‘Now then,’ said the matron, marching into the ward, ‘hush.’ She tilted her head to one side and pursed her lips. ‘Hasn’t anyone told you? Baby has gone.’
‘Gone?’
‘Yes, an hour ago while you were sleeping.’
‘Gone where?’
‘Why, with her father.’
‘Her father?’ I looked around the ward in wonder.
‘Yes,’ said the matron, ‘Mr McGee took her home, to get everything nice and ready for you.’
‘No!’ I cried. ‘No! He’s lying! Tell him to bring her back.’ I felt as if I were plunging from a great height with no water to break my fall. I clasped the edge of the bed, frantically trying to get up, wanting to leave the ward, to run after her. I thought of what Dob had said the last time I had seen him, what’s yours is mine. He had taken her. He was still my husband and he could do whatever he liked. I had no claim to my own child, not if he knew about Johnnie Heaven.
All that night I waited and waited. I told myself Dob was punishing me for my affair, that was all. Then he would bring my baby back. Once she started crying with hunger, he would return. Every time someone entered the ward I was flooded with hope, but daylight came and Dob did not come back.
The nurses said my sobbing was disturbing the other patients and when Billy came I’d been restrained, my arms tied to the bars of the bed to stop me moving. I was drained of blood, quivering from the lack of my child. ‘He took her,’ I told Billy, ‘Dob came and he took her,’ and my brother held me in his arms as he promised me, ‘Then we will find her. Trust me, little tadpole, we will find her.’
CHAPTER THIRTY
Billy and Violet moved me to Margate that summer to be reunited with little Percy, but I could have been anywhere for all I cared. I took no notice of my surroundings. I rarely went to the sea and everything seemed grey to me, the promenade and the people, the pier and the sands, even the ocean itself. Nature had lost its colour; I was living permanently underwater and I couldn’t have got to the surface even if I’d tried.
Mother was still living with Auntie Jessie, but when my brother took me to see her we had little to say to each other. She was ill and bedridden now and she lay there dressed in her mourning clothes, saying, ‘It won’t be long before I join your father.’ Mother had always considered diving a dangerous thing to do and now, I thought bitterly, she had been proved right. I wanted to confide in her, to tell her everything that had happened, about my love for Johnnie Heaven and the loss of my child. But each time I opened my mouth to speak she simply closed her eyes. My sister Minnie had left Margate and moved north to be with Charlie and Tom-tom. Billy said they were performing in aquatic shows but my interest in galas was over.
By now I had recovered enough feeling in my right leg to be able to take a few steps with the aid of a stick, but it still caused pain to move from lying down to sitting, and from sitting to standing was even worse. Billy bought me a bath chair in order to wheel me occasionally around the town. But I hated the way it creaked and I didn’t like how people stared, seeing me as peculiar, the way they nodded to their companions as they passed and glanced back wide-eyed. I only wanted to be in quiet places where I couldn’t be seen.
One night there was a storm which raged for hours, the wind blowing in terrific gusts all through town. Boats in the harbour broke from their moorings, swamping and sinking or drifting out to sea. Chimneys fell in the market square, uprooted trees lay on the ground and the pavements became running streams. Margate was in danger of being destroyed, and so was I.
*
Billy began to teach at the Marine Palace Baths and Violet did too, and in between he did everything he could to find my child. He made frequent visits to London, went to every address at which Dob had been known to stay, wrote to every newspaper, contacted every person in the sporting world. But Dob McGee had disappeared. He could have changed his name, he could have left the country and gone to Australia for all we knew, and there was nothing we could do about it at all. As each month passed and as the months turned into years, I wondered: was my baby walking now, was she talking? Did Dob treat her with love? Was she even alive?
