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Chapter Fourteen

 Out of respect for my grandfather I was wearing my smartest tee shirt and had belted my jeans at my waist when I dressed in the morning. They felt uncomfortable as my mother drove us in silence out of the village, but I’d be spared my grandfather’s gentle sarcasm.

An old country house and some low outbuildings made up the sheltered housing complex. The car park was some distance away. It was a hazy autumn morning and you could smell the sea on the walk over to the main building through well tended gardens. Inside, the smell changed: disinfectant and old people. This was the nursing home area.

I was feeling nervous. I’d given up hope on the trust; the money would come to me eventually, when my parents died, but that was irrelevant now, a lifetime away. I couldn’t care less about my mother’s opinion of what I was doing, but I desperately wanted Grandpa to understand. He was the one I’d always hoped to have on the touchline, or at the courtside or the poolside, all through my childhood. He’d encouraged me when I’d done well and sympathised when I’d lost. Grandpa’s interest in my sports started with a particular incident when I was just eight. I remember it so clearly. I’d started playing cricket at the end of the previous summer and was desperately looking forward to more the following spring. Grandpa had come out to the local park and had thrown down some balls to me. Then he’d batted to give me a chance at bowling. Finally he said we ought to do some catching practice.

“Right, Go back a bit and throw it to me on the full. Then I’ll do the same for you.”

I retreated quite a distance and Grandpa said, “Stop, that’s far enough. Remember, it’s got to reach me on the full.”

I carried on backwards. “Don’t be silly, Jolyon.” Grandpa stood with his hands on his hips. “You won’t get it half way.”

Finally I stopped, ran a couple of paces and threw as hard as I could. Grandpa’s exasperation turned to surprise as the ball sailed over his head and bounced way the far side of him. After trotting back to retrieve the ball he thoughtfully moved closer before throwing it back. It would have done an eight year old boy serious damage arriving from the distance I’d thrown it.

“That’s quite a throw you’ve got,” he said as we left the park. “And I’m impressed with your catching, Jolyon. You’ll make a good fielder. Fielding’s important, not just batting and bowling.”

He never gave praise unless he meant it. Praise from Grandpa had even more impact in the absence of any from my mother. Seeing my enjoyment of cricket, he spent a lot of time with me after that on summer evenings, batting and bowling and catching. “You’ll never be any good unless you practise,” was his mantra. “You’ll get out of it whatever you put in to it. Nothing comes free.”

We passed the usual uniformed staff and trolleys and morning bustle on the way to Grandpa’s apartment. The door was open. He was standing in the main living area, looking out of the window, as always smartly dressed, with well pressed trousers, a jacket and a tie. His white hair was neatly barbered. He was well shaved, no doubt still with the cutthroat razors I remembered with awe from my childhood. How did he not cut himself? It didn’t make sense.

Grandpa radiated a sort of flinty energy. In recent years he sometimes used a stick to steady himself going down a slope or when he knew he’d be in a crowd, but he held the stick more as a weapon, not as a hedge against loss of balance. No one would guess his age.

He turned as we entered. Nothing wrong with his hearing. “Hello, Jolyon,” and then a frown, “Hello Shirley.”

His voice was strong, but the change in tone when he addressed my mother gave me some hope that he wasn’t a hundred percent on her side.

“Hello, Grandpa.” It was good to see him and we had our usual hug.

“Now, pull up a couple of chairs.”

We sat down at the table where Grandpa ate. He moved a neat pile of newspapers out of the way, still The Independent I noticed, how appropriate, and sat on his bed.

“Your mother tells me that you’ve dropped out of school. I’m not happy to hear that. What’s it all about?” No preamble.

“It’s not dropped out, Grandpa. That sounds sort of derelict.”

“Dropped out is precisely what it is.” The first words my mother had uttered since we’d arrived.

“That’s not fair. I’ve got this opportunity, Grandpa. It’s a chance to play squash full time. In Manchester.”

“Why Manchester?” he asked. “I seem to remember you’d started playing down here.”

“There’s a coach there, Sailor McCann.”

“Out of a Glasgow tenement,” my mother said. “It’s impossible to understand a word the man’s saying.”

