White Goods

by Guy Johnson

I was about sixth in line to get into the pool. It wasn’t too deep, but you still had to climb a small white ladder to get into the water. I remember Justin being just ahead of me and making a big, wild scream as he hit the water.

  Tankard, quiet boy!

  Maybe it was the scream, the threat of the wet and the cold, or the smell – the stale smell, with leaves from autumn and winter still not entirely cleared, and smears of dirt on the blue of the tiling. But I froze. I didn’t want to go in. Didn’t want to be cold or wet, have the dirty water touch me, feel my feet on the greasy, unclean tiles. I wanted to turn back, but most of my class were on the steps or queuing behind me.

  Come on Buckley!

  Get in you poof!

  Get in the water, lad!

  It’s your turn. Get in you queer!

  It happened quickly: the fist on my back; the rush forward with no stopping; the smack of my face and belly on the cold water. The struggle, the panic, the not getting to the surface again – that happened gradually, like a film in slow motion, the sound of voices blurred and muffled.

  Eventually, I’m pulled out and think I’m being saved, being looked after, but I’m not. I’m being told off.

  Pull yourself together, Scot Buckley. Just a bit of water. Now, get to the back of the queue.

  So, I have to start again, but I’m the last in and I take it slowly, staying near the edge. Holding the float I’m given, putting on the orange arm bands, but I don’t take my foot off the bottom.

  Not once.

  Not.

  Ever.

  Years later, at the swimming pool in town with Justin, I still felt sick and angry about the incident. Roy Fallick had completely got away with it. At five, he had a fist as big as his head and it left a big black and green bruise in the middle of my back, right where he’d walloped me. He was still at our school, being a bully, using his hands to hurt people; still getting away with it.

  ‘We’ll get him one day,’ Justin promised, but he was shit scared too and it just wasn’t gonna happen.

  ‘Come on!’ Justin shouted, resurfacing, and finally I had to face my fear and slip into the water. ‘I’m going up the deep end!’ he announced, the minute I was in, my feet still able to touch the bottom. ‘Follow me!’

  All I wanted to ask was ‘how?’ but he swam off and I had to find my own way, wondering just why I’d come along when it was obvious that the day would end in my drowning.

  I stayed near the edge to start with, where it was safe, where I felt most secure. If someone had invented a parka coat you could wear in a pool, that’s what I needed right then: to protect me, to make me forget all the water that sloshed around me. I held onto the edge of the pool, where the water came in and out; the lip. Then I slowly made my way along, towards where Justin had headed. Holding on, going slowly. Gradually, the bottom of the pool started to slope away and I went further below the surface. My shoulders were initially above the water, then they were just below, and then the water was at my ears, splashing in my lobes and I could feel it over my chin. I knew I’d gone deep enough; I was on tiptoes, and the bottom of the pool came and went. I couldn’t go any further. My fingers were aching from hanging on.

  ‘I’m going back,’ I called to Justin, wondering if anyone was looking or had noticed me. But it was too busy. And Justin hadn’t even heard me.

  Then the inevitable happened. Someone pushed into me and my left hand jolted away from the side. I held on with just my right, but it wasn’t enough and my fingers lost their grip on the lip at the edge. I slipped around, my panic making me unsteady. Where was Justin? I couldn’t see him. But I could feel things – my breath quickening, my senses filling with alarm, making my heart beat its way through my rib cage. I tried to move my way back to the shallow part, to where my feet were firm on the ground, but people got in the way, or I got in their way. Elbows, arms, hands, feet, even heads knocked against me. So I was swept back into the middle, deeper. And then I went right under. Just once, but once was enough. I couldn’t even put my face under, usually. The water went up my nose, through all my tubes, and felt like it was burning me all the way. Burning and drowning at the same time.

  ‘Scot, you’re alright,’ a voice suddenly told me. ‘Calm down.’ I couldn’t hear it clearly, not at first, because of the splashing and screaming sounds coming from somewhere, echoing against the ceiling that went on forever. ‘Scot, I’ve got you.’ It was Ian’s mate, Russell Dunbar. He’d got me under the arms and he was looking at me, checking me. I noticed his arms: big rounded muscles. He was strong, looking after me, like a proper brother; like Ian. Only, Ian wasn’t there. ‘You wanna get out, mate?’ he said.

