We present an extract from Night Swimmers, the debut novel by Roisin Maguire.
Grace lives alone in Ballybrady, a little village on the beautiful east coast of Northern Ireland. She fills her days with swimming, fishing, quilting, and baiting the visitors – the townies - who arrive from the city with more money than sense. She hasn't left the village since moving to London for a time in the late 1980s.
Evan arrives in Ballybrady, taking an enforced holiday from his family and the company he set up in in Belfast. He is broken and grief-stricken by the death of his infant daughter and the fracturing of his marriage. He has come to try and mend himself, his faltering relationship and his career, even if none of these seem possible.
Evan has not even been there a week, when he gets trapped by lockdown. Floundering and forlorn, he struggles to focus and fit in amongst the locals. When Grace saves him from drowning, and Evan's troubled son Luca arrives to stay, all three are pulled together by currents that draw them to a reckoning with their personal trauma and back into society.
Grace was surprised to see, when she spotted the kayak, that the thin dark figure still drooped on its back like a tired cowboy at the tail end of a rodeo. She'd expected him to be in the water by now, those glasses long gone. Fair play to him, she thought, fair play.
He’d lost the paddle, of course, and as she came closer, she saw his face was very pale. His t-shirt was a slick dark green and his jeans full of water and, of course, he wore no lifejacket.
'Feckin’ townies,’ she hissed at the dog, which flattened its ears and blinked at her.
The man hadn’t seen them yet. He was still sitting motionless on the bucking kayak. Grace slowed her rowing and let her boat rest a little way off, to see what would happen next.
She nodded as a run of water slewed the kayak around, hard, and the man fell with a subdued plop into the icy rush of the sea. The dog barked as he came to the surface, gasping and spitting as they always did, horrified at the incredible cold, the terrible depth of the water around and beneath him, shocked and spinning and swallowing water, flapping and slapping and choking.
She let him settle. He looked like he knew how to swim.
Suddenly he caught sight of her and howled.
‘Help me! Help!’
She looked at him for a moment, shouting and splashing there. Then, with a few deft strokes, she came alongside him and twisted around on the bench to kick the little ladder over the stern with a lazy boot. She leaned down beside her to grab the paddle out of the water as it drifted slowly by. When she looked up, the townie was still clawing at the slippery green sides of her boat as if he could swim himself in, and thanking Christ and all of that, and she realised that without the glasses he probably couldn’t see a thing.
‘Go to the end,’ she barked. ‘There’s a ladder.’
When he failed to move, she said it again, and the dog barked for good measure. Nodding quickly, still coughing seawater, he began to inch his way down to the end, until he found the thing dangling into the sea, its metal strands clacking quietly as they all moved up and down, up and down. Grace settled the paddle where it wouldn’t interfere and watched the kayak floating away on the pointed swell. She got the oars ready in her hands and sat waiting, until she felt the sharp downward lurch of the man’s weight on the ladder, getting a hold. Then there was the groan of effort as he pulled himself up out of the water and became heavy, heavy, heavy again, but she didn’t turn around to help. The dog whined as the boat listed hard to one side. He’d got one leg over, probably, she thought, and was doubtless lying over the stern like a drying sheet. Yep, she could hear him gasping for breath.
Better watch his balls as he swings himself in, she thought, but didn’t say.
Another lurch and a thump and a Christ almighty, and the man was in the bottom of the boat. The little craft sat low in the water now, but it was fit for this. It would be a hard old pull to catch up with the kayak under this double weight though, so she bent to the task without delay. As she rowed, she heard him scuffle around and swear quietly, and finally right himself.
‘Thank god you came along when you did,’ he said loudly, to her straining back.
God had nothing at all to do with it, she thought, but didn’t say.
‘I dunno what I’d have done if you hadn’t come along.’
I do, she thought, but didn’t say.
Instead, she jerked her head towards the neat coil of rope on the seat beside her.
‘We’ll be alongside the kayak in a minute. Get that rope through the loop at the end of it so we can tow it in.’
‘Right. Right you are,’ he said, more quietly, and she smiled to herself.
His hand reached out and took the rope from beside her, and the boat lurched and swayed as he got clumsily into position. There was a clunk as she brought the boat up alongside the kayak and she sat still and quiet, letting the man fumble for the loop by touch, muttering to himself, calling himself all the names he deserved, panicking when he couldn’t find the loop of rope at the prow because he was a blind stupid bastard, a thick fucker, a dopey speccy cunt.
Nice language, she thought appreciatively, but didn’t say.
Instead, she shipped the oars and twisted around, lifting her legs up and over the bench in a smooth movement.
‘Here,’ she said peremptorily, and took the rope from him. He gave it up, blinking, and sat back a little on the bottom of the boat to give her space. Quickly she reached for the loop and threaded the tow-rope through. Tying a rapid square-knot she gave a tug to secure it and handed the remaining coil to the man.
‘Let it out a couple of foot and then hold tight.’
He nodded wordlessly, and she saw he was beginning to shake with cold and shock. She tutted.
‘Here.’
She took off her hat so that she could yank off her poncho, and held it out to him. It was time she was back at the oars. The current was taking them away from shore.
‘No. No, I’m all right, really.’
‘Put it feckin’ on.’
He took it from her then all right, and she didn’t wait to see him put it on. She clamped the hat back on her head where it belonged, and was already rowing, rowing, rowing, pulling back the advantage from the sea, angling across the run of the current and making the boat go straight, even with the bumping, splashing encumbrance of the kayak tied on behind.
Night Swimmers is published by Serpent's Tail
