Submarine

by Joe Dunthorne

  She throws her empty can at the bin on a small patch of grass below us. It clatters straight in. She lets out another, smaller, echo of her first burp and smiles at the man.

  Her friend is laughing. She throws her can too. It misses, bouncing and spluttering Coke, turning the gravel dark.

  ‘Oops,’ she says.

  I look over my shoulder to watch them jump into the cage behind me. They lean into each other as he pulls the safety bar down.

  Dad watches me from the ground as I slowly gain height. I wave. He waves back.

  As I move up from seven o’clock, past the watershed, I can see right across the fair. The generators look like squat toads, chain-smoking in the shaded corners behind each ride. In the cage behind me – below me – the two girls are pretending to be scared even though the ride is not going properly yet. One of them shouts: ‘Aaaah, fuckin’ ’ell, slow down!’

  As I reach the apogee, I can see the word DAVIS’S, written in strobing light bulbs on the roof of the dodgems.

  I wave at Dad. He waves back.

  The guy in the booth speaks into a police-style walkie-talkie.

  ‘Are you ready?’ His voice distorts through the tannoy. He has a cockney accent.

  ‘Yes!’ I say.

  ‘I can’t ’ear you,’ he says. He is standing behind a thin plastic window. ‘Are. You. Ready?’

  ‘Yeeesss!’ I yell.

  The man presses a button.

  There is a cheer as the wheel starts to speed up.

  As I reach the lowest point, I wave at Dad. He exaggeratedly pretends to bite his nails, as if he is terrified.

  The wheel gains more speed. My cage starts to swing on its own axis, like a cot. They are playing ‘Rhythm is a Dancer’.

  The girls start to scream.

  I notice my dad has already been distracted by a game where you fish for plastic hoops.

  The wheel accelerates. My cabin begins to pivot and roll. I think about the pills I have eaten bouncing around in my stomach like the balls in a lottery machine. I think of all the serotonin backing up in my brain. I think of the five different lottery machines: Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, Merlin and Galahad. I start grinning like a mental.

  ‘Woop!’ I shout.

  Centrifugal forces press my back against the seat. As I reach the apex, I see the floodlights have been turned on in St Helen’s Rugby and Cricket Ground, squares of white light suspended in the air like open portals into the next dimension. I stare into the lights. Squares burn on my retinas as I plunge downwards, my bum slipping forward on the cool metal seat, my chest against the safety bar.

  I close my eyes. There are melting marshmallow shapes on the backs of my eyelids. My stomach does one. I concentrate on the pickling sensation, my happy synapses. I open my eyes.

  ‘Yaaaaaaaaaaarrr!’ I scream as I whip past the man with the wacky stubble. He is staring at nothing, looking bored, a cloth sack of change in his fist.

  As I start to rocket upwards, the bliss becomes overwhelming.

  Rising, I have the floodlights in my peripheral vision like dizziness-stars. I feel as though my head is growing. I have quite a large head anyway. I feel it swell, as though someone is pulling all my hair at once.

  There are some serious happy-screams coming from the other cages: girls, boys, men.

  As I come over the apex and start to plunge, my neck becomes too weak to hold my head up straight. I feel like an alcoholic. I rest my head on the safety bar.

  Everyone is screaming. I imagine that, like me, they believe the screws that hold their cage to the wheel are loosening. They foresee their red cage being tossed like a cricket ball, leg-spinning over the fair, lit briefly in the floodlights. And just before visualizing their impact – crushing the Roast Pork caravan – they realize that the worst of it is over and they have survived one rotation. And for the few seconds while they are in the bottom third of the wheel, on their way up, they feel safe. That’s when they laugh and scream simultaneously.

  I rip past six o’clock and start to climb again; I am so happy that I can think about death without getting on a downer. My stomach is at Tumble Tots: forward rolls, cartwheels, roly-polys. I am close to ecstasy.

  My carriage turns briefly upside down as I reach the summit and start to plummet.

  My mouth lolls open, my tongue is zero-G. My IQ is in freefall. I can’t think of the word.

  Until I sweep upwards again.

  Prolapse. It means to fall or slip out of place, especially an organ.

