Lady at the pool

There's a lady who comes to the swimming pool every Wednesday, where I take one of my two boys for lessons.

She's a real pretty type, with light chocolate skin and perfectly curled curls that bounce as she steps with no hesitance on the slippery tiles surrounding the children's pool.

She towers above me, her sleek legs and thin figure protected by a bodyguard of a furcoat - at least ten bears for sure. I think in her cupboard lie the remains of a zoo - foxes and badgers and all sorts of felines. Tagged and bundled and crucified on luxurious velvet hangers.

My sweaty Durban armpits can't resist the central heating. I strip off my Rhodes hoodie, thermal K-Way shirt and numerous bits and pieces of wooly bobs and stand there, with my obscene armpits, fucking dying of heat. I drag a lumbering plastic high chair over to my table for my little one, and crash my ass onto a nearby metal chair.

The big brown bear slowly lowers itself onto a chair, with the grace of a praying mantis.

Our children enter the little pool, surrounded by red and yellow and green bits that float about, always there, to hold on. The pool is only 75 centimetres deep. Everyone can touch the bottom, even the littliest of feet. How can you feel so safe in a world you know so little about? And yet you do, you float content, with your 15 centimetres of foot you give a kick and off you go, supported, always supported, you make it to the other side. Smiling. Your fringe sticks to your forehead and your little lips make bubbles. Your eyes sparkle.

I am inside my armpits. And hardly more buoyant than a pebble. I feel like I'm a tiny pebble rolling around in a giant armpit. How very Dali. How very post-ironic and mock-pretentious. I could digress into discourse of a post-post-modernist nature.

But back to her. Her daughter is so obviously hers. The same gorgeous hair and intriguing, enveloping gaze. I imagine her 20 years from now, in a coat like her mother's, but maybe of fake fur, overlooking the Avon, a novel written behind her irises.

She watches her little silent swimmer. I notice that she is wearing headphones. I can't see what they connect to but I guess an iPod. Not a cheap imitation, mind you.

Is she listening to the radio? Keeping an ear to the traffic so she can maximise her time and minimise the miles as she drives back home or back to work?

Or what songs? What demands is her soul making? What soothing words do you need to hear, in this heat, in this middle of the day, with hours to go before sunset (and miles to go before we sleep)?

In the 30 full minutes that I oversee one child swimming  (look here! look at this! look what I can do!) and another one wrestling with a fork, the gnocchi, and The Aristocats, she sits perfectly still. Ensconced in the bear, her silence socially forgiven by her public notice: the earphones say it all. Nobody speaks to her.