Gus
‘Glad you got the boots?’ said Violet who was stood two steps down from him, looking as relaxed as he had ever seen her, despite being up to her thighs in cold water.
‘The thought of it is worse than the reality, I promise. And once you’re in and you’ve been swimming for maybe two minutes you’ll start to feel great.
It’s just that those two minutes that are…
’ She paused, choosing her words carefully. ‘A bit challenging.’
‘You’re not wrong!’ he said, trying to keep his voice light and not start shrieking as he descended the first step. Mid-calf, water over the boots now and directly onto his skin. ‘Twelve degrees, you said. Did you mean Fahrenheit?’
Violet was now at the bottom of the steps, the water level up to her shoulders. How was that even possible? How could she have got so far into the pool without any drama, and how could he have missed the opportunity to study in detail that slim, lithe body now completely obscured by water?
‘No,’ she said, smiling. ‘Twelve degrees Fahrenheit would be minus eleven Celsius.’ She looked up, thoughtful as she did the mental arithmetic. ‘Whereas twelve degrees Celsius is a warm and cosy fifty-three Fahrenheit, maybe closer to fifty-four.’
‘Wow,’ Gus was impressed despite his discomfort. ‘Have you just committed that to memory? Or did you do the calculation there and then?’
‘I love a bit of mental arithmetic,’ she said. ‘Even when I’m relaxing.’
‘Relaxing?’ Gus gave a little squeak which sounded terribly unmanly as the water level reached somewhere around his groin.
Any stirrings caused by thoughts of Violet’s lithe body were swiftly doused.
‘I really, really wouldn’t call this relaxing.
More a form of torture outlawed by the Geneva Convention.
Should I call Amnesty International?’ He took a deep breath in as he descended the final step, his feet joining hers on the floor of the pool– not that he could feel his feet– not that he could feel anything.
She looked at him, concerned for a moment. ‘Breathe,’ she said. ‘Don’t forget to keep breathing.’
He realised that he’d completely forgotten to exhale.
His chest felt tight as he released the air and he wondered whether he was ever going to be able to manage normal respiration again.
It seemed to require an inordinate amount of conscious effort all of a sudden just to force air in and out of his lungs.
‘Slow-ly,’ she said, looking directly into his eyes.
He could see out here in the wintery daylight, her misty grey-green irises were also flecked with bright sparks of blue and more closely resembled the colour of the sea after a storm.
The thought calmed him, and he was reminded of his earlier attempts to help her with Mrs Chambers’ cannulation when he had given her the same instruction, to breathe.
That now seemed like a walk in the park compared to this, but after a few moments of following the pace of her breath he felt able to speak again.
‘I forgot,’ he said, surprised. ‘I forgot how to breathe. And I’ve watched SAS– Are You Tough Enough?
That’s the first thing they tell you about cold water, people forget to breathe.
’ He half-laughed, half-gasped. ‘I think the clear answer is, no– thank you, SAS, but I am definitely not tough enough.’
‘You’re doing fine,’ she said, her smile making the corners of her eyes crease a little. ‘The SAS are correct. Everyone forgets to breathe.’
‘But I’m an anaesthetist,’ he laughed. ‘My entire career is based on ventilation. You’d think I’d remember that it was fairly useful in terms of keeping me alive.’
Violet laughed then and crouched slightly so her shoulders were now beneath the water.
‘Stop showing off,’ he said, mock-glaring at her. ‘It’s taking every ounce of strength I possess to just stay at this level. If I go in up to my throat surely it’s game over?’ He was only half-joking.
‘Bet your legs are starting to sting less though?’
He nodded; she was right. ‘Only because my chest is now on fire,’ he said, arms still held aloft. ‘My body clearly can’t cope with alerting me to a state of emergency over multiple sites.’
She took his gloved hand in her own and moved it slowly below the waterline.
‘Where are you taking me?’ He grimaced as his arm started the inevitable process of following his hand beneath the water.
‘Down,’ she said, smiling naughtily. ‘You’re going down.’ Was there something suggestive in her tone? He thought perhaps, but then maybe not. His senses weren’t currently the sharpest. She was just teasing him.
