by Tom Gregory
Without thinking I sank down and let the brownish grey water cover my head by some inches. I expected to touch stones, but my feet found none. At high tide the pebble beach sloped steeply. The underwater murkiness scared me, so I kicked up to the surface. Above water, but seeing only black now, I instinctively swam for the shore. I clambered onto the pebbles and stood up, gasping. Then the pain vanished. It was replaced by something far better, like being supercharged with electricity, and I no longer felt cold. I danced quickly up the beach, arms out wide to balance me across the painful stones. Climbing the sea wall to get to the shelter, I noticed John standing quietly, surveying the scene with a blank expression, arms folded. He hadn’t moved. He glanced over casually. ‘Well done, Young Marcus.’ He looked back out towards his swimmers. ‘Now get yourself dry and changed quickly. D’you hear?’
‘Yes, John,’ I replied, and although I didn’t feel cold, my body was shaking. Others had made it back to the shelter already and were in a similar condition, struggling to dress themselves with shaking hands. I looked back to the water. Mother Duck and Miss Piggy were still in there, bobbing around happily. John waved them in from the shelter and I wondered how many more times we would go through this torture before going home.
The bus made its way back up Jubilee Way as fast as it could, which was not very fast at all; maximum revs in a low gear – heating on full blast. My body felt strange. My skin was still tingling, and even though I wasn’t cold, I was still shaking. My clothes felt more comfortable and cosy than usual. The rain had finally stopped and, excited about driving up the helter-skelter road again, I perched myself up on the pile of bags. But instead of peeking out the window, I found myself staring at Miss Piggy, again. In fact, I had been looking at her more than anything, or anyone, else since we left London. This time she caught me, and looked back with a puzzled expression. I had been discovered. My face reddened.
She smiled at me, and held a perfect expression, tilting her head to one side a little and studying my reaction. A tidal wave of something, entirely new, washed over me as we looked at each other. Like the electric shock of the cold water, though it came from inside, it felt warm when the rest of my body was cold. She laughed a little, still looking at me, her blonde hair framing her fresh face. She had kind eyes. She was beautiful. The warm-inside sensation continued; like excitement, but with something extra added to the mix. The song playing on her stereo provided the live soundtrack to this moment of discovery – a slow number by Phil Collins – the added effect of the music almost more than I could stand. A lump appeared in my throat and my stomach turned in yet another knot. I had forgotten all about Jubilee Way, the cold, and swimming for that matter. This must be what it was like to be in love. Perhaps camping in Dover had more to offer than a Sunday roast after all.
Miss Piggy’s real name was Alison. She was probably fifteen – roughly double my age – and had swum the Channel on her own, aged twelve like Marcus, just a couple of years ago in 1983. It had taken her sixteen hours and four minutes. As the only successful Channel soloist in the current group, she held the status of being the best swimmer. Many of the photos and press clippings on the notice board I had been studying were of her. Her crossing was, for a matter of hours, the girls’ world record for age until it was broken by a rival swimmer, Samantha Druce, who was forty-three days younger. In the final mile Miss Piggy had swum through Dover harbour itself, stopping all ferry traffic in the process. Miss Piggy was a real-life legend.
As the bus approached the campsite, John announced from behind the wheel that he had put the ‘wrong petrol in the tank’. The faces, pre-emptive giggling and jeers of the others told me they knew what was coming. The ‘Kangaroo petrol’ caused the bus to lurch violently back and forth, as John alternated his foot between accelerator and brake pedals. I and my fellow swimmers, for whom the old bus had no seatbelts, were thrown around in fits of laughter and pain. Shortly afterwards someone asked John if the ‘hedges needed another trim’. They did, of course, and so the bus veered chaotically again, this time from side to side down the country lane, ripping away foliage as it went to the merriment of all on board. John, who I’d never seen like this before, was laughing hysterically from the driving seat – a frenzied look in his eyes, just visible to me from snatched glimpses in the rear-view mirror.
