Chapter 23
23
THE CASE OF THE FROZEN VAGINA
Sweet baby Jebus and all the saints and angels in heaven.
It’s cold. So very, very cold. It was bad enough when the water hit my ankles, and I have had to remind myself to both inhale and exhale with every forward step, but I am now at the point of no return. With the next step this icy-cold Atlantic water will reach my ‘area’.
I’m aware that men experience a certain degree of shrinkage in extreme temperatures as their body tries to protect more sensitive areas.
I don’t think we women have anything like that to protect our sensitive areas, but I swear my entire vulval region is doing its best to stay as far away from the cold water as possible.
I can almost hear her scream. ‘I suffered to birth you your babies and now you want to repay me with this ?’
At least I’m hoping it’s just my internal voice screaming and not my actual voice. Given the trauma of the cold water currently bathing my pubic area, I’m not sure I’m in control of my thoughts and deeds any more.
Never mind waterboarding, the CIA would just have to walk me into the water on the Atlantic coast and I’d be spilling the tea like a weak-wristed waitress with an over-filled china pot.
‘It’s invigorating, isn’t it?’ Peggy is shouting. ‘Just remember to breathe.’
Maybe, I think, maybe I don’t want to breathe. Maybe I just want to stop breathing and cease to be before I can walk any further into this water and definitely before the icy waves hit my nipple area. Dear God – the inhumanity of it.
‘Come on, Becs,’ Laura says, through chattering teeth. ‘All for one and one for all. Or is it the other way round? One for all and all for one? I can’t remember. I do remember the cartoon from the eighties though… with the dog. What was his name again? Dogtanian?’
‘And the Muskehounds, I think,’ I stutter, actually grateful for the distraction to my brain of trying to remember the theme tune.
‘That’s the one!’ Laura says. ‘They’d be right in here being heroic little dogs and doing heroic stuff. They’d keep going even though it’s absolutely bloody freezing.’
‘They’re dogs, Laura. They’d drown,’ Niamh says tersely as she walks in, arms wrapped around herself and hands clamped firmly into her armpits in a bid to conserve heat.
Needless to say, Niamh is not happy at being dragged to the beach this morning. It was only the pep talk from Laura, assuring her that the cold water and fresh air will clear her hangover, that got through.
‘Ladies! I know it’s cold, but honestly, by the time you get out you won’t even feel it any more. And you’ll just get a big rush of endorphins to buoy you up.’ Peggy doesn’t seem one bit bothered by the cold.
While the rest of the nervous dippers arrived in a variety of rash vests, wet suits, swim leggings, gloves and shoes, all wrapped up in a variety of dryrobes and big coats which were discarded at the very last moment possible, Peggy McCabe had walked down the beach in a simple one-piece. A beanie hat atop her head was the one nod to the bitter cold. She and two of her support staff – who are definitely nowhere near menopausal age – practically skipped into the water.
They are rosy cheeked and smiling broadly. Peggy looks the picture of health and as if she belongs on the front of a healthy-living magazine, while I’m sure that if I could see myself at this very moment I’d look like Leonardo DiCaprio just seconds before Kate Winslet yeets him into the ocean once and for all. ‘I’ll never let go,’ my arse!
I feel Laura link her arm in mine. ‘We’ll get through it,’ she says, bravely, with the stoicism of a soldier about to go over the top and into no man’s land.
She tries to link onto Niamh and is met with a shake of the head. ‘I am not taking my hands out from under my pits for anyone,’ she chatters. ‘At the moment they’re the only thing stopping me from freezing my actual tits off.’
‘It’s not as bad as cross-country running in second year through the snow. If we survived that, we can survive anything,’ Laura says, determined to keep proceedings as upbeat as possible.
