Ever Dundas - Goblin

I took off my shoes and shirt, but kept my shorts on. I stuck close to the shore, just splashing around, enjoying the feel of the warm water on my skin. I sat down, feeling the pull of the sea. Angel waved at me again, and I shook my head. She swam for shore.

‘What’re you doing?’

‘I can’t swim.’

She took me by the hand, dragging me up. I stumbled after her, staring down at our joined hands, water dripping between our fingers like we were melting into each other.

She took me past an outcrop, letting go of my hand so it was easier to scramble over the rocks. I followed obediently and we came to a rock pool. I wasn’t sure how deep it was, but the water was clear and you could see to the bottom. Seaweed swayed when the waves came in, the water gently entering the pool, flowing over the top of the rocks, causing only a slight ripple. I stared in awe at the starfish at the bottom of the pool. Angel lowered herself in and I followed.

‘I’ll teach you,’ she said.

It took about three weeks, mainly because my chores took up so much time, but also because the Idiot had noticed I was always going off somewhere, and he would tag along, pretending like we were friends. CP and I would just lead him to the woods and we’d stop there so CP could forage – he loved collecting branches and leaves and making a nest, so I pretended that’s all we did and after a couple of evenings of this the Idiot got bored and left me alone. Tom didn’t care where I went in the evenings, as long as I’d finished all my chores and as long as I was up at dawn to do my morning duties. Angel’s pretend parents were the ones who’d shown her the path to the sea when she’d first arrived. They were happy for us to go out in the evenings as long as she told them where we were going. She usually had to be back by nine, but at the height of summer they let her stay out until after sunset.

By the end of three weeks I was swimming pretty good. I stuck to the pool. I wasn’t ready for the sea, and Angel seemed fine with that. She didn’t even tease me for being a coward and I felt bad because I thought of Stevie and how if I had been him and I was Angel I would have given him a hard time and he probably would have swam in the sea just to prove to me he could and he probably would’ve drowned or got eaten by sharks and I’d be all twisted up with guilt. Angel was a real angel about it, not one of those Revelation angels, but those angels who give you a break.

I liked the rock pool better than the sea in those first days. It felt more private, like the whole world had disappeared and it was just me and Angel. Corporal Pig would come along most days too. He couldn’t get up to the rock pool and he’d make a godawful noise when we left him behind but he’d soon amuse himself, snuffling about in the sand. He would swim in the sea too. The first time I saw him I scrambled out of that rock pool, ran across the beach and into the sea to rescue him before I even realised he was swimming as happy as can be. I stood with the water lapping at my chest, feeling like a fool.

‘You’re making me look bad in front of my girl, CP. Look at you, swimming in the sea and swimming better than a Goblin could.’

I went back to Angel who was watching from the rock pool.

‘Who knew pigs could swim?’

‘How did you think you could rescue him? How could you drag that fat pig out of the sea?’

‘I dunno,’ I said, annoyed, wanting her to drop it.

‘I like that you’d try,’ she said as I swam off, still feeling that ache in my belly, that fear of losing Corporal Pig.

I practiced hard that week, listening to Angel’s advice, determined to get good enough so I could swim in the proper sea with CP. After I’d done practicing we’d flip onto our backs and just float. Sometimes we’d reach out and hold each other’s hand and we’d float in silence or we’d chat about this and that, sometimes about what was going on in the town, about old Mrs Carter and her stupidness, or I’d complain about the Idiot but mostly I didn’t mention him because I didn’t want him messing up my happiness with Angel. Sometimes we talked about before, about London and who we were then and what we did and who our families were. I told Angel about how Devil used to swim in the canal next to Kensal Green Cemetery, but I was too afraid to go in.

‘Who’s Devil?’

‘My dog.’

‘Where is he?’

‘Buried. In Kensal Green.’

I didn’t tell her what really happened to him. I just said about how the Nazis had come to London without people knowing and killed all the pets so that we would feel all demoralised and not be as happy about being at war and we’d give up.

I said, ‘I don’t really want to talk about it. I want to know about you.’

She said how she lived not far from me and I wondered how I’d never seen her before. She said she was happy in London and her parents were nice, but her dad had gone off to fight and her mum was sad. ‘My mum loves me, so she sent me away. She didn’t want to risk me being killed by a bomb so she sent me off on that hellhole train and now here I am.’

I told her about my ma and da and about David.

‘He was in a row with my parents about the war. He didn’t want to fight.’

‘He a coward?’

‘He isn’t a damn coward. He’s a conchie. He hates fighting, thinks it’s a waste of time. He wants to travel the world, sail on the seas. That’s pretty brave, when you don’t know if there’s going to be pirates or krakens.’

‘Uh-huh,’ she said, ‘that’s pretty brave.’

‘He was being made to go to the war. My parents were making him, but he said to me we would just leave. “We’ll leave all this madness,” he said. “We’ll go to the sea.” I dreamed it. I knew it would happen, but when I left I couldn’t find him and I had to go.’

‘Why did you have to go?’

‘The Nazis who killed the pets were after me, so there was no time to wait for David. I write to him but he doesn’t write back – I think he must have gone to the sea too. I’ll keep writing anyway, just in case. C’mon. I want to swim in the sea proper now.’

I swam to the rocks and peered over them, looking out to sea. I climbed up, pulled myself over and slipped into the ocean-proper. I became like liquid. I became emerald green, with seaweed hair. Angel came in after me, and we met beneath the surface, smiling at each other, blowing bubbles and chasing them to the surface. We swam over towards the beach and joined CP. I dived beneath him, his massive form blocking out the sun, his legs gently kicking. I came up by his side, planted a kiss on his head and followed Angel further out. The sea was cold, losing the concentrated warmth of the sun-drenched rock pool. It froze me blue.

As twilight fell, we sat on the beach and made a small fire from wood collected in the nearby forest.

‘The planes will see us. We’ll be bombed.’

‘They never come this far. Anyway, we’re sheltered. Hardly anyone can see anything down here.’

Corporal Pig lay on his side, snoring by the fire as Angel and I dried off. I told her about how at home I had washed in a shallow tin bath.

‘The water was cold. Ma scrubbed my skin raw. Sometimes she forgot, sometimes she forgot to scrub me raw and I’d go without a bath for weeks until David said I stank and locked me out our room. “You stink, Goblin,” is what he’d say. “You stink worse than old Mr Fenwick and he hasn’t washed for a hundred years.”’

‘You don’t stink now,’ she said.

It was true. Pretend parents made me and John wash every day in the river because God’s children had to be clean and pure. It was cold in the river. It turned me blue.

‘I was born blue,’ I told Angel. ‘Like the sea.’