Daisy Belle

by Caitlin Davies

  ‘He sure has,’ replied the gentleman. ‘Four years ago. He lasted a whole six hours. Last year he gave up in terrible weather.’

  I returned to watching Johnnie Heaven in the pool. He looked like he could swim all day and I admired his perseverance. He had set his heart on something and had failed, but now he was trying again.

  ‘Shall I introduce you?’ asked Dickie Fitzgerald when the swim was over and I was clapping along with everyone else.

  I looked around for Dob but he had left his seat to talk to a reporter and so I allowed Dickie to lead me down from the gallery. We walked along crowded corridors, past shivering girls with their chaperones, and I kept my eyes out for my rival Sarah Rosenheim, hoping to catch a glimpse of her. Then we came to an open door and Dickie gestured inside. Johnnie Heaven was sitting on a wooden bench, a towel looped around his shoulders like a scarf, both arms resting on his knees. He had a compact figure, more so than I had remembered, with fine brown curly hair plastered against his forehead. How dark his eyes were, how fetching were the freckles high up on his cheeks. He saw me at the doorway and he smiled with such a cheeky expression that even though I knew I shouldn’t, I walked in.

  ‘I saw you swim,’ I said, feeling foolish now as I heard the door close behind me. He didn’t remember me and why should he?

  ‘Why thank you, ma’am.’ He smiled again but stayed exactly where he was and I wasn’t sure what to make of this. Did I want him to stand because I had entered the room?

  I’d heard he wanted to try the Channel, I said. I was from England and I’d like to do it myself. I wanted to wish him good luck. Johnnie Heaven looked up and I felt his eyes like a lighthouse letting out a beam; perhaps he did remember me.

  ‘Do you swim, ma’am?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  There was a scuffling noise then from under the bench and a young child crawled out, his shorts covered in dust. ‘Oh Moses!’ Johnnie Heaven rolled his eyes. ‘I told you to stay outta sight, kiddo. We’re playing hide and go seek.’ He laughed and picked the boy up, tickling him on the stomach. ‘See this lady here,’ he said, ‘she’s a swimmer. And this here is my nephew. He wants to be a swimmer too.’

  ‘Are you strong?’ asked the boy.

  ‘Yes,’ I told him. ‘I am exceedingly strong.’

  ‘Who taught you to swim?’

  ‘My father,’ I faltered for a second. ‘Professor Belle.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Johnnie Heaven, ‘the Lambeth Baths. Of course. I swam there once myself… So you must be Daisy Belle. And what swims will you be doing over here?’

  ‘Atlantic City,’ I told him. ‘I shall be racing Sarah Rosenheim. And then I shall swim from Sandy Hook to Rockaway.’

  Johnnie Heaven gave a low whistle. ‘No one has ever managed that crossing.’

  I laughed. ‘Are you issuing me a challenge?’

  ‘Daisy!’

  I whirled around to see Billy standing at the open doorway with Dickie Fitzgerald. ‘Dob’s looking for you.’

  I became conscious then of what I was doing, standing unaccompanied in a changing room with a half-dressed man.

  ‘Your husband?’ asked Johnnie Heaven, pulling slowly at the towel around his neck.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, aware that my face was uncomfortably hot.

  Then Dob was at the doorway too, and Dickie was introducing them. ‘This is the fella you’ve just seen in the pool, our Channel hopeful.’

  My husband made a curt gesture from the waist and Johnnie Heaven laughed. ‘I ain’t a Lord, you don’t need to bow to me.’

  Then Dob scowled and said it was time to go.

  *

  That night in our hotel room as I sat before the mirror letting down my hair I knew my husband was angry. I should not have gone to meet Johnnie Heaven alone, Dob was jealous and I had annoyed him.

  ‘How very slow you are to undress,’ he said, as he lay on the bed watching me. ‘You are very quick to remove your sailor suit in the water, not so quick when your husband is waiting for you.’

  ‘The sailor suit was your idea.’ I put down my brush, trying to keep my tone light.

  ‘Yes, but you didn’t need to have agreed to it so readily.’

  ‘But I did it to please you,’ I objected, standing up to face him. ‘You said it would be good for the show and I agreed.’

