Pool (15 page)

47

His mother had left the porch light on, but otherwise the house was in darkness. Wolfgang congratulated himself for being so quiet as he felt his way along the hall towards his bedroom. It proved he wasn’t drunk (a drunk person would be noisy). Only when he had closed the door did he turn on the light (a drunk person would have turned it on first). He looked around the room. Nothing had been moved. But just to make sure, he carried the chair over to the wardrobe, climbed carefully onto it and checked in the suitcase. The black butterfly (his beautiful black butterfly) was still there. Wolfgang stepped down from the chair with great precision, without so much as a wobble (a drunk person would have lost his balance and fallen). He was fully in control. Fully in control but confused. What was he doing here? He’d come home to get something. The pool key! he remembered. Mark and Steve were meeting him at the pool. Wolfgang removed his shorts and kicked off his boxers, then hunted around for his bathers. He had to sit down on his bed to pull them on. His reflection grinned at him from the mirror on the back of his wardrobe door. ‘Boo!’ he said to it. The scar on his lip glistened pink beneath a sheen of perspiration. He should grow a moustache. I
will
grow a moustache, he thought, pleased with the idea. Then no one, not even Audrey’s sister, would question his age.

The orange key was in his bottom drawer, pushed inside a pair of balled-up football socks. Wolfgang threaded it back onto his key ring. When he tried to slip them into his pocket, he discovered his bathers were inside-out. It made no difference – they had no pockets anyway. Should he bring a towel? He was being very meticulous about this. Very sober. (He wasn’t drunk.) The other two had drunk most of the whisky anyway, and Merri as well. One bottle of whisky between four of them – it wasn’t really a lot. Not enough to make them drunk. Now ... what was he looking for?

‘Over here!’ Steve called softly. Wolfgang freewheeled his damaged bicycle – click-scrape, click-scrape – over to the three dark figures that had emerged from the trees at the edge of the car park. It confused him that there were three of them. ‘I thought just you and Mark ...’

‘Merri wanted to come, too. What took you so long?’

‘Ran over a cat.’

Merri gasped. ‘Was it hurt?’

‘Who cares about the frigging cat?’ Wolfgang said. ‘Look what it did to
me!
’

He leaned his bike against one of the trees and held up his grazed right arm. It was too dark to see the extent of the injury, but judging from the pain it was pretty bad. Without warning, Wolfgang’s knees buckled and he staggered heavily into Mark.

‘Hey, careful man!’

‘Thorry. I better thit down.’ He lowered himself onto the concrete kerbing at the edge of the car park. ‘Woh!’ he said, turning his neck experimentally from one side to the other, then blinking his eyes to clear his vision. For a moment – perhaps half a second – everything had turned black.

The others stood around him, a fence of legs against the lights across at the pool entrance.

‘Are you okay?’ asked someone – a girl.

‘Yeah.’

‘Are you sure?’

Steve’s little sister, he remembered. Merri.

‘Be all right in a minute. Just give me a minute, okay?’

‘Can’t hold your drink, Mulqueen,’ Steve teased him.

‘I wondered who hogged all that whisky,’ said Mark.

Their voices seemed to come from a great distance away.

‘It’th not that,’ Wolfgang said, speaking slowly and carefully. He still felt strange. ‘I think I landed on my head when I came off my bike.’

‘Can you stand?’

‘Think tho.’

Mark and Steve helped him to his feet. They supported him, one on either side.

‘You’ll be okay as soon as you get in the water,’ he heard Mark say.

‘Did you bring the key?’ asked Steve.

‘It’th in my backpack.’

‘Where’s your backpack?’

‘On my back.’

‘No it isn’t.’

‘Here it is,’ said Merri, picking it up off the ground.

With Steve and Mark taking most of his weight, Wolfgang limped slowly across the shadowy car park towards the pool entry. His head felt clear now but his grazed arm felt like it was on fire.

‘Th-tupid cat ran th-traight out in front of me,’ he said. ‘I wath halfway down Lithgow Road, on the steep bit. Wham! Went right over the handlebarth.’

‘Poor cat,’ Merri said behind them.

‘Cats are tough,’ said her brother.

‘Anyway,’ Mark said, ‘it’ll still have eight more lives to fall back on.’

‘Hey, nobody worry about me,’ said Wolfgang.

‘You?’ Steve gave a little snort. ‘You’re just drunk.’

‘I am not. Anyway, I’m okay now. I can walk on my own.’

They released him and Wolfgang shuffled the final few metres to the pool gate unsupported. Whatever had come over him had passed. Inside the gate, a row of three fluorescent tubes in protective wire cages shone down from the ceiling of the covered entryway. Lit up by their light, Wolfgang felt exposed and vulnerable as he crouched over his backpack searching for the keys. Anyone driving along Millar Street would be able to see them.

‘Woh!’ Steve said suddenly, causing Wolfgang to jump. ‘Look at his helmet!’

‘Hooley dooley!’ said Mark.

‘What about my helmet?’

‘It’s totalled, man!’

Wolfgang reached up to undo his helmet, but his fingers wouldn’t cooperate. ‘Will thomeone give me a hand?’

‘Man, you’re totally wasted!’ Mark giggled.

‘Am not. I hardly had any compared to you guyth.’

It was Merri who crouched down and carefully unclipped the helmet’s chinstrap. ‘Lucky you had it on,’ she said.

