Free A Friend from England by Anita Brookner

his extremely consistent output of work and concentration is assured by his habit of jogging every morning and swimming at his health club every evening once the shop is closed.
    Robin is the only person who knows about my fear of water, and he is constantly urging me to go swimming with him. ‘It’s just a matter of getting used to it,’ he said to me, seeing me drooping in the back of the shop, ‘and the benefits are enormous. And psychologically you’ll be a different person. Look at me. I used to have colds all the time. Now I’m a hundred per cent fit.’ He stillhas colds, but I didn’t point this out. ‘You can come with me this evening,’ he went on. ‘There’ll be nobody there. And I won’t watch if you don’t want me to. You don’t have to dive or anything. Just get in and swim a few lengths. You’ll be a different person,’ he repeated.
    The different person I was going to be (for we all want to be different) did in fact accompany him that evening. It is hard to describe how or what I felt. I was a good swimmer because we had lived by the sea when I was small, and my father and I had swum almost every morning in the fine weather. Besides, it was not swimming that I was afraid of. I think it was actually the sight of water and some vague but powerful fear of being sucked into it. When I had walked into the sea with my father I had felt quite safe, but, undressing at Robin’s health club, I could hear the peculiar muted din of water being violently disturbed and I began to shiver. Standing on the edge of the pool I could see a little steam hovering over the chemical chlorinated blue, and below me a pattern of tiles wavering and shifting; my leg, when I inserted it, immediately looked blanched and dead. A man wearing goggles and a nose clip was ploughing furiously up and down, and I was fearful of the commotion he was setting up, of the mess and foam he was creating. The noise echoed under the glass roof, a mournful and reverberant noise that filled me with horror. I waited until he was out of the way before launching myself and managed to swim a length without much trouble. But he was faster than I was or wanted to be, and I could hear him behind me. Every so often he passed me, rocking me in his wake; once my nostrils filled with the waves made by his arms and I retreated to the side, coughing in a hysteria of fear. ‘Go on,’ shouted Robin. ‘Don’t give up.’ Two girls, of enviable slimness, watched me curiously, before losing interest and neatly up-ending themselves in the water. They came up, hair streaming, and turned on theirbacks and floated. Water to them was familiar, an element in which they could play; their streaming hair made fronds below the surface. They decided to race each other, backstroke, and at one point, caught between their flailing arms and the man in the goggles, I thought I must sink. I couldn’t, of course; I was too good a swimmer, but my mind seemed to give way. I felt I must surrender, break down. I wanted no more of it. I waited for a gap and swam to the side; when I got out, my legs were shaking. Even when I was dressing I could hear the dull shouting, magnified under the glass roof, and the fact that these were sounds of enjoyment made no difference to me. I knew that I had not beaten my fear, that I never should, and I resolved never to put myself to this needless test again. I should simply avoid all expanses of water. I did not feel I had to prove anything. Or rather, I had just proved something. My fear was still there.
    That night I slept heavily, the sleep of exhaustion, or of regression. ‘There you are, you see,’ Robin said to me the following Monday. ‘I told you you could do it.’ I said nothing, for it was not his fault, was not even anything to do with him. But the incident had thrown me off balance and I was rather thoughtful for a while.
    The process of thinking does not become me. I feel my face growing longer, my eyes sinking deeper.