Swing, Swing Together

between it and the two on the right. If Harriet had understood the geography lesson correctly-and concentration had been difficult that afternoon-water flowing on the inside of a curve is shallower and flows less quickly than on the outside. If she could possibly steer herself leftwards towards the smallest island, there was a chance of getting a foothold on the silt that must have accumulated around its base.

With a determined thrashing of arms and legs she started across the current towards the eyot. She was immediately turned over like a log, but righted herself and tried again at a less ambitious angle to the flow. Several times she started to sink but managed to rear up, and when her strength was all but spent and she submerged again, she felt her knees touch firm mud. She was in three feet of water.

How long she remained kneeling in the shallows waiting for the pumping of her heart to return to normal Harriet was in no state to estimate. She was not surprised that by the time she remembered the existence of the three men in a boat (to say nothing of the dog) and turned to look for them, they were nowhere in sight. If they had noticed her in the water they had not demonstrated much concern for her plight. Two, she remembered, had been rowing and would have had their backs to her. The third had sunk downwards somewhat in the cushions at the other end and may well have been asleep. If that was so, then the panic in the water must have been unnecessary. Jane and Molly, for all their experience of the world at large, had plunged like porpoises at the first sight of the opposite sex.

Pleasing as that recollection was, it did not alter the fact that Harriet was marooned without her clothes, wet and shivering on a small island in the Thames.

Well, she would look upon it as a test of character. “A teacher must be equal to each situation, however unpredictable,” Miss Plummer frequently reminded her students, although the Plum’s wildest vision of the unpredictable was walking into a classroom and finding no chalk there. Resolutely, Harriet heaved herself onto the island, a narrow strip entirely covered by reeds, waist-high. Some small creature scuttled into the water, putting her nerves to the test at once. Harriet crossed the spine of the eyot with the high, fastidious steps of a wading bird, and entered the water on the other side.

A channel no more than fifteen feet in width separated her from the riverbank. Feeling no excessive pressure from the current, she ventured to the level of her thighs and found she could reach the bough of an overhanging willow. She twisted it round her wrist, took a deep breath and set off for the opposite bank with all the strength she had left. At its deepest point the water reached her chin, but she gripped the willow tightly and kept moving until she was clear and safely up the bank.

There, another test of character awaited her. She found as she stood upright that her way was obstructed by an uncountable number of thin metal struts radiating from a common center. It was like looking into an ornamental bird cage large enough to house a peacock, but the creature on the other side was not feathered or exotic: it was a policeman, shining his bull’s-eye lantern through the fore-wheel of a penny-farthing bicycle.

CHAPTER 4

A towpath dialogue-Short digression on diabolical practices-A constable’s consideration

“Would you be requiring assistance, miss?” he gently inquired in the dialect rarely heard by the sheltered community at Elfrida College.

“Oh!” Her hands moved with a speed that would have drawn a cry of admiration from a drill sergeant. “It would oblige me if you would point your lantern in some other direction.”

“Certainly, miss. Been swimmin’, have you? ’Tis nothin’ unusual to drift downstream a little. Where are you from?”

She hesitated, reluctant to throw herself on his mercy, but recoiling from telling a lie to the Law. Candour triumphed. “I belong to the training college. I was taking a midnight bathe. My clothes are half a mile that way.” She indicated the direction with a small movement of her head.

“Then you’d better put my tunic about you. ’Tis a tidy walk from here.” He set down his bicycle and lamp and began unfastening buttons. “That’s Medmenham Abbey behind me,” he said. “You’ll no doubt have heard of the Hell Fire Club of a hundred years ago. They were a prime set of rogues, they were. We remember ’em in these parts-Sir Francis Dashwood and that John Wilkes and Members of Parliament comin’ here regular from Westminster. There, put that round your shoulders, miss. Yes, when I saw you climbin’ up that bank, I don’t mind admittin’ the thought crossed my mind that you were the tormented spirit of some poor village girl, taken advantage of by those wicked rascals. Would you permit me to accompany you, miss?”

It seemed a superfluous question when she was wearing his tunic, but he must have asked it out of courtesy. He was a singularly considerate constable, standing in the moonlight in his braces with his bull’s-eye pointing discreetly at the ground. And he looked not many years older than she.

“I shall feel the safer for your company, Officer.”

He left the bicycle on the grass, explaining that he would collect it later when he returned to his vigil. There had been reports that night fishing was going on and he was deputed to investigate.

“I did notice three men in a boat, but I don’t believe I saw fishing rods,” said Harriet. She was feeling more comfortable in the tunic, which she wore like a cloak. It extended past the middle of her thighs.

“What sort of boat was it, miss?”

“Oh, a rowing boat, a skiff, I believe. Two men were rowing and the third was seated facing them. They had a dog with them. They didn’t look like poachers.”

“You can’t tell, miss. They might have been trailing nets.”

Even in her moment of greatest alarm this was not a thought which had occurred to Harriet. Imagine becoming tangled in their net! Things could certainly have turned out worse than they had. If the constable’s tunic had been only a foot or two longer, or, better still, if he had been wearing a greatcoat, the walk along the riverbank might have been quite agreeable. He was a tall young man and he moved with a confident air, one hand gripping his braces and the other pulling aside occasional branches that over-hung their route.

It occurred to Harriet that if night fishing was illegal, naked bathing was probably against the law as well. She wondered whether the constable proposed to make an arrest. It seemed to matter less than the reception awaiting her at College. Expulsion was inevitable, for what was “indecorous or unladylike conduct” if it was not coming back in the small hours dressed only in a policeman’s tunic? She would surely become a legend among the students, but she would never become a teacher.

She stole a glance at his face. He still had an accommodating look. Perhaps it was the way his moustache curled at the ends. No, she could see his eyes quite clearly in the moonlight and they twinkled with good humour, like her papa’s. They must be blue, she decided.

“I shall be in fearful trouble.”

“Why is that, miss?” He was genuinely surprised.

“We are not supposed to go out. It was a madcap adventure. I was dared to do it, you see. When Miss Plummer finds out-”

“Miss Plummer?” His accent made the name quite sweet to the ear.

“Our principal.”

“Why should she find out, miss?”

“Aren’t you taking me back to the College?”

“You ain’t in custody, miss.” He smiled. “If you got out without that lady knowin’ it, I dare say you can get in again. I’ll just walk along with you and make sure your clothes are still where you left them. When we get there, I’ll turn the other way and you can return my tunic and I’ll make my way back to Medmenham. I’ve no mind to disturb your principal’s sleep, any more than you have, miss. Besides, I wouldn’t know what to say to the lady. After all, I don’t even know your name.”

“Thank you.”

They walked the next two hundred yards in silence. Then she put her hand lightly on his sleeve.

“It’s Harriet Shaw.”