by Tom Gregory
2.15 p.m., 6 September 1988 – 9 hours, 7 miles off the English coast, English Channel
I lurched out of my trance and rolled onto my back. Something was trying to attack me. It had gone for my legs and so I kicked it away. As I rolled over the noise it made was terrifying. A drone-like siren of …
Then there was nothing there. Breathless in the water, I tried to process the information. I looked up at the boat, only half comprehending the scene or the people on board.
‘Calm down. Calm down! It’s OK, Tefal.’ Mother Duck was on the rail watching over me, on duty. ‘You just hit a big patch of seaweed, that’s all,’ she called out. The taste in my mouth was more foul than saline. Like petrol. The seaweed must have trapped fuel spill from a ship.
‘What’s that noise?’ I said drunkenly.
‘It’s nothing to worry about – just the Goodwin lightship. We’re close by.’
Treading water for a moment, I realized the sound was loud but occasional – like an industrial fog horn, despite there being no fog. I had heard of Goodwin Sands. It was mentioned in the same conversations as a place called Sandettie. Both were shallow points in the sea, and to be avoided. Swimmers needed to time their tides and routes in order to do so, or else their support ships would run aground. This was one of the reasons why a proper pilot was required. According to John, you needed special knowledge and years of experience to successfully escort a Channel swimmer. It was not the first loud noise to have shaken me on the crossing. Some hours earlier a hovercraft had buzzed past on its way from Ramsgate or Dover. I had never seen one up close on the move. It was loud and fast – an awesome sight from the water. Coming back into full consciousness caused another rush of pain. I needed to find a deeper state.
Five months before then I had woken cold. The window in my bedroom was wide open, and the single bedsheet I was allowed for warmth wasn’t having the required effect. My room was small, my bed taking up half the floor space. It was a clear night in April. I drew the bedsheet over my head, pulled it tight and began to breathe heavily into what became a makeshift tent. If I made an ‘ooohhh’ shape with my mouth and focused on the ‘h’ of ‘ooohhh’, the breath seemed to be warmer, and if I did that enough – a few minutes or more – the temperature inside the bedsheet tent would warm a fraction, allowing me to go back to sleep. It never occurred to me to close the window – that would be to disobey the new instructions.
It was now 1988, and I was officially in training to break the world record, and these were the new rules. No duvets, just a sheet – windows always open. No hot showers, nor baths; t-shirts allowed, of course, but no jumpers. Not even if it snowed. Certainly no coats. Then there was a new diet, designed to make me fat – my body was another weapon to counter the conditions. For endurance, there was a childhood’s worth of swimming to be done, in just a few months. And finally, there was me: how I thought and responded to things, and so a lot of talking, with John, to be done in the margins.
1988 was a big year for Eltham Training and Swimming Club. It was the twenty-first anniversary year of the club’s formation, and John Bullet had big plans. John always had big plans, but these were bigger than normal. Anna and cousin Vicky were selected to be part of the team for the club’s first ever two-way Channel relay attempt; same rules – a team of six on hour-long stints – just double the challenge and then some. There was now talk of a Junior Relay, for a team all under the age of fourteen, but at this stage the membership of that squad was far from clear. It was also now obvious that Mother Duck, after years of self-preparation on the one hand, and the nurturing of the rest of us on the other, would attempt a solo crossing herself for the first time. Then there was me. This was less talked about – in front of me at least – but everyone knew it was happening. There was a world record for the taking and John had set his sights on it. As had I.
The swimming club itself had been John’s own creation, according to Anna. It was unclear when he had decided to focus on Channel Swimming, but the albums and notice boards hinted at a journey of discovery through the 1970s and early 1980s, with black and white press cuttings of groups of teenagers in flares tallying up ever more relay swims. The first successful relay swim was in 1972. The successful soloists and Marcus’s world record of nine years ago were still the crowning achievements, but the club had grown steadily under John’s stewardship, and so had its collective ambitions. It had become a community, and for its members more of a movement than a club. In the world of elite swimming, though, and despite our own confidence in ourselves, we were seen as outsiders – a motley crew of cocky South-East London kids, led by an eccentric and irascible talisman in John. I didn’t care about that. I just wanted to swim. And to spend more time with John. As 1988 unfolded, we spent more time together than ever, and I was happy.
