Rob Palk

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Swimming Scene

He skipped over mounds and tussocks, across the flat top of the hill, the ground stretched out around him. He danced, swinging his bag, fizzing up the remaining cans, and fell into a trench.

How had he forgotten the trenches? They’d dug them for practice, before they sent the town’s men off to the Great War, though Mike couldn’t see what was so great about it. They’d signed up from every house, in every street, all of the young men, boys much younger than Chris.

They’d done a project on the war at school, the local Pals Battalion, and dragged in a survivor, one of the last, scarily old, his deterioration scaring Mike. The survivor had one astigmatic cloudy eye bulging bigger than the other. His mouth gaped gummy between words, fenced with strings of spit. His skin was the speckled brown of ancient books, veins rope-thick beneath it. He spoke in a dead accent, one their ten-year-old voices held only the faintest homeopathic trace of, an accent of mills and clogs and courtships with long dead Elsies. He spoke of his dead friends to twenty prepubescents and explained how each had died.

Most of the town’s young men had been killed in the same ten minutes, one morning in France, shredded by machine guns as they sloped over the dirt. Mike thought about their sacrifice, their heroism. They were idiots. They were in France, they could have run for it, shacked up in a farmhouse, crusty bread and decent wine, the farmer’s lovely daughter and in a few years you’d have jazz and flappers, the works. There were reasons to keep at it, not to die, there were good things in the world, if you didn’t die.

He came to the stone cross at the edge of the hill, overlooking the town which lay, sunk, beneath it, like a blanket stretched over a puddle. His phone buzzed and there was a message, saying The world will know you are a thief. He spun around, expecting to see his enemy, whoever it was, in a gorse bush or looking out from one of the trenches.

Terraces below him led to the town centre, the old civic-minded municipal sandstone and the dying 1960s high street, with the ring of industrial estates and call centres on the outskirts, circling like pox scars. 

He took another swig. He could see Chris’s house from here. Natalie would be finishing work in the school, he could see it to his right, with the cemetery to the back. She’d be packing up, weary from her late night, her day of telling teenagers about Dickens, while her marriage ended and she mourned the loss of her love. He must think less about Natalie. He called her but there wasn’t an answer. He was lying, half asleep, when Mona found him.

She leant against the cross, in a rust coloured sack of a dress, and took a bottle of cider from a carrier bag. The Boy was racing on the grass behind them, still in his school uniform. Mike waved and he put his arms in an aeroplane stance, zoomed off to his right and fell on his arse.

‘How did you know where I was?’

‘John Meadows came in the shop. Said you’d been making a nuisance of yourself around town and were last seen heading this way. Said I should try and restrain you.’ This was unwelcome and strange. Why was Meadows keeping tabs on him?

‘Do you…normally do what he says?’

‘He’s quite an important guy. Important around here.’ ‘Important’ was a code word for ‘thug’. He had annoyed the local heavy, betrayed his dead and damaged brother, broken his heart. No, he hadn’t. He hadn’t done that. ‘He runs a pub meat raffle,’ said Mona. ‘People really like it.’

‘Okay.’

‘It’s a very good raffle. And very good meat. He sounded really concerned, Mike. He said you were going mad. Something about you visiting people’s houses and stealing CDs.’

‘I did steal a CD, yes.’ He showed it to her.

‘Jamahl’s Beats and Breaks,’ read Mona. ‘Breaks as in holidays?’

‘I don’t think so. It’s a musical thing, a break. I don’t really know how it’s different from a beat.’

‘People like beats don’t they? They listen to them. Not as a musical ingredient but as the whole sort of meal.’

‘I’m not the right person to answer that.’

‘It’s like listening to one of your shows with just the laughter.’

‘It’s not exactly the same.’ She touched his arm for no good reason, like everyone seemed to be doing.

‘Why,’ she said in a quiet voice, ‘did you steal a CD?’

This was a difficult question to answer. He could pretend he was a kleptomaniac. He could say it was a comedian thing, they all did it, every April, sort of a professional code. He couldn’t tell the truth if John was sniffing about. He could say he was going mad. This might even be true.

‘I thought it was mine,’ he said. Mona tried to look at him. He was glad the sun was in her eye-line. She turned away and sighed.

‘Nostalgic this,’ she said. ‘I used to come up here as a kid, the same as you.’

‘How’d you know that I did?’

‘Used to watch you didn’t I? Oh god that sounds bad, I saw you a couple of times. I’d come up here to be weird and on my own. I’d climb a tree and think I was queen of it. A sort of magic queen. Point at things and put hexes on them. I’d see you shuffling about.’

‘Did you put a hex on me?’ That would explain a lot. She touched his arm again.

‘If I did, do you think it worked?’ He wasn’t sure.

‘I just used to wander around here thinking about being famous and girls.’

‘That’s why I like you, your depth. You’re going to be okay, you know.’

She said this last bit far too reassuringly. He wanted her to say it, over and over.

Behind them the Boy got up and whizzed around. Above, the clouds went through their repertoire of bad impressions, an elephant, a witch’s head, a duck, like panicked entertainers at a childrens’ party. Mona passed Mike the cider, the neck wet from her lips. It tasted of teenage sick. She budged closer. She felt cosy, a soft maternal body. He hoped she wasn’t getting the wrong idea. He didn’t see how she could be. He wasn’t at his most alluring.

‘Is it weird having a kid?’ he said.

‘It’s very normal having a kid at our age, Mike. Be nice if the dad was around. A dad, not the dad, the real one is a twat. I blame my parents, that hippy thing, it was very fecund wasn’t it? You were supposed to have lots of barefoot mites, scampering round your caravan.’ She sat further away. ‘It really has knocked you for six, hasn’t it?’ she said. For a moment he wasn’t sure what she meant. There were so many things these days knocking him. He was custard-pied by the world. ‘You’re allowed to talk, you know?’

