Swimming Home

by Mary-Rose MacColl

  ‘Do some humans come from the sea?’ she asked.

  ‘We all do,’ Florence said. ‘We’re all water babies. But some have a hankering to go back there.’

  Charlotte had arranged for a car to take Louisa from Manhattan, where they’d watched the start of the race, down to Sandy Hook in New Jersey, so they could watch the finish on the beach there. You could almost swim it faster than you could drive, Charlotte said.

  There had been a small crowd for the early start, including reporters and photographers. The swimmers had looked so vulnerable out there in their costumes, Louisa thought. There was a bigger crowd here at the finish. She couldn’t see Andrew. Black was in Baltimore. He’d planned to make the race but couldn’t at the last minute. He wired to say he’d see her next week. She’d been disappointed not to see him again.

  They were up on the lifeguard stand above the beach.

  ‘Swimming,’ Louisa said to Charlotte. ‘I’m sorry if I was rude about it.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t mind,’ Charlotte said. ‘You don’t swim, so you can’t know what it’s like to want to and not be able to.’

  It was a beautiful day, Louisa thought, warm and sunny, and the water made long, lovely waves on the way into shore. Charlotte pointed to the right of the shoreline, where swimmers were just coming into view.

  ‘Oh, yes, I see,’ Louisa said. She felt quite excited now. ‘So who’s the favourite?’ she asked.

  ‘Well, Aileen Ryan is swimming well, and so is Helen Wainwright. They’re at loggerheads, those two, always have been. There’s another swimmer, Gertrude Ederle, whom you might have heard of, but she’s not swimming today. Her sister Meg is in the team, very strong at the moment. They’re good in these open-water swims.’ She pointed out Aileen and Helen, who were in the lead, along with the British swimmer Hilda James. ‘It’s going to be very close,’ Charlotte said. ‘Actually, I hope it’s a tie. I couldn’t stand to have Aileen and Helen at each other again.’

  These three swimmers were ahead of the pack, the rest some way behind. Louisa was looking for Catherine among the swimmers at the back but couldn’t see her. She knew Catherine was in a yellow cap—Charlotte had pointed her out at the start. When Louisa couldn’t find her niece, she became worried. She started counting heads. ‘Where’s Catherine?’ she said to Charlotte.

  ‘She’ll be here,’ Charlotte said. They watched a few minutes more, the lead swimmers rounding a buoy and picking up pace now for the final run into shore, all the other swimmers in view. Catherine must be a long way behind, Louisa thought.

  Now Charlotte was looking too, scanning the sea.

  ‘I’d better alert the lifeguard captain,’ she said. Louisa could hear the fear in her voice.

  And then Louisa saw her. ‘There she is! By God, she’s ahead of them all!’

  Catherine wasn’t at the back of the pack. She wasn’t with the group to the right of the shore. She’d come from further away, on the left. And she was in the lead—a long way in the lead—on the far side of the group of swimmers. She would beat the others by a mile.

  ‘That’s not Catherine?’ Charlotte Epstein said.

  ‘I believe it is,’ Louisa said. She watched her niece increase her lead with each stroke. She looked so strong, so free, in the water. In that moment, something became abundantly clear.

  Louisa understood, as she had not really understood before, that swimming was a part of Catherine, that to take this from her was to take her life from her. Catherine probably had no interest in any of the rights and wrongs of women’s swimming, or the suits, or the sport, or the oglers, or even winning and losing. That was all put on swimming by others—by Charlotte, Black and even Louisa. For Catherine, the sea wasn’t swimming; it was home.

  She surfed in on a wave, which took her almost to shore. She stood and was pushed over by another wave. Oh, the cold. Her hands and feet were totally numb and her lungs hurt. But she was laughing. If this was a calm day, she’d hate to see rough seas. She couldn’t believe the race was finished already. The fellow in the boat had kept offering her food, chicken broth, chocolate cake, but she hadn’t been hungry.

  There was a crowd gathered above the beach, cheering. A dozen ran down the sand to meet her. Mr Handley hurried over with a towel. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you could swim like that?’ he said.