As the weekend unfolded, and my nervousness subsided, I realized I was having fun. In fact, everyone was having fun, including John, who, although strict when it came to swimming, was more mischievous and boyish than his poolside demeanour until now had suggested. It was exciting to be here – with the older kids. And John, who created a sense of reverence and revelry around him, seemed to be the oldest kid of all.
2. The North
6.30 a.m., 6 September 1988 – 1¼ hours, 3 and a bit miles off the French coast, English Channel
The state of the sea just off the French coast was unlike anything I had experienced before. The swell created an aquatic rollercoaster, and I was loving every second. The depth of the peaks and troughs increased dramatically as I swam out due west from the shelter of Wissant Bay. If I judged my distance from the boat and my breathing well enough, I could momentarily look down onto the deck and its occupants from a peak, just as the vessel rolled herself into a trough. That’s how I knew about the sea-sick passenger. FE41 was moving slowly, at the pace of a swimmer, so her engines were unable to steady her rolling by powering her through the sea. She was like a Weeble toy, wobbling and bobbing in the darkness. No wonder someone was feeling ill.
I, on the other hand, was part of the sea. As the water rose and fell rhythmically I found I knew instinctively what to do; to hold an arm of front crawl out for a fraction longer, pull a bit harder on recovering an arm, or delay a breath momentarily to avoid a gulp of water. The sensation of travelling downwards reminded me of roly-polys on the grass in our local park. But the sea was smooth at the same time. Unlike Dover harbour, there was barely any chop and so, presumably, hardly any wind, although I had no reference points to prove this in the dark. The sheer scale of things, from the boat to the wave heights and the as yet unrevealed black distance ahead of me, was enthralling. ‘One chance,’ I said out loud as I breathed out.
Underwater something magic was happening. If I got further away from the boat and its nasty neon strip lights, I saw that my arms were somehow making their own flashes of light underwater. There were minuscule sparkles of blue or green within the blackness when I plunged an arm in and looked forwards. I thought I was imagining it at first, but it kept happening – the harder I drove my arm on entry the more likely it was to be visible. Mesmerized, I focused on nothing else but making the water light up for a while. Having perfected the technique as best I could, I glanced over for the boat – she was suddenly a long way off and members of the crew were waving and calling me back from over the rail. I had become distracted. I laughed and swam back to the boat where the magic light was no longer visible. Behind us the sky was gradually changing colour. Black was becoming dark blue, and not long after, there were tinges of pink where the water met the sky. I wondered what weather was coming in.
The night shift, just over an hour of adrenaline-enhanced swimming, had been an adventure, and kind to me. Not since the sun rose on that misty dawn on the shore of Windermere’s southern tip two years before had I felt such a sense of place, or of belonging in the moment. Windermere: of all the locations John took us to prepare for this place, that was the one that counted for most.
I was out of breath. The climb was getting steeper, and every time I thought we were getting to the top of ‘the hill’, another ridge appeared. I was starting to wonder how big the hill was, given that the top had not been visible from the campsite where we set off. We could be climbing a mountain, here in the Lake District. When I looked back down to the campsite I could still make out our three familiar tents, now erect, but still flapping in the strong wind that blew down through the fell. They nestled neatly alongside the tree-lined stream that
ran through a lush and steep-sided valley. Everything in the Lake District was a shade of green. The white minibuses stood out in contrast, each now the size of a Lego piece viewed from on high. The older people were doing various jobs setting things up. They looked like the miniature plastic figures in a game of soldiers. John, who seemed to be in a temper after the all-night drive, had told ‘us lot’ to ‘Go and climb the hill!’ clearly wishing us out the way. Bear (hairy body), who had been to Windermere before, said this was normal. So a few of us set off across the campsite, found a footpath that pointed uphill and started climbing. The mountainous valley near Lake Windermere was the most dramatic place I had ever seen – even better than the road into Dover. But if I stopped to think for too long, about anything, I knew I would start crying again. So I kept climbing.
