Paper 2 Question 3 in practice: a 15-mark answer

I learned to swim in the cold summer of 1953, in a reservoir my mother had forbidden me to go near. My cousin Tom, who was twelve and therefore knew everything, assured me there was nothing to it. 'You just kick,' he said. I kicked. The water closed over my head like a lid on a pan, green and roaring, and for a long second I understood quite clearly that I was going to die. Then a hand seized my collar and hauled me, spluttering, into the reeds. It was not Tom's. It belonged to a man in a flat cap who had been fishing on the bank, and who said nothing at all, but walked me home, dripping, to my mother's door. I never learned his name. I have swum in seas and rivers all over the world since then, and every time I step into the water, I think of him.