  Chips once showed me a photo on the internet of a prolapsing rectum: a protrusion of the rectal mucous membrane through the anus. It looks like a monkey’s brain. One of the ways I can tell that I am unhappy is if I get squeamish about looking up internet photos of STDs, footballers’ broken legs, napalm babies.

  I reach the zenith and start to sink. The girls in the carriage above are still laughing.

  One of them yells: ‘Shut up, I’m bustin’ for a slash!’

  My ears go out of focus. There’s the taste of blood in my mouth. I grip the safety bar weakly.

  I start to lose touch with ups and downs. I scream, but only out of habit. The screams from the other carriages start to become less frequent, less convincing. I try to focus on something stationary: two men are crammed into the control booth, speaking to each other.

  I hear a man with a deep voice being sick.

  I focus on my body. My temples feel swollen. I am aware of the shape of my own brain in my skull – I could draw its outline.

  ‘Oh my God!’ says one of the girls, again. After a few more rotations, they are the only ones still enjoying themselves. They are laughing hysterically.

  Drops of liquid fall through the ceiling of my carriage – landing on the vacant seat and splashing on to my hand and forearm. There are two smells: petrol and ammonia. I look up through the mesh towards the cage above me. I make out two colourless ovals, pressed together. Liquid is coming through the bottom of their cage. Some of it gets whipped away by the wind, some of it lands on to my carriage. They are more than mere ovals, they are bare buttocks.

  As my cage tips forward the fluid runs off the seat and down on to the carriage below.

  ‘Oh my God!’ says the one.

  Paruresis is the fear of peeing in public places.

  The Skyliner begins to resemble the water feature in the botanical gardens.

  I rest my forehead on the safety bar and wait for the ride to stop.

  I concentrate on visualizing my various internal bits. My lungs are rolled-up cereal packets. My heart’s a wet tennis ball. My gut’s a stolen purse. My spine is Jenga.

  Eventually, they turn the Skyliner off: lights, music, the lot. There are two shrill screams as we freewheel to a stop.

  They turn it back on, the lights disco and stutter at first. They slowly bring us down to the ground, a cage at a time.

  As I get off, the man with the short, straight fringe presses a pound into my hand. The ground feels like a waterbed. So this is happiness. I have no idea what it will be like to be normal again.

  Sitting on the gravel, I watch the two girls get out. One has splatter marks down the back of her trousers.

  ‘This aim is out,’ Dad says, speaking to himself.

  I find him bending his knees to look through the sight of a small rifle next to a sign that says: ‘Everyone wins!’ He takes a step back for perspective and notices me standing behind him.

  ‘Ah, there you are. Was it fun?’

  ‘It was good,’ I say.

  He turns back to the gun and looks down the barrel with his right eye.

  ‘A man was sick, but only on himself,’ I say.

  ‘That’s lucky,’ he says, squinting.

  ‘Lucky,’ I say, sounding cryptic. I warm the pound coin in my fist.

  He must think that it is normal for a Skyliner to spin for five minutes. He probably thinks it is good value for money.

  My dad fires the gun; he hits the paper target mostly in the red zone
and only partly on the thick black line that separates the red zone, where you win a prize, from the white zone, where you win nothing, or to be more precise, you win a badge.

  ‘Yes!’ my dad says.

  The stall-owner, who has been hidden from view, sitting on a stool, stands up to examine the paper target.

  ‘Still got it,’ my father says, turning to me.

  The stall-owner is wearing a comfy-looking zip-up puffer jacket.

  ‘Sorry – it didn’t land entirely within the red zone. It has to be entirely within the red. Hard luck.’

  As my dad leans forward to look closely at the target he lets his mouth fall slightly open.

  ‘Oh,’ he says, nodding gently, ‘not to worry.’

  The man holds out a bucket with the words ‘Everyone Wins!’ in gold paint on the side. He rattles it at my dad. It is full of pin-on badges showing red and white targets. I think they are designed to let the other stall-owners know who the suckers are.

  Dad smiles at the stall-owner and turns to me.

  ‘Do you want one of these?’ he asks me.

  ‘No thanks,’ I say.

  My father looks as though he might shatter.

  ‘Thank you. We’re okay,’ he tells the stall-owner.

