Swimming Home

by Mary-Rose MacColl

  Louisa had brought from England a little gold chain with a heart-shaped locket. Catherine came into the dining room, which Louisa and the hotel owners had decorated for lunch. Andrew was there, Lillian Cannon and her husband, the coach Burgess, the young pilot, Sam. Louisa had made Andrew promise that there would be no reporters or reporting, that this would truly be a private party.

  Catherine hadn’t spoken to her aunt since Louisa had told her about the letters, and Louisa didn’t know what the girl was thinking. She still hadn’t told her about the trouble Michael was in, but there would be time for that later. She was losing Catherine now one way or another, and it was what she deserved.

  After lunch, Louisa gave Catherine her gift. ‘I had it made,’ she said. ‘I am sorry, Catherine. I truly am.’

  Catherine looked at her. ‘What you did, I just can’t believe it. But, Aunt Louisa, you really have no idea who I am. It’s not even my birthday today.’

  ‘Yes it is,’ Louisa said. ‘It’s the third of August.’

  ‘No, my birthday is the twenty-seventh of July—it was a week ago.’

  ‘Your birthday is when?’ Louisa said.

  ‘I told you—the twenty-seventh of July.’

  ‘But last year …’

  ‘Last year, you weren’t even home on the twenty-seventh. I was too scared to tell you because you’d gone to all the trouble of planning a celebration for the third of August. So I just let it go.’

  Louisa looked at her niece. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘How do I know what?’

  ‘How do you know you were born on the twenty-seventh of July?’ The twenty-seventh of July, a date etched in Louisa’s consciousness.

  ‘I’ve always known,’ Catherine said. ‘What’s the matter, Louisa? You’ve gone awfully pale.’

  There was a knock on Catherine’s door just after midnight. ‘Come on, out of bed. It’s time.’ It was Mr Burgess. Trudy Ederle was sick. Mr Burgess had been down to her hotel in the afternoon and ruled her unfit. Without telling the Ederles, he’d made other plans.

  Catherine dressed quickly and came down the stairs. Mr Burgess had got the cook out of bed. There was a plate of stew and potatoes on the table.

  ‘I’m not hungry,’ she said.

  ‘It’s not food, it’s fuel, girl,’ Mr Burgess said. For the first time since she’d met him, he seemed excited.

  Clarabelle Barrett had failed. She set out on the first of August and swam bravely, Mr Burgess told Catherine, but a fog ‘so thick she couldn’t see her hands’ made her give up after twenty-two hours in the water. The Channel had thrown its worst her way and the fog just did her in. Mr Burgess said the Channel decided who would succeed and who would fail and the swimmer had nothing to do with it. Miss Barrett was within shouting distance of the coast. ‘A sight I know well,’ Mr Burgess said.

  ‘Was she all right?’ Catherine wanted to know. ‘Afterwards, was she all right?

  ‘Aye,’ said the coach. ‘She knew it beat her, and she won’t be back. But that’s not your concern. Your concern is getting yourself across.’

  Lillian Cannon and her dogs were returning to America the next week too. She’d made two attempts herself, Catherine knew, the second shorter than the first. It was just too difficult, she’d said, which had given Catherine pause. If Lillian had found the swim too difficult, if Trudy had failed the year before, and if Clarabelle now hadn’t managed it, how would Catherine succeed?

  As if he guessed her thoughts, Mr Burgess said she had to think of one thing and one thing only out in the Channel tonight.

  ‘What’s that?’ she said.

  ‘The swim. Just think of the swim. No one ever swam a long way by thinking of the opposite shore. You let me worry about Dover, and we’ll be fine.’ He would be in the pilot boat. They both knew the rules. She could take sustenance, bottles of broth, cake, crackers, tied to a pole extended from the rowboat, so long as her hands never touched the boat or a person.

  The newspapermen would follow them in a second boat, Catherine knew, but, Mr Burgess said with a twinkle in his eye, he’d forgotten to alert the boatman. ‘Let’s have the water to ourselves for a while,’ he said. ‘You don’t like all that other stuff.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  ‘You’re going to do this swim, girl. You really are,’ he said. ‘Now, is there anyone else you want to wake up, that tall young fella that hangs off you like a puppy?’ At first she thought he meant Sam but he was talking about Andrew.