“Give the boy a chance, Phyllis.” My mother touched her hair, a rigid shell, two hours and probably two hundred quid’s worth, repeated twice a week in Brighton. She raised her eyes to the ceiling.

“This coach,” I went on. “He has some of the best players in the country, and from overseas. And he coaches the women’s world champion, Zoë Quantock.”

“Is she the woman who won Sports Personality? I think I remember her.”

“Yes, that’s her, she came third actually. I train with Zoë.”

“Well that’s not going to see you through the rest of your life, saying you trained with the women’s world squash champion.”

“Exactly,” my mother said.

“The point is, Grandpa, Sailor says I can be world champion too.”

“Absolutely absurd,” my mother said.

“Shirley, I’m trying to understand what Jolyon’s on about. Could you simply give the boy a chance.”

“This whole thing is just ridiculous. I don’t know why you’re wasting your time seeing him.”

“Go on, Jolyon. That sounds a bit far fetched, world champion. I thought it was all Pakistanis, the Khans, and the Egyptians.”

“It’s not like that any more. There are one or two good Pakistanis; lots of Egyptians it’s true. The world number one, he’s an Egyptian at the moment. But there’s Australians; there’s a Scot at number nine, Josh McKean, a New Zealander, a guy from Malaysia. It’s wide open.”

“Right then.” It was as if he was rolling up his sleeves. “Let’s just suppose for a moment you’ve got some potential. Sport’s a chancy business at the best of times. It’s just not clever leaving school without your A levels. For the sake of the two years, it’s obvious, you should stay on at school. Play some squash, certainly. But there’s no substitute for qualifications. I’ve hired enough people in my time, I know. Then you can concentrate on the squash, if you still want to. You could put off going to university for a couple of years, have a gap. It wouldn’t matter at that stage.”

“It doesn’t work like that, Grandpa.”

“Oh don’t be ridiculous, Jolyon.” My mother had been silent for all of a minute, probably a record.

“Shirley, I want to hear what the boy has to say. You’re not being helpful.

“Now, Jolyon. There’s more than an element of truth in what your mother’s saying. You are starting to sound ridiculous.”

I really wanted to convince him. “It might work, staying at school for another two years, if I’d played lots of squash. But I need to be full time to catch up. I’ve only really been playing for the last year. Sailor says I shouldn’t miss a day from now on.”

“Then why does he think you’re so good?”

My mother raised her eyes again and made a ‘tch’ sound, followed by, “Why indeed? Just tell him about the trust, Father, and he’ll come to his senses.”

“Shirley, you’re being conspicuously unhelpful. I’d be grateful if you’d leave us for ten minutes. Out of the room.”

Yesss! I doubt if anyone had ever spoken to her like that. My mother looked at him as if he’d accused her of catching gonorrhoea from the meter reader.

“I simply don’t understand why you’re wasting your time,” she said. “But if you want to carry on listening to this drivel, then I agree I’ll be better off elsewhere.”

She stood up and humphed out of the room, leaving her chair at an untidy angle.

Grandpa just said, “Go on.”

“I think it’s two things. Firstly, I did really well in the performance testing. Sailor says it’s the best he’s ever seen.”

“Tell me about that.”

“Well it’s simple. Four tests basically. The standing jump, off both feet, how high.” He nodded. “The drop jump. You drop from fifty centimetres and jump as high as you can. This time they measure how long you’re in the air after the jump divided by the time you take to do the jump, when your feet are in contact with the mat. Then there’s the bleep test.”

“I’ve heard of that one, the bleep test.”

“It’s really hard. Anyway, I did a seventeen. It’s high for someone my age.

“Then the last one’s the VO₂max, which you’re more or less born with, Sailor told me. I was over eighty, which is very high again.”

“So,” he said, “lot’s of good performances in some gym tests. How does that translate into world champion?”

“I played my friend, Dave Kemball. He’s the guy I was staying with, just outside Manchester. He’s really good. Ranked two in the country in the under seventeens. He always used to beat me. We’d have a good game but he just knew too much, too many shots, and he’s so fit.

“Anyway, before the game Sailor told me how to beat him. In a way it was beating him mentally first. The top two inches, Sailor says, it’s in the mind. Then beat him physically. I wouldn’t do it on squash skill, I could never do that with Dave. I just had to use what the gym tests said. In squash that means taking the ball early, that’s really hard. But if you can do it it’s really hard for your opponent too. That was all I did, pressurise him. It was only thirty five minutes. But I’ve never been so tired, Grandpa, I was absolutely gone. And I beat him three love.”

