"Another perfect day was that Wednesday. The sun was blistering, end of September shine. I put on my rose bikini and stood in my room with that weird sensation of swimwear in unusual circumstance. Also I was hungover.
She met me and we caught the train heading west. We walked sipping cans of fizzy orange pop called Miranda. The startling brightness and warmth made everything dreamy and as we turned onto the fields the first thing we saw was a huge circus tent spitting out garlands of rainbow ribbons and a pair of oatmeal and blonde horses nibbling the grass. It was so infant and woozy. We walked alongside a pond and into woods and she told me she was having therapy. He had taken her one night to get help, after tears and end of tethers. I love how she talks, playfully with words, she understands the look of a conversation, tells a great story. She said that her therapist was pleased with her progress. She was happy about this.
We strolled alongside a large sloping lawn where a flock of school children played sports academically. I said these North London children, these are the people who will grow up to have amazing lives.
We were lost for a while but then found our destination. Arrived sticky with sweat, inching down a little wooded alleyway, to a bungalow and a deck beside a big round pond, heavy with autumn leaves and specky moorhens. We went into an open roofed area to change. Ladies all around with flesh and shapes, all smiles and wrinkles. I peeled off my clothes and said, is there a locker? No, a big pear lady said, she had piles of brown hair bundled on top of her head and was smiling, we just trust each other.
Simple, we just trust, only writing it down now can I understand why I found this so comforting and striking.
My friend and I piled our things up and went out to the decking, we stepped onto the ladder, half submerged, and climbed down into the murk. The water was biting, freezing cold. I winced and screwed up my face and held on tight out of reflex, then turned myself right around and plunged in. I took deep breaths and swam out into the water, probably squeaking and gasping. She followed more slowly, in her blue swimsuit. It felt great to be in.
I noticed the yellow leaves in the pond straight away – some were floating on the surface, some were floating just beneath, held at a specific gravity, indecisive, as if the pond were jelly. Some leaves couldn’t be seen, I could only touch them with my feet as I swam past. A giant could float through space and galaxies would be these leaves, spread out and caught in a net, and the giant would feel them brush past her feet and would watch yellow worlds float on the surface.
I wanted to swim as far as possible, swim out and out. There were five or six older ladies in the pond with us and there were five or six lifesavers flush with algae. It remained cold for a long time in the water, but was always refreshing. When I came close to her we giggled and chatted, swam to the furthest point in the pond and back again, only our heads visible to one another. We got out and lay on the lawn, I took off my bikini top and baked in sun. The warmth in September was bliss after a cold dip and I wanted to feel my skin heat up and up.
We left and ate Lebanese food.
A few months later, I was at hot springs at midnight, not with her, with others. Perched on rocks beside pools of sulphurous steaming water, we sat down and had a picnic. There weren't enough candles to light the meal, so we ate groping and laughing, using our fingers as forks.
I boiled myself in a tub built to catch the water from the natural hot spring, swigging from a bottle of homemade red wine. The juice stained my lips, but nobody could see my smile in the darkness. When I got too hot I tiptoed down to a nearby stream and stepped in. That biting cold again. I lowered myself down onto the carpet of smooth pebbles under the surface, feeling the ice water wrap around my waist like hands. Slowly and with winces I lay back, closing my eyes, fully submerging myself. The water roared alongside my body, this little stream had so much power. Under there, in the black, with the sound of a clanking stones and rushing bubbling liquids, I dreamt I was being carried away like luggage." C. R.
