December, Oxford
As Stevie reached the suppository-shaped orange buoy anchored in the far-right hand corner of the lake, she trod water briefly to check where Holly and Angela were. There they were – not that far behind, swimming breaststroke and chatting away as if out for coffee and not doing the 450-metre course in an old gravel pit outside Oxford. The water temperature was a chilly six degrees and rather blue from the chemicals the owners put in it to stop algae and weed proliferating. Heads down front crawl meant Stevie saw more blue water than sky, but even so, she didn’t really take in anything under the surface aside from the one or two wafting weeds now and again, which made her twitch slightly when one of them trailed through her fingers. It was strange swimming here because it was probably only about ten feet deep maximum, but she couldn’t actually see the bottom except around the edges.
Sometimes a few rocks and weeds loomed up in front of her because it suddenly got shallower, but on the whole, it was just like swimming in a tank of Radox, just without the bubbles. It was quite relaxing and gave her the chance to really stretch out and concentrate on her technique. It was getting too cold in Crummock Water to do heads down front crawl.
They’d driven down from Cumbria yesterday and stayed at Emma’s house just outside Abingdon. Today, they were swimming in this lake at the morning session, then they’d go into Oxford for some culture and lunch, then there was a Full Moon Mermaid Swim in the river that evening.
The main reason for the spur of the moment flying visit was to try to find that elusive man to swim at the championships with them. Their Arctic Flappers Instagram account was attracting a lot of followers, but all women. She didn’t count the random men with zero posts and zero followers who sent dubious private messages, which she immediately deleted. More than likely they weren’t men at all but bots.
There were loads of swimmers, like them, making their way around the course. They’d chosen the middle distance course, which took them round the edge of the lake, past a few fishermen to an orange buoy, then across the lake to another buoy before cutting back diagonally to where they’d started. Emma had to be on safety duty for an hour and Stevie waved at her as she sat in a deck chair on the jetty, peering through binoculars at all the swimmers. There were also a couple of safety kayaks floating about, checking everyone was okay.
And there were men here too! Quite a few of them. All ages, sizes, and abilities. Surely this was the perfect place to scoop one up and invite him to join their team?
Stevie had got out, pulled on her swim cloak, and was having a chat with her friend when Holly and Angela finished their loop. Used to changing out in the open on the lakeshore, it was weird to see picnic tables, wooden shelves, and even a few hooks there for swimmers to use. But even more of a luxury was a communal outdoor changing room right in front of the clubhouse, which was in fact a converted shipping container. If people preferred, they could use another container, which provided the luxury of toilets and showers.
Stevie cringed at the thought of this in the Lake District, but the activity and buzz here was exciting: young kids from the local swim club like a pod of dolphins whizzing round the circuit with a coach tucked into a safety kayak in fairly close proximity, offering encouragement to them to keep going or instructions to lift their arms a bit higher, reach out further.
‘This is Stevie from the Lake District,’ said Emma when she joined them after completing her safety duty. ‘She’s looking for a man!’ Everyone snorted with laughter or looked shocked.
Stevie found herself explaining over and over again that it wasn’t that sort of man she wanted, but a specific man who would swim with them. She found it hard to get a word in edgeways because everyone knew each other and her conversations with people were constantly getting interrupted as their own friends joined them.
Holly and Angela, who were both now dressed, also squeezed into the clubhouse and were ready for a mug of coffee. They regrouped around the kettle and shared their views on how they were getting on, how much they’d loved swimming there, how friendly everyone was, and had Stevie found a man yet.
‘I saw you chatting to a group of men,’ said Holly with a wink-wink nudge-nudge expression. ‘Any luck?’
‘Nah! None of them swim skins through the winter. They all wear wetsuits. There are a few who don’t, apparently, but they’re not here today. Maybe tomorrow.’
Then Holly stepped backwards onto someone’s foot as she was getting out of someone else’s way. ‘Oops, sorry!’ she said.
It was getting very busy inside the building, partly because there were three huge sofas and not enough standing room. It was a man, and, to the embarrassment of Stevie and Angela, she went straight in for the kill.
‘Um, I was just wondering, do you swim just in trunks right through the winter?’ The man nodded and smiled at Holly. Encouraged, she continued, doing a sort of wiggle and a sway as she spoke to him. She was flirting! Stevie and Angela exchanged glances and laughed. Go, girl!
The rest of the conversation was swallowed up by the general buzz. Time to escape, thought Stevie. She gesticulated towards the door and she and Angela squeezed carefully in between people and out into the fresh air where they both took a long, deep breath and smiled.
