Nate surfaced again, spluttering and panicking. As I swam towards him, I tried to remember how to rescue a drowning person. We’d practised it at swimming club, so I knew that I had to get behind him and hook my arms under his armpits. It’d been easy enough in a pool, but the water was so cold my whole body felt heavy. And Nate, in his panic, wouldn’t keep still. He kept slipping under. Bobbing up. Slipping under. If this rescue was going to work, I had to stay calm.
‘Okay, Nate,’ I said, manoeuvring myself behind him. ‘I’m going to swim you back to shore.’
It was as if he hadn’t heard me. He kept trying to turn round, lashing out so I couldn’t get hold of him. Our legs kicked against each other’s. Water stung my eyes. There was a danger of us both going under at this rate. 105
‘You have to keep still,’ I warned.
A couple more attempts and finally I managed to grab him properly. Nate stopped struggling. The top of his head was now beneath my chin.
‘That’s good,’ I told him.
Kicking furiously, I steered us towards the shore. It didn’t look far – a length of the pool, at most. But the cold was brutal. I couldn’t feel my fingers. Nate had gone from wriggling like a ferret in a sack to being limp and very quiet. He was losing consciousness, I quickly realised, and that wasn’t a good sign.
‘Hey!’ Lena called from the water’s edge.
Something landed beside me with a slap. Lena yelled ‘grab it’ or ‘hold it’, I couldn’t catch the exact words. My free arm reached out to find a tree branch in the water. On the other end of it, some twenty feet away, was Lena. She’d waded into the shallows, skirt tucked into her knickers, and was shouting like the bossiest games mistress in existence.
‘I’ll pull you in if you grab on!’ she cried.
I grasped the branch, my other arm around Nate, as Lena pulled. Moments later, we were back in water shallow enough to stand up in. Nate’s legs couldn’t hold him, so Lena took one side, I took the other, and together we heaved him on to land. He was shivering so hard his 106whole body shook. What worried me most was how he kept closing his eyes.
‘Nate! Don’t go to sleep!’ I cried, then said to Lena, ‘Get his towel, can you – and his clothes!’
We wrapped the towel around him, then his jumper, his coat, his hat and scarf, and made him sit up. He kept shaking. I was shivering too, my hands and teeth juddering.
‘Can you w-w-w-w-walk?’ I asked him.
Nate blinked drowsily. ‘What d’you say?’
‘We need to g-g-g-get you moving, to w-w-w-warm you up.’ But when I tried to pull him to his feet he was a dead weight. Even between us, Lena and I couldn’t move him again.
‘It’s no good. We’ll have to fetch help,’ said Lena.
Yet there was, I remembered, another way to warm up, and it involved us huddling together. Not that I fancied putting my arms around Nate Clatworthy again, but I fancied fetching his father even less.
Quickly, I pulled on my dry skirt and sweater. Then, crouching beside Nate, I beckoned for Lena to do the same.
‘We need to hug him. You and me together. It’s the best way to get his body temperature up.’
Lena hesitated. ‘Promise me you’re not joking?’ 107
‘Cross-my-heart, swear-on-my-life promise,’ I assured her.
So I wrapped my arms around Nate Clatworthy, Lena did the same, and we hugged each other warm.
*
Afterwards, all I wanted was hot tea and a fried egg sandwich – if the hens had laid today, that was, for all the upheaval had upset their routines too. But Nate took longer than I did to recover enough for the walk home. Fully dressed, he was still shivering. We made him keep moving until the colour came back to his cheeks. And even then I got the distinct impression he wasn’t in any hurry to leave. He’d found a bar of Fruit & Nut in his coat pocket, and suggested sitting in the afternoon sun and sharing his chocolate.
I don’t mind admitting it was the chocolate that persuaded me. The bar was bigger than the ones Ma Blackwell hid on the kitchen shelf: Lena couldn’t take her eyes off it, either. So we climbed back up the slope into the sunshine which, thankfully, had some much-needed warmth to it.
‘Funny, it’s as if I already know you both,’ Nate remarked, handing round the Fruit & Nut. ‘Yet we’ve 108not been properly introduced, have we?’
‘Hard to when you were being sick in a hedge or drowning because of cramp,’ Lena reminded him.
‘It’s not happened before, you know, the cramp,’ Nate said. He swallowed his chocolate quickly, I noticed, not like Lena and me, who sucked ours slowly like boiled sweets.
‘Still, you shouldn’t train on your own. It’s dangerous,’ I pointed out. ‘Hasn’t Captain Farley told you that?’
‘No.’
‘He is training you, though, now Mrs Lamb’s gone?’
‘Officially, yes. He’ll get more involved nearer the swim itself.’ Nate smiled sheepishly. ‘I don’t believe he thinks much of me, actually.’
‘There’s a surprise,’ Lena muttered.
‘I meant, as a swimmer,’ Nate said, reddening. ‘But you’re right. I wouldn’t expect him to like me: I’m a Clatworthy, after all.’
He looked so downcast that for a moment I felt sorry for him. Maybe it wasn’t quite fair to hold Nate personally responsible for what his father and the water board were doing.
‘It does seem a terrible shame for Syndercombe to end up like the lost city of Atlantis,’ said Nate.
I blinked. ‘The what?’ 109
‘Don’t worry, that’s his posh education talking,’ Lena whispered to me. But I made a mental note to look up ‘Atlantis’ in our school encyclopaedia on Monday morning.
‘What I mean,’ Nate tried again, ‘is that if this was my home I’d be heartbroken about what’s happening.’
‘But it’s not your home,’ I pointed out, the old anger rising up in me again. ‘It’s ours. I was born here.’
Lena put a reassuring arm around my shoulders.
