Submarine

by Joe Dunthorne

  ‘I’ve noticed that when you light a match, the flame is the same shape as a falling tear.’

  She’s been sensitized, turned gooey in the middle.

  I saw it happening and I didn’t do anything to stop it. From now on, she’ll be writing diaries and sometimes including little poems and she’ll buy gifts for her favourite teachers and she’ll admire the scenery and she’ll watch the news and she’ll buy soup for homeless people and she’ll never burn my leg hair again.

  Nonage

  ‘And you’d get to show off those arms.’

  Mum reaches across and squeezes Dad’s bicep.

  ‘Hoh,’ she says, trying to look impressed.

  We are sat round one end of the dinner table: me, then my dad, then my mum. Mum’s put two candles out and we’re eating off the square plates: baked trout with field mushrooms and boiled new potatoes with parsley butter. She wants to convince my father to start capoeira. The tone of her voice flutters as she attempts to convey excitement.

  ‘And they play the most wonderful music, Lloyd.’ She tries to catch his eye.

  Dad doesn’t look up; he slides his knife into the field mushroom’s gills.

  ‘I think you’d like it – two drummers and a guy twanging this kind of one-stringed guitar,’ she says.

  It sounds awful.

  ‘It sounds awful,’ I say.

  ‘It’s not awful, Oliver. Your dad would like it. It’s really quite hypnotic.’

  I remember: Graham makes eye contact like a hypnotist.

  ‘And Graham’s putting me in for grading on Saturday,’ she says.

  Why would she mention his name? I can hear the squeak of grilled mushroom against Dad’s teeth.

  ‘To try for my yellow belt,’ she continues. ‘You could come along and see what you think?’

  Dad pinches the top of the headless trout’s spine, pulls it upwards, carefully; small bones unsheathe from the pinkish flesh, the tail fin comes away still in its skin. He lays it out solemnly on the blue tablecloth.

  ‘Will you be fighting?’ I ask.

  ‘Playing – we call it playing,’ she says, still looking at Dad for an answer.

  ‘Why is it called playing?’ I ask. We are talking across him, he concentrates on his plate. He pulls a small bone from between his teeth. He will finish his dinner before us.

  ‘Because we don’t try to hurt each other.’

  ‘Well, I don’t want to watch unless it’s fighting,’ I say.

  ‘Think of it like breakdancing,’ she says, trying to help me understand.

  I imagine her spinning on her head, wearing baggy jeans, listening to Cypress Hill. I feel unwell.

  ‘But you could accidentally hit each other?’ I ask, thinking of a reason why Dad might want to join in.

  ‘No, not really. You’re allowed to head-butt each other sometimes,’ she says.

  Dad chews.

  ‘Just come along to the grading?’

  He doesn’t look convinced; in fact, he doesn’t look anything – he could be running through his tenses: je mange, tu manges, il mange.

  ‘If we both learnt it then we could practise together.’ She looks at me and nods. ‘How cool would it be if both your parents did capoeira?’

  ‘On a scale of one to terrible, I would say –’

  ‘Graham will be there but you don’t have to talk to him,’ she says.

  Dad speaks; I sometimes forget how deep his voice is. ‘Why would I not talk to him?’

  Mum’s turn to watch her plate.

  ‘Yep,’ he says, hardly opening his mouth, ‘I’ll watch.’

  ‘It’s on Saturday morning.’

  He deposits half a boiled potato into his mouth, rotates his jaw.

  ‘Mm hm,’ he says. It is a positive sound.

  Saturday morning. Mum’s been excited for days. She is practising on the grass level, zone two, in the back garden – half-crab, half-ape,bounding and twirling in bare feet. She wears loose cotton trousers and a yellow vest that clings to her chest. She pretends she has an opponent: dodging, swerving, ducking.

  I’ve already delivered my excuse for why I can’t go to watch and it was not: Graham will be there and he thinks my name is Dean. Instead, I exploited my mother’s faith in human nature. I explained that Jordana’s mother is in Morriston Hospital, which is true, and Jordana needs my support, which is true, and visiting hours sadly coincide with her grading, which is also true. I never actually said: ‘I am going to visit her.’ Mum assumes I am thoughtful.