  ‘What’s going on, Scot?’ Justin was back.

  Russell gave him a quick, dark look and I recalled what he’d said to me earlier; his warning. You wanna steer clear of that one, Scot.

  ‘You alright then?’ Justin asked, looking at Russell, looking a bit annoyed, like Russell had intruded or something.

  ‘Your mate nearly drowned,’ Russell said, not looking at Justin, but looking at me. Just me. ‘Maybe you should get out?’

  ‘He’ll be fine,’ Justin cut in, and it was clear he didn’t like something, didn’t like Russell. I was a bit torn. Russell had helped and he was right, but he was Ian’s friend, not mine; at least he had been in the past. Justin was my friend, even if he had left me, encouraging me out of my depth.

  ‘I’ll be alright in the shallow end,’ I told Russell and he left me, swimming off, looking back a couple of times to check I was okay. I felt a bit of shame, as if suddenly I didn’t deserve his help quite as much, but I didn’t let it show. In a bit, I noticed him talking to the lifeguard, and I wondered if he’d told on me, and whether I’d be asked to leave. But nothing happened, so I guess he had just told him everything was alright.

  ‘You just gonna stay here?’ Justin asked, so I just said: ‘Yes, cos I can’t swim,’ and that broke it – that made us both laugh. I quickly forgot about Russell.

  We messed about in the shallow end for a bit longer. Justin tried to get me to put my face under the water – ‘Go on, I’ll let you have a fag.’ ‘What?’ ‘Nicked it from my sister.’ – but I just couldn’t do it. I thought of the burning, suffocating feeling; I thought of Roy Fallick’s big fat fist bruising my back; thought of my body smacking the surface and knew I was better off with more of myself out of the water than in it.

  Finally, we got out. I used the ladder, but Justin pulled himself up by his arms. His trunks must have got caught up at the front, trapped between his crutch and the edge of the pool, as they came down a bit and you could see the crack of his bum. I didn’t say anything; he would only have asked to see a bit of mine.

  When we got to the changing area, the one thing I was most dreading happened: all the cubicles were occupied. So I had to follow Justin into the men’s communal area. I hated it there, and not only because I was with Justin and I didn’t want him to see me naked. When I came with Ian or Dad (rarely) it was full of older men, all wrinkly and hairy, showing off their hangy-down bits without any shame. I found it all a bit alarming; for some reason this made Ian and Dad laugh. But on this day it was empty – to start with.

  I got my stuff from the short grey locker I’d squeezed it all into, piling it all up in my arms like I’m on Crackerjack; my shoes balancing on the very top, like the cabbages they give to the contestants who get a question wrong. As my feet splashed in dribbles of water along the way back, I wondered if I’d got a verruca yet. It was a good distraction from what I feared was coming: Justin getting a look at both my whatsit and Della’s towel, and laughing at me for both.

  I found a corner and dropped my stuff on a wooden bench, which was a bit wet from other swimmers, but my arms were about to give way – Crackerjack! – and I would have dropped it all anyway. My dry purple y-fronts fell on the floor, getting completely soaked, so it would look like I’d wet myself when I put them on. Justin was right beside me, but he didn’t say anything. I
could hear him – the slap of his wet trunks as they hit the floor and a shuffling sound, as he dried himself off with a towel. I put the Minnie Mouse towel around me, making sure that most of Minnie was actually facing away to the corner, which meant tucking it in at the back. Then I tried to take my trunks down without the towel slipping off, which wasn’t that easy, and I kept having to tuck it back in. I could hear Justin finishing off – the smack of his pants as he flicked the elastic at his waist, then pulling on his trousers and t-shirt – but he still hadn’t said anything. Not even any pointless conversation, which wasn’t like him.

  Eventually, there was a voice. It wasn’t Justin’s though. It came from the other end of the changing area. I knew it well and it made my skin goose-pimple, like it was suddenly colder, even though it wasn’t. And the pain was there in the small of my back again, going thud. The voice was unmistakeable to me.

  ‘What you fucking looking at?’ it was Roy Fallick.

  I didn’t dare turn; didn’t dare. And I just wanted my parka back - curse Auntie Stella and her washing and interfering.

  ‘What you fucking looking at?’

