Max called us over to one side. “Look, I’ve got something.”
“Oh yeah,” said Janet. “So we heard.” Everyone laughed.
“Get your coats and come outside with me,” he insisted.
I was reluctant to leave, but the girls followed Max to the door, picking up their coats as they did so from the backs of chairs. My ears were ringing once we were outside the hall and out in the quiet of the corridor, the music now reduced to a dull thudding in the background. After the darkness of the hall the bright corridor lights were harsh and cold, but Ruby took my arm and my excitement returned in a rush when I felt her warmth pressed against my side.
“This way,” Max insisted.
We walked down the corridors, passing no-one else until we reached the toilets. Max ducked inside and returned moments later with a carrier bag, inside which something clinked. He took out a bottle of Guinness. “Eight of them,” he exclaimed. “Courtesy of Bernard,” he offered by way of explanation.
“That’s stealing!” I said.
But Janet had already plucked the bottle from Max’s grip, and Ruby put her hand into the bag and took a bottle out. “How do we open them without an opener?” she asked.
Max laughed and took one out of the bag. “The Boy Scouts teach you everything,” he said. He flicked off the top of a bottle and put the neck to his mouth. I watched as he glugged down about half of it before gasping for breath and wiping his lips. The smell of alcohol was strong. “Let’s go in here,” he said, strolling over to a darkened classroom and opening the door. He disappeared inside and we followed, closing the door behind us then sitting on the floor in a circle. He shared out the bottles and flicked off the tops one by one.
I was new to alcohol. My parents were non-drinkers, except for wine at Christmas, so I put the bottle of Guinness to my lips with trepidation. The taste surprised me, for it was not strong, and certainly more watery than I expected. Plus it was rather distasteful. But as I ran my tongue across my wet lips I thought that perhaps it wasn’t all that bad and took another couple of swigs. I emptied one bottle and had another thrust into my hand. The effects were strange and alien to me. I became light-headed. I felt warm, comforted, relaxed and sleepy. I remember laughing at anything that was said, rocking back and forth in humour-induced paroxysms. Max started to kiss Janet, and before I knew it Ruby had launched herself at me and I was on my back with her alcohol-soaked lips playing passionately over mine.
Eventually someone looked at a watch and someone said we had to be getting home, and someone opened the door to leave, and we staggered blindly after that someone. The frosty night air hit me like a hammer. Once outside in the schoolyard I clutched at a wall to steady myself, and I was aware of arms supporting me, and laughter aimed at me. I grinned foolishly, shouting out something to the effect of, “I’m going to burn down this bloody school!” I turned to seek out Max’s approval, but was confused to see only Ruby standing there smiling at me, her cheeks flushed red, her eyes bright with flecks of sodium light sparking in them. I went over to her and kissed her. “Where’ve they gone?” I said, slurring my words, and proud of myself that I’d gotten a little drunk.
“Home, I think,” she said. She lifted her arms to my neck and the balloon tied to her wrist bumped against my head. “I think you’re a bit tipsy,” she remarked unnecessarily.
“I’m in full control of everything!” I cried, taking her in my arms with uncharacteristic bravado.
She fought me off and took my hand, leading me away from the school. We walked for long minutes heading in goodness knows what direction, her body pressed to my side, her arm snaked around my waist, our breath escaping in white clouds that were caught by a slight breeze and mingled, appropriately I thought, in the frozen air around us. I became aware of grass under my feet, crunching with frost. We arrived at a tree and she put her back to it and we kissed again. We remained wrapped in our tight little world in total silence for an eternity. Oh, the touch of those velvet-cushioned lips! Her warm breath! Her softness! If I were to die now, I thought, I would die perfectly contented.
The balloon bumped against my head again. With a good-humoured swipe of my hand I knocked it away. It tore free of Ruby’s wrist and sailed on the breeze away from us. “My balloon!” she wailed. “Oh, Philip, it’s going to catch on something and burst!”