Wolfgang thanked her and removed the helmet. He watched his hands bring it down into view. They didn’t seem to be his own hands. Neither did the helmet look familiar. Mark hadn’t been exaggerating: a large section of the red and black plastic covering had been shredded, exposing a fist-sized triangle of badly scored polystyrene imprinted with an acne of pebbles and tar.

‘How’s your head?’ Mark asked.

Still kneeling on the hard concrete, Wolfgang ran his fingers gingerly through his sweaty hair. There was a slight throbbing behind his eyes, but that was probably from the whisky. ‘Feelth okay,’ he said. Then he added, to make a joke out of it, ‘Apart from the thpinning.’

A car passed along Millar Street and they all ducked down.

‘Let’s get inside,’ Steve whispered. ‘Where the heck’s that key, Wolfman?’

‘Dunno,’ he said. It seemed beyond his capabilities to search for it. He pushed the backpack in Steve’s direction. ‘In there thomewhere.’

Steve found the key and opened the gate. Mark helped Wolfgang to his feet and the four of them hurried inside. As he passed the ticket window, Wolfgang called ahead to Steve and Mark, ‘Have you got your Theathon Patheth?’ and both of them laughed. It was a good joke. He felt pleased with himself for being able to joke at a time like this – so soon after nearly dying. His skinned arm was killing him.

There was only one light on inside the pool enclosure and that was down the far end, near the men’s changing rooms. It provided just enough light to see by, but not so much that they ran the risk of being seen from outside. Only if someone came right up to the fence could they be seen, and that seemed unlikely. It was the middle of the night.

Wolfgang was the only one who’d brought bathers. Steve and Mark stripped down to their underpants, Merri went in fully clothed. The two boys whooped loudly after they’d jumped in. ‘It’s awesome,’ Steve said. Then he began swimming up the slope of the water towards the high end. Merri splashed Mark and he dived down and tripped her up. She shrieked and yelled ‘Stop it!’ as he dragged her beneath the water’s dark surface. Wolfgang could tell she didn’t mind. She was a nice kid. He felt happy watching them, happy and superior. I’ll phone tomorrow, he thought. First thing in the morning, I’ll phone Audrey.

‘Wolfie, are you coming in?’ Merri was calling to him.

He stripped off his T-shirt, then sat down on the side of the pool to remove his sneakers. He dipped one foot in the water. It was cool, but not too cool. Merri tried splashing him but she was too far away to pose any threat.

‘Jutht you wait!’ he said playfully.

The helmet was lying beside him, next to his backpack and T-shirt and sneakers. His lucky helmet. It had saved his life. Wolfgang put it on. His fingers were slow and uncooperative; it took him some time to align the stiff plastic catches and click them together. Finally he was ready. He’d intended to impress Merri and the others by diving in – he was quite a good diver – but now he wondered about the advisability of doing so while wearing a bicycle helmet. It might hurt his neck or something. Instead, he slid into the water feet first. It wasn’t spectacular, but it was the more prudent option. Someone whose judgement had been impaired by too much alcohol might have risked a dive, but not Wolfgang.

‘What’s with the hat?’ asked Mark, a dark head out near the centre of the pool.

Wolfgang bent his knees until the water came up to his chin. ‘It’th a new kind of life jacket,’ he said. ‘I’m going to patent it.’

That was clever, he thought. He felt pleased with himself. Happy. The water was wonderfully cool after the almost unnatural heat of the night air. He let it caress him. His head had stopped throbbing and his grazed elbow no longer burned. In the distance, he could hear the low thrum of the big electric motor in the pump house; it sounded almost like a heartbeat. Wolfgang yawned, blinked, shook his head. A grey mist seemed to have fallen over him; he found himself struggling to keep his eyes open. The sensation took him by surprise. It was the whisky. He’d had too much whisky. It would be so nice just to go with it, Wolfgang thought, almost surrendering to the urge to sleep. Be so nice to be home in bed.

Audrey came splashing towards him across the fountain pond in the botanical gardens. She wore shorts and a black bra. Her expression was fierce. ‘Wait for what?’ she asked, in the voice of someone much younger.

Wolfgang snapped his eyes open. Merri stood chest deep in the pool two and a half metres from him, her head and narrow shoulders silhouetted against the light in front of the changing block.

‘Whaa?’ he said.

‘I thought you were going to get me back.’

‘Get you back?’

‘For splashing you.’

‘Oh. Yeah. Thure,’ he said, finally catching on. He flicked a handful of spray in her direction. It barely reached her, but Merri squealed as if she’d been hit by a fire hose.

‘Right!’ she shrieked. ‘You asked for it, buster!’

It quickly developed into a contest. Hands splashed, water flew. Soon they were both laughing, gasping, breathless. Wolfgang, much larger and stronger, began to drive Merri back. Finally she dived and came at him beneath the water, but he was ready for her. As soon as she surfaced, barely a metre short of him, Wolfgang hit her with a frenzied, two-handed barrage of flying water. Merri took a loud gasping breath and went under again. He stood, right arm poised, waiting for her to resurface, but Merri changed her tactics. Staying underwater, she grabbed him around the calves and tried to trip him up. Wolfgang braced himself, feet planted wide on the pool’s smooth concrete bottom, and waited for her to run out of breath. As soon as she came up for air he would let her have it. But Merri was determined. Discovering she couldn’t trip him, she moved her grip higher, digging her small sharp fingers into the backs of his knees. It hurt! Wolfgang shied away from her and felt his feet slip out from under him. He fell backwards. There was a jarring thump, his whole head seemed to explode, then the water rose up around him and extinguished the stars.