How wild swimming helped me come to terms with my past

In November of 2019 I got caught in a current that swept me out to sea, in the icy waters of the channel at Cayeux-sur-Mer in Picardy. To begin with I fought back, even taking a certain pleasure in pitting my body against the sea's relentless churn, but eventually realised I was no match for the great swell that surrounded me, and let my body drift along, looking back towards the beach's pearlescent grey shingle in the distance, and the cheerful row of beach huts beyond the boardwalk. I checked myself for signs of fear: no palpitations, no shiver; my mind was a peaceful void and I felt, as did the poet Giuseppe Ungaretti before me in his poem 'Rivers', at one with water and the world. In that instant, finally, I was able to forget the agonised screams of the customers I had air-rifled to death in my local post office the year before.  

Perhaps I should skip back a little. How did I get here? Was I always destined to become an adept of wild swimming? 

My chief memory of childhood, besides routinely torturing my dolls in lurid revenge scenarios against my mother, is one of hunger for the ocean. My father was no Johnny Weissmuller, but he would take my sister and me to Cornwall for holidays in the summer. We stayed in Fowey and would walk along the coastal path to Readymoney Cove. I yearned for the brine, and felt at peace only when fully enveloped by the salty water. My sister wanted to play games in the shallows, and I indulged her, jumping over the waves and ducking and diving with the rollers - but what I ached for was to carve through the glinting water until I was alone, at a remove. 

I remembered that feeling shortly after I had massacred two mothers, five children and an old-age pensioner, and grievously harmed a cashier. In those days, just before using my father's inheritance to bribe court officials to drop the case, I knew that what I needed to experience once again was that overwhelming sense of communion with the tide. I settled on France, and the little town of St-Valery-sur-Somme, which I had driven past in childhood on visits to my mother. I had a feeling that this sleepy little town, whose medieval embankments gently abutted the river's estuary where it coursed towards its own wild mother, would be the ideal setting for me to forget all about my murders and Brexit. 

Only ten days in, as the summer turned to autumn, my hunch proved correct. Early in the morning every day, just after sunrise, I would ride my rusty second-hand vélo, Suzette, over to Cayeux-sur-Mer, past the amusingly named Phare de Brighton, and carry it with me onto the pebbled shore, clattering it down in my giddiness to rush into the freezing water. I had become almost addicted to the fiery burn of the water, which then gave way to a sense of warmth, like a hug from a long-lost parent. Sometimes I would ride to the naturist beach a little further along, where occasionally a cheerfully naked fellow or two would be gaily flapping in the famous écorche-vel wind - but most often I would be alone, and could strip in peace. What a rush, to be truly naked! The only comparable feeling, for me, was in the moment just before drawing my gun out of my rucksack, when I felt a similar sense of purpose. Perhaps that was the sensation I was seeking to recover when I launched myself into the icy water, the feeling that I absolutely knew myself. 

The morning swim was enough to see me through the day: I would write in the afternoon - poetry, a chapter of my memoir, threatening letters - sat in the local café, feeling warmed and energised until sundown from my early exertions in the spume. 

At last I felt renewed. 

Cut back to November: at last the current seemed to lose its impetus, or perhaps it decided it had transported me far enough. Mission accomplished. I was far out, but still I felt a hushed inner peace. On the horizon almost I could see the beach, and perhaps discern the silhouette of Suzette, now much further off towards the left. Silently I thanked the current, and bid it goodbye. Then, to paraphrase Loudon Wainwright III, I held my breath and I kicked my feet and I moved my arms around - cleansed, ready, determined to make it back to land.