by Tom Gregory
From the atmosphere in the tent I knew the swim had created a moment. It was as if no one knew quite what to say. John was quiet and stern faced, and we mostly ate in silence. Anna was being gently teased for having cried with happiness as I landed.
John sent everyone to bed as dusk crept across the evening summer sky. He held me back in the tent, so it was just the two of us. We walked up to the wash block together. Despite the day’s events the natural routine of the campsite would continue. Very soon all would be silent, apart from the occasional bleat of a sheep, or the sound of any rain or wind that decided to visit. It looked like a quiet clear night, so the stars would be bright.
‘I need to keep you up a little longer, Tefal. Sorry, lad. I know you’re tired.’ The walk to the wash block was proving a challenge. I felt John’s arm around my shoulder, steadying me as I laboured up the path. I realized we had both achieved something today.
‘Don’t worry, John,’ I said, enjoying the moment of his company, and of feeling special.
‘It’s a safety precaution. I won’t let you sleep for some hours after a very long swim, just so as you are certain to wake up, you see,’ he said in a matter of fact way.
‘I know,’ I said, despite not knowing the medical reason for this. It was an accepted ‘club fact’ that you mustn’t let a swimmer sleep after a long cold swim – just in case something caused them not to wake up at all. Besides, I was enjoying the time with him, even though he still seemed a little solemn. I wanted John to be happy, and when I did something to please him, I found it made me happy too.
‘Tefal, well done today,’ he said as we strolled slowly up the path. I nodded, not quite knowing how to reply. ‘Thanks’ sounded a bit cocky, so I said nothing.
‘You know this is quite a big deal, right?’ he enquired gently.
‘Yes, I think so,’ I replied this time. ‘Does it mean that I might swim the Channel, John?’
He paused. ‘Yes. Yes, it does,’ he said, looking down at the gravel track as we walked slowly side by side. ‘Maybe, and it’s just a maybe, as soon as next year.’
I knew exactly what that meant, and I knew John knew that I knew. An excited grin crept across my face that I could neither conceal nor hold in. In that moment John told me, for the first time explicitly, that I might have the chance to break the world record for the youngest conqueror – to break Marcus’s record. Until this point everything had been oblique; speculation by others, the subtle placement of the idea by John – a kind of psychological seeding process that left me initially curious, then flattered, and finally ambitious. He caught my expression as he looked sideways at me and his tone instantly hardened.
‘But you are NOT to get big-’eaded about it, Tefal, do you hear me?’ he blurted out as if releasing pent-up anger. ‘I won’t have you swaggering around, thinking you own the place, and making a tit of yourself.’ ‘Do you hear? It’s not gonna happen, so you better watch yerself.’
‘OK, John,’ I said, stone-faced and serious. But inside I was skipping.
I wore my new sunglasses, the ones I had bought from Dickinson’s Chemist with my pocket money. They were Tom Cruise-style Top Gun glasses. The lenses were a bit big for my face, but I thought my head would probably grow into them soon enough. I added a sweat band around my brow to copy Pat Cash, who had recently beaten Ivan Lendl in the Wimbledon final. I wore my new white Fred Perry polo shirt – real logo, not fake – and, above all, my new prized Adidas trainers. They were the basic and cheapest ones, but the fact that Mum had bought them at all, not to mention the Fred Perry, was a result. Three stripes and tennis logos counted. I looked in the mirror, smiled, and walked off to the pools. It was Wednesday night – club night.
The Windermere swimmers and this year’s two relay teams, both of which once again included Anna, were in cold water still, so there was no swimming to be done indoors, but hopefully a bit of coaching for a younger group from the poolside. What I really wanted was to see my swimming friends, and for other people to ask me about my Windermere success. I would thank them politely, I thought; tell them that it was very hard but that I just had to hang in there until the end. If they asked about my great outfit, well, that was no big deal.
