Boy Underwater

by Adam Baron

  ‘Yes. That’s it really.’

  ‘But what’s it got to do with Mr Fluffy and the painting?’

  ‘Well,’ Auntie Mill said, ‘when you were born it got worse if anything. I was really jealous. On your first birthday your mum invited me on an outing. So that we could be friends again. We always used to go to this place when we were kids.’

  ‘Whitecross House?’

  ‘Yes. And your mum wanted to take you there. And we went and at first it was fine.’

  ‘It was lovely,’ my dad said. ‘Perfect. We looked round the house. We bought you a present from the shop.’

  ‘Mr Fluffy?’

  ‘And then we sat down by the river.’

  ‘On the checked rug?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘At midday?’

  ‘Yes, Cym.’

  ‘And did you go and buy coffee?’

  My dad glanced at my mum then, but she looked at Auntie Mill, who swallowed again. Then she said, ‘Well, that’s just it. Your mum went. She offered to go to the café and get them.’

  ‘That was nice of her.’

  ‘Yes, it was. But when she came back she hadn’t brought me any sugar.’

  ‘You have two sugars.’

  ‘Yes. I do. And it was such a small, small thing and I was so silly. I … Well, I complained. I said she never really thought about me, about what I wanted. Such a tiny thing, but we started to argue and it grew, and then it all came out – how I resented her, how she got everything she wanted and I didn’t. We really argued and the other people there were all watching so we stormed off and carried on in the car park. Arguing. And, well, that meant we left you …’

  ‘With me,’ my dad said.

  He looked up at me then, and I squinted into his face. It really was weird to see him in the flesh. I knew he was my dad because of his photograph, but I didn’t know how to feel. I’d never had a dad, had I, and it wasn’t like what I felt with Mum, the feeling just coming straight out of me. I knew then that it was something I’d have to learn, like Bradley did with his new-dad. I wondered if my dad would have to learn it about me too.

  ‘Cymbeline,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘That you’re not dead?’

  ‘No. About what I’ve got to tell you. No matter what anyone says, it was my fault. And only mine. All of it. Your mum and your aunt went off and I knew what I had to do. I had to watch you. It shouldn’t have been hard and it wasn’t hard. You were crying because of the shouting, I think, and I calmed you down. I played with you. But then … Oh Lord.’ My dad stopped speaking and squeezed his eyes shut, as if trying desperately not to see something.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Well, there was this job. A part in a TV thing. I’d had an audition that had gone really well and I was close to getting it, I knew I was. And, just at that moment, the director phoned me. I thought he was calling to say I’d got it. But he wasn’t quite. He wanted to know stuff. This and that, all sorts of things. I had to convince him. And while I talked to him I put you down.’

  ‘On the rug?’

  ‘Yes. On the rug. And I was on the phone and the guy was going on and on, and I just, I just, I wasn’t paying attention, Cym. I didn’t notice. I took my eye off you. Not for long. A minute. And … you crawled away.’

  ‘Babies can crawl, yes. Not swimming crawl obviously. But from between eight and twelve months they can do it, and pull themselves upright.’

  ‘Well, you did.’

  ‘And I crawled towards the river?’

  Dad stared at me. When he answered his voice was almost silent. ‘Yes.’

  ‘And fell into it?’

  ‘No,’ my dad said.

  I frowned. ‘No?’

  ‘No,’ he repeated, and there was another silence, even deeper than the others had been, everyone completely still, like the flowers in the garden are in the evening sometimes. They stared at me. And I stared back. I was sure I’d gone in the river. Wouldn’t that explain everything? Not being allowed to go swimming, Mum going mad at the pool, going to that place on my birthday? If I hadn’t fallen in the river, then what was it all about? I looked from face to face, each like a statue, until Mum’s cracked into tears: which is when I knew. When I guessed. The very last thing the painting had to tell me.

  The two balls of screwed-up wrapping paper.

  And the baby clothes Mum didn’t sell on eBay.

  The photos that I’d thought were of me and Bradley.

  ‘Your brother did,’ Mum said.

