Waterland (24 page)

In short, I wish to point out that (despite the availability and variety of contraception, despite the lowering age for the incidence of pregnancy amongst schoolgirls, and despite the apparent quicker maturation, physically, sexually and – yes, Price – even mentally, of today’s juveniles) your present generation has no monopoly—

And this little game of tease and dare beside the Hockwell Lode which had been begun before several times but had never reached its culmination (however you picture that) was only prevented from doing so partly by the innate timidity behind the outward bravado of those engaged (average age, excluding Dick, thirteen-and-a-half); and partly because on this hot and flagrant July afternoon, when things might indeed have already gone further, they were constrained by the watching presence of my brother, who, not being one for company and being at the best of times inscrutable, uncommunicative and difficult to be with, had never before participated in these proceedings. So it was impossible to tell how he viewed them.

‘First,’ says Freddie, ‘you must take off your sandals and socks.’ With which Mary and even Shirley Alford have no difficulty in complying.

A stylized pause in which Mary’s eyes remain on our swellings and Shirley’s flicker heavenward.

‘And then you must take off –’ but under the influence perhaps of his father’s whisky, or from sheer impatience, Freddie dispenses with the usual itemizing by which this game is enabled never to reach its conclusion and says, with a distinct leer ‘–
all
your clothes.’

Which produces consternation in both Mary and Shirley, though more so in Shirley. For those previously carefully separated intermediate stages – ‘your blouse’, ‘your skirt’ – did at least allow for compromise solutions: for audacity to falter on either side, for stipulations to be made (‘so far, no further’) or counter-bargains to be demanded (‘only if you first—’) or for a general descent into giggles or belligerence. For this game which is impelled by mutual curiosity has also the aspect of mutual opposition.

‘That’s not how we played it,’ says Shirley.

‘It’s how we play it now,’ says Freddie, taking a swig of whisky and patting his still covered protuberance. ‘Change of rules.’

Mary – followed, hesitantly, by Shirley – begins to remove her blouse and skirt. Though it is to be noticed that in doing this she looks, not at Freddie, Peter Baine, Terry Coe or me, nor at our tell-tale swimming-trunks but at Dick who sits, watching, like some mute adjudicator, knees drawn up, on the top of the bank.

The discarding of skirt and blouse places Shirley at a disadvantage. For whereas Mary’s developing anatomy requires that she wears the skimpiest of brassières, Shirley wears no such garment. Her flat, modest nipples present nothing different from what we are familiar with on our own rib-cages. And so, at this point, Shirley looks sheepish and all eyes turn to Mary.

Mary takes off her brassière and immediately wraps her arms around her shoulders.

‘And now your—’ But Freddie can never bring himself
to say without a great deal of facial distortion and the threat of giggles, the word ‘knickers’.

Mary shakes her head, still hugging her shoulders. ‘No. We’re equal now.’ (Hers and Shirley’s flannel knickers for our swimming-trunks.) ‘You’ve got to do something.’ And looks hard at Freddie’s swelling which possibly contracts under the gaze.

Silence. Licking of dry lips.

Then Freddie Parr leans forward suddenly, pulls Mary’s right hand from her left shoulder, presses it against his swimming-trunks and says: ‘There, you’ve had a feel. Now—’

Whereupon Shirley, with a look of fright, scrambles for her clothes, removes herself to a distance, dresses hastily and hurries off on her bicycle, amidst jeers and cat-calls.

And now, will curiosity outweigh inhibition?

Mary, with arms once more clasped over young breasts: ‘You first.’

Peter Baine: ‘But there’s four of us.’

Mary: ‘Do you want me to choose? Anyway, there’s five of you.’

And she looks up to where Dick still sits near the top of the bank. Alone and out of it (because Dick doesn’t yet have a motor-cycle).

And Freddie Parr, in particular, takes note of that look.

‘Come on then.’ With a note of authority. As if Shirley’s departure has somehow increased her confidence, or as if that glance at Dick has imposed on the four of us a mysterious compliance.

