Strange Sally Diamond

I hadn’t thought about her in months. Rangi was my best friend, my only friend. He had told me a secret. I could tell him, couldn’t I?

‘I suppose I wished she was. We had to leave Ireland because she told lies about my dad.’

I told Rangi the whole story as he cracked open two cans. I took a long slurp out of my can, assuming it would taste something like apple juice, but the taste was foul, like I imagined old men’s feet to taste. I spat the liquid out on to the grass.

Rangi laughed at me. ‘Seriously? You never had a beer before?’

I shook my head, but then attempted another sip. ‘Chur, bro!’ he said. I didn’t want any more beer so left the other five cans to him.

‘That don’t sound right to me,’ he said, when I told him what had happened when I’d stayed with my mother for the weekend. ‘You shouldn’t have kicked your mum, especially when she was pregnant.’

I shrugged. ‘Dad said I could.’

‘Don’t sound right to me,’ he repeated, and I felt uncomfortable. I regretted telling him anything.

‘My Auntie Georgia says it’s never right to hit a woman.’

I thought of his old aunt and her long days spent cleaning other people’s houses and then her bar work in the evening. I suspected that Dad wouldn’t think much of Auntie Georgia’s opinions. Why did Rangi think women were so great? His auntie was a drudge. His mum was violent. I changed the subject and soon we were talking excitedly about the rugby as the Lions Tour was coming to New Zealand again that winter. I had begun to take a greater interest in rugby since I’d met Rangi. He would have loved to play for his school team, but it wasn’t worth the hassle he would get from the other kids.

I got into the hot pools, which were shallow. At their deepest, they only came up to my neck. Rangi joined me and we bobbed around for a while. ‘Sweet as,’ he said. When we got out, the sun was hot on the surrounding rocks.

‘We have to cool off,’ I said. ‘Let’s go over to the cold lake.’

‘Nah, Stevie, I’ll stay here,’ said Rangi. He was clearly uncomfortably hot as sweat poured down his torso.

‘Come on,’ I said, ‘you’ll bake if you stay here.’

‘Can’t swim, can I?’ His voice was slightly slurred by the beer.

I felt special that Rangi had shown those scars to me. We were best friends.

‘Right,’ I said, ‘so you can’t swim and I can’t drink beer. We’re even, but at least I tried.’

He followed me to the cool water side of the cliff. I clambered down some rocks and slipped into the water. He followed me and sat on the edge, dangling his feet in the lake. ‘Man, that feels good,’ he said.

‘Jump in!’ I encouraged him. ‘You can hang on to the grass at the sides.’

‘How deep is it?’

‘I don’t know, deeper than me.’ I dived under the water and swam around for a few seconds and then I saw and heard the surge of bubbles as Rangi entered the water, too close to me. I swam away.

I’m not sure what happened next. Maybe the beer made him brave as he tried to swim out from the safety of the rock to join me, but I was nervous that he was getting too close and I swam out further away from him. Then I noticed that he was in trouble. Less than three yards away from me, he was out of his depth and beginning to panic. I could see him underwater. His head craned towards the surface but he couldn’t break it. I surfaced and tried to shout at him and point him towards the rocks just six feet away, but he never rose above the surface. If he’d pushed his body horizontally he could have touched the rocks and felt safe, but his eyes were scrunched closed. I wanted to help him. I wanted to guide him towards safety. It would have been so easy to lead him, grab his arm, but touching him would have meant my death, my agonizing putrefaction, and I was too afraid. There was nobody around to help. He thrashed around, gulping more water instead of the air he couldn’t reach. I surfaced and dived, surfaced and dived, screaming at the top of my lungs for help, while his lungs filled with water. I watched my friend drown.

Later, I thought of all the ways I could have saved him. I could have broken a branch off a nearby tree and pushed it into his hands. I could have used one of our towels and pulled him in with that. I don’t know how long the drowning took. It seemed like years. It seemed like seconds. It seemed like hell.

33 Sally

Uncle Donald died on 29th June. Aunt Christine asked me to come to the funeral in Dublin. She and I had been in regular contact. I had kept her up to date with all the news, my therapy, my new friends, New Zealand, selling the house, etc. She was so like my mum that it almost seemed as if she was back in my life. But I didn’t know Donald and I didn’t particularly want to go to the funeral.