Animals - Keith Ridgway

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and it had stuck. It might have been the person who told the story to Michael, or it might have been the person before that; it could in fact have been anyone at all in the chain, at any point, close to the original source or not. Even if it had been applied by one of the people who had actually been in the building, who had been to the fourth floor and had seen the stain on the carpet there – even then, how accurate was it? Shapes are fairly objective things, once you get past circles and squares and triangles. One person can look at a cloud and see the outline of a face. A second person can look at the same cloud and see the shape of a sailboat. A third person can look at the same cloud and see nothing but a cloud – shapeless, meaningless and fleeting. Even if you were to assume that several people had seen the stain and that they had all agreed that its shape resembled that of Australia, could it not be said that all stains, almost inevitably, look like Australia? It’s something about the large irregular blob-ness of it, with the single separate smaller blob underneath, Tasmania. Knock your cup of coffee and have a look at the resulting mess. From some angle, somehow, it will look a little like Australia.

      I don’t know why all of this suddenly seemed so important, but it did. I realised it with a sort of annoyance, a kind of underwater sigh of impatience, and a slight tilting of the head and a brief rolling of the eyes, as I dived down into the deep brightness of the pool, which felt to me less warm than I thought it should have, but which was, nevertheless, wonderfully refreshing. I knew that I’d have to call Michael and find out whether it was true, whether it was definitely the case that the stain on the fourth-floor carpet of the BOX building was shaped like Australia. I felt it was vital that I find this out, and I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t asked him at the time. My body was fully immersed by then. I was pointing downwards, head first, towards the bottom of the pool, still moving, and all the water seemed to panic around me, as if I was a catastrophe here. It seemed terribly significant – the matter of Australia, I mean. Significant in terms of what, I had no idea, and why it should occur to me that it was significant I had no idea either. But there was something in the notion of Australia. It wasn’t about the stain per se, or the idea that it remained, despite constant attempts to remove it. What was significant, if it was true, was its shape. I’ve never been to Australia. I know some Australians of course – it’s inevitable – but it’s not a country I know very much about or have very much interest in. And I did not know at that time, I think, what I could or would do with the knowledge – if it was forthcoming from Michael – that the stain was indeed, definitely and clearly and objectively, shaped like Australia. But I knew I had to find out.

      My momentum slowed. I kicked my legs briefly and did a quick breaststroke to keep myself going down. Why did I want to keep going down? I suppose I was exhilarated by the water, by being out of the world for a moment, by being so completely and alertly elsewhere. But really – the bottom of a swimming pool is a terrible place. There are tricks and corners there. There are hidden catches. There is the noise. The pool in the sports centre is white-tiled. It has black lane markers – elongated Is that attempt a kind of orientation, and fail, or fail me at least, providing only a mild sense of vertigo and a vague disappointment at the impossibility of falling. There is a slope in the middle somewhere, as the deep end becomes the shallow end. There are randomly spaced plastic covers over drains or filters or some such. There are the shadows of the lane ropes and their measured-out floaters, bobbing. There is the water: bubbles and distortions, glints of light, minute clouds of particles, debris, human dust, debris. We are disintegrating. Sometimes the sparkle of an earring or an unmissed bracelet or an unreachable delicate chain with cross or locket or twist. I don’t think I had been to the bottom of the sports centre pool before. And I think it was only when I reached it, my hands spreading out to brush the tiles, my body contracting, my feet tucking in, my eyes all around me, that I remembered how terrifying such a place is. My fingers touched grout. My hands pressed down on the strangely warm tiles. What were they made of, exactly? How did they not break? Leak? If they leaked would they leak inwards or outwards? How heavy is water? Why was I not crushed? Everything was above me. The shimmering surface, the lane ropes, the legs – kicking and still – the light. All of it above me. And the bubbles that came from my mouth fled upwards. And my hair lifted upwards. Everything natural wanted out of there. I glanced at a nearby drain or filter cover, whatever it was – an ugly sinister thing where you could easily trap a finger or a toe. The brightness was awful, the clarity utterly deceptive. I could see everything, and yet I suddenly expected a tap on the shoulder, a face in front of mine, a hand on my ankle – unseen before I saw it. I was swimming in a flooded hospital ward, a submerged asylum, a sunken abattoir, a place so full of ghosts that they touched every inch of my skin with their half-cold own.

      Perhaps the fear is about sound. Sounds there are so hideously distorted. It is an inverted silence – all unidentified roaring and the thump of your own heart. It’s a muffling that suggests being buried alive; the prolonged, strangulated fade-out of dying.

      Perhaps I watch too many films. Perhaps my fear isn’t my own at all but has been gifted to me by Hollywood. I’m sure my mind is full of a lifetime of images of trouble underwater. Of murder in the swimming pool. Of course, now that I try I can’t actually think of any. At all. Nothing specific. I can think of several celluloid underwater terrors at sea. But nothing in a swimming pool. I’m sure that they exist. They must. The relaxed swimmer, the pristine white, the lap of the water, the brightness. And then the underwater shot, the sudden odd angle, all sounds grotesquely altered, the light refracted, split and cutting, concentrated and threatening. The whiteness calling out for red. The sensual skin turned to vain vulnerability, the supporting water gone deep and thick and complicit. Everything suddenly stops.

      My worries about dreams came back to me then, as my body came upright in the water and my feet sought out the tiles below me. For weeks I had puzzled over this. I think I’ve mentioned it. I had not been able to find a way of thinking about it that did not disturb and confuse me. It had started very simply over coffee one morning, as K and I sat in the kitchen with the radio on, not long out of bed. We talked about dreams. That isn’t unusual, but that morning I remember that our conversation had been prompted by a story on the news. The security forces all over Europe were reported to be very concerned about the theft from an Italian laboratory of various poisons and toxins and that kind of thing. Vials of anthrax or botulinum or ricin or something. And of course, their concern was that the theft had been carried out by terrorists who would seek to use these toxins in an attack. As we listened, K looked up at me and frowned.

      —That’s very strange.

      —What is? I asked.

      —A lab, vials, all that.

      —Oh, it’ll just be another false alarm. It’ll all turn up somewhere, or they’ll arrest another cell because of it. It’s the stuff that doesn’t make the news that worries me.

      —No, that’s not what I mean. I mean it’s strange because I dreamed about it. Or something very like it. I think.

      I said nothing. K often relates dreams to me. I’m used to it. It’s a regular thing. I don’t really like it – I never have. Something in me clams up slightly when someone, anyone – not just K – tells me their dreams. I seem to have an instinctual resistance to it. I sipped my coffee, and my mind focused more on the radio than on K.

      —I was in a hospital, I think. All white and clean, and it had that disinfectant sort of smell.

      —You can smell in your dreams?

      —Apparently. In this one anyway. I was looking for someone. I’d come to visit someone, I’m not sure who. The place seemed deserted, there was no one around at all and there wasn’t a sound. It was all very creepy.

      K smiled a little and squinted, trying to remember the details.

      —Then this little boy appeared out of nowhere, wearing pale blue pyjamas, a real cute little kid, sleepy-eyed, straight out of a television ad for cough bottle or fabric conditioner or something, the only thing missing was the clutched teddy bear. And I asked him, could he tell me where I could find the Research Centre. I was very specific. And the boy told me that I would have to go and see Dr Harkin for my tests. And he took me by the hand, very solemnly, and led me down the corridor. The next thing I know is that I’m in a garden, outside

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