‘It’s time to swim,’ Ginny decreed.
‘Aren’t you supposed to wait for half an hour after eating?’ Fergus asked, and she gazed at him blankly.
‘Why?’
‘In case of cramp.’
‘What medical textbook did that come out of?’
‘My mother’s,’ he said, and she grinned.
‘My mother said every minute out of the water on a night like this was a minute wasted. Are you pitting your mother against my mother?’
‘No,’ he said faintly. ‘I daren’t.’
‘You did bring your togs?’
He had. He felt a bit self-conscious hauling off his shirt and trousers, with everyone looking at him. Ginny had seen him before but the thought of that made him even more self-conscious-and Miriam whistling didn’t help at all.
‘Ooh, Dr Fergus. You make me go all wobbly round the knees.’
‘I begin to see what you see in the man,’ Richard managed, and Fergus made a valiant attempt not to blush.
‘I’m swimming,’ he said, and turned toward the water.
‘Not before the race,’ Ginny announced, and he hesitated.
‘The race?’
‘We have a boat.’ Ginny gestured up the bank to where an ancient bathtub lay on its side.
‘That’s a bathtub,’ he said cautiously.
‘The man’s intelligent as well as good-looking,’ Richard whispered. ‘Ginny, you’ve struck gold.’
‘Quiet,’ Ginny ordered. She turned back to the lake and gestured to a series of poles curving about two hundred yards out into the lake. ‘We use the bath to paddle through as many poles as we can. The poles are all in shallow water,’ she said. ‘They mark the boundary of where non-swimmers can go. Plus they act as a sort of slalom run.’
‘A slalom run,’ Fergus said cautiously. ‘As in skiing. Right. Um… Anything else I should know?’
‘Our bathtub doesn’t have a plug.’
‘Right.’
Ginny grinned at his evident confusion. ‘Right behind where the bath is, there’s a clay bank,’ she told him. ‘It’s really gluey clay, and it’s the makings of a Cradle Lake tradition. You make your own plug. Your plug can be made of anything you can find on the ground, like leaves, grass, even cow pats-but the plug has to be held together by clay.’
‘I see.’ He shook his head. ‘Nope. I don’t see.’
‘The trick is to make your plug, launch your bath and then paddle-using only arms over the side. You weave in and out of the poles. The record is the third last marker before the plug disintegrates and the bath sinks.’
‘Who holds the record?’ Fergus asked, and Richard managed a smile.
‘That would be me. Aged all of fourteen. Twenty-three poles.’
‘Richard was great,’ Ginny told them, smiling down at her brother in affection. ‘But, Fergus, you’re a grown man with muscles that make even Miriam whistle. Surely you can beat a mere fourteen-year-old whippersnapper.’
‘With cystic fibrosis,’ Richard added. ‘Everyone without cystic fibrosis should be handicapped.’
‘No one’s beaten your record,’ Ginny said soundly. ‘Stuff cystic fibrosis. It didn’t beat you then.’
This was a battle, Fergus thought. He looked from brother to sister and back again and thought this disease had been a part of their lives for so long that it was a tangible thing. A monster to be beaten, over and over again.
Until it could no longer be beaten. Which would be soon.
Meanwhile, they were watching him. Expectant.
‘You want me to show you how it’s done?’ Ginny asked. ‘Richard would but he’s a bit tied up at the moment.’
‘You could say that,’ Richard said, and grinned. ‘Madison, sit by me while your Aunty Ginny plays boat captain.’
‘I reckon Madison could go in the boat,’ Miriam said, smiling at the lot of them like an indulgent aunt instead of the efficient nurse she was.
‘Can the dogs go in the boat, too?’ Madison asked, and Ginny held up her hands in horror.
‘One child maybe but no dogs. I intend to set a mark that Dr Reynard can’t beat. Madison, you can help paddle but the dogs would sink us by the first pole.’
‘Right,’ Miriam said decisively. ‘That’s it, then. The crews are decided. Let’s get this boat race under way.’
It looked easy, Fergus thought, sitting on the sun-warmed sand and waiting as Ginny prepared her plug.
‘The trick is not to show Dr Reynard what we’re doing,’ she told Madison, and they turned their backs on him and stooped over the clay bank. ‘But the trick is to weave the grass, over and over. Watch.’
Two heads bent, intent.
This was great, Fergus thought. This, for Madison, was a night off. She was totally absorbed, and for the moment she could forget the horrors of abandonment, the loss of her mother. She was handing Ginny blade after blade of grass, and a complicated piece of neurosurgery couldn’t have elicited more attention.
‘Right,’ said Ginny at last. ‘Fergus, you’re permitted to help haul the bath to the water’s edge.’
‘Gee, thanks.’
‘Think nothing of it.’
They hauled the bath down to the shore, then Ginny fitted the now empty picnic hamper into the rear, upside down.
‘That’s your seat,’ she told Madison. ‘Put your toes down into the water and kick as hard as you can. Kick and kick and kick. I find yelling helps, too. A sort of warrior war cry. Listen as I yell and follow.’
Madison looked dubiously at Ginny. For a moment Fergus thought she’d refuse, but Ginny was squeezing a little more water out of her plug and not paying attention.
Finally she looked up, satisfied.
‘Right,’ she told Madison, woman to woman. ‘Are we ready?’
‘Yes,’ said Madison.
So Madison was seated on the wicker basket. Ginny climbed aboard and squished her plug into the hole.
‘Right,’ she yelled. ‘Push.’
Fergus and Miriam pushed the boat out into the water, through the first poles.
‘Go,’ Ginny yelled. She was in the bow of the bath, leaning forward so her hands were paddling crazily in front of her. The boat was hardly steerable. The trick was to get close enough to the next pole to grab it and haul the tub around. ‘Go, go go,’ Ginny yelled, and Madison kicked with a ferocity that belied her four years of age.
‘Go,’ Madison yelled, entering into the spirit of things and kicking harder. ‘Go, go, go.’
The dogs were going crazy, barking in chorus. Miriam was laughing, and Richard was doing a close approximation to a chuckle, holding his hands up and clapping to show encouragement.
Five poles. Six. Seven, eight…
The tub settled lower in the water.
‘Kick,’ Ginny yelled, hauling the tub round the next pole. ‘Go, go go.’
Two more poles. The bow dipped…
The bathtub slid silently underwater, but by the time it sank Ginny had Madison in her arms, hugging her and cheering as their vessel disappeared from view.
‘We were fantastic, Maddy, girl,’ she whooped. ‘Weren’t we fantastic?’
‘Madison,’ Maddy said, but she was smiling.
‘Fourteen poles,’ Ginny said in satisfaction. ‘Beat that, Dr Reynard.’
Only, of course, he couldn’t. He made a plug he was sure would hold. Miriam and Ginny and Madison shoved him forward with a push he had to concede was as powerful a start as he’d given them. They whooped, the dogs barked-and he sank as he reached the eleventh pole.
