He frowns, brings his thinking forward, peers ahead of his skin and his skull to the spot where Pete is already bobbing, hand at rest on the side and frowning up at a woman who is pacing and speaking to Fezman and Jason. They are both still dry and standing on the tiles, Fezman in these mad, knee-length trunks like he’s going to play football in the 1920s but with Day-Glo palm trees and dolphins and surf on them. You can tell he fancies himself in them and they’re new. They maybe are from a girlfriend.
The speaking woman is round-shouldered and wears a blouse and a long skirt so tight it almost stops her walking, only this isn’t good because she has no arse, no pleasantness to see. When she angles herself and faces Dan, he ends up looking right at the curve of her little belly and her little mound and he doesn’t want to. They make him sad. Everything about her is sad — browny grey and bloody depressing — hair, clothes, shoes that she clips and quarter-steps along in — and Dan can tell she’s a teacher, because she’s got that fake cheerful thing about her mouth and darty little eyes that are tired and want to find mistakes. Every now and then, her lips thin together and it gets obvious that her job has gone badly for her, and probably also her life. And here she is taking her class for swimming lessons on a Tuesday afternoon — for safety and fitness and possibly something else that she can’t quite control. Dan is of the opinion that she should not have any kind of care over children.
“Excuse me.” The teacher doesn’t speak to Dan, although she has left the others and drawn really near to him. She’s maybe only in her forties, but he notices she smells of old lady.
“Excuse me.” She focuses on Gobbler. “I realize you’ve been here, that you come here quite often...” She swallows and angles her head away, starts seriously watching the children — you’d think they were going to catch on fire, or something — not that she’d be any use to save them. “And I’ve explained you to them, but now—”
“What d’you say, love?” Gobbler interrupts her and his arm around Dan flexes. “You’ve explained...?”
“Yes, I could explain you to them.”
Gobbler’s arm getting ready for something, thoughts roaring about inside it, Dan can hear them.
“Don’t know what you mean though, love. How you’d explain me. What you’d be explaining.” Gobbler is nearly giggling which the woman shouldn’t think is him being friendly, because Dan knows he’s not. “Is that like I need translating? Like I’m a foreign language, because that’s not it — British me, British to the core.”
Dan wanting to clear off out of it, avoid, and also wanting to do what he must, what he does — he goes along with the lads: Fezman, Frank, Jason, even Petey in the water, they close up alongside Gobbler, make a curvy sort of line, and they watch the woman regret herself, but still think she’s in the right. “It’s the children — I know you can’t help it — but they get upset.”
Dan’s voice out of him before he realizes, “They don’t look upset.”
“One of the girls was crying.”
“They look fine. Splashing away and happy. I mean, they do. I wouldn’t say it, if they weren’t.”
She tries going at Gobbler again which is unwise and Dan wonders how she managed to qualify, even get to be a teacher, when she is this thick and this shit at understanding a situation. “I told them you were as God made you.”
“What?”
“But with so many... it isn’t your fault, but you must see that you’re disturbing.” Her hands waver in front of her, as if she can’t quite bear to point at them. “You are disturbing. I’m sorry, but you are.” She nods. “There must be places you can go to where you’d be more comfortable.” Her fingers take hold of her wrists and cling.
And the lads don’t speak. She stays standing there and hasn’t got a fucking clue. And the lads don’t speak. Dan can tell that she has no idea they’re deciding to be still, to be the nicest they can be, working up to it by deciding they will mainly forget her and what she’s said and who they are.
And the lads don’t speak.
She gives them a disapproving face, touch of impatience.
And Fezman nods, thoughtful, and says — he’s very even, gentle with every word — says to her, “These are new trunks. I like these trunks. They are DILAC trunks, which you don’t understand.” He presses his face in mildly, mildly towards her, “They are Do I Look A Cunt in these trunks? trunks and I am going to swim in them this morning. And you look a cunt and you are a cunt, you are an utter cunt and I am sorry for this, but you should know and you should maybe go away and try being different and not a cunt, but right here, right now — a cunt — you’re a cunt. You are a cunt.” He nods again, slowly, and turns his face to the water and the girls and boys.
Dan watches while the woman stares and her head jumps, acts like they’ve spat at her, or grabbed her tits and his gone arm trembles the same way that Gobbler’s does and he wants to run, can’t run, wants to — wants to throw up.
The woman kind of freezes for a moment and then takes a little, hobbled step and then another, everything unsteady, leaves them.
The lads wait.
Dan sees when she reaches the opposite wall and starts yakking to a guy in a DILAC suit, guy who’s standing with a Readers’ Wives type of bint — they’re colleagues, no doubt, fellow educators. He decides that he has no interest in what may transpire.
Dan and the lads take a breath, the requisite steps, and drop themselves into the water. They join Petey. They swim — show themselves thrashing, ugly, wild.
Dan watches the ceiling tiles pass above him and has his anger beneath him, has it pushing at the small of his back, bearing him up. It wouldn’t be useful anywhere else.
And he makes sure that he watches — regularly watches out — twists and raises his head and strains to see, makes sure that the kids have cleared out of his way, out of everyone’s. He wants no accidents.
In his heart, though, in his one remaining heart, there is a depth, a wish that some morning there will be an accident: a frightened kid, scared boy, choking and losing his way. When this happens Dan will be there and will save him.
He practises in his head and in the water — the paths that his good arm will take, the grip, the strength he’s already developed in his legs.
Once that’s over it will mean he has recovered himself again — become a man who would rescue a boy, who would always intend and wish to do that — would not be any other man than the man who would do that, who would be vigilant, be a brave bastard and take care.
He never would have done the thing that he couldn’t have. He never would have been the man he couldn’t be. He never would.
No tricks of the darkness, no sounds in the pre-light, no panic, no confusion, no walking downstairs to find it, to see how it lies like it’s frightened and shouldn’t be hurt. No mistake.
There should be no mistake. There should be no mistake. There should be no mistake.
Robert Hayer’s Dead
Simon Kernick
“I used to have a boy like you,” the man said quietly. “A son. His name was Robert.”
The kid didn’t say anything, just kept his position, sitting on an upturned plastic bucket in the corner of the cellar. He was staring down at the bare stone floor, staring hard like it mattered. His naturally blond hair was a mess — all bunched and greasy — and his clothes, which were the usual early teen uniform of baggy jeans, white trainers, white football shirt, had a crumpled, grimy look like he’d been sleeping in them, which he had.
“I’m going to tell you about my son,” continued the man whose name was Charles Hayer. He was standing five feet away from the boy, watching him intently, his face tight and lined with the anguish he felt at recounting the story. “He was all I ever had. You know that? Everything. His mother and me, we were still together but things between us... well, y’know, it just wasn’t right. Hadn’t been for a long time. We’d been married getting on for twenty years, and the spark, the love, whatever you want to call it, it had just gone. You’re too young to understand but that’s sometimes the way it goes between a man and a wife. You’ll find out one day.”