Boy Underwater

by Adam Baron

  ‘This term? ’S all right.’

  ‘But what are you going to be doing?’ Mum asked. ‘I missed the meeting about it because I was working and they haven’t emailed the list through yet.’

  ‘Romans,’ I said. ‘And something called reproduction. Miss Phillips said we’re not allowed to be embarrassed when we do that but she went red when she said it so I think I’m going to be.’

  ‘Oh well. Anything else new?’

  Children, you’ll be dismayed to hear that we won’t be doing any more RE on Monday mornings.

  ‘Nothing worth talking about,’ I said.

  ‘Cymbeline. William. IGLOO. There is NOTHING wrong with you at ALL. Get out of bed, RIGHT NOW.’

  ‘But I’m ill!’

  ‘No. You. Are. Not. You have no temperature and your throat is completely normal.’

  ‘It’s not. It huuuu-rrrrts. It –’

  ‘Cymbeline, we’ve talked about this. If you miss a day of school, you have to be properly ill. I’ve got Messy Art today; if I miss it to look after you, I don’t get paid. Simple.’

  Messy Art is something Mum does with toddlers in a church hall on Monday mornings. In the holidays I have to go too and the one thing I’d say is that Mum is pants at naming things. Messy Art should be called ‘Messy Miniature Lunatics Go Ape’. But when she mentioned it I sighed. I know how hard Mum works and how we need every penny we have. She does sums on bits of paper at the start of every month. I found them once and looked down the columns. I’m okay at sums and it didn’t take long to work out that, after all the food and dinner money and the gas and electric and the council tax and a bit for school shoes she was saving up for and a fair few other things that didn’t sound like much fun, my mum had exactly nine pounds forty-three pence left over. There wasn’t anything on the list that she might have wanted.

  ‘Up!’ she shouted, and I just sighed.

  The first thing I noticed was the smell. Tangy, in my nose. Then the sound. As soon as Miss Phillips pushed the door of the leisure centre open I could hear it: loud and echoey and not quite real, laughter and voices and a hosepipe going, a phone ringing. It was weird but no one else seemed to notice it. But I gawped at the high ceiling and the bright light; it was like walking into a big dream. Then, as we marched through the foyer, I saw shapes moving around on the other side of these MASSIVE windows. And that’s when I first saw it: the pool.

  My stomach lurched. Sweat prickled on my forehead. I stopped dead still and someone bashed into me from behind and knocked me over. I picked myself up and just stared through the glass at the huge blue expanse shimmering in front of me. My eyes went big as Frisbees and I knew: I couldn’t do it. No. Way. I’d just have to tell Miss Phillips. Confess. I shook my head, not even sure that I could take another step forward until I saw who had knocked me over.

  ‘Sorry, Cymbeline,’ said Veronique, pushing her hair to the side of her face as she leaned in close to me. Veronique was smiling again and I smiled back as I realised something. Her breath smelled of Weetabix. It’s exactly what I have for breakfast! We were made for each other! When she wished me good luck I mumbled thanks, and then followed everyone else through the turnstiles.

  ‘Boys, left,’ Miss Phillips trilled. ‘Girls, this way please. No messing about now, boys.’

  Now I know – as you see me walk into the changing rooms – what you are thinking. Clever as you are (and you must be clever to have chosen this book) you have worked out that my mum, not ever having taken me swimming, is unlikely to have bought me any swimming trunks. Especially as, unlike Billy Lee’s parents, she is not ‘rolling in it’. On Friday, Miss Phillips had told us that if we forgot to bring trunks then we would have to wear the school spares, and the ones she held up brought howls of laughter: an ancient bodysuit, suitable, she said, for girls or boys. There was no way I was wearing that, but what could I do?

  I got the idea on Saturday but it wasn’t until Sunday night that I could act. Mum goes to bed really early on Sundays, hardly any later than me. After she kissed me goodnight I lay awake as she watched a bit of telly downstairs and then listened to a few records. Old slow ones that she plays ALL THE TIME. I listened as she then sat in silence for a bit, until her phone rang. She chatted to someone and then I heard her lock the front door and the back door, before she went in the bathroom. When she went into her bedroom I waited a long time, listening. And there’s something about my mum that I would like you to keep to yourself. She snores, and when I heard her doing this I got out of bed, opened my door and tiptoed down the hall to the boxroom.

