Jon McGregor - This Isn't the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You

You turn your face into the water for one more look before you get out, sucking in warm air through the snorkel. You catch sight of a larger fish than the ones you’ve seen so far. Something silver-blue, twice the length of your hand, drifting slowly between the rocks. It flicks its tail and glides away, and you push back with your legs to glide after it, trying not to splash. It slows again, leaning down to nibble at the wavering tips of seaweed, and as it flicks into another glide you follow, watching from above, quietly kicking your legs to keep pace.

And you think about last night. About what might have happened with Jo. Walking between the café and the bus stop, the alleys crowded, the buildings still giving out the heat of the day, the dark sky overhead squeezed between window-boxes and washing lines and women leaning out to smoke and look down at the crowds below. You lost sight of the others for a while, and then Jo was there, saying something, touching two fingers against your chest, letting one finger catch in the opening of your shirt. What did she say? It could have been nothing. The whole thing might have been nothing. But there were her fingers against your chest. That smile and turn. Walking behind her, and all the side-alleys and courtyards that might have been ducked into. And then catching up with the others at the bus stop, and nothing more being said.

You watch the fish flick its tail beneath you, stopping and starting through the sea-grass, and you curl your body across the surface to keep pace, the sun hot and sore across your back.

It happened once, last year, at a party after the exams. In the back garden, kissing against the wall of the house, and for what must have been only a few minutes there was nothing but the taste of her mouth, the movements of her hands, the press of her body. And then she’d stopped, and kissed you on the cheek, and walked unsteadily into the house, and nothing had been said about it since. It might have been nothing.

The soft wet bite of her lips, the trace of her fingers, the thin material of her skirt in your hand, the weight of her warmth against you. It was probably nothing at all.

You look up out of the water, turning to see if she’s reached the top of the path. Maybe she’ll hang back and wait. You’re further out than you realised. It would be good to head back now, to pull yourself up on to the concrete ledge, let the sun dry the water from your back while you gather your things together and hurry along the path to join the others. You pull your arms through the water, feeling the pleasant stretch of the muscles across your shoulders and back. You kick with your legs, hard, and your feet and shins slap against the surface, and you realise how long it’s been since you last swam properly like this, actually covering a distance. You should do it more often, you think, stopping for a moment to tuck the snorkel into the headband of your mask, spitting out a mouthful of seawater. You launch off again, enjoying the way your body cuts through the water, the air on your back, the sea sliding across your skin. The snorkel slips out of place, spilling water into your mouth, and you have to stop again, coughing, to clear it from your throat.

You see the others on the path, and you see a bus passing along the road, and you see the birds hanging in the warm air rising up against the side of the hill.

You take off the snorkel and mask. They’re getting in the way, and you’ll get back to the steps quicker without them strapped to your face. You try swimming with them held in one hand, but they slap and splash against the surface and drag you down, and you’re not getting anywhere like that so you stop and tread water for a moment. You’re further out than you thought.

The afternoon’s quieter now. No one’s jumped from the outcrop for a while. The teenagers on the ledge have started to gather their things together and drift back up the long twisting path to the road. The girl reading a book on the other bathing jetty has gone. The back of your neck feels as though it might be starting to burn. It probably would be good, after all, to catch the bus with the others. You think about just dumping the snorkel and mask, but it seems a bit over the top. There’s nothing like that happening here. There’s no problem. You can’t be more than a hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty yards from the shore. You tie them to the drawstring of your swimming shorts instead, and swim on.

This morning, in the old town, ducking into an art gallery to escape the glaring heat, you’d found the city’s war memorial, unmarked on the tourist maps. It had looked like another room of the gallery at first, and you’d drifted into the circular space expecting more vividly coloured paintings of wheat-fields and birch-woods and simple peasant-folk labouring over ploughs. But there were no paintings, only photographs. Black and white photographs from ceiling to floor. Row after row of young faces with dated haircuts, thin moustaches, leather jackets and striped tracksuit tops. The photos were blown up to more than life-size, and one or two had the inky smudge of a passport stamp circled across them. There were names, and dates, and ages: twenty-two, fifty-seven, fifteen, nineteen, thirty-one. There were candles burning on a table in the middle of the room, a bouquet of flowers, a ragged flag. Some of the boys in the photographs had looked the same age, and had the same features, as these teenagers jumping from rocks and squirting water at girls, boys who would have been half the age they are now when the war happened. You wonder if any of them lost older brothers, cousins, uncles, fathers. You wonder whether any of them remember much about it; if they duck into that cool, whitewashed room every now and again to remind themselves, or if they prefer instead to leap from high rocks into the warm ocean, to ride motor-scooters with the sun browning their bare chests, to lie with long-limbed girls in the scented shade of aged and twisting trees.

Perhaps when you get back no one will want to go to the trouble of laying the food out on the terrace and clearing it all away again. Perhaps you’ll all go to the pizzeria down by the dockside and sit at a table on the street, picking the labels off cold bottles of beer while you watch the old women offering accommodation to the tourists coming off the boats. Perhaps Jo will catch your eye and keep you talking until the others have moved on, and shift her chair so that her leg touches yours.

Swimming with the mask and snorkel tied to your shorts is worse than holding them. They’re dragging out between your legs like an anchor, pulling you back. You stop and tread water again, breathing heavily. You only paid a few pounds for them. They can go. You can always tell the others you left them behind by mistake. You unpick the knots and let them fall away. They hang in the water for a moment, lifting and turning in the current. You watch them sink out of view, and realise you can’t see the bottom.

The others are at the top of the path now, and one of them leans out to look down at the ledge where your things are still gathered in a heap. You wave, but whoever it is turns away and steps through the gap in the railings, crossing the road to join the others at the bus stop, out of sight.

You take a breath and swim, fiercely, lunging through the water, blinking against the salt sting, heaving for air, and there’s a feeling running up and down the backs of your legs like the muscles being stretched tight but you keep swimming because you’ll be there soon, climbing out, pulling yourself back on to solid ground, and you keep swimming because there’s a chance that the current has been pushing you away from the shore, and you keep swimming because this isn’t the sort of thing that happens to someone like you, you’re a good swimmer, you’re young, and healthy, and the rocks aren’t really all that far away and it shouldn’t take long to get there and there isn’t anything else you can do but now there’s a pounding sensation in your head and a reddish blur in your eyes and a heavy pain in your chest as though the weight of all that water is pressing against your lungs and you can’t take in enough air and so you stop again, for a moment, just to catch your breath.