She stood on the slime slick steps. Below her, the sea surged to grab her ankles. It was a deep green-grey colour with waves that rose and fell. Grasping the cold, metal handrails, she gulped short, panicked breaths. She was here now, she couldn’t turn back but still her fear welled inside her; stomach churning and mouth dry. She hadn’t slept; the dread of this moment kept all sleep away. She repeated her comforting mantra “Forward, forward”. She recited it to herself like a demented Rosary while shutting the front door behind her.
She chanted it as she drove the short distance to the sea; mumbled it to herself as she climbed out of the warm cocoon of her car and stumbled onwards. She walked down the tarred slope and through the gap to the bathing area. It was two sides of a triangle with the sea making up the third. Painted an ‘out-of-place’ shade of yellow, it had two sheltered areas for bathers to change that opened out at angles like a fat woman’s bingo wings. At the end of one was the diving tower, stuck up like a middle fingered salute to the Atlantic.
She hurried past the regular bathers and their glances of recognition. They huddled together in that loud, vocal way people have when they are familiar with each other. She looked ahead, her eyes fixed on her destination but still she noticed the brief dip in volume, as heads turned away. She shuffled towards the tower and the steps that led down to the sea. “Forward, forward” she muttered, she couldn’t stop now.
She placed her right hand on the damp concrete as she edged down the steps, reaching for the paint-chipped metal handrails. She grasped them firmly, looked down at the sea snatching her ankles and her stomach heaved. She lowered one foot onto the metal step, then another until she was ankle-deep. The cold was kept at bay as she stepped down again until the sea foamed around her knees. Her body was still a stranger to the cold shock that awaited as she was head to toe in neoprene, bought on sale in town the day before. A menopausal, middle-aged woman’s explanation of starting surfing lessons didn’t sound convincing but she was never good at lying anyway. She let go the handrails to wedge her latex swimming cap further down on her head. Having put it on before she left the house, she made a strange sight with her lurid coloured head to passing drivers. She secured her swimming cap out of habit rather than necessity as her hair had fallen out the month before.
She took another two steps and felt the push and pull of the waves against her. She was going to do this! Stretching her two arms out in front of her as if reaching for someone who wasn’t there, she pushed off into the sea. A wave slapped her in the face and she gagged on salty seawater. It was the cold that shocked her. Her body took over, taking shallow, desperate gulps of air. She fought to steady her breathing as air rasped in her throat. She swam a few strokes, coughed as she struggled to breathe. Her coughs became sobs barked out into the wind. She swam on as the goggles that she had securely fastened to her face to keep out the sea now filled from the inside out with salty tears. Still she swam on, struggling against the rise and fall of the sea.
The cold seawater seeped in and paralysed her chest. Then she noticed how the chill soothed the scorch of her grief and cooled her skin that was peeled raw with hurt. She swam on, found a rhythm as her sobs slowly faded. With her goggles filled and fogged, she bobbed in the waves and dunked her face in the water to rinse them. Turning around to face the land she had left, she looked up at the yellow tower that loomed over the winter sea. It was the 22nd of October and she wondered how her life had come to this?
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