This story is included in the collection Second Chance & Other Stories, published October 2022 – read it below, or listen here:
Charlie pulled the car in on the left just before the empty pier. He held down the button to turn off his phone, which was feeding Spotify through the speaker system, and slipped it down into the pocket on the side of the driver’s door – for once, not choc-a-bloc with scribbled notes, loose batteries, old keys, match programmes and a dozen other random items. “Make sure you clean the car,” had been Sophie’s last words the evening before, “and get it washed as well.” He lifted his wallet off the passenger’s seat and put it into the glove compartment, and unnecessarily checked one more time that the little black ring box was there too. Then he hopped out and grabbed his sports bag from the boot. The morning was grey, and the water lapped onto the end of the pier.
“Why do I do this?” he asked himself again, just as he had a few times on the ever-narrowing road out from town. Now, as he fumbled with his jocks under his dryrobe, and looked out at the choppy lake, he contemplated not bothering. But he was having a good run of it lately and though Sophie had wanted to get on the road earlier, he told her he’d like to grab a swim before they left, and so it would be 9.30am before he’d be at her house.
It was late September. The cold sting hit his feet and lower legs when he stepped slowly in at the corner of the pier – no muscular dives and sudden immersions for him. It stayed while he stood stock still, trying to work up the courage. And then, almost catching himself by surprise, he pulled the goggles down onto his eyes, and went for it: hands stretched out in front of him to gain the full value of his initial thrust, feeling the cold on his head and his chest and then starting to work his arms frantically, head still underwater, breath held, until he guided himself to a rock where he stood for a few seconds, shivering and gasping, but initiated. He’d broken the back of it now. He settled into a more consistent rhythm as he swam out to The Point. He wasn’t warm, but he wasn’t cold either. It was bearable.
“Any day you swim,” he thought, “is a good day,” and he resolved, as he had so often done before, to “stick with it through the winter this time.”
At The Point, he took a break, and was surprised to see a person coming his way from the pier, moving at a brisk pace, every stroke smooth, clearly an accomplished swimmer. As the person got nearer, the purple swimsuit bobbing out of the water announced her gender. She drew up alongside Charlie, poked her head underwater to find a rock and stood up straight on it; shoulders, neck and head all above water. “Good morning, I take it you’re a regular here,” she said, in a voice that wasn’t local, each word formed perfectly, earning its keep, “it’s my first time, bloody lovely spot.”
“Well, I’ve been coming here since I was a young boy,” replied Charlie, “but I’m not hard core. This is as late in the year as it’s ever got for me. How about you? You an all-year-rounder?”
“Oh, there’s no fool like an old fool, I guess,” she replied, confirming an English accent. “It’s the sea for me, near where I live, but I must say this is a beautiful place, a proper hidden gem. I’ve driven that road up there thousands of times over the years – I live near Ballina – and I never knew there was such a lovely place just a few miles off it.”
She wasn’t young, perhaps 70 or even a little over it. She had a firmness in her eyes, and she exhibited no discomfort in the water. Her skin was drawn tight across her face. Hardy, Charlie thought.
“What’s the story with that buoy over there,” she asked, pointing at the ball of orange a few hundred yards away, “please tell me that’s some sort of fabled local challenge?”
“Well,” said Charlie, “it’s a relatively new thing. The water sports club put it down there. It’s all the go now. Five hundred yards to it from the pier, so I reckon about 200 from where we are now.”
“You up for it?” she asked.
“Ooh,” said Charlie, “it’s a bit outside my comfort zone. It’s not the distance, but just out there, maybe 50 yards on from here, there’s the ledge. And that’s definitely fabled. It gets suddenly deep at that point. And not just deep – I don’t mind deep too much – but dark too. It’s the dark that spooks me.”
“The darkest hour comes before the dawn,” said the woman, “shall we leap over the abyss?”
Charlie couldn’t see a way out. And, anyway, if he was going to try the buoy, best not to do it alone. He had gone past the ledge a few times, but had always wheeled around almost immediately, his mind defeating him.
“Shall I declare the gauntlet thrown down?” asked the woman, “if it gets to you, just turn around and we’ll come back. Don’t be a martyr.”
And so, they set off. There was just him, the water, the woman – and the looming ledge. She moved a length or two ahead, and stayed at that remove, adopting his pace. When they crossed the ledge, he felt his breath quicken. His movements became mechanical and awkward. The darkness sent up lake monsters with long, curling tails; and hollowed out human skulls, white and ghostly. And it took him all his time to not turn back. He saw a headline: ‘Heartbreak as teacher drowns just hours before wedding proposal’ – the ring in the glove compartment revealing the imminence of his plans. He imagined Sophie getting a call. He’d turn back now before anything happened.
Then, mid-panic, Charlie saw that the woman had stopped. She was at the buoy, holding onto the rope that led down – God knows how far – to the concrete block that held the buoy in place.
“Nearly there,” she said, “it’s no bother to you.”
He thrashed wildly, no rhyme or reason to his breathing. He was coming up for air on every second stroke now, and each time the buoy came a little closer to him, until, eventually, he clung onto the rope and gasped for breath. She eased herself away from the rope and was treading water, giving him all the time he needed.
When he’d finally composed himself, he made the first move to set off on the return journey, and she took the cue. Though he was tiring, Charlie was less worried now. Every stroke brought him closer to the pier and the joy of completing the challenge. He just had to keep doing what he was doing, follow her, take a breath every four strokes, keep his thoughts under control, make light of the dark, trust himself, trust her and then it’d be over.
