‘You’ll get used to it.’ He stood and pressed her gently to lie backwards. ‘Trust the water. I’ll support you– but it’ll be the water doing most of the work.’
She let herself dip back. ‘If I do this, will you let me go back in?’
‘I will.’
He always kept his word. Pushing her feet up, she lay back, Jacob’s hand firm under her waist. Her hips rose to the surface. Calm swept her when her ears went under the water. She could no longer hear the wind. Its caress felt sensuous rather than bitter, rain barely noticeable.
‘Beautiful,’ Jacob murmured huskily, gradually moving with her into deeper water.
It was like floating in silk. Jacob started treading water.
How deep were they? ‘Jacob?—’
‘What can you hear– what can you feel?’ His voice was a little muffled.
He was trying to distract her, but she knew what he meant. They had been reading verse before this– Wordsworth’s poems and a few by Coleridge. Could she capture that sense of something sublime in nature? This was the kind of experience the writers sought, being out in the wild, open to the elements.
She closed her eyes and lifted her head a little to clear water from her ears. ‘I can hear the lapping of the water– the roaring wind– the sheep arguing?—’
‘Arguing? I always thought they were saying “here I am, where are you?”’
‘This is my poetic moment. My sheep argue.’
He gave a put-upon sigh. ‘Very well.’
‘The hiss of the rain. I can feel the water around me, holding me up.’ His fingers flexed. ‘And your hand.’
‘I’m barely doing anything– you’re floating.’ To prove it, he took his hand away briefly.
‘Jacob!’ Poetry forgotten, she floundered for her footing and went under. He scooped her up out of the water with a shout of laughter, caught her so her legs went around his waist. She coughed and swiped streaming hair off her face. ‘You wretch!’
‘Don’t blame me. That was you ducking yourself.’
‘You promised you wouldn’t let go.’
‘My hand was still there.’
‘But I couldn’t feel it!’
He wiped it down her back. ‘Feel it now?’
That was more like it. ‘Oh, yes.’
‘Now I’ve got you here…’
‘Yes?’ she asked hopefully.
‘Let’s try floating on your front.’
* * *
A quarter of an hour later, rain shower fading to spits and spots, Jacob allowed that enough time had passed for a first swimming lesson. She’d managed to float unaided, and even made some breaststroke moves that hadn’t drowned her. He declared that she would soon be proficient using her frog’s legs and arms.
‘Mind if I swim a little further?’ he asked.
‘Be my guest– or be your own guest seeing how this is your cottage and your tarn.’
‘Borrowed from the landowner. None of it’s mine.’
