Dun Laoghaire Baths Coming Down

By Ann Kennedy

I watched my childhood breaking down. The dinosaur ate chunks, bite by bite. Lying lost for decades, dead in minutes. It was coming down.

My twin sister, Margaret, our older sister, Louise, and I, met the 59 bus from Killiney to Dun Laoghaire outside our house every morning at 9.45. This was the routine drafted for summer days when school was out. Tucked under our oxters were rolled towels like jam roly-polys, encasing plastic swimming caps more fitting airmen of bygone days. Our ‘togs’ were bunched into this leathery shell.

On alighting the bus, we raced through the Park at Sandycove, screaming, to the large door where children were pouring down from all corners of south county Dublin. A turnstile let us in. A wire basket grabbed our clothes. In the changing cubicles, we stripped naked, feeling the frost bite like ginger snaps on the sea breeze. We stood on a surface I was never keen on. I can still smell its rancid pong, its dark stickiness. Hygiene was dubious, but no one ever got sick from going to Dun Laoghaire Baths.

The baskets were dumped with a grey-haired lady. We gawked at the slab of slate by the high diving-board, where temperatures warned us of the day ahead – chilly or chillier, freezing or cold, but never warm. Running to read it, our toes attempted to hold the ground, an art in itself.  Water from the men’s hoses had sloshed the deck with chlorine first, then drenched it with speeds of spray, to sanitize and debug the baths. Giggles ran with the wind.

A long bank of concrete ran along the back wall, where we sat in between swims. The summers were hot and sticky, the air fresh with salty spray. Giggling girls melting into a white-washed slab. Naked legs toasting red, pink and white flowery togs. The Otters’ Swimming Club bedecked, brandished like a national flag against the stark lime painted walls.

For the little ones, it was the far end, the baby pool, or junior infants, but never on the wall with the Otters. I learnt to swim by lying flat on a small lump of cement, pretending, like an airman lost for his plane and his wings.

Time passed and we graduated onto the big pool. We felt all grown up and water smart, but I was still jelly-fishy. A limpet, lank thing, I wished for the sun to melt me away. It didn’t happen. I enjoyed it the best I could. In the evening, tired children, wet, cold and chilled, headed home. Home to our Mums and Dads. Home for a bite of food.

About to take my first dive one day, I summoned the back block and a particular Otter sitting there. “Louise, LOOK!   LOOK Louise!” I cried to my sister, three years older, an Otter of significant status, in my eyes.

She came down and towered beside me.

I pointed my joined hands to the water. Wedged my head between my arms, created a statuesque stance, seconds before possible flight. Stinging like shattered glass, a brat of a lad let fly and I was catapulted into icy water belly face down. It hurt. A lot. Louise let out a roar of disapproval and the lad ran as fast as he could, then disappeared without guilt.

I didn’t try it again. My confidence had washed away and I was a deflated beached whale. I sat the day nursing a redness a lobster on a grill would die for.

We all competed, if we joined the Otters. Margaret, my twin, hadn’t dived yet. This was my chance to claim ‘champion’ knowing a dive can knock the socks off those who were too timid to do so. Alas, she tipped the other end an inch before me almost always, despite the push-off on that far back wall. Disgusted, I never adequately described the feeling.

We both entered for the Personal Survival Awards. Bronze level. A. I am a marked lady from this event, without a doubt. It took place during the daytime, and the Baths were closed to the public. We trembled, as the event began. Our maiden solo flight from the high board was about to begin. We entered the ‘simulation’ of being a drowning rat some place you shouldn’t be drowning, and had to save ourselves.

Procrastination found me flinging out last. I hit the surface with a fright and swallowed half the bay and coughed horribly. I slapped the skirt up above and caught the fresh cold air under it. This was my life buoy. I threaded water for three minutes. God, I had hoped would help me after that, if the rescue took longer to navigate this or that emergency.

At any four-minute mark, no one need send the lifeboats. I was ten feet under by that time. The next marking to my spirit and soul of endeavor was going to be the challenge never forgotten. Diving down under the water, I swam three yards. The aim was to miss the bottom belly of the U boat, but I hit the grey gun-metal, every time, and was morto. I should rightly be dead by now. It was a lesson in determination, character building and experience, which lasted a lifetime. Laughing from our wheelchairs today, agitated by this memory, Margaret and I get all hot and bothered. It took so long for us to achieve this award, I wonder still, if we were let pass an inch short of the Bronze Standard.

Evenings were cold in the Baths, an east wind whipping into everyone’s tiredness, we twins were ordered out and the medals shoved into our paws. “Go home, well done,” we were told. We did.

The Otters’ bench produced an Olympian, an International and a Masters champion, still dunking down at the Forty Foot as ‘the larger than life’, Claire Small, nee O’Dwyer. Everyone’s dread, yet a type of initiation to bravery, Vicky Smith got stung by a lion’s mane and ended in St Michaels Hospital. Louise, my sister, swam for Ireland at the age of sixteen. Built tough, she graduated to teaching half of Dublin to swim, not drown. A formidable teacher, she took no prisoners, with a voice so loud, it startled. As an adult, I was at the receiving end many times.

You didn’t get tired in Louise Kennedy’s classes. You didn’t get out early. A sister could claim no privilege.

“Where are you going?” she’d bellow.

“Out”

“Get back in.”

“Get back in.”

You didn’t answer a second time.

Louise had learnt her art in Dun Laoghaire Baths.

Swimming good and godly in the clouds above now, my wonderful sister died far too young. The stunned community watched the cortege. Children of children who grew up with her lined the roads in mystified horror. We drove after her that day to grandfather’s grave. Daddy died a year later.

The Baths was the premier entertainment of kids in ‘them days.’ It is remembered for icy waters and lots of fun. Running like flashing flipping fish over to Teddys’ bare-footed, we had no worries of glass or antibiotics. We beat the hot tarmac, dripping wet, for flash bars, Peggy’s legs, aniseed balls or licorice. Running back to our lines of skinny legs, blue-turning toes and pursed lips, we licked and slobbered and got into the pool for more punishment. It was Siberia,

Clark’s sandals were buckled on. Shivering, the goose bumps were as great as any measles rash. Long hair hung in slimy sodden strands. We sucked at the tips of them and waited for the Killiney bus, out of our minds with exhaustion and cold. We hugged the wet towels for relief. It had been a great day at the Baths. When we arrived home, togs were pegged on the clothesline, flapping madly. We sat down for the wonderful dinner Mum had made.

The next morning, the sun broke the sky at dawn and the day began again. The Killiney bus arrived at 9.45 a.m. and three girls boarded it. We were off to Dun Laoghaire Baths.

Now, the jaws of the dinosaur are shaking the air in a thunderous earthquake. The summer is turning to fragments of memory; the dust stinging my eyes. The solid old soldier, warrior, airman, is bitten alive, to be no more.