Swimming Home

by Mary-Rose MacColl

  She looked over at the group of photographers watching her. What she wanted more than anything was to take off her clothes and leave them here on the sand, and dive in and swim. She knew it would be cold, but even the cold wouldn’t be enough to deter her. As she waited and watched the sea, photographers snapping their blasted pictures, she realised she would not go in while they were there. She saw Andrew further up the sand, sauntering towards her.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said when he reached her. ‘Are you swimming or contemplating?’

  ‘Both?’ she said.

  ‘Company?’ he said.

  ‘I don’t want to go swimming with all these fellows here,’ she said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t know. Can you ask them to leave?’

  ‘Not really. They can snap whatever pictures they like in a public place. You could just strip down to your bathers and let them photograph you getting in the water. They’d love that.’

  ‘But I wouldn’t love it,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to, not in front of all of them. I think I’ll just go for a walk.’

  Andrew looked over to the group of reporters and photographers and sighed. ‘Well, they won’t be happy until they have something to send back to America. That’s how the business is.’

  ‘Why don’t you kiss me?’ Catherine said.

  ‘Kiss you?’ he replied.

  ‘Yes—that would give them something to send back to America.’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’ He leaned in and kissed her on the cheek, his hands still in his pockets. When he pulled back again, his eyes were soft.

  He looked over at the reporters. ‘It seems that hasn’t satisfied them,’ he said, and she disliked him then because he was one of them.

  ‘I can’t stand this,’ she said, and turned and walked through the crowd of reporters and back up the headland towards the hotel.

  31

  BLACK MUST HAVE HEARD THE URGENCY IN HER VOICE on the telephone. He’d only arrived from America the day before. He had a meeting he could cancel, he said, if she could come to the Carlisle at noon. He asked when she was heading over to France. She wasn’t sure, she said. He’d be going himself in the next few weeks; by air, he said.

  ‘She’s going to do it, Louisa. My girl’s going to swim the Channel.’ There it was again: ‘his’ girl. Louisa wondered just how far he’d go to help his girl. She needed him to help her now.

  He was in the lobby waiting when she arrived, wearing his lounge jacket and pressed slacks. ‘Thank you for agreeing to meet me,’ she said. ‘Can we walk? I don’t think I can sit still for this.’

  He offered his arm, smiling hopefully. She didn’t take it. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘No, I’m not,’ she said abruptly. ‘I have done something that I thought was in Catherine’s best interests, but it’s become complicated and I need you to listen.’

  ‘What is it, Louisa? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

  ‘Yes. Please. Just let me speak. Is there somewhere private we can go? Perhaps I don’t want to walk after all.’ She had suggested on the telephone that they might walk in the park, but now that she was here, she didn’t feel she could go any further. She had a plan, she reminded herself, and she needed Black if she was to execute it.

  ‘Of course.’ He gestured to the waiter, stood and spoke quietly to him. He came back to Louisa. ‘I’d invite you to my suite, but that might cause a stir, so our man here has arranged for us to use the private lounge.’ He helped her up and linked his arm in hers, then placed his other hand on her hand. She calmed a little.

  They went into a lounge off the lobby. He closed the door behind him and she sat down at the table by the window. He poured her a drink, a neat scotch, brought it over, then poured one for himself. He looked apprehensive, Louisa thought, as if she might have bad news for him.

  ‘Before you start,’ he said, ‘it was never my intention to deceive.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ she said. ‘Just give me a minute.’ She breathed in and out.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Deceive?’ she said. ‘Whatever do you mean?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you tell me why you’re here?’

  ‘You know Catherine grew up on an island north of Australia?’

  He nodded carefully.

  ‘There was a family there, a woman and her child, who were close to my brother Harry.’

  ‘Florence Cunningham.’

  She looked at him. How on earth did he know?

  ‘Julia and I wrote one another occasionally. She told me about Florence. I take it that’s who you mean? I didn’t know she had children.’