  Dad has a foot-high pile of marking on his desk. He stacks his papers in a heap just so we know.

  ‘Lloyd, I’m going to walk down to St James’s now,’ she calls up the stairs.

  There is no reply.

  She walks up a few steps.

  ‘Lloyd?’ she says, on tiptoes.

  She notices me watching her and goes upstairs into the study.

  ‘Lloyd?’ She lowers her voice but I have better hearing than she can imagine.

  ‘Mm, sorry, what was that?’

  ‘I was just saying: I’m going to walk down to the grading now, if you’d care to join…’

  ‘Okay, I’ll just finish this…’

  ‘… could you not do it after?’

  ‘It won’t take a minute; when’s your big moment?’

  ‘Well, my bit won’t be until the end of the class but you can see how the lessons work and there are some really amazing people…’

  ‘I’ll follow you down in ten minutes or so.’

  Or so.

  ‘Okay, it’s St James’s Church.’

  ‘Got it.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Good luck.’

  Mum comes downstairs, kisses me on the forehead and says: ‘Give my best wishes to Mrs Bevan.’

  ‘Bust some ass, Mom,’ I say, Americanized.

  She nods, pauses, gives me a second, unnecessary squeak-kiss on the cheek, grabs her towel from the banister and closes the front door quietly.

  I let exactly ten minutes pass before going upstairs. He is reading the dictionary when I step into his study.

  ‘Dad, aren’t you going to watch Mum?’

  ‘Mm?’

  ‘Mum’s grading?’

  ‘I thought you were going out,’ he says, his head down, an index finger descending the page.

  ‘I’m going to Morriston Hospital; you’re going to St James’s Church.’

  We both have responsibilities.

  ‘Yes, you’d better get along then,’ he says.

  ‘I’m going now.’

  ‘Time doesn’t wait for the terminally ill.’

  It is the sort of thing that I would say. I try and think of a reply.

  ‘Well, I’m off to do my duty,’ I say.

  ‘Good chap.’

  I shout, ‘Bye!’ and close the front door loudly. I run along to the end of my street and turn left up Constitution Hill. Constitution Hill is cobbled, very steep and famously good for joyriding. My legs start to ache but I keep on running.

  I turn first left again, coming back on myself along Montpellier Terrace, the street behind our house. I sprint until I recognize the tall frog-green gate that opens on to the upper level of our back garden. My parents usually bolt the gate closed and, as a further security measure, the high back-garden wall has been topped with broken glass embedded in concrete. From many days of forgetting my house keys, I have learnt that there is a certain spot on the wall where I can get a decent handhold without opening my wrists.

  I stick my toes into gaps in the masonry and heave my head above the lip of the wall. I can see into the kitchen, the music room, the study and the frosted glass of the bathroom.

  Dad is standing in his study. His right hand is on his belly through an undone button on his shirt. His left hand is a fist; he rubs his knuckles on his lips. He looks around at the things in his room: the inset bookshelves, the crane-neck lamp, the letter holder, the expensive painting of navy and yellow squares, the off-white filing cabinets th
at prop up the slab of hardwood that he uses for a desk. He is thinking: Just look at all this shit. What is any of it for? Lloyd! This is the moment to save your marriage. He puts a hand out for balance on to his pile of marking. He’s thinking: Fuck Graham! I love that woman – yes, that woman – and I’m going to show her how much.

  There’s a whole soap-opera monologue going on in that freckled, pinkish skull. He’s gone; he’s walked out the door and left it open.

  I jump down off the wall and stand in the road, feeling conspicuous, like a burglar scoping out a property.

  I think about Dad busting through the double doors of St James’s Church, tearing his vest off, karate-chopping and elbow-dropping his way past twenty or thirty sweating henchmen. Mum’s in the pulpit, tied up at the hands and feet, a capoeira cord stuffed in her mouth. Dad rips off her restraints.

  ‘Welcome to the advanced class.’ Graham’s voice comes from the rafters.

  Dad spins round, looks up. Graham’s in full capoeira costume, standing on a ceiling cross-beam.

