When I woke the next morning my hair was damp again, my nightgown sticking wetly to my chest.
‘What’s the story—’ Lena stopped, mid-catchphrase. ‘Oh, Nell, you’ve had a fever!’
She’d often had horrid night sweats like it when she’d been ill.
‘I’m all right,’ I said, brushing off her concern and getting out of bed.
Yet the graveyard dream stayed with me all day, leaving me wrung out and limp, as if I really had been swimming in my sleep. I couldn’t concentrate in lessons. I barely spoke to anyone in the playground. Ma Blackwell’s plan to send Lena back to London, and me to the orphanage – possibly – had shaken me to my bones. I couldn’t bear it. We needed our own plan, Lena and me. And I’d a 96feeling it’d take more than the money a paper round could provide to ensure we stayed together.
That same day work began on the reservoir. Despite Mr Clatworthy’s promise that we’d have time to get used to the idea, life in our little village started changing at a galloping pace. First it was the trucks arriving, brutish and noisy, that churned up mud, frightened the livestock and sent us clambering into hedges to avoid being crushed on our daily walk to school.
The trucks brought the workers, some with clipboards, most with shovels, pickaxes and leathery, lined faces, who set up camp just outside the village. Their tools tip-tapped and their machinery rumbled all day long. Yet we only ever saw the men themselves if they came to the shop for cigarettes or a pint at the White Lion, or at night when their tents lit up like paper lanterns on the hillside.
Almost as soon as the workers arrived, the locals began to leave. Among the first to go were the six tuberculosis patients from the huts in the Blackwells’ orchard – three went home to their families, the other three to a sanatorium near the sea. It happened just before school one morning: Lena and I watched from an upstairs window as nurses helped the sickest patients into a waiting ambulance. 97
‘They'd better not try taking me away!’ Lena cried, genuinely worried at the possibility. ‘I’m not ill any more!’
Sometimes, when the mornings were cold, she’d rub her breastbone with her fist and say her chest felt tight. Yet really, we all knew she’d recovered from the TB. In its own cruel way, that was part of the problem.
‘Ma Blackwell wouldn’t dare put you in an ambulance!’ I assured her, though putting her on a train home to London was a different matter entirely, and if we didn’t think up an alternative, it would be happening.
*
Saturday at the lido was the first proper chance Lena and I had to consider what we were going to do. June was only a few months away. Yet, though we’d been on tenterhooks all week, Ma Blackwell hadn’t mentioned anyone leaving again. Like everyone else in Syndercombe, the Blackwells were taken up with the workmen arriving and the changes already under way. People talked of little else.
As usual, we caught the one o’clock bus into Minehead, wearing our swimsuits under our clothes so we didn’t waste precious time getting changed. I’d braced myself for seeing Nate Clatworthy again. Though 98I wasn’t exactly looking forward to hearing about his training regime with Mrs Lamb, a bigger part of me was dying to know everything. So I was quite disappointed when Captain Farley informed us, at the start of the session, that Nate would no longer be attending our club.
‘He’d barely started, anyway,’ Bob pointed out.
‘Huh! He still walked off with the prize though, didn’t he, eh?’ muttered Jim.
‘Not fair,’ Maudie agreed.
‘It is simply a matter of temperature,’ the captain told us firmly. ‘Even our pool is too warm for a would-be Channel swimmer. From now on young Clatworthy will be training outside in open water, so there we are.’
‘Yes, but where?’ I asked.
The captain, who seemed to think the conversation finished and was already directing the others into the pool, looked irritated. ‘Where?’
‘Where’s he swimming, sir? Is it Mrs Lamb who’s training him?’
The captain rolled his eyes. ‘Oh, get in the water, Nellie, for heaven’s sake! Enough about Master Clatworthy! Think about your own swimming, why don’t you?’
But that was exactly it – I was thinking about my own swimming, because whatever Nate Clatworthy was 99doing, I wanted to be doing it too. I was even willing to watch him train, to talk to him about his new regime. How else would I learn how to be a Channel swimmer?
That afternoon, the pool felt like tepid bathwater. I swam badly. My legs wouldn’t kick properly; my arms were too heavy. Countless times Captain Farley told me to buck up and concentrate. At one point, even Maudie asked me if I was all right. I said I was, thank you, but all I could think about was Nate, and the special training he was doing, and how I’d give anything to have that chance.
Afterwards, Lena and I went to the nearest tearoom for our usual post-swimming currant buns. We bought an extra bun to take home for Perry and Sage, then found a seat near the window and shed our coats.