  She shook her head, then reconsidered. ‘Yes, there is,’ she said.

  ‘Hurry up then,’ he said.

  She took the steps two at a time and knocked softly at the door.

  Louisa must have been up because she came to the door quickly, in her nightdress and socks, her hair a mess. ‘Catherine,’ she said. ‘Are you all right?’ She looked so tiny standing there.

  ‘I’m going. I’m swimming,’ Catherine said. ‘And I wanted to tell you, just in case anything happens. It’s all right, Louisa. Really it is. Not what you did. That was terrible. But you’ve been a good aunt, such a good aunt. I’ll just send the letters and explain what happened as soon as we get home. All right?’

  ‘Of course,’ Louisa managed to say. ‘Can I come in the boat? I’d like to be there.’

  ‘Can you dress quickly?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We’ll meet you down there.’

  They made their way by lamplight down to the little beach. Sam was there and Catherine was relieved. He’d said he’d swim with her when she was feeling tired and she was glad that Mr Burgess had remembered to wake him. Sam would go on the pilot boat with Mr Burgess. And coming towards them now was Louisa, tiny in her cardigan and woollen skirt.

  ‘Come on, girl,’ Mr Burgess said to Catherine. ‘Let’s get you ready.’

  He and Louisa helped Catherine to slather grease and lanolin over herself. ‘Stinks,’ Catherine said. She was wearing her woollen suit. She knew it would chafe on such a long swim and she’d already decided what to do about that. Through the night, she was going to take off the suit and leave it in the dory until first light and then do her best to put it back on. She hadn’t told Burgess but knew he’d agree.

  ‘You’ll be glad of the grease when you’re out there,’ was all Mr Burgess said, his eyes bright in the midnight. Then he looked up toward the inn. There were lights bobbing down the hill. ‘Quick, here come the newspapermen. Pity their boat’s not here. Let’s row out quiet now. I’m not letting them on with us. Just you and me and the Channel, eh?’ They’d moored the pilot boat out in the bay. The boatman had been the one to see Mr Burgess himself safely across all those years ago.

  There was no time for goodbyes. Catherine dived into the waves while Mr Burgess rowed out with Louisa and Sam. They cheered her on quietly, although she’d hardly swum fifty yards. There was a moon rising over the water. Catherine was swimming the Channel, she thought, and it had happened just like that.

  35

  THE WATER HADN’T FELT COLD WHEN SHE’D SET OUT. That was the strange thing. Perhaps it was the excitement. But now all she was aware of was the cold. The muscles of her arms had cramped an hour ago but now they were past cramping. The weather had been kind so far, although Mr Burgess said they were far from out of the woods. It had been a bad season, he’d said the week before, too few days that were on a swimmer’s side.

  Mr Burgess had rowed with her for a while to keep her spirits up, and he’d given her some broth and chocolate cake. Her hands were numb now when they brushed against the woollen suit at her hips. She knew she had to keep moving or her body would begin the process of shutting down. Her body was begging to shut down, in fact. It would be the easiest thing in the world, to curl up here, to sleep.

  She suspected this was what had happened to Trudy Ederle the year before. She’d gone to sleep in the water and another swimmer had pulled her out. Later Trudy said she’d been fine but the other swimmer saw her go under and come up, water flowing out
of her mouth, he said. She also said she was sure her coach—the Scot Jabez Wolffe who’d attempted the Channel twenty-two times and failed—had fed her whisky with the beef broth. Mr Burgess would not be feeding Catherine whisky, he’d assured her. ‘But, I won’t think twice about pulling you out, girl,’ he’d said. Catherine knew that Trudy’s father had told Burgess he wasn’t to take Trudy out of the water without her permission. Mr Burgess had made Mr Ederle and Trudy sign a waiver to release him from any legal responsibility. If Catherine was unconscious, she thought, of course she’d want him to pull her out of the water. It was only a swim, for goodness’ sake.

