A story first published in The London Magazine in 2024.
Our David thinks he’s a whale. He’s three years younger than me. Neither of us did much at school. I went in the army and David got into computers. We could both have done a lot worse. We knew plenty of lads did a lot worse. He taught himself computer languages and worked for a big financial company in Leeds for a long time. Eventually worked his way up to head of department and then thought he might as well set up for himself, so that’s what he did. Started his own business. Doing what exactly I don’t know but he’s done it well whatever it is. Still with computers. He was forty when he went out on his own. He’s fifty-two now. We’ve never talked about it but he must earn five times what I do. At least five times. I left the army in nineteen ninety-eight and went into roofing. I was always outdoorsy in a way David never was. I like working with the sun on my back. I couldn’t do what David does. Even if I knew what it was I couldn’t do it. I’d rather be up on a roof in the rain than stuck in front of a computer screen all day. I say that, but these days I send young Harry and our Owen up the ladders. I stop in the van and call it project management. It’s a young lad’s game really and anyway I’ve paid my dues. But I’m out on the bike most Sundays and I ran the Bradford 10k back in March, and on top of that half the time I’m chasing around after our Owen’s kids, they’re three and seven, that keeps you young. What I’m saying is that our David hasn’t moved from his chair for the best part of thirty-five years.
I’ve never been much of a swimmer. I did my length at school and I splashed about in overalls to pass basic training and once I’d done that that was enough for me. Hung up my trunks. My swimming days were behind me and good riddance. Then our David had his heart scare.
Me and our Cath met in eighty-nine, in a pub called the Tut and Shive. It was a shithole then and it’s long gone now. Thursday night. There was a turn on. Foursome doing Quo numbers. I was out with some lads from Carlton Gate and she was out with her sister and her sister’s mates. I went over and we had a bit of a dance and a bit of a kiss. We’d never have thought. But you never do, do you? Here we are though. Our Owen and his two and our Caley and our Jessica and her little one. When we got married our David was best man. He was taking out a lass from his work back then. I forget her name. Black hair and a bit of a hatchet face. It didn’t last. It never did seem to last. I said to him, your turn next, mate, your turn next, David lad. I’d had a few by then. He just smiled. Yeah, yeah, he said. He split up with the lass from his work not long after that. I remember because when I rang him up to tell him our Cath was pregnant, the first time, that was when he told me they’d split up. It was a bit awkward but we got through it. We were never close-close, me and our David, but he was happy for us even though you could tell he was fed up about his lass. I don’t know who dumped who. It’s best not to ask. At about the time our Owen was born David moved into the flat on the Doncaster Road. Bags of space. He filled it with furniture from Dad’s old house. He had it looking right nice. We used to call it his bachelor pad. It was always sort of a jokey thing to say but I think it got more of a joke the longer it went on. He was still living there when he had his heart scare. He rang me. Even before he rang the ambulance. He rang me and I told him to ring the ambulance.
We go twice a week, Tuesday and Thursday. Five-fifty a pop. It adds up but I don’t mind. We were getting our breath back at the shallow end when he said it. I thought he was saying it because of what our Dad said once. Dad went down the mines straight from school, at fifteen, sixteen. Kinsley pit. I can’t say he loved it but it was a job. However bad it was it was always better than no job. I used to think of Dad down the pit on bad days. Nailing shingles in the rain. Hodding slates up three flights of scaffold. Better than no job. They moved Dad to Frickley after Kinsley closed and after Frickley closed he got a job at the mining museum up past Middlestown. Showing folk around. Tours of the pit. He liked it. I met him after his shift once and we got a cup of tea and looked at an exhibit about the strike. Pin-badges. Coal Not Dole. Geordie Brealey and his plastic helmet. All that. Dad was never bitter. He was just sad. That was when he said it. British industry, he said, it’s like a beached whale. Chewed and scavenged down to its bare bones. And it was once so mighty. I asked him when had he ever seen a beached whale and he said he’d seen them right enough. When, I said, and he said on the television, like. Attenborough. And it’s this huge strong thing that rules the waves and you can’t hardly imagine it any other way. Then boom. There you are. Washed up. Done for. It all broke his heart a bit I think.
They took David to the same hospital Dad died in. Pinderfields. We’ve all been in there one time or another. Our Owen was born at Manygates but our other two were both born there. I’ve been in more times than I’d like. Roofing nail through my hand. Cancer scare. The time they thought I’d broken my back. Our Cath had her hip done here. But Dad had never been in before he came in that last time. Fit as a whippet. Always had been. Built like a butcher’s dog. When he came in that last time it was like he couldn’t believe what was happening to him. We had to believe it because we could see it and we didn’t have any choice but right up to the end I don’t think he really believed what was happening to him.
David and Dad weren’t that close. Not as close as me and Dad. He wasn’t there when Dad said the thing about the whale. That’s the thing. So he can’t have meant that. I didn’t want to guess. I don’t like guessing games. I don’t like mucking about. How do you mean, I said. He was wiping his goggles. When I’m here, he said. Like a blue whale.
I enjoy my food and I like a beer. That’s all right when you’ve got the metabolism for it. I’ve always been able to put it away. Gets harder when you get older but still. I think I look all right. Sometimes at the baths you catch yourself in the mirror in your trunks. Can’t help it. And I think I look all right. But like I say our David’s always been what’s the word, sedentary. You can’t eat rubbish with a lifestyle like that. I thought that was what he meant. Like a whale. But I said something, I think something about my metabolism, and he looked at me funny, and said ‘no’.
Then I got to thinking about Dad again and the beached whale thing. I’ve seen them too, on Attenborough. The deadest things you’ve ever seen. Bits chewed off them. So big and so bloody dead. And what’s more they’re so alone. You’ve never seen anything as alone as a dead whale on an empty beach. Alaska or Namibia or wherever it is. The wind howling and the whale there, alone and dead.
No, David said. When I’m swimming.
I didn’t get it.
I think I do now. Our David wouldn’t say. He just said think about it. I hate that. But then he was off again, off up the slow lane, so that was that. I watched him. Up and down. He does a big slow breast stroke. Dunks right under. Up for a breath. Down for a stroke. Up again. Not fast but smooth. I went after him – it’s best when I swim behind him, keeps me at a nice slow speed, otherwise I go mad trying to go too fast, and I’m knackered after three lengths. I went after him and thought about it.
The water does something. You’ve no weight at all, not really. That’s the thing. In the water it doesn’t matter whether you’re big or not. That’s the point of whales. They weigh a ton but it doesn’t matter. They might as well weigh nothing at all. That’s the point. I swam and I stared down into the pool. White tiles and the water the colour of toilet cleaner. Someone’s sticking plaster on the bottom. Not silent, I could still hear the music they play there. ‘I’m So Excited’. Pointer Sisters. Not silent but different. I was swimming but I felt like I was hardly swimming at all. Up for a breath. Down for a stroke. David’s white feet kicking in front of me. Felt held. The deep end falling away. All the weight in the world, and no weight at all.
Richard Smyth 