Barry Clifford: The Swimmer

As a boy, I watched a movie called The Swimmer in the 1960’s. Somehow this movie connected with me and yet the subject matter had no relevance to my life then, but as time marched on I understood it more. When it came out it got mixed reviews of being too dark, too deep, or both, but strangely entertaining that held your attention leaving questions that really had no answers. Today it is understood better and seen to be timeless, and by the movie ratings online internet site, Rotten Tomatoes, it now enjoys a 100% rating.  

In essence it is a story about a middle-aged man who decides to visit his neighbours swimming pools and them poolside on a hot summer's day. He is met by various but increasingly hostile reactions by those he meets. He thought himself successfull with beautiful daughters within a happy marriage, but it was soon revealed in different ways that nothing could be further from the truth and his own unhappiness was finally exposed by others and at last by himself. This final humilitaion comes to pass at the close of the day when he eventually returns after his poolside marathon to his family home only to find it boarded up and deserted under the umbrella of a storm; over two years had passed too over the course of that one day. He finally had to confront that which he already knew.

I have seen this story play itself out many times since and in relative terms not much longer than a day either.   

One personal tale in Galway in 1998 was when I was building the brickwork for monumental walls on what could only be called the Babylon Gardens of a magnificent new house. It had its’s own large indoor swimming pool, chandeliers hung in the great hall, en-suites in the many  bedrooms of epic proportions built to awe; and in case awe might be missing, this man also built two outer buidings the size of small houses to accomodate more guests. It seemed he had more friends than many on facebook.

One affair and a collapsed marriage since and with the banks beating a path to a door of the mansion that he no longer lives in, I pass this place now and again and think of The Swimmer. On the main road you can see the faded For Sale sign and the garden acreage of the front of the house is now divided into sites for development to help pay for the bank’s losses. What had become of the man and was the price worth it for the mistress went as quickly as the money did? From the time the last brick that I layed on those walls less than 10 years had passed when the life he wanted to embrace was over.

There is no lesson to be learned by it all in the round for we are all so different driven by varying impulses from desire to bragging rights, or from a need to prove or erase something from the past. Too often though it is what is in front and around us that which is more than enough, and it is when we falter when we go looking for something that is not there. John B Keane meant something more when he said that Ireland will only ever be happy when each man has more than the next man.

By Barry Clifford