21 Miles. Jessica Hepburn

me the night I decided to book my boat, but now another thought has occurred to me about how the presenter might be able to help.

      ‘Sure,’ she replies.

      ‘Well, because of the cold and the no-wetsuit rule, you have to put on weight to swim the Channel.’

      ‘Yes …’

      ‘So I thought I might write to some inspirational women – some of them mothers, some of them not – and ask them to meet and eat with me. I thought I could ask them whether they think motherhood makes you happy or whether you can have a fulfilling life without children. It might help me decide what to do next in my own pursuit of motherhood.’

      ‘Sounds great,’ the presenter says encouragingly. ‘You should.’

      I pause for a moment, summoning bravery.

      ‘Actually, I was just wondering, and I hope you don’t mind me asking … but I’m wondering …’ I take a breath and press on nervously. ‘I’m wondering whether I could interview you over lunch or dinner or something?’

      ‘Interview me?’ the presenter says.

      She looks startled and I immediately fear I’ve gone too far. She pauses before speaking again – presumably to work out how to let me down tactfully – so I step in and save her. ‘Don’t worry, you don’t need to say yes now. Have a think about it. I’ll write to you another time,’ I say, speaking quickly to cover all our embarrassment, ‘or maybe I could just have the transcript of our conversation today?’ I add, turning to the producer and then back to the presenter. ‘I know we didn’t eat but I did make you a coffee which you’ve been so nice about drinking even though I burned the milk. And you had a biscuit. Well – half a biscuit.’

      Oh God, I think, I shouldn’t have mentioned the biscuit. Now I’ve made things even worse.

      The presenter smiles at me kindly without really giving an answer. The producer, who I can tell doesn’t want to do anything without the presenter’s agreement, says she’ll ask her boss about the transcript. I don’t push it. I move on. We all know she’s not going to ask her boss about the transcript. Maybe it was naive of me to think that anyone in the public eye would be prepared to talk to me candidly about their thoughts on motherhood versus non-motherhood, especially a journalist who, after all, is accustomed to being the interviewer not interviewee.

      As I show them out, the producer says she’ll be in touch about recording me at the Serpentine. I feel a knot of regret in my stomach. Why did I mention any of that swimming stuff ? What was I thinking when I booked that boat? None of this is going to get me what I really want.

      –––––

      Later that evening, I decide it’s got to be beer and nachos for supper. Sometimes the only thing that helps is a jalapeño.

      The Serpentine

      The Serpentine Swimming Club in London’s Hyde Park is one of the most legendary open-water swimming clubs in the world. It has probably nurtured more Channel swimmers than any other club in England and given that it’s the nearest natural swimming location to where we live it was probably inevitable that I would find my way there. I say natural, but actually the Serpentine lake was created at the request of Queen Caroline, wife of George II, in 1730. (Going back to my list of women who changed the world that’s after Elizabeth I and before Victoria.) For centuries Hyde Park had been a royal hunting ground, until Charles I opened it to the public in 1637. Around a hundred years later, Caroline decided she wanted to create an ornamental lake to make the park even more beautiful. At the time most artificial lakes were long and straight but the Serpentine, which was named for its snake-like shape, was one of the first man-made lakes to curve as if it was natural.

      The first time I ventured down was a cold, wet, winter morning at the start of my Channel exploration – around about the time I made my first call to John. I’d read that the club – situated at the bit of the lake known as the Serpentine Lido, which has been roped off to create a swimming enclosure of a hundred metres in length – was a good place to meet people who had swum the Channel. So I decided to go on a reconnaissance mission. I’d also read that the best time to meet them was at the famous Saturday morning races – which have been running for well over a hundred years and take place every week, year round – when swimmers compete over various distances for a series of different cups linked to figures associated with the club’s history.

      When I arrived the banks of the lake near the lido were crowded with people and it was difficult to work out quite what was going on. A group of swimmers, clad only in swimming costumes and silicon hats, were lining up along the pontoon jutting out into the water at one end of the lido. Then a man on the edge – clothed much more appropriately for a winter’s morning – started counting through a microphone and one by one at intermittent intervals each member of the group descended into the murky, chilly-looking water and started swimming. Any stroke seemed to go – crawl, breaststroke; there was even a butterflyer. Eventually they were all in and swimming at full pelt up towards the top of the roped-off enclosure where they got out. Then the whole thing started again with a new batch of swimmers. The juxtaposition of near-naked bodies jumping into the cold with people standing on the bank wrapped up in coats and hats was an incongruous one. I watched for a while and then at what I hoped was an opportune moment sidled over to the man with the microphone and asked if he knew whether there was anyone around who had swum the Channel.

      ‘Go and speak to Boris and Nick,’ he said, pointing towards two men standing a short distance away, both over six feet tall, mid-thirties-ish, and embodying the word ‘strapping’. I introduced myself. They were polite and told me where to look for more information on the internet, but there was nothing about our conversation on that Saturday morning that made me feel encouraged to believe I could do what they had done. If anything, it made me think that this was a closed world I didn’t belong in. However, what I realise now is that no one who has swum the English Channel, or knows anything about Channel swimming, will tell a stranger in a gung-ho fashion that they can definitely do it. Because you can’t. Even the strongest swimmers rule themselves out of the Everest of swimming. And these men didn’t know me from Poseidon.

      I didn’t attempt a swim that morning. After my conversation I sloped off for breakfast at the café overlooking the east side of the lake. But I did think to myself that eggs Benedict might taste even nicer if you’d been in the water, and figured that at least thinking that was a move in the right direction.

      –––––

      The next time I ventured down to the Serpentine was the Saturday after I got back from Formentera. Andy, Mark and Teresa were all members of the club and with their encouragement I decided to give it another go. It helped that it was now mid-April and the weather and water were getting warmer. Still cold, though. Very cold. They had also helpfully explained the whole counting thing to me, which is to do with a handicap system that ensures everyone has an equal chance of winning the race whatever stroke or speed they swim at. What happens is that you are a given a number on which you start the race, which is gradually refined over time as week by week the club’s Honorary Handicapper gets to know your speed. The slowest swimmers have the lowest numbers and go off first, while the faster ones have higher numbers and chase after them.

      The morning of my second visit to the Serpentine, the race involved everyone swimming from the pontoon to the top of the lido enclosure, back again, then down to a buoy about the same distance away on the other side and finally returning to the pontoon, a total distance of 400 metres. I got given a handicap and my heart was beating fast as I heard the number approaching. When it arrived there seemed little choice but to get in. The thrashing of bodies all around me in cold water was overwhelming. Handicap or no handicap, I didn’t win.

      That morning, in addition to my baptism, I also had my initiation into the Serpentine’s spartan changing facilities: one small room with wooden benches and hooks on three sides, a sink in the corner and an adjoining toilet. There’s no segregation between men and women; everyone just crowds in and you quickly get used to