‘Aunt Pol didn’t know she was pregnant? You’re joking.’
Mum withdrew from the wardrobe and sighed, looking, not directly at Jimmy, but at his reflection in her dressing table mirror.
‘Happens. Still happens. Daft lassies. Concealed pregnancy they call it. A guilty secret, Dad said. Fair knocked his stuffing out. His wee girl. Clever. Set for the Uni. Law she was going to do. Suddenly we’re standing over a hospital bed looking at her with a baby in her arms. Fifteen. Helpless. You go into shock.’
Of course, thought Jimmy. That explained the single photograph GI Joe had studied with such interest. Explained why Dad spent the next twelve years – his last twelve years – hiding behind a newspaper blocking the sight of Jimmy out. Mum’s anxiety in that photograph, watching Aunt Pol holding Jimmy in her arms as if he was a grenade that was about to explode. That made sense too. And the blank terror in Aunt Pol’s eyes: What have I done? No wonder everyone – apart from himself – looked freaked.
‘Never met the – him – your father.’ Mum made the words ‘your father’ sound distasteful, twisting her mouth into a grimace as she applied pink lipstick carefully. She kept her mouth half open, moving her lips slightly as if she was rehearsing her next statement. Through the mirror Jimmy watched her intently.
Their eyes locked. Mum’s hard, seeing back into memory. Then, under Jimmy’s scrutiny, they softened.
Snap.
She closed her mouth. Blotted her lips with a tissue, stifling other things she could say. But didn’t.
She sighed.
‘Your dad was back to Ireland before you came along. Pauline couldn’t get in touch with him. So she said. Dad was all for having the police because Pauline was a minor – fifteen – but Pauline swore your dad thought she was eighteen. Father Patrick was involved, of course. He said we’d have to have you adopted unless we pretended you were mine. Och, it was all mess.’
Mum’s shoulders slumped beneath the weight of the secret she had kept all these years. Under her fresh powder and lipstick, Jimmy noticed her age for the first time: the soft wrinkles pouching her face, the droop of her jowl. He’d never thought her old before. She’d always just been Mum. The best.
A wave of affection swept Jimmy, and his arms went round his mum. He squeezed her tight.
‘You’re glamorous for an old granny,’ he said.
Together they sat, shoulder to shoulder, not speaking as they examined each other in the mirror.
‘You know, you’re right. I’m not bad for my age.’ Mum stood up first, dusted herself down. She sounded like Aunt Pol, thought Jimmy. When she grinned and stroked Jimmy’s cheek, she even looked like Aunt Pol. Jimmy had never spotted the resemblance before.
DESSERTS
Chapter 26
Merman
GI Joe was pacing up and down outside the Leisure Centre when Jimmy arrived with Aunt Pol and Mum.
‘Just enjoy yourself today, Jim,’ he advised, as they parted at the changing rooms. ‘You’ve proved yourself already learning to swim. Never mind winning.’
Aye, that’ll be right, thought Jimmy, as he lined up with the other competitors at the poolside. Never mind winning! All very noble. Now that he was here, having put in all those hours of training, did he ever want to win this race?
After all, he would never have dreamed he’d be in this situation: a competitor.
Next to Victor. With a girlfriend good enough to eat rooting for him alongside Coach in the spectator’s gallery, her dancing eyes never leaving him.
Not to mention the eyes of the five blokes from other swimming clubs, all go-faster goggles and six packs with attitude. They looked along the starting line, clocking the new lardy lad. Sizing him up.
Taking in the height: What was he? Six one? Two?
The new aerodynamic into-the-wood haircut: Crikey! Well mean.
The belly: Massive. Solid, mind.
The breadth: Shoulders like a medieval battering ram.
The reach: Long, powerful-looking arms positioned for the dive.
Five blokes and Victor.
All looking.
Looking worried.
Splash!
A whistle blast and they were off. Jimmy, a torpedo, breaking the surface of the water well ahead of all the other competitors.
Never mind winning, GI Joe tells me after all the training I’ve put in. Never won squat. Not one certificate for effort in class . . .
Ripple ripple ripple.
Fused together, Jimmy’s legs became a merman’s tail powering him through the water.
Crash!
Jimmy’s arms were plunging pistons driven by the might of his shoulders. As he reared up, gulping air like some huge sea-creature before his next stroke, he heard cheers, and whistles, and yells echoing around his head.