Just getting here had been another adventure. Since Dover that Easter of 1985, the fast forward feeling had been replaced by a new sense of excitement, even confidence. Anna and I were now somehow and suddenly part of the Senior squad, and, having been on two more camps to Dover, had broadly got the hang of things. Swimming in the sea so early in the year was very cold. The time spent in the water had increased steadily over the trips to five, ten and then twenty minutes, and it was normal for some kids to leave the sea in a state of deep cold: shaking, with blue lips, even unable to dress themselves without help. I noticed that the kids who suffered most tended to be the skinny ones. Anna and I got cold, but were able to cope, being neither fat nor thin. As summer set in and the sea began its slow, stubborn warming up process, the Dover trips were supplemented by midweek evening swims in the local open air lido, sometimes in darkness, instead of the warm comfort of Eltham Baths. The physical challenge changed; from one of coping with the shock of cold, to one of resilience. It was hard to know to what extent the sea had become warmer versus our bodies becoming acclimatized to the immersion. Anna thought it had to be a combination of those things.
I had learned a lot about swimming in the open conditions of the sea. Getting changed outside and in public was the easy part. Swimming in the rain – clearly not an issue. But wind and tide were things to think about. Even in the confines of Dover harbour the conditions could get choppy, but at beaches like St Margaret’s-at-Cliffe on the north side of the harbour, or Shakespeare Cliff to the south, the waves could make normal swimming impossible, especially if a storm had passed through. Swimming in harsh conditions sometimes became a matter of staying afloat and judging how to time and handle the waves. When a wave caught the hand or arm when recovering mid-stroke, my breathing and balance were thrown, which normally meant coughing on a mouthful of saline, which could in turn make me retch and stop swimming entirely. When I asked John about it, he told me to straighten my arms a little at the elbow to keep them ‘higher’ – the action reminded me almost of a cricket bowl when he mimed it on the shore. My higher arm was less likely to hit the wave on its way through. It worked. Feelings of fear were being replaced by confidence, in my own abilities and the people around me. I liked it. It felt far better than being at school, where I was still frequently pulled up for bad habits or sloppy work.
When going along the shoreline in better weather, it was even possible to go backwards while swimming forwards if the tide was running quickly. Sometimes people were stung by jellyfish. The red rashes that resulted looked very unpleasant but conferred a level of status. However, I liked this type of swimming. There was nothing I could do to change the tide, or waves or wind, so every swim felt like a duel with the elements and a matter of survival. I knew, with John watching from the shore and the other swimmers around me, that I would be OK.
No one could enjoy the really cold feeling after a swim, which normally happened when the conditions meant I didn’t notice I was cold until it was too late. I didn’t like the saltiness of the water either. It tasted horrible, made my tongue sore, and could make me throw up. Saline also made things rub until they became sore, sometimes raw and bleeding: around the trunks, and especially armpits. Anna knew to carry some Vaseline, but often I forgot, only to ask Anna for a smear of grease to ease the soreness after it had happened.
Girls were still better at this kind of thing as far as I was concerned. Many of the boys in the group were faster, but not all of them could handle the cold. And the only person I knew who had actually swum the Channel was Miss Piggy. Just looking at her made me tremble. If she said anything to me, which was sadly a rare occurrence, I was excited beyond measure and could never manage much more than a blush in reply.
Even though we had learned quite a lot about swimming outside, neither Anna nor I had expected to be invited to Lake Windermere to train for a week once school broke up. Apart from anything else, we had agreed during a recent game of ‘across-the-road badminton’ that we were probably both a bit young for this, especially me. Anna was eleven, I was eight. The rest of the group, with one or two exceptions, were teenagers. But as a team, the two of us would cope. Anna would look out for me, and the older cousins would look out for Anna. John, meanwhile, would look out for everyone.
