Skippy Dies (54 page)

‘This is total fucking bullshit,’ Siddartha seethes. ‘Coach never should have picked you. You’re his little bum-chum, that’s
the only reason.’ From behind him, Duane gazes at Skippy with expressionless eyes. ‘Asshole,’ says Siddartha, by way of a
parting shot.

‘You didn’t go to training?’ Geoff says, when the other two are gone.

‘I didn’t feel like it,’ Skippy says vaguely.

‘Oh,’ Geoff says, and doesn’t say anything else.

In the shopping mall at lunch break a huge silver-needled Christmas tree has been installed, making the people rising and
descending on the escalators around it look like tiny decoration-angels in anoraks and polar fleeces.

‘Where are you going with your
girlfriend
tonight, Skip?’

‘I’m not sure – maybe to the cinema? She’s going to call me.’

‘Cinema is good,’ Mario says approvingly. ‘I have been on many dates in the cinema – but I have not seen very many films!’

‘Because I was having sex,’ he adds a moment later, in case the others haven’t understood. ‘In the cinema.’

Yesterday she never called back. In the Study Hall carved into the desk a new graffiti:
CARL CAME IN THE GIRLS HAND BEFORE SHE EVEN TUCHED HIS PENIS
.

But now, as if to squash these doubts, Skippy’s pocket starts to bleep. It must be her! He hurries out the door of the video-game
shop and fumbles open his phone. No, it’s just Dad. ‘Hi, Dad.’ He tries to keep the disappointment out of his voice.

‘Hi, D. Just thought I’d give you a call, see how you were set up for the big race tomorrow.’

‘Oh, right.’

‘How do you feel? Are you excited?’

‘Yeah, I suppose.’

‘You don’t sound it.’

Skippy shrugs, then realizes Dad can’t see it, and instead says, ‘No, I am.’

‘Okay,’ Dad says. In the background Skippy can hear the printer whirr and telephones ringing. There is a long strange pause:
Dad takes a deep breath in through his nose. ‘Listen, Danny,’ he says. ‘We had a phone call last night.’

‘Oh yeah?’ He stiffens, turns a little to the fluted wall.

‘Yeah, from Mr Roche, your swimming coach.’

Skippy stops dead.

‘Yeah,’ Dad muses, like he’s thinking over a crossword clue, but you can hear his voice stretched taut like it’s on a rack.
‘He told me you’d quit the team.’

Frozen by the wall next to the kitchen spoils shop.

‘Danny?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I was pretty surprised to hear that, I have to say. I mean, I know how much you were looking forward to this race.’

‘Oh, well…’

‘Oh well what?’

‘I’ve been getting a bit tired of it lately.’

‘You have?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Of swimming?’

‘Yeah.’

They circle each other through an imaginary space that is not mall or office: in Skippy’s head it is a clearing in a winter
forest, with sun clinging to the trunks of bare trees.

‘Well, that comes as a surprise,’ Dad says slowly. ‘Because you’ve always loved to swim, ever since you were a tiny tot.’

Pan-pipe ‘Away in a Manger’ descends like nerve-gas from the speakers above. All of a sudden Skippy feels a great weight tugging
on him, tugging on the whole mall, pulling it downward towards a single point.

‘Your coach was surprised too. He says you’re a natural. Phenomenal natural ability, that’s how he put it.’

Dad pauses but Skippy doesn’t say anything. He knows what is coming and there is no way to stop it. Around him the walls of
the mall begin to tremble.

‘He wondered if it might be him, if he’d been too hard on you in training. Well, I told him you’d never said anything like
that to me.’

Screws twist from their sockets, girders creak.

‘He said you’d mentioned personal reasons.’

Everything is vibrating, like the shopping mall is one big tuning fork.

‘Danny, I told him about your mum.’

Skippy closes his eyes.

‘I had to, Danny. I had to.’

Windows exploding, huge reefs of masonry descending from above, the walls of the mall tumbling in on themselves.

The Game blown all over the road.

