COMBAT STROKE

Libby, dispatched again to her aunt Marie, inhaled the June air spiced with sea salt, the tannery and old Dan's pipe.

Shy returning to the outdoor seawater pool at first, in no time she was joining in the shouts of ‘It’s grand when you’re in a while,’ and ‘Keep your shoulders under!’ She’d line up outside the metal grille of the gate, waiting for the rattle of Dan’s heavy keyring to herald his arrival on his bicycle. Once or twice he said, ‘You'll have to come back tomorrow, there's broken glass in the bottom,’ and the day felt like a month. Otherwise she was in the water, rain or shine. Rain was better. Sunny days meant wading room only, through some suspiciously warm patches. Luckily Irish sun was rare; nonetheless the pool habitués ended up darker by September - with a tinge of teal, thanks to the nearby tannery effluent pipe.

Dan patrolled in faded navy overalls and heavy work boots, a whistle on a lanyard around his leathery neck. He couldn't swim but he could throw the life ring, and anyway all the regular kids knew how to swim thanks to Mrs. Garrett, who had taught Libby too. Too tall for her age, she’d stood out in the frogspawn of inflatable armbands and tube rings; she’d heard a mother cluck that she must be ‘backwards.’ She was the opposite, but that was her secret unless her own mother came along braying about her reading ‘War and Peace’ while everyone else was still on picture books. ‘I taught her to read when she was three. And she’s a great little knitter, she learned that from me too.’ But she couldn’t claim Libby’s swimming was down to her. Her mother would never risk being observed from above in a pool, doing the crouched walk she’d do on sand, her arms moving atop the sea, careful not to wet her helmet hair.

Libby’s pride was bigger than herself the day she shed the inflatables. She could do anything now, she was sure. This was her world, well outside her mother’s realm. She’d escape that realm the minute she was of age – swim to a boat and stow away maybe, she just had to get good enough. And she would. Already she was edging beyond the shallow end, doing doggy paddle in the space next to the confident kids in the middle of the pool.

The next year Mrs. Garrett taught Libby’s cohort the breaststroke. Libby didn’t like the name. A couple of the boys tittered at it. ‘Or ‘frog stroke’’, Mrs. Garrett said, ‘it’s modeled on how frogs swim.’ No better; lone frogs were cute, but Libby had seen a photo of a male frog, his arms wrapped tight around the front of a female. ‘Mating’ was the caption - as icky as two dogs stuck together in the street.

When her skin got too crinkly, she’d join the others on the wooden benches for ten minutes or so, shivering under towels and tapping their feet against the cold, offering each other cheese’n’onion crisps and Opal fruits. They’d cup their hands around the snacks, worried about seagulls diving for them. But the gulls preferred the peace of the Town Park bins to the violent splashes and yells from the deep end dive bombers. Dan let the big boys rule the dive board; better than having them stretched out on the grass at Quann’s, backs to the cemetery wall, passing flagons of cider and pretending they were cool with having to cross the Irish Sea to find work. Whistle blows were reserved for the unruly in the middle of the pool, where Dan kept an eye on weaker swimmers, kids of an age where they obeyed when he yelled ‘Out!,’ looking his most fearsome.

Libby’d go back and forth across the middle as fast as she could, still doing breaststroke. She wanted to do butterfly, like her dad, but there wasn’t room in the pool. When her mother had seen her try at Garryvoe Beach, she’d scoffed ‘You’re like a plough in the sea.’

‘Must have splashed the helmet hair,’ Libby thought.

After that, she developed a splash less but swift stroke of her own. On her side, first one hand pulling her forward, then the other. Some of the other kids liked it, but said it wasn’t a real stroke, though one thought it looked like something called combat stroke. She’d use it when her neck hurt from breaststroke. Sometimes she stopped for a breather at the edge, resting her hand on the metal bar and kicking her legs out to keep warm.

She’d just touched the bar when someone surfaced right behind her and pressed his slimy body into her, grabbing hard at her chest buds. ‘Ow!’ she cried, elbowing at his blubber. He detached himself, laughing as his round shape swam away to the deep end, goggles tied around his carroty hair. She froze, waiting for Dan to blow his whistle, but nothing happened.

Mortified, she swam to the shallow end, ignoring Mrs. Garrett’s stink eye as she picked her way through the tiny stick arms splashing blindly, panicking them. Ascending the concrete steps, she stopped herself from tugging at her swimsuit bottom to let water escape. His eyes – all the boys’ eyes – were on her, she was sure. Oh to be the nine or ten inches shorter that she should be.

With her back to the pool, shivering and pinching her towel high around her, she stepped into her shorts and T-shirt, then wrang out her swimsuit. How thin and worn the fabric was. All the more so when it was stretched on her body - she still had a bit of baby fat. He’d never have grabbed one of the skinny girls. She put her unopened Taytos on the bench and left. She hadn’t clearly seen the boy’s face; she started to see him in every red-headed boy in the town. She stayed away from the pool.

‘Hah! I knew it was just a fad, like everything else,’ she heard her mother say down the phone to Marie, ‘I’ll send her some wool, she can knit a cardigan for back-to-school.’

‘No, send fabric so I can make a swimsuit that fits,’ Libby muttered.

She’d go back to the pool. Her mother wouldn’t take it from her, and neither would that faceless boy. Suddenly she wasn’t embarrassed by what he’d done; she was angry at herself for not embarrassing him back.

When Marie was off the phone, she said, ‘Is the swimsuit why you won’t go? Right, I’ll get you a new one for your birthday instead of a book.’

‘That’d be great, thank you!’ Libby cried.

‘No bother,’ Marie said, relieved not to have to go to the bookstore and ask for ‘anything by Dostoevsky’ whoever he was when he was at home.

‘With cups,’ Libby specified.

Marie guffawed.

‘Well, I suppose they have training versions,’ she said, seeing how serious Libby was.

There’d be no more breaststroke. And maybe she wasn’t cut out for butterfly. But her made-up sidestroke suited her just fine. She’d face the deep end so that she could see any danger approaching. And have a hand free to push it away. Or grab it, if needs be. Hard.

Sharon Keely grew up in Ireland, and has wandered a bit since, always heading straight to the bookstores wherever she lands. Stories in CafeLit, Scrimshaw, Audemus. Poems in online publications.