‘Well, as the actress said to the bishop, if we go down, we go down together,’ he said, realising he sounded less like a practised seducer and more like a bad comedian from the eighties.
He’d obviously reverted back to his earlier ‘dad joke’ territory of the start of the week.
It was probably only a matter of time before he started prat-falling into the pool.
Although on second thoughts, that was unlikely given the temperature of this pool.
‘Indeed.’ She pulled his other hand until only both their heads remained bobbing above the surface.
This close to her, he could see the freckles scattered across her nose, the pale pink of her cheeks, the impish turn of her mouth as she smiled at him.
A few strands of hair poked out from her navy swimming hat and added to the elfin quality of her features.
She looked delicate, like fine china, like a naughty porcelain elf.
‘We’d better get moving,’ she said, breaking his gaze.
‘Don’t be trying any Olympic front crawl, it’s like the breathing, slow and steady.
’ She turned and checked that he was okay before she disappeared under the surface of the water and bobbed up a metre away, her fingers cresting the wave of a graceful breaststroke.
‘You don’t have to get your head under,’ she said cheerfully. ‘It might feel a bit much for your first time.’
Gus pushed himself forward from the floor, his head held rigid and resolute above the water; even pride couldn’t force his chin beneath the surface just yet.
He managed a couple of strokes but felt like an ageing diva trying to preserve a face full of make-up as he extended his neck away from the cold.
The rest of his body was now starting to feel warm– well, maybe not warm but a temperature more compatible with life anyway– so he risked lowering his jaw, keeping his sightline on Violet’s booted feet as they met and separated a metre in front of him.
She turned her head to check he was following her and resumed her swim, cutting through the water with barely a splash, her long legs stretching out to their full extent before she drew in her knees, splayed her feet and kicked back, the small bow wave catching Gus’s chin.
‘You’d better not wee in the pool,’ he shouted over to her.
‘I’m right behind you, immediately downstream. ’
He could hear the laughter in her voice as she replied.
‘Might warm things up a bit,’ she said and turned her head to look behind her again. ‘I’ll swim ahead now I know you’re not going to drown. We’ll keep an eye on the time. Don’t want to be in for too long.’
‘No danger of that,’ said Gus cheerfully.
‘My body’s not going to let me forget it wants out of this scenario as soon as possible.
’ But as he said this he realised that it wasn’t true.
His chest no longer felt tight, his limbs felt warm, heavy but powerful as they sliced through the pool.
And the splash of water against his cheeks no longer felt painful, more refreshing.
He risked two strokes of front crawl that brought him back to touching distance of Violet’s feet so he reached out and tweaked one of her toes.
‘Hey!’ she laughed, kicking back at him. ‘I said no racing, remember? Slow and steady. I was trying to give you some space.’
‘I can’t help it if my body is a machine,’ he said. ‘Maybe I’ll reconsider my SAS application now. I’m clearly a natural.’
He could see the rise and fall of her shoulders as she laughed.
‘Less talking, more swimming from you,’ she said.
‘Seeing as you’re such a natural.’ And reaching the end of the pool she executed a perfect rolling turn and dived beneath him so that he could see the entire length of her body gliding past in the opposite direction as she skimmed the pool floor.
‘Now who’s showing off,’ he called as he reached the edge.
He stopped to catch his breath and looked back down the pool, watching Violet continue her clean leisurely strokes to the shallow end.
He realised in that moment that he was enjoying himself.
In spite of the cold, and the fact that he was in the middle of a week of nights, and to all intents and purposes living a lie, he was actually really enjoying himself.
He felt invigorated, just as Violet had said he would.
His core temperature had stabilised, his pulse rate had slowed and he felt both physically spent and wide awake.
He also realised, as Violet yet again checked over her shoulder to make sure he was okay, that he had forgotten what it felt like to be looked after.
Usually, it was his job to make other people feel safe and secure, to reassure them that everything was going to be alright.
His professional demeanour tended to extend into his personal life with every effort made to put people at ease by remaining calm and unflappable.
But he hadn’t been unflappable as he’d entered the water, he had been very much flappable.
And Violet had seen it, sensed it and not drawn attention to it.
She had simply told him to breathe, let him know she was there and that he was safe.
He wasn’t sure he could think of the last time anyone had done that.