*
In the spring of 1886 we returned to London. Billy had been appointed swimming instructor at the Essex Road Baths and he tried to get me to join him. I could sit in the gallery, he said, or he could position my chair at the poolside and I could watch from there. Look at little Percy, just five years old, wasn’t it wonderful the way he raced and performed? But I didn’t want to be anywhere near water, for I would only long to be in it and to feel my body come to life again. So as the months passed and we settled into our new home, it was Violet who taught the women and girls to swim, while Billy organised galas and travelled around other London baths to see what they were up to, just as Father had once done.
One evening my brother came back very excited and said he had a trip planned for me. ‘I’ve told you I don’t want to go on any trip,’ I replied, not moving from my position at the window where I stayed for most of the day looking out over the square.
‘Well, you are,’ said Billy, ‘because tomorrow we’re going to the Hornsey Road Baths.’
‘Why would I want to go there?’ I muttered angrily.
‘Because ladies have a pool to themselves on Wednesdays,’ he said, ‘and girls can swim there all day long if they wish; they even have a swimming club. Don’t you remember the girls in America, wouldn’t you like to see this new pool?’
I didn’t answer. That was the day I had seen Johnnie Heaven and I didn’t want to think about him.
But Billy was insistent; a gala was being arranged at the Hornsey Baths and they wanted me to present the prizes. ‘Everyone still remembers you, Daisy,’ he said.
‘What do they remember?’ I snapped. ‘My failed dive in a pond with a crown on my head?’
‘There’s no harm in going to have a look,’ said Billy. ‘The girls’ instructor is keen to meet you.’
‘It’s a long way to go for a look,’ I objected, although in truth it was only two miles.
‘Why?’ asked Billy. ‘Don’t you think you can make the journey?’
*
The next day he hired a cab and the driver roped my chair to the back; it clung there precariously as we drove through the streets of Islington. I hadn’t been out for a very long time and I couldn’t help but notice the life all around me as people bustled to get to their destination, never stopping to think how easy it was to move from place to place.
When we arrived at the Hornsey Baths, Billy wheeled me in through the gatehouse and then he handed me my walking stick, took me by the arm and led me in. It was a pretty bath, although very small, and I had to admit there was a pleasing lightness about the place. There was also plenty for the bathers to do, with a chute and springboard, a hanging trapeze and rings on a rope. The bath was full of girls, splashing and floundering and making a racket, but it didn’t look too clean to me; there was floating fluff and streaks of dye, flakes of mud brought in on people’s shoes. Surely, I thought, it was time to change the water. But this didn’t bother the girls, it was a sunny spring morning, they had their own pool and they were having fun. I felt my body relax, felt a spark of interest now.
‘Do you want to stay and watch?’ asked my brother.
‘Perhaps,’ I said, ‘for a little while.’
Billy positioned my chair in an alcove and I glanced at a group of girls standing in the shallow end performing arm movements. The water was so cloudy that nothing could be seen of their bodies below their waists; they could have had mermaid tails for all anyone knew. Every shout and laugh was multiplied, as it always is in a bath, echoing off the tiled walls and the iron rafters. Whoosh went a girl down the chute and behind her came three more.
‘No more than two at a time!’ shouted a female attendant, hurrying along the poolside, just as one particularly large girl attempted to crawl her way up the chute. Then my brother tapped me on the shoulder. ‘Here’s M
r Millichap. The girls’ instructor.’
I looked up to see a stout red-faced man wearing a none-too-clean white coat.
‘Miss Belle,’ he said, ‘delighted and honoured to have you here. Down the chute not up!’ he shouted at the girl still crawling up the slide. Then he sighed. ‘It’s not easy teaching girls. Some learn in three weeks, others have scarcely mastered a thing. That one over there,’ he pointed to the far end of the bath, ‘she learned in a couple of lessons.’
I looked at the girl, holding onto the rail kicking her legs; she appeared about to give up.
‘But that one,’ he said, nodding to a girl standing by the side, ‘if she won’t get in soon I’ll have to push her.’
Push her? I thought; you will do no such thing. How would a girl learn the joy of swimming if she were pushed?
