Wordsworth s Leap

Setting: Lake District, Northern England - June 1981

The end-of-term celebration for the sixth form at Windermere Grammar had moved from the official ceremony to the traditional "informal gathering" by Blackwater Quarry. Everyone chipped in ;10—serious money in 1981, enough for a decent pub meal. The girls were meant to organize food while the boys handled drinks, but Polina Wordsworth had other plans.

The Outsider's Contribution

Polina came from old Lakeland gentry—her family had lived in the same stone house since before Wordsworth made the Lakes famous. Brilliant but solitary, she was the class oddity: too bookish for the local kids, too aloof for genuine friendship. While others prepared sandwiches and crisps, she sat apart on a moss-covered boulder, reading a battered copy of Anna Akhmatova's poetry—in Russian, which she'd taught herself.

"Wordsworth's at it again with her foreign nonsense," muttered Jake, the rugby captain, but there was grudging respect in his voice. She'd contributed her money like everyone else, then disappeared to the off-license, returning with four bottles of decent vodka and two of wine.

"How'd you manage that?" asked Sarah, the head girl. The shopkeeper rarely sold to students.

Polina shrugged. "I asked properly."

The Unexpected Performance

As twilight deepened and the first bottle circulated, Jake called out: "Come on, Wordsworth! Give us a song—you're always humming something."

Polina looked up from her book, closed it carefully, and walked to where someone had brought an old acoustic guitar. Her voice, when it came, was lower than expected—almost husky, definitely not girlish:

There's a woman who's sold all her diamonds and gold
For a staircase that reaches the heavens...

She sang the haunting alternative to the Zeppelin classic, her voice climbing impossibly high on the final notes, then settling into something else entirely—a song about a young Russian poetess swimming in the Black Sea, wild and free and completely herself.

The Challenge

When she finished, Polina set down the guitar and walked toward Quarry Edge—the fifteen-meter drop that even the most reckless boys avoided. The water was deep enough, but hitting it wrong from that height could knock you unconscious.

"Want to remember this day," she said to no one in particular, untying the sash of her simple summer dress.

They watched, transfixed, as she removed her sandals, placed them neatly together. Then, with the matter-of-fact precision that had marked all her academic achievements, she slipped off her undergarments beneath the dress.

"Anyone care to follow?" she asked, letting the dress fall to the grass.

For a moment she stood silhouetted against the darkening sky—tall, pale, completely unashamed. Then she ran three steps and dove.

After the Plunge

She surfaced cleanly, swam a lazy backstroke to the middle of the quarry, then returned. Jake, surprising himself, was first to help her up the rocky path.

"Brilliant," was all he managed.

Back at the fire, she asked for vodka. Drank it neat, without flinching. Only when she'd dried completely did she dress—slowly, thoughtfully, each piece of clothing a small ritual.

"Tomorrow I'm off to Cambridge," she announced. "Natural Sciences at Newnham. Probably won't see any of you again."

She opened her book one final time and read aloud—in English now—Akhmatova's words about learning to live simply, wisely, looking at the sky.

Epilogue

Years later, some would claim they'd always known Polina Wordsworth would do something extraordinary. Others insisted they'd seen the scientific genius beneath the teenage eccentricity. But Jake, whenever the story came up in pubs, would simply say: "She was the bravest person I ever knew. Made the rest of us look like children playing at being grown-up."

The quarry still bears informal witness to that summer evening—local legend among the climbers and swimmers who've come since. They call it "Wordsworth's Leap," though none of them know the whole story of the girl who taught herself Russian poetry and left the Lakes for Cambridge, carrying with her the memory of one perfect moment of absolute freedom.