Daisy Belle Read online

  About the Author

  Caitlin Davies is a novelist, non-fiction writer, journalist and teacher – and likes nothing better than outdoor swimming. Many of her books are inspired by the stories of forgotten women from the past, and several have a watery theme. Her ground-breaking history of Thames swimming, Downstream, was described by the Independent as ‘a fascinating cultural history of swimming’, and resulted in the Museum of London’s first ever Wild Swimming Display.

  Caitlin was born in London in 1964, and after training as an English teacher she moved to Botswana where she became a journalist for the country’s first tabloid newspaper, the Voice. While working as editor of the Okavango Observer she was arrested for ‘causing fear and alarm’, and also received a Journalist of the Year award. Four of her books are set in the Okavango Delta, where she lived for 12 years, including the critically acclaimed memoir Place of Reeds.

  Caitlin is currently a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the University of Westminster, Harrow, in the School of Media, Arts & Design.

  Caitlindavies.co.uk

  @CaitlinDavies2

  Also by Caitlin Davies

  Fiction

  Family Likeness

  The Ghost of Lily Painter

  Friends Like Us

  Black Mulberries

  Jamestown Blues

  Non-fiction

  Bad Girls: A History of Rebels and Renegades

  Downstream: A History and Celebration of Swimming the River Thames

  Camden Lock and the Market

  Taking the Waters: A Swim Around Hampstead Heath

  Place of Reeds

  The Return of El Negro: Africa’s Unknown Soldier

  Daisy Belle

  Swimming Champion of the World

  Caitlin Davies

  This edition first published in 2018

  Unbound

  6th Floor Mutual House, 70 Conduit Street, London W1S 2GF

  www.unbound.com

  All rights reserved

  © Caitlin Davies, 2018

  The right of Caitlin Davies to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. No part of this publication may be copied, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  ISBN (eBook): 978-1-911586-49-4

  ISBN (Paperback): 978-1-911586-48-7

  Design by Mecob

  Printed in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives Plc

  In memory of Glyn Roberts, a champion lifeguard on Hampstead Heath.

  Dear Reader,

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  Founders, Unbound

  Super Patrons

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  BWW

  Julie Cameron

  Stephen A. Cameron

  Marie-Clare Castree

  Joanna Chadwick

  Frank Chalmers

  Christine Clinton

  David Cooke

  Shirley Cooke

  Anthony & Gill Cooke

  Amanda Craig

  Zoe Davies

  Jake Davies

  Hunter Davies

  Helen De Meyer

  Chris Demetriou

  Simon Dixon

  Sally Doganis

  Bernadette Driscoll

  Lucinda Duckett

  Ella Foote

  Pauline Forster

  Shirley Forster

  Mark Forsyth

  Kirsty Foster

  Bill Fulford

  Brian Gautier

  Bruce Gill

  Nicole Gordon

  Jill Gregory

  Valerie Grove

  Judy Hallgarten

  Katherine Hallgarten

  The Mixed Pond Association, Hampstead Heath

  Julia Hobsbawm

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  Simon Inglis

  Christine Jackson

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  Iain Keenan

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  Sarah Kingue Kouta

  Sienna Kingue Kouta

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  Sophie Levey

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  Claire Lowman

  Sean Macaulay

  Margaret Maddern

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  Anna Mansi

  The Margate Bookie

  Paul Maskell

  Jackie McGlone

  Patrick McLennan

  Audrey Meade

  Innes Meek

  John Mitchinson

  Fiona Mullane

  Leeroy Murray

  Andy Nation

  Caroline Neary

  Amy Norman

  Prue Norton

  Theodora Ooms

  Yvonne Osborne

  Bridgit Owen

  Wendy Pajak

  Michael Palin

  Cathy Palmer

  Matthew Parris

  Anne Parsons

  Pat Pearn

  Gemma Pettman

  Piers Plowright

  Justin Pollard

  Ross Priestley

  Peter Rae

  Nigel Ramdial

  Gillian Rees-Mogg

  Chris Romer-Lee, Thames Baths CIC

  Jacey Salles

  Daisy Solomons

  Justine Solomons

  Anthea Stewart

  Claire Thornton

  John Tierney

  Katia Vastiau

  Joan Warren

  Corinne Westacott

  Marie Weston

  Jane Withers

  Contents

  About the Author

  Also by Caitlin Davies

  [Dedication]