‘If you had any idea how much trouble it gives having a girls’ bath,’ sighed Mr Millichap again, ‘all the stray hairs… Get off the chute!’ he roared. ‘Would you mind watching them race, Miss Belle? It won’t take long.’
I was about to say I had to go, I was tired and would come back another time, but Mr Millichap was already heading off along the poolside. ‘Take me home,’ I told Billy, ‘I’ve had enough.’
‘Wait!’ he said, in a voice so urgent that it made me wonder what was wrong. Then he pointed at a girl sitting on the diving board below the gallery. She was a plump little figure with curly brown hair, and she was tugging impatiently at the sleeves of her knitted one-piece costume. There was something about the way she sat so self-contained on that diving board, with her legs a-dangling, that sent a flush of recognition through my body.
‘Do you see her?’ asked Billy.
I nodded, unable to speak.
‘I noticed her when the superintendent showed me round the girls’ pool. She is so like you, Daisy, I thought I’d seen a ghost.’
The girl stood up then and held out her arms like a fairy about to take flight and I caught my breath, my heart in my mouth as it used to be when I dived. How sure she was of herself, how fearless she seemed as she bounced on that board with a big smile on her face, looking around to see who was watching. And I knew the impossible had happened this morning at the Hornsey Baths. After all this time, after years of fruitless searching, Billy had found my child.
‘Is it really her?’ I whispered. ‘Who is she with? Where does she live, how did she come to be here?’
Then I saw the girl fall into the bath with a horrible splash. But she hauled herself out quite easily, the sodden costume sagging down, looking very pleased with herself. As she passed the alcove on the poolside she gave me a look of curiosity. Only it was not my chair she was looking at, it was me. How I longed to announce myself, to reach out my arms and pull her in, to tell her who I was. But I knew that I couldn’t. If I was to steal her back, then I must wait and watch. I must be very careful until the time was right.
‘That was good,’ I said, my voice raised as the little girl went by, loud enough to make her stop.
She stood there flushed with pleasure, her hair plastered against her forehead, eyes as dark as ink. How shiny was her skin, how pretty the freckles on her cheeks.
‘Only,’ I said, ‘you need to start a little nearer to the edge of the board.’ Instantly I regretted that I had pointed out a defect in her dive, when what did it matter how she did it?
‘I know how to dive,’ said the little girl in a stubborn fashion.
‘Do you really?’ I asked, amused, for she was clearly a child not intimidated by adults. ‘And who taught you?’
‘My Pa. He got me a teacher.’
I felt a stab of fear then; was he here? Was he right here at the baths this very minute and could he see me? I looked around, scanning the poolside, glancing up at the gallery, but I could see no one who looked like Dob.
The girl looked at me and suddenly smiled. ‘My name is Hettie.’
Hettie? I felt my heart tremble with fury; my child had been named after Dob’s mother.
‘I’m four and a half and I have a brother and a sister but I’m the oldest.’
‘You are?’ I asked, trying to sound unconcerned. But who were these other children, and who was their mother? ’And do you like to swim, Hettie?’
‘Yes. But sometimes I’m scared.’
I felt a tug on my heart. ‘Why, what are you scared of?’
‘That I’ll hit my head on the bottom.’
I laughed, the first time I had laughed in years. ‘Have you ever seen a kitten fall, from a chair perhaps? Because if you have then you’ll know a kitten always lands up on her feet, and you will too if you’re taught right.’
Then off Hettie went and I watched as she took her place on the board, inching further to the edge this time, and she looked across at me before diving in.
‘That was much better,’ I said, and she smiled with the easy openness of a child being praised.
Then Mr Millichap was clapping his hands for attention. Practice was over and it was time for the races to begin; whoever succeeded would be in the gala next week. Billy went up to the gallery to watch, while Mr Millichap shouted out instructions to the girls and they lined up by the poolside, tall and short, stout and thin, eager and anxious, all about to get in the water.
‘Today, young ladies, we have a very special visitor, Miss Daisy Belle, a former world champion.’ He bowed in my direction and I heard one or two of the girls begin to titter. They didn’t believe I had ever been a champion, how could they, this lady in a bath chair?