There was a copy of the newspaper lying on the table where the swimmers signed in. It had been left open on the right page, with my photo (an embarrassing one that had been taken recently by the Eltham Times) staring back at me. There was a short article that relayed the fact that a ten-year-old London boy had swum Lake Windermere, in what was thought to be a record for age, and that he had plans to swim the Channel and so mount a world record attempt the following year. None of this was news to me, so I didn’t really react when I read it for the first time with others looking on. I was shocked to see it was the London Evening Standard, though. That was a pretty big paper.
‘I’m famous!’ I said as I looked up smiling to the surrounding cabal of parents and swimmers. There was no reply as such, perhaps a few nods of the head as they passed on through. People wandered off to get changed, or to watch their kids swim from the side. I coached some six to eight year olds for an hour on widths. One of them was really good.
‘Tefal,’ began John curtly from his office chair a couple of hours later. He sat behind his large desk, looking a little angry, which was not unusual towards the end of a Wednesday night. It was late and I had bounded into the office, excited at all that had happened, but also excited to see him … to see John.
‘Hi, John!’ I replied chirpily.
‘Tefal,’ he repeated. He paused momentarily when he saw my outfit (sunglasses now resting on my head) and gave a confused and disapproving look, before resuming. ‘I am sending you to Coventry,’ he said, before looking back down at his papers.
‘Oh right. Why Coventry?’ I asked happily in return, willing to comply but a little confused. My mind raced over the possibilities. I knew roughly where it was – further north, but not so far as the Lakes. We had only last Easter spent a day and night in Coventry on a family canal boat holiday. Still I was clueless, but John didn’t answer.
‘How come Coventry, John?’ I repeated, eager to understand the plan. ‘Is there a special pool there? Or a lake?’
Still no answer. In fact, he didn’t even look up, which was strange. Something was wrong. I stood there awkwardly. No explanation was forthcoming.
‘John?’ I waited.
I knew he could hear me.
‘John!’ I demanded. Still he didn’t reply.
None of this made sense. I felt a wave of emotion bubble up inside, and my face reddened. I could feel myself about to cry.
‘John?’ I asked gently, quietly, pleadingly for a final time as the tears came to the surface. Nothing.
I ran out of the office and looked for the nearest escape route. The stairs down to the underground men’s changing area for the big pool were close by and the big pool was now closed for the evening. I hurried down into the cave, found an empty unlit cubicle and sobbed.
It was a few minutes before I was ready to come out. I had done something terrible and I didn’t know what it was. I had angered John, the person I most wanted to please, and to the point where he had shut me off entirely and wanted to send me away to another city. I looked in the mirror. My eyes were puffy and red. People would know that I had been crying, the worst thing. But I had to get up top and find Dad so we could go home. I resolved to hold it all in, and act my way out of the situation. No more crying.
I saw Dad and promptly burst into tears again. He bent down and gave me the cuddle of a confused and concerned parent. I felt like a little child, not a ten-year-old lake-conqueror. ‘What is it, son? What’s happened?’
‘John says he’s sending me to Coventry, and I don’t know why, because he won’t tell me …’ I sobbed. ‘He is refusing to say anything at all!’ I spluttered.
‘All right, all right,’ Dad soothed and cuddled, ‘don’t worry, Tom. You’re not going to Coventry … It’s OK.’
‘But why Coventry, Dad? I don’t understand.’
‘It’s an expression. It means he isn’t talking to you. Have you done something to upset him?’
‘No. Don’t think so.’
Anna appeared, looking worried. ‘Where have you been?’ she chipped in. ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere.’
‘Not saying,’ I sobbed, deciding to conceal all unnecessary information in self-defence, even against my sister.
‘What’s going on here?’ Dad asked Anna, clearly detecting she held some additional information.
Anna handed him what was now a roughly torn cutting (by her own hand) from the Evening Standard. Dad looked at it quizzically. ‘Not sure I understand. So what?’ he challenged.
‘John’s not happy about it,’ Anna replied neutrally. There was clearly another circle of information to which Anna had access but I did not.
