Joe was surprised when Sam said he would like to come to the baths with him on the Saturday afternoon and watch him in the speed trials. They went the short way, past the old jail, over the narrow bridge, by the Tenters cottages, up the small hill and down again to the sandstone baths, a pleasant easy route in daylight made more pleasant by Sam telling him some funny stories about the war, especially about the mules, stories he used to tell years ago to get the boy to sleep.
He did well in the trials. It was good, sprinting up and down the pool, especially the crawl, freestyle, throwing out his arms as far as they would go, stretching it seemed to snapping point, palming the water down to his groin and then a rapid recovery while the other arm machined its way through the water and the legs powered steadily, the ankles slackening to free the feet to a churning paddle, the face half emerged on the right just before the down stroke to snatch a breath hissed out under the surface, the feeling of water rippling over the skin and faster, driving out all thought, all feelings, all imagination, just the will to win, to beat the rest.
For those seconds he was wholly healed. In competition he was freed from the plague of himself. To compete meant you could never feel you were alone. In competition you were in constant company. It meant you always had to look to someone else. Competition gave the outside of you a clear purpose. Nobody could ask questions, not even you, that was the great beauty of it. You were what you did and you did it just as hard as you could which made you stronger. And it could carry over. Especially when you won. The glow of it could warm and light you through hours, even through a day.
His dad had a word or two with the trainer while Joe did the usual business with the Brylcreem. Everybody told him his dad could get on with anybody. His aunty Ruth had told him his dad was a very popular man. Joe rather cringed at that, sorely aware of unpopularity, of a compulsion to be the organiser, otherwise no one, he was convinced, would play with him. This apprehension of his unpopularity had grown since his beating by Og. But his dad just chatted away, scratched the back of his head in that way he had, smoking, as usual.
‘He says you have the makings.’
Joe was pleased: that the trainer had said it, that he had said it to his dad and that his dad thought to repeat it to him. He smiled, to himself.
‘Your last time was near the club under-fourteen record. Less than a second away.’ Sam sounded genuinely impressed.
They were walking back the longer way because Sam wanted to go into the town. The wind was still high as it had been for the past fortnight, there were already pools of flood water in any flat field, and the little beck beside them fumed like a mill race, but Joe felt warm and calm and as steady as he had been for many weeks.
‘So everything OK, then?’
The tone was false. Joe’s sympathies, which had been reaching out in fullness, withdrew like a threatened snail’s horns. ‘Yes,’ he answered, sad that the good moments had been so few.
‘Nothing on your mind, then?’ Sam was aware of his clumsiness but he had little finesse with his son in matters tangled by fear, which he saw, and cowardice, which he scented. He laboured on. ‘Nobody getting at you?’
Had anybody told him? Joe only committed himself to a shake of the head.
‘Nothing bothering you at all?’
Did Colin count? And not confessing he had not made it as a server? ‘No,’ he muttered, not looking at his father.
So, Sam concluded, he was right. ‘Like swimming better than boxing now?’
Had he seen the ruined gloves?
‘You gave those gloves what for.’
But he laughed when he said it.
They passed by Vinegar Hill.
‘I still like boxing,’ said Joe. But he did not specify whether it was doing it or watching it and the latter was certainly true, which absolved his answer from falsehood. ‘Swimming’s easier than boxing.’
‘Always stick at what you find easy,’ Sam said. 'If you find it easy the odds are you’ve got a bit of a talent for it. But, then, I thought you had a bit of a talent for boxing.’
Joe was not up to a response.
They were at the end of Proctor’s Row, which ran parallel with the churchyard. At the empty corner of the High Street, Sam stopped. Joe was forced to do the same.
‘Joe?’
‘Yes.’
‘Look at me, Joe.’
The boy, whose eyes had been scanning the ground, levered up his face slowly as he dared until his eyes met the blue stare of his father, almost a hard look, almost the look that could freeze him.
‘So there is nothing bothering you?’
‘No.’ The word was almost a gasp.
‘You’re telling the truth?’
What could he say? Oh, what could be say? How could he possibly begin to describe what was happening, how did he know how to describe it, what on earth would it sound like, it made no sense, it was outside answers to questions, so what could he say?
'I am,’ he lied.
‘You wouldn’t lie to me, would you, Joe? Look at me, Joe.’
The boy tried to hold his father’s hard look. He was frightened to the marrow. Don’t back down had been drummed into him. We don’t back down. There was a prickling sensation over his scalp as, for what cannot have been more than mere seconds, he fought to hold the look.
‘You wouldn’t lie.’
‘No, Dad.’
He so much wanted to tell him. Whatever it was. Just something about it. About in bed, that thing in the corner. On the bike on his own when he was in the country and that awful feeling would sheet over him, the boy wanted to let out some of the pressure of the pain, but how could such things be told, they were not to be talked about, they were so deep inside that words could not reach them, and even if they could what authority could they possibly have? In that moment the boy yearned for an understanding beyond both of them but it was not there and the only course open was to lie.
He knew his father saw through it.
‘There’s never any shame,’ Sam said, ‘in admitting you’re in trouble. It sometimes helps to admit it. I’ve known that myself, both ways. I’ve admitted things to a friend and somebody’s admitted things to me.’
Only three people passed by. Each was given a cheery greeting by Sam in a tone quite at odds with the urgency of his speech to Joe. Anybody watching the two of them from a window would have thought the man was giving the boy a telling-off.
Joe wanted to run away. Just to run.
‘So: last time. Anything up?’
The boy could hold that gaze no longer and his head dropped. But there was no giving in. This time he shook his head, all he could manage. Another lie. It screamed through his head. Three. He waited for the punishment.
‘And then there’s times,’ he heard above him, ‘when you have to keep things in. I know about that as well.’
It was meant as comfort but the boy was beyond that.
They walked back through the town, down the High Street, past the Fountain where the men smoked and spat, down King Street towards Market Hill and the Blackamoor, father and son, getting to be as big as you, Sam, see you later on, Sam, could they not all see that he was a liar? Was it not as clear as glass? A liar as well as a coward, afraid even step in step with his father of the dark night, God could see right through him, he was transparent, could see every bad weak part of him, what have we done to deserve this weather, Sam? almost shoulder to shoulder but so far apart.
On the steps of the Blackamoor, as Sam fished out his keys, he said, ‘You know what the referee tells the boxers when he pulls them away from each other after clinching for too long?’
Joe shook his head.
‘Box on.’ Sam smiled. ‘That’s what he says. “Box on.”' And he opened the door.
Joe nodded and attempted a smile. He went into the pub, reluctantly. Box on.