by Geoff Dyer
After a moment Fran said, ‘It’s lovely here isn’t it?’
‘Last year it had only been open for a couple of weeks when some kids threw a load of toxic chemicals in that turned the water purple. It was closed for the rest of the summer while the bottom was scraped and cleaned.’
‘What a shame. It’s not as nice as the Lido at home though is it?’
I shook my head. It was funny hearing Fran say ‘home’ like that.
‘I remember getting the bus from school down to that pool,’ I said. ‘It was a big old double-decker and the branches of trees used to whack the top of it. On the journey there this bus used to have to go round a very steep bend and when it did everybody on the top deck used to charge over to the left-hand side to try and topple it over. About fifty kids all crammed into the front four seats on one side of the bus. “Come on – one more push and it’ll go!” We really wanted the bus to go over.’
A guy in tourniquet swimming trunks strolled past, his body a dark map of muscle that the sun navigated easily. A few yards away a woman with spiky bleached hair was reading an old Penguin Modern Classic. At the edge of the pool a young punk was wondering whether to take off his pyramid-studded wrist-band before getting in the water.
‘Am I going brown?’ I asked Fran.
‘Yes.’
‘Good.’
‘Shall we have a swim?’ Fran said.
‘We could have a bit of a paddle.’
‘Come on.’
I was still a couple of feet from the edge of the pool when Fran dived past me and entered the water in a low, perfect arc. I saw her shape, wiggly beneath the water. After several seconds she came to the surface, smiling and rubbing her eyes. She swam back to the edge.
‘Come on!’ She flicked an armful of icy water on to my shoulders.
‘Fran, please don’t. I hate being splashed.’
‘Sorry,’ she said, smiling and kicking up another freezing scoop of water. I did a scorching belly-flop into the cold shock of water. Still gasping from the cold I thrashed my way up the pool. Fran swam alongside in long easy strokes and then pulled away, straight and fast as a torpedo. The shock of the cold faded quickly and I did a couple of lengths as fast as I could. I’d never really liked swimming – I’d never got the hang of breathing properly and the idea of doing fifty lengths a day or whatever it is you need to do to keep fit bored the crap out of me.
After four lengths I climbed out and wrapped myself in a towel. After a few minutes Fran clambered out of the pool too. A hand slapped my shoulder – ‘Drug squad!’
‘Shit!’ I jumped and turned around. ‘Approximately how many times have I asked you not to do that Carlton?’
‘Ten or twelve,’ he said grinning. Beside him Foomie was doing the same. She and Fran kissed and held each other; Carlton and I just stood there. Foomie was wearing a loose white T-shirt and a pair of Steranko’s shorts. Her hair was pulled back tight, making her eyes look large and oval. Carlton was in a vest, shorts, red baseball cap and tennis shoes. We expanded our encampment of bags and towels and sat down.
‘Nobody else coming?’ I asked.
‘Yeah, Steranko and Freddie should be. What about Monica?’
‘She’s got to do a lunchtime shift at the restaurant. She’ll be down later.’
‘There’s Freddie look. Yoh!’ Carlton called, waving. ‘Freddie!’ He saw us and, just too late, just as he was waving back, he saw the three kids running to bomb him. The next moment he was lost in an explosion of water. Everyone laughed.
Wrapped up in the towel I slithered out of my wet trunks and pulled on my shorts. Freddie picked his way between towels and people and eventually stood before us in dripping shirt and trousers.
‘Good job you didn’t have the corduroy jacket on, Freddie,’ said Carlton.
Foomie was reading the paper. Freddie was carefully rolling a large all-grass joint. I picked up my book but lost concentration after about five lines. It dawned on me that I was actually becoming more badly read as I got older. Fran was stretched out on her front, absorbed in the book she had curled up in her fist. Freddie asked if anyone had anything to use as a roach.
‘Here you are,’ Fran said, tearing a large corner off the back cover of her book.
‘Jesus Fran. For a bad moment I thought that was my book,’ I said. ‘That’s why she reads so fast. She has to get through them quickly – before they fall apart. Look at that: it’s got about two hours’ life left in it at most, that book.’