‘What a morning,’ said Stevie. Angela nodded but seemed distracted.
‘Are you okay, Angela?’ asked Stevie now that she could hear herself think.
‘Hmm, so-so.’ Angela seemed to be caught off-guard and blurted out, ‘Things really aren’t so good with Ed. His mother has gone to stay with her sister because of me.’
‘Oh, my God! Really?’ Stevie wasn’t sure whether to feel pleased or concerned. If anything, she’d half expected Angela to say that she had decided to move out, not the mother-in-law. ‘Sorry,’ she said, giving her friend a hug. ‘But why do you say because of you?’
‘This swimming thing.’
‘My God! Surely not? It’s just going swimming with friends, it’s—’
Angela interrupted, ‘You know that her husband, Ed’s dad, he drowned? I told you about that, didn’t I? Okay. Well, I think Margaret is still paranoid about anyone going in the water.’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘That’s what I think anyway. But the good thing is we’ve talked about it all, Ed and I.’
‘That’s good,’ said Stevie, thinking, What a weird situation. ‘So, he knows you’re down here with us. How did he feel about that?’
‘Oh, he wasn’t worried about me going away, but was not happy about the swimming championships.’
‘Hey! I’ve got a possible.’ Holly’s voice interrupted what Stevie had been about to suggest to Angela. ‘He’s called Mike, he’s an experienced winter swimmer, and he’s going to check his diary to see if he’s available for the championships!’
‘Well done, you,’ said Angela quietly.
Emma reminded them that there was a group of ladies going down to the river that evening for a moonlit skinny dip. Stevie knew her friend had in the back of her mind how much of an impact the naked forest swim in Norway had had on her. They both agreed that perhaps Holly and Angela would benefit from letting go of worries and basking in the moonlight naked. ‘There’s something mysterious and slightly illicit about night swimming,’ said Emma, ‘as if you were stealing something from the dark and turning it into your own special bit of warmth and light.’
* * *
One by one, as jeans, hoodies, T-shirts, bras, and knickers were pulled off and neatly folded or carelessly chucked down onto the grass, the figures became women: breasts, buttocks, hips, and bellies. Emma pulled something long and glittery from her bag and flapped it about in the frosty air – a mermaid’s tail, complete with fin. She pulled it on over her legs and posed for a photograph, stretching her arms across herself in feigned modesty.
The air filled with the sound of giggles, whispers, and squeals as hands grasped hands to help each other down the steep, muddy bank onto the little beach by the river. Only the mermaid was left and she hopped across the grass until she was right at the edge of the slope. Nothing for it but to sit down and slide onto the sandy beach four feet below. There she sat, giggling until tears ran down her face; mascara and sequins mixed together in a sparkly mess down her cheeks.
Someone had to go in first or they’d be standing there all night for the early morning dog walkers to point and stare at. So two women braved it. The first waded out up to her waist clasping her phone protectively, wanting to photograph the moon, which cast its white glow as it hung huge and low above the river. She beckoned to the others to join her for a selfie – a teetering, beautiful tangle of arms, curves, beaming faces, and hair.
The water on this winter night was bitingly cold and a bit rivery as the women swam against the gentle flow towards Little Wittenham and Dorchester. Heads-up breaststroke allowed disjointed conversations about currents, cow poo, who could wee while they were actually swimming, whether your boobs caused drag, and what would they do if a boat came along and had anyone ever seen a boat on the river at night in November? Squeals erupted now and again as the mermaid tail swished against someone’s leg.
The riverbanks loomed high above them, mostly inaccessible because of the brambles and bushes, even in their winter state, and the water was too deep to stand.
‘Did someone leave a light on the beach?’
A moment’s panic, until one of them piped up that she had brought battery-powered fairy lights and left them in a huge glass jar on the bank above the beach to mark their point of access.
The swimmers had abandoned their clothes, along with their human trappings, to become part of the river and the life that belonged in the water. Long hair wafting around their shoulders joined the weeds that brushed against their bellies like a dead man’s fingers. Ring-less hands spread like frog’s webbed feet pulling through the water. Nostrils twitched close to the surface; every breath a palette of decaying greens, woody browns, goosey greys, and sulphurous yellows.
All was silent now on the riverbank near the piles of clothes as a tiny water vole scuttled out of its home, ran along a precarious twig, paused to sniff the air, and then plopped into the water, scaring the lone swimmer who’d turned before the others to float gently back downstream to the fairy lights. Once safely in the gently illuminated sandy shallows, she wallowed, relishing the feeling of complete liberation here in this secret world of water.