She’s right, of course. It feels positively tropical in comparison to the hour-long PE lesson from hell we endured when we were at school. Three times around the school grounds, through the long grass and up the slippery, mud-rich hills, dressed in T-shirts and P E knickers. Not even shorts. But PE knickers. Grey knee-high socks pushed down so they didn’t look completely ridiculous over our plimsoles. Plimsoles which had very, very little grip in icy conditions, as it happens. It had been bad enough when we set out, but when the sleet started to fall sideways, blinding us, and feeling as if we were being stung by hundreds of icy bees, it took on a whole new level of endurance challenge.
I still remember the look of horror on our PE teacher’s face as we stumbled back into the hall one by one, our faces now as blue as our PE shirts, our skin mottled and our toes frostbitten. My hands had gone a fetching shade of purple and were numb to the touch. Kelly Gallagher had an asthma attack. It was all incredibly dramatic as the teacher whacked on a large heater to maximum and we crowded around it, trying to get some heat into our bones.
The upside was that she felt so guilty she did an emergency run to the hot drinks machine by the canteen while we were getting changed, and returned with twenty-three can’t-believe-it’s-not-hot-chocolates (a strange warm liquid which tasted like someone had stirred some water with a stick of a Twirl bar).
‘We can have hot chocolate after this,’ I say. ‘If we survive. Proper hot chocolate. With marshmallows and cream!’
Laura snorts, her teeth still chattering. ‘That’s it! The spirit of adventure!’
‘Okay, ladies! It’s time to get down into it now! Trust me, it’s easier if you submerge yourself up to your neck. Your body adjusts faster. So let’s count back from five then everyone hunker down. Swim if you want but it’s okay to just let your body float a bit.’
Laura, Niamh and I look at each other with a mixture of fear and mild hysteria. But I suppose, in for a penny, in for a pound. We haven’t come this far to only come this far, etc., etc.
‘I can’t believe this is how I’m spending my Saturday morning,’ Niamh hisses, very reluctantly freeing her hands to hold on to ours.
With a courage we don’t necessarily believe in, we count down from five and submerge ourselves almost fully into the icy ocean waters.
It’s akin to a religious experience. Which at least explains how often I call on our Lord as I wait for the promised numbness to kick in. This high better be worth it.
Laura is staring at me wide-eyed, panting as if she’s in labour.
‘Don’t… Don’t hy-hy-hyperventilate!’ I stutter, wondering if my body has ever been this cold before in any of my forty-six years and why on earth anyone would do this more than once.
It’s a comfort at least to hear the squeals from my fellow dippers while Peggy calls to us to remember to breathe and to just trust in our body’s ability to adjust to the cold.
The squeals quickly quiet, replaced by laughter and chatter. When I glance to Laura she is smiling – still focusing on her breathing but thankfully at a more controlled rate.
Niamh has her eyes closed and is breathing hard, as if she is just about to go in for the home stretch and push a baby out.
‘It’s not so bad, is it?’ Laura says.
‘Dddde… pp… ends what you’re comparing it to,’ Niamh says.
I’m about to tell Laura she has to be having a laugh when I feel my body relax and that numbness Peggy promised start to take over.
Okay. This might actually be okay after all. I’m finally able to take my eyes from Laura, Niamh and the other swimmers and look around me. Here I am, this one person at the gateway to this vast ocean between Ireland and America. Yet in this second, bobbing up and down in the water, a smile now unexpectedly wide across my face, I feel a sense of belonging. I am part of something bigger. We all are. That’s quite amazing, really.
‘Okay, ladies,’ Peggy shouts. ‘Time to get out and get warmed up!’
‘That’s it?’ asks Niamh, who has already pulled herself up to standing and thrust her hands back under her armpits, with incredulity.
‘Yep. Any longer and we risk hypothermia kicking in, which is absolutely shite craic by all accounts!’ Laura replies.
I stand up, the wind coming in off the ocean whipping around me as I walk back to shore. It’s the strangest sensation. I do not feel cold. In fact, what I feel is something quite euphoric instead.
So of course I do what anyone in a state of euphoria would do – and I burst into tears.