Jog On Fat Barry (27 page)

A few months after leaving the hospital, Kevin had caught Clair Button touching up Aubrey Hill in the Grafton pool and reported it. And Mr. Coffey, the assistant manager of the Prince of Wales swimming baths, was obliged to bar the girls from the leisure centre for eight weeks. Later that same day, Aubrey’s eldest brother, Titus, gave Kevin a kicking after word went round their estate that Aubrey Hill was a lettuce-licker, and Kevin was left to nurse his cuts and bruises and to cry like fifty sissies on the pavement outside the baths.

Of course, it was extraordinary that Fat Barry and Kevin Lyons should have bumped into each other again, but that is precisely what they did do when Fat Barry collided with Kevin still sniveling outside the baths some quarter of an hour later. Barry had tumbled onto the pavement and Kevin had helped him back onto his feet.

“You look different,” Kevin had said.

And Barry did look different: he was fat again.

“I know that voice,” Barry cried out, astonished. “That’s Kevin Lyons, that is.”

Kevin’s voice had been the first sound Barry heard when he came out of his coma. It was a voice he’d never forget, and he could still clearly hear exactly what it was Kevin had said, “Do you want the nurse then, you silly blind bugger?”

Kevin told Barry he was working at the Prince of Wales baths. The leisure centre had given him the job because he’d saved a girl’s life.

“It’s the first job I’ve ever had,” he said.

Barry told Kevin the doctor had told him he was a fat bastard and needed to exercise regularly if he wanted to live. Kevin suggested Barry take up swimming, and added that Fat Maureen, the girl who worked in the ladies’ changing room on Mondays, Thursday, and Saturdays, was a right fat bastard too. So Barry bought himself a pair of swimmers, and, as days turned into weeks, and weeks into months, the two men became a fixture: one fat; the other rake-thin. And a day seldom went by when you couldn’t find the two of them together in the baths, with Fat Barry swimming laps, and Kevin egging him on.

Pinhead
was an affront Kevin never much cared for. Children who became adults had called him that. And their children, in turn, did likewise. And it was a difficult thing to watch a forty-odd-year-old man being tormented by children. Not that Fat Barry was able to see them: he saw nothing, but he did hear, which, to all intents and purposes, was much the same thing. The endless bawl and holler of
Pinhead
ricocheted off the ceramic tiles in the Grafton pool, and each time it did, Barry found himself wincing for his friend. Those unconsidered shouts made him angry: anger that he took out on his own body, and he’d slice through the water until the exertion of doing so purged his fury. Soon Barry was swimming three miles a day; fat turned to muscle, and the wise and wary learnt to leave Kevin well alone after that muscle got flexed.

Fat Barry confided in Kevin that he was glad he hadn’t died after all. His decision to come back from the other side had been the right one to make. Then, a day after the Notting Hill Carnival, Aubrey Hill’s brother, Titus, who wasn’t wise or wary, managed to corner Kevin in the changing room. He told Kevin that if he couldn’t say what three sixes were, he’d be getting more of what Titus had already given him outside the Prince of Wales swimming baths months before. Kevin searched for the answer but couldn’t find it. Titus sneered.

“You’re fucking thick-as,” Titus said.

He gave Kevin a slap and Kevin fell to the ground. But as he did, he cried out a person didn’t need to be clever to swim the English Channel.

“Cross the Channel,’ Titus laughed. “A plastic bag can swim the fucking English Channel, you muppet!”

Barry never did discover what it was that prompted Kevin to say what he had to Titus about swimming the English Channel. Perhaps it was something he’d seen on the telly or heard on the radio. But however it came about, Kevin quickly became obsessed with the idea: the idea of Fat Barry swimming it, that is. A lifeguard said Barry should do it for charity, and Fat Maureen suggested that the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association might be a worthwhile cause. Kevin’s crazy idea began to take on a life of its own. Barry started spending more time in the water than he spent out of it, and Mr. Coffey, ever so generously, said the Prince of Wales swimming baths would do whatever it could to support the silly blind bugger’s worthy challenge.

Fat Barry trained throughout that autumn and winter. And then, in the third week of March, Barry received word from the English Channel Swimming and Piloting Federation that he’d been allotted a window for crossing from Dover to Calais on the 23rd of April. He telephoned his aunt Ivy, who lived in the seaside resort of Littlehampton, and asked if he and Kevin could come down to stay, so he could get himself acclimatized to the water temperature in the Channel. She said, “Please do, dear,” and two weeks later, Fat Barry was out in the sea swimming beside Kevin who puttered along the shoreline in a small boat with a little electric outboard that any child could operate. And all was going as planned: until five days before Barry was scheduled to make his swim. That was the day Kevin’s heart went: it stopped beating, just like that cardiologist predicted it would. Kevin slumped onto the tiller, and the little boat, changing direction, began heading out to sea.

