The art of breaststroke

I’m house-sitting for the foreign correspondent while he attends the funeral of his beloved father-in-law Toto, the last of the languid Old Etonian gentleman bankers. And he has a pool. And what a pool it is.

The days here are roasting; the sun is now the enemy. Already dead leaves crackle underfoot. So I swim in the evening, when it is a little cooler. The pool is built into the hill above the house. On one side is a wide apron of smooth white stone slabs. Beyond the apron is a rose garden and stone-built pool house with power sockets and a beer fridge. On the other side the water falls over a brim with an ‘infinity’ effect.

I swim wearing sunglasses and a linen bowling cap and I begin with a breaststroke slow enough not to disturb the surface of the water. Submerged to just below my nostrils I can see the tiled roof showing through the olive trees and a long hump-backed mountain beyond. Contrails hang in the sky. Not a breath of wind. Silence. Once in a while a Pentecostal gale starts up out of nowhere, buffeting the olive trees, changing their colour from green to silver. Then it dies away again as suddenly as it came and the evening silence resumes. I imagine that it is a relieved silence after the day’s fierce heat.

Swimming is my great pleasure. One tip for better swimming offered in a book written by an instructor, which I have always remembered, and which becomes truer as I get older, and which I offer here, is to love the water. Instead of battling against it, embrace it like a lover. Hug it to you. Caress it.