The Carp Pond

normal so I can take my time coming up and letting the pipe top gently break the surface of the water. There are three options here: one – blow the water out the top like a whale which is obviously a terrible idea if you are trying not to be noticed; two - attempt the suck/close tube mouth with tongue and blow the water out the side of your mouth; three - drink. The second is the holy grail of our water chase game; I have never managed this, so I drink. It is difficult and pretty disgusting. Then I breathe.

  There are still some splashing sounds, probably from where I had been. Maybe they have seen the damp stains where my arms rested on the branch. I hold my breath and duck down and start swimming. I don't have much clue which way I am swimming so I am just swimming in the direction I feel is right. My hand touches a reed. Through the dirty water I can see their vertical lines. Very carefully I swim into them trying to move as few as possible. I do not go far in. I bring my head out of the water very slowly, take a breath and look round. No one is too close. I have a better view of the pier. I can see a man in more military looking clothes standing there. He has the rifle with the telescopic sight, a forage cap and camouflage jacket and trousers. He is a big man with a beard. He is talking to two other men. I do not recognise them. One is small, not much bigger than me.

  Now I see that there is a man waist deep in water by the tree I had been hiding under. That frightens me and I sink underwater with my pipe to calm down. The necessary slow breathing is so effective it reminds me of the many times when... I stop that thought and think about where I am.

  The pier is up to my left and I could swim there in one go. The old swans’ nest is only a few metres away to my right. I suspect that these are obvious hiding-places. There are others: the very thick reeds by the sluice gate; the water lily type plants up beyond the pier. We weren't supposed to swim there because the roots are dangerous. Though I thought I might be able to get very close to the edge of the pond under their broad leaves without being seen. An untried manoeuvre may not be the best thing to rely on now, but worth thinking about.

  If it was not for the grinding.

  It spread across the water blocking out all the other sounds. Painful metal on metal sounds that was then followed by a deep gushing sound. The sluice! I brought my head up again and looked down to the end of the pond. Three or four men were standing around the gate. Two were working down behind the sluice. They must have been using some kind of bar to help lever the gate whilst the two at the top forced the rusty crank round. They were draining the lake.

  The water would drop down the legs of the pier. The reeds would fold down in to the mud. The old wash tub would appear and I would be squirming in the mud like a worm trying to bury itself before the birds come. The men would surround me and hack me to death. Or shoot me, or just tread me in to the mud until I drowned in the slime.

  There were places in the lake where rocks could be grabbed and stuffed into my trousers. I could weigh myself down, drink more water. Join my family. Be a pale body in the mud.

  I got punched, flattened, gripped from my toes to my neck, and knocked backwards until I was almost underwater. Air exploded out of me as water leapt into the air on the far side of the pond close to my drowned tree. A bomb! How could a bomb go off now?

  Then I saw the rowing-boat. It had left the pier. Soon it would only be a few feet away. The big man in camouflage was standing at the front looking over to my old tree. The little man was sculling with our home-made paddle from the back. The big man reached down and picked something up, a grenade. He toyed with it as he scanned the water. There were a lot of dead and stunned fish floating around the boat. As he came closer I could see his fingers clamping down on the lever of the grenade to stop it flying away and setting off the timer. He put the index finger of his other hand through the safety pin ring and paused. I slid underwater and pushed out towards the boat.

  We all loved it, it became the way we would begin the game. With five children in the boat at least two had to be standing up and that made it very unstable, all you had to do was...

  I went deep. You could normally find a patch of rock or hard ground in this area of the pond. I found it with the tips of my fingers, brought my knees up and looked above me. The sky, the rough shape of the boat was directly above me. I kicked down with my feet and dragged the water past me with my hands as hard as I could. I kicked and pulled again and brought my hands up in time to push the edge of the boat up as I burst out of the water. The boat rolled heavily away from me. The men shouted trying to balance themselves, especially the big man standing up. I could see the open mouth, the wide-eyed look of surprise and .. and fear as I flipped my hands over the edge of the boat and pulled down with all my weight. The big man went over the other side, the small man came down with me.