July sunshine on the banks of the Hockwell Lode. Four pairs of swimming-trunks, two dark blue, one black, one maroon, lowered, in the sunshine, with almost maidenly meekness and with an anxiety on the part of each to be neither ahead nor behind its neighbour. Four wrinkled, irresolute and slightly sticky members revealed, amidst nests of incipient pubic hair; which attempt to stand up, go limp and stir again feebly. For whether it is the equivocal
work of Freddie’s stolen whisky (already having unsteadying effects on our heads and the pits of our stomachs) or merely innate bashfulness, we cannot muster between us – for all our anticipatory stiffness and for all Mary’s taking her arms, by way of inducement, away from her baby breasts – a decent hard-on. And your history teacher’s little instrument – I baulk, you see, at no confession – droops utterly.

Mary, after a cursory inspection, turns her head aside. (With one accord, four pairs of swimming-trunks are swiftly pulled back up again.) She is disappointed. Her curiosity has been cheated. For such a meagre display, she is not going to pull down her own navy blue convent-school knickers.

The swimming-trunked foursome stands – or does not stand – disgraced. Freddie takes a hasty pull of whisky. Terry Coe – can it be possible? – has tears in his eyes. And your history teacher does not know where to look.

‘Unless,’ says Mary, thinking aloud and relishing the position of absolute advantage she has now acquired, ‘unless you – pass a test first.’

‘What test?’

Four raised, apprehensive heads.

Mary looks at the surface of the Lode. ‘A swimming test. From the wooden bridge. Whoever swims the furthest –
under
-water. I’ll – show him.’

‘But you know I can’t swim,’ says Freddie.

‘Too bad. You’ll just have to learn.’

By the ‘wooden bridge’ Mary means a narrow, rickety affair of planks and slats with a single hand rail, slung across the Lode and raised in its central section by two piers, some eight feet above the water, to allow the passage of lighters. A perfect diving platform.

‘So come on.’ And Mary, to taunt us, takes her arms once more from her scarcely developed yet fully perceptible breasts, then puts them back again.

We get up, the whisky causing us difficulty in finding
our balance and producing renewed qualms in our bellies. It is doubtful whether we are prompted any longer by the prize of glimpsing what makes Mary different from us between the legs, so much as by the desire to prove ourselves to each other. Just as Mary, perhaps, is no longer motivated by curiosity but by this undeniable power she has discovered and is wielding.

But as we turn to walk along the Lode bank to the wooden bridge we stop and both our masculine pride and Mary’s feminine authority receive a check. For Dick has joined us. He has come down from the top of the bank. And not only Dick but, attached to him, concealed, if scarcely contained by his straining swimming-trunks, a tubular swelling of massive and assertive proportions.

Now, given brotherly closeness, I had had occasion enough to observe my brother’s member – flopping and dangling, inert. A fair specimen, sizeable but not gross, in its unprimed state. But I had never glimpsed— I had even reflected – considering Dick’s other sluggish characteristics, his potato head, his lack of words, his muddy gaze – that Dick just wasn’t interested. But I had never glimpsed—

And nor perhaps had Dick. Perhaps this occasion was for him as for us one of astonishing and traumatic discovery. For he thrusts this prodigy before him, bracing his pelvis, as if holding away from himself something he is uncertain whether to acknowledge.

‘Me too. M-me swim too.’

Mary’s eyes – we all notice this – goggle. A flush ignites her cheeks. Her brow wrinkles. And while these symptoms take place, she considers perhaps (my swift, bitter surmise) that, quite apart from this fact of sheer and astonishing dimension, Dick is four years everyone’s senior. Here, after all, wrapped in infantile trappings, is a man (a little tuft of hairs in the centre of Dick’s breastbone). What other wondrous faculties might this otherwise dumb creature possess …?

In Mary’s eyes, rekindled, refired, curiosity. And fear. Just a touch of fear. The kind of fear which because it jostles with curiosity and because it contains something else – a touch of pity too, of strange, charitable intent – forms a dangerous mixture.

To the wooden bridge. Fast. To conceal in impetuous and desperate action the effect of this cat among the pigeons, this goat among sheep. To avoid, at least, having to stand and look any more at that little giant. Even Freddie, despite his not unreasonable protestation, hurries along the Lode bank. Because he is going to have to learn.