For him. What a sound!
Jimmy was halfway through the race already, approaching the wall at the deep end. He wouldn’t surface again until he was a third of the way down the home strait. There was no need to be above the water any more to sense the effect his performance was having on the spectators’ gallery. He could feel the atmosphere, the charge of it, crackling the water like static. Yells echoed around him, but there was no time to stop. Freeze the moment. Check if people really were on their feet –
Whoa! Look at that huge bloke go!
No time to see Mum and Aunt Pol clinging to each other, willing Jimmy to win, their hearts beating as hard as his own.
Ellie, fists clenched, chanting, ‘Jim, Jim, Jim, Jim . . .’
No time to grin at GI Joe’s screech: ‘COME ON THE BIG MAN.’
Things were very close. As Jimmy flipped for the tumble-turn, Victor was on his merman’s tail snapping like a crocodile. For one infinitesimal moment as Jimmy passed him, their eyes met under the water. No other witnesses.
That look of disbelief in Victor’s eyes; his realisation that big, fat, useless Smelly Kelly, who five weeks ago couldn’t have swum his way out of a trickle of Maddo’s piss, was taking the mick here, that was better than winning, thought Jimmy, butterflying all the way to the end of the race as though his wings were jet-propelled.
He finished at least a body-length clear of Victor. The six packs still frothed like milkshakes halfway up the pool.
‘That’s our club record smashed,’ Barry Dyer screamed as Jimmy’s eyes searched the spectators for Mum and Aunt Pol and Ellie. ‘Both of you. First and second. You’re not even fit yet, Jim, and that was a PB for you, Victor. Great going, lads!’
Victor ignored Barry, spitting out a jet of water. His mouth moved constantly, although the only words Jimmy could make out over a booming tannoy were, ‘. . . beaten by that fat loser.’
Ladies and gentlemen, let’s hear it for our Scotstown Boys’ team. A new club record for 100m butterfly in a sensational demonstration race, won by their new team member . . . Big Jim Kelly!
Spectators were clapping even before the announcement was finished. Aunt Pol had her hands cupped over her mouth and was whooping at the top of her voice. Next to her, GI Joe, punching the air with both hands and yelling in that vein-bulging way of his, looked positively demure. Everyone seemed to be standing up, except Mum, who was dabbing her eyes – and Ellie, who was dabbing her glasses.
So this is what winning tastes like, thought Jimmy, as he scanned the crowd. Must have felt like this for my dad.
It had been a while since Jimmy had felt the swoop of hunger in his belly, but now a tiny pocket of emptiness opened inside him.
Instinctively, he glanced up at the deep end of the pool.
What would he think if he saw me? Would he be proud?
I wish he was here. I wish he’d always been here.
‘Hey, cheer up, Jimmy,’ said Barry Dyer, ‘look round. Remember how this feels – and get used to it.’ He seized Jimmy’s nearest arm, raised it aloft. A victory pennant.
Unnoticed, beneath a fresh wave of applause, Victor slipped out of the pool.
Chapter 27
&n
bsp; Sticks and stones
‘You’re gorgeous,’ Jimmy crooned under his breath, stealing a final glimpse of Ellie, as she edged her way along the gallery behind Aunt Pol. She wouldn’t be outside to meet him when he changed because she had a piano lesson, but before she left him she had leaned over the spectator’s barrier to squeeze both his wet hands after the race and tell him he was her superhero. Sweet music! Her glasses had been completely steamed up, Jimmy chortled to himself. ‘See you later,’ she’d said. Even sweeter music! No wonder he swung through the changing room doors like a gladiator.
‘Wasnae right, swimming us against a whale. I couldnae get round his arse to overtake him. See the tidal wave when he dived in? Help! Help! I’m suffocating. There’s no room in here any more.’ Victor’s damsel-in-distress voice instantly severed Jimmy from his joy. He slunk into the showers aware of one or two swimmers exchanging wry smiles at his expense. But no one laughed.
‘There should be a law against flab like that, man. Doesn’t his blubber make you boke?’
Sticks and stones’ll break my bones but names’ll never hurt me, thought Jimmy, mentally chanting the mantra that Aunt Pol had taught him.