‘Is that right?’ said Dad, in a way that suggested he was trying to control his voice. ‘Wait here, you two,’ he said firmly. Anna looked at me with a face full of worry. This was not good. We followed as close behind as we dared as Dad approached John’s open door and presented himself. From a safe distance I could see that strong words were being exchanged, then the door closed, and Dad went inside the office.
A couple of minutes later he emerged. Stern-faced and resolute. ‘Let’s go.’ Dad was rarely very strict about anything. We left in silence.
Dad came up to see me in bed that night and tuck me in; a rarity these days. He sat on my bed and patiently outlined what he thought had happened. He explained John’s concerns, which must have been shared earlier behind the closed office door; that he was worried I was becoming too cocky – becoming a big-head. He explained that John had not agreed to the Evening Standard article being printed, and had thought Dad had sent the material, which both of us knew not to be true, in fact absurd – a point Dad had made to John. That mystery would remain unsolved, but the wider problem, of my recent attitude, was still in question.
‘What shall I do?’ I asked.
‘Well, I have arranged with John that you both need to cool off for a bit – let things calm down. And then to speak to one another about it, sensibly, next time you go to training. So that is an option open to you if you choose.’ Typically Dad had found a way out for both sides – no wonder he was a solicitor. ‘But I do need to ask you something myself, Tom,’ he said, looking slightly uneasy. I looked back at him, expectantly.
‘Is this what you want to do? To swim, with John as your coach?’ Dad looked at me as I pondered the question. I had never really thought about it. I was used to doing everything John asked of me, and willingly, no matter what it was or how hard. I always wanted to please him, to earn his respect. It hadn’t really occurred to me that there was actually a choice.
He continued, ‘You see, I don’t know anything about swimming, but I can see that John Bullet is a brilliant coach, and a very talented man. He is also sometimes … a difficult man. I learned that for myself tonight.’ This was a serious intervention. He went on …
‘I do think he wants the very best for you, so on that basis we are willing for this to carry on.’ He emphasized ‘we’ to underline his own control of the matter. ‘But on the strict proviso that you actually want to do this. If you do, we will support you. But you will need to understand all that comes with it. And that includes John, his methods, and I suspect a few more tears on the way. And if you don’t want to do it, well, that’s fine, and fine by your mum too.’ I knew the last part alluded to the fact that Mum, once the driving force of the swimming idea, had become more uncomfortable with the plans that were now unfolding.
I lay in silence and processed the advice, even though the answer was already glaringly obvious. After a pause I replied.
‘Of course I want to do it, Dad. I want to break the record. I want to be the youngest person to swim the English Channel.’
‘I thought you might say that,’ he chuckled. ‘Now get some sleep.’
Feeling better, I did as I was told. But not before drawing back the curtains and pulling the sash window next to my bed wide open – to let in the cool night air.
JC appeared back on the rail. Things had been going well, for a while. He unwrapped another Chupa Chups lollipop and began teasing me once more. But I didn’t really feel like reacting this time. The last hour, maybe even two by now, had passed slowly even though I had swum hard. Buoyed by the prospect of success, and with some soup to burn inside, I had made a renewed effort. This was the part of the swim where I would break my own time and distance record and so the deductions ran over and over in my head. The minimum known distance for a swim crossing of the Channel was thought to be about 28 miles, on account of the tides. If I was now over halfway, and six or seven hours in, then I must have swum at least 14 miles of the minimum 28. But how much more, hour by hour, was what mattered now. I somehow needed to find at least another 14 miles from my body; another length and a half of Windermere.
The constant reworking of the calculations in my head triggered something else; I kept looking up to see the coast, and to see if it looked any closer since the last time I looked up. But it never looked closer, and so I started to look more and more in growing desperation. The physical act was becoming almost involuntary, like a yawn or a sneeze, and was disrupting my stroke, preventing me from making the progress that would bring the cliffs any closer. I began to feel a desperate anger at my situation and the resulting conversation I had with myself became an outlet. This was fucking impossible.