On the central section of the wooden bridge, five figures, in the following order, from right to left: Peter Baine, Terry Coe, Tom Crick, Freddie Parr, Dick Crick, all in sundry postures of bravado and apprehension (and in one case distinct sexual arousal) and all (with one exception) in varied states of inebriation. Five figures staring at the Hockwell Lode – a man-made water-course which drains into the River Leem which in turn drains into the River Ouse – waiting for the signal to dive.

The art of underwater swimming as practised during the fine summer spells by the male children of Hockwell, Wansham and elsewhere, is neither sophisticated nor, on the other hand, undemanding. It consists of a combination of lung-power and muscle-power; against which are pitted the murky, muddy waters of the Hockwell Lode which offer little to choose between the open-eyed and closed-eyed style of swimming and which, when unintentionally if unavoidably swallowed when air supplies give out, taste foul. It has been the subject before of challenges, mild bets and boasting. But never before of such urgent provocations as this.

Your history teacher believes he is not unskilled in this art. He believes he can beat Peter Baines and Terry Coe (has beaten them before). And as for Freddie Parr— But turbulent emotions and an unexpected rival make him tremble as he stands on the wooden slats.

Five figures on the bridge. And one on the bank (in navy blue knickers) who – still with arms clasping shoulders – shouts ‘Ready!’ Allows a merciless pause, in which fiercely inhaled draughts of air are half wasted. Then ‘Go!’

The younger of the two Crick brothers dives and loses sight of his opponents. Determined that his lungs shall burst rather than that Mary shall have cause to scorn him (let alone refuse him the sight of her—), he swims deep. No breaking of the surface to disqualify him. His eyes encounter a brown and silent fog. Suspended silt. Stirred-up silt. A domain where earth and water mingle. His limbs struggle, his throat makes little gulps. He must come up (what must it be like to drown?), he must come up—

And does, fifteen yards from the bridge, to gasp, gasp again, and to see Peter Baine, also gasping, some three yards behind him and Terry Coe a yard behind that. But no Mary on the adjacent bankside to proclaim Tom Crick is first, Tom Crick has won. Because what is happening at the bridge? Freddie Parr is taking a swimming lesson. Freddie, indeed, not to suffer utter humiliation, has dived in, and now he thrashes, flails, splutters, yelps, rolls, sinks, comes up again, gurgles, sinks again. Mary stands in agitation on the bank. And my brother, who has not dived in, who remains on the bridge, looks down at Freddie with an air of fascination, with an air also of someone waiting till so many seconds have elapsed, and then – as those in the water swim towards the scene – kneels, lies down on the slats, hangs over the edge, secures himself with one hand, and extends the other, without hurry, to Freddie. Who grabs it and – now in a state of humiliation greater than that he sought to avoid – is hauled up on to the bridge by the manifest strength of his rescuer’s long arm.

Brief and callous enquiry-session, as Peter Baine, Terry Coe, and I climb out on to the bank.

‘He’s all right.’

‘What happened?’

‘His own fault.’

‘Did Dick push him?’

‘No, he dived – sort of.’

‘Stupid idiot.’

‘Didn’t have to. No one made him.’

But Dick says nothing. He stands on the bridge, vacant-faced, swelling stiffer than ever.

Freddie slumps on the bank, chest heaving.

‘But did you see? Did you see who won?’ A petulant, insistent voice. (Because even at the risk of appearing smug, your history teacher doesn’t want his achievement to go unreckoned.)

‘I saw—’ says Mary, wandering, disconcertingly, in the direction of her clothes.

But as she speaks a hoarse cry and a loud splash make all heads swivel.

Dick has dived. Dick has expressed his opinion that the contest is not yet over.

Ripples. Bubbles. A glimmer of sallow limbs beneath the grey-brown surface. Then nothing. For a long time nothing. For fifteen, for thirty seconds, nothing. Then nothing again. Then when nothing must surely have gone on for the utmost period allowable to it, still nothing. And, after a further, amazed stretching of credibility and while Freddie, on all fours, expels on to the grass a stream of whisky-scented vomit, still nothing. And still nothing. With the result that all (excepting Freddie) rise to their feet and Mary (neglecting the complete concealment of her nipples) lifts one hand to shield her eyes. Because, basing a spatial reckoning on the lapse of time, it is now a question of looking into the sun-glinting distance.

Blue-haze sky. Hot banks. Flat, flat Fens. Rasping rushes. Mud between the toes. Weeping willows. Mary …