THE POOL

I'm working on my new novel and one of the key settings in 1908, 1914 and the present is the old Victorian swimming pool. This is inspired by the pool at Lanhydrock House near Bodmin which was built in Victorian times and is nestled far away from the great house in a copse of knotted trees. This is an early piece of writing that I have woven into my new novel:

The old swimming pool slumbered at the far side of the parkland, deep emerald water dreaming behind elaborate wrought iron gates that had surely been there since the old queen was a girl. The patterns were intricate, twisting upwards like barley sugar and beckoning the boys forward with the promise of something just as delicious and forbidden.

The aged latch was rusted but lifted easily enough as the boys slipped through. The air beyond the gate felt cooler and a world away from the parched gold of the shorn parkland. The grass was still beaded with moisture and the flagstones surrounding the pool gleamed with dew. The gravel path leading to the sky trapped water was weed strewn and the high hedges had grown upwards unchallenged. Blind eyed statues guarded each corner, urns weighing down their flattened heads and white limbs caressed by snaking ivy. The water, still and green, had a mesmerising quality to it and the boys paused to peer in, both drawn and repelled by the smoothness of the surface and their white floating faces.

They balanced like tight rope walkers around the edge of the pool until they reached the farthest end where worn stone steps sank into the water. They kneeled down and dabbled their fingers into, loving the small ripples moving ever outwards at this faintest disturbance. A frog plopped into the depths and the pool, despite its hidden stillness, seemed alive with secrets. For the briefest second it seemed to them as though something dark flashed in the bottom of the pool, but it was gone before they could feel sure of it existing at all. A pike? A lost sea serpent? The notion left them unsettled, as though they had crossed into a place where the facts and rules of the school room and the Big House no longer held sway.

They knew this place was forbidden to children but this only made it even more enticing. The steps sinking down into the pool, their surface slippery with algae, seemed to beckon them on. Thick strands of emerald mermaid hair drifted in the water and a sharp breeze whipped over the water, making the ripples surge and the hair seeming to swim. Excited to paddle, the boys tugged off heavy boots and thick woollen socks and waded in, plucking out strands of weed and tossing them at one another with shrieks and yells which seemed too loud and irreverent, as though they were shouting in church.

They played for a while and the water, reaching up to their knees, sparkled in the sunlight, but there was something disconcerting about the way it consumed and remade their reflections which made them hesitate from venturing deeper. Cast in silver and sliced by ripples, their faces seemed to melt into misery, eyes big and mournful and mouths dropping with sorrow. It was as if the pool was showing them as they might one day be; shadows of the future, longing to be lost in the past…

Time ran differently here. They couldn’t articulate it but it felt as though a boy might find himself marooned in this moment and caught in this place like one who had wandered into the land of fae. Insects tapped forever in amber. Late for luncheon and unable to catch up with the rest of their life. In an unspoken agreement they turned for the steps, peeling the last of the weed from their white legs and tossing it back into the pool where it floated for a moment on the surface before vanishing into the teal depths.

They stepped out of the water, shaking droplets from their limbs like dogs and pulling on their socks without even pausing to dry their feet. The air seemed thicker, as though something heavy had settled over the pool. They didn’t speak but each boy couldn’t shake the feeling that they had disturbed something ancient, something that had been undisturbed for far too long. As they made their way towards the gate the smallest boy glanced over his shoulder, one last salt pillar moment, and thought he saw something in the water—a flash of movement, too quick to be real and he gasped.

 A ripple. A white face. A shadow.

He blinked and when he turned back to look again, the pool was still and empty. The ripples had stretched into infinity and the water settled to a mirror smoothness. Then the gate clicked opened and the boys slipped through and started to run. The ran away from the old pool to the big house where game pie and pickles and cold cuts waited.

Across the parkland the still and secret old pool was waiting too...