I watched out of the window for the dark blue Vauxhall Cavalier. It was the newer model of the exact same car John had before. In fact, this was his third dark blue Vauxhall Cavalier in a row. As he arrived I grabbed my swimming bag from the hallway and called out to Mum as I left. I threw my kit onto the back seat, jumped in the front, and put my seatbelt on. It was early, 8 o’clock, on a bright Sunday morning.
‘Where are we going, then?’ I asked.
‘For a drive. I thought we might get some breakfast. Good idea, Young Tefal?’
‘Suits me,’ I replied, wondering, perhaps hoping since it was Sunday, if the swimming bag on the back seat would even be needed. Barely anything was said for the next thirty minutes. I went to turn up a song I recognized on the radio and John told me not to touch the dials. John listened to Radio 2, but I was not a fan – too much weird music, sometimes even country music, which according to Anna was just plain wrong. We drove down the M2 until we reached a turnoff nearer to Dover than London. This Little Chef was John’s favourite. He only ever ate in Little Chefs when on the road. In the last year we had stopped off, once or twice, just the two of us, for a bite to eat. John always paid, because I had no money. I always thanked him, to be polite, realizing that he often treated me to things that he ought not to have paid for.
‘Morning, Mave!’ he called out to a buxom lady in her Little Chef pinafore. ‘Hello, John,’ she replied tunefully as she bustled busily towards us, bumping into the identical bench tables as she went. She wore a Little Chef name badge bearing her actual name – Mavis.
We took our seats next to the window and watched the cars and lorries whizzing down the motorway. Sitting opposite one another in silence, we studied the traffic.
‘Who’s this young man then?’ asked Mavis as she flipped open her order pad and clicked the top of the biro into action.
‘This is Tefal,’ replied John.
‘Tefal, eh? Why Tefal?’ she asked with an inquisitive smile in my direction.
‘I’ve got a big spam,’ I said matter-of-factly, pointing slightly to my forehead as I said it.
‘I see,’ she said, wearing an expression that suggested the opposite.
‘Two Early Starters, please, Mave. With tea, and white toast,’ directed John. I nodded my agreement at Mave, smiling smugly to prove that John and I were of the same mind on absolutely everything. She scribbled on the pad, and left us alone. Early Starter … I liked the name of this signature Little Chef dish. It was reserved for people like me. Well, John and me at any rate. It was now May and during the preceding winter I had been swimming before school most mornings and so now considered myself an early starter. Dad would drive me to the pool in the dark and cold, normally in his pyjamas, before returning to pick me up on his way to work. A 6.30 dropoff meant I could do at least an hour’s up and down while John did paperwork in the office. The lifeguards wouldn’t arrive until I had left for school, so I had the big pool all to myself.
The next conversation over our breakfast would be about tea, since John could drink tea at a remarkably hot temperature. I could not because I was eleven, John would say. ‘When you’re older it’s easier to drink hot tea.’ Comforting to know
. It was nearly always a point of discussion, another part of our new routine. Other frequent conversations covered the merits of Vauxhall cars, the reasons why everyone should be made to take life-saving classes, and, more often these days, the complexities of long distance swimming – tides, pilotage and endurance.
The Little Chef-branded plates arrived, identically loaded with a full English, just as the photo on the menu had promised. Mavis brought the toast, pre-buttered, and finally the tea, in two stubby silver teapots that dribbled when tipped over the white cup and saucer. The cups boasted the familiar logo – the chubby cartoon chef with his hat on. So did the paper napkins, carpets and the sugar sachets. I only took sugar in tea during a long cold swim, like John. This was the Little Chef routine: logo propaganda and cloned conformity on a plate. It was a drill of repetition and regularity, designed to generate trust, to keep the customer coming back. It resembled the relationship that had emerged between John and me.
