21 Miles. Jessica Hepburn

I do feel as if who I am is shifting a little.

Then, as I am thinking this, I suddenly remember the poem is by D. H. Lawrence. It’s the one about his encounter with a snake. In it, he describes how he watches, mesmerised, as the snake drinks from his water trough and, despite the danger, and the voice of his education telling him to kill it, his first reaction is to feel honoured. And that’s exactly how I’d felt, so far from land, in water so deep and unknown, because there is something exhilarating about surrendering yourself to an animal or element more powerful than you, especially when that thing – for me, the sea; for Lawrence, the snake – chooses to act kindly towards you. And as I swim into shore Lawrence’s words rebound through the waves: ‘Was it humility to feel so honoured?/ I felt so honoured …’^*

      When we finally reach the beach, which looks near long before it is, the rest of the group are standing waiting.

      ‘How was it?’ they all say, ‘or needn’t we ask?!’

      ‘Do you know what?’ I reply. ‘It was a tablespoon of agony and a teaspoon of amazing.’

* D. H. Lawrence, ‘Snake’, 1923

      Optimist or Pessimist?

      ‘Helloooooooooooooooo,’ the man in uniform calls.

      I’ve got to the front of the passport queue and I didn’t even realise it. For the last ten minutes I’ve been watching a woman and her daughter. The child – a toddler of around three or four – is wearing the cutest stripy OshKosh B’gosh dungarees and baseball boots. She’s got her own miniature suitcase, fuchsia pink, which on her mother’s instruction she picks up and carries forward each time the queue moves. I can’t take my eyes off her. Occasionally, when she gets bored with the wait she abandons mother and suitcase and adventures under the barriers to explore, until her mum scoops her up and carries her back to the queue.

      ‘Helloooooooooooooooo,’ the man calls again.

      I move towards the counter and hand over my passport, then head to the baggage carousel. I don’t see her again.

      Although it’s already late afternoon when I get back, I have to head straight into work. It’s the first day of rehearsals for a new production and in the evening we’re having a party for all the actors and the staff to get to know each other. It begins with one of those games where everyone stands in a circle and reveals something unusual about themselves by way of introduction. Stupidly, when it’s my turn, I say that I’ve just flown in from Spain where I’ve been training to swim the Channel. It’s one of those moments when ego and adrenaline combine to make you say something you immediately regret. As soon as it’s said, it can’t be unsaid. For the rest of the evening people keep coming up to me and saying in admiration: ‘Are you really?’ I don’t know how to answer this. If anything I’m even more unsure than I was before I went to Formentera. The week was good, but I didn’t come anywhere close to doing six hours; even the headland swim was less than an hour and that felt like forever. A teaspoon of amazing doesn’t get you from England to France.

      –––––

      The next day I get an email from John with an evaluation form. I hate evaluation forms. Whenever I get given one at a conference or event, it instantly becomes something to doodle on. I am a legendary doodler. Give me a piece of paper and a pen in a meeting and I won’t write notes, but I will draw you lines of boxes and circles and stars. A stranger once leaned over to me and told me that my doodles said a lot about me. He left the meeting before it finished so I never got to ask him what they say exactly. Maybe they say, I’m the type of woman who doesn’t like filling out evaluation forms. That would be true. However, I want to show my appreciation for the week away so I duly complete this one.

      John emails me back:

      Thanks Hepburn.

      Have you booked a boat yet for your Channel swim?

      To be so clear that you should after a week is not divine intervention in a prophetic vision that sees you successfully swim the Channel – it is an affirmation certainly from me to you that you have the potential which is a great start. As we discussed you would have to swim freestyle and to see you develop what is not your preferred stroke in such a short time was very encouraging. The encouragement is based upon your attitude and determination which as far as I know cannot be either filmed nor taught in a seminar. The opposing circumstance of a better stroke but flaws in both the mentioned characteristics would be a great cause for concern so you are on track …

      In the days before the internet, this note would have arrived in the post and I would have let the ink fade and the paper go yellow and curl at the edges. It is a letter to treasure – so I print it out and pin it to the side of my desk. I certainly don’t have a prophetic vision of me reaching the beach in France and picking up a pebble either, and I also know that attitude and determination doesn’t get you everywhere, as otherwise I’d have a baby by now. But John’s encouragement means a lot and I do have to think about what I’m going to do, because another thing I’ve learned is that swimming the Channel can never be a spur-of-the-moment decision. It involves months of planning and preparation.

      The first thing you need to do is book a support boat. There are only a limited number registered to take people across in the small swimming window each summer. Over the next few days, I dare myself to look at the website, which has pictures of all the boats with their pilots. (I’m not sure why they’re called pilots. I’ve always thought pilots flew planes and captains went to sea, which reminds me: flying is really a much better way of getting to France.) I clock a couple who look like they’ve got friendly faces and might be gentle on an amateur agonist. I email them to enquire about slots for next year. They seem to be very busy already but one, named Paul, has a slot on a neap tide next August.

      Tides are another important factor in Channel swimming. There are two types, neaps and springs, and as far as I can tell, the main difference is that one has more water and is therefore stronger than the other. Historically, Channel soloists have always chosen to swim on the neaps, the one with less water, as it’s considered to be easier.

      Paul’s boat is called Optimist, which seems like a good omen, but the problem is I’ve always been a pessimist and I can’t bring myself to book it. To me, pessimism is the art of thinking that something won’t happen so that when it doesn’t you’re not as disappointed as you might have been if you’d let yourself believe it would. I’ve found it to be the best protection from failure and disappointment and I’ve used it a lot over the last few years, as failure and disappointment seem to have been following me around. And the thing is, what if I’m just putting myself in their path again? It’s all very well deciding to do something big, but I need it to be something I stand a chance of achieving.

      Yet now I’ve thought it, how can I unthink it? I keep picturing myself at the end of my life with my bucket list in hand, recollecting that I wanted to be a mother (and wasn’t), and that I wanted to swim the English Channel (and didn’t even try). That feeling scares me, and over the next few days I’ve got Édith Piaf’s ‘Non, je ne regrette rien’ playing on repeat in my head. But the pessimist in me still can’t bring myself to book the Optimist because I’m even more terrified of facing failure and disappointment again.

      –––––

      A couple of days later I’m checking my work emails in bed before going to sleep. Apparently, this sort of thing kills your sex life, but then so does trying for a baby. No, that’s not quite true. It’s great when you start trying for a baby – there’s nothing nicer than having sex for the purpose for which it was originally intended – what kills it is when you have to start trying very hard. I remember naively thinking that the first month we threw away that feminist-prized contraception, we’d be pregnant. But a month passed and nothing happened. Then two, then three, then more. We progressed