21 Miles. Jessica Hepburn

the same thing over and over again. ‘Not yet … Not yet … Not yet.’ And finally: ‘In you come. Good job, Hepburn. Good job.’

      John’s two swimming assistants, Alice and Catherine, hold out my towel as I stagger out of the water, their congratulations warm and genuine.

      ‘It’s just so hard,’ I say, taking the towel gratefully and wrapping it round me.

      They laugh. ‘Don’t you mean it was AGONY?’

      –––––

      On the penultimate morning of the tour, when I come down from my room to breakfast, John, Andy and Mark are sitting at the table eating and chatting.

      ‘Just the person we’ve been talking about,’ John says. ‘How are you feeling today?’

      ‘Ready for more agony,’ I say cheerily.

      ‘We’ve just been discussing whether you should try and do a Channel relay this summer if there’s a cancellation.’

      ‘A relay? What’s that?’

      ‘You swim the Channel as a team. Each person is in the water for one hour in succession until you get to France,’ Mark explains.

      ‘How many people in the team?’

      ‘Usually six, but you can do it with less. Obviously, the smaller the number the more times you’ll swim and the bigger test it will be. It will be a good way of seeing whether you really want to attempt a solo. What do you think?’

      ‘I think: is my crawl up to it?’

      ‘Well, you should have some lessons to improve your technique, but basically you just need to learn to keep going,’ John says.

      ‘And if you do a relay you’d rather be in the water than on the boat anyway,’ Andy adds.

      ‘Why’s that?’ I ask.

      ‘You get terrible seasickness on the boat.’

      ‘Sounds like fun.’

      ‘I told you,’ Andy says. ‘Swimming the Channel isn’t.’

      ‘Yup, I’m starting to realise that,’ I concede.

      In fact, I’m starting to learn a lot of things which are making me wonder why anyone would want to take on the challenge of the Channel. It may be twenty-one miles from Dover to Cap Gris-Nez, which is the nearest point of land in France from England, but the tides are so strong you can’t swim in a straight line. Instead you zigzag across, and the distance you have to cover is much greater than that. In the past you could swim from France to England, which was considered tidally easier than the other way around, but nowadays the French have banned it. (Too much hassle or something. No doubt Joan of Arc would have been proud of them for taking a stand against the Brits.) I’ve also learned that there is only a small window each year when the water’s warm enough to get across, and even then it’s going to be cold, far below the temperature of any swimming pool. And because of all these things – the tides, the distance, the cold and the unpredictability of the weather – I’ve learned that a very high percentage of those who set out don’t make it across. It’s one of the toughest physical and mental endurance feats on the planet. Fewer people have swum the Channel than have climbed Mount Everest.

      But I have also learned something else, an unexpected boon that does make it worth giving it a second thought: aspiring Channel swimmers get to eat. A lot. Apparently most people put on a couple of extra stone in the lead-up to their swim as it is by the far the best way of keeping out the cold for the longest possible time. The appropriate cliché to use here is: ‘Every cloud has a silver lining’, or perhaps I should say instead, ‘Every wave has a chocolate coating’.

      I help myself to a large bowl of cereal.

      ‘So, John,’ I say. ‘What have you got in store for us today?’

      ‘Wait and see, Hepburn,’ he says cryptically. ‘Wait and see.’

      Try as I might, it’s impossible to get John to reveal his swimming cards. He’ll never say how long we’re going to be in the water for, however hard I attempt to wheedle it out of him.

      An hour later, when we convene on the terrace for our daily briefing, he says that we’re going out in a boat. He points to the edge of the headland, which marks the furthest point of land we can see from the house, and says we’re going to go out there and swim home. He also says that we’re going to practise feeding on the way back. Despite my love of food, eating in the ocean is not something I particularly fancy the thought of. But that’s another thing I’ve learned about swimming the Channel – you don’t do it without some form of sustenance on the way. Captain Matthew Webb drank beef tea and brandy in the nineteenth century, but fashions change and nowadays it’s carbohydrate powder mixed with warm water and sweetened with fruit squash. John starts to give instructions about how it’s going to be administered, how we need to drink it quickly so we don’t stop for too long and get cold, and, most importantly, how we mustn’t touch the boat during the process because if you do this during a Channel swim you’ll be disqualified. But I’m not listening. All I can think about is how far that headland looks and how there’s nearly no way I’m going to make it.

      We jump on the boat from the water’s edge and start to speed out to sea. It’s only then that John discloses he’s going to drop us all off the boat at different points. The strongest swimmers are going to be plopped in the water right at the headland and the aim is for them to swim and catch the rest of us up. A little closer to home he drops off a couple of others. And finally, but still along way out to sea, me.

      John turns the boat to go back to check that the others are OK and suddenly I am alone, with only the deepest dark blue beneath me. It’s a totally different experience from swimming up and down the shoreline. So far away from land, surrounded by water, I can sense the sea’s immense power and its potential to extinguish human life in an instant. I also immediately imagine all the unknown, and possibly predatory, life forms around me and hope that whoever they are they’ll stay away and let me share their world safely. But even though I feel small and vulnerable, as I start to swim I also feel something else. The words of a poem my dad used to recite to me when I was a child come unbidden into my mind: ‘And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid, But even so, honoured still more.’ As I swim I try to remember the rest of the poem and who wrote it but I find it impossible to focus on anything for very long as I’m constantly distracted by the effort of my movement through the water.

      For what feels like ages I detect no sign of life or boat and I start to become more and more conscious of the cold. But I know now that minutes in water seem like hours and eventually, I hear the sound of the boat and John’s voice.

      ‘Hepburn, time for a feed,’ he shouts.

      I look up and see John leaning down with a cup. I reach up for it and take a sip. It is warm and sweet.

      ‘Quickly,’ he shouts. ‘You don’t want to get cold.’

      ‘I already am,’ I say.

      ‘That’s it, hand it back. Don’t touch the boat,’ he says, ignoring my comment.

      I snatch another sip as John leans forward to take it and gives me my next instructions.

      ‘Now start swimming. Quickly, so it gets into your bloodstream.’

      I put my head down into the cold and for a few moments feel a glorious rush of warmth and energy. The boat speeds off and for a while I’m alone again, until suddenly I feel movement behind me. I flinch in fear before realising with relief it’s just Andy and Mark, who have caught up with me. For the rest of the way they swim alongside me. At first I think I’m doing a good job of keeping up with them, but it soon becomes clear they’re just supporting and steering me home. As I swim, I think about the past week: how I’ve been a fish out of water – or should I say the only fish in the sea who doesn’t like getting wet – but also how there has been something special about spending time in the company of strangers I would