And when I’m dead and in my grave, you’ll be sorry for what you called me.
Not quite so easy to follow this advice when Victor’s insults were sloughing off Jimmy’s fit new skin like an acid, exposing the same old Fat Boy Fat underneath.
‘Heard this one? What d’you get if you cross a pig with a set of swimming trunks?’
Victor’s hand gestured towards Jimmy. ‘A PIG, right? – with a pair of ba’-crushin’ lycra swimming togs?’
Only the sound of running water broke the silence. ‘Easy. That’s what you get.’ Victor hollered raucously, stabbing his finger through the steam.
Victor’s humourless laughter ricocheted around the showers, but nobody else joined in. One swimmer nodded towards Jimmy as he left the showers, saying to his mate, ‘Why’s the big man taking a slagging from that plonker?’
‘I know, creamed the pants off him in the pool,’ said the other, ‘He shouldnae take snash like that.’
Another six pack, towelling his hair, cocked his head at Victor. ‘He might be fat, man, but he shafted you big style.’
Five remaining six packs murmured their assent.
‘Beat me?’
Victor’s voice rose in incredulity. ‘Beat me? You jokin’ man. Pah!’ He spat at Jimmy’s feet. Sneered.
‘That was all a set-up out there. I let fat boy win.’ He lowered his voice. ‘See, both his mammys were up there rootin’ for him. Couldnae have razzed the saddo in front of them.’
BAM!
Two of the six packs had to dive into empty showers to avoid being bulldozed as Jimmy slammed through them like an international scrum forward. Grabbing Victor’s neck with one hand, Jimmy switched the shower above his head to cold and turned the spray on Victor. Full.
‘Let me win, did you? Fancy swimming our race over again? Right here, right now?’
Jimmy could feel Victor’s Adam’s apple quiver under the pressure of his fingers. He loosened his grip.
‘Ready? I’ll take you on in the water any time, Victor.’ He worried Victor’s neck when he didn’t answer, staring hard into Victor’s pale blue eyes. They blinked back, cowed, pupils reflecting another hulking face. Angry. Ugly with aggression. Jimmy’s own.
Jimmy pushed the image of his angry self away in disgust, reeling Victor off-balance so he slipped and slid, all jaggy knees and knobbly elbows, down the wall to the floor like a slick of shampoo.
‘Hey, break it up, big man. He’s no’ worth it.’
The biggest of the six packs stepped apprehensively between Jimmy and Victor, forming a barrier with his arms to restrain Jimmy from the shivering specimen struggling to his feet under a cascade of cold water.
‘Game over,’ said the six pack, and Jimmy recalled Hamblin, the PE teacher, saying the very same thing. Not five weeks ago as he held one boy back from attacking another.
This time, the roles were reversed.
Chapter 28
Awright?
‘Awright?’ asked Aunt Pol.
Everyone kept asking Jimmy that today, as if he was an invalid or something.
It was the first thing Barry Dyer said when he grabbed Jimmy outside the changing cubicles and thumped him in the chest in delight.
‘Y’awright, Jim?’
I was till you punched a hole in my ribcage, thought Jimmy, a heavy shrug the best response he could muster. The sweetness of his victory had been tainted by the violent way in which he had gone ape at Victor in the showers, leaving the taste of self-disgust in his mouth. That wasn’t me back there, he thought.
Barry, however, was too excited about something to notice Jimmy’s mood.
‘You dark horse, you,’ Barry was saying, finger and thumb poised to pinch Jimmy’s cheek. Jimmy stepped back in time. ‘I knew it! Knew you reminded me of Frankie Fallon.’ Barry contented himself with flexing his huge index finger under Jimmy’s nose. ‘Here’s me thinking I was hallucinating; you looking like that, and swimming the way you do.’
‘Who told you?’
Jimmy couldn’t believe his ears, Barry’s words knocking the stuffing out of him more than any thump to the chest. Hadn’t begun to get his head round any of this real dad business and here was his flipping swimming coach discussing it as though it was the weather!
‘Was it him? Did he tell you?’ Jimmy pointed accusingly at GI Joe, chatting at the reception desk with Mum and Aunt Pol. Must’ve been him, thought Jimmy. ‘Blabbermouth.’