  The boxroom is a small room near the bathroom. I don’t go in there much. It’s not that I’m not allowed; I just don’t. There’s nothing for me, just boring stuff that Mum stores. There’s a tennis racket that she never plays with and some old bottles of wine. She doesn’t drink. There’s a pair of weightlifting weights and bin bags full of clothes. Uncle Bill bought me a Scalextric on eBay and it’s a pain to keep putting up and down. The boxroom would be perfect for it but whenever I ask Mum why she doesn’t chuck that junk away she just smiles and interferes with my hair. She doesn’t answer, but I know why she keeps it all.

  It’s my dad’s stuff.

  Snore, snore, snore, whistle. Snore, SNORE. I glanced back at Mum’s door and then I turned the handle. It only took five minutes to find the swimming trunks. They were in the second bag I opened (the first had baby clothes in, a little odd as Mum normally sells all my old stuff on eBay). There were even some goggles. I snuck them into my schoolbag with a towel and went to bed.

  ‘Right, boys,’ Miss Phillips said, putting her head round the changing-room door. ‘Come on now.’

  ‘Yes, Miss,’ we all said, apart from Marcus Breen of course. Being Marcus Breen, he stuck his willy between his legs and told Miss Phillips he thought he was in the wrong changing room.

  Have you got a Marcus Breen in your class?

  We all filed out, a rushing noise getting louder as we made our way across these bumpy white tiles. We passed an old man having a shower who was completely covered in black and white hair, like a badger with a person’s head on, and then a group of big ladies approaching the water like some hippos I’d seen on the Discovery Channel. We stopped right by the edge of the pool and Miss Phillips chatted to a young man in shorts and a red polo shirt, with this big chin like a deck of cards. He looked down at us as she spoke to him, nodding all the time. Then he started to speak. He told us about safety things, the importance of swimming, how we had to listen to his whistle and do exactly what he said. He went on and on, while I looked at the pool. The smell was stronger now, biting into my nostrils. Our bit went from the deep end, where we were standing, towards the shallow end. The rest was portioned off by fat plastic rope things and was being used by the big ladies, who were jumping up and down to music. I began to think – yes! – this is going to be it for the first lesson, just talking. Until the man said, ‘Now then, which of you has never had any proper swimming lessons before?’

  I fixed my eyes on him and took a big, deep breath. This was my chance. I could just raise my hand and admit it. I’d never been swimming. I could tell Billy Lee I’d been winding him up on Friday. I could join all the other beginners and finally learn to swim. I was pretty sure I’d be fairly good at it if I was shown how. I’m good at sport. I may not have told you, but I’m third-best footballer in Year 4 (joint). In a few weeks I’d be ready to take anyone on, including Billy Lee. But there was a problem. There were no other first-time learners. Not one other person put their hand up. Not even Marcus Breen.

  ‘Impressive,’ the man said. ‘Well, let’s start at the other end of things. If you’ve all had lessons, has anyone here passed Level Four?’

  ‘I have,’ shouted Lance, sticking his armpit in my face as he shoved his hand up. Belvedere Blatt said he had too, and so did Laura Pinter and Elizabeth Fisher (though she just needed a wee).

  ‘Great,’ the man said, nodding. ‘Well, you’ll be our demonstrators. I
f you could just slide into the pool please, and –’

  ‘But I’ve passed Level FIVE,’ barked a voice from right behind me.

  It was of course Billy Lee. He strode to the front and put his hands on his hips, the jet-black goggles strapped on to his forehead making him look like a giant bug. Everyone else sort of shrank back from him – apart from the teacher that is, who nodded admiringly. He asked Billy if he could dive and Billy said of course. The man nodded again and I could tell something: Billy had forgotten about our race. He was so intent on showing off that he didn’t care about it. The man stepped to the side as Billy put his goggles over his eyes. He did this elaborate stretch with his arms, and then hooked his toes over the last tile near the edge. He would have dived in if Lance hadn’t called out,

  ‘Wait!’