  I try and think of what he would say if this had happened to me.

  ‘Funfair? Unfair, more like,’ I say.

  He laughs. It is not one of his normal laughs but it is a laugh all the same.

  He bends downs and picks up a furry whale off the gravel.

  ‘I won this on the fishing game,’ he says, holding it out to me. ‘I’m sorry. It was either this or a crab.’

  *

  The arcade is a low-ceilinged temporary construction, a bit like a demountable classroom. The walls and ceiling are black.

  With my dad in tow, I ignore Ridge Racer, Street Fighter II Turbo, Mortal Kombat and PacMan and walk straight up to Shocker, the authentic electric chair replica, that takes up the entire back wall.

  The seat is an oversized oak throne. Above the back rest is a genuine volt-o-meter that records your progress towards the ultimate goal: 13,200 volts.

  ‘Here we go, Dad. I want to pay for you to have a go on this,’ I say. ‘You’ve got to hold on until the end of the ride otherwise it’s a waste of my money.’

  There are warning signs all around it. ‘High Voltage’ and ‘Overhead Power Lines’. They have a Welsh-language one with a picture of a man being electrocuted: ‘Danger/Perygl’.

  ‘How much are you paying to kill me?’

  ‘Enough,’ I say.

  I remember the time Dad gave me thirty quid to go to the therapist.

  Dad sits down in the chair. He straightens his spine.

  I help him do up the leather limb restraints. I make sure that his fingers are making secure contact with the electrodes on the armrests.

  I put the warm pound in the coin slot.

  ‘I didn’t do it!’ he says.

  ‘Repent! Repent!’ I say.

  ‘My wife made me do it!’ he says.

  ‘Any last words?’

  He opens his mouth while he thinks of something.

  ‘If you gotta go, you gotta go!’

  Dad says this on long car journeys when I tell him I need a piss.

  ‘Any better last words?’ I say.

  ‘And now for the mystery!’ he says.

  A few of the kids in the arcade look across from their games. Two boys glance over from the sunken seats of Formula One cars.

  My dad is wearing a green short-sleeved shirt and khaki shorts.

  ‘I sentence you to death by electrocution,’ I say, hitting the ‘High Power’ button.

  There is the sound of a heavy steel door being slammed shut and bolted. Then we hear his heartbeat beneath the hum of an electric generator warming up. The volt-o-meter twitches.

  He raises his eyebrows and does a this is scary face. He has no idea.

  The execution begins. The chair vibrates violently. I can tell that he was expecting something more serene. His sandals flap against his feet. There is the sharp fizzing of static.

  Two boys in caps stand next to me, watching.

  Dad holds on.

  ‘Go on, Dad,’ I yell.

  His best glasses slip off his nose, on to his knee briefly, before falling to the floor.

  One of the boys laughs and points.

  ‘You can do it!’ I tell him, scampering forward to pick up his specs. I look up at him. He is blinking wildly.

  The needle on the volt-o-meter waggles past the halfway point.

  The woman who hands out change is watching from outside, smoking a cigarette. She looks bored.

  Wisps of steam unfurl from behind his head.

  His face has gone red but, to my surprise, he is beaming, his teeth chattering with the force of his grin. His laughter sounds choppy as he bounces on the seat.

  I can see the shape of his knuckles, white against the skin.

  One of the boys yells: ‘Bang!’

  A shaft of smoke bursts out the top of Dad’s head. There is the sound of frying and sizzling.

  As the sound of the electric current fades, all that remains is the monotone of my father’s flatlining heart monitor.

  ‘Yes!’ I shout.

  The two boys nod, approvingly, and saunter away.

  The smoke rolls along the low ceiling and pours up into the night – a reverse waterfall – like when the kettle boils beneath the plate cupboard.

  The seat slowly stops shaking.

  Dad’s eyes look glazed. His grip loosens on the electrodes.

  His head slumps on to his shoulder. His tongue lolls. His limbs go limp.

  I step up to the throne and take his hand in mine, as though I’m about to propose.

  ‘You’re not dead,’ I say.