‘You don’t mean Father over there?’ Barry Dyer looked even more upset than Mum did when Jimmy or Aunt Pol came out with something irreverent. He covered Jimmy’s stabbing finger.
‘Father never said a word about you,’ he whispered. ‘Even when I asked him if he believed in reincarnation. Told him you were the spit of this big Irish junior I remembered. “Fallon was the name,” I says. “Swear to God that could be him in that pool.” And Father Joe says to me, “I’m a priest; don’t do reincarnation. And, anyway, Jim’s himself. His own man; a one-off.”’
Barry gave Jimmy a brace of matching shoulder punches.
‘That young lady told me Frankie Fallon was your dad,’ Barry said, blushing slightly as he spoke. He was pointing, not at Aunt Pol, but at Mum.
‘Awright, Jim?’ Now GI Joe wanted to know. ‘Because you’ve got a face like fizz on you. Things OK?’ He was nodding towards the showers.
‘Sorted,’ said Jimmy. ‘Victor doing his usual. But ach –’ Jimmy’s swiped the air as though he was knocking away a pesky midgie.
‘Something else up, Jim?’
Jimmy stalled, shoulders slumping. Blurted before he could stop himself. ‘All this business about my dad.’ He was watching Mum and Aunt Pol laughing with Barry.
‘Getting to you now? You want to know more about him?’ asked GI Joe.
Jimmy shrugged.
‘Dunno. Dunno what I want to know.’
‘You’ve a lot to get your head round, Jim. It’ll take time.’
‘Everything’s so different,’ Jimmy mumbled, watching Mum and Aunt Pol throw their heads back to laugh at something Barry said. He’d never seen them behave like this before. So chilled. Aunt Pol with her arm around Mum’s shoulder shaking her teasingly. Mum primping her hair slightly for what could only be Barry’s benefit.
‘Must be a relief for them, Jim,’ said GI Joe, mind-reading. ‘Getting things out into the open.’
‘I knew there was something – something, not right. I had dreams –’ Jimmy began, but his thoughts and feelings flew about in his head too rapidly to be pinned down. ‘I just wish I could see my dad, find out about him,’ he whispered, before slipping past GI Joe, and Barry and Mum and Aunt Pol. He needed to get outside for air.
‘Awright, Jim?’ whispered the priest, touching Jimmy’s arm gently. He had found Jimmy leaning against the Leisure Centre wall, his eyes clo
sed.
‘I’ll tell you one thing I remember about your dad. You couldn’t miss him, Jim. He was built like a brick cludgie.’
‘You mean he was fat.’
Jimmy’s eyes remained closed. He didn’t want anything to distract him from the information GI Joe was feeding him.
‘First impression, Jim, was this huge fella. Big red mullet of long hair. Frankie was totally different from the rest of us. That’s why,’ GI Joe admitted, ‘I couldn’t understand what Polly saw in him at first.’
‘See, Jim, back then I’d have eaten myself if I was chocolate. I was a wee poser stringing Polly because I thought I was gorgeous. But I was rotten to her, always arranging dates then standing her up. Blanking her if she spoke to me. Total wally. All flicked hair and attitude. She must have thought I was scum when I turned up here again after all these years. You’ll always get teenagers like me, Jim. Run of the mill, ten a penny. But you wouldn’t buy two Frankies for a pound.’
‘Frankie was different,’ GI Joe said. That, thought Jimmy, was one of the adjectives he used repeatedly. Along with words like ‘hefty’ and ‘big-built.’
‘Fat you mean, yeah?’
‘Did I say fat once, Jim?’ GI Joe was getting a bit worked up. ‘I said first impressions were of someone huge, but you get used to someone’s size, see beyond it when you suss the person inside. I mean, d’you think I keep thinking “he’s fat” when I’m with you? How tragic would that make me? Frankie was just different. Polly thought so too. Frankie made her feel special, never mucked her about, never made her feel small.’
‘How d’you know all this?’ Jimmy asked.
‘Because Polly told me all about him when I finally came groveling, begging her to go out with me. No chance. “Away and admire your blackheads in the mirror,” was about the jist of it for me. She said Frankie wanted to marry her. She’d told him she was eighteen, a law student.’
‘Course, I slagged her bigtime for lying. Said Frankie must be dumb to believe her. That’s when she fell out with me. Never spoke to me again.’
Fat Boy Swim Page 11