  ‘What?’ she said. ‘Mr Handley, you were right. The water isn’t so cold if you don’t think about it. I’m actually sort of warm, to be honest.’ She smacked her lips together. ‘But my mouth isn’t working very well.’

  Mr Handley was laughing as he wrapped the towel around her. Everyone was smiling. The photographers were taking pictures. ‘I saw fish, a big school of them in front of me. I tried to follow but they were too fast. I’ve never seen fish like that before, green and black and yellow. They were very beautiful.’

  ‘You know, you won, Catherine,’ one of the photographers said. ‘The Australian won. What do you think of that?’

  She looked at Mr Handley. They were taking pictures of her and she didn’t know what to say.

  ‘All right, boys,’ the coach said, ‘that’s enough. You’ll terrify the poor girl.’

  In the back of the group, she saw Andrew smiling and waving.

  ‘Andrew!’ she called. ‘Andrew, it’s you!’

  He came over. ‘Well, that was a sight to see, Catherine—you coming in way ahead. There’s no one else even finished yet.’

  ‘Really?’ She looked around and realised that what the photographer had said was true: there were no other swimmers on the beach. She had won.

  ‘You’re going to be famous, girl,’ Andrew said. He leaned down and kissed her on the mouth. She pulled back, surprised.

  ‘Andrew,’ she said.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said then. ‘I don’t know what came over me.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I really won?’ He nodded, smiling.

  ‘Goodness,’ she said. ‘I didn’t think anything like that would happen.’

  After the swim, Catherine collected her trophy. A reporter from the New York Daily News asked her how she’d won by so much.

  ‘I was lucky,’ she said. ‘I picked the tides, so that when all the others were swimming against, I was being pulled to the shore and I looked faster. But it’s always luck,’ she said honestly.

  ‘But you were the fastest swimmer too,’ he said.

  She thought about this. ‘Being fast isn’t anything out there,’ she said. ‘It’s the water that gives or not.’

  The photographers took pictures of her getting out of the water, getting her award, towelling dry and then once she’d dressed.

  Louisa had come down the beach to Catherine after the swim. ‘I’m getting sand in my boots,’ she’d said first. ‘Oh, I’m terrible at this. Well done, Catherine. You’ve swum amazingly well. You won!’

  Catherine smiled.

  Her aunt stepped forward to embrace her.

  ‘But I’m all wet, Catherine said.

  ‘Oh, I don’t care, darling. You’re just a marvel,’ Louisa said. She hugged her tightly and didn’t let go until Catherine did.

  Catherine was exhausted by the end of the post-race celebrations, happy to get in the motor car that would take them back to the hotel in New York. Andrew and Louisa came with her. When they arrived at the hotel, there were more photographers, sent by the local papers. Catherine could smell the magnesium from their flashbulbs on her clothes for hours after.

  Finally they went inside. She’d been seven hours in the water and three hours on the journey back, by which time the evening papers were reporting Catherine’s feat. She’d set a new record.

  ‘Is that what reporters do?’ she said to Andrew. ‘Follow girls like me? ’

  ‘It could be worse,’ he said. ‘Once I had to follow this prize fighter who was a terrible drunk. I think you’d be easier.’

  ‘I didn’t mean for them. I meant for me.’

  ‘For you? You’re the star, darling. We all adore you!’r />
  The next morning, when Catherine left the hotel to go to the WSA pool, there were half a dozen reporters and twice that many photographers waiting for her. ‘Can you tell us what you’ll do today, Catherine?’ one of them said.

  ‘I’m going to the tank to train,’ she said and smiled. ‘And maybe I’ll swim in the harbour with my friend this afternoon.’ When she smiled they took pictures, so she smiled some more. It was strange that they were so interested in her, Catherine thought. All she’d done was swim.

  ‘What’s next?’ one of them asked.

  ‘I think we swim around Manhattan next Saturday,’ she said.

  ‘Are you going to France?’

  ‘No,’ Catherine said. ‘I haven’t been selected.’

  ‘How does that work? Didn’t you beat everyone yesterday?’