I fully recognised the symbolic importance of the balloon. It might indeed burst, and the night might burst along with it. I ran after it, rather gallantly, I thought, confidently telling her not to worry. But the drink and the fresh air were having a combined effect on me. Though I might have wished to pursue the balloon in a straight direction my legs appeared to want to take me elsewhere, and I found it took an immense amount of concentration to maintain the floating shape in my swimming vision. I bounced against a tree like a human pinball, and would only feel the pain in my leg the following day. In the end I had to stop, breathless, hands on knees and gulping in mouthfuls of that frigid night air. The balloon, I thought, was the Devil himself taunting me, for it swept back into sight not more than ten tantalising yards away, and as soon as I made a move towards it the breeze took the thing up in the air and I was racing across waste ground yet again with my hands outstretched, cursing with all the force of a piqued miner.
With my eyes fixed solidly on the ghost-like blob held aloft before me, I didn’t even register the canal in front of me.
One minute there was ground beneath me, the next I was floating in the air like the balloon. For one crazy, fleeting second I thought I might fly up and snatch it out of the night sky. But its shape blurred into a streak as I fell headlong into a pit of total darkness. It wasn’t until I hit the water that a vague realisation of what I’d done seeped into my addled brain. The effect of the icy water on my body was akin to that of a huge electric shock; a thousand needles pushed simultaneously into my flesh, and reds and green flashed before my eyes. I sank quickly, sounds of rushing water and bubbles filling my ears, just as my nose and open mouth filled instantly with foul-tasting canal water, forcing to swallow, my eyes clamped shut, my arms and legs flailing and thrashing furiously to regain the surface. Panic took over. I was driven by the pure instinct for survival.
Thankfully I broke the surface, gulping in a welcome lungful. The problem was I wasn’t a good swimmer, and in my present condition – fully clothed, freezing and head fuzzed by drink – the best I could do was splash about in a vague dog paddle and scream. But my words were choked as I went down in spite of my efforts. I had only been in the water a few seconds, but already I felt my strength ebbing, being sucked out of me and into the frigid black liquid. Nevertheless I clawed and kicked frantically till, mercifully, my head bobbed on the surface long enough for me to grab another mouthful of air. I was aware of myself crying, blubbering pathetically, my words escaping poorly formed and in staccato because of my shivering, because I knew that if I could not grab a hold of something soon – and there was nothing ahead but a brick wall – I would sink under forever.
I saw Max. At least, I thought I saw him, standing perfectly still on the bank and staring down into the water at me. It might have been a shadow or a trick of the light, for there was no reason for him to be there. Whatever, I yelled out at this slim hope of salvation: “Max! Help me! Can’t swim!”
The inky water lapped over my head again, my hand waving feebly above the surface. Though I felt completely drained, I kicked out again, and sure enough I saw the stars above me and would have yelped with joy had I not so desperately needed the breath. I also had the terrifying idea that if I went under again it would be for the last time. As my head turned in the water I made out the figure again, and, convincing myself it was Max, cried out imploringly to him. The figure remained unmoving, and I thought that it was so cruel to be tricked by the light like this. Till I saw the figure had something in its hands. A long twisted branch, dead and silver in the starlight.
As the figure crouched onto its haunches and thrust the branch out,
I knew for certain it was indeed Max, though why he remained silent I did not know. The branch’s tip hovered about six inches or so from my pale, frozen fingers. I reached out and made a grab for it, but the branch was whipped away only to return to the same position moments later. I reached out again, emitting a shriek of desperation as I did so; but the branch’s tip thumped me square in the shoulder and I was ducked under the water briefly. Again I surfaced, and the branch jabbed into my chest. I yelped out, “Hold it still!” but it cracked me across the head with such force that I was sent under again.
I heard muffled splashes and knew that the branch was striking the water above me. I reached up to where I thought the surface was, but there was only the icy water above my head this time. I knew I was sinking. I had no strength left to fight my way upward again. But I wasn’t afraid. A curious, comforting warmth began to seep through my body, into my legs, into my arms, percolating upwards through my chest and into my head. I was no longer cold. In fact I was so comfortable that I wanted to turn over, as if in my bed, and go to sleep. Go ahead, a voice told me, release your scorching lungs, take a deep breath and sleep.
