Suddenly there was a cry smothered by a dull explosion. Paul looked out over the partition and saw a boy at the bottom of his dive, alone in the pool. He looked flat, spread-eagled, his hair middle shaded and smoothed by the water. He breast-stroked to the surface and blew out a farting noise.
‘First in.’ It was Olly. ‘Get a move on, Paul,’ he screamed.
Paul hopped about on one leg putting on his black trunks. Then he put the Corporation ones over them, tying the string at the sides. The red and black looked nice. If you only wore the Corporation ones your thing kept showing.
He blessed himself, said the first line of an Act of Contrition and went out of the box. He walked jerkily down to the three foot end, holding his elbows. The water splashed out on the sides and was cold underfoot. By now the pool was threshing with swimmers and the noise was deafening.
‘Look at the ribs,’ screamed Olly’s head.
Paul moved down the steps at the three foot mark and stood on the last step, knee deep.
He splashed some water over his shoulders and face. Then he pushed himself off from the side screaming with cold. Paul had just learned to swim. He could breaststroke a breadth at the shallow end but above four feet he kept close to the bar. Somebody had once told him, ‘If you can swim a breadth you can swim a mile,’ but he didn’t believe it. He stood for a while jumping up and down stirring the water with his hands. Olly swam down to him and they played diving between each other’s legs for a while. Then Olly headed off for the high board. Paul half swam, half pulled himself along the bar to the deep end. Olly climbed the steps to the top board, swiping the wet hair from his eyes. Paul treaded water waiting and watching him. When he reached the top he held onto the railing, a boxer in his corner, then ran and launched himself into the air, his heels cocked and fifteen foot down, exploded into the water. He came up beside Paul.
‘Come on and try,’ he said. ‘It’s great.’
‘Are you mad?’
‘You’re yella. Once you’ve done it once, it’s dead easy. Come on.’ He swam to the steps and Paul followed. They sloshed out of the water and began climbing the ladder. At the top Paul looked down at the squat, upturned faces and held tight to the rail.
‘Ready?’ Olly asked.
‘You go first.’
‘Go on, I want to watch you.’
‘You go first or I won’t go,’ said Paul.
Olly ran and disappeared at the end of the wet matting on the board, plummeting out of sight. Paul blessed himself and waited until Olly came up again.
‘Are you yella?’ He laughed appearing up the ladder. He ran past Paul and jumped again holding his nose. Paul let go the bar and scrambled quickly down the ladder and jumped as high as he could off the side of the pool. The bubbles seethed up his nose and his ears pounded and rumbled. He came up near Olly.
‘I did it.’
Olly swam over to him and said, ‘Good for you. I thought you were chicken. Come on again.’
‘Naw,’ said Paul. ‘Once is enough. What about playing tig?’
But the tig was no use because Olly would dive into the middle of the six foot end and couldn’t be caught.
Afterwards Paul stood out on the side to get his breath back. The sour taste of the lime made him wish for his currant square now. It was colder out of the water than in. Goose pimples came out all over his body and the light hairs on his arms stood up. ‘You could strike matches on ye,’ his father had once said to him at the sea-side. ‘It couldn’t be good for him,’ his mother added, huddled in the depths of her deck chair. Paul stood shivering and listening to the din. Splashing and slamming of dressing box doors mixed with a continuous jagged scream, which echoed and multiplied when flung back from the high glass roof. It started at the beginning of the session and stayed at the same sawing pitch throughout. The long whistle to end the session shrilled and the noise reached a crescendo as everybody plunged in for the last time.
Paul was near his box and felt too cold for a last fling. He pushed the half door shut and spread the cotton towel on the duck-boarding. He began to dry himself slowly. He peeled off his trunks and left them, a wet figure eight, at his feet. He felt alone in the box. The noise was outside, people whistling, shouting jokes, but inside he was safe and insulated. Private. He looked down at himself, at his wisps of hair. He wondered if he would ever have a bush like the gym teachers. ‘You’re on the verge of life now my dear boys – soon you will become men,’ the Redemptorist, his black and white heart pinned to his chest, smiled. ‘And I know you will all make very good men – every last one of you.’ Paul dried himself and pulled on his drawers trying not to think about it any more. Then suddenly from outside there was a scream, totally different in tone from any of the shouting and larking that was going on.
