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SPPLLLASHHHH!!
Chlorinated water spattered onto Veda's orange and crimson swimming cap. Ten year old Darryl had run along the side of the swimming pool and hurled himself into the water, knees drawn tightly into his chest, to "bomb" his trough-clinging, shrill-screaming sister. His whoop of delight drilled through Veda's skull and echoed around the vaulted ceiling. Ten year old Darryl was built like a barrel.
"Aunty Veda, Aunty Veda, watch me swim." The mantra chant of four year old Billy, a string of snot joining nostril and lip. The child waggled his arms, kicked his plump legs and sank with a wail. Anthea left her seat on the steps and waded across the pool to scoop up her son and congratulate him on his efforts. The string of snot had gone.
Veda suppressed a shudder and wondered again how Anthea had persuaded her to spend Saturday morning swimming with the kids. On her list of enjoyable things to do, it ranked alongside watching that tremendous televisual spectacle Tiling, Painting, Stippling and Plastering, a DIY Guide since she didn't particularly like swimming and she positively loathed kids.
Anthea's husband, to confound a marriage-span of expectation, was working. Anthea had decided that it would be good for the children to get out of the house and away from their X-Box consoles. She had thus devised a day with swimming at the municipal pool followed by lunch at a well-known hamburger chain and an afternoon at the cinema. "Aunty Veda" had been invited along for several reasons, firstly to provide an extra pair of hands and secondly to stir her assumed maternal instincts, although why this was a desirable goal had never been convincingly explained.
Anthea's children were weird. There was Sulky Samantha, tender twelve, more concerned with keeping her eye-shadow dry and her lipstick glossy than with swimming and who answered every request or suggestion with a huge sighing
"Oh God, do we have to? It's so embarrassing"
There was Stick-Insect Steve, furtive fourteen, lurking by the steps, eyeing Veda's breasts, moping on about missing the computer game spot on Live and Kicking whilst Samantha told him that the only spots he should be looking at were the ones on his Tipp-ex coloured face.
There was Darryl the Barrel slapping his hands on the tiles, heaving his vast wobbly burger-gut out of the water, dancing on the edge, his pink-green-yellow-cyan Bermuda shorts stuck to his skin, yelling "Get ready! Get ready!"
"Mind me hair, mind me hair," screeched Samantha. Too late. Darryl exploded into the water beside her, roaring with laughter. "You git, Daz. You absolute git." She punched his head as it broke through the surface. "I hate you. I hate you. You're an absolute git."
Billy thrust one hand into his mother's and stood on a step, one of his free fingers making an exploratory foray into his nose for a second string of snot.
Veda caught Anthea's eye and forced a smile. "I'm off for a swim," she said, "Just a few lengths." She pushed herself off from the tiles and the trials.
The chosen film was a bland cartoon about a bunch of foxes who, through cunning and ingenuity and the help of a rabbit called Claude, a field mouse called Herbert and a grass snake called Cyril, foil the attempts of Mr Slyme the Property Developer to turn their den into an extension of the M42. The animals, showing proper community spirit and several sharp sets of bulldozer-track-gnawing teeth, succeed because "might is not always right and the environment can be saved if we all work together" (HURRAH!) Veda couldn't help reflecting that, were the foxes, the rabbit, the field mouse and the grass snake a convoy of travellers, a peace protestor, a bunny-hugger, a tree-dweller or the Prince of Wales, the police would be in there, batons flying, boots kicking, and these Communist insurgents preventing progress and profit would be carted off to jail. Perhaps, she decided, to avoid cracked heads, activists should dress up as field mice.
At least the cartoon, a compromise offering, was better than those proposed by the individual children. Samantha's suggestion was
Girl Talk (12)
This is a movie about five teenage girls 'falling in love' with the same big-pectoralled, rock singing jock, how they fall out, hate each other, don't talk to each other, forgive and make up with ice cream soda and lots of huggy-kissy tears as the jock breaks each girl's heart in a studied piece of 'male bastardy'. This 'fly on the wall' all-American teen-girl behavioural-conditioning movie appears to have been shot on a camcorder. It is, in other words, cheap and authentic, and looks it.
Whilst Darryl had drooled at the prospect of spending ninety minutes watching nubile young girls in pyjamas sprawling on their beds, he had not been so interested in listening to their problems and had recommended the futuristic cinematic treat
Robodog 3: The Reckoning (18)
in which a computerised canine wreaks havoc in a small mid-West town by savaging postmen and eating their sacks before its circuits are fried in an electrical storm and mangled in a car crusher. Veda had pointed out the 18 certificate and received the scornful reply that "everyone in [my] class has seen it".
Stephen the Stick had whined that he wanted to see Dutch martial arts superstar Donk Еasenauer, the Rottweiler from Rotterdam, and Californian fitness instructor supermodel Plesantly Bulging in their latest release,
Superskullcrusher, the Rematch (15).