  Dear Reader Letter

  Super Patrons

  Prologue


  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Afterword

  Acknowledgements

  Patrons

  Prologue

  I watched you that day at the pond, you know, peering secretly through the foliage, seeing you swim before you saw me. It was one of those strange early autumn mornings when the sky is so surprisingly blue that a person would think summer was on its way. But instead it was the last burst of colour before the days darkened and the season ended. We’d come late that morning; it was a difficult journey for me. I didn’t know if you’d already arrived with the other girls. I could not even be certain that you would come again, for what if your father had found out? What if he knew where we were?

  We were in a rush, Billy and I. But when we reached the point where the path split, one way leading east up an incline to a patch of woodland and the other straight ahead to the gate of the pond, I told my brother to stop. Let us wait awhile right here, I said, for I had noticed to my left an oval of light and a sliver of water through the trees. Billy handed me my stick and I raised myself up, leaning one hand on the fence. It was as if I were looking through a tunnel, between the branches of the maple trees and in through the bushes to the water. Only a fraction of the pond was visible, the shape of a crooked triangle, but it was enough to see a swan pass by, as majestic as a silent steamship.

  Then came the sound of splashing and there you were, your hair as black and wet as a seal. ‘She’s here,’ I whispered to Billy. I could see your mouth just above the water, breathing as I had told you to, and the sheer joy on your face as you swam. The water was smooth that day and the reflections of the clouds made it seem as if you were swimming in the sky.

  Still I watched. You were passing out of sight now, heading towards another girl. I could hear her calling your name, see you speed up your stroke. And I stayed there, grasping the wooden post, because I had decided that today was the day I would tell you. You must know who you were and how you had come to be here. It had to be done; right here and right now as Father used to say, and the very thought of him took me back to my childhood when I too first learned to swim.

  Then Billy coughed. The silence on the path was interrupted by footsteps, the sound of boots crunching on the stones behind us. Men were coming on their way for a swim; we didn’t have long, ladies’ hours would be over soon. On we went, down the path and through the gate past the boatman’s hut. Its door was open. I smelled pipe smoke on the wind, heard the insistent tapping of a woodpecker high up in the poplar tree, hidden amongst its heart-shaped leaves. And there on the left was the pond, its surface as flat as a plate.

  We stopped by the jetty that reached across the water like a wooden tongue. On the opposite bank the branches of the weeping willows sank low, as if dipping down to drink. I knew what they would look like from water level, I could almost feel their fluttery leaves, and I so longed to join you in the pond and to feel the power of my body again.

  Billy settled me on a patch of grass and sat down beside me. Together we watched the girls in the pond, and especially we watched you. Miss Hope was on the jetty, shouting out instructions, while the white-haired boatman stood next to her, leaning on his hook. At the southern end of the pond boys were fishing by the causeway, and even though they shouldn’t have been there during ladies’ hours, they were watching too. How fast you were in the water, how determined your stroke as you raced ahead of the other girl. You reminded me so much of myself as a child, when no one but my family knew my name, and I wondered how I would ever find the right words to tell you a story like mine.

  Then you caught sight of us and put up one hand, and it broke my heart to see you wave and not know who I really was. I felt the grip of fear in my stomach, for what if I did tell you everything and I lost you again? What if this time it was forever? But this is the tale I wanted to tell you, when the time was right. Bear with me while I try to explain, for this is a story of another little girl who loved the water more than anything else in the world.

  CHAPTER ONE

  I was born in 1862 in Margate, a seaside town that lived for holiday people and where the air was as pure and fresh as any in England. You will never see as many blues as you will in Margate, from a turquoise sea to an inky sky and every shade in between. It was there that I first discovered my love for the sea, which was little wonder seeing as my father spent half his life in it. They called me ‘tadpole’ and that is what I was, little Daisy Belle the tadpole, sleek and wet and stout. But I don’t believe anyone, not even Father, thought that one day I would become a champion lady swimmer of the world.

  It was my brother Billy who introduced me to the water; Father would not have considered it otherwise. I was the youngest and the only girl and he hadn’t thought of me as a swimmer. But then one morning Billy carried me down to the Margate sands where the milky sea washed up against the jetty and little boys dabbled with their buckets. It was here that Father came to take his daily swim, one mile to the head of the jetty and back, before he went off to work at the brewery. He came from a seafaring family and water was in his blood.