  Dob laughed, a mirthless sound. ‘You are very keen to please men, aren’t you Daisy? Well then, are you coming to bed?’

  I looked at him, startled by the coldness in his voice. I had worn the sailor suit to please my husband, and yet here he was looking at me like this.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  A week later we headed south to Atlantic City and it would have been a pleasant train journey if only Dob had not been so sullen. He had barely spoken a word since we boarded, except to criticise my hat and complain about the heat. Perhaps, I thought, it was the weather that had spoiled his mood. He had wanted us to come to America, it had been his idea, and now we were here nothing seemed to meet with his approval, including me.

  ‘Is she fast, Sarah Rosenheim?’ I asked.

  Dob scratched at his whiskers. ‘Would you be racing her if she were not?’

  ‘I wonder what she’s like?’

  ‘You are not to speak to her,’ he said, ‘you’re not here to make friends but to beat her.’

  I shifted in my seat with impatience; surely I could be friends with someone and still race against them. ‘What is the wager?’ I asked.

  He raised his eyebrows but didn’t reply.

  ‘Is it large?’

  ‘A thousand dollars.’

  I sat back, shocked. A thousand dollars! We both knew he had no such sum of money should I lose.

  ‘We’re in America,’ said Dob, ‘we’ve come to win.’

  And I thought, we? It was I who was racing, not him.

  *

  The next morning we joined Dickie Fitzgerald on the beach and as we walked along the city boardwalk, past the restaurants and fancy hotels, I could almost have been in Margate. Everywhere were holidaymakers, strolling along to see and be seen. We saw a woman in a wheeled chair being pushed by a laughing man and Violet said she had half a mind to hire one too. But the further on we walked and the more I looked at the sea the less carefree I became. It was not a good day to swim, the surf was rolling in and all the waves were capped with white.

  A small crowd had gathered around Sarah Rosenheim on the pier and she turned round as I approached. ‘Daisy,’ she said, as if we were in the habit of meeting like this, and she offered her hand with a firm shake.

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ I said.

  Sarah laughed. ‘You are just so quaint!’

  ‘Now then, ladies.’ Dickie Fitzgerald cleared his throat and spat on the ground. ‘We’ve got everything well fixed, this sea will blow over in a while and then we’ll start on the second fire of the cannon. You are to dive from there—’ he pointed at two planks jutting out over the side of the pier. ‘Then you swim back and forth in view of the shore. When you get to the buoy, that’s when you swim back. Five miles either way.’ He rubbed his hands together and spat again. ‘Now girls, neither of you must lay a hand on anything for support… and don’t you even put as much as a tip of a toe to the bottom.’

  We both laughed; we would be out in the sea and it was unlikely that if we put our foot down we would touch the bottom.

  Then Sarah took off her cloak and so did I. I caught sight of her sloping shoulders and the way her suit was cut off at the arms and knees.

  ‘Are you ready?’ she asked, looking me up and down. ‘In that cumbersome outfit of yours?’

  ‘Why of course I am,’ I told her. ‘And if you ever come to London you’ll need a more ample bathing costume than that.’

  Sarah laughed. ‘Oh, they are very particular over the pond are they?’

  I was about to answer, enjoying the banter, already thinking of what I would say next, when Dob muttered ‘Daisy’ in a warning voice. He had told
me not to talk to her. Perhaps he was right, I thought, as he left the pier to take his place on the judges’ boat. Talking with Sarah might distract me from the challenge. So I held my tongue and looked out at the sea and at the waves slapping at the foundations beneath us. Then two men approached, each with a bucket, and asked if we were ready to be greased. I flinched as they began applying the lotion to my legs, rubbing it in as if I were a goose at Christmas.

  ‘Porpoise oil and lard,’ said Dickie Fitzgerald. ‘Don’t you know it? Didn’t you use it in the Thames?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘It will keep you warm, and ward off the sharks.’

  I laughed a little nervously; no one had mentioned any sharks.

  ‘How was the Thames?’ asked Sarah Rosenheim, holding out her arms as the men began to grease her too.