It was Stevie, listening to her own body as it spoke to her of connection to its wilder self, a self that had never been allowed to truly flourish, but which had come out to play in the icy river pool in the Norwegian forest.
A woman of logic and stoicism, it had always gone against her nature to be flowery and spiritual, but slipping naked into the watery artery of London with other women of all different shapes, sizes, abilities, and backgrounds had felt so completely natural. It was as if with a flick of the mermaid’s tail, society’s units of measurement and quantification had vanished, replaced by emotion, sensory overload, and a desire to be at one with the world.
‘I am slowly changing,’ she told Holly and Angela on the walk back across the water meadows to the car. ‘I am starting to see my body in a completely different way and I feel good about it.’
* * *
Back in Cumbria the next evening, it was hard to leave Stevie’s car and the warmth of friendship to step out onto the muddy, stony track and begin the walk back up to a life Angela wasn’t sure existed anymore. She’d asked Stevie to drop her here because she didn’t want her friends to get involved in any awkward situation; it seemed unfair after such a long drive. Ed hadn’t objected to or supported her trip down to Oxford, but he had not been happy about the winter swimming championships. He thought it sounded frivolous and potentially dangerous. This was her problem, though, and she had to deal with it. She had absolutely no idea whether Ed would be on his own in the house, or whether his mother might have used the opportunity of Angela being away to come home.
The kitchen light and the yard light were on. Angela felt her heart pounding under her hoodie and was feeling far too hot. Stress had increased the frequency of her hot flushes over the last week or so to the point where it could happen at any time, anywhere. This was not a good moment to be having one. It made her feel lightheaded and not in the mood at all for facing whatever was behind that kitchen door.
She pushed down the handle, half expecting it to be locked. Inside, Ed was sitting at the kitchen table eating his tea. No sign of his mother – still at her sister’s, hopefully. He looked up as Angela walked in out of the dark. She noticed that his knife and fork were shaking slightly as he held them in midair above his plate. She instinctively wanted to reach out, take the cutlery from him, and hold his hands to stop the shaking. But she didn’t dare to speak, let alone touch him. Her throat was so dry. How many steps was it to that glass she noticed sitting on the draining board? Why was she even counting steps across her own slate floor? She walked in across the mat, closed the heavy door quietly behind her, put her bag down and said, ‘Hello.’
Ed dropped his cutlery on his plate with a clatter and stood up. Angela wished he’d stayed sitting down because then he seemed less large. ‘Hello,’ she said again, more quietly, trying not to convey her nervousness. She went over to the sink and poured the glass of water she needed so badly. Her tired imagination flipped into scary film mode and she spun round, half expecting to see Ed standing right behind her with a knife. For God’s sake, she told herself, get a grip!
‘Are you okay?’ His question took her by complete surprise. She walked slowly towards him, put the glass down on the table, and stood right up close to him. She was desperate to be hugged and told everything was alright. But he just stood, his arms hanging down by his sides. She realised that all the fluster and anger had drained out of him, if there had ever been any. Maybe it had all been in her imagination?
She took a risk and put her arms around his waist and pulled herself closer to him. He didn’t respond and that’s when she realised that actually, she’d been right. All was not well. Something had indeed happened.
‘What’s wrong, Ed?’ She held onto his arms and stood back a little so she could look into his broad, wind-chapped face. Those brown eyes that crinkled around the edges when he smiled – but it really had been a long, long time since she’d seen him smile, a proper big smile.
‘Mother’s in hospital. They had to do emergency surgery last night.’ He pushed her away from him gently, stepped back towards the table, and slumped down in his chair, unable to continue.
‘Oh, Ed! Why didn’t you ring me?’ She felt awful that she hadn’t been there to be with him. Whatever she thought of Ed’s mother, as Ed’s wife, she should have been with him. This was all going horribly wrong. Now, instead of resentment and fear, she felt guilt and anxiety. ‘Is she okay?’
‘She’s comfortable, but her heart is very weak. I need to go back into the hospital shortly to sit with her.’
‘I’ll drive you. Give me two minutes to use the bathroom and I’ll be back down. You can’t go alone.’
Ed said nothing. He just sat. Angela thought he was probably in shock and had been coping with the situation because he was alone and had to. Now she was here, it was all coming crashing down. It certainly was for her, but she also knew that all she wanted to do was be with him. There was no place she’d rather sit than at his side until this went one way or the other. Nothing else mattered. Nothing.