  Trudy’s father wanted his daughter to win. Catherine’s father had never been like that. He’d only ever encouraged her. Now she had Louisa, and she’d disappointed her at the start, she knew. She hadn’t been the girl Louisa had wanted her to be. They’d both learned along the way, Catherine thought now. But in telling Catherine what she’d done, hiding the letters from Australia, Catherine had felt, strangely, that while Louisa went the wrong way about showing it, her aunt truly cared about her. She cared enough to intervene to protect Catherine’s interests. Louisa was on her side in a way her father had been on her side, she realised; in a way she imagined her mother might have been on her side.

  She’d so much wanted to please Mr Black. She couldn’t remember when she’d decided she wanted to swim the Channel, to become the first woman to do that. Mr Black had told her the newspapermen would only become more interested in her once she succeeded. He was ambitious on her behalf, not like Trudy Ederle’s father but not that different either, when Catherine thought about it. She didn’t think she wanted that for herself. In truth, she’d have liked Clarabelle Barrett to be the first woman. She was the one of them who most needed money.

  Mr Black had come to see Catherine the evening before, after he’d returned from Paris. He’d wished her a happy birthday. She didn’t bother explaining that it wasn’t her birthday. ‘I have to talk to you, Catherine,’ he’d said, looking very serious.

  ‘We might be making the attempt tomorrow,’ she said. ‘Mr Burgess says the tides look good.’

  ‘Well, that’s the best news.’

  ‘What did you want to talk about, Mr Black?’

  ‘Nothing, honey. Nothing that can’t wait until we get to Dover. If you go in the morning, I’ll fly overhead. I’ll come down low and wave. Will you wave back?’

  ‘Of course,’ she said.

  ‘I’m glad you’re a swimmer,’ he said. ‘I lost my sister and mother to drowning.’

  ‘I know, Mr Black. Louisa told me.’

  ‘And I don’t have anyone left but you.’ It was so odd, the way he’d looked at her as he said it. It gave her a thrill but something about it frightened her too.

  She was cold now in her bones, nothing left inside to keep them warm. They’d hit a squall and Mr Burgess had recalculated their route, which would see her swim an extra two miles. She was more than halfway there, he said, but she wasn’t, if she knew what he meant, which she didn’t, because nothing made much sense to her right then.

  She made herself think of the island, the warm sand under her feet, so hot in the middle of the day you could burn your feet on it, Michael’s long brown body, his smile. If she wrote to him, would he be the same? Would he understand that it hadn’t been her fault, that Louisa had stopped the letters? Would anything be the same? She thought of Florence, dear Florence, and wept.

  The grease and lanolin, designed to stop the worst of the cold and chafing, had worn off now. She wondered why they bothered with it. She never did get her swimsuit off. She’d worried she wouldn’t be able to put it back on and the photographers, who surely would catch them up soon, would snap the picture of a lifetime. Her suit was hurting at her shoulders and underarms. But pain was a better sensation than the cold, which frightened her.

  Louisa had asked her once whether when she was swimming, she thought of her mother. Louisa meant her mother drowning. She’d said no but it was a lie. On a long swim, she always thought of her mother. She thought of the way Julia had given up. Sometimes, like now, she would talk to her. You didn’t hold on, she’d say. You had a life preserver and you didn’t hold on. Why not? I would have held on, she’d say to her mother. I would have stayed with you, no matter what.

  The twenty-seventh of July. The twenty-seventh of July was Catherine’s birthday. And all these years, Louisa had thought her birthday was the third of August. Not because she’d got the date wrong, as Catherine had assumed, as Louisa had pretended after lunch that day, not because her brain was so addled she couldn’t keep a date in her head, not because she didn’t care enough, but because she had been told Catherine was born on the third of August. By her mother Millicent. By her brother Harry. Because if they’d told her the truth, that Catherine was born on the twenty-seventh of July, she’d have known what they were hiding from her.

  On the twenty-seventh of July that year, Louisa’s own child was born: the child her mother had told her was a boy, a boy who’d died.

  She could remain here in the water forever, she thought suddenly, swim on and on. Until what? said a voice she didn’t recognise. Until she ran out of energy and life ended, she thought. She looked across at the pilot boat. For hours now it had been nothing but a haze of lights. She’d swum through the night, Sam diving in to swim alongside her when she needed company, and she’d lasted through the morning, the afternoon, and now it was another night. She would finish alone, she knew. It was the end or not, she knew.

