Submarine

by Joe Dunthorne

  ‘You know your next-door neighbour, the man at number fifteen?’ I ask.

  ‘You mean Mr Sheridan?’

  ‘He is a knacker. A knacker is someone who slaughters horses.’

  He doesn’t say anything. He rubs my back at approximately the sixth vertebra.

  ‘Would you mind lying on your front for me, Oliver? You can put your face here.’ He could have said ‘lying prone’, saving two syllables.

  He points to a small hole, a bit like a toilet seat, at one end of the bed.

  ‘Here, Andrew?’ I ask.

  He nods. I shift on to my belly and poke my nose through the hole.

  ‘I’m going to lower the bed now, Oliver.’ The bed lowers, becoming briefly animate. I wonder if he lied about not understanding the word pansexual.

  He massages the area surrounding my eighth vertebra. ‘I know Mr Sheridan quite well, Oliver.’ He has moved up to my neck now. ‘He’s a painter-decorator.’

  He rubs my back at approximately the ninth vertebra.

  ‘Andrew, he has the eyes and overalls of a killer,’ I say.

  My mum says that if you want to remember someone’s name you should be sure to address them by their name at least twice during your introductory conversation.

  I can only see this tiny patch of light-blue carpet. I think about spitting on it. Or trying to vomit.

  He applies a little more pressure on my neck.

  ‘The family at number thirteen are Zoro…’ I lose my breath as he kneads my back. ‘Zoroastrians. Zoroastrianism is a pre-Islamic religion of ancient Persia.’

  I can’t stop myself from grunting. I hope he doesn’t think I’m enjoying myself.

  ‘Hmm, I’m fairly sure that they are Muslim, Oliver.’ He presses harder on my neck. If I wanted to throw up, I could.

  ‘Okay,’ he says. A machine bleeps like a television being turned off. ‘I’m going to do some ultrasound on your back.’ I don’t know what the word ultrasound means. Normally, I would note the word on my hand but, in this instance, I am forced to bite a chunk from the inside of my cheek as a reminder.

  ‘This is cold,’ he says, and it feels like he is breaking eggs on my back. It is not unpleasant.

  I think about what he has told me about the family at number thirteen and the man at number fifteen. I think about the way he touches my back and the model skeleton and that he said I have long femurs.

  I could easily throw up.

  He rubs the gel into my spine and shoulders with what feels like an underarm deodorant roll-on. I don’t need to use deodorant yet. Chips says that roll-on is for gays.

  ‘I was sick on your car,’ I tell him. He stops rubbing.

  ‘What?’

  It is quite difficult to speak; my cheeks are squished together.

  ‘On the bonnet. But it didn’t stick because of the rain.’

  ‘You were sick on my car?’ he says. This is like speaking to a baby.

  ‘Yes, I was sick on your car. The yellow one. Your car alarm had been going off all night and I wanted to teach you a lesson.’

  I really feel like I might be sick. My face is starting to feel numb. There is another bleeping sound. I think he has turned something off. I hear him pacing. I am very vulnerable. I occasionally glimpse one of his loafers. Then he stops. I wait for him to say or do something.

  ‘You can sit up now, Oliver. We’re done.’

  Afterwards, the doctor was very nice to me. He told me that I am really very healthy and my back isn’t bad at all. He gave me a free lumbar support, a salami-shaped cushion, because, he said, he wants us to be friends from now on.

  I hide the lumbar support under my shirt as I open my front door.

  Mum is waiting inside, sat on the bottom-but-one stair.

  ‘How did it go?’

  ‘Great – I feel really relaxed.’

  She has half-dried her hair. The tips look darker brown than the roots.

  ‘Good. Will you go again?’

  ‘Nah, it turns out I only had a small bit of childhood trauma; it didn’t take very long to sort out. He says that one of my main problems was that I don’t feel close enough to my parents. They don’t share enough with me.’

  She watches me. She’s wearing a terrible purple fleece.

  ‘What’s under your jumper?’ she asks.

  I look down at my barrelled chest.

  ‘That’s a new pillow.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘So I can sleep at night. I’ve been having trouble sleeping. It’s mostly your fault.’

  ‘Can I see it?’