I sat back, reliving how I’d felt. “It was fantastic. I really like Dave. But I took him on there. I’d never beaten him. It was, I dunno, exhilarating. I controlled him. Then Sailor talking to me afterwards. The idea I could be the best. It’s a long way away to go, obviously. But it’s worth a try. And to be honest, otherwise I’ll just be doing what Mum expects. Dad too, I suppose. But Mum. It’s sort of like I’m her little possession, to be displayed everywhere. Look at mine. My one’s better than yours. See how well it’s doing.

“Well I will be better than anyone’s, but she just doesn’t seem to like it this way. And I know giving up school doesn’t sound clever. And it isn’t, I suppose.”

Grandpa’s blue eyes had never left me. “The quality I value more than anything in a person, Jolyon, and I’ve told you this before, the best quality of all is enthusiasm. I’ve been getting worried about you these last couple of years. You’ve been turning into a typical cynical teenager, always ready to knock something down, never to build it up. I’ve hated that. It’s not how you always used to be. This is the first time I’ve seen you enthusiastic about anything for ages, the first time in years. When your mother told me about the squash I was angry. It sounded like another stupid step downhill. I realise now it’s not that.

“It is a big risk, though. It’s a huge risk. Another of my worries has been that all you’ll go for is an easy life. Live off what I’m leaving you. Not make anything of yourself. That wouldn’t be acceptable. I’d already been wondering about altering the terms of the trust. Eighteen seemed a good idea when I set it up all those years ago when I sold my business. Recently it had started to feel a ridiculously young age, giving you more money than most people could ever spend. I’d wondered about changing it entirely, maybe to forty or something like that. The story your mother told made it easy. You’d get the money in the end; I don’t want to give it all away somewhere else. But only after your mother and father had died. And that’s decades away.”

He sat back and shut his eyes. “I’ve a confession to make now. I got your mother to tell me who it was putting these daft squash ideas into your head. She tends to slant things, put them the way she sees them. I wanted another angle. I’ve met Sailor McCann, you know. It had to be the same man. It was an occasion when your father was first at Faslane. Your dad thought the world of Sailor. Well I phoned him yesterday evening. He told me more or less what you’ve told me. You’ve really impressed him. More than even the performance assessments, he says there’s something inside you. I used to see that when you were small, I thought I did. Then it disappeared. Now I can see it again.”

His voice had gone very quiet and I had to lean forward to hear. “I asked Sailor how long it would take you to reach the top. He said even though you’re so raw, because with you it’s all physical, well not entirely, he did say that you hit the ball very well, ‘beautifully correct’ I think was his phrase, he said he’d know by the time you were twenty one whether you were going to be a world champ.”

There was a long pause, and then he went on. “I asked him about twenty one. I pressed him. He said you had it in you to be world champion, that’s a bit open to chance, or world number one, one or the other, by your twenty first birthday.

“Two chances, Jolyon, two chances, world number one or world champ.” His eyes held mine. “And that’s what I’m going to give you. I’ll get my solicitor to redraft the trust. I set it up originally to be flexible, so it won’t be a problem legally. If you’re world champion, or officially world number one, either’s all right, by your twenty first birthday, the money in the trust will come to you then. If you haven’t made it by then, well, no gifts from me. The trust will then vest on the death of the second of your parents.”

He was still looking at me intently. “I know you’ll do it, Jolyon. After talking to Sailor McCann, knowing you as I do. After all those games we used to play. There was never a child who tried so hard to win.” He looked away for a moment, maybe into the past. “I’m just hoping that I’ll be there to see you do it.

“Now, will you go and find your mother and bring her back. Go on.”

It was a relief that I could turn away. I didn’t want Grandpa to see the tears in my eyes.

Chapter Fifteen

I got back to the McCann’s house after the appointed time for the evening meal, but Sailor had put some food aside. He sat down with me at the kitchen table while I bolted the food down. I’d missed lunch.

“Hard man, your grandfather.”

“I was amazed. He told me he’d spoken to you.”

