November
On the beach after their swim, the three silent water warriors began the process of stripping off wet costumes, gloves, and booties, drying and redressing in warm layers. It was a peculiar ritual, which Stevie did differently from the more fastidious Angela and Holly just did differently every time.
Today, with the sun’s November warmth, the race against the after drop felt slightly less threatening, but nevertheless Stevie was glad she had explained the basics of how the body worked after being in cold water. During their earlier swims, she’d made sure Holly and Angela understood how the blood flows back to the extremities, which were cold, and then back through the heart. This chilled blood could cause the body’s core temperature to drop by a degree or two further, which, in the worst case, could lead to dizziness, confusion, clumsiness, and an inability to rewarm without additional help. The after drop was the beginning of a slippery slope to hypothermia, she had warned the others, so it was not something she ever wanted to see them experience.
‘So what do you both think about this relay team idea then?’ she asked once they were all sipping hot drinks.
‘Let’s do it,’ said Holly, hopping about to try to get some feeling back in her size four feet. ‘Mind you, my feet are like blocks of ice now, so God knows how I’ll manage as the water gets colder.’
‘We’ll be acclimatised by then. It’s still a few months away,’ reassured Stevie. ‘Don’t forget that you’ve only been doing this for a few weeks.’
‘Hmm, when did I first come down?’
Stevie could almost see Holly’s brain working its way back through her diary.
‘Eyebrows! That was it. We met at the salon and you were about to have your eyebrows done.’
Angela stared at Stevie’s darkish brown eyebrows but said nothing.
‘My God! Stop staring!’ Stevie laughed, covering the upper half of her slightly freckled face with her free hand. ‘Do they need doing again?’
Holly ignored the question.
‘Thank God we’ve sorted that one out then.’ Stevie’s surprisingly throaty laugh was infectious and as she stared out across the lake, she remembered what she had thought when she met Holly down by Bird Poo Island for her first outdoor swim. The woman who would look more at home in the city couldn’t have brought more stuff with her if she had tried and then she stripped down to the smallest, flimsiest fluorescent orange swimsuit Stevie had ever seen.
‘I thought this would be the easiest to get on and off,’ Holly had chirped, grinning at Stevie. Stevie remembered wondering if she was going to actually do some swimming. From their first encounter at the beauty clinic, she had suspected that what Holly looked like mattered more than whether something was practical or not. No one was that tanned in the Lake District, either. But she had to admit that Holly had an amazing figure and not just because it was sculpted by that high-cut plunge-neck second skin.
‘And I only started a week or so before you, Holly.’ Angela interrupted Stevie’s thoughts, and looked at her cheap pink child’s watch anxiously. ‘I’ve got to go in a minute I’m afraid. Things to do.’
From some of the things that had come out in their swimming conversations when their filters disappeared, the other two women knew this was Angela’s code for ‘I’ll be in trouble if I don’t get back on time.’ There was nothing concrete, but enough to indicate that this hesitant self-conscious woman had a less than ideal home life.
But on this stunning Lakeland day, such thoughts had no place. In Stevie’s heart, she knew the water was gradually opening up energy within the other two women. For herself, it was a relief to be able to let more people into her dark, internal emotional confusion about love, rejection, and her place in the world as an older woman. In return, she listened, didn’t judge, held, and then let go. The water took it all and asked for nothing. Flaky as it sounded, it was what Stevie had come to believe the more she swam.
She tipped the remains of the now cold tea from her enamel mug. ‘Of course. Next swim? I know we’d mentioned Thursday, but, actually, Friday’s looking dry and sunny.’
‘I’m free,’ said Holly.
Angela nodded, her still damp hair falling loose from the topknot she’d hastily created while getting dry. Stevie noticed how feather light it appeared, not thick and heavy like hers.
‘Brilliant. My turn to drive,’ she said, pulling her merino wool hat down more cosily around her ears.
As they walked slowly back up the narrow bracken-edged path to the road, silence fell upon them once again. Lost in their private worlds of breathing and relaxed smiles, they were headed back to a reality that was far more complicated than wild swimming in this stunning landscape.