The Teacher's Secret by Suzanne Leal Read Free Book Online Page B

paid to movement in his feet. Not that it’s stopped him smoking. Might make me cut down a bit , he says, but buggered if it’s going to make me stop . He’s a rollies man and he rolls themup tightly so they’re as thin as a straw; so thin the filter bulges. That’s another concession to the leg problem: the cigarette filter. Something to keep the doctors off his back.
    ‘The pool take you by surprise, did it, mate?’ he yells. He’s always been louder than Sid.
    Sid puts his hands up on the top edge of the pool and laughs. ‘Lost in me thoughts,’ he calls back.
    Ray parks the buggy in the usual spot: just beside one of the bench seats that’s been concreted into the sandstone that surrounds the pool.
    Getting off the buggy should be a simple enough manoeuvre, but for Ray it’s a bit of a business and he needs more than a minute to manage it. Now, a minute’s not a lot of a time unless you’re watching your big brother do something that should take a couple of seconds, his face screwed up in concentration and in something that isn’t quite pain but looks pretty close to it. That’s when, as always, Sid wants to shout out to him to check he’s okay, to check if he needs any help. But, as always, he stays quiet and carries on like nothing’s wrong. That’s what he’s learnt to do.
    Once he’s off, Ray pulls his walking stick from the back of the buggy and leans on it. He can handle some weight on his feet, but not a lot. Because of the flamin’ gangrene . That’s how Ray tells it. Sid’s pretty sure it’s not actually gangrene, but it’s still not much chop. Still means that his feet won’t work the way they should. Except in the water. They flip along okay in the water. That’s why he likes coming to the pool, no matter what the water temperature is.
    ‘You coming in, mate?’ It’s an offhand question, but Sid times it carefully, waiting until he can see that Ray has got his balance and will be able to get over to the pool without too much drama.
    Ray’s got the script going too. ‘Hold your bloody horses.’
    Standing still in the water is making him cold, but Sid stays put as he waits for his brother to get over to the pool’s edge. It upsets him to watch it—the winch-drag of Ray’s steps—and sometimes he looks away, pretending to check out the headland instead.
    When he’s at the edge of the pool, Ray holds on to the ladder to lower himself down to a sitting position. At the same time, he throws his walking stick aside, so that it clatters on the ground behind him.
    Once he’s finally in, it’s like he’s been reborn. He’s a breaststroke man, not an overarm man, and he never puts his face in the water; he just keeps his head up the whole time, even if there’s a school of sparkling fish swimming right under him.
    Sometimes, they stop at the end of the pool—the far end, not the ladder end—and look across the bay, across Sandy Rock and up onto the headland. It’s a low rise of bush scrub covering loose sandy soil that, at its point, turns to hard sandstone shale. When they were nippers, he and Ray would scour the place for bullet shells left by the shooters after a day on the rifle range. It’s still there now, the rifle range—smack bang in the middle of the headland—and the shooters still come of a weekend, but it’s been a while since he and Ray were up there. No chance for Ray now, but Sid could still do it; have a wander, even take the path all the way over to Raleigh Beach. If he had a mind to, that is.
    And as if he can hear what his brother is thinking, Ray uses his chin to point up to the headland. ‘You been up there lately?’
    Sid gives his chuckle—a quiet, fruity sort of chuckle—and shakes his head. ‘Can’t remember the last time.’
    After a bit, they battle their way back down the length of the pool. Once they get there, Ray flips on his back—face up to the sky,hands out, feet up—while Sid gets out to take a shower. It’s just a wooden post