We present another story from the RTÉ Short Story Competition shortlist 2025 - read Pool Story by Jill Kenny below
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Rural Irish town, evening. Tim drops into the chipper to check his hours, although he knows his hours, then walks past the big catholic church his mam doesn't make him go to anymore, past the petrol station and glare of red lights with numbers of prices he reads though he doesn’t drive, to the river, where he slows down a fraction to listen to its gurgling. He can already smell the chlorine nearby. His big white shoulders soften.
He loves the pool like he loved acting school. Something to do with the space, being there and somewhere else at the same time.
Shrubs. Car park. Swinging doors. He holds it open for a tall woman he doesn’t recognise, who says thank you very much. The yawning receptionist says Hi Tim and he says Well.
It is 8pm, Friday. The adult sw im at the local leisure centre. Tim doesn’t go drinking at the trad on the Thursday evenings. He doesn’t go to the gym. In the pool he doesn’t do a length, or leave the lads. He likes to float and sometimes does little kicks against the end.
Changing rooms. One friend already in his trunks and flipflops leaning against a locker. The other with a two day stubble is shoving things into a locker and asking if either of them have a euro for it.
Tim gives him his only euro, takes off his nylon tight branded top, strips down to his briefs. Leaves his locker shut but unlocked. Here you don’t have trouble with the lads stealing stuff, it’s if you accused them you would.
They walk together, past the sign that says No video, photography. Sean, who was recently laid off with his da when the ribbon factory closed, was the reason. Slipped his phone’s camera underneath the cubicle a few years ago, pretending he just dropped it. That it was recording by accident. He made such a deal of it, nearly like it happened to him, that he just got barred for the year.
Tim says Ready and they walk by the opening to the showers and the Swimming costumes must be kept on at all times sign. He would never take his off but he’d still prefer the sign wasn’t there. His briefs cut into his hips and make two thin lines to his groin. When he passes the sign that says Lifeguard, their lives are in your hands, he wonders why this isn’t in a private staff area like the ones they have in the chipper. Then thinks the sign is for the people to see that the lifeguard can see.
The pool is 20 metres. At the end, is the jacuzzi. Either side, the sauna and steam room. Not dissimilar to the layout of the church or a cross. The three of them walk in a line -- the flipflop friend walks practically in on the pool, though Tim knows he’d never fall in.
They go backwards down the metal bar one after another. The two lads grimace though it’s lukewarm. Though there’s no-one watching. No-one and everyone. Tim smiles to himself, thinks it’s like a play or God or town or something. He counts seventeen men in the area, one woman and one couple. The couple are throwing a ball around half way down the pool, stretching and wading and swimming after it. There’s a nodding exchange between the three lads and a few of the older men also at the deep end, including Sean and that’s that: the lads settle into the end, where they bob and turn around and hold the bar.
In front of the sauna men from up the road sit on new pine benches beside old towels and locker keys. Flip-flops and puddles are on the ground. To Tim, they are props.
The tall woman isn’t so tall now she’s in the pool. She does a different kind of swimming each length. When she goes backwards she doesn’t move her arms. The two lads talk about going to a gig in Galway in a few months. The price of it. And a new gaming site. They look around a good bit. Tim presses his legs in against the wall and smells under his arm.
Sean and another man are now at the end of the tall woman’s lane. When she gets there she bumps into Sean’s belly with her head, surfaces. Spits out some water and moves away a few paces, starts another length.
After the big clock hits twenty past the hour, the three lads move to the sauna in unison. Sit as wide as they can though they are all in there crowded with the other men. Arms on their legs.
A man's mid-talk. The wife’s brother died, right. The funeral organiser came in to buy her and the husband a drink, and when he got the bill at the end the drinks were on it. Weren’t thinking of the next customer were they, what?
He was not, one of them says.
Hahaha, they say.
They talk about work and the commute and petrol being cheapest in their hometown. Tim doesn’t have some of the things they have but he likes his job. Takes the orders. Packs it up. Answers calls. Gets his meals too. If he were to use his mam and da’s language, he’d say they were good to him.
Are ya still at the acting? The funeral-talking man asks.
Tim shifts around a bit, swallows.
Got paid for a thing on TikTok out West. Getting some auditions. Don’t need to travel up to Dublin now with online casting, which is handy.
None of them look at each other. Two of them are leant straight back. Two completely forward. It smells of pine and heat.
You can get up to 10 grand for an ad.
Not stable though, eh? The funeral man says again.
Tim looks down at the sweat bubbling on his calves. Thinks of how his mam tells her other cleaner friends when an ad comes on the telly at work in the hotel, that it could have been him.
Weren’t ya meant to go to London or something?
Yeah, a cousin out there. But sure everything changed with Covid. He’s a box of a place anyway.
Pause
Would’ve been a nightmare, he adds.
Sean comes in dripping and says Move over in the bed lads.
Jaysus you wouldn’t want to be in London, one of them says, making room for Sean, thank god we were here. Bit of a space at least.