In the space of less than four years the swimming club had taken over nearly every aspect of our lives, but there were no objections from Anna and me. To pay for a new bus John needed to raise money, so evenings after school were spent collecting old newspapers house-to-house in Eltham to sell for recycling. Spare Sundays in the winter had been given over to life-saving classes, open to the general public and run by John for a fee. Boot sales, sponsored walks to Dover, club discos and ‘horse race nights’ completed the endless carousel. Anna said it wasn’t just about the bus; Channel swims cost money, as did the camps. The club was about participation as much as ability, and the fundraising meant everyone could join in.
Weekend Dover training camps were becoming more frequent and more intense and the spirit of the group was rising. A new cohort of younger swimmers was coming through as part of the Junior Relay idea. It included Rabbit (buck teeth), Pauline (a boy named Paul), Tubbs (well fed), Bushy (eyebrows) and ‘MDJ’ – Mother Duck Junior (Kirstin, but clearly someone marked out as a future leader). Rabbit, whose real name was Andrew, had become my best friend in the club; we were the same age, lived close by in Eltham and he could make anyone laugh on demand. He was also very kind. With its new members the squad was a mixture of seasoned veterans and novice would-be Channel aspirants. After three years I no longer felt like the baby of the gang. I had outgrown that role in swimming terms, and so had a new role to play encouraging others.
Dad’s prediction from two years prior had come to pass and our cherished lido had closed down over the winter, so John also had to find a solution to our training needs. The South-East London Aquatic Centre in Woolwich became known to us by its acronym – SELAC. Aquatic Centre was a mild overstatement of its current re-purposing but an understatement of its past use. The pair of old dry docks, known to the locals as Henry’s docks, were built for ship construction on the banks of the Thames by Henry VIII. But they no longer matched their surroundings, dwarfed by high rise council flats on three sides. A weed-strewn concrete surface divided them. The building that lay in between, already derelict, was quite new – early 1980s, I thought – its intended purpose not entirely clear. We decided it was for the sub-aqua divers who came to explore the depths, though not many of them came. Around the perimeter a high security fence kept people away, but the residents of the surrounding flats could look down on us all the while.
The smaller of the two docks was given over to coarse fishing and allowed to become overgrown with weeds. Dicky and Giant joked that the weed the fishermen were enjoying smelt quite good. The larger dock was full of cold, clean freshwater and, importantly, was about 100 metres long. When we first arrived John posted sentries around the place, having arranged for an extra watch of older Seniors and parents to help manage any interference from troublemakers who might throw stones, or worse. I got the sense that we ought not to have been there at all. I wondered if John was taking a calculated and necessary risk, because there was no choice – not this year.
The enormous steps that cascaded from each side to form the ‘V’ were ‘listed’ for historical reasons, according to Dad. I tried to imagine the dock when empty, with the hulk of a great wooden ship filling the void as tiered armies of men stood on levels either side working on the hull. Perhaps that’s why the divers came – to look for historical artefacts, gold coins and skeletons.
Some nights, on a high tide, the Woolwich ferry would moor itself just on the other side of the dock wall. When the light across the Thames was just right the view was stunning; over on the Isle of Dogs some huge buildings were rising from the ground and starting to dominate the skyline. Canary Wharf was to be a major development, the biggest of the office blocks being billed as the highest in Europe, Dad said. SELAC had become our new midweek cold-water home, and even though Anna and I still mourned the loss of our treasured lido in Eltham Park, I was growing to like it. It was a bigger pool, and a new routine for a bigger year. But it was no Windermere.
After a swim of around seven and a quarter hours and 15.5 miles on the lake that summer, I strode out of the water at Belle Isle in reasonable nick. That single moment of success finally confirmed the plan: I would make an attempt on the Channel no later than 9 October, in a bid for the world record. I knew from talking with John that the window for the season was driven largely by temperature; the Channel takes a long time to warm up over summer, but holds warmer water until quite late on, before a dramatic autumnal correction. Save for any deliberations by the Channel Swimming Association, which still had to authorize my attempt, this was now all too real. But the summer holiday that bridged the gap between Windermere and the day of reckoning was a hinterland, and some even more peculiar routines became normal.
