Submarine - By Joe Dunthorne Page 0,8

holiday dad lifted the scorpion to his earlobe like an earring. He Betty Booped, coyly blowing me a kiss.

My knees slip into the gloop. Where the mud’s skin has torn I can see tiny worms, almost maggots, flailing around. As I go to move my right foot, my left foot sinks deeper – up to my paper-white thigh. I still myself, like a sculpture, and take a breath. I am in the centre of a large hippo’s back of mud. I search through my pockets: an English pound and, to my surprise, a tennis ball. I place them on the mud next to me. Neither object sinks.

… American soap operas do this.

In dramatic situations, I close my eyes very slowly and then reopen them. I stay in the same place, the same predicament, but things change. Where there is no way out, a plan materializes. When I am lost for words, I find them…

It is important for my parents that I occasionally put myself in danger. It gives them a sense of being alive, of being lucky. Holiday Dad is always a good person to scream for.

The villa sits halfway up the valley side. I try and sound as if I’ve got something exciting that I want to show him: ‘Dad!’

‘Father!’

‘Lloyd!’ I imitate my mother’s voice.

‘Pa! Pops!’ I bleat – this makes me sink a little further. The mud sneaks under my shorts.

‘Help me!’

I hear someone – my father – coming down the hill. When he runs, he makes noises like someone clearing their throat. I listen to the sounds get louder. My father has a bad back. One day, I too will grunt at physical exercise.

My father’s bare torso appears above the brambles and nettles. Instead of going the long way round he stomps through them, pretending they do not hurt. He is naked except for his corduroy shorts and brown leather sandals. He has at least ten dark hairs around each nipple.

My father looks frightened. He loves me. He cannot help it.

He says nothing, ignores the tennis ball and pound coin, does not even make eye contact with me. His one concern: prolonging my life. After searching for but not finding a branch – heroes always use initiative – he comes to the edge of the bank, standing where spears of grass pierce through the mud. He leans forward; the mud gives like dog shit beneath his feet.

‘Nnngh,’ he grunts while getting his balance. This is no time for vowels.

I imagine the instrumental guitar music that they play during the cliff-hanger ending of Friday’s episode of Neighbours. Will I make it to my fifteenth birthday?

Bending his knees, Dad stretches one hand out to me. His arms are tanned like créme brûlée. This is not the moment to mention that the mud in my shorts is warm and sexual. I reach out with both arms, only to slip a little deeper, a little further away.

My father glances left, right and up.

I am the only person I know whose belly button is undecided, umming and ahing between in and out – it disappears beneath a pregnancy of mud.

There are seams of orange clay, like spatterings of paint, appearing where the mud has been churned.

My father retreats back towards one of the pine trees. He wedges one foot into a gap where the trunk parts into two main limbs. He climbs up one of the tree’s arms, using a rough, protruding knag as a foothold. I am impressed by his style of ascent. As he climbs, I can see that he has little underarm hair, almost none.

I imagine he will force a branch down so that I can reach it and then, with a sound like a first volley of arrows being loosed, I will be flung high into the air above the valley. A safety net on the patio, constructed by my mum using the washing line and clean sheets, will catch me and drop me into my seat at the table.

The mud underlines my ribcage.

The next thing that happens is very disappointing. My dad climbs further up the tree until he is entirely hidden. I can hear the flap of his sandals being heeled down on to wood. I wonder if my mother has phoned the emergency services; it’s not every day that she gets the opportunity to use the Italian for ‘helicopter rescue’. Eventually, with a limp-sounding crack and my father’s loud exhalation of breath, a long thick branch falls from the foliage.

The saving of my life takes