  With Mum clinging to his back like a shell, Dad defies gravity, leaping up on to a rafter.

  ‘First lesson: the cuckold kick,’ Graham says.

  The world slips into slow motion. Graham launches a flying kick. Mum whispers something into Dad’s ear as she slides off his back; Dad sidesteps to the left and Mum to the right. They reach out and hold hands to create a formidable, romantic clothesline that catches Graham on his Adam’s apple, sending him coughing to the floorboards.

  There’s a sound from the garden, in the top terrace. Someone treading, the rustling of leaves. I wait for the sound to subside before clambering up to have a peek. I see Dad walking down the steps with a fistful of rosemary. I watch him go back into the kitchen. The chopping board is out. There’s a lemon, a pestle and mortar and I think I can make out a bulb of garlic.

  With his back to me, he has head-lock control over the pestle and mortar. He lines up clove after clove under the knife handle, smushing each one with a swift chop. The lemon squeezer is a torture device – he crushes two citric skulls.

  So this is it. Marinating. If Die Hard 2 had ended like this I would have felt utterly cheated.

  27.7.97 – summer holidays are go.

  Word of the day: lemon – informally used to mean unsatisfactory, defective.

  Dear Diary,

  My mother tried. I saw that she tried.

  Who can blame her for coming home after her grading, showering quickly and heading straight out again to a beach-party celebration with her capoeira mates. I managed to speak to her for a moment while she was looking for a beach towel.

  She told me that she had passed the grading and they named her ‘O Mar’ – the sea in Portuguese – which is also what I yell when she refuses to give me a lift to school.

  Her note said:

  L,

  have gone to ’Gennith

  for a party, back tom,

  J x

  Abbreviations say it all. Dad spent much longer staring at the note than it took him to read it.

  Since Dad missed the grading, Mum has been with Graham at capoeira on Wednesdays and Sundays, and Graham is teaching her to surf whenever the waves are good. On one occasion, she even went abseiling. She makes a point of being full of energy.

  This evening, we all had Sunday dinner together and, as per usual, nobody argued. She cut up her broccoli and I noticed dried sea-salt crystals on her elbows. These are the equivalent of another man giving your wife jewellery.

  One of the things about the sea around Swansea is that it’s a dark, bluey-grey colour and nobody can see what your hands and legs are up to.

  From my attic room, I have watched Graham’s Volvo pull up when he drops Mum off or picks her up. If I have my window open, I can sometimes hear the slide-guitar music he listens to. I imagine he is the sort of guy who only has two tapes in his car. Mum leans across to the driver seat and they have a one-armed hug and a cheek-kiss; sometimes the one arm rubs her shoulder.

  When she goes out, Dad spends his time reading the Radio Times without listening to the radio. Also, the fridge is bursting with marinated lamb chops, sea bass, mackerel. When she is in, he goes up to his study and does marking, which, by the way, he has almost finished.

  Somehow, they never go to bed at the same time.

  Stay calm,

  Oliver

  (Baby Watch: Tampons Remaining: 8)

  12.8.97

  Word of the day: swell – a word used by surfers to refer to a series of waves. Also, a word relating to a building-up of emotion.

  Dear Diary,

  Jordana rang today. She tried to break up with me. I made things clear.

  I said: ‘No. Now is not the time. I know it must be frustrating.’

  I used very controlled language and did not raise my voice.

  She said: ‘What are you talking about? You can’t say no.’

  I said: ‘Listen, I understand where you’re coming from but this will have to wait.’

  She said: ‘Oliver – I’m breaking up with you.’

  I said: ‘No, you’re not. Look, trust me, you’re just having a nonage.’ A nonage is a period of immaturity.

  ‘What?!’

  I put down the receiver calmly.

  She was only angry because I had not enquired about her mother’s second potentially lethal operation.

  I have had a realization: my father may be unattractive. He has these fine hairs on the end of his nose that, in sunshine, can look like dew. The whites of his eyes are often a yellowy-white – like seashells. He has one of those dark patches, a melanoma, on his forearm. It is not cancerous, merely repulsive.