Fran put down the book and smiled. Freddie lit the joint and passed it to her. When it had gone round once more she got up and asked if anyone was swimming.
‘My head is,’ said Carlton.
Fran walked to the edge of the pool and dived smoothly into the water.
Steranko showed up a few minutes later, a large bag slung over his shoulder. He grinned and said hello to everybody and kissed Foomie. Freddie said he could finish the joint.
‘Well Steranko, you must have quite a hangover.’
‘That’s putting it mildly. Jesus, was I ever drunk.’
‘Did you see the midnight rat?’
‘I must have done. I can’t remember what it looked like though.’
‘If you’d seen it you’d remember it.’
Foomie put her arm around Steranko’s shoulders. A man bounced towards us, his Hawaiian shirt fully inflated by a wrap-around gut.
‘That guy looks so much like a beach-ball I’m surprised nobody’s taken a kick at him,’ Carlton said. The lifeguard nearest us blew his whistle, shouted something at two kids and then leant back in his chair. Nice job, just sitting there, telling people off and getting tanned.
By the time Fran pulled herself out of the pool we were all stoned. For a moment she stood by the edge of the pool, smiling, her wet hair dripping. The sun caught her earring. No one was speaking. Steranko looked at her, at her neck and shoulders, her waist, her legs. They held each other’s eyes and then Fran looked away quickly, conscious suddenly of the way her feet were moving over the warm ground. Foomie saw the way Steranko was watching Fran as she walked towards us, pearls of water clinging to her short hair.
For a moment we were all trapped by the chains of our gaze. Then Steranko looked down to the trail of wet footprints stretching towards us from the blue pool, turning quickly to damp smudges and then melting away to nothing.
Fran reached for her towel and draped it around her shoulders. A pair of kids flicked their towels at each other like whips, soaking the corners so they stung more.
Someone had to speak.
‘What’s the water like?’ Carlton said.
‘Lovely,’ said Fran, clearing her throat. ‘You should go in.’
‘He can’t swim,’ Freddie said and everyone laughed.
Fran stretched out on her towel and stared at her book. I glanced at Foomie who looked quickly away. Steranko put on a pair of sunglasses.
The sun slipped and slid over the blue water.
006
On Friday Carlton and I went to a bad party near the Elephant and Castle. We left early and sober, grumbling about the party as we walked along. We turned a corner and almost bumped into three young white guys. One of them mumbled something to Carlton who said nothing, kept walking. It looked like nothing would happen. Then they trotted after us and blocked our path.
‘What was that you said?’ one of them said.
Carlton said nothing.
‘I’m talking to you.’ All three of them were looking at Carlton; nobody was paying any attention to me. They all smelled of beer and had the same look of tabloid malice.
‘I didn’t say anything,’ Carlton said. ‘I was just going about my business.’
I took a step nearer the guy.
‘Come on mate. He didn’t say anything . . .’ I said but it was pointless. Whatever you say in situations like this becomes part of the ritual of provocation which is a necessary prelude to violence. There must always be some excuse.
‘Stay o
ut of this you,’ the guy said. The same guy was doing all the talking. He’d been through this scene so many times in his head – maybe in real life too – that he now spoke his lines without any real enthusiasm or threat. The other two hadn’t said a word yet. The talker and the one to my right were both thick-set and ugly. The third one, standing slightly behind his mates, looked wiry and spiteful. The other two looked like thumpers; this one was the potential slasher, the vicious kid who was also a little scared. He would wait till you were on the ground before getting stuck in. He was the one who would end up killing somebody one day.
The smell of booze in the night.
I was starting to tremble. There was no one around. I looked at Carlton.
‘So what was it you were saying?’ The bloke walked towards Carlton, the other two watching. I took another step forward.
One of the other guys – the other big one – pushed me in the chest with the palm of his hand: ‘This isn’t your fight. Unless you want it. Stay there and you won’t get hurt.’