“Aye, he had a lot o’ questions. We must’ve spoken for forty five minutes, mebbe an hour.”

“How did he get your number?”

“Through your mother, then the Kemballs. I had the impression not much gets in his way.”

“He’s still so strong. For eighty five.”

“Aye, I could feel it. He started off quite aggressive. Like what was I doing ruining your life? What right did I have? He told me he’d been so grateful to his mother when he was a lad. She made him study when he didn’t want to. Forced him. She’d seen his talent. He told me he’d been a wild kid. It was her got him into engineering. She never saw his success, though. He’s always regretted it.

“I said hold on a minute, Mr Fellows. How d’ye define success? Does it have to be inside the tramlines? Big business success? Academic success, Mr Fellows? Do ye think I’ve had the academic success? I tell ye what I’ve had, Mr Fellows. I’ve had Zoë Quantock. I’ve had a world champion. That’s success.”

Sailor stood up, opened one of the kitchen cupboards, took out a bottle of malt whiskey and called out, “Do you want a glass, Mary?”

To my surprise a positive reply came back from the room his wife used as a study.

“Bring two glasses, then.” Sailor looked at me. “You’ll have a soft drink, son.”

A moment later Mrs McCann came in with two crystal glasses and sat down with us. Sailor fetched me a glass of squash and poured tots of whiskey for his wife and himself.

“I was talking about Jolyon’s granddad. And education.”

“It’s Sailor’s theme, always,” Mrs McCann said, looking at me intently. “I’ve been so sad, we’re both so sad, biggest regret of our lives, we could never have kids. But Sailor has brought more life into the world, more life out of more kids than, I don’t know,” she gave a wry smile, “the biggest families you see round here. This part of Manchester, very Catholic.”

It was an intimate moment. Mary McCann put out her hand and rubbed Sailor’s back. “I should know. I come from a Catholic family, four brothers, five sisters. And did my father care about us? Care? No. It was the booze he cared about. Sailor cares far more about each individual in his group than my dad did about any of us.”

“Aye,” Sailor went on. “I said to your granddad, you’re the one for Jolyon. You’ve the power to encourage your grandson’s talent. He’ll listen to you. Your boy has as much potential as anyone on the planet. That much. The whole planet.” He looked at me. “I told him Jolyon doesn’t realise it yet, he’s so raw. But I know. I know, son. I told him you tick all the boxes. I told him about Zoë. I knew when Zoë first came to me she was special, what she’d do. The first day. Nobody was aware of her then. Nobody was aware of me. Nobody would listen when I said she should go full time. Her dad kicked up a fuss. Heavy duty. But I was lucky there. It was her decided that, not me.

“Then your granddad asked me, how long is it going to take? How long before he could make it to the top? I said mebbe six years. We’ll know by then. He said he knows you, ye’d never be focussed with a target like that. Six years, it’s a lifetime. Too long. He asked me, could he do it by the time he’s twenty one?

“It’s a tough one. I told him I’ll know that in twelve months. When I’ve seen how you come on physically.”

“Stop messing around, Sailor,” Mrs McCann interrupted. “Sailor told me the other day, before all this came up, he told me he’d bet Jolyon would be number one by his twenty first birthday.”

She turned to me. “Once in a blue moon Sailor makes a bet. Only if he knows he’s going to win.” She laughed. “It hurt him, but he put on a bet, he really did, at Ladbrokes, that Scotland would drop out of the top hundred football countries I think it was, top something anyway, I can’t remember. When Berti Vogts took over as manager.”

“Bertie who?”

“Of course, you’re too young. Boy did it hurt.” She smiled. “Scotland were pathetic. But Sailor won his bet.” She rubbed his back again. “We’re drinking the winnings right now. It wouldn’t surprise me if he put a bet on you.”

I’d never seen this side of Sailor, a secret life he didn’t show his players. “Can it, Mary, that’s no’ called for. But yes, that’s it son, I told you’re granddad you’d make it by the time you’re twenty one. An’ there’s my fiver resting on it, good odds.

“An’ that was when he told me about the legacy, the trust. How much is it? Two million quid?”

I nodded. “Something like that.”