  My friend. My so-called BEST friend. Billy would have spent the entire lesson demonstrating his incredible skills. He’d have forgotten about me. I could have plonked about in the shallow end until it was time to go.

  BUT NO!

  ‘Please, sir,’ Lance shouted, ‘Cymbeline’s got Level Five too!’

  ‘Cymbeline?’ the man said, looking around at all the girls. I get that A LOT.

  ‘Here,’ Lance said, pushing me forward. ‘He’s EPIC at swimming.’

  A hush developed. Everyone looked at me. Most of the class looked at me with expectation. The swimming teacher looked at me as if he very much doubted what Lance had said and Billy Lee looked at me with what I can only describe as a hideous, terrible glee. Because he’d realised. He’d either found out somehow, or he could just tell by looking at me, but he knew: I was not epic at swimming. And not only that. He could tell that I’d never been swimming at all.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, holding up his hands and stepping behind me. ‘Don’t ask me, sir. Ask Cym. He’s incredible. He can do butterfly. He can even do some other strokes I’ve never heard of. Moth, wasn’t it? You should demonstrate, shouldn’t you? Show us all how it’s done, Cym. GO ON!’

  And I felt two hands on my back. Billy’s hands. And then I found myself moving.

  Forward.

  And then I felt myself

  Swimwell.org has quite a bit to say about diving. It is, says Swimwell.org, the action of ‘leaping or springing into water’. I had not, however, paid much attention to this part of their website as I really hadn’t thought that, on our very first school lesson, we’d be doing that. So, when I entered the water below me, it wasn’t with a dive so much as a sort of tangled upside-down ouch. Water, as I found out then, HURTS. I blame the pain for what happened next. After the initial shock, I did not panic. No. I put the knowledge I had learned on Swimwell.org to use. I started to move my arms like windmills, just like the woman in the pictures had done. I started to move my head from side to side. Both of these things should have sent me bulleting to the other end of the pool, where I would have been able to execute a perfect tumble-turn (minus bubble bath). For some reason this did not happen, something I intend to inform Swimwell.org about in the strongest possible terms.

  I did not, as they said I would, go forward. Instead, to my intense surprise, I went down, entering what seemed like another world in which you couldn’t really hear anything. Everything was blue and when I looked around I saw bolts of white light whipping round. I saw legs wiggling across the pool, and then I saw something else. It was, I realised, the bottom of the pool, and it was coming towards me. Fast. And then I felt it, with my head, after which I felt sort of floaty and not particularly concerned that I was now at the bottom of a swimming pool. At least I’d done it – I was swimming, though not how most people do it, I admit. Then I felt something else, a sort of emptiness around my waist that I couldn’t quite understand. I was about to investigate when I heard the

  It really did sound like an explosion. It came from above and I looked up to see a mass of bubbles and foam coming towards me, out of which two hands appeared, which hooked themselves under my armpits. Then I felt myself rising, up out of this quiet new world, sound suddenly smashing back into my ears as I hit the surface. What happened next is the COMPLETE AND TOTAL DISASTER that I was talking about before. My rescuer pushed me up against the side and, as I held on to the edge and gasped, I looked up, confused. For there was the man in the red shirt. He was standing above me with a long pole in his hand. Miss Phillips was there too, bending over and looking horrified.

  So who had jumped in to get me? Billy Lee? It must have been. And I’d never live it down, not EVER. But Billy was standing at the back with his mouth wide open. Everyone was there except …

  It was only when I turned to the left that I saw who it was who’d rescued me.

  Veronique Chang.

  I found out later that Veronique’s on Level 9, or whatever it is that lets you swim for the borough at the national finals. She’d just climbed out of the water and was grabbing my arm to pull me out. Seeing her do that, Miss Phillips reached forward for the other one.

