Keith Ridgway - Hawthorn & Child

— John.

— No, he was — it’s part of the story. He needs a shit. So he’s walking back to the hotel, and he’s all wet, and he’s got a towel thrown around his shoulders, but he’s barefoot, on those poolside tiles, he’s left his flip-flops by the shower. And he slips. You know. He just goes arse over tit. And he lands on his side and rolls into the pool. And there’s a great big splash, and all the kids in the pool are laughing, and some of the people who’ve seen it think it’s the funniest thing they’ve ever seen. It’s You’ve Been Framed stuff. If anyone had caught it. So there’s a lot of laughter. But then the laughter just stops. ’Cos suddenly there’s this plume of something in the water. You know, a big stain of something in the water. And for a second everyone thinks it’s blood, and the kids all dash for the sides and climb out, screaming, and the grown-ups stand up and come over. They think it’s blood. But then they notice that if it’s blood it’s clotting already, in these little clumps …

— Oh Christ.

— Yeah. It’s not blood. It’s not red. It’s brown. Poor Freddie’s had such a shock that he’s shit himself. Big Freddie. On his holidays. He’s eating what he likes, you know, for once, and he’s full to overflowing with last night’s five courses; garlic mushrooms, pickled herring, I don’t know, meatballs, chocolate ice cream …

— John! Stop it. That’s disgusting.

— It’s what happened. Anyway. Poor Freddie. And it’s foreign food. So he’s a bit, you know. Loose.

— Jesus Christ, John.

— And people are standing around, you know. At least, some men are. The kids have all run off, and the mothers are gathering them in, checking for flecks, all that. For new moles. And there’s some guys standing at the edge just looking at the water and it’s only after a little while that someone asks, where is he? Why hasn’t he surfaced? And they’re peering down there, under the water, and they can see him. They can see the shape. They can see his bulk, and the Jewfro, and his big blue shorts. It’s like the shit is a pyramid in the water, an upside down pyramid, and at its point, there’s Freddie’s ballooned-out blue shorts. Just hovering there. Treading water. Under water. So they begin to think maybe he’s stuck. Maybe he’s got his foot caught in a drain or a grill or something — you know you hear about that happening. And they’re all looking at each other ’cos they know that one of them is going to have to go in there. Into the shit. To get him out.

— Oh John, this is awful.

— Have I not told you this before?

— No!

— Well. OK. So one guy, a young guy, he decides he’ll go in. He’ll do it. So he moves away from the shit a little bit, to clearer water, and he puts on his goggles, and he closes his mouth and holds his nose and slides in. And when he’s underwater he waits for the bubbles to clear and he looks over towards Freddie. Big Freddie. He’s standing there, or floating, and all the water around him is dark and full of bits of shit and at his legs, near his middle, there’s this big cloud of liquid shit, just floating there, and Freddie has his back to the wall of the pool, his arms over his head, pressed against the underside of the bar, the rail, stopping himself from surfacing. He’s holding himself under. And the guy looks at him, you know, like, what the hell is he doing? And he waves at him. And Freddie looks over. And Freddie has this look on his face. This grim sort of terrified look of shame. Pure shame. He looks at the guy, and he looks away again immediately. He can’t look at him. Can’t look. He just shakes his head furiously. As if to say, you know, don’t look at me, leave me alone, leave me.

— Oh my God, the poor man.

— Yeah.

— They got him out, right?

— You try shifting a big man like Freddie out from underwater when he doesn’t want to be shifted. While everything is slick with shit as well, and he’s got his arms rammed rigid against the rail. Anyway. The interesting thing is that it took forever for the guy who’d got in the water to get anyone else to help him. They wouldn’t even reach in to try and pry Freddie’s hands of the rail for ages. The guy, the young guy, he bobs up to the surface, and he tells them what’s going on, but they all just sort of stand there looking at him.

— He drowned?

— He drowned.

Hawthorn looked at his brother closely.

— Come on.

— What?

— This is a Jew joke. I’m waiting for the punchline.

His brother opened his mouth and looked at him.

— Jesus. It was a horrible death. Why would it be a Jew joke? He was Jewish. What can I do about that? You’re telling me you haven’t had weird deaths on your beat? I know you have. You’ve had weirder than that. It’s not a joke. It just happened. Freddie Simon. I think. Something like that. Look it up.

Their father laughed. They both looked at him. He shrugged. Sipped his beer. His granddaughter ran over and whispered something to her mother. Tess stood up and walked to the house with her, hand in hand.

— Anyway, said John. Just goes to show.

Hawthorn thought the punchline was coming then. With Tess out of the way. He waited for it. Something about floating Jews, drowning Jews, Jews and shit, something like that. John said nothing. Then he stood up and stretched and went off to play with his boy.

— I swear that’s a joke.

— What’s the punchline?

— I don’t know. We’ve embarrassed him out of telling us.

— John doesn’t do embarrassed.

— He’s getting fat himself. Maybe he’s embarrassed about that.

His father laughed.

— He’s not fat. Jesus. No one in this family gets fat. Not on my side anyway. He’s just settled a little. He sits all the time. Needs more golf. If you weren’t walking around half of London all day long you’d be fat, the crap you eat. When I was a kid you never saw a fat person. Or if you did you ran home and told your mum about it. These days everyone is fat as fools. It’s the crap they eat. So much crap. You see them, the kids, stuffing their faces. Fat little kids. Your mother fed you right. If you weren’t a cop you’d have ruined all that by now.

— I thought no one in this family got fat.

— You have fat skin.

— I have what?

— Bad skin. Unhealthy. You have a pallor. You’re not getting the right vitamins or something. Circles under your eyes.

Hawthorn sighed.

— You need looking after, his father said, a little quietly.

Then,

— You get Jew jokes at work?

— We get all sorts of jokes at work. Everyone gets their turn.

— Gay jokes?

— Lots of gay jokes.

— You complain?

He smiled.

— What do you think?

— They funny?

— Some of them.

— Like what? Tell me a few. I love a good fag joke.

He looked at his father, sitting with his hand on his beer bottle, healthy, his body relaxed in the sun. He was in shape. His eyes were two living rivets in a hard shell, his face the summary of an argument, lined with a lifetime of being right. His knee bounced slightly. He tossed his chin minutely towards the sky and stared, smiling.

— Fuck off, Dad.

His father laughed at him. Laughed loud and loosely, and folded his body forward a little and slapped him on the shoulder.

He clamps his hand to his flat stomach, his little finger finding his navel, and he slides along the wet wall, moving to his left, towards a man with a tattoo on his arm that is vibrant and glistening in the half light like a wound.

In the crowds around Bank, the woman with the green parka and the torn jeans has been like a catch on the movement of his eyes. He keeps on seeing her. Her face is raised out from the blur of other faces. She carries no sign. But she snarls an ugly anger that distorts her features into something crooked and unnatural and he is drawn to her and knows it, and tries to lose her in the noise and the chaos, but she always seems there when he looks, and there as well when he looks away.