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Toni and Rob followed a school bus down the hill to the Five Seasons. "I wonder if they're going to open up the waterslide for the school kids," Rob said. "We've got to have a go if they do."
"Are you serious?"
"Of course. When we used to come here as kids, they didn't have a waterslide like this. The best we had was a rope swing over the creek."
"So, some things have got better then, eh?" Toni did not expect or get a response.
Once they'd parked, Rob headed off towards the waterslide and, from her porch, Toni saw him coming back at a trot, barely able to contain his excitement.
"Right. Adam says he's going to open the waterslide for an hour as a treat for the school kids, and he says we can go on as well – and, here's the best part, we can go for free because we're residents."
Residents? The word grated in Toni's ears. Was he totally insensitive? God, it was so easy for him to make comments like that when for him a trailer park was nothing more than the setting for a redneck joke. You can be sure a caravan has never been a real option as a place to live for him. "I can't. I don't have any togs with me or anything like that," she said. "And it will be freezing."
"Don't worry about that, you can wear shorts and a t-shirt, and it won't be that cold once you've gone down the first time."
Toni knew she ought to laugh at Rob, tell him to grow up, and wondered whether in a flat organisational structure she could refuse to go down a waterslide. But, realising how it will impress the boys, she gave in, and he looked absolutely rapt.
Soon Rob and Toni were walking across the field, barefoot in shorts and t-shirts. Close to the waterslide, they exchanged apprehensive looks. An ant trail of children clutching mats zigzagged up the steps to the mouth of the tube, and they could hear the drone of an engine and rushing waters. Above them, banshee screams of thrill and bravado echoed amplified and distorted through the tube.
As they stepped into the shed that housed the catchment pool, they tasted chlorine in their throats. Two teachers looked up from their conversation and smiled knowingly, as though the newcomers had special needs. There was a tumble of limbs as a knot of children flew from the mouth of the tube and into the frothing water. One of the teachers shouted a hopeless caution, and the kids struggled out, ecstatic and unbowed against the maelstrom.
The two officials of the country's second oldest life insurance company stood useless at the bottom of the stairs until a girl with incontrovertible ginger plaits told them to take a mat and pointed to a stack of multicoloured luges. They followed instructions and warily climbed the stairs towards the top. When an itching queue of children formed behind them, Toni motioned Rob to step aside, and eager, small, wet people ran past them and up.
Above the trees, the top of the tower was sun blasted. The fibreglass walls were roughly painted sky blue and white like the basilica of a Greek island church. Adam was wearing faded blue overalls, his beard as full as an Orthodox bishop's. He regulated the flow of children with his back to the mouth of the tube. He radiated kindness but barely greeted Rob and Toni. On one side of the mouth, a laminated poster explained step-by-step how to go down, and Rob immediately set about analysing the list of instructions as though it were a new Bill of Rights. On the other side of the mouth was an exhibition of pictures of how not to do it, each prohibited example crossed by a red X. Adam waved the children down with the slightest blessing of a movement. Then, every other boy, once out of eyesight, practised one of the forbidden methods of descent.
"Ladies first," Rob said.
Toni hesitated on her mat before her body remembered how she always out dared the boys, and, as she pushed off into the flow, she let out a girlish squeal she'd kept inside for fifteen years. Only vaguely could she feel the sensations of the fall: first the ickyness of sitting in cold water, the acceleration, the stomach churn of unexpected directions, the fearful possibility of looping the loop, then, she saw a bright light ahead and plunged from the tube. Powerful currents pushed her to the side. Her face was stretched in a blissful grin, and she wondered whether Johnny's rebirth had been like this.
She scrambled out, dignity left long behind, and waited to watch Rob ejected head first like a salmon making for home. He was quickly splashing over to make sure she wanted to go again. This time they ran up the stairs, and again and again, until Toni realised Rob wasn't with her at the top. He arrived at last gasping for ragged breath. He didn't look good, wet and bedraggled, with his potbelly and skinny arms, and haphazard clumps of body hair evident through his sopping t-shirt. "Had to let the kids past," he said, and leant forward, his palms pressed against his lower back. "Lovely – uh – view." He moved to the window, shaking cramp from his thighs. He pointed out places of interest – the old coal terminal in Exmouth, the start of Arcadia – until he'd recovered.
Wind buffeted the structure and chilled as it penetrated the gaps. The creaking of plastic against metal, the shudder and sway discomfited. It would be ghostly here alone at night.
"I'm going to try it backwards," Rob told Toni in a conspiratorial, double dare sort of way. He checked lest Adam had overheard, but Adam was staring straight ahead, his eyes blank from the enlightenment of all thought gone, as he controlled the flow; a transcendental traffic cop. Behind him, children crouched to surf down, go without mats, or reckless in forbidden, squealing clusters.
When Rob had exhausted his repertoire of riding styles, he suggested they go down together. Although it meant being cramped and close as figures in a sex manual, Toni understood his intention was innocent, no more than a need to share the fun. Yet she knew her underwear and body beneath were obvious through the clinging wetness of her t-shirt and shorts.
"OK."
They were locked together, their clammy flesh meshed. He wrapped his arms around her in pillion, careless of her breasts, but, once they splashed down and were separated by the currents, he told her he wanted to do it one last time but on his own – kneeling.
Outside the waterslide, Toni saw how Rob like a horny teenager with X-ray specs couldn't resist stealing a peek at her body beneath the sodden veil. She pulled the sticking fabric away from her and folded her arms, but little has been left to the imagination. Rob saw that she'd noticed, and kept his gaze above her neckline as they walked back. They were still enthusiastic about their manoeuvres and derring-do but no longer so innocent.
In the Fifth Season Page 26