‘I don’t think I can talk to anyone. But if I did it’d be to you.’ This seemed to please her. She scruffed his hair. The sun fell upon them and with it an odd contentment. Mona was a good one. It was a shame she wasn’t Natalie, in a way. Still, she wasn’t. There was no getting around that. They drank some more and walked back in the sun, the Boy running ahead. He kept stopping to point at things and name them. ‘Cloud’, he’d say, or ‘bush’, like an observational comedian. He crept beside Mike and asked him about death. He asked Mona if he could take a day off to go to the funeral. Mona said she would think about it. ‘Every day a funeral,’ sang the Boy.

They reached a large pond where the old guys used to fish and Mona asked if he remembered the day they went there, the Four of them, when Chris and Natalie had swum and they’d stayed on the side.

‘Nothing to stop us now,’ she said. ‘Come on, let’s have a swim.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Mike.

‘Come o-on,’ said Mona. The Boy, who was scratching in the soil to some obscure purpose, perhaps looking for bodies, nodded at the news of swimming, as though it were par for the course. Mona was taking her clothes off. Mike didn’t know the etiquette, if someone did this near you. Looking and looking away seemed equally objectionable. She was certainly looking at him. Her flesh was white to the point of sub-silver, a moon colour. She looked, he had to admit, pretty incredible, unexpectedly so. She looked exactly the opposite of how he imagined Natalie would, soft where she’d be hard, with none of her lean angularity. She didn’t do anything with her pubes. The girls Mike dated in London were officially too cool to do anything with theirs, but he now saw they discreetly did. He wondered what Natalie’s approach was. He should stop staring at Mona’s pubes. She hopped into the water, hiding them.

‘Come on in,’ she said. Mike started undressing. Mona waved and bobbed. Mike took off his pants, wishing his penis was a little larger, wondering why he wished this, and remembering, last of all, that there was a child present. God this was all weird.

The water was at a level of stinging coldness that almost felt like heat.

His leg hairs danced on the oily surface. The water was clear, the bed soft, no bottles and no bicycles, no rusty cars. Mona, not feeling the cold, was out in the middle of the pond. Mike breathed deep, sank to chin height, feeling the sting on his balls, his feet leaving the bed. The shock of it died down in him replaced by an eruption of joy. He was laughing, and laughing at nothing, the purest laughter.

Mona beckoned him. As Mike swam towards her, he saw the Boy on the bank, still in his school uniform, and tried not to wonder if this was weird or not. Mona made a whooping sound, jumped, showing her breasts. This was unavoidably odd, possibly even a crime, although at the same time he couldn’t help liking them. They weren’t at all the sort he normally responded to. They were…un-Natalieish. Mona kept on cavorting. She seemed a bit too happy, frenzied, a bacchante. He’d never seen her having such fun. He couldn’t help smiling too.

‘Is this alright, with the kid?’ said Mike. ‘We don’t want to turn him into a sex murderer.’

‘Feel the water,’ said Mona, shushing him with her finger.

‘I don’t have any option but to feel the fucking water,’ said Mike.

She put her arms round him, hugged him closer, buoyant. Mike tried to keep his body very still, in case it betrayed him by enjoyment. He did not want an erection. They were easily misconstrued. She felt seal-like and slippy. Mike would do the right thing, which was nothing. He froze as rigid as he could.

‘Coming,’ shouted the Boy. Mike was freed. The Boy was dutifully stripping, a light deprived creature. He looked like he’d been skinned.

‘Is this weird?’ said Mike.

‘My mum and dad were hippies. I turned out alright.’

The Boy was swimming in a unique way, splashing frantically, like some pre-industrial means of distributing water. His eyes and mouth were batrachian, wide-open as though in fear. Mona didn’t seem alarmed by any of this. The Boy was coming towards Mike. He wished he could shoo him away.

‘Hello Mike,’ said the Boy. ‘The watery abyss.’

‘Hello,’ said Mike.

‘I’m a selkie,’ said the Boy.

‘Fucking hell,’ said Mike.

‘Mike, please,’ said Mona. He looked down at the bottom, further than he’d imagined. He hoped this wasn’t the place. Surely it wasn’t, it couldn’t be. Chris was in his head again, stepping into the depths, Chris letting the mud drag him, Chris recovered, face to the sky, Chris somehow, still in the pond, waiting to grab at his feet with pale strong wrists, waiting to pull him under. Mike had forgotten how to swim. He kicked and struggled and when he opened his mouth the pond rushed into it, tasting of coldness and chalk. He was going under, he was choking and as he surrendered he felt hands grip him.

Mona’s mouth was against his, pumping him back awake again. ‘Jesus, Mike,’ she said. ‘You scared the life out of me. Has that happened before?’ She was clutching him to her breasts and he didn’t mind being there, but felt he probably ought to.

‘It’s happened once before, I think,’ he said. ‘Hard to tell cos I wasn’t in a pond the other time.’ The three of them were naked, without towels. Mike got up and shivered and hopped on the soil, rubbed his goose-pimpled skin, pointlessly, with his tee-shirt. The Boy stood to one side, giving every appearance of being sorry Mike was alive.

When he was only mostly damp, he struggled into his jeans, Mona dressing the Boy alongside herself. ‘Thanks for back there,’ said Mike.

‘For what?’ said Mona.

‘Rescuing me,’ said Mike. ‘Saving my life.’

‘I couldn’t very well have let you sink.’ she said. ‘People would have asked questions.’

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Rob Palk is the author of Animal Lovers (Sandstone Press, 2018). He has also written for The Guardian and The Fence and appeared on Radio Four. He has recently completed his second novel, The Crowd Pleaser and is currently seeking an agent.

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