And when I awoke, I told myself, I would ask Max what on earth he was up to, hitting me like that. I felt myself drifting off, no past life flashing before me, no terror, just the overwhelming urge to sleep. I felt my mind, my being, fading away, dissolving, becoming one with the water…
* * * *
12
Friday
I floated in the warm void for an eternity, with vague dreams, shapes and colours flitting through my thoughts like myriad cars on a motorway; one blur followed by another blur, no real substance to them, no common thread. Then I heard a sound, faraway like whispers on the wind. Voices. Lots of them intruding on my cosy blackness. They were getting closer, but strain as I might I could not penetrate the heavy shroud before my eyes. Then it struck me. Should there be voices under the canal? Was I dead? And if I was, to whom did the voices belong?
Awareness gradually trickled in with syrup-like slowness. My eyes were glued shut so I tried to prise them open. They didn’t respond straight away, but my lids parted enough to let in a burst of light. I shut them again. And all the while the voices grew louder, and I heard music playing. I became aware of my body again, feeling something warm and heavy bearing down on it, on my arms, my legs and my torso. I felt the heat of it. But there was no sense to it all yet, just a jumble of sensations that had been liquidised and poured into my skull.
I let the light in again. I could see colour. Green, mainly. And movement. All viewed as if through a smudged piece of warped glass. My vision settled. There was a woman staring down at me, a woman in a light-blue uniform and wearing a silly little white cap perched on her tight ginger curls. There was a familiar smell. Like the cupboard at home where my mother kept her little army of medicines and tablets.
“He’s with us at last,” I heard her say. “Hello, young man. Hello, young man!”
There was pressure on my hand, and I realised she was squeezing it. I blinked, not fully comprehending. An angel?
Then I started, sat bolt upright and gasped loudly, sucking in air. My arms thrashed frantically on the bedcovers. The nurse grabbed me, pinning my arms to my body. “I…can’t…breathe!” I wanted to yell, but it came out as a pathetic little croak. “Max! Help me, Max!”
“You’re ok,” she said. “You’re fine now.”
I calmed down, smelling her freshness, feeling the softness of her sturdy, comforting embrace. At which point I burst into an uncontrollable fit of tears.
* * * *
They stood around the bed, on all sides, staring at me with wide grateful eyes, and each wearing wide grateful grins. My mother and my father, one on each side of me; Connie Stone and her partner Bernard grinning. He now sported a wonderful handlebar moustache, long hair and sideburns; my Uncle Jack who’d sneaked a day off work; and my old Auntie Lulu who’d travelled sixty miles on a bus just to be here with her brown paper bag full of grapes, a Mars Bar and a dog-eared copy of Hotspur, which I hadn’t read for years but for which I pretended to be extremely grateful.
“You came pretty close,” Lulu said in her squeaky little voice that I miss so dreadfully now on recalling it. “We all thought you were a gonner. But Albert an’ me prayed like crazy, an’ it seems to have worked, ‘cause here you are as good as new and all cleaned up!” She thrust the Mars Bar into my hand. It was soft and melting. I put it with the other presents and cards lined up on the tiny cupboard by my hospital bed. Then she cuddled me tightly, as everyone had done before her, smearing me with her scented lipstick and wiping her perfume off onto my bedcovers; I reeked of it for hours. But it was a pleasant reek, smelling of love, of family, of those I thought I’d never see again. Later, when they’d all left me I pulled the blankets up to my face and breathed it in, smiling at it. “God bless the lad that pulled you out. Deserves a bloody medal,” she continued. “Mind you, damn foolish thing you did, falling into the canal like that, you great lump!”
“We owe Max a lot,” said mother. “We don’t know how to thank him.” I could see she was about to start crying again, and her rough motherly hand clamped around my scrawny wrist like a parental handcuff. She lifted a crumpled handkerchief was to her nose and she blew loudly. “I’m going to give him a party or something to say thank you,” she said to Connie as she wiped and sniffed then blew again. “I’ll bake him a special cake with real cream and everything.”