  ‘No. I lied. It’s rolled-up porn magazines.’

  She squints at me.

  ‘Tell me what’s under your jumper, Olly?’

  It’s times like this I am thankful to be a teenager.

  I take advantage of my parents’ current stance on swearing – that it is up to me.

  ‘Fuck sake!’ I yell, barging past her and taking three steps at a time. Thank our Lord for long femurs.

  I run up to my bedroom, sit down at my desk and start writing a short story:

  There are nine planets in our solar system, Saturn being the largest. The life forms of Saturn are silent. They don’t need mouths because they communicate using thoughts, not speech.

  ‘I want to stay in my room,’ a young Saturnian thinks to his mother.

  His mother understands completely. She comprehends his meaning in a way that spoken Earth monosyllables could never replicate. She knows that he feels like having some time to himself – no need to ask if he’s okay or worry about him or leave booklets around the house.

  I tongue the small notch in the wall of my mouth. Then I look up the word ultrasound in the encyclopaedia.

  Ultrasound uses high-frequency sound waves to study hard-to-reach body areas. Ultrasound was first developed in the Second World War to locate submerged objects: depth charges, submarines, Atlantis and such.

  The first thing I ever stole was three pounds and forty-five pence from the mantelpiece at Ian Grist’s birthday party. I spent it on Copydex.

  The second thing I ever stole was my father’s Oxford Encyclopaedia. I caused a small argument between Mum and Dad. He said: ‘I always put it back in exactly the same spot after I use it and – look! – it’s not there.’

  The next day, he went out and bought two hardback copies of the encyclopaedia; one was black and one was navy.

  ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘now I’ve bought you your own copy.’

  I heard the thunk of the book landing on her desk.

  Some months later, when Mum was away at a conference, I left his old encyclopaedia on the landing outside my bedroom. I wanted him to find it. It was open at pages 112–13, which contains the entry for ‘cognitive dissonance’:

  Cognitive dissonance is a condition first proposed by the psychologist Leon Festinger in 1956, relating to his hypothesis of cognitive consistency.

  Cognitive dissonance is a state of opposition between cognitions.

  A cognition is basically a thought, belief or attitude.

  The theory of cognitive dissonance holds that contradicting cognitions serve as a driving force that compels the human mind to acquire or invent new thoughts or beliefs, or to modify existing beliefs, so as to minimize the amount of dissonance (conflict) between cognitions.

  Dad read this entry, then, without comment, he quietly placed the book back on my bookcase.

  For my last birthday, Dad bought me a pocket-sized Collins English Dictionary. It would only fit in a pocket that had been specially designed.

  Last Christmas, in the way that my father tends to when he feels he has hit upon a seam of easy, pleasing gifts, he gave me a blood-red Roget’s Thesaurus, a square bulge in my stocking.

  I have my reference books to hand while gazing in through the windows of our downhill neighbours.

  I have the attic room in a building that is partly owned by my parents and partly owned by the bank.

  We live halfway up a steep hill in a t
hree-storey terraced house. The area is known as Mount Pleasant. The Victorians built the streets in a grid shape so that all the houses face the same way, looking out over the bay. My parents tell me that I have a fantastic view, but I don’t believe in scenery.

  Swansea is shaped like an amphitheatre. The guildhall is somebody in the front row wearing an ungainly, clock-tower hat.

  From their first-floor bedroom, my dad likes to watch the Cork ferry as it appears from behind Mumbles Lighthouse and shuffles out into the bay.

  ‘Here’s Corky,’ he says, as though introducing a game-show host.

  I like to look into the windows and the back gardens of the houses on Grovelands Terrace. I consider myself an excellent judge of character.

  The family at number thirteen are still Zoroastrians.

  The ugly old woman at number fourteen is a triskaidekaphobic. She fears the number thirteen.

  The man at number fifteen is still a knacker.

  And there’s Andrew Goddard at number sixteen – both an excellent pansexual doctor and a compulsive liar.

  Sunday. Me and Dad are at the tip, which is nothing more than a car park full of skips, crushers and enormous freight containers. The sky is concrete grey. I can smell beer slops, vinegar and soil.

