worms

Congleton in July means one thing more than anything else for small children. The paddling pool. A blue-painted shallow circle of concrete. Every summer since she could remember, Sarah had taken the girls there. The first couple of times just taking Simone, then struggling with Theresa as a baby while the older girl balanced precariously on the metal hub at the centre of the pool.
Something that she’d always done alone anyway. That was how parenting was. Some stuff seems to belong to one parent. The children pick up on the different styles. How you’ll order a day, the way you’ll play. Geoff used to bundle a child up in his arms and roll her over and over, suspended in mid air. It looked precarious, as if the daughter would slip from his hands. He was never holding on with both hands, one arm supported the child while the other worked the rotation. Squeals of delight; “he rolls her like a poly,” he’d say. All of Geoff’s play seemed to go together with a strange and private naming. Another game: Geoff, ridiculous, crawling up and down the living room making a big cavity under his torso. Simone would crawl under him as he named this game “tummy tunnel, tummy tunnel”. When Simone was too big for this, Theresa took over the game. Something else he used to say “must press on” – a quote from some old film or something. Code for – let’s stop phaffing about and get on with it.
She packed the bag with towels, dry clothes, food, juice, everything she might need. The girls were in the back yard, already in the sand-pit; it was a scorchingly hot day. They’d need more sunblock soon.
Simone and Theresa trotted along to the pool. It was already busy. Many small children. Some with parents guiding them through their first encounter with the rather chilly pleasure of the pool’s water, the jets that arced in from a pipe running round the perimeter. The places where a break in the pipe meant you could wade in without being sprayed. Others were dashing around madly, their parents sunbathing oblivious on the grass banks, or (more likely) not even here. Some sibling “in charge” but actually not really doing much.
A teenager rides into the park on a bike, leaning over crazily to open the gate’s bolt, but (of course) not able to close it behind him. He cycles down the slope and bumps into the water. The wheels skid on the bottom of the pool. Wet, slippery with sun-block that dripped off those small bodies vulnerable to light as well as irresponsible cyclists. She sees herself moving from the bench. A child, much younger than her own reaching for a ball, oblivious to the cyclist wobbling, trying to right himself. Who else is looking after this toddler? She scoops the child up, he’s wearing blue trunks and has beautiful red hair. He’s starting to look quite red – his fair complexion catching the sun too quickly. Sarah’s holding him as the cyclist crashes down at her feet, his stunt misfired. She says nothing. A bothered-looking teenaged girl rushes up,
“Thanks ... er, I was just in the loo. Is he okay? George? I’ve told you to look out for the big boys. Thanks, lady.”
Sarah looks up to the portaloos, as if seeking to verify the girl’s excuse.
“That’s okay. I hope I didn’t scare him. George, is it? Lovely name. I just thought that youth was going to knock him over.”
“Thanks.”
Sarah paused. The water was cool around her toes. She checked for her girls. They were engrossed in some bizarre version of tennis that seemed to involve keeping a ball out of the water, but of course each time it was wetted, the next hit sent spiralling tails of water everywhere. Much excitement and screeching.
Sarah looked down into the water. There, she saw some pale shapes. Impossible to identify, they looked like some kind of noodle. She bent down to investigate. The thing she picked up was a worm. Dead. The colour and life leached out of it. Sarah dropped it quickly. She did not cry out. No reason to scare the children. But as she walked out from the place where she rescued George she could not help noticing the tens of worms that lay, dead and washed out, at every conceivable distance from the pool’s circumference. Try not to give the worms too much credit for feeling. They are simple organisms, not blessed with much ability to plan, hope, persevere in adversity. It was just stupidity that lead them to keep moving forwards, once they had found themselves in this lightly chlorinated water, where there was nothing to eat. But she couldn’t help thinking of this as a nightly ritual. The lost worms finding themselves in the pool, incapable of imagining that this was not just another rain puddle they could crawl through. This wetness would not dry up soon, nor would it yield to dry ground, welcoming soil. Instead they were in a featureless, blue-painted, limitless space. And how ever far the worm managed to crawl, none would find a way out. All would die.
Sarah wept on her bench, fairly unobtrusively. After a certain amount of time she got out some snacks. By some radar which hadn’t picked up her distress, but which was infallible in the case of food, Simone and Theresa came running with that high-stepping action one adopts when aiming for speed through water. Not long after they went home.