This is a free-for-all bare-knuckle fight lasting two hours with a plot about drug smugglers and bimbos as flimsy as Plesantly's garments and as flailing as Donk Еasenauer's fists. Plenty of bulging muscles and bouncing breasts, it promises "a glorious Jugorama of life in the raw".
Veda completed another length, clung to the tiled trough at the deep end, spat out a mouthful of swimming pool water, sighed. The burger lunch was still to come. A happy hour wearing a "Happy Hat" (a garish cardboard crown in crimson and gold) and eating beefburgers was enough to send one totally and utterly "Moolally".
Anthea had insisted on getting her out of the house. On balance, she was probably right. Since returning from Jervaulx, Veda had spent most of her time poring over the notes she had made, cross-checking and referencing, reading up on Renaissance history and The Cult of Saints and doing the jigsaw she had got at the jamboree. There was a piece missing. She had looked for it everywhere. Finally, in frustration, she had penned a letter to the Jigsaw Maker in Jedburgh–
Dear Sir
I recently purchased a jigsaw puzzle of Albrecht Durer's woodcut of Saint Jerome. I bought the puzzle from you at the Jervaulx Jamboree. Imagine my disappointment when I got home, did the puzzle and found that one piece was missing. I expect this was an oversight on your packers' part and would be grateful therefore if you would send me a replacement puzzle at your earliest convenience.
Yours
V. Jenkins
She had yet to receive a reply.
She pulled her swimming cap further towards her ears and reached behind her back to check that the fastening on her bikini top was secure. This two-piece swim-suit in Imperial purple was relatively new. Veda had bought it last summer for a week in the sun which had not happened because her cloth-eared travelling companion had confused her request for a holiday visit to Greece with a holiday visit to Grease. Somehow it had seemed inappropriate to wear the bikini even in London's West End.
A boy surged from the water, shoved his tinted blue goggles over the wet black hair plastered over his forehead and grinned through his freckles. It was Iestyn Thomas.
"Hello, Veda," he said. "How are you?"
"Fine thanks," she replied.
"How did you enjoy Jump or the Divil?" he asked. "Written the review yet?"
"Why?" Veda smiled.
"I respect your opinion." The boy shrugged his narrow shoulders. "You here on your own?" He was squinting around. Veda waved a hand.
"I'm here with a friend and her children," she told him. "Anthea Adams. Dear Anthea. You know. 'I'm fat and I'm forty and fading away...' "
Iestyn laughed. "I wouldn't say that."
"Cheeky monkey." Veda splashed a backhand's worth of water into his face. The boy spluttered melodramatically. "Better
than a washerwoman's tub," she said. "How does the role compare with that of Hieronimo?"
"Totally different. Hieronimo doesn't wear grey tights and a traffic cone on his nose." Iestyn floated on his back. "Perhaps you'd like to interview me. I've done a lot of theatre work in the last few months. You might find me interesting."
Egocentric young man, she thought.
''I'm doing The Jackdaw of Rheims next,'' he told her, ''By Joshua Grundy. It's an opera based on one of Ingoldsby's legends, about a jackdaw who steals a golden ring from Cardinal Mazzola. I'm playing the Jackdaw. I have a great costume. It's got a huge traffic cone beak, and I get to wear grey tights. My legs look great in tights.''
''I expect they do,'' said Veda, noting somewhat uneasily a hulking brute in sea-boots standing in the gallery with a pug-faced boy. The boy's vicious scowl seemed directed at Iestyn.
''As I say, you should interview me,'' Iestyn continued. ''I sing with the Jericho Academy for Young Singers.''
Jericho Academy for Young Singers. JAYS.
''Iestyn…'' cried Veda, but he merely pulled his goggles down again, emitted a sharp "Kaaaark" and was gone, rolling over onto his stomach and shooting away in a flashing of flesh as his sleek, slender body twisted away in a fast front crawl. At the far end, he hauled himself up the ladder, hesitating halfway to glance back at her, the water lapping at his navel, disturbing the locker key safety pinned to the broad white stripe on the side of his swimming trunks, then stalked away.
Veda felt a surge of disappointment as she watched the slender figure in the bright purple-and-orange trunks stretch over the horizontal board advertising new flavoured Mintifresh Gel to scoop up a fluffy white towel. She watched as he stood with his back to her and towelled his dark brown hair with rough, jerky movements. His ribs stood out, stark carvings beneath the pale skin. Then he reached over the hoarding once more and fished out a white T-shirt. As it fell over his torsos, it revealed a drawing of a jay bird and the legend
THE JAY
WILL COME
Veda was up the ladder and out of the water in one heaving movement.
"Iestyn! Wait!"
The boy turned to face her. He had pushed his goggles back on to his forehead. On his chest was a huge black
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