  The newspapermen were on the boat behind them, the photographers wanting their pictures, reporters wanting their stories. They’d caught up now. They wanted a dream, she thought, a winner with long legs and a lovely smile. Catherine could be that person. She was sure she could. That way led to fame and to fortune. And everyone wants that, Mr Black had said. Everyone wants that. ‘You’re a model of what it means to be a modern woman,’ he said. ‘What do you think of that?’

  Mr Black said he wanted to talk to her when she made land. She already knew what he was going to say. He’d sponsor the next swim and the next. He’d been so good to her, and she felt she owed him something. He wanted her to become an American citizen, to swim for the US in the Olympics in 1928.

  Her father had told her the story of the selkie, half woman, half seal, who came to live among men and dried out for want of the sea. Someone had stolen the selkie’s skin so she couldn’t go back. In one version of the story, the selkie left a child, like Catherine’s mother left her. In the water the world was quiet but the sound of her breath was loud. What a lovely thought, the quiet of the sea floor and no one to worry about.

  She could hear the shouts. It was Burgess. ‘Catherine, are you all right?’

  She waved. Had she dozed off? Perhaps she had. One arm up and over, the other, and this way you go forward.

  She could see the shore, barely, the lights of Dover, hear Mr Burgess yelling from the boat. ‘That’s the Forty Lights,’ he said. ‘You’re there, girl! You’re nearly there! Just keep swimming.’

  She didn’t know that it had been less than thirteen hours since she’d left France. She didn’t know that once she completed this last mile, she would not only be the youngest person to swim the English Channel. She would not only be the first woman, she would set a record, beating the last swimmer by over three hours. The tides had been kind, the Channel had admitted her, and Catherine had kept swimming.

  The journalists called to her. ‘How are you feeling, Catherine?’ ‘Are you tired?’ ‘Are you nearly there?’

  They were like ants, she thought, like nothing. She knew other swimmers had faltered in the last mile, and she understood why. It wasn’t fear of failure, it was fear of success. She was beyond any particular emotion, joy or sorrow or pain. That’s what swimming was for her, she realised, a way to come to this place in herself. She felt not tired, but beyond tired, beyond cold. And, yet, fully alive.

  Mr Burgess was telling her to turn to the
right. She saw she’d come too far over. They were supposed to come in at Deal but he’d decided to make instead for Kingsdown. She could see little lights on the beach, thousands of them. The word had got out while she’d been swimming, Mr Burgess said. They’d transmitted their stories to their newspapers and had made the late morning editions. Crowds on the beach were there to welcome her, Catherine Quick, the first woman to swim the English Channel.

  She couldn’t see anyone on the boat now. She was almost past them, she thought. For a few moments, she became disoriented, couldn’t see the boat itself, couldn’t see the lights on the shore either now. Had she lost consciousness? She rolled over and thought she could float here forever. She heard, in the distance, a voice. It was a voice she knew; not Mr Burgess, although it must have been him. Again, someone was calling her name. She looked to where she thought the boat was but still couldn’t see it. She stopped a moment, rubbed her goggles. It was infuriating trying to keep up in the darkness. The voice again. It was calling her name. Not Catherine—her other name. ‘Waapi, I can see you in the light! I’m coming. I’ll swim you in.’

  And then, Mr Burgess was there in the dory. ‘Who is that?’ he said.

  ‘Catherine,’ Louisa said. ‘It’s all right.’

  There were lights everywhere around her now, from the pilot boat, and from the shore, even a beam from the lighthouse trained towards her. She could make out his funny little head bobbing up and down in the water in silhouette.

  ‘Michael!’ she yelled. ‘Over here, you idiot. I’m over here.’

  ‘Just tell him not to touch her,’ Mr Burgess said. ‘It will disqualify her.’ She heard Louisa cheering. Catherine looked up to Burgess.

  Michael came closer. ‘Waapi,’ he said. ‘It’s really you.’

  ‘It is,’ she said, swimming to him and throwing her arms around his neck. ‘It’s me. You smell like coconut.’