  We were early that morning, Billy and I, the tide was in and the beach was small as we walked along the shore towards the row of ladies’ bathing machines. These were like Wild West wagons and they put the ladies’ ones right at the far end of the beach away from prying men’s eyes. There had been a storm the night before and some of the bathing machine awnings had been blown away, the wheels as well. One year, before I was born, an enormous wave had carried the machines right into the sea, with the people still inside, and the bathers had been forced to run out half-naked and scramble to shore. Father didn’t think much of the machines: the way they jerked and jolted and lurched, the sloppy, gritty floors, the shrieks of the terrified children as the dippers put them in the sea and told them to swim. Where, he asked, was the pleasure in that? It took away the whole poetry of the thing; it was not how swimming should be.

  Father’s sister, my Auntie Jessie, was a dipper. She was an enormous mountain of a woman and she put the children in head first and then scooped them up again. This caused all manner of disagreements between her and my father. He said it was a way to drown, not to swim, and they argued about it constantly as they did most things. But I was very fond of Auntie Jessie. I liked to visit her home on Love Lane, where she rented out rooms after her husband died, and she was the only one who called me by my given name, Daisy Mae.

  Billy and I stopped to undress, piling our clothes under a well-chosen stone, then he picked me up and walked towards the sea. He stopped every now and again to point out something of interest: a tiny shell that a mermaid had left, the feet marks of a bird that had been dancing. Billy liked to tell me stories; he was a great lover of make-believe and although he’d had little schooling he had already taught himself to read.

  We reached the edge of the ocean, with lapping waves like the hem of a dress, and Billy pointed to a boat, out where the sea was as still as a tableto
p. I wondered how it stayed like that above the water. I had so many questions inside me: why didn’t the boat sink? What made the water blue? Would it move up and down like that with me? I could see that every wave was different from the next, and I wanted to know what it would be like to feel the white on the crest.

  Billy waded slowly in, holding me in his arms, and I clung to him, my fingers nudging at the little dimple he had below the bone of his right shoulder. The sea was cold; I could feel it seeping up my legs and I let out a cry. ‘Don’t be afraid,’ said my brother, ‘don’t you want to catch some fish for dinner?’ But I wasn’t afraid at all; I knew we were about to do something naughty and that I would like it when we did. I was far from a docile child; instead I would do anything to go on an adventure.

  I loved my brother the way the youngest in a family can love the oldest. I was far closer to him than to my other brothers, Charlie and Tom-tom, and from the moment I was born Billy saw it as his task to look after me. He was already a fast swimmer; despite his awkwardness on land, water was his element. But he’d been very delicate as a child: he’d shown no sign of walking and as a two-year-old he could not even sit up, his bones were so painful and soft. The doctor said it was rickets, but that exercise would be good for his legs and that Margate was the ideal place to be. And indeed it was. Five minutes on the jetty or the promenade was enough to give anyone a healthy appetite and even ladies who didn’t like sea bathing were happy to get a pretty glow afterwards. Father encouraged Billy to exercise and taught him to swim and soon my brother grew stronger, although it pained him to walk sometimes and his right leg was permanently turned in at the knee.

  Billy looked a lot like our father, with unruly eyebrows and a slight gap between his front teeth, and in profile they were exactly the same, always with their jaw jutted out. My brother swam most days in the ocean. He soon developed a powerful overarm stroke and Father thought he had the makings of a champion. When he was younger Father had been the fastest swimmer on the Kentish coast, and now he wanted someone to follow his example.

  Billy stopped at the point where the water reached the top of his chest. He blew, once, twice, quickly on my face and when my eyes closed in surprise, he took me under. Down we went, into the sea. I tasted salt in my mouth and I couldn’t hear a thing. Then I opened my eyes and for a moment we looked at each other, my brother and me. His lips were closed, his cheeks puffed with breath, his hair waving like a black anemone. A string of seaweed floated across his forehead and as he tried to brush it away I let go of him and for a moment or two I paddled on my own. It was a confidence born of intuition, I don’t know how I did it but I did, and I kicked away with my fat little legs until up I popped back into the air. Then so did Billy and he laughed and said I was a little tadpole.