‘Hey mister, mister.’
Paul stood up on the seat and looked out. A boy, half-dressed, was running up and down the side of the pool pointing into it and screaming all the time, ‘mister, mister.’ Paul looked and saw a still figure lying on the bottom at the deep end. The attendant raced past his box and plunged in. He scooped the body up off the bottom and swam with it to the side. Another man took it from him, by an arm and a leg. The boy’s mouth was black and open. Paul sat down on the seat so he couldn’t see. Everything was completely silent now except for one of the boys who was snivelling and crying. Paul dried his feet and put on his socks. He pulled on his trousers and stood up to look out again. In the middle of a quiet crowd of boys the attendant was kneeling, his clothes darkened with the wet. The boy’s body was blue-grey and when the attendant did anything with its arms, they flopped. Paul stood down and finished dressing. He whispered over to Olly, ‘Will we go?’
‘Wait t’see what happens.’ Olly, in his vest, hung over the half door.
‘Is he dead?’ Paul hissed.
‘Looks like it,’ said Olly.
Paul sat down again. The box was painted dark green. Initials and dates, crude guitar shapes of women with split and tits were carved or drawn on every square inch of space. He began to read them – ‘G.B. WUZ HERE’ – ‘TONY IS A WANKER’ – ‘BMcK 1955.’ He read these things over and over again until in the distance he heard the bray of an ambulance. It drew close and stopped. There were some sweet papers and a few dead matches lodged beneath the struts of the duck-boards at his feet. He picked up his togs and very slowly disentangled them from the red ones. Olly came in dressed.
‘What’s happening?’ Paul asked.
‘They’re away.’
Paul looked out. The crowd had gone and everyone was back in their boxes getting dressed. Someone started to whistle but stopped. The pool was absolutely still now, the black lines at the bottom ruled rigid, perspective straight, the surface a turquoise pane.
They walked straddle-legged down the slippery edge of the pool and threw their borrowed togs and towels into the bin. Outside at the turnstile the girl had put a piece of cardboard over the porthole and there was a queue, quieter than usual, waiting to see if they were going to get in or not.
The boys walked down the steps and crossed the road to the bus stop at Lizzie’s bakery. Olly looked at the currant squares in the window. About a quarter of a trayful had been sold. Then he too leaned his back against the window and the two of them stood, their heads turned, waiting for a bus.
II
A TIME TO DANCE 1982
FATHER AND SON
BECAUSE I DO not sleep well I hear my father rising to go to work. I know that in a few minutes he will come in to look at me sleeping. He will want to check that I came home last night. He will stand in his bare feet, his shoes and socks in his hand, looking at me. I will sleep for him. Downstairs I hear the snap of the switch on the kettle. I hear him not eating anything, going about the kitchen with a stomach full of wind. He will come again to look at me before he goes out to his work. He will want a conversation. He climbs the stairs and stands breathing through his nose with an empty lunch box in the crook of his arm, looking at me.
This is my son who let me down. I love him so much it hurts but he won’t talk to me. He tells me nothing. I hear him groan and see his eyes flicker open. When he sees me he turns away, a heave of bedclothes in his wake.
‘Wake up, son. I’m away to my work. Where are you going today?’
‘What’s it to you?’
‘If I know what you’re doing I don’t worry as much.’
‘Shit.’
I do not sleep. My father does not sleep. The sound of ambulances criss-crosses the dark. I sleep with the daylight. It is safe. At night I hear his bare feet click as he lifts them, walking the lino. The front door shudders as he leaves.