Tim says Yeah.
They start talking about The Covid, and work and what closed down and the 5 kilometre radius rule, and it somehow feels like he’s looking straight into that bit of space the man said. He remembers when the chipper reopened the sit-in section and how he liked looking at people’s faces again. It was only much later he thought to himself that something was missed.
He decides to pick up a bag of chips afterwards. The Polish boss’s daughter will say Are you training hard? Short red hair. Red cheeks. She sometimes gives it to him for free. They treat him the same as customers, even a bit better.
Is the film festival back up and running afterwards? says Sean. Tim thinks why they don’t asks the other two lads questions but he knows.
Yeah, it was on February, says Tim.
How’s that?
He volunteered at it. It annoyed him how his filmmakers were so serious about their shorts, mostly about some kind of small town life. Them getting their expensive hotel, and coffee and scone voucher, and when he asked one of the managers there if he could give out some of the extra scone and coffee vouchers to the volunteers and he said no, Tim quit, walked out of the theatre there and then, but the filmmakers didn’t notice. Not epic or slow enough for them, Tim thinks, and he can’t remember who he’s mad at anymore.
Ah, all up themselves, he says.
Good for the town though, says one of them.
Tim says Mmm, looks at the sign saying not to put water on the non-coals, then the thermometer pointing somewhere high.
Silence
Some swimmer, isn’t she? one of them says, nodding to the now not tall woman in the water.
Some filly, did you say? says Sean.
The two of them laugh.
Tell ya though. Speaking of film stuff, I was out foreign, Lanzarote, says Sean. Me and this man looking over at each other at lunch trying to place one another.
Tim feels trickles running down to his feet and dripping on the wood.
I was like 'are you the one from Ireland AM’. The Mrs has it on the telly in the morning and he said he was. I said ‘I knew it’ as Sean slaps his hand on his thigh, and I asked for an autograph for the Mrs and he gave it.
Someone says fair play to him and Tim thinks of whether he’ll ever go foreign, to New York or L.A. His Mam says Hollywood won’t come knocking but he really doesn’t like flying. The tight space. Everything so small below.
His bearded friend says he’s roasting so the three of them get up to go to the third of the holy trinity, the jacuzzi. Sean asks his overheated friend if he wants to just go, but he has a cold shower and feels okay to go on. The tiles feel cool on Tim’s feet to the jacuzzi and the space kind of opens.
The tall woman is inside the jacuzzi and as the lads arrive, the foreign couple gets out. Her cocking her head sideways, squeezing the water out of her hair, him walking tall but relaxed, his hand on her lower back.
Tim’s friends talk about a gaming influencer, while Tim looks out the only window along with the not so tall now in the jacuzzi woman. A thin tree blows in the wind; a man walks a Boxer with a bright pink toy in its mouth. He’ll definitely get a chipper afterwards. Extra vinegar. Maybe a battered sausage. He tilts his head back, his ears under the water. He thinks of a scene he did years ago in acting school and then he thinks of nothing.
He feels the rush of water and a limb beside him, tilts his head back up, Sean is by his side, sunk in far enough so the bubbles go up to his bottom lip. His lips are open, his beady eyes parallel to the woman’s breasts, staring. Tim thinks he’s like a crocodile. She looks at Sean, then at Tim, and gets out in quick, agile movements. She doesn’t squeeze the water from her hair like the woman in the couple.
Tim watches her walk away towards the showers and Sean raises himself up, leans over to him and says, C’mere to me, let me tell ya, and Tim doesn’t move, suddenly feels off. He tries to relax, to think what act they’d be in if they were in one but his chest feels tight. He's suddenly afraid he'll never do good things, or say what he means, or act.
Tim gets out of the jacuzzi, ignoring Sean, even though he knows Sean wouldn’t like that, doesn’t answer when his red faced friend asks him where he’s going. He walks ten steps to the pool, and sinks in. One big white chip into oily, wavy waters, before peaking at the surface for air.
Tim wipes his eyes with his hand, checks he has the full length of water to himself and lets go of the bar, pushing off with a lot of kicking. Probably soon he’ll stop and grab onto the side, but for now he doesn’t. For now, he swims and makes his way down along it and along.
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About The Author: Jill Kenny (BA English Lit UCD, M.Sc Multimedia DCU) has been published in Arc Literary Magazine and Future Perfect anthology, and has exhibited in the RHA. She's been placed in national poetry competitions and was guest poet at Prima Vista Literary Festival. Jill is working on her first book with support from The IWC's National Mentoring Programme, The Source, and The Stinging Fly Summer School. She's "inspired by the ancient oak wood and farm she grew up on in Tipperary, long-term meditation, and modalities that explore inner and outer systems".
Listen to the RTÉ Short Story Competition 2025 stories nightly on Late Date from Monday 13 October (full broadcast schedule here). Tune into Arena for interviews and updates, and join us for the live Arena/RTÉ Short Story finale in the Pavilion Theatre in Dún Laoghaire on Friday 24 October - tickets are on sale here
