One afternoon in September I was strolling aimlessly along the beach near the Harbour Arm when I saw a party of gentlemen in a rowing boat. They were traveling parallel with the shore and making quite a racket, splashing the oars in a drunken fashion. One of them stood up; he had a bottle in his hand and was making a toast. Then another two stood up and the inevitable happened: a gentleman at the back fell in.
I stood quite still for a moment, expecting that they would stop the boat and put out an oar to help, but instead they were paddling round in circles. Was it all a game, I wondered? Hadn’t they noticed what had happened, or was the man in the sea a good swimmer? But he couldn’t be; I could see him floundering, his head rising and sinking, and from somewhere behind me came the cry of ‘He’s drowning!’
I had never rescued anyone before, but I had watched my father and Billy countless times and my movements seemed to be instinctive, as without even stopping to take off my boots, I ran to the sea and dived in.
I kept my face high in the water, aiming for the spot where the man had fallen in, and when I saw a patch of bubbles ahead I knew it was air escaping from his clothes. I dived down with my arms outstretched, sweeping my hands from side to side until I found him. The man’s hat had come off and I grabbed at his hair, twisting it like a rope in my hand and pulling him to the surface. The water was deep and although the sea was calm I couldn’t let him go under again because I might never find him. I could feel him being dragged down by the weight of his clothing, and my own skirts were wrapped tightly around my legs. But the incoming tide would help us; if he would just let me keep hold of him I could drag him to shore.
Then he began to struggle and turned himself around. I lost hold of his hair and his legs entwined themselves so tightly around one of mine that I could barely move. If only I could lose a limb like a starfish, then I would gladly have let go of my leg. I felt a sharp kick from one of his boots and then his hands were on my shoulders and I was conscious of the sheer strength of him as he pushed me down. In order for him to stay up, he would do anything to keep me under. I was locked in an embrace with a drowning man.
Then his hands were around my neck and I felt his whiskers brush against my skin as he forced us both down again. We moved against each other in a terrible dance, cheek to cheek, his arms still round my neck, he trying to get to the surface and I seeking a way to break his hold. I grabbed at his whiskers, as bushy as seaweed, and when I felt one of his hands move I latched onto it with my mouth and bit as hard as I could. The hand went limp, my neck was released, and as we came to the surface I heard myself gasping: we had only just made it in time. I turned on my back, pulling his body up between my legs; at last he had stopped fighting. Then I kicked as hard as I could, heading back to the beach.
It was now that I became aware of the gulls swooping overhead, a boat sounding its horn, even the faint sound of people on the shore. I wondered where the man’s friends were – why hadn’t they brought the boat to help? Still I kicked out with my legs, using both arms to keep his body on mine. He was a young man, I thought, strong and determined. How happy his family would be that they hadn’t lost him to the sea. I looked down at him, grateful that he was no longer struggling, that he trusted me now. And that was when I realised that something was wrong. He was lying against me as still as a corpse. I sensed the water growing shallower and I stood up, struggling with the weight of him, unable to bear what would come next.
Then up ran the foolish gentlemen from the rowing boat. ‘Dob!’ they shouted, ‘Dob McGee!’ Relieving me of my burden, they took him by the arms and legs and dragged him to shore.
‘Put him face down!’ said one as they laid him on the sand.
‘No, on his side!’ said another.
I looked down at the man they called Dob McGee, expecting his skin to be blue with foam around his mouth. But instead his face looked strangely restful, he even had colour in his cheeks, and I fell to my knees, pulling frantically at his clothing until his neck and chest were free. I saw his eyelids tremble, his nostrils twitch, and when I put my face to his mouth I felt a gentle salty breath.
The people on the beach were shouting, asking for blankets and dry clothing, if anyone had any spirits. A few moments later a man was kneeling on the sand binding Dob’s hand with a handkerchief and I watched as the cloth turned blood red.
Someone threw a blanket around my shoulders and I became conscious of my soaking clothes, my boots full of water. It was a sunny day but I was shaking as if it were the middle of winter.