‘So,’ I said, my mouth full of bun. ‘What are we going to do to earn money?’
‘For the Blackwells?’ Lena asked, calmly pouring our tea.
‘For our future, Lena! We need a – oh!’
Seeing Captain Farley enter the tearoom, I stopped, mid-rant. He made a beeline for our table, which gave me just enough time to swallow my mouthful.
‘Did I forget my towel?’ Lena asked when he reached us, because she was often leaving things behind. 100
‘What? No.’ The captain turned to me, dropping his voice. ‘The gravel pits, Nellie, up at Marley’s Head. That’s where you’ll find the boy, if you’re interested.’
Somehow, he knew I would be.
I stood up immediately, reaching for my coat. ‘Thank you, Captain Farley.’
‘We haven’t finished our tea,’ Lena wailed.
But this couldn’t wait.
*
A short while later we were standing in the road at Marley’s Head, the bus disappearing round the bend.
‘Now where?’ Lena asked.
The afternoon light was beginning to fade, and Marley’s Head was a desolate sort of place, high up and bleak. It was where two smaller rivers merged before tumbling through our valley, and the spot the water board had chosen to reroute their flow. The evidence of it – razed hedges, trenches, fields turned to mud – was already in plain sight, and quite a shock. I had to remind myself that we were here for something far more exciting.
The gravel pits were down a lane that hardly anyone ever used. 101
‘This way,’ I said, beckoning to Lena. ‘Come on, slowcoach!’
A few yards along the lane we reached a gateway set back in the hedge. The gate itself, hanging wonkily on its hinges, opened on to a narrow track that, unless you knew otherwise, appeared to be a dead end. The track led to an old gravel pit, about the size of four swimming pools and filled with very deep, very cold water. It was the sort of place where, if a person went missing, the police would search for a body. It was also a brilliant spot for open-water swimming.
All along the track, the flattened grass and muddy footprints were a sure sign that someone was already here.
‘Nate?’ Lena asked, pointing at a large shoe print.
‘Got to be. Crikey, he’s got big feet!’
Lena giggled. ‘Flippers, more like!’
The gravel pit was just around the corner. The path stopped high above it, giving us the most wonderful view of the water below.
‘Looks like a lake on the moon,’ remarked Lena, and I knew what she meant.
The pit was bordered on all sides by steep, bare, shingle slopes which ran right down to the water’s edge. The water, cloudy and iron grey, looked as cold as the Arctic Ocean. The only splash of colour was an abandoned 102yellow towel, spread out halfway up the slope. Next to it lay a boy’s bicycle. Out in the water, swimming a slow front crawl, was Nate Clatworthy. I was expecting a focused training session like the ones we had at the pool but this, unfortunately, looked more like a nice afternoon dip.
‘Where’s Mrs Lamb?’ I wondered.
‘Gone back to America, I suppose,’ Lena replied.
‘Well, he’s a silly beggar, swimming out here all by himself,’ I muttered. It was our club’s golden rule to never go into open water on your own.
‘Bet it’s cold in there,’ Lena said with a shiver.
‘That is the point.’
It was cold where we were too, high up above the water: the wind in our faces had a bite to it, and against our legs, the chill of the evening rose from the ground. Once we’d found a more sheltered spot, we sat, hugging our knees and watching.
I didn’t take my eyes off Nate as he swam. Up and back, up and back: he travelled the length of the lake in his unfussy style. It would be cold in that water: possibly less than fifty degrees Fahrenheit at this time of year. Anyone who could cope with that sort of cold was, I had to admit, doing well. The old feeling of envy stirred in me as I watched. I’d so wanted to be Mrs Lamb’s Channel 103swimmer, and seeing Nate do what I’d give my back teeth for felt both thrilling and like punching a bruise.
Suddenly, he stopped swimming. Something seemed to be wrong. He was reaching under the water to his leg or foot and struggling to stay afloat.
Lena stiffened beside me. ‘D’you suppose he’s all right?’
I was on my feet that instant, running, sliding, slipping down the slope, Lena right behind me. By the time we reached the water’s edge, there was no sign of Nate. He’d vanished under the surface.
‘I knew that boy was trouble,’ I hissed, yanking off my coat.
Lena stared at me. ‘You’re going in? In your clothes?’
I stepped out of my skirt and wriggled free of my sweater, till I was down to my shirt and underwear. As much as I hated Nate Clatworthy, we couldn’t leave him to drown.