Swimmer

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Bill Broady. Swimmer

CONTENTS

I

II

III

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

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S W I M M E R

B I L L B R O A D Y

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One morning at seven you were all gathered at the side of the pool, listening to Coach: ‘Do your time, do your time! Don’t look at the others. Don’t even think about the others. Just do your time, do your time!’ He made it sound as if you were prisoners, in for a long stretch, with no parole or pardon. Suddenly there appeared behind him a dirty, bristled man, wearing a corded tartan dressing-gown … legs wide apart, leaning back so that his head looked heavenwards, he whipped it open. You all dived, screaming, back underwater, as Dad and Coach dragged him away, but you’d glimpsed that there’d been no hair, no … winkle between his legs, just a bubble-gum-pink expanse: a flash of nothing.

Competition was the price you had to pay for spending so much time in the water. Not that it was particularly competitive: at local, national and junior international levels you just won and won, absently, without any real pleasure. You didn’t like having to turn in races and go back again, as if you’d forgotten something: the 100 metres was only the same 50 twice, the 200, four times. Swimming back through your own wake you always feared that you’d crash into yourself coming the other way. They should have built pools that expanded or contracted to the required length, or huge circular ones in which you’d spiral round until you reached the centre. At the climax of a race your vision would always begin to fog: it was as if you were heading into a shimmering grey light – you’d reach out but it would remain tantalizingly just beyond your hand’s final touch on the rail. Even when you won you were disappointed: you’d look at your empty hands and then have to move out for the next race, although you could feel the water trying to hold you there, clinging to your legs like a lonely, desperate child.

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