  I walked right up to the edge of the pool and curled my toes over. Today. I took a big deep breath, the air tangy, though not weird because I was used to it now. The water in front of me was all blue, and shimmering, and deep, and the other end seemed sooooooooo faaaaaaar away. A length. A WHOLE length. Could I do it? Really get there? I swallowed, then pulled my goggles down over my eyes and did a big stretch, like I’d seen Billy do in his race, which he’d won by about three miles. He was sitting on the side with Bradley and Veronique, who all gave me these big thumbs-up and grinned, which only made my legs feel even weaker than they already did. I turned back and looked along the line at the other kids, from all the other schools, getting ready as the man in the red shirt said, ‘On your marks …’ I blinked and turned forward, though immediately I looked behind me at the seating where all the parents were. Lance’s dad-dad waved. Veronique’s mum waved too, before putting that hand up to her mouth, the other on the sleeve of the woman next to her.

  Mum.

  My poor mum. She was staring at me, her eyes wide open, both of her hands out in front of her in fists. Her mouth was clamped shut and it didn’t look like she’d taken a single breath for hours. I realised then that, as nervous as I was, it was so much worse for her. Watching me about to go into the water must have been dreadful. It was so brave of her to come, and I wanted to rush over and hug her and tell her that I was going to be okay.

  But I didn’t get a chance.

  ‘GO!’ the man shouted.

  Water. It can hurt and I thought it was going to then, but it didn’t. Much. I tried to dive like Veronique had in her race (which she’d also massacred), all dipping and smooth, and though I didn’t quite do that, I did manage to stay away from the bottom. And then I moved forward, my head down, my arms like windmills, the sound all thuddy and intense until, yes, it grew a bit calmer and more even, because I was doing it, I WAS SWIMMING, and it felt so thrilling and easy, and not just in a physical way, but also in my head, as if I was leaving behind the boy who’d been standing on the edge just seconds ago worrying about his mum. And in a sense I was leaving him, though I’d been doing that every day, it seemed, ever since Dad had told me what had happened.

  I didn’t speak for a second. I just stared at Dad as he stared back and then reached into the pocket of his jeans. He pulled his wallet out and from that drew a small, creased photo of two babies. Without speaking he touched his finger to one and I blinked at its wide open face, smiling up at me. Suddenly I felt very small.

  ‘What was his name?’ I said.

  ‘Antony,’ he croaked, and I nodded.

  ‘Like, “And Cleopatra”?’

  ‘Yes. That’s right. Antony. He just …’

  Dad couldn’t speak after that and I knew why. They didn’t have to tell me what happened. I looked down at my lap and rolled the name around in my brain.

  ‘Antony,’ I said, and it felt weird, as if they were telling me he had just been born, which he had in a way. In my head. Put there for the first time. But it shouldn’t have been the first time, should it?

  ‘Why did no one tell me?’ I said.

  The adults all looked at each other then. And then they started to argue again, reasons coming, excuses and apologies and more tears, and it sort of washed over me because I knew what the answer was. I was a little baby, then a child. They didn’t want to paint the real picture. They thought they could paint one that would be easier for me to live in, without realising that you can’
t live if you don’t live in the real painting. In the truth. I left them there, arguing, and went back down to Juni and Clay in the treehouse. We’d done the outside blue with a green roof, and on the inside we had a wall each to do pictures of ourselves on. Clay had painted himself as a lead guitarist with skulls all around him. Juni had done herself fencing. I’d done myself in my St Saviour’s kit, holding a football, but I painted over that.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Juni asked, but I didn’t answer. I just painted a little baby in my arms instead.

  We went home then. The three of us: Mum and me, and Dad. Walking in felt weird, and even more so to have Dad there. In our house. Where Mum and I live. Mum turned the heating on and then the lights, apologising for not having any proper food in. We had pizza from Iceland, which was great, and then Mum came up with me to put my pyjamas on. I could hear Dad downstairs and so I whispered my next question.

  ‘Why did you tell me he was dead?’

  Mum shuddered. ‘It was so horrible, Cym. After what happened. I couldn’t even look at him. I didn’t want to see him ever again.’

  ‘But why did you tell me he was dead?’