  ‘Yes, well, Harry was very close to Florence. My other brother … Oh, that doesn’t matter now. Anyway, when Catherine came home to London with me after Harry died, she wouldn’t settle at school. She just wanted to go back to the island. I began to despair. I mean, she and I didn’t know each other terribly well, and I’m not used to children. I know it’s no excuse. But it seemed to me that the thing that unsettled her most was news from Australia—from Florence and her son.’

  He nodded. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘You might expect that.’

  ‘Yes. And then one day I collected the post on my way to work. And there was a letter for Catherine. And I read it.’ She raised her hand to stop him from talking. ‘Yes, I know it was wrong. I know it wasn’t mine to read.’

  ‘No, I understand,’ he said. ‘I would have done exactly as you did.’

  The relief! He didn’t think she was a terrible person. She continued. ‘When I look back now, I … I think I misunderstood something in the letter—although perhaps I didn’t. But anyway,

  I made a decision; that is, I kept that one letter to see what happened.

  ‘And then you came along and we were off to New York and swimming, and so I kept the next letter and the next. And I suppose I saw the swimming as a godsend, really, to take her mind off these other things while I sorted something out with a school. I thought she would go over to America and swim a little, and then return to London and go back to school.’ She sighed heavily.

  ‘Anyway, I told Nellie to keep Catherine’s letters to Australia and not send them, and after a while Catherine stopped writing and talking about the island. And not only that, she was much more happy. She was in New York and all she wanted to do was swim well for you. She admires you, Lear, that’s the truth of it.’ Louisa was worried it was more than admiration, that Catherine had a crush on Black. She’d lost her parents. She’d lost her home. Oh, Louisa had been so wrong, she saw now.

  There was a gardener outside in the drive, pruning something, rosebushes probably—she’d seen rosebushes on the way in. She could hear the regular snip of his shears, the click of the stems breaking.

  ‘Well, that’s good news,’ he said. ‘Well done.’

  She smiled weakly and put her fingers to her eyelids, held them there for a moment. ‘No, you don’t understand. There’s been another letter. The boy, the boy Catherine was close to, is in terrible trouble and it’s my fault.’

  ‘What boy do you mean, Louisa? Florence’s boy?’

  ‘He’s Catherine’s age or a bit older. His mother says he went to one of the towns on the coast. He wanted to get a job, to earn money. He wanted to come over to see Catherine, to find out why she hadn’t replied to his letters. I thought he’d forget. She’d forget. And it was for the best. And now he’s in trouble. The boy. He’s in trouble, terrible trouble, and it’s my fault.’ Louisa explained briefly what had happened.

  ‘I don’t understand, Louisa. That’s not your fault.’

  ‘Well, of course it is. The boy would never have been in Cairns if it weren’t for me withholding the letters. And Catherine would never have stopped writing.’

  ‘You can’t know that.’ He looked at her intently.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, I’m not seeking your forgiveness here, or some version of Maryland w
isdom. Just listen.’

  She realised she was close to losing control, and he was doing his best. She needed to calm down. She needed him now like never before. ‘I wired Harry’s lawyer in Cairns and got him to look into the situation.’

  ‘Witherspoon.’

  ‘You know Witherspoon?’

  He hesitated before answering. ‘Yes, he’s done some work for me on a shipping deal Alex and I were negotiating in Australia.’

  ‘Anyway, at first I was terribly worried, of course, because the letter would have taken some time to arrive and … Anyway, Mr Witherspoon’s been able to reassure me on that score. The boy’s in prison, charged, awaiting trial.

  ‘I thought of going to Alexander, but he and Harry … He won’t be disposed to help. He’ll say I did the right thing.’

  ‘And you think you didn’t?’

  ‘Of course not. If he’s hanged, it will be because of me.’

  ‘Now, hold your horses there, Louisa. We went from trouble to hanged. Why hanged?’

  ‘I’m sorry. It’s just so awful. They robbed a shop. They shot a man. He’s dead.’

  ‘This boy did?’

  ‘His mother says no. And Mr Witherspoon says she’s right.’

