Shallow End

I'd like to say I was scared of the water but that's not quite it. I was scared of the other people. Of being fifty and standing in the shallow end in my togs with the instructor going "and kick!" like I was six. Turned out the adult beginners class on Wednesday evenings in Tallaght is eight people, and not one of them is under forty, and not one of them was looking at me. They were all looking at their own feet. Our instructor was a girl called Sinéad, maybe twenty-five, with a whistle she never used. First thing she said was, "Nobody's putting their face in tonight. Nobody. We're just going to walk about and get used to it." So we walked about. Eight grown adults walking in a line across a swimming pool, chest deep, like a very slow protest. The man next to me, Gerry, said out of the side of his mouth, "I'm sixty-two and I've never been past the steps in me life." "Why now?" "Grandkids. Same as you, I'd say." "Same as me." Second week we put our faces in. Just for a second. Sinéad counted to three and half of us came up spluttering and she said, "That's it, that's the whole thing, everything else is just doing that for longer." And I thought, that can't be true, and then over the next six weeks it turned out to be basically true. Third week we floated. I couldn't. My legs kept sinking and I'd panic and stand up. Sinéad put her hand flat under my back, not holding me, just there, and said, "Look at the ceiling. Tell me how many lights there are." I counted lights. When I got to fourteen she said, "You've been floating for about twenty seconds," and took her hand away and I was still floating and I nearly cried in a public pool in Tallaght. Gerry got it the week after. He did a whole width on his back and came up at the far side with his arms in the air like he'd won something, and the rest of us clapped, and the lifeguard looked over like there'd been an incident. I can swim now. Badly. Twenty-five metres, then I need a rest. My grandson starts on the fourth and I'm going to be in the pool, not on the side. I'll be the one going slower than the five-year-olds. Gerry says he's signing up for the improvers. I said I'd think about it. I've thought about it.