And it was. He floated back over the ledge and onto the familiar beige of the rocks and solid ground. “Well done, you,” she said to him, “it’s great to overcome a fear, isn’t it? It does get rather choppy out there, doesn’t it, as you leave the shelter of the bay?”
They swam slowly back to the pier and pulled themselves out. Charlie eased himself into his dry robe. She wrapped herself in a thick-set beach towel and walked to her car – a green jalopy of a Morris Minor, he could see. She returned with an old-fashioned flask of coffee and two mugs. She poured one and handed it to him.
“That’ll do you good,” she told Charlie.
“Thank you. Jesus, that’s lovely, I wouldn’t usually spoil myself like this. It’s more of an in and out job for me,” said Charlie, supping at the hot coffee, before leaving it on the ground so that he could pull on his shirt and jeans and poke his feet into his sandals, the steady restoration of order. He looked at his watch. 9am. It’d take the guts of 40 minutes to get there.
“I often think of swimming as an escape, in the very literal sense,” she said, “we’re all escaping something – something big or something small, but when we haven’t something big to worry about, we just make something small into something bigger, so we’re never stuck for something to escape.”
“Just as well I didn’t drown there – I’ve a big day ahead of me,” he joked.
“You have? Oh, go on, I do love a good story, the suspense is killing me already,” she said, exaggerating each word as she spoke.
“Well, I probably shouldn’t tell you, no-one else knows, but we’re going to my girlfriend’s parents’ place in Donegal today, and while we’re there, I’m planning on asking her to marry me,” he said.
“Oh, you going and drowning on your morning swim wouldn’t have helped things then, that’s for sure,” she said.
Charlie laughed, the woman too.
“Anyway, marriage,” said the woman, “how exciting! Will it be your first time on that particular merry-go-round?”
“Yes,” he replied, laughing again, not expecting her flippancy.
“And your wife?” she asked.
“She’s not my wife – well, not yet anyway, and she might baulk, you can never be sure,” he said.
“Sorry, your, what’s the word, your intended, your other half, your better half…” she said.
“No, she hasn’t been on this, er, merry-go-round before either. You sound unconvinced by it – have you never tried marriage yourself?” he asked.
“Unconvinced? Of course I’m unconvinced – I’ve been married three times. Does that sound like someone who’s convinced?” she replied, playfully.
“Three times, wow, that’s, what, impressive, or something; I don’t know, optimistic maybe,” he said.
“I buried two of them,” she said.
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” he said.
“Not as sorry as I am – I buried the wrong two. Well, they were dead, so it was only right to bury them, but the wrong two died. Only the good die young, or, in some cases, the middle aged. The third one is proving extremely resistant; he’s 82 and hasn’t been well for years, but he’s still hanging on. Hard to kill a bad thing, I suppose,” she said.
“Sounds like true love,” he said.
“Oh, we’re not together anymore,” she clarified, “but you never fully shake them off while both of you are this side of the clay – goodness knows what it’s like the far side, I don’t even want to think about what goes on there.”
He found her off-handedness refreshing. Sophie, she’d plan everything from this day onwards with precision, he knew that. He’d have to go along with it, but, really, all the palaver wouldn’t be necessary. He looked away, taking another mouthful of coffee. A small dog appeared on the rocks to the right, a man trailing behind him, stick in hand.
“And would you have any words of wisdom for where I am now, a man on the brink of another abyss?” he asked.
“Indeed, I have, but I wouldn’t presume to advise anyone who would be willing to take advice from me, if you’ll forgive me my Groucho Marx,” she said.
“Go on anyway, I’ll make a call on it after I hear it,” he said.
He sensed the lightness of the preceding minutes was about to recede.
“My good man, my advice is very simple – yet it is the product of years of experience, much of it bitter, so don’t underestimate it merely because it is not complex or long-winded, if you don’t mind me saying,” she began.
“Not at all,” he said.
The woman looked away and for a moment Charlie feared she would dry up. He’d noticed that sometimes before when he’d strike up conversations with strangers; at some point, often when they’ve really started to open up, they bring down the shutters, as if they have travelled too far in a first encounter.
“Don’t rush into it,” she said, “I had a bachelor uncle who spent his life saying he was taking his time getting married. ‘Soon enough to a bad market’, he used to say. And while he took it to extremes – the old bugger lived to be 101 and we all spent years minding him because he had no-one of his own – I do contend that he had a point.”
Charlie saw the humour but didn’t laugh; instead, he considered the advice carefully.
“Don’t rush into it. You know what people say, if it’s for you, it won’t pass you by,” she added. “I have a different take on that – presume it’s not for you, push it away. Make it difficult for it to manifest itself. And then, if it does, you’ll know it’s right – you’ll have put it through a rigorous test.”
Both retreated into silence. The dog retrieved the stick from the water. He shook himself vigorously in front of his owner, refusing to release his grip on the stick, bringing the game to a halt.
“I hope I haven’t upset you,” said the woman, suddenly tender, “I’m sometimes too direct. It’s no reflection on your good lady; I don’t know her from Adam.”
“There’s no problem with your advice,” said Charlie.
Another lengthy silence fell.
“You know what,” announced Charlie, “I think I’ll swim out to the buoy again. It’d be a pity to waste such a nice morning.”
“A wonderful idea,” said the woman, “I’ll just put this back in the car and join you. It’ll set me up for the day.”
Charlie walked to the edge of the pier and half dived, half bellyflopped, into the water and turned out to face the open lake.