“‘Far too much to give to someone before they’ve achieved anything’, your granddad said. ‘The boy needs a target’, he said. Ye can tell he’s old. But there’s a spark about him. ‘Thank you, Mr McCann’, he said. ‘I can see how I’m going to manage this now.’”

Sailor was making a fair imitation of the way Grandpa spoke. “‘Leaving the money is incidental. He’ll get it in the end, anyway. It will be up to him. Whether he gets it on his twenty first birthday. Or later.’”

I nodded. It seemed so enormous, so impossible.

Mary smiled at me this time and ruffled my hair. I might have been embarrassed but I wasn’t. “Sailor will do his bit,” she said. “The rest is up to you, Jolyon. You’ve got to do yours. If you want two million quid by the time you’re twenty one.”

“Given the choice I’d rather be world champion. I want to be like Zoë.”

“Aye, that’s it, son, but it’s both or nothing for you. I promised to keep your granddad up to date. He wants ye to do it. Don’t disappoint him.”

I didn’t sleep well that night, thinking about Grandpa and the challenge. I hadn’t been to see him enough recently. It would be even more difficult with me in Manchester. There was a tournament coming up in Brighton soon, a bit Mickey Mouse, but I’d enter it anyway and see him then. I thought about my mother, too. The thing that would impress her, or rather, much better than that, the thing that would mortally piss her off, would be me completing Grandpa’s terms for the trust. That would be a grand slam triple bagel, game, set and match to me, mother dear. I’d make a point of buying her a ridiculously expensive present, something she’d hate. Only trouble was, there was a downside to Grandpa’s challenge: me not making it. That would be awful, truly awful. How my mother would crow.

I wanted to show Zoë, too. With her in mind I wished I could do it sooner. As for the practicalities, the move from eighteen to twenty one for the trust, that was a problem. I hoped I’d be okay for money. Maybe I’d get something from my father now.

Over the next couple of weeks Sailor mapped out what I’d have to do (I could hardly believe the words) to reach world number one by my twenty first birthday. Reach world number one? Sometimes I thought that three times round Pluto was more likely.

“The big challenge is the ranking points. You have to reach the first round of PSA tournaments to get points. When you’ve enough points to be ranked you’re in the first round automatically. Before that ye can only get into the qualifying. So by the time you’ve reached the first round you’ve probably had two hard matches, against young guys as hungry as yerself. Then you end up playing a seed and bang, you’re tired, you lose quickly and no’ many points. It’s hard to make progress.”

We were sitting in Sailor’s kitchen having a cup of tea. As usual we had had breakfast with Mary at six thirty prompt, six and a half bells or something. She had left for work as usual at about seven, looking very formal and expensive, leaving Sailor and me to clear the dishes away. Sailor often did paperwork then, there seemed to be enormous amounts of it, and sometimes we’d chat about how things were going over a cup of tea before setting off for training.

“How are the points allocated?”

“It depends on the grade of the tournament. We’ll go through it when you join the PSA. The tour guide gives the nitty gritty. What ye need to know now, the higher the prize money the more points. Ye’ll have to be winning big money tournaments, not just doing well, before yer twenty.”

My life fell into its new pattern after that, fierce training with Sailor’s squad, good behaviour back home in Sailor’s semi, military mealtimes. Matches were important and there were as many as Sailor could find me. If I’m honest, to an outsider it would have been dull, squash and not much else. I had my decks set up in my bedroom but the only way I could mix was through headphones. Although that kept my hand in there was no buzz, no satisfaction in perfectly syncing a bass line unless you could feel it juddering the contents of your chest. There was no one to play a new drop to. And not enough money to buy any vinyl.

Dave had gone back to school, so I’d usually only see him at weekends when he came along to training. I often found myself wishing I could get back with Samantha. My dreams of rescuing voluptuous babes from Fallowfield Pool after I’d got my lifeguard qualification disappeared on about day two. It was dreary sessions of watching pensioners burn off single figure numbers of calories in their forty minute sessions. Mainly they chatted at the shallow end, not doing much swimming. Then there were the frenetic kids’ parties. You soon identified the brats you’d happily hold under rather than pull out of the pool.

I was given little sympathy by Sailor when I moaned about this one evening. He’d insisted that I save as much money as possible to pay for trips to tournaments. We were sitting down for our evening meal. As usual, he’d done the cooking, no hardship, the food was never dull.