  ‘Because I told him to go away and never come back. And I thought it would be easier for you that way.’

  ‘But why did he agree? He’s my dad.’

  ‘Because he felt so guilty about what happened. And because he was terrified he’d let something like that happen to you as well. But the real reason is because we were stupid,’ Mum said. ‘We all were. We were all so very stupid, Cym.’

  I thought about that and then asked what she’d been doing in the river.

  Mum stared at me and took a deep breath. ‘I just wanted to be close to him,’ she said. ‘To Antony. The last place that he was.’

  I wanted to know more, but there was no point, not then. I just concentrated on how great it was to have Mum back, telling her everything I’d done to work things out and find her.

  ‘You won’t ever have to do that again,’ Mum said, before interfering with my hair.

  Dad asked if he could stay that night. Mum thought about it, emphasising the word ‘sofa’ when she agreed. He was lying on it when I went down in the morning, fast asleep with his feet sticking out over the end. I looked down at him, and then at his picture on the mantelpiece, thinking how I’d done the same with Veronique’s Nanai. I’d been able to recognise her from the photograph, but I couldn’t do that with Dad. I knew it was him but I couldn’t make the two things connect up.

  I still can’t quite, though I try at weekends when he comes round to see me and take me out. Not every weekend because sometimes he’s working. And sometimes he doesn’t come, and it’s not because he’s working but because of other, complicated things, which he tells me about afterwards but which I can’t quite get my head round. Mum just sighs when he doesn’t come, shaking her head as she lowers the blind back down. She tells me that it’s not because of his reasons.

  ‘He’s an actor,’ she says, which apparently explains it.

  ‘At least you actually have a dad now,’ Bradley said, at school one morning.

  ‘Two–one,’ I told him, before running off to art therapy with Mr Prentice.

  I see Mr Prentice every week now. Veronique’s there of course, and Billy comes too now. He makes these big, clumpy clay things while I do pictures of babies, and then toddlers, and then five-year-olds and then only just ten-year-olds, all looking a lot like me (but not quite). Mr Prentice says they’re really good but I’m not interested in what they look like to other people. For me it’s about connections. Not making them, but finding the connections that are already there, seeing them amid the confusion of everything else. For instance, that dream I had about brown water. It wasn’t about something that happened to me. It happened to Antony. It was the last thing he ever knew, but I had the dream because I’m connected to him. I’m connected to him forever, and not just him, either – Billy, for instance, who I thought I hated; I’m connected to him by things we have in common and these are stronger than the things that made us hate each other. And not just Billy, either, but everyone, everywhere, is connected if you can just see how, like Veronique can. It occurred to me while I watched her build her DNA model that the reason she smells like somebody somewhere is eating candyfloss is obvious. It’s because somebody somewhere is.

  And Mum’s making connections too. Or not trying to ignore them any more. She sees Dr Mara one hour every week for a chat, but it’s her painting that really helps. She brought all the pictures from her bedroom down to the kitchen and I watch her, every night, as she fills them in. The middle, where she lost Antony, the dips and the swirls of the angry water that took him away.

  The water. The race!

  I drove on, pushing through the blue shimmers and the bubbles, confused when – YES! – I got to the far end, because the loud thumpy noise hadn’t stopped. When I lifted my head out and saw the man in the red shirt the noise carried on, and I couldn’t understand until I climbed out and saw my schoolfriends, my mum, all the parents and teachers, Miss Phillips most of all, cheering. I thought for a second I’d won – until I saw all the other kids in their towels. I’d come SO last, but I didn’t care. It was incredible, amazing, the best moment of my life – until I panicked.

  But my swimming trunks were ON.

  And that’s it, just about, though I should probably tell you about the party. Veronique’s mum and dad had it at their house after the swimming today, and the first thing I did when I got there was run to the bottom of their garden. Nanai was asleep and so I pushed the door open quietly, tiptoeing round to the wall. But I was disappointed: the photo was gone. I thought Veronique must have taken it and I was about to tiptoe out when I saw it. Nanai had it. It was face down on her lap and I picked it up, staring at Thu for a second before Nanai stirred and looked at me. I didn’t know what to do so I just smiled at her, and handed her the picture, watching as she held it to her chest and settled down again, her wrist not quite covering Thu, who smiled out at me from the shadow of her mother’s straw hat.