  ‘NO!’ I screamed, spitting out water like a stone fish in a fountain. ‘Please don’t pull me ou—’

  But it was too late. My legs kicking, I left the swimming pool, though not quite as I’d entered it. Earlier, I’d tied the cord on my dad’s swimming trunks as tight as I possibly could. But it wasn’t quite tight enough.

  ‘I can see his willy! I CAN SEE HIS WILLY!’

  Marcus Breen. That was him. And if you haven’t got one in your class you can have ours.

  You can come and get him, ANY TIME.

  ‘Hello,’ I said when I got home later. I was talking on the phone to a man from British Airways. ‘May I book two tickets to Australia, please?’

  ‘Er, yes,’ the man said, possibly taken aback by my young-sounding voice. ‘When would you like to travel, sir?’

  ‘Today, please.’

  ‘Oh. Right. And which city do you want to go to in Australia?’

  ‘Which …?’

  ‘Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne or Perth?’

  I hadn’t thought about that. ‘Which one is the furthest away from St Saviour’s School, Blackheath, Lewisham?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir. It’s not a question I’ve ever been asked before.’

  ‘Oh. Okay then, how about this? Which of them, do you think, is the least likely to EVER be visited by someone from St Saviour’s School, Blackheath, Lewisham? I mean, like, NEVER?’

  I never heard the man’s answer, so I can’t tell you what it was. My mum came in and saw me with her bank card in my hand. I thought she’d be mad but she just gave me a soft smile and pressed the red button on the phone before putting it down on the kitchen table. Then she interfered with my hair.

  ‘Australia, hey? A holiday?’

  I looked at her. ‘No. We’re going to live there.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, though I thought about France first.’

  ‘France?’

  ‘Because of the chocolate croissants. But it’s too near. Rachel Jones went there on holiday last summer. She still bangs on about it. She might see me.’

  ‘And you don’t speak French.’

  ‘I know. So that’s why I thought of Australia. It’s the furthest country from us for one thing, but I saw an Australian cricketer on the telly last week. He was speaking English. Sort of.’

  ‘Right,’ Mum said, and I thought she was going to laugh for some reason. But the trembling of her lips didn’t turn into laughter. She was staring at me, hard, and then she reached out to take my hand. She was wearing her red jumper, the really itchy one, and the sleeve scratched against my wrist. She tried to mouth some words.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Cymbeline, I’m sorry I never took you swimming. I really am. I’m so, so sorry.’

  And so she should have been! And I nearly said that. But what she did then stopped me. I’ve told you about her crying, haven’t I? But she’d never cried like this before. I thought crying was done with your eyes mostly, and your mouth a bit. But when Mum started to cry it was with all of he
r. Her shoulders moved up and down and her throat made this weird croaking noise. Soon her whole body was shaking, like the washing machine when it’s nearly finished, and all I could do was watch her. She kept saying sorry, sorry, over and over, or at least she tried to because she couldn’t get the word out properly. She clutched her stomach and shook, my wrist really itching now, but unlike the washing machine she didn’t slow down and go quiet again. She carried on, and on, and on, trying to say sorry, and I heard myself say it’s okay, it’s okay, it was nothing really, just the whole class seeing my willy after the best girl in the entire world had seen me floundering around and dragged me out of the swimming pool. Don’t worry about it. But Mum didn’t seem to be able to hear me. It was like – and this may sound weird – she wasn’t saying sorry to me at all. But someone else. It was like there was someone else there, with us in the kitchen.

  Mum shook, and she shook, and I couldn’t make her hear me. There was nothing I could do, so eventually I took my hand back and went upstairs to my bedroom. It was quiet in there. Everything was really still. I took a Lego model to bits and put it back together again, though it didn’t look quite the same. I got an Asterix from the shelf, but for the first time ever nothing inside it made me laugh. Not even Obelix. So I just sat there, snizzling Mr Fluffy, until I heard footsteps on the stairs. But they went past, and I heard Mum’s bedroom door opening. And closing. I walked out on to the landing and listened, but I couldn’t hear anything. So through the door I said, ‘Mum?’