Night Swimmers opens with the protagonist Grace striding from the sea and up through rocks and shingle to her cottage. The scene is a bay on the Co Down coast: and there is the sense of a deep breath before an onset of – something tremendous, but of what? The main sandy beach – the wide, picturesque, yellow beach – is around the corner and is heavily patronised by visitors and tourists; but nobody comes to the little bay, where the shingle can be sharp underfoot. It is clear that Grace prefers it this way: she likes to have the place – meaning, of course, the world – to herself.
But now a group of swimmers have accessed this cove: “She heard them before she saw them, a cluster of brightly coloured chickens, fussing at the water’s edge, flapping and clucking.” Wild swimmers – but soon this group will see that none of them is as wild as Grace, who though she appears born from the waves, is rather more selkie than Aphrodite. “It was a damn pity she wasn’t a seal.” Now, she emerges naked from the sea. “Oh my god, I wish I had my phone”, squeals one of the not-so-wild swimmers, before Grace stills their chatter. And then, the onset, as she walks up and into a world which is turning, and changing, and shattering. Very soon, there will be no more parties of swimmers visiting this stony cove.
Roisin Maguire joins a growing association, numbering such writers as Ali Smith, Sarah Moss, and Elizabeth Strout in its membership. Night Swimmers is a Covid novel, emphatically so: it is the first spring of the pandemic, the sun shines daily and the air is warm, as if nature is mocking the fear that presses all around. Maguire evokes this unease supremely well – but her main concern, one senses, is to explore the idea that a frightening pandemic also brings with it the possibility of making one’s life anew, if only courage will present itself and if only circumstances will permit.
Grace has a history, one laced with grief and pain, and she has sought to build a new life for herself in this lonely edgeland, this finely balanced littoral. Maguire has no wish to mine this history too deeply: it is part of the nuance and delicacy of the novel that Grace’s past is only glanced at and is not subject to unnecessary scrutiny. What’s past is past: what matters instead in this story is the present tense – and a better future that might be there for the taking.
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For Grace, this possible future may include company, fellowship, perhaps even love – at first sight an odd prospective future for so solitary a character, with nobody except a misshapen dog for company. But atomisation is the consequence not of place, but of attitude and of fate: and a community is indeed to be found even on this bleak stretch of coast. Grace slowly gathers a company of other apparent misfits: her niece Abbie, hankering after calm and space away from the busy emptiness of the city; Evan, who does something in finance and who wants out; and Evan’s son Luca, despatched from the city in search of safety by the sea, and like his father in flight from shattering grief and gnawing guilt. None of these characters has yet found their place: none of them, indeed, expects to do so – and it speaks to the undercurrent of compassion that flows through Night Swimmers that images of abundance and kindness manifest throughout, and are made available even to the harsh and bruised Grace.
It is an indication of Maguire’s aptitude for a metaphor that Grace makes her living from quilting – that is, from creating a unity from disparate elements; although in a flash of sly humour, Grace complains that she simply can’t keep up with the orders flowing in. Out in the world, consumers are passing lockdown by shopping online; they are buying quilts, and keeping Grace busy – she is part of an even larger community, whether she likes it or not. And as she and Evan – in a beautifully evoked scene – patiently work to release a cormorant from the knotted fishing line that have been choking and drowning the creature, she understands that she herself has much to give and to teach. Storms will come, and must be weathered, experienced and learned from – but better times might yet lie ahead. This is the bright hope of a glowing, generous novel, even as the Covid world closes in.