My son is breaking my heart. It is already broken. Is it my fault there is no woman in the house? Is it my fault a good woman should die? His face was never softer than when after I had shaved. A baby pressed to my shaved cheek. Now his chin is sandpaper. He is a man. When he was a boy I took him fishing. I taught him how to tie a blood-knot, how to cast a fly, how to strike so the fish would not escape. How to play a fish. The green bus to quiet days in Toome. Him pestering me with questions. If I leave him alone he will break my heart anyway. I must speak to him. Tonight at tea. If he is in.
‘You should be in your bed. A man of your age. It’s past one.’
‘Let me make you some tea.’
The boy shrugs and sits down. He takes up the paper between him and his father.
‘What do you be doing out to this time?’
‘Not again.’
‘Answer me.’
‘Talking.’
‘Who with?’
‘Friends. Just go to bed, Da, will you?’
‘What do you talk about?’
‘Nothing much.’
‘Talk to me, son.’
‘What about?’
My son, he looks confused. I want you to talk to me the way I hear you talk to people at the door. I want to hear you laugh with me like you used to. I want to know what you think. I want to know why you do not eat more. No more than pickings for four weeks. Your face is thin. Your fingers, orange with nicotine. I pulled you away from death once and now you will not talk to me. I want to know if you are in danger again.
‘About . . .’
‘You haven’t shaved yet.’
‘I’m just going to. The water in the kettle is hot.’
‘Why do you shave at night?’
‘Because in the morning my hand shakes.’
Your hand shakes in the morning, Da, because you’re a coward. You think the world is waiting round the corner to blow your head off. A breakfast of two Valium and the rest of them rattling in your pocket, walking down the street to your work. Won’t answer the door without looking out the bedroom window first. He’s scared of his own shadow.
Son, you are living on borrowed time. Your hand shook when you got home. I have given you the life you now have. I fed you soup from a spoon when your own hand would have spilled it. Let me put my arm around your shoulders and let me listen to what is making you thin. At the weekend I will talk to him.
It is hard to tell if his bed has been slept in. It is always rumpled. I have not seen my son for two days. Then, on the radio, I hear he is dead. They give out his description. I drink milk. I cry.
But he comes in for his tea.
‘Why don’t you tell me where you are?’
‘Because I never know where I am.’
My mother is dead but I have another one in her place. He is an old woman. He has been crying. I know he prays for me all the time. He used to dig the garden, grow vegetables and flowers for half the street. He used to fish. To take me fishing. Now he just waits. He sits and waits for me and the weeds have taken over. I would like to slap his face and make a man out of him.
‘I let you go once – and look what happened.’
‘Not this again.’
The boy curls his lip as if snagged on a fish-hook.
For two years I never heard a scrape from you. I read of London in the papers. Watched scenes from London on the news, looking over the reporter’s shoulder at people walking in the street. I know you, son, you are easily led. Then a doctor phoned for me at work. The poshest man I ever spoke to.
‘I had to go and collect you. Like a dog.’
The boy has taken up a paper. He turns the pages noisily, crackling like fire.
‘A new rig-out from Littlewoods.’
Socks, drawers, shirt, the lot. In a carrier bag. The doctor said he had to burn what was on you. I made you have your girl’s hair cut. It was Belfast before we spoke. You had the taint of England in your voice.
‘Today I thought you were dead.’
Every day you think I am dead. You live in fear. Of your own death. Peeping behind curtains, the radio always loud enough to drown any noise that might frighten you, double locking doors. When you think I am not looking you hold your stomach. You undress in the dark for fear of your shadow falling on the window-blind. At night you lie with the pillow over your head. By your bed a hatchet which you pretend to have forgotten to tidy away. Mice have more courage.
‘Well I’m not dead.’
‘Why don’t you tell me where you go?’
‘Look, Da, I have not touched the stuff since I came back. Right?’
‘Why don’t you have a girl like everybody else?’
‘Oh fuck.’
He bundles the paper and hurls it in the corner and stamps up the stairs to his room. The old man shouts at the closed door.
‘Go and wash your mouth out.’
He cries again, staring at the ceiling so that the tears run down to his ears.
