I’d hoped we’d get a quick reply to the telegram. We needed to know the exact date for the swim, and the closer to the sixteenth of June deadline it was, the better. Yet a week passed with no news. Then another. The waiting dragged on – and on – and became almost painful.
‘Have you heard from the Channel Swimming people?’ I asked the captain, who, despite moving away from Syndercombe, was now turning up at training at least once a week.
‘It’ll take a while to arrange everything,’ he replied.
‘But it’s already been three weeks,’ I argued.
‘Patience, Nellie,’ he warned. ‘Your job is to help Nate get into good shape so we’re ready when they give the word. Concentrate on that, please.’ 143
So I tried my best to put it from my mind.
Meanwhile, though Ma Blackwell never said why she’d been at the captain’s house that day, very soon afterwards she took me aside to tell me everything was sorted. When she and Mr Blackwell left Syndercombe I could indeed carry on living with them, for good.
My first reaction was of huge relief.
‘And Lena?’ I asked hopefully. ‘Can she come too?’ A simple yes from Ma Blackwell would take the pressure off needing the sponsorship money. I’d still do the swim, still help Nate, but it’d be a huge thing to not have to worry about.
Her answer, though, was unchanged.
‘Now, Nellie. We’ve already discussed this. Lena should be with her own family.’
‘But Lena’s almost our family nowadays,’ I pleaded. ‘Don’t make her go. We’ll do the horses every night – and every morning – and we’ll do all the dishes, and dig the potatoes, and—’
‘There won’t be any horses when we move,’ Ma Blackwell interrupted. ‘Perry and Sage are being sold.’
I didn’t believe her. Mr Blackwell wouldn’t let that happen.
‘Everyone’s got tractors these days,’ she tried to 144explain. ‘And we won’t be farming any more, not like we do here.’
‘But he loves his horses!’ I cried. I loved his horses.
‘And he knows when it’s right to let them go.’ Ma Blackwell’s face was closed. ‘I’m sorry, Nellie, but that’s how it is.’
‘You know Lena still coughs in the night, sometimes?’ I said, trying a different tack.
‘Listen to me, will you?’ Ma Blackwell was losing patience. ‘We can’t afford to raise two children. It costs money.’
So why didn’t the rest of the world share this view? I wondered. People were having babies all the time. We kept seeing pregnant women on the bus, in the village, in town. The newspapers had even given it a name – the baby boom – and like everything else seemed to be, said it was all down to the war.
‘Lena has to go home by the June deadline.’ Ma Blackwell was firm.
I went straight upstairs to our bedroom, and to Lena, who was lying on her counterpane, reading a letter from her mother.
‘The Blackwells are selling Perry and Sage,’ I told her, by now on the verge of tears.
Lena was horrified. ‘Not the horses!’ 145
I nodded miserably.
‘Oh, Nellie.’
She beckoned me to come and sit beside her. She knew how much I loved Perry, and it was some comfort to be with the one person who understood. Mr Blackwell might be willing to give up his horses, but I’d never leave Lena. Doing the swim, earning the sponsorship deal, was our only way to ensure we’d be together.
But all this not knowing about the date was properly frustrating. What made it worse was watching the village pack up around us as the June deadline inched ever closer. Over half of Syndercombe’s houses now stood empty. Soon they’d be starting work on clearing the graveyard and taking the bodies to the new cemetery in town, and that meant moving Mam. It was another thing I was dreading.
*
Despite the stress of waiting for news, the training was going well. So too was the momentum behind the swim, which was building every day in new and exciting ways. One Saturday morning a photographer came to take publicity shots of Nate and he made us promise to be there. 146
‘We’re going to support him,’ I reminded Lena – and myself – as we dressed in our smartest frocks and tidied our hair.
‘And to have a nose at where he lives,’ Lena replied.
The meeting was at the Clatworthys’ huge house in the next valley, the front door of which was answered by a woman wearing an apron.
‘Crikey, has he got a maid?’ I hissed. Lena tried not to giggle.
We were shown into a sitting room full of flowery chairs and sofas, and actual flowers tastefully arranged in vases. The Clatworthys were in a group by the fireplace, talking to a lady wearing a camera around her neck.