  ‘Very unpleasant to drink,’ I told her. ‘But then it’s never safe to talk while swimming in case you get a mouthful.’

  ‘Well that’s funny,’ she said, bouncing on her feet. ‘Because they never can stop me talking when I’m swimming. And they can’t stop me chewing gum neither.’ At that she held out her hand and her trainer produced a strip of gum the colour of slate. She rolled it up with her fingers, popped it in her mouth and started to chew.

  ‘Five minutes from now, ladies,’ said Dickie, ushering us forward. ‘Take your places please.’

  So we stepped onto the planks and Billy came to stand behind me, kneading away at my neck and my shoulders as Father used to do. It was time to be serious; there would be no more talking now. Sarah and I stood side by side, so close we almost touched, then a cannon boomed and all along the shore the people began to shout and cheer. When the cannon boomed for the second time we both leaped in.

  I came up at once and set out as fast as I could, but my rival stayed so long under the water I thought she would never appear. Then there she was, right next to me, smiling and chewing away on her gum. We travelled parallel, she closer to the shore than me, and as we did great swells of sea came rolling over us. Soon I was riding up and down on the waves like a girl on a see-saw, spitting salt water at every breath, and the judges’ boat was hidden in a shower of spray.

  I was glad it was only five miles each way for I’d never raced in the sea before and already I was using up my energy just battling the waves. I saw the buoy ahead of me, we were halfway at least, and then I realised that Sarah was no longer by my side: she was overtaking me now. I heard the people on the boat cheering and told myself to ignore the waves and focus on the race. But I saw how fast she was swimming, lengthening the distance between us, and I knew that if I didn’t catch up soon then it was possible I never would.

  Suddenly I saw Sarah’s head plunge down and her back rise out of the water, writhing from side to side.

  ‘Heavens!’ someone cried from the boat. ‘She’s doubled up, what is it?’

  ‘She has a cramp,’ came the answer, ‘she’s sunk!’

  Her head appeared out of a great wave and I saw the anguish on her face as she tried to keep on swimming. But she was rolling under, back and forth, and I knew it was no cramp of the arm or the leg; it was cramp of the stomach. The boat had reached her now; she could barely lift her hand to touch the oar and with a great deal of shouting she was pulled on-board.

  ‘Is she all right?’ I called, swimming towards the boat as it dipped up and down in the waves.

  ‘Swim on!’ shouted Dob.

  I shook my head. I would not continue on my own when my competitor was in pain; there would be no triumph in that. The race was over.

  ‘Swim on!’ Dob shouted again.

  ‘I shan’t,’ I called, ‘it’s not a fair race.’

  ‘A thousand dollars!’ he hissed, hanging over the side of the boat, waving me on with his hands, ‘a thousand dollars!’

  I saw Sarah trying to stand up, and I knew what she was doing; she wanted to be back in the water. I felt her desperation as keenly as if it were my own, and so I put out my hand and deliberately touched the boat; the race was done.

  ‘Daisy won,’ said Dob as I was pulled on board.

  The judges looked surprised.

  ‘She did,’ Dob insisted, ‘she swam the longest.’

  But the judges disagreed; neither of us had completed the course and I was disqualified by touching the boat. We could repeat the swim on Saturday, they said, if the water was smooth and the weather better. No, said Dob, it was not possible; they knew that, we couldn’t stay. We would take our money elsewhere: we had to go to Sandy Hook.

  *

  Back on the shore he waited impatiently outside a bathing hut as I changed, and the minute I came out he started marching along, muttering about cigar-chomping swindling Americans.

  ‘Why did you give up?’ he asked.

  ‘I didn’t give up. I chose to stop. How could I have swum on when Sarah could not?’

  ‘And that makes it all right?’ Suddenly he grabbed me, his hands digging hard into my arms. ‘Don’t provoke me, Daisy. You made an utter fool of me. I told everyone you could do it. I wagered a thousand dollars. Then you chose to stop.’

  But he hadn’t lost any money, I thought, the wager was off. The only person to have lost money was Dickie Fitzgerald for meeting our costs.

  I felt his hands move down my arms and tighten around my wrists and as I let out a cry a group of people on the boardwalk stopped to watch.

