Chapter 25
The following morning, Sandycove was practically deserted when Lucy and I walked through the village. Only the bakery was open, and there were commuters heading to the station.
We heard a voice. ‘Luce!’
We turned to see a woman our age rushing up to us.
‘You’re here!’ she said. ‘Finally!’ She threw her arms around Lucy. ‘It’s so good to see you!’
Lucy hugged her back. ‘I’m so glad to see you too.’
‘I have to say, Luce, you are looking amazing. How are you?’
‘Fine.’ Lucy shrugged. ‘I’m a lot better. Better than I was.’
‘Well, you look it.’
Lucy turned to introduce me. ‘This is Kerry-Anne, who I told you about. Kerry-Anne, this is Ellie.’
Ellie was tall and thin, and smiley, her brown hair long and straight, and she was wearing shorts and a bikini top, a rolled towel under her arm. She shook my hand, smiling. ‘Oh, I’ve heard all about Kerry-Anne,’ she said. ‘My mother is Maureen from the hotel. She’s taken a huge shine to you.’
‘Well, I’m delighted to have met her,’ I said. ‘She’s such a lovely woman.’
Ellie nodded. ‘She’s the best, she really is.’
The three of us began walking towards the Forty Foot and, at the brow of the slope, we turned onto the flat rocks where the swimmers all gathered. We stood beside Lucy, who was still looking tentative. ‘I might just dip my toe in.’ Lucy looked at me. ‘You go in with Ellie. I’ll just do my thing.’
Ellie and I walked to the edge of the water, then down the steps, plunging into the cold, dark water, my temperature plummeting suddenly.
As I resurfaced and made large, deep strokes, my body regulated, and I swam around, ducking my head under, holding my breath.
It was quiet there, with my ears under the surface, as though life was suspended.
I flipped over onto my back and floated, above was only sky and seagulls and clouds, the distant sound of voices.
There was a sense of a baptismal, I thought, as I slunk and slipped around in the water, feeling utterly and completely free.
Perhaps this was what meditation was like, and not being someone who was a meditator, this was probably the closest I was going to get.
Caitlin was and, in the last few years of her life, had embraced so much of that world.
She would go on yoga retreats and would light candles and begin her day with a ten-minute meditation ‘practice’ as she called it.
‘Don’t diss it till you try it, Kerry-Anne,’ she used to say. ‘I am so much calmer these days.’
She carried on meditating throughout her treatment and, right at the end, some of her other friends from her yoga life brought in incense to the hospital room, which caught in the throat and made my eyes water. But they were watering anyway, and the incense was a great distraction.
Oh, Caitlin. I looked up at the sky. I hope you’re okay up there.
Ellie had swum straight out to the yellow buoy which was moored about fifty yards out, and was heading past me again.
She called over, ‘By the way, I would love to be involved in the PR for the knitting circle.’ She treaded water beside me.
‘I have a few ideas. We need a campaign, I’m thinking something to do with lost jumpers, lost hearts, lost property, not sure yet.
Leave it with us and we’ll brainstorm later.
But we can look after the social media, take photographs and start directing people to the website.
And I thought we should yarn bomb the village… ’
‘Yarn bomb?’ I had no idea what on earth this could mean.
‘Basically we ask the circle to knit a hat for the postbox or to wrap a scarf around a lamp post, or knit bunting, that kind of thing. I thought we could then pitch to be on the evening news. And what about celebrities wearing one of the jumpers? I have a few ideas. Cillian Murphy, Saoirse Ronan, people like them.’
‘Great ideas,’ I said. ‘But I have to go back to Boston soon. Finnuala and Sheila will be in charge and can make the decisions.’
She nodded. ‘It’s such a wonderful business.
I mean, I know it’s a community enterprise, really, with profits going back into supporting the elderly, but it’s still so great.
There are skills which we just don’t value as much as we should.
I think I’m going to see if they will give me a few lessons.
I would love to have a go.’ She looked over at Lucy still standing on the rocks.
‘She’s getting in. God, she’s so brave. She nearly died. ’
Lucy seemed determined. There was a slight hesitation, and Ellie and I watched as she made her way down the steps, eyes tightly closed, her hand on the metal rail which led into the sea, her feet finding each step, leading to greater depths. ‘I feel like I should sing a song,’ she said.
‘“Dreams” by the Cranberries?’ suggested Ellie. ‘You did that in the school talent contest. Remember?’
‘Talent was used in a very loose definition,’ said Lucy, as the sea came up to her thighs.
The sea was up to Lucy’s waist now and, still with her eyes closed, she suddenly leaned down and pushed off, and began singing, and I recognised the song. Caitlin and I used to sing it back in college, it was on repeat on that old CD player we had.
The two of us watched, breath held, as Lucy shimmered in the water, her body now a dark form heading out to sea.
And then she popped up again, her face a huge smile, and still singing.
And then we all joined in, that beautiful song that we all knew and loved.
I thought of Caitlin, who would be singing harder and louder than anyone, despite the fact she didn’t have a note in her head. The very thought of it made me smile.