  This was an accusation thrown at Justin on a regular basis. I waited for his response, wondering if for once he might remain silent. He didn’t.

  ‘I’m looking at some fat ugly cunt with a dick that looks like a brussel sprout, you flid!’

  ‘Fuck off, queer,’ Roy replied and I was expecting more – a thump – thud! – but what Justin said seemed to shut him up and put him off. For a bit, at least. It would come later, though.

  Roy took himself and his small vegetable off to see if a cubicle was free yet, I guess. In any case, we didn’t see him at the pool again that day.

  We were silent again for a bit. Finishing off. Combing hair. Justin slapping on gel. Rolling up our wet stuff in our towels. Checking we had everything.

  ‘Thanks then,’ he said eventually, in a way that meant the opposite. Why did people do that? It was a Della special, that: ‘Oh, that’s just brilliant.’ ‘Aren’t you the clever one?’ ‘Yeah, that’s really gonna make a difference, that.’ And now Justin had started doing it. Thanks then. But I hadn’t done anything, so I didn’t reply. You probably need to stop staring at people, is what I had wanted to say, cos they clearly don’t like it, but I didn’t. I would only have got some snappy comment back. Keeping quiet didn’t stop him making another remark, however.

  ‘So,’ he said, as we were about to leave, narrowing his eyes a bit, like he was pissed off, ‘what’s with the Minnie Mouse towel?’

  On the way out, I bought us both a Texan Bar from the machine near the exit and Justin seemed to warm up again.

  ‘What shall we do now?’ he asked, ripping open the wrapper, as we went down the steps to street level. But we were instantly distracted, as a little crowd had gathered around Tina, including a policeman wearing one of those tall navy hats with the silver bit on the top. ‘A tit,’ Justin called it, but I knew it was wrong to say. Even though the police had come for Dad on the night of the funeral, they were just doing their job, probably.

  ‘She with you boys, then?’ the copper asked, when we approached. ‘She’s been making quite a bit of noise.’

  I thought Justin might get a bit cheeky – make some bacon jokes or something. He usually did. At school, with teachers, he was always being kept in during the break or after school, or being sent to stand outside the head mistress’ office. His mum was called-in a few times, too. ‘What do you expect me to do?’ I’d overheard her say in the playground to Mrs Pothecary, our teacher. ‘You’re the one looking after him here, not me. He don’t get into any trouble at home.’ Which wasn’t true, but you didn’t correct Justin’s mum. She left a nasty mark on your arm if you did.

  Anyway, he was quiet and polite to the policeman outside the swimming pool. No back chat, nothing.

  ‘Can I take Tina home?’ he asked in a softer voice I didn’t recognise.

  ‘Tina?’ the policeman chuckled, and that seemed to work, so I guess Justin knew what he was doing, because the copper said: ‘Go on then, but don’t leave her like this again, or I’ll speak to your parents.’

  ‘Does he know you?’ I said, as we walked away, Tina’s feet – Stilettos, Justin called then – clip-clopping on the pavement.

  ‘All the coppers know me,’ he bragged, like it was a good thing – like a prize or a trophy. Something for show-and-tell or assembly. ‘Right, what next?’ he asked, finishing the last bit of his Texan Bar and dropping his wrapper in the gutter, without even checking if the policeman was still looking. Back to his old self.

  I wondered what would happen when I finally got home. It was going to go one of two ways: either a committee of ‘faces’ would be waiting for an explanation – And where do you think you’ve been? - or no one would have noticed my absence. It was the last of the two.

  It was five o’clock when I went through the back door. Me and Justin had spent the afternoon in the big park in town – Jubilee Park – and then gone back to his for a bit, breaking another of Mum’s rules.

  At home, Auntie Stella was in the kitchen, stirring something brown in a pot. She wore one of Mum’s aprons – in blue and white checks – and a pair of pink, high-heeled slippers, with pink feathers stuck on the front. Definitely her own, I thought. She dropped some big white things, like baby’s fists, into the brown stuff, so I guessed we had stew and dumplings coming. Dad was out somewhere.

  ‘Where you been?’ Ian asked, as he shooed me into Della’s room – our official den of conspiracy - but I didn’t have to answer, as Della spoke immediately.