  ‘Why did you accept the challenge?’ asked Dob, ‘if you couldn’t do it?’

  ‘Let her be,’ said Violet, coming up behind us, and Dob let go, thrust his hands into his pockets and walked on alone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Dob and I left Atlantic City two days later and took the train north to Sandy Hook, while Billy and the others carried on to New York to be there when I arrived. I was nearly mobbed by well-wishers at Sandy Hook; it seemed that everyone was ready to wager that I would do the swim. Word had spread that I had outlasted Sarah Rosenheim in a terrible sea and this was a straight sixteen miles to Rockaway Beach. Dob did not speak about what had happened at Atlantic City, there was no mention of my having given up the swim. He was cheerful and charming once more.

  We waited days for the right conditions and each morning I went down to the beach where the air smelled of pine and the sand was thick like clay. I listened to the rustle of the grasses in the dunes and looked out towards the bay, wondering when I would be allowed to begin. Dob seemed to understand my restlessness; he did not bother me with questions, only encouraged me to train every morning for as long as I liked. Then at last we had a perfect day; the blue waters sparkled and the breakers curled in a lazy fashion as I stood on the thin spit of shore waiting for the boat to arrive.

  ‘How long do you think it will take?’ I asked the boatman, while the reporters boarded and Dob loaded the provisions.

  ‘That’s up to you.’ He gave a hoarse laugh. ‘But I’d try it as fast as you can if I were you.’

  Then a gentleman came running along the beach waving a telegram, and for a second I was fearful, convinced it would bear bad news.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Dob after I had read the telegram and folded it into my hand.

  ‘Nothing,’ I told him. ‘Just a message of good luck.’

  ‘You have the skill, Daisy,’ he said, ‘you don’t need good luck.’

  I got on the boat and settled myself below in the cabin, the telegram still tight in my hand. I caught sight of myself in a mirror on the wall and saw that I was smiling as I slipped the message from Johnnie Heaven into a crack behind the glass. After the swim, I would retrieve it.

  Then we pulled off and a little later the engines stopped. It was time to come up. I could hear the reporters’ chatter as I appeared on the deck. ‘Oh I agree that women should know how to swim,’ said one, ‘but as a sport it should be purely masculine.’ Then another joined in, ‘I reckon these women hold some very fishy records, even more fishy than the swimmers themselves!’

  The men fell silent as I
made my way through them, keeping my expression calm and heading for the stern. The day was burning hot, there were barely clouds in the sky and I tried to think of nothing but the cooling water below me. What did it matter what the journalists thought? I would soon prove them wrong.

  So in I dived and the water was delightful, as smooth as buttermilk and so clear that I could see the sand beneath. ‘Throw me my hat,’ I called to Dob as I came up to the surface, ‘it’s so hot I’ll wear it while I swim.’ The sea was the best place in the world to be on a day like this and I slipped through the water with barely any effort at all. Before long the people running along the shore grew smaller, a buzz of insects danced around my ears, and then ahead of me was the bay dotted with vessels.

  ‘Slow down,’ called Dob as a ferry packed with passengers came into view.

  But I didn’t want to; I was revelling in my speed.

  ‘Slow down!’ he called again. ‘Don’t waste your energy.’

  But I wasn’t wasting it; I was using it. Ever since we’d arrived in America he’d been telling me what to do, and now I’d just about had enough. So I ignored him and carried on. Soon I heard a man shout, ‘You’ve left New Jersey, you’re in New York now!’ and I grew thirsty and paddled next to the boat to ask for lemonade. Again I set off with a strong fast stroke; it was a little cooler now with wisps of cloud in the sky and when my hat blew off I simply laughed and continued swimming. Then a man called, ‘Look out, jellyfish!’ I dipped my head under and saw their tentacles hanging down, sweeping the water like the fringe of a rug. I stopped and tried to swim around them. But instead I found myself gliding through and over them and it was a horrible sensation, their tentacles as sticky as jam. I felt a sharp sensation as if a knife was slicing across my skin and let out a cry.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ called Dob.

  ‘I’ve been stung.’

  ‘Stop the swim!’ he shouted, holding up his palms to the judges.