  ‘Yes, I did,’ she said. ‘But the WSA will select American swimmers.’ She smiled and they took her picture again. They seemed to want to take her picture doing just about anything.

  The next day at training, Charlotte Epstein asked Catherine to come into the office. ‘What were you thinking?’ she said, throwing a newspaper onto the desk.

  Catherine looked at her in astonishment. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘You told them you weren’t selected for the Channel.’

  ‘Well, I wasn’t,’ Catherine said. ‘I told them the truth.’

  ‘This looks dreadful for us. I’ve had Black and our chairman on the telephone this morning asking me how we made such a blunder. Black says I promised we’d put you on the team if you won Sandy Hook. He’s threatening to withdraw his support. We were going to fix it, Catherine. I would have talked to Mr Handley and …’

  Catherine shook her head. ‘I really don’t know what you mean, Charlotte. I just told the truth.’

  26

  LOUISA HAD FOUND HERSELF LOOKING FORWARD TO seeing Black. They met in the lounge of her hotel.

  ‘I’m so sorry I missed the race,’ he said. He embraced her lightly. He smelled fresh.

  ‘Oh, it was something to see,’ Louisa said. She sat down and waited as he ordered drinks for them.

  ‘You look wonderful,’ he said when the waiter had been dispatched.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘It’s just lovely to be here. Thank you for suggesting it.’

  ‘I bet Charlotte was surprised,’ he said. ‘I knew Catherine was the one.’ He smiled.

  ‘Yes,’ Louisa said. ‘We all were pretty surprised, I think.’

  ‘Not me,’ he said. ‘I know my girl.’ The way he said it irked Louisa—my girl.

  ‘So now she can come home happy, triumphant and confident,’ Louisa said. ‘We’re very appreciative of what you’ve done for her.’

  He smiled. ‘Louisa, she really could be the first woman to swim the Channel, you know.’

  ‘But she’s not in the team.’

  ‘She doesn’t need to worry about the WSA. Let them take the Ederle girl. We’ll take Catherine.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Me. And you. I’ll get her a coach over there. She can go home with you and then train.’

  ‘Lear …’ Louisa wanted to mention his family but thought better of it. ‘I’m not sure anymore that this is what she wants, and it’s never been what I want for her,’ she said firmly.

  ‘Of course it’s what she wants,’ Black said. ‘She was born to it. Anyone can see that.’ He thrust his jaw out, a gesture she’d not seen before.

  ‘Born to what, Mr Black?’ Catherine had walked in.

  ‘So you did it,’ Black said, turning around and standing to greet her. ‘I just knew you would. I just knew it. You’re my girl.’

  He embraced Catherine. Again, Louisa was bothered by the familiarity in his tone, and his embrace was warm. He was staring at Catherine now and the look on his face was hard to read. Pride, Louisa thought. He was proud of her. When he looked at Catherine, was he thinking of the sister he’d lost? That’s what you’d have thought watching him now, it occurred to Louisa.

  Louisa switched her gaze to Catherine and smiled. ‘Catherine, you are in all the papers,’ she said. ‘And this time, they’ve actually got pictures of you swimming.’ She showed her the pile on the table. ‘Mr Black says you could swim the English Channel next.’

  Catherine smiled. ‘Do you really think so? Do you think I should?’

  Black didn’t give Louisa a chance to answer. ‘Of course you should. You’re going to be the greatest swimmer in the world. You’ll see.’

  The Association made the announcement the morning after the story hit the newspapers. The three swimmers to attempt the English Channel would be Trudy Ederle and Helen Wainwright from the WSA and the Australian Catherine Quick, funded jointly by the Association and Mr Manfred Lear Black.

  Catherine had thought Aileen would be selected over Helen Wainwright. She was a better swimmer, and a much better diver. Catherine was going to Aileen’s for the weekend but now she worried Aileen wouldn’t want her to come. She’d pushed Aileen out of the Channel swim, after all. When she arrived at the house, she hugged Aileen and burst into tears. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, fally-bally! Don’t worry, Catherine,’ Aileen said. ‘I don’t mind, really I don’t.’