‘Bring smelling salts!’ a man cried.
‘Get the snuff,’ said another.
I didn’t know if they were talking about Dob or me, but when I looked down at him again he was awake. His face was turned towards me and there I was, staring into a pair of deep-set eyes of such a strange colour I couldn’t decide if they were brown or green. Then, as I was looking at him, he winked.
‘Dob!’ shouted one of his friends, and as he looked around at the people on the beach, he tried to sit up.
‘Don’t,’ I told him, ‘don’t try to get up too soon.’
He turned his head to the other side, began coughing fit to burst, then he lifted his hands and flexed his fingers. He began patting himself all over, his chest, arms and legs, as if trying to find where he was injured.
‘You fell in the sea,’ I told him, ‘but you’re fine.’
He looked at me with a puzzled expression now. Did he know what had happened and where he was, had he understood what I’d said, was he even aware that he’d winked at me? Then he pushed himself up to a seated position and his friends gathered round, slapping him on the shoulders, offering brandy, saying what a fright he’d given them. But Dob didn’t reply, he was still patting at his coat pockets until at last he brought out a sodden notebook and brandished it in his unbandaged hand. ‘Ruined!’ he said. ‘Utterly ruined.’
Was he mad? I thought. A few minutes ago he had nearly drowned in the sea and now he was worried about a notebook! Then he fumbled inside his waistcoat and this time he brought out a pocket watch. ‘It’s stopped,’ he said, looking up at me and shaking it in his hand. ‘Hmm… it must have stopped at the precise moment you rescued me. Look,’ he shook the watch again, ‘a quarter past two, the moment we met.’
The police arrived with a stretcher then, followed by dozens of running children. ‘Wait!’ cried Dob as the crowd pushed me to one side and that was the last thing I heard before they wheeled him away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The very next day when I came out of my auntie’s home on Love Lane, there was Dob McGee sitting on a wall. He was playing a mouth organ, sliding it across his lips, and on the cobbles sat a cat, watching as if enjoying the tune. It was ‘My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean’ and it was such a sad lament to bring back a loved one that as he reached the chorus I stood there as mesmerised as the cat. I wondered how he had found me so soon. Was this really the man who just yesterday had tried to push me under the sea in terror for his life? Now here he was, as fit as a fiddle.
I closed my auntie’s door, and Dob jumped down from the wall. He wore a coat the colour of wheat and as he landed on the cobbles it waved apart to show an emerald vest. His hat was new and so were his boots; he looked like a gentleman of some means. But although he was smartly dressed everything about him was a little rakish and a little askew. His necktie was carefully knotted but lay to one side, and when he took off his hat there was a loose lock of hair hanging over his forehead. He saw me look at the hand that held the mouth organ and then my gaze fell to the other, tucked away in his waistcoat pocket, and I remembered what I had done and the handkerchief on the beach red with blood.
‘I’ll survive,’ said Dob. ‘Only the doctor says I am not to play the piano for a while.’ He laughed to show that this wasn’t something he did. ‘Please,’ he said and held out his elbow, ‘will you walk with me? I owe you my life.’
It was as casual as that. I took his arm and off we went down Lov
e Lane.
‘So,’ he said, as we turned into the market place, busy with holidaymakers buying supplies, ‘you ran away from the Aq?’
I stopped, surprised, and released his arm.
‘One of my friends recognised you. Don’t you think I know who you are? Daisy Belle! The diver who proved the equality of womanhood! I saw you once, at the Lambeth Baths with Webb.’
I nodded; that seemed an age ago.
‘But I was so far from the pool I didn’t see your face.’
I waited to see what else he would say, anxious that he might make a comment on my costume or some trivial thing that would make me wish I’d never agreed to walk with him.
‘Your stroke I remember, a very fierce breaststroke, far more skilful than Webb’s.’
I nodded, because this was true, and when he offered his arm again I took it.
‘I heard something about an exploding tank at the Aq. Did they not feed you there?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Were you so hungry yesterday that you had to bite off the tip of my thumb?’