Barry amended his course to follow the sound of the boat, but about an hour later, the sound of the electric outboard stopped, and so did Barry. He rolled onto his back to catch his breath and waited for Kevin to say something. The wind was blowing and it had started to rain. Barry called out to Kevin but nothing came back. He called again, and then again. He reached out for the boat but it wasn’t there. Moments later he began to panic. He swallowed a mouthful of water; started to choke. He thrashed about, spinning this way and that. Kevin’s name must have tumbled out of his mouth fifty times, but no voice came back. There were no sounds other than the wind and the rain and the waves slapping against his face.

Miles away in Bexleyheath, Colleen would be boarding the 09:07 train for all stations to Victoria. She’d open up
The Mail
and then begin to do the crossword: Colleen always did the crossword. Barry had often wondered if making love to her would feel any different now that he was blind. He certainly missed making love to Colleen. They did it every Saturday night regular as clockwork before she left. Maybe Colleen missed it too. Perhaps that was the reason why she telephoned to wish him luck swimming the Channel. It had been the first time he’d heard her voice since she walked out. Colleen even suggested they could get together for a drink after the swim, if Barry fancied it, that is. And Barry had said he didn’t see why not. Colleen was still his wife, after all, and he missed her touch, the smell of her skin, how gentle she could be. He did sometimes wonder if he could ever forgive her for walking out. But what Colleen had said about all that had been true—Barry left Colleen long before she ever left him.

Not knowing what else he could do, Fat Barry began to swim again. He wondered how long he’d been at it but couldn’t guess. The saltwater had bloated his tongue, and he was exhausted. His arms felt like lead weights, and it was difficult to keep them moving. He knew Aunt Ivy would be sick with worry and would’ve been onto the police hours ago. No doubt the Coastguard were already searching for him. Perhaps they’d found Kevin. Barry stopped to listen for a speedboat or helicopter, but he couldn’t hear anything and started swimming again.

The night before, Kevin had asked him why his Aunt Ivy was always crying.

“Because my mum stepped in front of a bus,” Barry had told him.

If Barry closed his eyes, he could still see his mum walking into their house with her shopping bag like it had happened yesterday and not all those years ago. He could still see her standing in the hall: could still see her turning to stone as she glanced up the staircase towards the creaking bedsprings.

As the waves knocked Barry this way and that, he wondered how many times his fingers had traced the letters of his mother’s headstone:
Elsie Price Loving Mother and Wife.
It was more than a thousand, and he was still doing it. He could feel those letters against his fingertips, and he wondered when it was that he finally stopped hating his Auntie Ivy and his father for giving his mum the reason for doing what she did. He couldn’t remember: one day it just stopped making sense. His mum was dead; his dad was dead, and Aunt Ivy, one day, would be too.

Fat Barry turned onto his back for another breather. Raindrops were now pelting down all around him. He wondered if it was already dark, and if the Coastguard had night vision goggles. He knew Aunt Ivy would’ve been onto the police again. If he could have, he would’ve told her not to worry.

“People do things,” he would’ve said. “That’s life.”

The rain was beating against his face. A rogue wave rolled over him. Water shot up his nose. He started to swim again but his arms and legs no longer wanted to move. They felt so heavy: Fat Barry was just too tired. He thought he heard Kevin cry out. Thought he heard him shout, “You silly blind bugger!” But it was only the wind, or perhaps a seagull. He began to crave chocolate cake and raspberry tarts; found himself wishing he hadn’t upset the goldfish bowl; killed his fish, and he wondered how far across the Dover Strait he may have already got, and just how far away the French town of Calais still might be.

Biography

KEVIN COTTER was born in San Francisco to Irish/Italian parents who had married for love but separated when he was seven. In 1968, he, his mother, brother, and sisters left the States for England, moving to Hampstead, in London. It was there that Cotter entered a world that would permanently influence his life and writing: a lawless wonderland, hectic and chaotic, with abandoned houses and warehouses, crumbling cemeteries, and shops that kept their doors unlocked in the evening while the staff cashed up. He could ride the bus for tuppence, steal a bottle of Gold top milk off someone’s doorstep, work for 35 pence an hour supplemented with an additional 50 taken out of the till when the boss wasn’t looking.

School was a cigarette under the stairs by faulty radiators, or sitting in rooms playing three-card brag. He left when he was sixteen and signed on the dole, receiving £16 a week. After countless dead-end jobs, he worked as a porter on the emergency ward of the Royal Free Hospital before joining the US Navy on the Delayed Entry Program. Six months later, he deserted. He then enrolled in college, but deserted that too.