by Stella Duffy
Lunchtime, the place is full. Midday office escapees, retired schoolteachers and half of Brixton market, rolled up Railton Road to get to the green, the water, the blue. One end of the café’s outdoor tables over-taken with towels and baby bottles and children’s soft toys, floating girls and boys in the water with the yummy mummies, wet mummies, hold me mummy, hold me.
Two babies hanging on to each arm. Helen can’t believe it. This is not what she’d planned when she booked that first maternity leave, four years ago. Can it really be so long? She looks at her left hand where Sophia and her play-date Cassandra jump up and down, pumping her arm for dear life, (dear god, who calls their daughter Cassandra? Foretelling the doom of the south London middle classes), while in her right arm she rocks the little rubber ring that Gideon and Katsuki hang on to. Helen shakes her head. Back in the day. Back in the office, loving those days in the office, she wondered what it would feel like, to be one of them, the East Dulwich mummies clogging cafés and footpaths with their designer buggies. She looks up as a shadow crosses her, it is Imogen, Cassandra’s mother. Imogen is pointing to the table, surrounded by buggies. Their friends wave, lunch has arrived, Helen passes the children out one by one and immediately they start whining, wanting this, wanting that, she can feel the looks, the disapproval from the swimmers who have come here for quiet and peace. Helen has become that mother. The one with the designer buggy. And she hates the lookers for making her feel it, and hates that she feels it. And she wouldn’t give her up babies for anything. And they do need a buggy, and a big one at that, they’re twins. (At least she didn’t call them Castor and Pollux.) Helen can’t win and she knows it. Sits down to her veggie burger. Orders a glass of wine anyway. After all.
Charlie swims, back and forth, back and forth. He lurches into the next lane to avoid the young men dive-bombing to impress the girls and irritate the life guards, makes his perfect turns between two young women squealing at the cold water. He swerves around slower swimmers, through groups of chattering children, he does not stop. Charlie is held in the water, only in the water.
3pm, a mid-afternoon lull. Margaret and Esther sit against the far wall, in direct sunlight, they have been here for five hours, moving to follow the sun. From inside the yoga studio they can hear the slow in and out breaths, the sounds of bodies pulled and pushed into perfection. At seventy-six and eighty-one Margaret and Esther do not worry about perfection, though Margaret still has good legs and Esther is proud of her full head of perfectly white hair. Margaret looks down at her body, the sagging and whole right breast, the missing left. She had the mastectomy fifteen years ago, they spoke to her about reconstruction, but she wasn’t much interested, nor in the prosthesis. Margaret likes her body as it is, scars, grey hair, wrinkles, lived. She and Esther have been coming to the pool every summer, three times a week for fifty years, bar that bad patch when the council closed it in the 80s. They swim twenty lengths together, heads above the water, a slow breaststroke side by side because Esther likes to chat and keep her lovely hair dry. Then Esther gets out and Margaret swims another twenty herself, head down this time, breathing out in the water, screaming out in the water sometimes, back then, when it was harder, screaming in the water because it was the only time Esther couldn’t hear her cry. It’s better now, she is alive and delighted to be here, glad to be sharing another summer with the love of her life. Esther passes her a slice of ginger cake, buttered, and they sit back to watch the water. Two old ladies, holding age-spotted hands.
Charlie swims on.
5.30pm, just before the after-office rush. In the changing rooms, Ameena takes a deep breath as she unwraps her swimming costume from her towel. She sent away for it a week ago, when she knew she could no longer deny herself the water. It arrived yesterday. It is a beautiful, deep blue. It makes her think of water even to touch it, the texture is soft, silky. She has been hot for days, wants to give herself over to the water, to the pool. She slowly takes off her own clothes and replaces them as she does with the deep blue costume. When she has dressed in the two main pieces – swim pants and tunic – she goes to the mirror to pull on the hood, fully covering her hair. Three little girls stand and stare unashamedly. She smiles at them and takes the bravery of their stare for herself, holds her covered head high, walks through the now-quiet changing room, eyes glancing her way, conversations lowered, walks out to the pool in her deep blue burkini. Ameena loved swimming at school, has been denying herself the water since she decided to dress in full hijab. She does not want to deny herself any more. The burkini is her choice, the water her desire. She can have both, and will brave the stares to do so. In the water, Ameena looks like any other woman in a wetsuit, swims better than most, and gives herself over to the repetitive mantra that are her arms and legs, heart and lungs, working in unison. It is almost prayer and she is grateful.