“What do you expect, son, everything on a plate?”

“Well, that’s where this rabbit stew is.”

“Rule five, sonny, rule five.”

“It’s just that it’s hard to get to the pool, and then it’s tedious, just doing the lifeguarding. You’ve no idea how dull.”

“Start of January, there’s the solution. If you do well in Sheffield there’ll be a lottery grant for you for sure. Let it be an incentive, son, show the powers that be you’ve arrived.”

Sheffield meant the British Open Junior Championships, just about the biggest junior event on the world calendar. Apparently there was a massive entry, hundreds of kids in each age group. It was too big for a single centre, so it had to be played at three big Sheffield clubs, the Abbeydale, the Hallamshire and the Concord Sports Club. There were four age groups, under thirteen, under fifteen, under seventeen and under nineteen, boys and girls. I would be desperately disappointed if I didn’t do well in the under seventeens. That would be a big set back.

“How are lottery grants decided?”

“It’s tight now. There used to be more money around. There’s a sort of committee. The national coach, and Tim Graham’s a bit sharp but he’s okay, and four high performance coaches in the regions. Dick Bentley over in Sheffield, you’ve met him, Alastair Stoogie, Brian Bartholomew in the South East and the fourth’s vacant at the moment. They get together regularly and decide who’s going to get the support. Dick’s the important one as far as you’re concerned. If you win the under seventeens you’ll definitely get some help.”

Dick Bentley had brought the best players in his squad of juniors over to the EIS for an informal match, ‘The War of the Roses’, a couple of weeks earlier. I was getting used to the historical Lancashire Yorkshire rose rivalry, red for Lancs, white for Yorks. I’d upset Dick by saying that we didn’t do pouffy flowers down in Sussex. In the match I’d beaten the Sheffield number one easily, which had apparently made a better impression on him than my attempt at humour.

For me the highlight of the White Rose visit was one of the girls in their team, Paula Bentley, Dick’s daughter. Paula made a good impression on all of us, graceful, laughing. And provocative. Paula was well aware of the effect her body had on the opposite sex. In GCSE Geography, I remembered, we’d been taught about a disease called goitre, which used to cause a condition known as Derbyshire Neck. Goitre made your eyes stick out. Riley showed every sign of having goitre whenever Paula was around.

“What’s an intelligent boy like you doing full time squash?” Paula had asked me.

“Appearances can be deceptive. My parents were dead disappointed with my GCSEs.”

“GCSEs! What about your A levels?”

“I dropped out of school. Didn’t do them.”

“When was that?”

“Just this summer.”

“No! How old are you then?”

“Sixteen. I’m seventeen in March.”

“No way! I thought you were much older.”

“Well, how old are you?”

Paula provided a diversion from my regular ruminations about Zoë. Paula was just into the under nineteens, her eighteenth birthday apparently on midsummer’s day. I stopped myself from replying that she already looked a wicked twenty one, more than one entendre on the wicked. It was several things about her, the cut of her dark hair, short and sophisticated with a long fringe that she kept out of the way on court with a yellow bandeau, her long brown legs, her truly international walk. And her boobs. They’d have been labelled ‘Twenty Percent Extra FREE!!!’ if you’d seen them on a supermarket shelf. I stopped short of explaining this, and from asking whether there would be any special offers. She gave me the feeling she wouldn’t have been too offended.

“How much dosh do you get in a grant,” I continued with Sailor.

“You don’t get any money in your pocket. But you get your travel to major events, and accommodation. Next year’s going to be big for you, a fair bit of travel. We’ll map out a plan after Sheffield. The grant’ll be important. In fact I don’t see how you can do it otherwise. We don’t want ye having to work all the hours God gives at Fallowfield.”

“Too right. That’s not a career I’ll be moving into when I retire from squash.”

“Don’t knock it, son, it’s a job. And there’s still your lodging to pay. I’m hoping you’ll get one of the kit manufacturers to sponsor you after Sheffield, some racquets mebbe, but ye still have incidentals to get. Like a razor, for instance. When did you last have a shave? Did your dad no’ tell you about puberty and facial hair and things like that?”

“Riley would call that harassment, Sailor. How do you know I’m not growing a beard?”