‘I know we had our pact and everything. But I’ve often wondered whether I’d done right by you there, sport. I mean, in a school
there are people, there’s a framework in place to help you deal with exactly these kinds of things. I should’ve told you –
I don’t know, I just…’ Dad’s hands dropping hopelessly to his sides, the two of them, Skippy and Dad, falling to the ground,
shot in the head. ‘I feel like I’ve let you down, son. And I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Danny.’

A glazed Christmas-coloured distance away, Mario in the door of the game shop, making an
Is it her?
face at Skippy. Skippy yanks his face into the shape of a smile and waves him back.

‘Anyway – well, your Mr Roche was quite taken aback by that, obviously. But he said it explained a lot, in terms of your attitude
lately. He said it was clear you’d been under a lot of strain. But he also said – and I agree with him – that the very worst
thing to do would be to let that strain stop you from doing the thing you love.’

Skippy just nods. Disbelief all that is keeping him upright: the blood that whomps through his head, as stars whiz back and
forth through the mall, through the bodies of the shoppers, which fade into negatives behind the bright streaks.

‘He says – he seems to me like a good man, a really decent man, he was a very promising rugby player, did you know that? Anyway,
he – he knows all about missing chances, that’s how he put it to me. And whatever about chances and potential and all that
– swimming’s what you love, Dan. It’s what you’ve always loved. God, I was telling him how we’d put you in the pool when you
were only a year old, and you’d steam about like a, like a dolphin!’ Dad laughs to himself. Then he stops. ‘I know you’re
worried about Mum, sport. Maybe it’s impossible to carry on a normal life while this is going on. But you know how much she
wanted to come to the race tomorrow, you know how hard she’d been working to get herself strong enough to see you. If she
thought for one second that you’d had to stop because of her, that after all this preparation you’d quit because of her… well,
that would break her heart, sport, it really would.’

Oh Jesus.

‘I’m not putting any pressure on you. Whatever decision you make I’ll support that, and your coach will too. He’s not going
to mention this to anyone in the school, he won’t talk to you about it either unless you want to. But he wanted you to know
that if you did change your mind, if you did, there’s still a space for you on the bus.’

‘You’re not going to come.’ Knowing the answer in advance.

‘We can’t, Danno. I know I promised we would, and I feel terrible. But Dr Gulbenkian’s saying it might be unwise. Just at
the minute he says he couldn’t advise it. And I don’t… I don’t want to be away from the house right now. I’m sorry, sport,
I really am. But you don’t need me to have fun, right?’

‘Was that her? Was it Lori?’ they ask when he comes back into the shop.

He shakes his head. ‘Just my dad wanting to wish me luck for tomorrow.’

‘Champs don’t need luck!’ Geoff Sproke declares.

Soon they are leaving, zagging down the escalators. A man in a top hat and white gloves reluctantly gives them sample chocolates
from a silver platter. At the sliding doors, carollers are gathered, swaying arm-in-arm and singing, ‘Winter Wonderland’.

‘Help fight cancer!’ One of their number, a young man in glasses and a green anorak, thrusts a bucket under Skippy’s nose;
then, ‘Sorry,’ he says, and takes it away again.

Back at school, the bad feeling grows and grows. The pills call to you from under the pillow. Speeding out of control, Skip?
The brakes are right here! Wouldn’t you like to be Danielbot again? Cool as a cucumber?

You try Lori’s phone but it goes straight through to voicemail.

‘Has she called you yet, Skippy?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Oh, well, maybe she’s out of credit.’

‘Here we go again,’ Dennis says tartly.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

Dennis keeps mum, looks out the window.

‘She’s going to call,’ you say.

His schedule so falls as to leave Father Green’s Fridays free of classes after two o’clock; typically, he will spend this
time in his office, attending to various administrative duties that arise from his charitable work. This afternoon has been
passed on the phone to the biscuit factory, trying to confirm a donation for this year’s Christmas hampers. The company has
always given generously in the past; now, however, the man with whom Father Green is used to dealing has moved on, and his
replacement – younger, bored-sounding – insists that charitable donations come under PR, which has been ‘outsourced’ to another
company. So Father Green calls this other company, where he speaks to a woman who does not understand what he wants. Is it
T-shirts? TV coverage? Celebrity endorsements? It is simply a donation of biscuits to be delivered to households in poor areas,
Father Green tells her. Oh no, that would be a decision for the biscuit company itself, she tells him, and, after tapping
at her keyboard, she gives him the name of the man he spoke to earlier.