He half turned away from me and faced Carlton while the other guy also started crowding Carlton. I tried to control my trembling, tried to remember stuff I’d read about the way that everyone is frightened by violence, about how you master fear, but all I could feel was the fear of getting hurt. How to turn all that fear into adrenalin or whatever it is that makes you able to fight? I started breathing deeply. Whatever happens, you’ve just got to help Carlton, whatever happens Jesus fucking Christ. Carlton glanced at me and I don’t know what he saw. One of the white guys had moved to within inches of him.
I thought: whatever happens is going to happen soon. It was too late to stop anything now. I tried to steady myself again, to gain control of my limbs, to make myself not be scared.
The guy spoke straight into Carlton’s face: ‘I’m talking to you, you bla –’
Suddenly Carlton’s head snapped forward into the guy’s face, his fist into his stomach, his foot into the guy’s knee. He was already turning when he shouted: ‘RUN!’
Carlton was a couple of feet clear of me when I started running. As soon as my limbs began moving my fear ignited all at once in a burst of energy which took me to just behind his shoulder. We were both running flat out. My head was thrown back so that my lungs could take in more oxygen which my heart pumped out all over my body. I didn’t look back once. My feet flew over the pavement. Without realising where we were we charged into a main road. The yellow light of a cab came towards us through the dark. Carlton waved frantically, looking round fast to see if we were being chased. We were still running and the cab drove past, not wanting to get involved in whatever it was we were running away from. I glanced round quickly. About twenty yards back I saw the three of them running.
‘Carlton!’ He looked round. Up ahead there was a bus at a stop, indicator flashing, waiting to pull out into traffic. Without speaking we sprinted for the bus. By the time we were close to it it was out in the road and gathering speed. With a final burst of acceleration Carlton leapt on. I was a few steps behind – the bus was going faster and faster, in another few seconds it would be accelerating away. I lunged for the hand-rail. My grip slid down the pole but I got my hip on the platform and slithered on board. The conductor started bawling us out and for a moment it looked like he was going to throw us off the bus.
‘Don’t stop,’ I panted. All the passengers were looking at us, wondering if we were running from the cops, unsure what to do. We were breathing like we were trying to suck every drop of oxygen out of the bus. The bus stopped and an old woman got on but the conductor didn’t give the starting signal. There was blood on Carlton’s forehead. I looked out of the back of the bus. I could still see the three of them, a good way back down the road.
Something about the way we looked – maybe he could see the ashes of all that burnt fear in my eyes – convinced the conductor that we weren’t running from the scene of any murder except our own. He tugged the cord twice. The bus groaned and pushed its way again into the night traffic.
005
I knocked on Foomie’s door and watched her shape swim and lurch toward me through the pebbled glass. I kissed her on the cheek and followed her inside. Her hair was wet and she showed me into the kitchen while towelling it dry. The flat was full of the warm smell of cooking. Her eyes looked big and clear.
‘You OK?’ I said, leaning on the back of a chair. She nodded, smiling. I walked into the living-room. She had lots of plants; they created a fresh, restful atmosphere.
‘I’ve got to get some more plants,’ I said.
‘Hey?’ she called from the kitchen.
‘Your plants are nice.’ I walked out to the kitchen again and clambered into the small gap between a chair and the kitchen table. The kitchen walls were painted a yellow that was bright but very easy on the eye; all the woodwork was green. Foomie had the white towel wrapped around her head.
‘D’you want some tea?’
‘Shall I make it?’
‘That’s OK.’
She pulled the kettle over to the sink and filled it without unplugging the lead.
‘Very handy,’ I said. ‘That’s something I’d really like to do – except I don’t have the first idea of how to go about it. Design the ergonomically perfect kitchen.’
Foomie smiled and leant back against the sink. Behind her the window was pearled with steam. The shelves were crammed with herbs and spices. Pots and pans were piled up to one side of the sink. Cups hung from the undersides of more shelves. The noise of the kettle working started.
‘It’s just you and me. I hope that’s OK.’
‘That’s perfect. I feel quiet.’