“Rule number six, son. No beards. Or not if that fluff’s the best you can do.”

Chapter Sixteen

“There’s a blocked toilet in the men’s changing room, Jolyon. Go and fix it when you’ve finished your spell.”

I was perched on the observation stand by the side of the Fallowfield Pool, bored out of my mind. I was looking forward to a break from watching elderly swimmers, and to the sandwiches I’d carefully prepared after getting back from training that morning. Sailor’s cooking didn’t extend to packed evening meals for lowly lifeguards.

The unwelcome instruction about the bog was coming from Anthea, one of the supervisors at the pool. Anthea had an enormously high opinion of Anthea, not shared by me. With anyone else her round face, short brown hair, adequate legs and at least county standard bum, obvious in the tight shorts she wore, would have added up to a classification of All Right. She really looked okay. So did sour milk until you sniffed it.

“Oh come on, Anthea. Why can’t Derek do it?” Derek was another lifeguard at the centre, a walking refutation of the theory of Intelligent Design.

“Because I’m telling you to, that’s why.”

Anthea had a way of winding me up within seconds of any conversation starting. Nothing new today. “I’m due off in fifteen minutes,” I said. “Are you sure you don’t want me to go and do it now? Then I’d be on time for my tea break.”

“No,” she looked up at the big clock over the pool. “I’ll get Di to take over from you at six o’clock. You can have your break once you’ve cleared the toilet.”

“What about Derek? He’s on general duties too.”

“Derek isn’t feeling too good.”

“Derek’s always not feeling too good. When he’s on duty that is. He’s fine any other time.”

“Well I’ve made up my mind, so stop arguing.”

Up to then I’d wisely not told anyone at the centre about my plans to leave. But up to then I’d managed to control my temper. Not this time. I let it all go, at a volume my mother would have been proud of, “Thank God I’ll be out of this effing place in the new year!”

Now the whole pool knew, and probably everyone in the crèche and the gym and even out in the car park. The swimmers were all suddenly staring at us. I must have been loud. They didn’t have their hearing aids on in the pool.

“For God’s sake Jolyon,” Anthea said, looking around. “Keep your voice down. You’re way out of order. I’ll have to report this. You’ll be up for a disciplinary for sure.

“And don’t forget the toilet.”

She flounced away round the pool. A couple of minutes later, through the glass barrier that separated the wet and dry sides of the centre, I noticed Anthea chatting with Derek. No sign of anything wrong with him of course. He pointed at me and they both laughed. It dawned on me then, dead obvious from their body language, they must be an item. What a horrible thought. Derek attracted women in a tanning parlour sort of way. It wouldn’t have been his personality; all he had was his overdeveloped body, steroid fit from a seven day a week gym habit. He had the broad shoulders, huge pecs and thick neck of the sweat-stained retards you saw pushing improbable iron in the Fallowfield weights room. In Derek’s case it was all emphasised by the tight tee shirts he wore. Just the sort of mindless meat that would attract a fly brain like Anthea. Derek’s effectiveness as a fellow dogsbody was in inverse proportion to his muscle bulk.

I’d had a run in with Derek soon after I’d started at the place. There was going to be a large Scouts event after school hours that evening, in the park next to the centre. We’d been told to take several hundred metal chairs outside. The chairs were stored in stacks of ten in a room at the back. I found it hard work from the beginning, on a really hot late summer’s day.

Perhaps Derek was feeling the same way. He’d started chuntering as soon as Jim Braddock had given us the job. “Who does he think I am, some no-hope assistant? I’ve a fucking certificate in sports physiology, that’s what I’ve got. I’m not paid to carry fucking chairs around. And what are you laughing at?” I’d made the mistake of smiling at his tirade. “This is a job for juniors, so get on with it.”

I could just about manage three of the chairs at a time. I reckoned Derek could have picked up a whole stack without difficulty, but he was crabbing through the storeroom door with just a single chair in each hand. After fifteen minutes, before we’d completed even a quarter of the job, Anthea came out to see how we were getting on.

“I’ve strained my left pec,” Derek said. “I’ll have to stop before I do more damage.”

“Okay,” Anthea replied. “You carry on, Jolyon. I’ll see if I can find someone else.”

