​

THORENSEN THE NIGHT SWIMMER

by Clive Jones

​

Night after night it was the same:  the other boys in their double row of beds safely asleep; the tall, bare windows; the tick-tick of branches against the glass in the wind that blew unremittingly across the moor.  The moon cresting the silver clouds, its astonished face staring ahead, seeming to move, staying still, but moving nonetheless.  And Thorensen in his bed thinking of the swimming pool lying so still, a smooth slab of water glowing green in the darkness.

Sometimes in the morning, in the moments between chapel and breakfast, there would be time to go to the poolhouse and admire the beauty of it.  Sometimes, before Watts and Pike, the school’s County Swimmers, had broken its brittle surface with their hard low dives and crack-crack double splash.  They would swim together up the pool, quick and powerful, their kicking churning the water into two crashing wakes that spread to the poolsides and chopped and slopped in the gutters.  But before Watts and Pike it would be there transfixedly still and intact, smooth and lucent in the thin silver light.

In the candlelit chapel while the choir sang prime he would see it in his mind’s eye.  The smooth singing in the cool, moist morning could sometimes be like the water of the pool, transcendental, perfectly still, yet moving nonetheless.  While the other boys went off to breakfast, Thorensen would sometimes quietly ease open the door of the poolhouse and slip inside.  The smell of chlorine and damp wooden cubicles always lay so heavily under the timber roof with its misty windows.  He would stand on the poolside at the deep end and see the straight black lines lying perfectly still on the pool’s tiled floor.

And in the evening, there would be time.  When the other boys were under the elms smoking or doing boyish things in their common rooms, there was time to go to the pool again.  Sometimes it would be settling itself under the silent, heavy air.  Outside, the wind that blew across the moor would be whistling and sighing around the wooden eaves and the high ridge of the roof, bringing with it the distant clamour of boys or the clitter-clit of a goods train.  Within, the pool itself would be silently draining the room of light.  By the walls, the cubicles and showers would drown in shadow, then, as the night drew in, the gloom would advance until the last of the cool, steady light gathered itself over the water and finally sank into it.

Other boys were gregarious. Thorensen was not.  There was something about him that enabled him to be alone when he wanted to: he was a solitary.  Where other boys drew their strengths and identities from running with the pack, Thorensen was quite the opposite.  Instead of brashness, he had developed a diffidence: people thought him pre-occupied.  He seemed to care very little for the outward signs of achievement.  He would frustrate his masters by doing poorly in examinations, even though they were sure he had grasped, even enjoyed, most of his studies. At games, he could place a ball nicely by hand or foot, but never put himself forward for the team trials.  If the other boys had ever thought about this, they would have puzzled. The only other solitaries were those the packs had cast out, and even they had formed a sad little group of rejects.  But Thorensen had never run with any of the packs.

Where he found this individuality from, no one knew.  No one guessed that his source of strength was the contemplation of a pool of still water.  No one could imagine the way in which, almost every night, he could find such peace.

One evening, quite late, he had been sitting by the poolside watching in the silence the moving stillness of the pool, when there came the sound of excited voices and the crash of doors flung open.  Thorensen hesitated for a moment, then moved carefully into the gloom and up the stairs to the balcony, cast in shadow.  His first instinct had been to flee, as befits a third-former, but this was overcome by a new desire to watch unobserved.  In came Watts and Pike and their crowd of seniors.  In the turquoise half-light he could see that they had booze with them.  Their exhilaration made ludicrous their attempts to be stealthy, and their realisation of this ludicrousness made them more exhilarated.  Only Watts and Pike looked purposeful.  Quickly the two shed their clothes and took their starting places.  A sudden hush fell and someone said ‘Three – two- one- Go!’ and the race was on. Thorensen felt the crack-crack of the two splashes smash the still water and the strong legs tear it into shreds.  The swimmers reached the far end and turned powerfully amid shouts and yells of encouragement.  Thorensen saw the bucking shoulders and straining faces of the swimmers approach him in the turmoil of their own wakes.  Water splashed over the poolside and onto the clothes of their supporters.  The black lines on the pool-bottom writhed as they became caught up in the boiling water.

Later, under the astonished moon and with the tick-tick of branches against the windows, Thorensen lay awake.  The assault on the pool by Watts and Pike tormented him.  It had been so overbearing.  Intent only on their own pleasure, they had never noticed the perfection they had violated.

He slipped from his bed and pulled on a few clothes.  Down the dark, empty staircase he went, across the gloomy hall and out into the sudden cold of the night.  Across the quad and into the heavy moist air of the poolhouse.  The pool lay there beguilingly still and silent.  Except for a half-full beer bottle floating in one corner, it was as though nothing had happened. Thorensen fished out the bottle, hid it in a cubicle, and then undressed.  The light from the pool silvered his body as he stood where Watts and Pike had stood.  But instead of diving, he eased himself into the water as carefully as he could.  The pool accepted him.  Its edges barely moved.  Slowly and smoothly he started to swim, passing gently over the surface of this stillness.  No sound. No splashes. The pool remained flat and lucent.  The black lines remained straight.  Every tile on the bottom was clearly rectilinear.  The pool had accepted him.  Across the surface the sound of his own breathing echoed back to him.  The water seemed to thicken and coagulate under him as he moved across it, as though to support him.

He reached the shallow end and carefully stood up.  Looking back, it was almost impossible to tell that he had been there.  His mind eased, he towelled off, dressed and went back to his bed, only to fall asleep immediately.

During the nights that followed, he often went to the poolhouse.  A ritual developed: first to sit and watch the pool, waiting.  Sometimes it was only a few minutes before it was right to enter the water, sometimes much longer.  He had begun to swim underwater, since that obviated the risk of disturbing the surface.  It had been an important development: at first he had thought only of swimming across the water, feeling himself supported by its surface tension like a pond insect.  But to swim silently through the turquoise water, eyes open, ears singing, was to feel it opening to him, receiving him.  It took strength and skill, he discovered, to swim gently and yet remain submerged.  Even so, by half-term he could easily swim the length and come up at the shallow end to find the surface smooth and complete.  He never felt scared or straining for breath.  It almost seemed that if he needed to he could breathe the water into his lungs and come to no harm.

One or two of the masters thought they noticed him become even more solitary – quiet, self-confident, curiously uninterested in boyish things.  They may have noticed inside the cover of an exercise book his name, ‘Thorensen’, in bold capitals, and neatly underneath, ‘the Night Swimmer’.

​