  He nodded, breathed in and out slowly. ‘All right, Louisa, you need to look at me.’ He sat for a few moments, regarded her carefully. She felt like talking but stopped herself. ‘So you withheld some letters to help your niece. I don’t see a problem with that. It’s your job to care for her. And then this boy’s done something wrong, or not.’ He took a sip of his scotch. ‘That’s not your fault.’ He shook his head. ‘Not at all.’

  He spoke as if he was used to people agreeing with him, as if he could fix anything, teasing out Louisa’s liability as if that would make it all right. And she imagined he mostly could fix anything. But no amount of clever description and running from liability changed what had now happened.

  ‘As far as I’m concerned,’ he said, ‘you don’t have to do anything.’

  ‘Of course I have to do something,’ Louisa said. ‘I can’t keep this from Catherine now.’

  ‘You absolutely must keep it from her now,’ Black said, a sense of urgency in his voice. ‘She mustn’t under any circumstance know this, not now, when she’s about to make the attempt on the Channel—not now, when she’s left all that island nonsense behind.’

  ‘The bloody Channel is all you think of,’ Louisa said.

  He looked hurt. ‘No it’s not. I’m thinking of Catherine, her future. This will give her a confidence nothing else ever could, Louisa, after everything she’s been through.’ He looked surprised that she thought so poorly of him.

  ‘Well, if the boy Michael is dead, it won’t matter. Anyway, Witherspoon can do something, as it happens. He just wants money and so I’ve told him to go ahead on the basis that I will pay.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘He says the police aren’t really even terribly interested in the case. They want to solve it, and this is an easy way to do so. To take the more difficult way, which means truly solving the crime, they need money.’ She felt tears threatening. ‘He’s a lovely boy, Lear. I met him.’

  ‘How does Witherspoon know this boy didn’t do it?’

  ‘Michael was working on a fishing boat. He wasn’t even in Cairns when the man was shot. The other boys say they weren’t there either. Their alibis would hold in a fair trial, Mr Witherspoon says. It’s just an appalling place where some lives are cheaper than others.

  ‘The owner of the boat has signed an affidavit to the effect that Michael was working on the day of the murder, but the police so far have shown little interest. We can take our chances with a trial, Mr Witherspoon said, and he’ll represent the boy. But that too is fraught. Witherspoon tells me the quickest way to convince the police to look at the affidavits he’s collected is to give them money.’

  ‘A bribe.’

  ‘That’s not the word he used.’

  ‘What word did he use?’

  ‘Contribution.’

  Black smiled. ‘Ah, the world’s the world. And I’m guessing that’s where I come in—the money.’

  She nodded. ‘Yes, the money. I told him to go ahead, but I don’t have a thousand pounds.’

  He took a sharp breath in. ‘Oh, that’s a lot of money.’

  ‘It’s less than you’d spend on one of your parties, I’d warrant, let alone those jaunts up in the aeroplane.’

  ‘Possibly,’ he said. ‘But those are my parties and my jaunts. This is to help a boy I’ve never met.’

  ‘It’s to help me.’

  He took a puff of his cigar. ‘If I’m to help, you mustn’t tell Catherine.’

  ‘I have to tell Catherine.’

  ‘Ah, we come to an impasse. You now want to unburden yourself of your dishonesty as a way of seeking atonement.’

  ‘No; if I don’t tell her, Florence and Michael will.’

  ‘Not if she never sees them again,’ he said. ‘Which is what you wanted in the first place.’

  Louisa stopped then. She wouldn’t tell him the whole story. She wouldn’t tell him what else she was planning to do. What had happened to Michael—and all because Louisa decided she knew best—made her realise she must now do the right thing.

  She’d been wrong taking Catherine from the home she knew and loved. And, she was pretty sure, she’d been wrong about Michael and his relationship to Catherine. He and Florence were more Catherine’s family than Louisa was. Catherine was cast adrift not because she was wild and uncivilised as Alexander had claimed but because she’d been taken from the only home she’d known. And, Louisa thought now, it had been a good home.