My son, he is full of hatred. For me, for everything. He spits when he speaks. When he shouts his voice breaks high and he is like a woman. He grinds his teeth and his skin goes white about his mouth. His hands shake. All because I ask him where he goes. Perhaps I need to show him more love. Care for him more than I do.
I mount the stairs quietly to apologise. My son, I am sorry. I do it because I love you. Let me put my arm around you and talk like we used to on the bus from Toome. Why do you fight away from me?
The door swings open and he pushes a hand-gun beneath the pillow. Seen long enough, black and squat, dull like a garden slug. He sits, my son, his hands idling empty, staring hatred.
‘Why do you always spy on me, you nosey old bastard?’ His voice breaks, his eyes bulge.
‘What’s that? Under your pillow?’
‘It’s none of your fucking business.’
He kicks the door closed in my face with his bare foot.
I am in the dark of the landing. I must pray for him. On my bended knees I will pray for him to be safe. Perhaps I did not see what I saw. Maybe I am mistaken. My son rides pillion on a motor-bike. Tonight I will not sleep. I do not think I will sleep again.
It is ten o’clock. The news begins. Like a woman I stand drying a plate, watching the headlines. There is a ring at the door. The boy answers it, his shirt-tail out. Voices in the hallway.
My son with friends. Talking. What he does not do with me.
There is a bang. The dish-cloth drops from my hand and I run to the kitchen door. Not believing, I look into the hallway. There is a strange smell. My son is lying on the floor, his head on the bottom stair, his feet on the threshold. The news has come to my door. The house is open to the night. There is no one else. I go to him with damp hands.
‘Are you hurt?’
Blood is spilling from his nose.
They have punched you and you are not badly hurt. Your nose is bleeding. Something cold at the back of your neck.
I take my son’s limp head in my hands and see a hole in his nose that should not be there. At the base of his nostril.
My son, let me put my arms around you.
A TIME TO DANCE
NELSON, WITH A patch over one eye, stood looking idly into Mothercare’s window. The sun was bright behind him and made a mirror out of the glass. He looked at his patch with distaste and felt it with his fin
ger. The Elastoplast was rough and dry and he disliked the feel of it. Bracing himself for the pain, he ripped it off and let a yell out of him. A woman looked down at him curiously to see why he had made the noise, but by that time he had the patch in his pocket. He knew without looking that some of his eyebrow would be on it.
He had spent most of the morning in the Gardens avoiding distant uniforms, but now that it was coming up to lunch-time he braved it on to the street. He had kept his patch on longer than usual because his mother had told him the night before that if he didn’t wear it he would go ‘stark, staring blind’.
Nelson was worried because he knew what it was like to be blind. The doctor at the eye clinic had given him a box of patches that would last for most of his lifetime. Opticludes. One day Nelson had worn two and tried to get to the end of the street and back. It was a terrible feeling. He had to hold his head back in case it bumped into anything and keep waving his hands in front of him backwards and forwards like windscreen wipers. He kept tramping on tin cans and heard them trundle emptily away. Broken glass crackled under his feet and he could not figure out how close to the wall he was. Several times he heard footsteps approaching, slowing down as if they were going to attack him in his helplessness, then walking away. One of the footsteps even laughed. Then he heard a voice he knew only too well.
‘Jesus, Nelson, what are you up to this time?’ It was his mother. She led him back to the house with her voice blaring in his ear.
She was always shouting. Last night, for instance, she had started into him for watching T.V. from the side. She had dragged him round to the chair in front of it.
‘That’s the way the manufacturers make the sets. They put the picture on the front. But oh no, that’s not good enough for our Nelson. He has to watch it from the side. Squint, my arse, you’ll just go blind – stark, staring blind.’
Nelson had then turned his head and watched it from the front. She had never mentioned the blindness before. Up until now all she had said was, ‘If you don’t wear them patches that eye of yours will turn in till it’s looking at your brains. God knows, not that it’ll have much to look at.’
Collected Stories Page 12