The Land of Children's Jokes was locked in the bony embrace of winter, the limitless building must have central unheating, Ian reflected miserably. It was also awkward walking hand-in-hand with Doug, who often had to proceed with extreme caution in order to avoid knocking the spade in his head. Eventually they came to a tunnel that was different to all the others. This one was tiled. It was, Ian realised as they splashed through a footbath, set in its slippery floor, the sort of tunnel you go through on your way from the changing rooms to a public swimming pool.
He was right. When they emerged they were standing at the side of a swimming pool, an old-fashioned thirties’ pool with magnolia tiling everywhere, a couple of tiers of wooden seats for spectators and green water lapping at its sides. Doug said, ‘I have to go on a bit and check that everything has been prepared. If you don't mind I'd be obliged if you'd wait here for a while.’ Before Ian could object, or remonstrate with him in any way he was gone, back through the footbath.
Ian sat down in one of the seats. This, he thought to himself, is no dream. It's too cold, for a start, never mind its terrible lucidity. There was a splash and an explosion of breath from the pool — there was something, or someone in it. Ian rushed down to the edge and peered in. Nothing. The greenish surface of the water lapped towards him and then away from him again. But then he saw something move, right down towards the deep end where the gently sloping bottom suddenly took a dive. It looked like a piece of statuary, a bust or torso of some kind, although not quite the right shape; and anyway, Ian observed, a trail of tiny air-bubbles linked it to the surface.
It lurched, then shot up from the bottom of the pool in a shroud of air and water — whoosh! Ian recoiled, it was bobbing in the open air, the torso of a man, quite a small man with collar-length dark hair. The armless and legless man wriggled his torso feverishly to remain upright in the water, his breath came out in hard ‘paffs’.
Ian was a little blasé by now. ‘You must be Bob,’ he said.
‘Aye — that's me,’ replied the quadra-amputee, still jerking spasmodically. He had a pronounced Strathclyde accent. His limbs had been chopped off right at the joins, shoulder and groin. Ian could see distinct ovals of recently grafted skin framed by the empty legs of his blue swimming trunks. For some reason the most revolting thing about Bob was this, that he had troubled to clothe his bottom half; the empty legs of his trunks stretched down from his groin, under his perineum and up his arse cleft at the back, framing the scar tissue with shocking clarity in spite of the ultramarine wavering.
Bob had managed to stabilise himself. He was sufficiently buoyant to prevent the water from coming above his nipples and he was now keeping himself upright with nice twitches of his hips and buttocks. Ian examined him more closely. He had the sharp features of a Gorbals hard man and the razor scars to go with them — thin blue capillaries radiated across his face from his nose. His narrow hairless chest — and indeed the rest of his body from what Ian could see of it — was packed with taut muscle under a pale freckled skin.
‘Did yer mother never teach you that it's rude to stare like that at the disabled?’ Bob snapped.
‘Oh God, I'm sorry, I'm a bit disoriented, you see. I've no idea either how I got here or what the hell it's all about.’
‘You can be forgiven for that,’ said Bob, mellowing. ‘I dinna’ ken anyone who rightly knows how he came here.’ He moved his head around to indicate the place they found themselves in. It was an amazingly expressive gesture, as if his neck were an arm and his face a hand he could talk with. ‘Ahm from Scotty Land — originally like.’
‘Oh,’ said Ian.
‘D'ye ken it?’
‘Well, I went when I was a child, to Edinburgh on a school trip.’
‘Edinburgh! Pshaw! Edinburgh! Thass no more Scotty Land than the bloody Tyne, man.’
‘Where are you from?’ asked Ian, sort of knowing that this was the right thing to do.
‘Glasgie, man, Glasgie, not that that's necessarily yer real Scotty land, ahm not claiming that because anyone from north of the Gramps always says that they're the real Scotties and I can see their point.’ Bob finished this speech by arching his pale body right out of the water like some hideous Rainbow trout, then he plunged his head down into the pool, so that his foreshortened rear end shot up in the air. The arch was followed by another and then another. Ian watched dumbfounded as the amputee propelled himself the length of the pool by exercising this limbless butterfly stroke.
Bob reached the shallows and regained his equilibrium in the far corner of the pool, his narrow shoulders jammed up against the rails of the ladder. There was a splashing from the footbath — Ian turned and saw Doug emerging spade-first.
‘About bloody time!’ hooted Bob.
‘I'm sorry?’ said Doug, urbane as ever.
‘You leave the bloody man in my pool without so much as by your leave — what kind of manners are those then?’
‘It was only for a couple of minutes — ’
‘Dinne give me that crap, many mickles make a muckle; and you can tell his fucking nibs from me, that ahm no afraid of him neither. There's little else he can do to hurt me, now is there?’
‘I'm sorry if I offended you,’ said Ian. He couldn't say why but he rather liked Bob. There was something truly admirable about the way the spunky Scot had overcome his terrifying disability.
‘Oh dinna you worry, lad, I was jus’ letting off some blather. You run along now; and as the medieval knights used to say to one another on parting, “Be-sieging you!” Ahahaha! Hahah'ha!’
And it was this cackling laughter that followed Ian as he splashed his way back through the footbath behind Doug.
But either it wasn't the same footbath, or else someone had been indulging in scene shifting on a prodigious scale, for this time, after tramping through some changing rooms, they emerged into what was clearly the reception area which properly belonged to the swimming pool. A long low space, a checkerboard of blue-and-brown carpet tiles spread out towards a row of glass doors at the far end. There were cork boards all the way along the breeze-blocked walls and attached to them the usual notices advertising the times for the Junior Ducklings Club, aerobics classes and the water polo heats.
It was as if the swimming pool had been some kind of air-lock in between the Land of Children's Jokes and a less problematic reality, the reception area was so mundanely institutional. And for Ian, underscoring this paradigm shift was the sight of two familiar figures, sitting on a couple of tiny chairs that were set beside the information desk near the glass doors. One of the figures was Dr Gyggle and the other was The Fat Controller.
‘What's your name?’ called The Fat Controller, turning to face them.
‘Doug,’ Doug replied.
‘Of course — ha, ha! — “Doug”, that's rich. All right, Doug, bring him over here and then lose yourself, exit, scram, got the ticket? Good, good, in fact, capital!’
Ian took his time strolling down to meet his two mentors. He knew now that he had all the time in the world.
‘Come on, Ian, don't dither,’ said The Fat Controller. ‘We haven't got all the time in the world, you know. What's that you say?’ Poor Doug had banged the haft of his spade against a fire bell; it was this tinging noise that The Fat Controller was responding to.
‘Sorry,’ said Doug, ‘I didn't say anything, it was just my spade. .’ He trailed off and gestured up to the ceiling in a rather helpless fashion.
‘I thought I told you to go away, Dougie — so do it — and on your way back give that coon-boy a shake, got that?’ barked The Fat Controller, who had a charmingly off-hand sort of way of voicing racist sentiments.