
And Geoff could hear the others yelling encouragement at her.
'Two miles, Petra!'
'Go for it!'
'Come on, sweetheart!'
She seemed dazed, uncertain. Slowly she swivelled in the water, turning in 360 degrees as if she were lost, as if she were trying to locate the whereabouts of those voices. It was Geoff who finally figured out what was the matter.
'She's crying,' he said, and his stomach tightened as if a fist had slammed into it. 'Joe, for Christ's sake, she's crying.'
'She can't give up now,' Joe snapped at him. 'She'll hate herself later. Hell, she'll want to kill me if I stop her.'
'She doesn't want to swim anymore.'
'The hell she doesn't. She's just tired and confused.'
He turned to one of the pace swimmers who shared the boat with him. 'Get her more tea, Bob. Let's give her some energy.'
Was he the only one of them that could see her face? Geoff thought in desperation. She was crying out there, her eyes squeezed shut, her mouth open and trembling. 'Joe! Pull her in!'
Joe was like a bantam rooster as he faced Geoff with his hands on his hips, his feet planted wide apart, his eyes narrowed. 'She stays.'
'Goddamn it! You're torturing her!'
'She knew it wouldn't be easy.'
'She's crying. Crying!'
'Lots of swimmers cry.'
Geoff glanced from Joe's adamant expression to Petra's agony, and the decision came to him, the knowledge of what he had to do. With one flick of his wrist he had unzipped his slicker. He threw it off and stripped the buttons from his shirt in his haste. When his torso was ba
re, his jeans went next, his back bare and wet in the rain, his hair turning dark as it dampened. He tore off his briefs, his sneakers and socks. Before Joe really realised what he was going to do, Geoff was over the side of the boat, a naked body in diver's arch as it hit the water and went under.
The water pulled him down in its cold grasp, and his body went rigid as it plummeted into the blackness. He had to claw his way to its surface, fighting for air as he came to the top and choking when a wave slapped him in the face, filling his open mouth with water. When his eyes cleared, he swam towards Petra, ignoring the voices above him, the megaphone barking.
'Geoff! Get back here! Leave her alone!'
She was still crying when he approached her, treading water frantically and crying, her hair plastered to her head, the tears mixing with rain on her face. She looked so awful that Geoff wanted to take her in his arms and hold her tight, but he knew he couldn't offer her that sort of comfort.
He got within two feet of her and said in a voice loud enough to carry over the sound of wind and rain, 'Petra! Petra, it's me!'
For a second he didn't think he was going to get through to her, but then she blinked. 'Geoff?'
'Petra, I'm going to swim with you,' he said. 'We're going to make it together.'
She stared at him. 'You?'
'If I can do it, you can.'
'But… why?'
There was a gust of wind, and cold water splashed against his face. Geoff spat out a mouthful and then said, 'Because I believe in it. Because the swim is important.'
'You… you thought it was a waste of time.'
The megaphone was screaming obscenities at him, but Geoff ignored them. 'I was wrong about that. Remember that story my mother told us about her father and the way Marilyn Bell's swim gave him the will to go on? Well, I started to understand then what a swim like this means to people. It's not a waste; it's inspiring, it's courageous. Petra, I want you to make it. I don't want you to give up now.' And he meant it. Geoff had once thought her goal was an individual act, a selfish act, but as he had watched her struggle against the rain and the wind and the cold water, her swim had come to symbolise something else for him—it mirrored in a public way every private, lonely struggle, every human effort to overcome adversity, even his own fight for health.
Love is a Distant Shore Page 17