Charlie swims two, three, four lengths in time with Ameena, and then their rhythm changes, one is out of sync with the other, they are separate again.
8pm, the café is almost full, the pool almost empty, a last few swimmers, defying the imploring calls of the lifeguards. Time to close up, time to get out. Diners clink wine glasses and look through fairy lights past the lightly-stirring water to the gym, people on treadmills, on step machines, in ballet and spin classes. Martin and Ayo order another beer each and shake their heads. They chose food and beer tonight. And will probably do so again tomorrow evening, they are well matched, well met.
It is quiet and dark night. Charlie swims on, unnoticed. Eventually the café is closed, the gym lights turned off, the cleaners have been and gone, the pool and the park are silent but for the foxes telling the night, tolling the hours with their screams. And a cat, watching.
Charlie climbs from the water now, his body his own again, reassembled from the wishing and the tears and the could be, might be, would be, from hope breathed out into water, from the grins of young men and the laughter of old women and the helpless, rolling giggles of toddlers on soft towels. Remade through summer laughter spilling over the poolside. He dresses. White shirt, long pants, baggy trousers falling over his toes, a waistcoat, tie just-spotted, just-knotted below the turned-up collar, then the too-tight jacket, his big shoes. Without the cane and the moustache and the bowler hat he was just another man, moving at his own pace, quietly through the water. With them, he is himself again. The Little Tramp walking away, back to Kennington, retracing the path he and Sid ran through summer nights to the welcome ponds of Brockwell Park.
Behind him the water holds the memory of a man moving through it in cool midnight, a celluloid pool in which he flickers to life, and is gone.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to Carine Osment, Jen Hamilton-Emery, and to Twitter for making the links.
Writing short stories is a fine thing for many reasons – one of those reasons is simply that they are much shorter than novels. Commissioning stories however, and compiling anthologies is a far harder task. I know this having done it myself. There are contracts and payments, chasing up recalcitrant writers and persuading publishers that yes, they do want another anthology and that yes, there will be readers. So to all those who have ever asked me to write a short story, thank you. And to the readers of the short story – thank you. The short story is regularly described as enjoying a revival, for some of us, it never went away. You readers – we readers – are the reason we know it is here to stay.
The stories in this collection first appeared as follows:
‘Martha Grace’, published in Tart Noir, Pan Macmillan, 2002.
‘From the River’s Mouth’, broadcast on BBC Radio 4, 2008.
‘Everything is Moving, Everything is Joined’, published in Litmus, Comma Press, 2011.
‘No’, published in Blue Lightening, Slow Dancer Press, 1998.
‘Ladies’ Fingers’, from The Hand, Gay Sweatshop, performed 1996.
‘Un bon repas doit commencer par la faim …’ published in Paris Noir, Capital Crime Fiction, Serpent’s T
ail 2008.
‘A Swimmer’s Tale’, published in Girls Night In, Harper Collins, 2000.
‘Being the Baroness’, published in Little Black Dress, Polygon, 2005.
‘A Partridge in a Pear Tree’, published in 12 Days, Virago, 2004.
‘Siren Songs’, first published in Girls Night In, Harlequin, 2004.
‘The Gilder’s Apprentice’, published in The Independent, 2012.
‘Uncertainties and Small Surprises’, published in Fresh Blood, Do Not Press, 1996.
‘Stick Figures’, published in Pretext, 2001.
‘Silk Lovers’, published in Velocity, Black Spring Press, 2004.
‘Face Value’, published in OxCrimes, Profile, 2014.
‘Come Away With Me’, published in The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 10, 2013.
‘There Is An Old Lady Who Lives Down Our Street’, broadcast on The Verb, BBC Radio 3, 2011.
‘Jail Bait’, published in Britpulp, Sceptre, 1999.
‘To Brixton Beach’, broadcast on BBC Radio 4, 2011.