‘Hi, come on in! I’m Sophie, by the way.’ She beamed.
Captain Farley was there too, I noticed, browsing someone else’s bookshelves this time. Lena and I perched on a sofa to watch as Sophie clicked away with her camera.
‘We’re awfully proud of him,’ said Mrs Clatworthy, pretty in a grey silk dress. ‘Such an achievement for a child his age.’
‘Indeed, he has a remarkable talent for swimming,’ Mr Clatworthy agreed smugly.
I felt myself reddening at this. Captain Farley coughed, and I’d a sudden, terrible fear that he’d somehow guessed the truth of the situation. As more 147praise was heaped on Nate, I grew hotter, and probably redder, until thankfully, his little brother Eddie decided to pick his nose. Horrified, Mrs Clatworthy rushed to fetch a hanky. The photo session came to an end.
‘Thanks for coming,’ said Nate, flopping on to the sofa beside us. ‘Phew! I’m glad that’s done.’
‘I don’t believe it is, quite,’ Captain Farley remarked, then to Sophie: ‘Did you not require a shot of the support crew?’
She agreed she did.
And so we went outside to stand around the Clatworthys’ garden pond. Though I tried to hide behind Lena, Captain Farley insisted I be at the front with Nate. Lena stood very slightly behind us. Nate was a natural before the camera, that star quality Mrs Lamb had recognised shining out of him. In contrast, I felt awkward and embarrassed. It was the first time I’d had my photo taken properly, though if our plan for the swim worked, it wouldn’t be the last. I knew I’d have to get used to cameras and photographers.
‘I suppose even Gertrude Ederle had to start somewhere,’ I admitted on the walk home.
‘Still, it was nice of Captain Farley to make sure you had your photo taken, wasn’t it?’ Lena remarked.
I hadn’t thought of it like that.
*
148The following week, Captain Farley moved our Saturday training session to the seaside. By now it was May, and there’d still been no word of an exact date for the swim. If it wasn’t decided soon, before the deadline to leave Syndercombe, Lena would have to go back to London. Time was running out.
The Bristol Channel coast was seven miles from the village. It wasn’t the nicest stretch of coastline, with grey shale beaches, mud flats and water the colour of rain clouds, but it presented us with challenges we’d not yet faced. Another would be swimming under the watchful eyes of Captain Farley, Mrs Lamb, who’d flown in from America, and our sponsor, the chewing gum man, Mr Wrigley, who was keen to check Nate’s progress.
At six o’clock on a damp morning, we gathered on the beach. The sea was choppy, the breeze a brisk north-westerly. Nate and I were nervous. Although I wore my costume under my clothes just in case, it was Nate they’d come to see, Nate who shivered in his black tunic and orange cap, and whose training had mostly been, these past weeks, the short bike ride to and from the gravel pits. Lena, provider of encouraging thumbs ups and cheering smiles, watched from the sidelines. 149
Mrs Lamb wasted no time in explaining to Mr Wrigley why Nate was such an extraordinary find.
‘He’s charming, likeable, photographs like a natural. You’ve seen the shots Sophie took,’ she said.
‘Sure,’ Mr Wrigley agreed. ‘We’ve got ourselves a proper young English gentleman, eh? People are going to love him!’
Though he looked unremarkable in a grey suit and glasses, Mr Wrigley’s American accent made it hard not to be excited by the glamour of it all. He and Mrs Lamb talked about photographs, television, magazine articles as if they were auditioning a movie star.
Eventually, almost as an afterthought, the conversation turned to the swim.
‘You’ve had the June date confirmed?’ Mrs Lamb asked Captain Farley. ‘The association’s been in touch?’
I shot him a nervous glance in case he’d heard and not told us.
The captain shook his head.
‘Really?’ Mrs Lamb was surprised and slightly annoyed. ‘Too many requests, that’s the problem. I’ve never known Channel swimming be so popular. Leave it with me. I’ll chase it up.’
Her attention then turned to Nate. ‘You’ve built up your stamina? You’ve been training?’ 150
He assured her he’d worked very hard indeed.
‘You’ve been eating well, I see. Lots of carbohydrates,’ she remarked.