Derek gave me a smirk. “Get on with it, then. The job needs to be finished by five.”

What an idle bastard. “You big girl’s blouse,” I said. “If you’d been wearing a proper sports bra that wouldn’t have happened. Come to think of it, you and my mother, you’re about the same size. If it helps, she gets hers from Marks and Spencer’s.”

In a moment he’d grabbed me by the shirt and lifted me off the ground, “Just don’t mess with me, sonny.”

I was too pissed off to be worried. “Mind that pec, Derek love. The silicone may leak out.”

“You cunt,” he hissed and pushed me away. “I’ll sort you out later.”

“Boys, boys,” Anthea said. “Leave it out. Come on Derek. And you, Jolyon, you get on with the chairs.”

But I was on a roll. “He’s damaged my breast, Anthea, I mean my pectoral. I can’t carry on…” Here I tried to mimic Derek’s rather high pitched voice and his Lancashire accent, “in case I do more damage.”

Derek’s face turned an even deeper shade of red, but Anthea pulled him away. “I said, leave it out. I’ll send someone as soon as I can.”

In the end, Sarah, one of the fitness instructors, appeared, but I’d done the bulk of the job by then. I was knackered when we finished. It was the start of permanent hostilities between me and Derek. From then on I took every opportunity to bring up the subject of implants, and how clever it was that you couldn’t see the scars, and was Derek’s poor pectoral still tender, and would it help if I gave it a squeeze.

As for Anthea, it had taken me a little longer to start wishing something awful would happen to her. Our first run-in had been over the till at reception. The end of day balance had been off by small sums on several occasions. Apparently the discrepancies hadn’t been enough for anyone to become fussed, but they had been consistently negative. Anthea had raised the matter at the end of my first staff meeting, four weeks after I’d started at Fallowfield.

“Lastly, I think you’ve all heard, some money’s been going from the till, 60p, 50p, not much. We thought it must be a child at first, or even mistakes, the amounts are so small. But that’s impossible. No children behind the desk, and the till’s always under, not over.

“What I’ve proposed is, we’re giving the thief an opportunity to stop before it gets serious.” She looked at me. “We think we know who it is, Jolyon, don’t we. It’s only happened on your days on. Just stop it now, nothing more said, and I won’t have to elevate it to upper management.”

That was seriously out of order, and I was livid. A wave of heat washed over my face, made worse by the smiles from the other lifeguards.

“Are you suggesting it was me?” I said, as calmly as I could.

“Not for the record, no one’s seen you. It’s just obvious, that’s all.”

“I don’t accept that.”

“Well then, you can play the detective and find out who it was. Only joking. Just get on with your normal duties and leave the till alone.”

Thank goodness I’d be out of the place permanently at the end of February. Roll on the British Open. No pressure, I thought. Sailor was expecting me to win and winning was key to the lottery grant. Not that the grant would add up to free cash. But paying my main expenses would make a huge difference to my finances. Specifically, no more dismal minimum wage lifeguarding. The work at Fallowfield was grim and the company even grimmer.

Typically, Anthea wasn’t going to let me forget my outburst. Later the same evening when we were both on duty at Reception she said, “So you’re planning to leave, are you?”

“Just as soon as I effing well can. I can’t wait to hand in my notice.”

“It could happen sooner than you think. The last disciplinary we had, it was someone much better than you, she’d been here for several years. She was fired, just like that. While you’re still here with us, if you’re still here with us, you’ll have to sort out your attitude problem.”

Derek had joined us. “Is he bothering you, Anth?” He moved uncomfortably close to me. “You just watch your mouth, Joly-on. You need to learn some manners. Show some respect. Understand?”

“I understand where not to look for an example.”

He bumped his chest against me. “Just try it with me, boy, just try it. Just raise your hand.”

“No way, not unless you lay off the garlic for a couple of days. I’d be asphyxiated.” I turned to Anthea. “Do you have a halitosis fetish or something, Anthea? His breath, fuck’s sake. It wouldn’t do anything for me.”

Two customers walked in at that moment and Derek managed to control himself and pull away. He wandered off, huge thighs rubbing together, no doubt incubating awful fungi. Anthea mouthed something under her breath and booked the customers in.

Afterwards she said, “Don’t expect any support from me at your hearing.”