‘It’s not just about the dam,’ she explained to Nate. ‘You took Nellie’s place at the swimming club. Captain Farley said if it wasn’t for you she’d have been picked to train with Mrs Lamb—’
‘Lena, don’t tell him that!’ I cried, squirming with embarrassment.
‘Don’t flip your lid! It’s true!’ she insisted.
Nate looked at me, stunned. ‘You really wanted to swim the Channel?’
‘Why, don’t you?’
‘Do I look like I’m enjoying it?’ he said, and laughed.
His reaction threw me: so he wasn’t thrilled that Mrs Lamb picked him? This wasn’t a dream-come-true moment?
‘Why are you doing it, then?’ I wanted to know.
‘Because my father told me to.’ 110
‘Oh.’ I nodded. ‘Him.’
‘Now look here, it’s complicated, all right?’ Nate replied, suddenly defensive. ‘I ran away from school last term, and he’s not yet forgiven me for it.’
Mrs Lee had already told us that before coming here, Nate had gone to an expensive boarding school in Surrey. This wasn’t unusual for boys of his sort: the running-away part, though, sounded rebellious and brave and made him go up in my estimation. Lena was also looking at him with new interest.
‘What happened?’ I asked, because most of us Syndercombe kids loved school.
Miss Setherton was a firm but fair teacher, and though we sometimes laughed at Tom and Bob for being goofs, it was all done in good heart.
Nate grimaced. ‘I suppose you’d call them bullies. You know the sort – can’t stand anyone who’s different.’
‘Different? You?’ Lena looked surprised. ‘In what way, exactly?’
She had a point. I’d been with Lena when people stared at her because she wasn’t white, or spoke to her slowly as if she didn’t understand English. Whereas Nate was from a wealthy British family, at a school full of boys just like him. It was hard to see why he wouldn’t fit in. 111
Nate reddened again. ‘Let’s just say I’m not a natural at studying, especially the reading and writing part.’
‘Oh?’ I frowned. He sounded properly clever to me.
‘It’s the words,’ he said. ‘They jump about on the page, and muddle my head, and some boys in my class think it’s great sport to make fun of me.’
‘Sounds tough,’ Lena murmured.
‘You’re a decent swimmer, though,’ I reminded him.
‘Maybe. Joining the club was Father’s idea. He said if I couldn’t cope with schoolwork then I had to succeed at sport to prove I wasn’t an awful embarrassment to the family.’
Again, I felt a pang of pity for Nate. The Blackwells might not be my real parents, but they never made me feel I wasn’t good enough.
‘For what it’s worth, I’m rubbish at spelling,’ I admitted.
‘I’m useless at algebra,’ said Lena. Really she was good at maths, but it was nice of her to pretend.
‘You’re doing this to please your family, then?’ I asked.
He shrugged. ‘It’s that or be sent back to school before the end of term.’
It didn’t seem a strong enough reason, not to me. Swimming the English Channel was a huge challenge. He should want to do it from the ends of his hair to the tips of his toes. It should be all he was thinking about. 112It should be keeping him awake at night.
‘What do your parents think of your swimming, Nellie?’ Nate asked.
The question took me by surprise. ‘Umm … they’re both dead so I couldn’t say.’
‘We live with the Blackwells,’ Lena explained.
‘Did live with the Blackwells, if we don’t sort something out soon,’ I reminded her.
Nate looked confused.
‘I’ll explain over a fried egg sandwich,’ I told him, getting to my feet and pulling Lena up as I did so.
‘She makes a good one,’ Lena added. ‘Runny yolk, crispy edges. Lots of salt.’
I nodded at Lena. ‘Well, she makes amazing scrambled eggs with chillies.’
Nate didn’t move.
‘You’re inviting me to your house?’ he asked, somewhat amazed.
‘Sure, why not? Unless your dad told you not to mix with us locals.’
‘No, no! Not at all!’ Nate stood up, grinning from ear to ear. ‘I’d love to. I mean, thank you, that’s jolly marvellous! I accept!’
I’d a feeling it was a long time since anyone had invited Nate Clatworthy to tea.
*
113Back at Combe Grange we made fried-egg sandwiches. I admit, I was glad the Blackwells weren’t in, so I didn’t have to explain Nate Clatworthy’s presence in their kitchen. I was still getting used to the idea myself. It wasn’t that I’d suddenly forgotten what his father was here to do, more that something in me had softened. Maybe it was the swim itself, the cold of it, the challenge. Or maybe it was talking to Nate, and realising that we all had disappointments and secrets, and sharing them made us feel a bit more connected, somehow.
‘You could train with him,’ Lena whispered, after we’d eaten and were clearing away the dishes.
All through tea I’d thought of little else. Captain Farley, I was pretty certain, had told me where Nate was training because he knew I’d be curious. And the truth was, Nate and I could learn a lot from each other if we became training buddies. Besides, after today’s performance at the gravel pits, Nate would hardly need reminding that it wasn’t safe to swim alone.
When I suggested it, he agreed very readily.
‘I say, Nellie! That would be top! Perhaps we could even swap places and you do the Channel swim.’ 114
I laughed. He had to be joking, surely.
‘Nice idea,’ I replied. ‘But that’d never work.’
Lena’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Wouldn’t it?’
‘Probably not,’ Nate admitted. ‘It’s all very official. Done through the Channel Swimming Association, so you have to register your name, and have a pilot travelling with you. Mrs Lamb explained it all.’
‘And there’s the sponsorship deal with the chewing gum man,’ I pointed out.
Nate nodded. ‘I suppose that scuppers that, then.’
‘Still, no harm in dreaming,’ said Lena.
‘No harm at all,’ I agreed, and felt myself smiling.
It wasn’t that we had a plan yet, Lena and I. But I felt hopeful that one was on the way.