Kings Hall

The plastic bench creaks as they sit, arranging bags carefully to avoid the steam that puddles around the picture window. In the swimming pool their kids attempt a breast stroke – a young uniformed coach thinking about what to have for dinner as children gamefully thrash from one end of the pool to the other with a float under one arm, water churning. The thick glass keeps out any noise from the echoing baths but the decibels will be deafening in there. Nothing surer.

After the scrum of the changing room - the smell of feet and walls of heat; of balled up clothes and hair scraped into-bands-into-buns-under-caps - the two friends look forward to this bit. The quiet. Their blue plastic bench. And seeing their children from afar with the sound turned off. Earnest efforts through triple-glazing - so sweet and suddenly so small.

With an easy cadence they return to conversations from before, untroubled by eye contact. One kid is in danger of losing her cap Shazy notices. Anothers’ goggles pinch and she eventually ditches them altogether. Their chat is punctuated with hoots of laughter for a belly flop or a new stroke, duly commented upon. Today they share the bench with a newcomer to the 4.30 class – an older woman, alert, bright eyes, with a smile playing across her lips as if enjoying a private joke. Her gaze is generous, seeming to favour no child in particular. She is especially delighted by the symmetry of the older class who are attempting, for the first time, a synchronised swim. She shares with them her appreciation for the older coach’s efforts, he has been with the centre for a long time, decades now she says, but doesn’t appear ever to lose his love of teaching. Can there be anything more satisfying than teaching young children to ally the water, make it theirs? ‘He’d have a job with me.' She smiles. 'I certainly never had the grace of these kids.’ ‘Nor me’ says Shazy, ‘I love swimming but it doesn’t always love me back’ and she draws on her laughter like it were a cigarette, the vibrations bringing the bench and all three women in on the joke. ‘What stops you going in more?’ The woman asks, direct now. ‘If you love it so much.’ ‘It’s not what stops me it’s what gets me in there’ Shazy says gesturing at her daughter doing a sitting dive. ‘She gets me in. Mother's love. Left to my own devices there’s always something in the way and it doesn't happen’. The woman appears to chew on this, thoughtful.

They return to their spectating and casual commentary as the class rounds up. ‘This girl’ the woman notices, eyes on a young girl languidly butterflying up the middle lane. Turning now, they can all see it too. She cuts deftly through the water, unaware of their gaze, wheeling her arms, enjoying the demands of the stroke. She leans in and they catch the girl’s expression as she surfaces. ‘Who's she doing it for?’ And they look again, at how she plays, entrusting her weight to the water and how her body appears to thrill as if flying.

The class over now they make to leave, retrieving bags, fishing out towels for cold kids, minds already on the walk home and after that, dinner. Relieved of their weight the bench sighs and recovers its shape as the viewing gallery empties out. In all the activity only Shazy notices the woman stays put.

They never see her again and there is nothing strange in that, in the transience of classes and levels and new terms and the swim that is London’s own churn. Early 2025 the centre closes - for refurbishment allegedly - though in reality it will be years before it reopens, and the girls will be grown by then and their gentle Wednesday eddy replaced by something faster, more adrenal. Shazy will miss Kings Hall. A swimmer now on the noisy side of the glass she will need to find another pool to join. Grateful to the staff she brings chocolates to say goodbye. At the reception she sees a pinboard she’s not noticed and a photo and there's that smile, those eyes, their one-time companion.

‘Coach Maggie’, it reads. ‘1954 -2002. The beating heart of Kings Hall'