“It was one of those midsummer Sundays when everyone sits around saying ‘I drank too much last night’.”
This was the opening line of John Cheever’s 1964 novel ‘The Swimmer’ and also of Hedley Twidle’s January 2016 newspaper article which inspired me, not to address my relationship with alcohol, but to try and slake my thirst for new swimming locations.
The Cape Town University lecturer’s piece was surreal, melding The Swimmer’s broken Neddy Merrill with his own quest to dip in 50 naturally formed public pools under the shadow of Table Mountain.
For this swim safari on the first day of Autumn, we were three: J and O and Y. Me, and a German who lives in Ireland, and a Capetownian artist who swims at the Serpentine in London’s Hyde Park.
During our rush hour drive to Kalk Bay on the Atlantic side, O remarked “the sea, it just doesn’t do justice to what it is. Three letters cannot sum up the sea.” I agreed and suggested that the sea could be a metaphor for life. Much of what we experience in life, and our reactions, can also be reflected in what happens in the sea. In life, and open water swimming, you read the conditions and navigate to your best ability. Many maelstroms are best avoided, but that is not always possible. If you focus on what you can do, you might just propel yourself to calmer waters. But to use a cliché, which of us has ever had the perfect day of sailing, or managed to get away with the perfect life? O is correct. Can we call it “Metaphor-sea?”
Our first stop flopped. The tide was out at Kalk Bay rock pool. Workers were cleaning the drained pool’s concrete bund walls with chlorine to remove all the accumulated green slippery stuff of the summer. A local advised us of Dalebrook, skimming stone distance away, and a pool not on our list.
Dalebrook was hidden away on the sea-side of the railway tracks and we had company. A cormorant, my favourite bird, joined us to search for an easy snack . Y called them a “duiker” or a diver in Afrikaans. Watching cormorants on the Thames, I always enjoyed how inefficient they were outside water. These birds take off in the wrong direction to where they end up, seemingly wasting energy as they do a massive u-turn. And if they were me, it would be akin to leaving home, returning for my mobile phone, and maybe hopelessly returning again. The duiker swam an underwater lap in about 40 seconds looking for urchins, crabs and other sea life.
We were all distracted by Max, a golden Labrador who retrieved sticks, and swam with me and his owner. Like O and me, the dog-owner’s daughter had also swam from Robben Island to the mainland at the weekend. What would Nelson Mandela, a prisoner for 27 years, have thought of people swimming from his island of incarceration, to a land where many live in houses shrouded with electrified razor wire?
And what was Y thinking on the return to her home town? Y brought five swimsuits for the day and between promises of sketching everything, she mentioned the ebbs and flows of loves past, paintings completed, and more.
We drove north to Camps Bay. The traffic with returning school kids had dissipated. Again, workers were chlorine-cleaning our goal. This rock pool was bigger, but shallower, and damn the consequences, we had a short quick swim before moving to the jewel of the day.
Maiden’s Cove displayed the geologist in O, as he wondered at the gargantuan granite marvels forming the sentry boundaries of the pool. These boulders looked so natural and you wondered who would win, the persistent Atlantic, or the unyielding granite? And perhaps having a duiker’s memory, it was here that Y swam while her swimsuits stayed in the car. Time and tide was moving in on us.
By Saunders Rocks, Y reminisced on being called ‘Bonnie’ as a child and her happy face beamed as she made the homecoming to the pool of her youth. She chatted with all. One beach goer, recommended Zakes Mda, a local contemporary writer.
Everyone has to let go at many points in life, and this was ours. Our last swim was a three-metre jump from a granite boulder into the cold oncoming sea. We returned to the car. Y was staying behind. I drove O to his car, and I happily headed to the airport for home.
Yours swimmingly
John Tierney
The Pool of Rock when Bonnie comes home