  ‘Oh, Aileen, look at me. I’m the one who’s going and you have to stay and I’m crying.’

  ‘Well, that makes perfect sense to me. You’re going to leave us, and we don’t want you to.’ Now Aileen was crying too. ‘You’ve been the best friend. Will you come back?’

  ‘Oh, I do hope so.’ They were sitting out on the porch on the swing chair.

  ‘You know, I wasn’t going anyway,’ Aileen said, smiling through her tears. ‘I’m starting Georgetown in the fall. Daddy wouldn’t have let me swim, even if I’d been picked.’

  ‘You mean you’re going to university?’

  She nodded. ‘We visited last week. I’ll be in college, with a dorm mate, and the only thing that would make it better would be if it was you. I’m allowed to keep swimming through the rest of the summer, though, and diving. And I’ll be watching you. You bet I will.’

  When they went inside, Mrs Ryan embraced Catherine warmly. ‘You have to come back to us, Catherine. You’re our family now. Don’t forget that.’

  They were such gentle, lovely people, Catherine thought. They had accepted her just as they’d found her, and she would never forget them. Catherine saw, too, that although Aileen was angry at her father for making her give up swimming, she really did want to go to college and study law. She wanted to move on with her life, and she didn’t see swimming as the way to do that.

  After Louisa left to go to Baltimore, Catherine was frightened to leave Charlotte’s apartment because she might see a reporter or photographer. At first she had liked it when they took her picture. It had felt like they were her friends. They called out after her in the street: ‘Give us a smile, Catherine.’ She quickly got used to the noise of the flash behind her, the smiles on their faces, the big eyes of their flashbulbs staring coldly at her. But they were with her all the time now. She was only to be in New York for another week, and it was as if they couldn’t get enough of her.

  Catherine had come to hate seeing her image looking back at her from the newspaper page. While others would say, ‘Don’t you look beautiful?’, she felt anything but beautiful. They photographed Trudy, too, and other swimmers. Mr Black’s newspaper had a big feature article, written by Andrew, on the Channel contenders of 1926. He put his money behind Catherine Quick, he said, ‘the Australian girl who’d made good in America.’

  She walked past the newsstand at the station and saw her own face looking out at her, a pasted-on smile, woollen bathers. When she arrived at the tank, Charlotte said, ‘You’re on page three again.’

  ‘I know,’ Catherine said. ‘I saw.’

  ‘It’s great for us.’

  ‘I hadn’t even been swimming,’ Catherine said. ‘I put my costume on and stood there. I hadn’t even been in the
water.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter,’ Charlotte said. ‘We need to stay in the papers, Catherine. It’s for the sport.’

  ‘Is it?’ Catherine said. ‘Is it for the sport? Andrew told me it’s for the legs.’ She thought of Louisa suddenly, what her aunt had said at the beginning about swimming. She’d been right. ‘Why do they do that?’

  Charlotte shrugged. ‘Perhaps it’s not ideal, but if it helps us grow our membership and increase donations, then I don’t see the harm.’

  ‘It’s not your picture.’

  In the change room, she asked Aileen, ‘Do you think it’s right that the papers print pictures of us in our swimsuits even when we’re not actually swimming?’

  ‘I’ve never thought about it,’ Aileen said. ‘They don’t put my picture in the paper very much. They seem to like you the most.’ This was said without any ill will, Catherine knew. ‘I suppose diving isn’t like that swim you did. They’re mad keen on the Channel, and it will surely be you or Trudy.’ Aileen looked at her more closely. ‘But you’re crying, Catherine. What’s wrong?’

  She’d put her suit on and was about to go outside. She sat down heavily on the bench. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I thought it was all good fun at first. But it’s all the time, Aileen. I can’t go out of the hotel without seeing a photographer. Charlotte said they’d leave me alone after Sandy Hook settled down but they just want to keep at me. Even Andrew.’

  ‘Well, it’s his job,’ Aileen said. ‘He’s supposed to do stories for the newspaper. Maybe you need to be more like that Lillian Cannon? She has the dogs.’