  I smiled back, until Nanai fell asleep again. Back in the house, Bradley told me he was being Lance again.

  ‘But why?’ I asked. ‘What’s wrong with Bradley?’ Lance just shook his head and told me not to ask.

  I told him fine, and then hesitated.

  ‘I’ve got the same sort of news,’ I said.

  ‘Really? You mean you’re not …?’

  ‘Cymbeline Igloo? No,’ I said, and I told him what Mum had told me. Igloo wasn’t my real name! It was just one my dad took on to make him stand out more as an actor.

  ‘He chose it because it was my brother’s first word. He just came out with it one day. That’s why Mum kept it.’

  ‘Wow,’ Lance said, before grimacing. ‘So what should you be called?’

  ‘Smith,’ I said. ‘Can you believe it?’

  Lance said no and asked if I was going to change to that. I shook my head. ‘Nah. I’m not going to worry about it. Igloo’s my name now. And you don’t have to worry about that other Lance. Lance is just you; it doesn’t go anywhere else. And you can be any kind of Lance you want,’ I added. ‘Starting with my best friend.’

  ‘Better best friend.’

  I smiled because he was right. After what we’d been through we would be better friends. We knew what it was like to ruin it and so we’d make it stronger instead.

  Uncle Chris came in then. He was really happy because he’d given up his job (even though we’d saved it for him). He announced to everyone that he was ‘taking a strategic lateral movement’ into something called ‘ethical long-term investment potential’ and that Alisha was going to help him.

  Auntie Mill in came with him and she had an announcement too: she’d given up tennis and would be moving back home. Juni and Clay were SO happy, wrapping their arms round her and trying not to cry. I was happy too of course, though I had (and I still have), serious worries about her backhand.

  We all went
outside to play football and everyone beat their kick-up record. Even Veronique beat hers (two). Back inside she said she wanted to ask me something.

  ‘Kissing,’ she said.

  I stared at her. Everyone stared at her. ‘Er …?’

  ‘Dad gave me this book about puberty and it’s in there.’

  ‘Right. So …?’

  ‘Have you ever kissed anyone?’

  ‘He’s kissed me,’ Mum said.

  ‘Apart from her. Like, for instance, a girl?’

  Everyone was still staring. Billy elbowed me in the ribs. He hasn’t stopped doing that. ‘Go on, Cym, answer.’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Well, I haven’t kissed a boy either. So would you like to kiss me?’

  ‘Er.’

  ‘Go on, Cym, answer.’

  ‘Would I …?’

  ‘Not now of course.’

  ‘Not …?’

  ‘Now. My body has yet to produce any progesterone. The book says I might start feeling like kissing a boy when I’m eleven. Year Six. What do you think? I mean, if I do feel like doing that then?’

  ‘Well, Cym?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Good,’ said Veronique, ‘because that gives you plenty of time to read about how to do it, doesn’t it?’

  I said yes and everyone laughed, apart from Mum. She looked a bit nervous and it wasn’t anything to do with what Veronique had said. I thought it was just stress from the pool, but it wasn’t. When the doorbell rang she ran over to it like she was on fire, even though it wasn’t her house. When she opened it I was surprised – because the man was there. The man who always comes with his little girls to her Sunday workshops at the National Gallery. I didn’t know why he was there, but I did realise then that Mum had her dress on, the one she’d got from Oxfam. I was glad she was wearing it because who cares who it used to belong to, it was hers now, and she looked great in it. The man must have thought so too because he told her that over and over again.

  Stefan. Mum told me his name when she brought him over. He had his little girls with him and the younger one grabbed hold of my leg. I pretended to mind but she was cute, actually. She had this unicorn with her called Silver, which got me thinking about the very last thing I have to tell you. The thing I couldn’t tell you before because it hurts too much. And which I’ve been leaving to last, like tidying your room, putting anything before doing that. I so don’t want to tell you it even now, but I have to, I know it, or the picture I’ve been painting won’t be finished. It won’t be real, will it?