‘Immersion therapy is working,’ said Lucy, treading water.
‘I mean, my feet can…’ She sank down an inch or two, feeling for the bottom.
‘…Just about touch solid ground. And I know if I started drowning, someone would at least toss a life ring at my head. I don’t see myself swimming out to Sandycove Island just yet… which we used to do.’
We swam around together. ‘I was just thinking about my school principal,’ I said.
‘Caitlin and I went to the kind of school where you weren’t valued as a human being if you weren’t good at sport.
The principal was this terrifying woman who once represented the USA in skiing at the 1976 Winter Olympics and had a framed photograph of herself from then, on the slopes, in giant ski goggles. ’
‘Did she win a medal?’
‘No, she was disqualified for taking a banned substance. She said it was for a head cold. Always maintained her innocence, got the whole school behind her and we were all so incensed on her behalf that we wrote letters to the Olympic Committee asking for her to be reinstated.’
Lucy laughed.
‘You know,’ I said, as we floated around, ‘I don’t think she was perhaps that innocent after all.’
Lucy was smiling as she paddled around. ‘She sounds like a sociopath.’
‘Yes, she really does. And she hated Caitlin.’ It was all coming back to me now. ‘Because Caitlin didn’t believe her. Caitlin refused to get involved in the writing campaign. I remember thinking how rebellious Caitlin was, but perhaps she just saw more than the rest of us.’
‘She didn’t toe the line.’
‘Never.’ And I smiled again, floating on my back. ‘No, she lived her life on her terms. She was the best of us.’
‘Remember our leavers’ ball back in school?’ said Ellie.
‘Don’t remind me,’ said Lucy. ‘It was carnage.’
‘Carnage makes it sound more civilised than it was,’ said Ellie. ‘I do remember you—’
‘Stop!’ Lucy covered her eyes, laughing.
‘And then when you—!’
‘No, please!’
‘Was it your uncle Eddie’s old VW Beetle you drove around at 6 a.m.?’
‘Might have been.’
‘Did he ever find out?’ asked Ellie.
‘He has an inkling,’ said Lucy. ‘I think it was the fact I had left my shoes in the car that gave it away.’
‘We’d slept on the beach,’ Ellie told me. ‘And we woke up and were starving and decided we were too cold and tired to walk to buy some food, so we borrowed a car and nothing was open except for a garage in Dún Laoghaire and we had tea and chocolate.’
The two of them laughed.
‘How’re you doing?’ I asked Lucy.
‘Grand.’ She grinned. ‘I feel so much better. I’d forgotten that the sea was always my safe place, I used to spend hours and hours in the water.
But it wasn’t the sea that nearly drowned me.
It was Charlie Richmond.’ She was sculling beside me as we swam back to the boat.
‘He can’t sail for toffee. I don’t know why not, but he just doesn’t get it, ropes and things, and wind speed.
But he is desperate to impress his father.
But it’s easiest for him to have that speedboat.
Anyway, he’d just bought the thing, and he careered right into me, while I was sailing.
I was shrieking at him to tell him to move, but he just couldn’t.
There was something wrong with the boat or just he couldn’t work the thing.
He should have had lessons, I suppose. And he has been taking sailing lessons because he is obsessed with taking part in the regatta.
But, anyway, he smashed into me, and I was thrown overboard and hit my head and was knocked unconscious.
And he just didn’t try to save me. Because he couldn’t, I presume.
Too incompetent. But that’s when I came to, wedged underneath my boat, and couldn’t get out.
And I panicked. I remember not being able to breathe or move.
Totally trapped underwater. It was like being in a grave, you know? ’
Thankfully I didn’t know, but I understood her meaning.
‘Henry was absolutely furious,’ went on Lucy.
‘Henry wanted to ban Charlie from being in the water, unless he passed some kind of competence test. Which is obviously impossible, but he was just so cross and wanted the marine authority to prohibit Charlie from taking to the water. He and William had words in the village one day and William tried to punch him. But of course the Richmonds won, as they always do, and Charlie didn’t even ever say sorry to me.
He’s been taking sailing lessons though, as well as a speedboat course.
He had to, as part of his insurance claim. ’
Finnuala and Sheila were just emerging from the sea. ‘Well, good morning, ladies,’ said Finnuala. ‘We decided to have an early swim from now on, as we are gainfully employed, thanks to this one here.’ She smiled affectionately in my direction.
Sheila nodded at me. ‘You know in Sandycove, we have a saying, forty dips in the Forty Foot and you’ll never go home again.’ She gave a loud cackle. ‘It’s scientifically true.’ She tapped Finnuala’s arm. ‘Isn’t it?’
Finnuala nodded. ‘Oh, yes, scientifically true as anything. My father was a Yorkshire man and it happened to him. Nothing about falling in love with my mother. It was the dips that did it.’
‘Well, I won’t be here long enough for forty swims,’ I said, feeling sad that I wouldn’t be. If I swam six times a day, would that get me up to forty?
Finnuala’s phone beeped and she raced to get it.
‘Our first sale!’ she called out to everyone. ‘A cardigan to Cardiff!’