I had come to trust him – we both had – even though I was still scared of him. He was like a strict teacher from school – feared initially, becoming progressively more likable. I had begun to understand he was different from the other adults I knew, and certainly different from my parents – from Dad. A sense of mischief and nonconformism was ever present even though things had to be done in a certain way, from the trivial (the making of tea) to the critical (life-saving drills in the water). I was used to my parents’ attitudes, which were, by and large, quite relaxed on most issues. The importance of these ‘things’, the things John cared about, was rarely appreciated by ‘dozy parents’ or ‘idle teachers’. John’s world, I was discovering, was forged in experience and practical application, rather than in text books. But humour, manifest in the obsession with nicknames (normally quite near the mark, and sometimes clearly beyond it), was an important facet. This was a tight-knit group, where banter and mickey-taking were constant, and, given the need for resilience, probably necessary. If someone was sensitive, it just got worse until they learned to cope with it or, if they couldn’t cope with it, they usually left. Overall, though, Anna said that although she thought John had favourites, which were not always related to swimming prowess as much as to a sense of fun, things were basically ‘fair’ – an important concept in our family.
We arrived at the meeting point, the Yorkshire Grey pub car park at the foot of Eltham Hill, at 2 a.m. one Friday night in July. John ‘fuckin’ ’ated’ traffic, so we would drive through the night. We were on time, but again others had done the hard work to get us ready to leave. The only thing the party needed was a full complement of nervous young swimmers from Eltham, whose parents had agreed to send them on an adventure to the Lake District.
I had never been out of bed so late and at 2 a.m. Eltham was asleep. Dad drove us down the deserted High Street without saying much at all. Anna had held my hand in the back seat. Mum, who always put a brave face on new things, had been very reassuring as we left home, but could tell I didn’t want to leave and that I was fighting back tears. When Dad cuddled me to say goodbye in the car park I wanted to cry again, but I didn’t want to look like a sissy, so I held it in.
The quiet of the night added to the tension. A silent tussle between the yellow streetlamps and the surrounding darkness offered a sense of danger. The brief moment where the night felt exciting was soon overpowered by a feeling of nauseous fear. On this occasion, I hoped I would be allowed to sit next to Anna on the bus.
There were two minibuses this time: the usual one full of the normal kit and support equipment required for swimming in a large lake, and a more road-worthy one hired for twelve or so swimmers. We would travel in convoy. John Bullet drove the rusty old club van and Dennis, Miss Piggy’s dad, drove the hire bus with us, his passengers. ‘Throw your bag into the kit bus, Young Thomas,’ said Dennis kindly, referring to me by my real name, which was now used
more often than ‘Marcus’. I was happy that my real name had been returned to me, but sad to have lost the automatic association with the club’s world record holder; I had learned a lot more about his swim in the preceding months just by reading the boards in the pool – trying to understand. I didn’t have an all-important nickname yet. Everyone else did. It left me feeling a little sensitive, but not as sensitive as I might have felt on having an obvious bodily feature singled out.
Dennis fiddled in the near darkness with a wire coming from a very tall aerial that sat on the roof of his bus, like a limpet mine, thanks to a strong magnet on the base. Each bus was fitted with a Citizen Band, or ‘CB’, radio, so the drivers could communicate. I loved radios and walkie-talkies, and for a brief moment forgot all about my fear and watched in fascination, ignoring the instruction regarding my bag.
Next, Dennis fiddled with some red and black wires at the back of the unit in the cab of the bus and suddenly the face of the CB buzzed into life and lit up the darkness. A bright red number shone out – 16 – the channel in use; next to this, a white back-lit meter with a vertical needle inside leapt into life when Dennis squeezed the microphone – the needle swinging quickly across into the red area of the dial. It looked very scientific. There was a volume switch and something called a ‘Squelch’ dial, which, when Dennis fiddled with it, caused the radio to issue an urgent and constant chhhhhhhhchhh sound. I had never seen anything like this and knew instantly that I loved CB radios.