‘Miss Belle will present the prizes at next week’s gala,’ said Mr Millichap, ‘and now she wants to see what you’re made of.’
I watched the older girls jump in and swim the length of the bath; some had a ragged style, gulping and giving up and clutching the rail, while the rest struggled gamely on. Then it was the turn of the younger girls and I saw Hettie putting on a hat, impatient for her race to begin. I felt such a rush of love for her then because there she was, a creature who had grown inside me, and now it was as if I was looking at myself.
The girl to her right was fat and built for battling the waves, while the girl on the left needed to build her confidence for she was already asking whether she was standing in the right place. ‘Do I dive in from here?’ she asked. ‘Do I swim the whole way?’ But Hettie just wanted to get in. That was her first mistake; she was so keen to begin that she entered the water clumsily and the other girls were already swimming off. Hettie was determined to catch up, and very quickly did, but then she made her second mistake. She so wanted to know if she was winning that she wasted time by looking constantly left to right, and didn’t even see the stout girl coming up behind her. By the time she’d grabbed the rail another girl had caught up too and Hettie came third.
She was so disappointed. Her shoulders slumped as she got out of the pool and when I called her over I tried to be kind. ‘Sometimes,’ I said as she stood there dripping next to me, ‘failure is more interesting than winning.’
But this meant nothing to Hettie; instead she was growing tearful. ‘I was nearly last.’
‘No you weren’t, you were third. You’ll still be in the gala. And whoever likes someone who is always first?’
She was not convinced, scratching at her leg and mumbling, ‘I’m glad my Ma didn’t come.’
‘My mother never saw me swim,’ I said and immediately wished I hadn’t.
‘Why not?’
I opened my mouth and then closed it again; this wasn’t a conversation I wanted to have. ‘It’s better to experience failure early on, then it won’t be such a shock when it comes. Proper training is essential, you can’t win without it.’ Goodness, I thought, I sound exactly like my father, and for a moment I could have sworn I smelled cigar smoke in the air. ‘I was four years old when I first performed in public, so a little younger than you.’
‘Were you really a champion?’
‘Oh yes, I was a champion. But that was a long time ago, and when I was little, gi
rls weren’t allowed to swim.’
‘Why not?’
‘Perhaps the boys were afraid we would beat them.’
Hettie laughed at this, a childish giggle. But then she shivered and I saw she was cold.
‘Do you have a towel?’ I asked, ‘Your own towel? You don’t want to catch any diseases.’
She shook her head, teeth chattering.
‘Hettie!’ called Mr Millichap from the other side of the pool. ‘Stop dawdling and go and change.’
The other girls came rushing past us, the people in the gallery began to leave and Billy came down to join me. But still Hettie stayed where she was. ‘What if I’m last in the gala?’ she asked.
And suddenly I knew what to do. ‘Well,’ I laughed, ‘if that’s what you’re worried about I can teach you to swim much faster if you’d like?’
She eyed me carefully, perhaps about to say she didn’t need anyone to teach her, and I worried I’d been too eager, too direct.
‘Do you know what, I first learned to swim at the seaside. Have you ever been to the sea?’
Hettie shrugged. ‘What is the sea?’
‘What is the sea? Well, I will tell you if you want. I was the fastest girl in England you know, the first to swim the River Thames. I dived higher than anyone. I even swam in a whale tank.’ I spoke quickly, the words tumbling out because I had to get and keep her attention. I had to make my very own child want to see me again.
‘What’s that?’ she asked, pointing to my forehead.
‘This scar?’ I lowered my voice. ‘I got this on a dreadful day when I was in a tank… and it exploded.’
‘Really?’ Hettie looked amazed.
‘Yes,’ I said, leaning forward and taking hold of one of her hands, ‘and I can tell you all about that as well, and how to be the fastest swimmer ever, when I come back next week for the gala. Would you like that? Will you be here?’
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