I laughed then, I couldn’t help it. ‘It was only because you wouldn’t let go of me.’
He smiled too and we stopped and exchanged the oddest of looks. There we were, standing in Margate’s market square, surrounded by people in their holiday best when only hours before we’d been under the sea battling for our lives. I thought of his arms round my neck, the strength of him carrying me under. How I’d pulled him up between my legs and nestled his head beneath my chin as I’d set off back to shore. I could still feel the weight of him, the fear when I thought he was lost.
‘I heard you were badly cut at the Aq,’ said Dob. ‘You must be very brave.’
I shrugged.
‘You have a scar,’ he said, and as he leaned closer I felt heat rise through my body and I could smell his cologne, a mix of lime and rum.
Then a fiddler ran by screeching out a tune, a donkey cart came careering towards us, and we resumed walking up Duke Street to the pier. Everyone on the parade seemed to know Dob and several times we had to stop as he answered questions. Yes, he was fine. No, a little water never did anyone any harm. Yes, indeed this was the lady that had saved him. Not once did he show any shame at having almost drowned or having been rescued by a lady. Instead, he had turned it into a triumph. And I could see, as we continued heading eastward out of town, that Dob was the type of man other men wanted to impress and women wanted to be noticed by. He seemed to draw people to him, to make their voices a little louder and their expressions brighter. And all the time, even when he was standing still, he never stopped moving, his hand drumming on a hip, fingers jiggling in a pocket, boots tapping on the cobbles.
He told me he was from Manchester where his father was a doctor; he’d had a carefree life until his mother Hettie had died and then he’d moved south. ‘I thought I’d become a vet,’ he said, ‘so I went to London to be a student. But I had a terrible secret…’
‘Yes?’ I looked at him a little worriedly.
‘I hated the profession! So then I became a sports journalist.’
‘A sports journalist?’ I laughed. ‘And you don’t know how to swim!’
He looked a little bashful. ‘I think I may have found someone who could teach me. I was thrown in the canal as a child and it was enough to put me off for life.’ But he’d loved sports since he was little and had often snuck away from home to watch a fight in the street. His first ambition had been to be a boxer. Did I know, he asked, what it was like to have a childhood ambition?
I nodded; of course I did.
‘When I was ten years old I was set to fight an older boy who was the terror of the area. It took two days for the winner to be decided.’
‘And it was you?’
‘It was. Father wasn’t amused. It wasn’t manly to organise a fight in a field, and I was banished to the top of the house and put in solitary confinement for a week. I didn’t even get the chance to patrol the neighbourhood,’ said Dob with a smile. ‘I was a hero and an exile all at the same time. If that’s fame, I thought, I will have no more of it!’
And we laughed then, how we laughed, as we started to climb the pathway up the cliff.
‘Why do they call you Dob?’ I asked.
‘My middle name is Robert, and my nom de plume is ‘Robert the Devil’! The report I wrote yesterday was ruined. They will not be happy with me back in London.’
So that was why he had been so upset, I thought, as we reached the top of the cliff where ripening corn rippled in the breeze. It was a drowsy autumn day; below us the sea shimmered like a new coin, the beach a curve of untouched sand. Dob stared out to the ocean, then he picked up a stone and dropped it lazily off the cliff and when he turned to face me his voice was soft. ‘I could have stayed there forever, you know, down in that sea yesterday, being held by you.’
We looked at each other in silence then and I knew at that very minute that we were linked, Dob and I. A current ran between us, and wherever one of us went the other would follow. My brother Billy would like him, I thought, and Violet too. He couldn’t swim but he was a sports journalist, he knew our world. He knew what it was to compete and to race, to try to be the best.
‘What were you celebrating in the boat yesterday?’ I asked.
Dob smiled, jangling some coins in a pocket. ‘An engagement.’
‘Oh?’ My face fell and I turned away, ready to walk back down the cliff.
‘My brother is to marry,’ said Dob. ‘He has found true love, our mother would have been delighted. Whereas I…’ He took his mouth organ out of his pocket and began to tap it against his leg. ‘I am still searching. So, what is there here for you in Margate?’
