Rebecca and Kay opted for a yoga class instead, and I’m glad. In their company I’m a different person, fitting in with their thoughts and ideas. I have never felt so malleable. It is the island, working upon me, taking away everything familiar. I should be shelving books right now. I should be standing behind the library desk, giving out my stamp and my smile. Instead I’m formulating a plan to break the rules. I’m going to read something that was never written to be read.
I reach the deep end of the pool and turn, my body curving like a comma, and start on another length.
The lifeguard sits in the tall chair set back from the shallow end, and I can feel her attention upon me, not in an uncomfortable way, but simply as a bored onlooker, like a housewife watching daytime television. After a few lengths, I notice she has climbed down the rungs and approached the poolside. The illusion of separation between us is broken. I swim up to her feet, taking in the serious blue eyes and the muscular calves as the woman kneels down and leans over to me.
‘The pool’s closing for lunch in five minutes.’
‘Okay.’
‘Usually it would be open all day, but the other attendant is off this week, so I don’t have cover. For the lunch hour.’ She has a Scandinavian accent I think.
‘I’ll be fine,’ I say, ‘if you want to go ahead and have lunch. I’m a strong swimmer.’
‘It’s a question of liability.’
‘Yes, I can see that. Okay.’
‘So, five minutes, then?’
Something peremptory in her tone forces my hand. I say, ‘I’ll get out now, if you like,’ and pull myself out, my thighs slapping on the cold raised lips of the tiles.
The woman walks away. But she’s not offended; she returns with a soft, cream towel from the rack by the changing room door. She holds it out, and I stand up to take it, and wrap it around myself.
The swimming pool is a beautiful space, filled with sunlight from the row of tall clean windows that look out over a stretch of field, and the blue beyond. The roof is a wooden pyramid, very unusual in design, with slats interlocking to form a spire. There are dark blue moulded plastic seats along the wall opposite the windows, lined up exactly, and it feels like being inside a church. I find I’m reluctant to leave. I could have gone on swimming for lengths that multiplied into miles.
‘It’s so calm,’ I say. ‘It must be peaceful, working here.’
‘No. We have to stay alert. Ready for anything.’
The cold is setting in. I excuse myself and skitter around the edge of the pool to the changing rooms, where I dress mechanically, in layers designed to trap heat. When I step out into the foyer, with my wet hair soaking into the back of my jumper, the lifeguard is sitting on one of the tubular stools in the tiny café area by the main door. She has a sandwich on the table in front of her, the cling film wrapper partially peeled back.
‘What time will you open again?’ I ask. I watch her not eat the sandwich. She is staring at it with what appears to be intense dislike.
‘A couple of minutes.’
‘Is that all?’
‘You want my sandwich?’
‘No, thanks. Don’t you like it?’
‘It’s got tomato in,’ she says, as if that explains everything.
I am caught between my desire to swim and the thought of climbing back into my clammy costume. Eventually she says, ‘You picked a really quiet week for your holiday. Usually the pool is so busy. What’s your name?’
‘Marianne.’
‘I’m Inger.’ She half stands on the metal bar between the legs of her stool, and holds out her hand. I shake it, and find myself smiling, tickled by the incongruity of the gesture.
‘Are you happy?’ she asks.
‘Um… yes, pretty happy.’
‘Enjoying your holiday?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s good,’ says Inger. ‘I thought you looked sad, in the pool. That’s why I couldn’t leave you in there alone. Sometimes people do dangerous things when they’re sad.’ She says it in such a matter-of-fact tone, while lifting up the corner of the top slice of bread to examine the filling.
‘Really? You mean – in the pool?’
She shrugs. ‘It happens. I’ve had four try to drown themselves. Three, I saved. They could throw themselves off the cliffs, but no, they have to come to the pool instead. Off the cliffs would be much quicker and easier for everyone. But they don’t really want to die, do they? They want me to save them. Being saved is a good feeling. It gives meaning to your life, I’m thinking.’ Inger sweeps up her sandwich and throws it, overhand, into the blue bin next to the main entrance. It’s a fair distance, but the sandwich lands squarely in the bin. Inger doesn’t look in the slightest bit pleased with herself. Maybe she makes the throw every day.
‘That must be stressful, though,’ I say. ‘Being the one that does the saving.’
‘I like it. It’s the one I didn’t save that bothers me. She drank pool cleaner first, from the storage area. We keep it padlocked now.’ She stands up and stretches, then puts her hands on her hips. She looks ready for anything. ‘You can get changed again now if you want to carry on swimming.’
‘I might leave it for now, actually.’
‘I’ve put you off? I’m sorry. Listen, every swimming pool has a few deaths. Every street, every house, someone has died, yeah?’
‘You seem really…’ I can’t think of the right word and settle, eventually, on, ‘Scandinavian.’
Inger laughs. ‘It’s true. I’m from Denmark. I hope you have a good time while you’re here. You should go to the cinema tonight. They’re showing Jodie Foster films this week. There’s a discussion group afterwards, if enough people come.’
‘Are you going?’
‘For sure.’
Her casual invitation fills me with the confidence to ask my own question. ‘Can I ask – did you know Amelia Worthington?’
‘I met her a few times. She was very old when I started here. She didn’t leave the white house, and staff don’t get invited up there often. Not even now Mrs Makepeace is in charge. She keeps to the house too.’
‘Did you have to do a declaration? When you first started working here?’
Inger hesitates, then says, ‘I first came as a visitor, for the week. I was a manager at a bank in Copenhagen, and I was interested in Buddhism – this was eight, nine years ago. So I thought a free week, alone, to meditate, would be good. I spent the week trying to sit and clear my mind. Have you ever done that? Meditation? It’s very difficult. I couldn’t stop thinking. I wrote in my declaration all the things I’d thought about, and when I read it back to myself I knew I didn’t want to go home.’
‘So you didn’t?’
‘I talked to Mrs Makepeace – she was Lady Worthington’s assistant back then – and she said they needed a pool attendant. I’m a strong swimmer. I stayed.’
‘Didn’t you have family?’
‘I had a boyfriend.’ She smiles a little. ‘He wanted to see other women anyway. I let him see all the women he wanted. Except me.’
‘And what happened to your declaration? Did you finish it?’
‘It went into the vault, with the others, I guess.’
‘The vault?’
‘Up at the white house. The basement is an archive. That’s the point of the island, right? These stories, sealed up, like a time capsule. A record of what it means to be a woman.’
‘Could you see it again, if you wanted to? Your declaration?’
‘Why would I want to?’ says Inger, with such puzzlement on her face. ‘Once you’ve changed your life, why would you want to read about what you were before? I don’t think that’s a healthy impulse. Look, come to the cinema tonight, and stay for the talk, and maybe you’ll understand more about making a declaration.’