  His eyes roll back into his head. He groans, long and throaty. His arms rise slowly, his wrists are limp. The experiment has worked. It’s been months, maybe longer, since Dad pretended to be a reanimated corpse. His zombie hands wrap around my neck. They draw me into a hug.

  ‘You’re not dead,’ I say.

  Devolution

  It’s Wednesday. We’re sat round the dinner table. Since my treatment, Dad’s returned to work and has become far more communicative at mealtimes. I’m thinking of becoming a psychiatric doctor.

  We had honeydew melon with Parma ham for a starter and now we’re eating Moroccan lamb with couscous and sultanas. For the first time in weeks, Dad has cooked our evening meal.

  I am thinking about the name Graham. Over the years, I’ve heard my parents talk about all their friends. I’ve heard every kind of name, nickname and surname: Maya, Salmon, Porko, Chessy, Morwen, Dyllis, Silent, Colleen – and yet I can’t remember them ever mentioning Graham. On the phone, Mum’s friend Martha was talking about Graham as if he was a major character, needing no introduction.

  My parents are discussing public transport.

  ‘It’s almost cheaper to fly,’ Dad says.

  I think it’s important that all my parents’ secrets are out in the open.

  ‘Stop this,’ I say, raising my fork into the air. ‘I have a new topic of conversation.’

  They both look at me.

  ‘Oliver, in polite society we change the direction of a conversation by pretending that the thing we want to talk about is in some way linked to the topic at hand,’ Dad says.

  ‘Very important skill,’ Mum agrees. ‘Your granny is an absolute master.’

  ‘Let me try,’ I say.

  ‘Okay,’ says Mum. ‘We were talking about the price of trains.’

  ‘Think of yourself as a TV presenter moving between segments,’ Dad says.

  ‘Trains, you say…’ I allow a pregnant pause. ‘How incredibly dull; let’s talk about what I want to talk about. Who… is Graham?’

  My parents share a look.

  ‘He’s an old friend of ours,’ Mum says.

  Dad whispers to me with a hand hiding his mouth:
‘He’s the bloke I stole your mother from.’

  He chuckles like a gremlin, his shoulders jiggling.

  Mum looks at him as if he is a child. His lips shape the word ‘oops’, then he straightens up – back to adult mode.

  ‘How old a friend is he?’ I ask.

  ‘Old, old,’ Mum says.

  She sips her wine.

  ‘Why haven’t I heard of him before?’ I ask.

  ‘Well, because we haven’t seen him in a long time. Lloyd, could you pass me the plum chutney please?’

  ‘Why are we going to see him now?’

  ‘What?’ Mum says, although my question was clearly audible.

  Dad pushes the chutney across the tablecloth.

  ‘You’re going for lunch with him,’ I say.

  ‘Yes, you are,’ Dad says.

  ‘That’s right, Lloyd. I’m going for lunch with him because he’s moving to Port Eynon.’

  ‘And he’s an old friend,’ I say.

  ‘Right,’ she says. There is a popping sound as Mum breaks the seal on the chutney jar.

  ‘How can he afford to buy a place in Port Eynon anyway?’ Dad asks.

  Mum scoops out a forkful of the chunky, blood-red gloop and shakes it on to the edge of her plate. Dad picks his napkin off the floor.

  ‘Don’t tell me he’s actually got a job?’ Dad says.

  ‘Lloyd, the man has spent the best part of a decade setting up capoeira schools all over the States. He can afford a cottage in Port Eynon.’

  The man. She calls him the man. This worries me.

  ‘I never knew there was so much dollar in dancing.’

  ‘It’s not a dance, Lloyd.’

  ‘Oop. Beg your pardon,’ he says, throwing me a wink.

  She raises her eyebrows at him before going on.

  ‘Anyway, he’s very kindly invited us out to dinner.’

  ‘Hang on, let me just check my diary.’ Dad mimes turning the pages of a notebook, he shakes his head and clicks his tongue. ‘Shame, I think I’ve got ballet class all weekend…’

  I laugh.

  ‘Lloyd – don’t be a twat.’

  Don’t be a twat – brilliant!

  ‘No, seriously, I’ve actually got tons of work.’

  ‘Come on, you haven’t seen the man in ten years.’

  Again – the man.

  ‘You haven’t seen my pile of marking.’