‘You’re not to go out, Tefal. Not during the day, not without my permission. Understand, lad? Unless you are training with me, it ain’t happening,’ John had instructed.
‘But what will I do all day?’ I remonstrated.
‘Eat, preferably. And watch telly, lots and lots of telly,’ came the reply, accompanied by a toothy grin.
I followed it to the letter. Breakfast was a self-catered affair. A whole tin of Heinz beans, three scrambled eggs and two thick slices of buttered bread. Just like swimming camp, but cooked by my own hand rather than Mother Duck’s. More complex was the porridge starter. It had to have a full dessertspoon of soya flour added, why I never found out. Lunch was normally more creative. I had full access to the kitchen and any provisions Mum chose to supply me with. Homemade bread, pizzas, pies and even the odd cake were all suddenly within my repertoire, largely thanks to a lady called Delia Smith who appeared on the front of a large black cookbook in the kitchen, holding an egg. Mum groaned at the mess, but presumably this was better than having to churn out such nutritional excellence herself. Dinner was her domain anyway. John had insisted on liver once a week, shepherd’s pie twice a week, and steak just the once. The rising food bill was a cause of marital discussion. Dad was allowed to keep his ‘fish and chip Friday’ routine with Nick the Greek, much to everyone’s relief.
Week by week it was working – I was getting fatter. Fit but fat, and, more importantly, buoyant. Having gained a stone or more in weight over the summer (I was nearly as heavy in stone as my age in years), and having not been near hot water in six months, I had an outside chance of staying warm.
Eat, swim, eat, swim, eat. Repeat. Richie Benaud kept me company for large swathes of the day, as the BBC brought the full depressing picture of a day’s play against the West Indies into the sitting room. I sat and watched on my own, hoping Anna might return from her daily boy-chase to liven things up. She rarely did.
Summer nights training with the Channel squad were a high point, partly because I craved the company of my swimming friends, and John. The drive from Eltham Baths to Woolwich took me past Shooters Hill and our old house, the common, my old nursery school and the magnificent barracks. I looked out for soldiers, and guns, and always felt a twinge of excitement as we drove past.
The musical diet that summer was happily mo
re varied. The charts were under an unwelcome assault from Stock, Aitken and Waterman’s ‘Hit Factory’, and a series of novelty records designed to annoy rather than satisfy, and so albums were getting a look in on the minibus stereo. Run-DMC had released Tougher Than Leather, and the opening track, ‘Run’s House’, was played loudly as we exited Eltham for the banks of the Thames. Anna kept a copy of the Dirty Dancing soundtrack close to hand – there were classic soul tracks mixed in with some decent US pop; nothing to upset anyone. The mix tape left over from Windermere had some highlights among the crap, but the song that made everyone look out the window and reflect was by Michael Jackson. ‘Man in the Mirror’ made us stop and think.
Most of us saw that 1988 was already special no matter what came next, and that together we were sharing a time that would define us. We knew we were in a generation of swimmers that could write the next chapter of club history, and that song seemed to catch our shared mood, and fondness for one another.
It was a good night for swimming by the Thames. Clear summer skies and late evening light made our dock and the surrounding city a thing of beauty. The sunset was reflecting off the newly installed glass of the Canary Wharf tower, the ambient light causing our surroundings to remind me of a well-baked golden cake. I swam hard. The tunes playing in my head were uplifting: ‘Rush Hour’ by Jane Wiedlin, ‘Crash’ by the Primitives and ‘A Little Respect’ by Erasure. Plumes of bubbles rose from the deep divers below, adding to the drama. My energy levels rose to keep pace with the music playing in my head. Turning against the dock wall I picked out a swimmer in front, the further away the better, and made a plan to chase them down. I had begun to do this a couple of years before in the big pool on Wednesday nights, and I was happiest when the plan resulted in the narrowest of victories as the target swimmer (who was unaware and so never to be upset) and I touched the far end within a second or less of each other. It rarely worked when I tried it on Anna. She was too quick.