‘Yup.’ Nate gave his stomach a prod. ‘That wasn’t too hard.’
I smiled.
‘But the training on your own? How’s that going?’
Nate caught my eye. ‘Actually, I didn’t.’
‘Aha!’ Mrs Lamb glanced from Nate to me in understanding. ‘You’re the secret weapon, are you?’
I nodded, suddenly shy.
‘Nellie’s a top-notch training partner,’ Captain Farley put in. ‘They train together most of the time, and we’ve requested that she be on the pilot boat. What do you say they swim together today, as it’s their first sea session?’
Mrs Lamb’s mouth twitched: as she considered the request, I held my breath.
‘Very well,’ she said.
Mr Wrigley shrugged. ‘Sure, sounds peachy to me.’
I breathed again, and in a flash I was down to my costume, tugging on my orange cap.
‘You’ll have to gauge the waves,’ Mrs Lamb told us. ‘And keep your mouth closed. Too much saline will make you as sick as a dog. Your skin will be sore 151afterwards too. Being in salt water for a long time does strange things to the body.’
I listened carefully. Nate, though, was impatient to get in the water.
‘Race you in,’ Nate whispered to me.
‘NO RACING!’ Captain Farley barked. ‘Conserve your energy!’
It surprised me just how different it was to swim in the sea after the gravel pits. The water was heavier, more unpredictable, and tasted absolutely vile. There were times when I surged ahead of Nate, and times when I held back so as not to raise too much suspicion. After two hours, we were called in.
‘Well done,’ I said, passing Nate his towel.
But the swim had taken it out of him: his eyes were bloodshot. He was shuddering with cold. I could’ve easily kept swimming, and as we walked back up the beach, Captain Farley fell in beside me.
‘Good swim, Nellie,’ he said quietly. ‘You’ll do well.’
I wasn’t sure what he meant. Was he talking about a time in the future when I might make my own attempt to the swim the Channel? Or had he twigged what we were planning for June?
I didn’t dare to ask. 152
*
True to her word, Mrs Lamb did chase things up. Only a few days later at the end of school, we saw Nate waiting for us at the school gates.
‘Nellie! Lena! Guess what I’ve got!’ he hollered, waving an envelope above his head
I clutched Lena’s hand. ‘Oh, thank heck! They’ve replied!’
‘To Nate? Not the captain?’ Lena asked.
‘They probably wrote to him too. Anyway, Nate’s the one doing the swim—’
‘Or so they think …’ Lena replied, eyes glinting with delight.
We elbowed through the usual crowd of kids all dying to be the first out of the gates, to where Nate was waiting on the pavement. He was splattered with mud – and cow dung, from the smell of him – and had clearly run all the way across the fields from his house.
‘Here, you read it,’ he insisted, handing the envelope to me.
The letter was still sealed, and from the outside looked as plain as the coal merchant’s bill. That didn’t stop my stomach from giving a queasy, fluttery turn. Please be good news, I begged silently, before ripping the envelope open. 153
The letter was on smart, headed paper from the Swimming Association. It was addressed to N. Clatworthy, and stated Nate’s registration number, the start date – Monday 23rd June – the time of the swim – 2.00 a.m. – and the place where, weather permitting, he’d enter the water at Dover.
‘“You must wait for a sign from your pilot before walking into the sea”,’ I read out to the others. ‘“Your entry point will be Shakespeare Beach, your destination Cap Gris-Nez, France. On arrival at the French coast you will be expected to leave the water on foot and take three steps on dry land for the swim to be valid.”’
‘What about you, Nellie? What does it say about you coming?’ Nate asked anxiously.
‘I’m getting to that bit.’ I ran my finger down the page. ‘“The pilot will be Johnny Hawkins on his boat, the Maybelle. Places on board are also confirmed for principal trainer Captain Farley and training partners Nellie Foster—”’
‘Yes!’ Nate punched the air.
‘“And”,’ I continued, my hands now shaking, ‘“Lena Gill.”’
Lena swayed slightly. ‘Holy mackerel!’ she whispered. ‘It’s really happening!’ 154
I looked at Nate, at Lena.
‘I think we did it, didn’t we?!’ I said.
Nate beamed. ‘By jove, old thing, I think we did!’