to become a queer.
On the rare occasions his dad isn’t around, Swole invites us in and his mum gives us cold lemonade: the kind you make by adding water to yellow powder.
The shelves beside his bed are stacked high with books and board games but Swole doesn’t read much and he has no brothers or sisters to play games with. His pride and joy is the huge wooden battlefield, painted green and brown, on which battalions of British and German soldiers line up against one another. There are hundreds: running or marching across the uneven terrain, lying down or kneeling to fire from black trenches, or from behind balsa-wood rocks and bushes. Some are frozen in action, arms flung back in the moment of being shot, while others are charging enemy lines with fixed bayonets, led by officers armed only with pistols. Each model is immaculately painted: the British in khaki and the Germans in grey with contoured helmets that are so much smarter than the British pudding bowls. ‘Dad made everything, apart from the soldiers,’ says Swole. He tells us this with pride but little affection.
He was proud enough recently to take me into the separate area of the wood yard adjacent to their home where his dad makes his own stuff. When working here, Swole says that he always wears a full-length white apron instead of his overalls.
‘Take a look at this,’ he said, carefully lifting the sheet from a large cabinet whose delicately shaped doors lay unattached beside it. ‘It’s for keeping trophies in. Look at those joints, they’re called dovetails.’
I ran my finger across the interlocking wooden teeth at the corners and could feel only smooth wood.
‘I said, “look” not “touch”!’ He leaned close to check for incriminating fingerprints before he put the cover back, and tugged it left and right to make it look undisturbed.
‘Let’s go.’
‘Jesus, Swole, what’s the matter?’
‘My dad, he’d kill me if he knew I’d let you in here.’
The look on his face made me as keen to get out of there as he was.
John and I used to play with toy soldiers but Swole deploys armies. Today, John is eyeing them longingly. If he were on his own, he’d happily lead them into battle. Swole regularly rearranges the formations and we would much sooner help him to do this than look at his dick, again. Rooksy, however, is persisting.
‘Come on then Swole, let’s see if it’s got any bigger.’
I hate these moments because they can lead to Rooksy suggesting cock comparisons, which only involve establishing whose is next biggest after Swole’s. I always refuse. Although things are starting to happen for me down there, progress is depressingly slow. Rooksy and Swole have pubic hair. So do I, but unlike them, I know exactly how many I’ve got. We’ve seen Swole’s dick before because he likes showing it. He spends a lot of time in his bedroom, making do with his solitary games of soldiers, reading American comics, playing chess against himself and, we suspect, playing with himself. Rooksy says that it couldn’t have got that big without hours of attention, something that could work for us if we do the same. We’re obviously not devoting enough time to it.
Swole looks like Alfred E. Neuman, the kid on the cover of Mad Magazine; his ears don’t just stick out but are cupped towards you by invisible hands. He’s aware of his less-than-film-star looks but his dick is a consolation and, although his ears turn deep red when others refer to it in front of girls, he’s secretly pleased and fondles it gratefully in most idle moments.
Rooksy gives him a shove. ‘Give it some air Swole or it might stop growing.’
Swole grins. ‘OK, shut the door Billy.’ He unbuttons his trousers. And there it is on his open palm, like Mr Bevan our butcher showing a lamb chop to a customer. Only the greaseproof paper is missing.
‘You lucky bastard,’ says Rooksy, poking at it with a German lieutenant. ‘Can you make it bigger?’
Swole is ahead of him and everything is swelling nicely until we hear his mother coming along the hall. He grabs a comic from the shelf and throws himself face-down on the bed. Rooksy stands bolt upright. John and I whip round to study the soldiers but crash into the battlefield. The resulting earthquake sends the British and German armies bouncing into one another. Mrs Dunn flings open the door to the silence of illicit activity rapidly abandoned.
‘Four nil!’
Mrs Dunn raises an eyebrow. ‘What’s that, Billy? I hope it’s not four nil to the Germans.’
She’s a sharp one is Mrs Dunn, a skinny woman with short, violently permed hair. She purses her lips while her darting, nervous eyes probe the room.
‘Now what are you up to, Raymond?’ she asks, in the way mums do when they really mean everyone present.
‘Nothing, just playing.’ The choked squeak betrays his excitement.
‘Why don’t you go out now and get some fresh air.’
‘OK Mum.’ His voice is closer to normal.
‘Well, up you get then.’
‘In a minute, Mum, I want to finish something off.’
Rooksy snorts. Mrs Dunn’s eyes flash but she says nothing.
‘Quick about it then, Dad’s home you know … and that comic is upside down.’
Very sharp, Mrs Dunn.
Swole won’t be finishing off anything. Mention of his dad has drained the colour from his face. After his mum closes the door, he rolls on to his back, frantically doing up his fly buttons. John starts setting the soldiers in khaki back on their feet to show a British victory. Rooksy looks disappointed enough to ask for his money back.
‘Let’s go,’ says Swole.
In our house, ‘Dad’s home’ means noise and what Mum calls ‘foolery’; at Swole’s, it brings a scary hush. Even when out with us, Swole behaves as if his dad were standing behind him, and whatever he’s about to do, he takes a look around first.
Mr Dunn is a cabinetmaker. He hates running the yard and the business of buying, cutting and selling wood when all he wants to do is work with it. According to Swole, he’s happy only when he’s making his own furniture. But most of the time, he seems to be waiting to get angry and the red marks that we often see on Swole’s face show that he doesn’t wait for long. Sometimes it’s worse: a black eye that Swole swears comes from being bashed up by kids from the other side of Vauxhall Bridge Road. Even if this were true, they would never hit Mrs Dunn. So where does she get her bruises?
It’s not as if other parents don’t hit their kids; some fathers even use their belts. John and I have been spared this. While Mum used to slap out spontaneously at whatever part of us was closest, Dad has never hit us, or threatened to. His own father beat him and Mum says we’re lucky that he’s decided to be different. Not that he doesn’t make his disapproval clear: he can freeze you with a look. But it lasts only long enough to make a point before a tilt of his head and, sometimes, a smile tells us it’s over.
At the foot of the stairs, Swole’s wide-eyed warning brings us to a halt by the open door to the wood yard. On the workbench, Mr Dunn, in his white apron, has the carcass of the trophy cabinet on its back and he’s rubbing it with sandpaper wrapped around a small wooden block. His work-thickened shoulders and Popeye forearms couldn’t be moving more gently. After each pass, he runs his fingers over the smoothed surface and holds them close to his face to examine the white dust as if he’s about to taste it. He wipes it on his apron and rubs again.
He hasn’t looked at us but he knows we’re here. He stops working. We’ve interrupted him and he isn’t going to start again until he’s told us so. He closes his eyes, tilts his head forward and stretches his neck by easing it from side to side. We wait. Swole is shaking. His dad opens his small, dark eyes and his instantly accurate gaze makes me want to run away.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’ His soft, menacing voice