JC sucked his lollipop and pulled a face. ‘Fucker. He knows that will piss me off. JC is a fucker.’ He didn’t let the lollipop tease go for ages. Then a smug wave. A comedic grin. Each act dragged out over a minute or two, making me angrier. At one point he hid, only to reappear a stroke or two later. The behaviour was strange even for him, so I kept watching for the next instalment. Eventually, somehow, he made me laugh. He saw the contorted smile on my face as I took a breath and folded his arms in triumph. I had not looked up to see England for at least twenty minutes.
Things continued like that for a while. Meanwhile, the pain was accumulating all the time. My body was in new territory. The soreness was acute; the feeling of the shoulder blades rubbing together abrasively on every stroke was building, beyond what I had experienced before. The burning discomfort in my thighs and hips was increasing too. If I managed to block out the sensation of one, the other took over. Pain cues more anger. Where the fuck were we anyway? I had been focused on managing the pain for some time, so maybe we were closer.
At last, John held up the bottle. It wasn’t red. Must be chicken soup. I swam over and repeated the drill. But I knew this was going to be a different conversation. Because I wanted to give up.
‘How are you?’
‘Tired. My legs reel hurt. I … I have a problem … with my shoulds …’ The words were not coming out right, but at least I could tell.
‘Tefal, listen to me.’
‘Why?’ I replied out loud. I was preparing my brain to stop swimming and to give up.
‘Listen to me, Tefal. Because you have ten miles to go. Ten miles.’
This time I did want to cry. Things felt desperate now, yet there was still so much to do. Ten fucking miles. John was being straight with me, because he expected me to be able to deal with it, and probably because he felt there was no alternative. I searched. There was silence between us for a while as I bobbed up and down. Another way of looking at it, was that I was probably two-thirds of the way there, give or take the odd mile. I swigged the chicken soup and considered the options. Inside I knew the truth, which was that I could carry on swimming. I just didn’t want to because I was exhausted and because it was painful. But if I was two-thirds of the way there, then perhaps I had to keep trying. The thought of climbing onto the boat and facing John and the crew having given up was equally unhappy. For now there was no option. In fact, I realized that even entertaining the idea there was an option at all was
dangerous. It was a battle I would eventually lose by giving in, only then to regret it immediately afterwards.
I finished the soup and threw the bottle into the sea. I thought about it sinking all the way down to the bottom of the English Channel and wondered how long it would take to reach the seabed. I had no idea how deep the water was. What was the seabed like anyway? Some fish, lots of sand and no light probably. My brain was wandering off, even when I was treading water and supposed to be speaking to John.
‘Can I have a biscuit?’ I snapped out of the trance.
‘Yes, Tefal.’ John lobbed another chocolate digestive overboard and I grabbed it from the surface before it sank.
‘How far to go?’ I asked, even though he had only just told me. I had to hear him say it again, and I wanted just a few more seconds of rest before resuming. Then I noticed the doctor on the rail for the first time, looking at me carefully. What the fuck did that ginger-bearded twat want? This had nothing to do with him.
‘About ten miles,’ repeated John, and sensing something else, this time he carried on. ‘We are still on for a really good time. You’ve just got to stick at it. Listen to me now. The next couple of hours are going to be the hardest. You will be going through a barrier, but you are just going to have to get through it.’ He spoke slowly and clearly. The chopping hand was there, but I had to really concentrate to process the information. A ‘barrier’. We had discussed this at various points in the past year or two. John had talked about any swimmer reaching a low point in a solo attempt of the Channel. It could be overcome, but the overwhelming majority failed to do so. Something about the way he described it sounded mystical, as if no one really knew why it happened or how to prevail, but it was inevitable no matter who was involved or the preparations they had endured.
‘Do you want another biscuit?’ asked John after a pause.
‘No. Fine thanks.’ I swam on.
5. The Early Starter