  I have bought him some Soltan Self-tanning Mousse, a pair of tweezers and Vitaleyes Eye Drops.

  He has finally finished his marking.

  No more excuses,

  O

  (Baby Watch: Tampons Remaining: 8)

  Llangennith

  I woke up early this morning because a tile came off the roof and shattered in the back yard. Mum is standing in the front room, still in her dressing gown, looking out at the bay. The sea looks frilly with breaking waves. Just visible above the beach, rainbow-striped kites strain in the wind.

  ‘Surfing today, Mum?’

  ‘The waves are too big – I’d get squished.’

  ‘What about Graham?’

  ‘Oh yes, he’ll be down ’Gennith probably.’

  This is my chance. Graham’s off being heroic. Dad’s in Sainsbury’s – he goes at six on Saturday mornings to miss the rush.

  I draft a short note in the mindset of my father. My dad’s handwriting is impossible to imitate so I print the note on the computer – using Garamond, the romantic font – seal it in an envelope and stand it on their dressing table.

  Jill, now that I’ve finished marking essays and done the shopping,

  I’m all yours. I’ve turned the dimmer switch down to halfway.

  Why go out for rump steak when there’s marinated sirloin at home?

  Ll X

  I hang around on the landing, half-way up the stairs between her first floor bedroom and my attic room. I wait for her to come and get dressed.

  She walks into her bedroom. I listen to the ripping paper. She must be opening it. There is a pause.

  ‘Oliver?’ is the word she says.

  I wonder whether she is going to ask me to leave the house for a few hours so that she and Dad can get clandestine.

  ‘Oliver?’ she says, sharper this time, the ‘Ohl’ sounding like the beginnings of a phlegmy cough.

  I tread downstairs and stand in her doorway.

  ‘Oliver,’ she says, in her ghost dressing gown, ‘what is this?’

  She holds the note up, held between the tips of her extended fingers; her hand makes the shape of a gun.

  ‘I don’t know. What is it?’

  ‘I think you do know.’

  Her hair is flat against her head.

  I scroll through some respon
ses:

  Oh, is that the note from Dad? Yeah, I was involved but only in an editorial capacity.

  Yes, it was me. I was only trying to save your marriage.

  Dad’s been so busy, but he does want to make love to you – think of me as his attractive secretary.

  ‘Okay, okay, I admit it. I wrote it. But I spoke to Dad and this is what he wants.’

  She frowns: lines of a dying person’s handwriting appear on her forehead. She lets the gun fall to her side; it opens into a hand.

  ‘You spoke to Dad? About what?’

  ‘I spoke to Dad. He knows he’s been imperfect. And he wants to make it up to you.’

  ‘Oliver, what did you talk about?’

  ‘Jill, listen’ – I take a step towards her – ‘he still finds you attractive.’

  She blinks. Her jaw juts, pulses.

  ‘Oliver, are you making this up? Don’t lie to me.’

  I don’t answer so quickly that it sounds like I’m panicking, and I don’t wait so long that it sounds like I’m thinking about it. I get it just right: ‘I swear to you, Mum.’

  Plus I do my truth-eyes.

  She is about to say something important like how come he’ll speak to you but not to me, but she stops herself.

  Her mouth falls slightly open and I see her tongue tap against her teeth. She pulls open her wardrobe. There is a full-length mirror on the inside of the door. Half of me is reflected, split down the middle. I realize that my truth-eyes just make me look a bit psycho. The collar of my Crocodile polo shirt is curling up.

  Mum obscures my view of myself as she yanks out some clothes.

  ‘Oliver, I’m going for a surf,’ she says, turning to me.

  ‘Right. Don’t get squished,’ I say.

  She keeps looking at me.

  ‘I’m going to get changed,’ she says.

  ‘Oh,’ I say. She wants me out of her room. She normally changes with the door open. I have seen her nondescript white underwear many times. Until now, it has never been a problem.

  I step out of the room backwards, like a butler, closing the door as I leave.

  I go downstairs and sit in the lounge. I hear her stomping around. I wait for her to do something.

  Outside, Dad pulls up with the shopping.