  I’m high-fiving wine bottles through stiff brush. It is a bit like a mass grave and all the green bottles are Jews. There are brown bottles and clear bottles too but not nearly as many. With Gestapic efficiency, I pick out another green bottle from the crate.

  All the bodies will be crushed, recycled and used in building motorways.

  ‘Oliver, we’ve got something to tell you,’ Dad says, dumping a cardboard box full of garden waste into a toad-green mangler.

  Unlike the doctor, when Dad says ‘we’, he means ‘we’, because Mum is omnipotent.

  ‘Who’s dead?’ I ask, shot-putting a bottle of Richebourg.

  ‘No one’s dead.’

  ‘You’re getting a divorce?’

  ‘Oliver.’

  ‘Mum’s preggers?’

  ‘No, we –’

  ‘I’m adopted.’

  ‘Oliver! Please, shit up!’

  I can’t believe he just said that. I yelp with laughter. He looks flustered and red, cradling a slush of Sunday newspaper supplements. I keep laughing long after it has ceased to be funny.

  But what Dad says next cuts my chortling short. Nothing could have prepared me:

  ‘Your mother and I decided: we need a holiday. We’ve booked for us all to go at Easter. To Italy,’ he says.

  Flagitious

  In assembly, Mr Checker announced that these are the best years of our lives. He said that most of our defining memories will be formed during school.

  At the end of the assembly, Mr Checker held up an article from the Evening Post. He explained:

  ‘Zoe Preece’s mother’s beagle has beaten off eight thousand other dogs to win Best in Show at Crufts.’

  Mr Checker made Zoe stand while we applauded, cheered, laughed.

  Zoe is not the fattest girl in our school; Martina Freeman is much fatter. If you call Martina fat, she will push you against a wall and grab your balls. For this reason, Zoe has been appointed fattest girl. When she gets called Fat, she scurries away and writes about it in her diary. She has a short dark bob and excellent skin, the colour of full-fat milk. Her lips are always wet.

  The best kind of bullying is topical. My friend Chips is a topical bully.

  It is a well-known fact that on the last day of school before a holiday, even a half term, there are absolutely no rules.

  The path to the school pond runs through a scrubland of ill trees, nettles and punctured footballs.

  Chips adopts the pompous trot of the Crufts dog-trainer as he leads Zoe down the path, dropping the contents of her pencil case at intervals like dog chews.

  ‘Good girl,’ Chips says, tossing Zoe’s highlighter pen over his head.

  Chips has a grade-two all over; you can see the contours of his skull, bulging and ridged.

  Jordana, Abby and I bring up the rear, watching Zoe’s bum when she leans down to retrieve her stationery. She is wearing trousers.

  ‘Come on, girl,’ Chips encourages, dropping a Niceday rubber that bounces out of Zoe’s grasp.

  Zoe calls out, ‘Stop it!’ as she stoops. Victims lack creativity.

  A protractor clatters on to the paving stones. I see Zoe’s dairy skin where her shirt has turned transparent with sweat.

  ‘That’s it, Fat, almost there.’ Chips lets a palette of coloured pencils fall from the pencil case.

  We reach the small, stagnant school pond. It is covered in green algae. A sunken tennis ball, mossy but luminous, glows beneath the surface like a globule of phlegm. The pond is bordered with paving stones; tall brambles encroach on all sides, leaving hardly enough room to walk around the edge. Chips stands on the far side, his mouth slightly open, his tongue bright red. I can see the small dark scar, like an almost-healed scratch, on his upper lip. With her left hand, Zoe clutches the retrieved stationery to her chest. Her right hand reaches out as Chips dangles her pencil case over the water.

  ‘Give it back!’ she shouts.

  ‘Good girl. Now, roll over.’

  Bullying is about solidarity.

  I don’t know which of us puts a hand to Zoe’s back first – we are all capable – but once one person commits then the rest must follow: a basic rule of bullying.

  I feel the ridge of Zoe’s bra strap and the warmth coming off her skin as my hand – our hands – push. She falls, not in the traditional style, belly-flopping, but with a foot outstretched as if the algae might hold her up. The Reebok on her right foot finds the bottom of the pond, which is only eight inches deep. For a moment, I imagine that she might just balance there, fat-ballerina on one leg, but her foot slips from under her and she falls on her bum into the shallow gloop. Her ruler, rubber, pens and pencils float on the thick algae.