  ‘She’s doing proper cooking now,’ she cut-in, arms crossed over her chest, pulling a face like a sulking dog. ‘Dad’ll love it.’

  ‘Has something happened to Marilyn?’ I asked, but they both ignored me.

  ‘We need to sabotage it,’ Ian announced.

  ‘So, what’s that mean?’

  They both looked at me, Della’s sulky dog curling up like a cat into a grin.

  It wasn’t quite as easy as they made out. Della and Ian were supposed to drag her away from the stew, distract her with something, and then I was supposed to put something in it to spoil it. But they made the rules complicated.

  ‘Don’t make it too obvious.’

  ‘She’ll know if you make it too bad.’

  ‘We still need her to serve it up, for Dad to try it.’

  ‘And you mustn’t change the colour or anything.’

  The last bit seemed the easiest, because you couldn’t really change the colour of something once it was brown. I knew that from mixing up paints when we did Art at school; I always ended up with lots of different browns.

  ‘And don’t make it too obvious when you’re done,’ Ian insisted.

  ‘Yeah, don’t come charging in and say: ‘I’ve done it!’’ Della added, and they both thought this was hysterical.

  ‘I won’t,’ I said, but I was still a bit worried about how I was going to pull this off.

  The distracting bit took quite a while to sort out.

  ‘I gotta stay with this dish till it’s done,’ Auntie Stella kept insisting, whenever Ian or Della asked for her attention. ‘Just give me a minute or so.’

  Come and see this on the TV, Auntie Stella? Can you have a look at my leg, I think I hurt it? Auntie Stella, there’s a mark on the carpet – can you have a look? Have you seen what’s going on over the road – look?

  I kept expecting her to catch on, but she just laughed lightly to herself. I think she was pleased to be in high demand, like it was a sign we were accepting her being there at last. I felt a bit mean, but then again we hadn’t asked her to stay; hadn’t asked her to lose her flat. She’d asked herself.

  ‘All finished,’ she eventually announced, switching off the gas, giving it one final stir, click-clacking with her stiletto slippers as she left the kitchen in search of the others. ‘Now, what’s all this about...’

  Somehow they managed to entice her upst
airs. Well, Della had – and Ian was on lookout. ‘Oh, your Mum’s stuff,’ I heard Auntie Stella say. ‘You wanna sort through it now?’ Which was interesting, because she sounded all surprised, like it was a bit too soon to do it, even though we knew she’d been ferreting-through-it-like-a-desperate-tramp (Della, in a bitter, teary voice) for days.

  Down in the kitchen, I was trying to remember the rules. ‘Don’t make it too obvious.’ ‘She’ll know if you make it too bad.’ ‘We still need her to serve it up, for Dad to try it.’ ‘And you mustn’t change the colour or anything.’

  I looked at the kitchen clock. It was 5:50 by then. Dad might be back soon. I was never sure what he was doing, what job he was on. But it usually brought him home around six.

  In the cupboards, there were all sorts of ingredients to choose from. Gravy powder, pepper, chilli powder, lots of herbs and stuff I’d never heard of or wasn’t sure had ever been used. Custard powder too, which I thought about, but I wondered if it just might change the colour a bit after all.

  In the end, I picked up the salt. Making it a bit saltier might be enough. It was in a big bag, the size of a bag of flour, but plastic and see-through, apart from the writing on it. Someone had snipped a corner off, so you could pour it out. I took it down from the cupboard and began to tip a little bit in, slowly.

  ‘She’s on her way!’ Ian was suddenly behind me, his voice abruptly in my ear, making me jump. Making my hand jolt.

  ‘Shit, Ian!’ I cried, moving the bag away from the pan as quickly as possible, but it was still at an angle, and it tipped over the cooker, then all over the floor, making a huge mess. A thick white line of powder ran across our black and red lino; a line of gunpowder, in my imagination, just waiting for the fuse to be lit. It didn’t take long.

  ‘You idiot,’ Ian scolded me, taking the bag, shooing me away. ‘Get a dustpan and brush and quick.’

  Then it all seemed to go slow motion. Me getting the brush. Ian stirring the stew, clearing up the salt that had spilt on the hob. Auntie Stella getting closer and closer. Her voice too. The words coming out long and slow. What. Are. You. Kids. Up. To? What. Have. You. Done?