Chapter 24 Summary

"Child's Play"

"Child's Play" at eleven pages is one of the longer passages in Waterland. After introducing the chapter with reference to the war in France as it had commenced in June, 1940, Crick now provides the details as to how Mary Metcalfe, Freddie Parr, Dick Crick and the other young people become involved in the adolescent sexual challenge game that leads to Freddie Parr's death in July, 1943.

A group of boys are on one side, a group of girls across from them, on the banks of the Leem. Parr initiates a dare with Mary Metcalfe, where the other will have to show their pubic area to the group. The boys have been drinking whisky, stolen by Freddie from his black marketer father.

The dare results in Mary telling the boys that the one who can swim the longest underwater will see her naked...