‘It’s my home,’ I told him. ‘It’s where I was born.’
‘But what will you do, now you’re not at the Aq?’
He sounded very interested about what I had planned and for a moment I wanted to tell him all my fears and dreams, how I’d left London and didn’t know what I would do next. But I couldn’t, we had only just met. ‘I thought I might do a show here.’
Dob shook his head as if this wasn’t good enough. ‘Is that what your father wants?’
I didn’t answer; what did my father have to do with this, why was he asking about him? ‘It’s my decision,’ I said, ‘not his. I’ve run away.’
Dob smiled. ‘Ah, an independent girl. But what will you do? You’re a champion swimmer. The mermaid of London. The naiad of England! You could do anything you put your mind to. Surely there is something you’d like to do?’
And I thought, he understands me. He admires my drive. It was fate that brought us together and allowed me to rescue him. If I hadn’t been on the beach, if I hadn’t left Father and been here in Margate, then would Dob be standing here now?
‘What do you want most in the world?’ he asked. ‘Fix your mind on it and you will get it.’
I smiled a little sadly. ‘You can’t have everything you want in life.’
Dob laughed. ‘Why not?’ Then he winked at me and played a few chords of ‘My Bonnie’. ‘This island is too small for you. You’ve done the baths; you’ve done the Thames and the Aq. What’s next? Have you ever thought of America? They are mad on swimming over there.’
‘Are they?’ I asked, as if it were nothing to me. But America had been my dream for a long time. Father had promised I could go and he had lied, and as I set off following Dob down the cliff I wondered: had I rescued him or was he going to rescue me?
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Nine months after we met, Dob and I set sail for New York. I had remained in Margate since the day I’d pulled him from the sea, while he had returned to London. Billy had joined me, along with Violet and their baby Percy, and together we rented lodgings. We kept ourselves busy, Billy and I, with seaside shows, plunging twice a day from the head of the pier and displaying our skills at the Marine Palace Baths. Father knew where we were, but he had not come after us. Instead he was pretending he di
d not care. He was certain, said Billy, that in time his children would come back to him.
Mother was aghast that my brother had not married the mother of his child and one evening while Violet was putting Percy to sleep I asked her about this.
‘Why would we marry?’ she replied. ‘I don’t want to put up with things the way my ma did.’
A part of me agreed with her; I didn’t want to end up jealous and fearful like my mother, but then that had been Father’s fault, not hers. ‘What did she have to put up with?’ I asked.
‘Everything,’ said Violet. ‘He wouldn’t even put jam on his own bread. Men change when they marry. They woo and pamper you, then they turn into a husband.’
I looked at little Percy, asleep on his parents’ bed. He was growing into a restless child, wanting to walk before he could crawl, to argue before he could talk. But now here he was, as peaceful as anything, and I wondered if I would ever have a child. I don’t know where the thought came from, because I couldn’t swim if I had a baby, so what was I thinking of? Yet the more I looked at his soft, sleeping face the more I felt a yearning for one.
*
It was difficult to be apart from Dob but he sent me weekly telegrams, had flowers delivered to my door, showered me with flattery and praise and made me feel I was the centre of his world. The times we were together were fleeting but this made them even sweeter, the trips he made to Margate and the evenings we shared on the promenade. I looked forward to these visits with the excitement of a child, eager to tell him how I was, to answer his questions on my swims. How big was the crowd that had watched that day, how much had they been willing to pay?
Then Dob’s father died and Dob inherited his estate, and when he asked me to marry him I sealed my reply with a kiss. Despite what Violet had said about marriage, and despite my mother’s life, I knew that Dob was different. And after we had married, then we would make the journey to New York. There were plenty of opportunities in America, said Dob, he already had contacts in the sporting world and I could take my pick from any number of women I wanted to swim against. This was what I wanted, he asked, wasn’t it? And indeed it was, for I had not forgotten the day I had nearly swum against Emily Parker in the Thames.
Daisy Belle Page 14