by T W G Fraser
The Carp Pond
TWG Fraser
Copyright 2013 TWG Fraser
There was a war on, a civil war but with other, neighbouring, countries involved too. I was not very sure about that. But it meant that we could become a target, according to my father. Not because we were important nationally, or even regionally, but apparently we mattered in the local area. Anyway, he said that it had got too dangerous for us at home. We had shut our lumber yard in town for the moment, and left our house and moved into a hut in the forest to be safe. It only had one room but it did have a brick chimney so we could do a bit of cooking indoors. My parents, five brothers and two sisters and I all slept in there in sleeping-bags. My younger sister and I shared a hammock. I was not sure if this was better than sleeping on the floor but it was more fun. At night we plaited hair and whispered stories to each other. On the plus side, there was no school and the shack was close to a big old carp pond. I was on the school swimming team so I swam in it quite a lot. We all did.
It was a big pond, very muddy at the edges with thick groups of tall reeds clustered round the banks. There was a small pier at one end where our rowing-boat was moored (loaded with my fishing-tackle that I had forgotten to bring indoors). At the other end was the old sluice gate. Try as we might, we could never get the old gears to turn. Not that we wanted to drain the lake but things could get a bit dull out here, even if it was the summer.
And it was a good summer morning. The others were not up yet but the sun was and it was just beginning to warm me as I lay by the side of the pond. A bank rose up behind me for a few feet before dipping down and levelling off about 30 yards away around the shack. Further on it rose up into the forest which undulated slightly in all directions so you could never see very far, and of course the trees didn't help. So I was surprised to see our old foreman's head appear a couple of slight rises away from me. I could have hit him with a stone quite easily. He did have a big head, it would have made an easy target. He had not noticed me but then he was staring very intently into the trees, straight at the shack. I rolled over and stuck my head up to see what he was looking at.
He was watching half a dozen or maybe eight men crowding round the shack, mainly at the door which one kicked and they all ran in. Something odd happened to me then. My feet went very cold as if they were encased in a shoe box of solid ice and something in my chest became very heavy. I didn't move. I had seen big knives and some guns. I heard some screams, some like how my younger sister would scream, others I did not really recognise. There were shouts too. Then it went quiet and then there was a shot.
I turned my head and looked at the foreman. My eyes were blurred and I could not see him clearly. I wiped my eyes on my sleeve and he turned his head and looked at me. He looked annoyed. He stood up and I saw that he was holding a gun which he put to his shoulder and pointed at me. For a second I did not move which was lucky because when I did move he fired and I saw leaves and twigs lift up where I had been lying. I was only a few steps from the pond when I stood up and I ran for the water's edge. It was a cheap single-shot hunting rifle with no magazine so he had to load a new bullet by hand. He brought the gun up to aim again as I stumbled through the mud and then dived into reedy water just as the gun fired.
I was underwater. It was pretty cloudy but I could see the light of the sky above as I swam deeper. I turned to my right, trying not to disturb the reeds as I swam, towards the pier and the foreman. I hoped he was heading down to where he had seen me dive in and was watching the water towards the sluice gate assuming that I was trying to swim away from him.
It was the summer and my family had been in hiding for two months. One month of playing chase in the woods and one month, when it got warmer, of playing chase in the water. And what a game it was.
Trees are fun to climb but it is rare that you can cross from one tree into the next. For some reason branches never seem to overlap, or even grow very close to each other and from the ground it’s normally fairly easy to look up and spot whoever is hiding up there. In fact climbing trees was a hopeless thing to do if you wanted to escape.
On the other hand water is three-dimensional. You can swim over someone and miss them or hide under them and grab them. It isn't a matter of stamina either, surprisingly. Using old bits of hosepipe you could hide underwater for minutes on end just waiting to pounce. My younger sister was especially good at that, and swimming without splashing, a giveaway in chase, is especially handy when someone is trying to shoot you.
I had clothes: a vest, a dress, pants and socks, my sandals had come off when I had dived in. Also, with no school, my hair was longer than ever before. Not only was I going to be able to stay in the water for a fair bit of time but I was also going to be showing very few bits of pale skin when I stuck my eyes out of the water.
I could swim twenty metres underwater, sometimes forty at a push, enough to get to one of our water dens. You couldn't often get right out of the cold water unless you could get to the swan's nest on the other side or hang over the branch of the half drowned tree surrounded by the high reeds. Thankfully the bit of pipe was stuck on a branch stump. This was good, but not as good as the metre-long pipe that floated beneath a ring of bottle corks that made it almost invisible from any distance. That was under the pier where I had left it a couple of days ago.
There were shouts. I looked back to where the foreman was standing. He was at the edge of the pond, roughly where I had gone in, pointing at the water and calling over his shoulder. Some of the men appeared, shouting down at him, not believing that someone had escaped. I could not see the shack from the water but I could hear someone doing some loud counting and another calling out the family names. Yes, they agreed with the foreman: I was unaccounted for, and more than just a witness, I was someone who might want to remember. There was a bit of pointing and arguing but within a minute most of them were spreading out round the lake's edge, guns in the crock of their arms. One even had a telescopic sight. I sank lower in the water. I had fourteen hours at least until night fall. I pissed myself and started to shake. I could remember more clearly now what I had heard coming from the shack. I bit the log. I practically had to break it and my jaw pulling it out again. I decided to only think forward, for a bit anyway.
A man with a beard walked up to the edge of the pond closest to where I was hiding. This put him at only five or six metres away. He was wearing shoes so I did not think he would consider wading out to the tree. I did not move. My hair covered what little of my face showed above the branch. I wished I had my arms down, under water, not hooked over the wood. The man looked to his side and called out to the next gunman. I sank down lower and slid my arms into the water as slowly as possible. This was all from experience gained from playing with my brothers and sisters: fast moves and obvious human shapes could give you away over a long distance. I decided it was time to go under and have a think. I tipped the tube horizontal to get the water out, I stuck my mouth over the end and pushed myself underwater, holding myself there by bracing my arm against the underside of the branch.
There were a lot underwater noises. I was breathing in and out of my pipe which I could see above me just breaking the surface of the pond. Somebody was wading heavily through the mud quite far away, probably on the far side of the pond.
What can I do? I have water, if I have to drink it, I have no food, I will get cold, I can relieve myself, number one easily, number two, well it had been done in the past. Evasion and escape. I do not think that they will get bored and go away. I do not think that they will all come wading into the pond as they know I could possibly slip between them and be out of the water and running into the woods befo
re they could get out of the very sticky mud. They must believe that I am in the reeds. Or hiding under the pier. Or drowned? Or wounded and dying?
Then there is splashing very close to me. I know not to look. I grab the tube and push down deeper and start swimming out into the pond going as deep as I can. I roll over onto my front and start to do a troubled breaststroke, one hand hampered with holding the tube. I want to make it as far as I can before going up for a breath. This is a very difficult operation that takes many attempts to get right as it is very easy to break the surface as you come up for a breath. Especially as you really want to come up and gasp for air. But this time I have to have good control. I do not try to swim as far as possible like