  We all feel proud; as Zoe begins to sob, her shirt splattered green, her stationery slowly sinking, we know that this will be one of those vivid memories from youth that Mr Checker told us about in this morning’s assembly.

  Autarky

  My mother stands by the front gate, talking to a driver’s-side window that is wound down halfway. She is explaining, in Italian, that she cannot speak much Italian. Smiling, she tells the window that she is from ‘Galles’. My mother loves being asked for directions.

  ‘They must have thought I was local,’ she says, sitting back down at the stone table. Her light tan complements the simple wrinkles at her eyes and mouth. My parents and I are near Barga, in Tuscany, staying in a rented villa. Sitting outside on the clay-coloured patio, we look down upon a small river and a dried-up vineyard in the valley below. It is warm here but not excessively so. My parents like to come to holiday destinations ‘out of season’. It gives them a sense of individuality.

  In the car on the way to Heathrow Airport, my parents had a discussion about money. My parents don’t argue – they only discuss. I find this infuriating.

  They were discussing how much money to transform into traveller’s cheques. Traveller’s cheques are a way of letting the world know that you expect to get mugged. It is the equivalent of swapping to the other side of the street when you see some older boys smoking outside the newsagent.

  They disagreed about how expensive Tuscany would be: Dad thought quite, Mum thought not very. The debate was reignited today, in the butcher’s, when I demanded that we buy lamb. Dad said that the lamb was a bit steep; Mum said that it was perfectly reasonable. Regardless, it is my fifteenth birthday tomorrow so we’re eating things that I like: beetroot and yoghurt, cheesy mash and lamb cutlets of indeterminate value. The lamb is bleeding.

  I listen to them talk about their friends and colleagues. I try and let them know that they are boring by turning my head very deliberately from one to the other as they talk, as though we were on Centre Court. They have nicknames for most of their colleagu
es: Pixie, Queen Ann and Porko. Porko is my mother’s boss.

  ‘Porko’s getting married.’

  ‘I thought there already was a Mrs Porko.’

  ‘No, he’s had various ladies…’

  ‘Porkettes.’

  ‘Porkettes. Exactly. But this one is the real deal.’

  ‘How can you be sure?’

  ‘Well, he announced it at the end of an exam-board meeting.’

  ‘No flash in the pan, then?’

  ‘Apparently not.’

  ‘Not a rasher decision.’

  ‘Please, Lloyd.’

  Anger does not come easy to me. It is something I have to encourage, like a greyhound in second place. My father is pulling a lump of lamb fat from between his front two teeth. He struggles with it, trying to pincer it between thumb and forefinger, pushing it with his tongue. His yellow teeth are enough – I’m out of the traps with a howl:

  ‘Why don’t we talk about me?’

  My father dabs the edges of his mouth with his handkerchief. Handkerchiefs exist somewhere between the tissue and the flannel. My dad owns eight.

  ‘All you ever talk about is work. What about me? Aren’t I interesting?’ I say.

  ‘Okay then, Oliver, tell us something.’

  I slide the slices of beetroot around my plate, turning the splodge of yoghurt pink. I like the way beetroot turns your wee pinkish red; I like to pretend that I have internal bleeding.

  ‘It’s not as easy as that – you can’t just ask me to tell you something and pretend that you’re taking an interest. This is not some board meeting where I’m just another bullet point.’

  I sound impassioned. My father pretends to write down something on his handkerchief.

  ‘My son is not a bullet point,’ he says, making an exaggerated full stop, looking to me for my reaction. He hopes to diffuse the situation with humour. My greyhound is laughing, lagging.

  ‘To be honest, Oliver, I think of you more as a permaculture farm,’ he says, using a word I don’t understand. He sees my discomfort. ‘Permaculture is a form of very delicate, small-scale self-sufficiency farming. Certain crops are planted next to each other so any nutrients that one plant takes from the soil the other puts back. Like the birds that peck food from a hippo’s teeth, you need a careful balance of stimulus –’