“He loves plain ones,” Connie beamed. “Nothing too fancy, but sometimes he’ll eat icing. I love chocolate, but he doesn’t,” she shrugged.”
“Then I’ll make you a chocolate cake, Connie,” mother enthused, grinning, “with chocolate cream inside.”
“Would you, Mrs Calder?” Connie’s eyes sparkled. I’m sure Bernard’s eyes did as well.
“And I’ll mix in a few chocolate chips too,” she said, nodding seriously.
Connie clapped her hands together. “That would be so nice, Mrs Calder. I can’t wait!”
“Max could have been killed as well, you know,” my father blurted, as if he’d been contemplating this for some considerable time, his arms folded, his back straight. He’d never been one for showing much emotion, but I could read love and relief in his ruddy features.
My Uncle Jack bent forward, wagging his finger. “Too true,” he agreed sagely. “When I was a kid, these two lads went swimming – good swimmers as well – and they both got into difficulty. It was a sunny day, the water was as calm as anything, but they got into difficulties all the same. We’d been warned by the teachers not to go swimming in the river. Anyhow, this bloke, a good swimmer himself – out walking his dog, I think, a poodle…” he chuckled at this “– well he dives in to rescue them. Only he’s the one that drowns and the two kids scramble to shore anyway. I think it was a bloke out fishing that found his body, all bloated-like, a couple of days later two miles downstream. The current, you see. Fast bugger. He said it was the biggest thing he’d caught all day!” he chortled, his shoulders shaking with mirth.
He stopped laughing, scratched his nose self consciously, and sat back in his chair, suddenly aware that all the others were looking fixedly at him, my mother’s mouth wide open in horror at what might have been, her eyes about to fill again. “Shut your trap, Jack!” Auntie Lulu hissed. “That’s tactless, that is. They’ve all been through a lot, you know!”
“It’s the truth though,” he defended. “It was in all the local papers.”
“Still,” Connie mused, “it’s not the sort of thing you’d expect to find on your fishing line, is it?”
And so I discovered that Max had indeed saved me from drowning. He’d risked his own life in that frozen canal to rescue me, and all my earlier doubts took flight. One moment my mind was filled with the image of him standing there uncaring, then hitting me with the branch, then striking the water to make sure I never surfaced again; the next it had been sponged away, and I imagined an Errol Flynn dive, h
is arm grabbing me, a desperate paddle to the side with his lips and jaw set, a look of steeled determination in his narrowed eyes; and Ruby waiting there on the canal bank, looking fretful, tearful and almost swooning with relief when Max hauled me to safety, and she helping to haul me clear. A mad rubbing and pushing followed to empty my lungs of liquid then Ruby sitting herself astride me (now that was a thought) and giving me the kiss of life as she’d been taught in school. And finally my head cradled in her lap when I coughed and drew in a thankful gulp of frigid air, her fingers combing lovingly through my drenched hair.
I have a feeling the truth wasn’t quite so dramatic, but the story had grown in true Boy’s Own heroics with every telling and I wasn’t about to argue, for it was a miracle I was still alive, and miracles deserve elaboration.
Later that day when everyone else had gone home, Ruby and Max wandered in accompanied by the ward sister. It surprised me as visiting hour had long gone. Yet I was pleased to see them. Ruby almost ran over to me, sat on the bed and flung her arms around my neck. She gave me a deep and protracted kiss.
“Now then,” said the sister disapprovingly, “don’t eat him all at once!”
“I thought you were dead, Philip,” Ruby murmured into my ear. “Thank God you’re alive! And all over a stupid balloon. I would never have forgiven myself if anything had happened to you. Never.”
I cannot deny that I basked in her attention. I smiled at Max who stood behind her. “Thanks, Max,” I said, my throat sore and the words not coming out with any strength of conviction. But his face was quite grave, apart from a flicker of a smile back at me.
Blood Bonds: A psychological thriller Page 10