
It was only supposed to be a quick dip.
I was at the beach. I’d say it is my local beach, but that gives the game away. It’s 30 minutes drive from my home, which is local for the UK but not local for Sydney – and the fact I call it ‘local’, while not actually being from around here, should cast a cloud of ominous foreboding over the story to come.
My partner M. suggested that I could go for a dip if I wanted – she’d look after the dog and, you know, I may as well now we were here. I jumped at the chance: I came to this beach whenever I could – often at important points in my life, often in the evening, when I was alone and had the place to myself. I’d surrender and be bashed in the surf and scull and catch a wave to help me back in and then sit on the sand and feel lucky to have made it here, to Australia, the most beautiful land in the world – as far as I am concerned. So I took off my t-shirt – a little self-conscious of my out-of-shape body – left M. on the sand dunes with the dog and walked across the hot sand to the surf.
There were surfers in the water in front of me but I couldn’t be bothered to walk over to the flags far away to the left where the life savers were – I was only going for a quick dip. The gap in between the surfers was an obvious rip, the water was shallow and the breakers were intersecting at a triangle – yep, not going in there! I walked to the right further along the beach to a spot that looked calmer – and a bit deeper – close in. This looked alright – a quick immersion to freshen up and say hello to the ocean and then I’ll be out.
I dived in. It was bliss, the water, cool and welcoming, soothed over me in a smooth and salty embrace. I dived under a couple of breakers and started sculling, reaching down with my foot to check for the reassuringly sandy bottom – thinking how nice it was I didn’t have to go far out to be just out of my depth.
I let myself float and relaxed, lying back and dipping my ears into the silence of the ocean and communing with the sky. A brief moment of repose – not more than 20 seconds but just what I’d been looking for – and then I pulled my knees to my chest, turned and struck out back for shore. I tried my version of front crawl, an ungainly head above the water thrash because I never got the hang of that breathing thing that is proper form. I preferred a leisurely breast stroke, but this was my power swim. It always did the job, no matter how awkward it felt.
I windmilled, pulling the water deep under me with my hands and kicking the stiffness from my legs, and leisurely powered my way forward for a minute, before I straightened up and reached out with my foot for the bottom. Strange – I’m still out of my depth? I must have covered at least 20 metres, surely? I struck out again, harder and longer this time, enough to be pulling hard for breath when I stopped and reached down with my foot. This time there was a brief wisp of sand on my big toe but then … nothing.
And then I knew with a sudden certainty – a certainty that immediately broke over me in a deafening cocoon: I was floating in a stream of several tonnage of water that was slowly pushing its way out from the beach and taking me with it, at a pace slightly faster than I could swim.
When the panic set in the first thing I noticed was that my body instantly weighed heavier and my breathing was more laboured – I became acutely aware of the proximity of my mouth and nose to the waterline, and that it was somehow an effort to keep both above it – and I was already breathing hard. I hadn’t had time to exercise recently and the pleurodesis of eighteen months ago had impacted on my lung capacity. I now realised with horror how poor my lung recovery actually was.
I’d always considered myself a strong swimmer. Well, that was actually a lie – any strength I had was because I kept a cool head when swimming. I kept relaxed. If I felt tired I would just kick back and scull until my energy came back. I knew what to do in a rip – you just relaxed and let it take you out and then you made your way obliquely back to the shore. There was nothing to be scared of.
Yet, now that I was pulling hard to catch my breath and struggling to keep my head above water, all these long held certainties suddenly deserted me. I felt heavy, like I would sink to the bottom if I didn’t fight, but that if I did fight I would burn all the energy I needed to stop me from drowning.
Christ! It’s the fucking undertow! It’s pulling me down!
The panic looped through my body: my lungs didn’t seem able to generate enough pressure to inhale properly while they were below the waterline. And I couldn’t scull – I’ll either be pulled under by the surf or carried further out to sea to drown, exhausted, there.
I’m in the critical zone – I must get OUT! – surely the bottom must be here somewhere? There were two surfers 500 yards to my right, and a woman sitting oblivious on the beach infront of me. I could see M. on the dunes on the horizon.
I remember thinking – no-one knows! I could drown here, close to the shore, before someone even realises I’m in trouble. I flooded with terror.
I took as deep a breath as I could, let the adrenaline jolt through my legs and struck out again, more determined, more desperate this time. I half caught a breaking wave and when I straightened up, breathing hard, I felt my toes gain purchase, but this dissolved as the undertow pulled back, with me in it – back out towards the ocean.
I flipped out of it onto my back on the surface so I could breath, kicking frantically, pleading with the ocean to let me go, just this once, that I was sorry I’d been so stupid, that I’d meant no disrespect.
A breaker rolled over me and I spread out my arms to try and catch more of its force, and then turned and struck out again until my lungs were drowning in lactic acid and I straightened up, and my feet dug into sand – but it was being stripped away again – and I was adrift again.
Gasping. No! FUCK NO!
More adrenalin – pure agonising panic – I’m soo close! If I can just get to a point where I can dig my feet into the sand and catch my breath and then push again? I knew I’d need more than a foothold, enough to brace myself against the solid body of water relentlessly forcing me out into the blue.
I needed the waves. I concentrated on trying to keep horizontal on the surface, and timed my strokes to start just in front of the breakers, still horribly aware of my leaden limbs and the waterline and my mouth gasping for air – never enough air! - just above it. The next depth check was better, my foot held the sand enough that I managed to push weakly off into another wave.
I kept my mind blank. Do not fucking think. Think and you’ll panic. You might do this yet.
Even after my feet were firmly anchored on the sandy bottom and I was slogging through the water pulling at my waist, I was still trying not to think. I was now horribly aware of how fierce the appetite of my lungs was, that they still couldn’t get enough air and that my heart was straining, and all those stories of heart attacks in the sea made sense. Was I going to get to the shore and have a heart attack? How had I let myself get so out-of-shape? What the fuck had happened to me?
The people on the beach had no idea of the severity of my crisis. I felt a deep and crippling shame with every laboured breath.
I staggered out of the surf, pathetically slowing to effect a more stately and deliberate exit for the benefit of the onlookers, who I was now convinced were laughing at me. I stumbled out – my lungs still desperately fighting for breath, my heart pounding – then steadied myself and turned, with hands on hips, to stare manfully at the ocean – all the while wincing at how hard my rib cage was heaving in an attempt to pull sweet oxygen into my body and flush out all that lactic panic.
I was still too frightened to feel grateful. I knew I would never look at this beach, or the ocean, the same way again. I thought rips were fast things that hit you like a horsebacked barbarian – I never realised they were all about leisurely and irresistible power; power that seemed so knowing and uncaring and utterly unconcerned with consequence, power which could take you and blithely drown you 30 yards off a crowded beach.
And at that moment, standing in the baking sun and striking as nonchalant a pose as a shaking, gasping, out-of-shape middle-aged man could, I knew that I had left something of myself behind in the rip, and that something had passed into me in return.
My body, once so strong and confident, was sonorously telling me a story it had never told before. It was telling me it was just a door, and that one day I would pass through it.
And that would be the end.
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