Dreamboat Dad Read Online Free PDF Page B

what a bold
son he has.
    Surfaces to sight of his handsome father laughing proudly, pointing
and telling his fellow Americans, that's my son you just saw! Isn't he
something! Yank waves that he'll see his father later, there's money to be
earned. Joins the others in real time.
    Following a threepenny piece as it dances and flits like a butterfly, the
larger shilling makes broader arcs, a two shilling coin short and fast falling,
the prize half crown its own zigzag loop. Bodies clash and fuse and break
loose under the water, it's another world, another dimension. The winner
breaks the surface triumphant, holding the prize aloft.
    Kids stay in the river as long as bodies will stand then head for the
other blessing of warm baths. To the social warmth of touching bodies.
Water as if with a slight oil content soft to the touch, slippery on the skin,
all around sky and steaming wet.
    Talking, jabbering, laughing, spit-squirting, food-smacking mouths,
the mouths just on the surface blowing bubbles, mischief brewing in the
eyes, smiles breaking white against a deep brown backdrop of complexion
and uniform black hair, heads that sink beneath and hold breath for an
impossible time and break free sucking air spitting laughter, triumph at a
record broken. Hard truth of those who surpass the record and no one
cares.
    Still, this is their place all: those of weak personality, the strong, bland,
boring, the lame the limited the dumb the mentally defective, the numbed
of too harsh a home life too early, it cannot be discussed, quite a few suffer
it, just know every kid feels for you, just stay close and stay loyal, die for
us if asked and we'll give you comfort in return and die for you.
    There are the ones born angry even furious, at something or just
nothing, they're in too, the social cripples, the retarded of body and
mind, the ugly, hideous, plain, the lucky gloriously lovely, the handsome,
beautiful, gorgeous of feature and body, you're the better part of it but you
owe too, everyone owes. Chud, you're one of us, you too, we don't care
your stink parents. Yank, you're in too, don't care your name its origin,
what some call your mother, none of that here, you're with us, of us.
    Growing up in paradise like an underground garden sprouting a
thousand steaming manifestations. And one day a father, come all the way
from America here to claim his son.

CHAPTER EIGHT
    HENRY AND HIS FATHER SAW into our future and built a four-bedroom
house of basic design on family land, on ground not likely to have thermal
break-outs. Hardly moved in as a young married couple, Henry about
to start work as barman at the local hotel, I got pregnant, then war was
declared.
    Became a too-large place of lonely residence in the years of Henry's
absence, even with frequent visitors and living in a close-knit village. I felt
a nagging need for something else, something more than village gossip and
petty gripe. But I was born here too, looking in the same mirror giving
reflection of life unchanging back. Maybe I should have fallen into line,
gone with the flow.
    Having the baby made a difference, kept me busy and in that blissful
state of motherly joyfulness. I particularly liked having a hot bath with
her, surrounded by our relatives, the villagers. The custom was to share
the child around, with two sets of grandparents, uncles and aunties, even
cousins. Once past the breastfeeding stage little Mata might stay overnight
with a relative. The house would feel too big and lonely again then.
Wondered if my discomfort was a premonition of the future, that I would
never really belong in this house.
    When Henry's father died in 1943 my mother-in-law gave me the
task of writing to inform her son. Took several months before Henry's
reply journeyed back, expressing sadness of course at not being able to say
farewell, the usual. But between us, he wrote that his father had been an
ordinary man of no great note, other than building Henry's house with his
son's energetic help. In