  I did not let go of the boat, that wasn't how to play the game well. Whoever was 'it' and doing the tipping wanted to grab someone else to join the 'it' team. Normally whoever was in the water was splashing around trying to clear their eyes and swim away as fast as possible. That was what the two men were doing. But another trick to play was to climb up inside the overturned boat and not make a move, then, then they didn't know where you were.

  I got my feet under the front seat and my shoulders over the middle bench.

  The grenade went off. I felt the push in my back and the boat lifted a bit. The splashing and shouting outside the boat stopped.

  I could hear some yelling coming from the shore.

  By my feet was the fishing tackle bag. Slowly, without rocking the boat I reached forwards and undid the buckle and felt for the fish knife. I had it in my hands. Then I felt something else, lumpy and solid. I brought my hand back, put the blade in my mouth and reached again into the nose of the upturned boat. It was a cold, heavy grenade.

  A hand slapped against the side of boat and I almost dropped the grenade catching it, to my horror, by its pin ring. I froze. Another hand or an arm flapped helplessly against the planking. I could see camouflaged legs kicking in the water only inches from me. I shoved the grenade into the waistband of my trousers. The man's jacket had risen in the water revealing a grey vest tucked in his belted army trousers. His stomach looked huge in the water. I took the knife from my mouth in my fist and pointed it just above his belt beyond the curve of his belly. I pulled back my hand and then stabbed, pulling the knife across as far as I could before he pushed himself away from the boat. It had been much easier to cut than I expected. The noise outside was tremendous. I ducked down into the water going deep again so that I could look upwards and get a view of what was going on.

  The body of the smaller man was floating outstretched and motionless to one side of the boat. On the other side the big man was kicking and flailing one arm – his other seemed to be held against himself – it was difficult to tell because of the dark cloud of blood around him.

  I swam back up into the boat took a breath and then went down into the water again. This time I stabbed him in the groin. I could hear him scream even though I was underwater.

  I swam back up into boat. I pulled the roll of fishing line from the bag and tied the loose end to the pin of the grenade and put the grenade in the bag, buckled it shut and then tied the straps round the bench. I left the fishing line on the bench. I swam back out and under the smaller man's body. He was face down and very white. Luckily his eyes were shut or I would not have been able to touch him. I grabbed his foot and pulled him back to the upturned boat, pulling him down and then letting him bob up into the upturned boat. I couldn't hear the big man now. He did not even seem to be splashing. But I could hear more shouting from the shore. There was the crack of a rifle. The bullet smacked into the boat and into the small man. A thin ray of light lit a spot of wood on the other side of the hull. I ducked down and looked for the big man. He was not far. I grabbed a foot and hooked it under the edge of the boat. Another bullet came down through the water in front of me. I snatched at the fishing line, took one last gulp of air and sank deep, turned and swam
for the pier playing out the reel behind me.

  It was a long swim.

  If there had been anyone on the pier they would have seen me bobbing underwater. But no one was. I heard a couple more shots. But all I could really think off was to hold my breath a bit longer and a bit longer still until suddenly the air went cooler and darker and I knew I was under the pier. I came out of the water far too early, behind one of the old piles. There was a slight splash, not noticeable above the racket of shouts and shots from the remaining men round the pond. Someone took a few steps onto the pier shouted and then ran off. I could see his legs for a bit before he disappeared behind the reeds. I continued letting the line out as the boat and bodies slowly drifted towards the open sluice.

  I could see no one else at this end of the pond. To the left side of the pier I had an almost clear view over the whole of that side of the pond round to the sluice. To my right the reeds blocked out the area closest to me. But I could see a group of men down the other end of the pond. There were five or six, including the foreman. They seemed to be waiting for the boat to drift to them.

  It was cold under the pier. It always was. Everything seemed