He hangs up the phone, checks his watch. Twenty past three. Classes will be over soon.

Jerome
.

Switching on the kettle, he sits down to open a drawer of correspondence.

I can hear your heartbeat, Jerome
.
When is the last time it beat this fast?

Old ladies’ handwriting, pitifully frail. Reaching across the desk for his reading glasses.

In Africa?

The kettle has boiled. He pours the water into a cup, places the bag in the water, watches the umber clouds billow forth.

He knows your desire, Jerome. He trembles whenever you look at him. So uncommonly beautiful, so desperate for love
.

Spooning out the bag, pouring a little milk, just a splash, from the small carton.

You will show him how to pack the hampers, how each object must be arranged
.
He will kneel here, working quietly while you read through the accounts
.
Then, absently, you start to stroke his hair
.
He makes no protest or complaint
.
Instead his head slowly comes to rest against your thigh, you see his eyelashes flutter closed – then you fuck him in his
little rosebud, over this desk, you fuck him!

The cup overturning, tea pooling on the varnish, devouring the letters of his parishioners –

Ha ha ha ha!

And the air is filled by that burning wind, that roiling stew of carnality: animal sweat, the fetor of unwashed loins, white
eyes rolling at you while black arms hammer languorously at the walls of the church, that tiny outpost of decency, so laughably
flimsy in the relentless heat –

How you missed it, Jerome
. The voice, that Old Familiar, so close now its words and his own thoughts are almost indistinguishable.
Why deny what is in your heart! Why deny yourself life?

The heat! He feels it now, again, as if he were in Hell already! Waves of it, beating in through the metal walls of his hut,
all night long, dreams and desert melted into one overpowering carousel, sweat soaking the bedclothes and he with the cold
blade to his flesh, tears in his eyes as he implored God for the strength to do it, to rid himself once and for all of this
ever-flourishing root of wickedness, this lightning rod for all that is unholy –

But you did not
.

He did not – could not!

Because you knew the truth.

He could only flee Africa, batten the door on those memories,
those flames of desire and their quenching! And every day since he has heard it rattling!

Open it, Jerome
.

Has he not prayed for it to be silent? Has he not prayed to be cleansed? Has he not begged God to show him the light, to lead
him to goodness? And yet there is only desire, temptation, the Devil, gleaming at him from every grain of sand, calling from
every pair of plump, incarnadine lips, and Christ not once, not the faintest glow of a presence, not the vaguest adumbration
in a dream, not once in nearly seventy years!

You knew that there was no one watching
.

How is a man to win that battle? Where is he to find the strength?

The hour arrives, Jerome
.
This is my last gift to you
.
Once more, to feel a body touching yours
.
Love
.
And after that, perhaps, peace
.

In the corridor he hears a bell, doors opening, a thousand youthful footsteps rushing free.

Trudging back down the hall towards the priest’s office, every Loriless step like getting cut up into shreds. You take out
your phone. It gazes back at you blank and placid. You imagine being with her and telling her what Dad said, maybe telling
her everything, her saying kind things, wise things. It’s just a swim meet, Daniel, no biggie. Hey D, don’t worry, everything’s
going to be fine. You imagine her being with you, a bandage over a wound.

You write the text and then delete it, you’ve already left two voice-mails, there are rules about these things, you don’t
want to seem desperate. But you are desperate! And the unsent message bounces around inside you agonizingly,

like a scalding ping-pong ball. You descend the steps into the basement, past Ruprecht’s laboratory. Silence from the priest’s
door. Then, weirdly, as if just for a second you had X-ray vision, it’s like you see him waiting on the other side, a praying
mantis poised there motionless. You unlock your phone again. Fuck it anyway! Type in the message and send it,

You knock on the door.

‘Come in,’ the voice returns.

You enter to find Father Green sitting at his desk, a china cup poised primly at his lips and a small black missal between
his fingers. ‘Ah yes, Daniel, very good,’ he says. ‘Close the door, would you? It’s just the two of us today.’