‘Me too . . . I hope you’re hungry; there’s a lot of food.’
‘I’m always starving. The more I eat the hungrier I get. Is there something I can do?’
‘No, I’ll just do the salad. You could put a record on,’ Foomie said.
In the main room I crouched down and flicked through Foomie’s records. She had all the latest funk and hip-hop, a few jazz albums. From the kitchen came the sound of chopping. The sun was angling through the blinds. Tiny diamonds of dust danced over the stereo; a golden caterpillar of light inched its way along the sofa.
Foomie came in and leant against the door frame. I stood up with a click in my knee so loud it sounded like a couple of bones had cracked. Foomie’s eyes widened. ‘That sounded painful.’
‘Not really.’
‘We can eat in about five minutes,’ she said after a slight pause. The sun arranged thin racks of shadow on the wall.
Back in the kitchen I sat at the table and pulled four cans of Red Stripe out of a carrier-bag.
‘D’you want a beer, Foomie?’ I asked.
‘Hmmn, please.’ On one hand she had a quilted oven-glove made to look like a crocodile, four fingers forming the head and upper jaw, the thumb making the lower jaw. She held up her hand and snapped the jaws together a couple of times. I laughed; like Freddie’s ‘Every Dog Has His Day’ glasses, a crocodile oven-glove struck me as one of those objects for which you could develop quite a strong affection.
Foomie had cooked vegetarian lasagne. I tried to eat slowly but it was too delicious and I ended up, as always, shovelling it away by the forkful. We talked about nothing in particular, sentences and topics following each other on a faint thread of sense and then disappearing as if they’d never actually taken place. The punchlines of jokes evaporated before we got to them. It was strange being like this with Foomie. Judging by the conversation you would think we hardly knew each other but it was because we knew each other well that there was this odd evanescent quality to what was said. Neither of us mentioned Steranko or Monica or anyone else.
The yellow walls glistened with a light film of condensation.
It was a warm evening and after dinner we took Foomie’s cassette player on to the roof of my block. Silhouetted by the slanting light the TV aerials threw long strips of shadow on to the red bricks of the low wall. S
heets hung out to dry on the opposite block shrugged like flags in the breeze. There were a few lights on. While Foomie rolled a joint I put a tape of Schubert’s fourteenth string quartet on the cassette player.
We passed the joint back and forth and listened to the music, saying nothing.
For a few moments the horizon was a damson smash of clouds. Then the sun sank behind the flats in the distance, leaving the roof in shadow. I went down to the flat to make coffee and fetch some candles.
When I came back up the sky had deepened to indigo with a few ink-dark clouds. I handed Foomie her coffee and lit the candle.
Foomie leant back against the railing, a slight breeze combing her hair. Steam was floating from the dark surface of her coffee; when she sipped from the cup there was a slight movement of muscle in her dark arms. She was wearing a sleeveless dress that came to her knees, blue with tiny white splashes like stars in the dark sky. It was still warm. The red and white lights of a plane flashed above us. Clouds slipped past the early moon. To Foomie’s left I glimpsed the frail pattern of a spider’s web stretched between railing and wall.
The second movement of the quartet slid into the night: desire and dread circling, coaxing, and turning into each other; the sound of longing generating its own momentum, finding its own form.
Listening, Foomie tilted her head to the sky. Warm candlelight touched her throat. Half her face was in shadow. The dress moved faintly in the breeze; the music swaying. She was still leaning against the railing, her feet slightly apart.
The candle flame twisted and writhed, recoiling from the touch of the breeze that would extinguish it.
As I moved towards her, my shadow, agile with the light of the flames, disappeared into Foomie’s and then climbed slowly up her legs. I touched her neck and a few strands of hair. The light of the candle glowed in her eyes. I bent my face towards her until there was only breath and then nothing at all between our lips.
004
Freddie came round when I was in the bath. While I got dry and put on some clothes he made a pot of tea. We sat in the kitchen and talked about boxing. After a while Freddie said, ‘I’ve come to a momentous decision.’