  Louisa was going to do what she could to make up for the harm she’d caused—if only she wasn’t too late, she thought now. But she wouldn’t tell Black. He would never agree, so bent was he on making Catherine his champion. ‘Are you suggesting I go on as if nothing happened? I can’t do that, Lear. I just can’t. It’s wrong.’

  ‘Then you have a problem, Louisa.’

  32

  THE WEATHER WAS FINE THROUGHOUT THE FIRST WEEK of July and Catherine thought they might try the swim—the sun shone and the water looked like glass day after day—but Mr Burgess was waiting for the right combination of weather and tides.

  ‘The Channel is in charge here, not us,’ he said. ‘I thought you were the swimmer who already knew that. Anyway, the sooner you learn it, the better you’ll be. The Channel tells us when she’ll let us swim, and when she won’t.’

  They needed perfect conditions, but even if the tides were in their favour and the weather looked calm, the North Sea could squall at a moment’s notice and ruin a swim.

  ‘The English Channel, my girl, is the most difficult body of water in the world,’ Mr Burgess said. ‘You’re squeezing two grumpy seas into a too-narrow gap, creating a force that has to go somewhere. Often it goes on top of a little swimmer.’ It was notorious for claiming ships, and many a fine swimmer had failed, he said, sucking on his pipe thoughtfully.

  In the meantime, she spent time in the water every day. She started at twenty minutes. Catherine could have stayed longer. She didn’t mind the cold at all, the thrill of the icy water on her skin, even the way it seeped into her bones. She loved the tiredness afterwards, as she drank hot tea in front of the fire. She preferred it to swimming in warm water now, she realised, although Lillian Cannon, who trained with Catherine, told her she’d still rather swim in warmer water. Lillian was sponsored by the Baltimore Daily Post, and her dogs were to swim the Channel with her, although Catherine had read a story in The Times that said this was cruel to the dogs. The newspapers were just making a story of it, Lillian said. One of the dogs refused to get in the water anyway, Catherine had noticed—he just stood on the beach and howled—so she wasn’t sure how they were planning to have them swim the Channel.

  Lillian didn’t seem to want to win anything. Like Catherine, she just enjoyed swimming. And there was a lightness about her
that was lacking in everyone else here, Catherine thought, including Andrew, who was getting very serious about the challenge of the Channel and Catherine’s chances. Even Clarabelle Barrett, whom Catherine liked, was serious when it came to swimming. Catherine had asked Mr Burgess if Clarabelle could swim with them but he’d said no. When Miss Ederle arrives, he said, I’ll have three swimmers, and that will be enough.

  The newspapermen tried to get Catherine and Lillian to be mean about one another, but they had agreed they wouldn’t say anything negative about the other. ‘Do the newspapers bother you?’ Catherine had asked Lillian.

  ‘Oh, no,’ Lillian said. ‘I don’t mind so much. I just cuddle one of the dogs and think nice thoughts and then it’s over.’

  ‘I wish they cared more about other things.’

  ‘Yes, it’s odd. All we’re doing is swimming. Before I left New York, I did a little swim for the newspaper in the river.’

  ‘I remember.’

  ‘And all those sailors from the Illinois came out on deck and cheered. You’d think I’d won the war. But do you know, I didn’t really even swim. I just dived in with the dogs and then got out. My husband says they like me in my bathing suit.’

  The two swimmers often walked along the shore in the afternoons, sometimes followed by the reporters and photographers who Catherine did her best to ignore. If you didn’t capitulate, give them a smile and turn their way, they wrote stories with headlines like SWIMMER SULKS or POUTING PRINCESS. You couldn’t win, she knew that well enough.

  Lillian had met Andrew over dinner one night. When Catherine said he was a reporter, she noticed that Lillian and her husband Eddie became more careful with him. Lillian wasn’t as open. One day on the beach, Catherine asked Lillian about it. ‘Oh, I would never talk openly to one of those fellows,’ she said. ‘The next day, it would all be in the newspaper.’