‘Hey Francis Drake! Hey, Francisco Miranda! Let’s go swimming!’
‘Hullo,Edi–. Hi,Eddie,’ replied Francis, correcting himself, aware of Friedrich’s proximity.
‘Hey, Eddie! I like it. Fast Eddie Aikau, that’s me!’
‘Whoever he is, but if you like the name, it’s yours,’ said Francis, with self-conscious bravado.
‘Better than Edsel, anyway,’ grunted Friedrich. ‘Go have fun, boys.’
‘Who’s this Eddie, then?’ Francis asked as he changed for the pool.
‘You don’t know, man? Why, holy San Francisco, he’s everywhere. Even in books. Famous Hawaiian surfing dude! Hang ten! Catch a wave! Have a rave! Get a shave! Ya gotta know these things, Sir Francis!’
The vast pool, more like a small lake in expanse, embraced a concrete diving tower and a number of lower boards, and an island equipped with an assortment of sun loungers which was accessible by inflatable dinghy to those reluctant to get wet. Beyond the tennis court at the other end glistened yet another pool, rectangular and Olympic-sized, but this one, said Edison, was off-limits.
‘Papa says only adults can use it. He holds parties there. People get drunk and naked ladies jump into it at night.’
‘Really?’
‘Yup. For real. They make so much noise I can’t sleep. And a champeen surfer dude need his sleep. Pow-pow!’
‘Does your mother mind?’
‘Mother? I don’t got no mother. Hey, get set to get wet!’
After his initial discomfiture, Francis threw himself into the water. Whooping and splashing, the boys dive-bombed and raced one another. Francis was amazed to see how much faster a swimmer he was than the ‘champion surfer dude’. He had never before felt such a release from restraint and inhibition that he even, briefly and heretically, thought of swimming nude himself.
‘Watch me dive!’ Francis called from the lower diving board. It was, he knew, a creditable jack-knife, but Edison’s interest was flagging. He lay on the deck on his back in the sun. Francis, loath though he was to get out of the water, lay down on the concrete to be companionable. The grounds slumbered in the mid-morning heat. Even the flamingos, whose wings were clipped, Edison said absently, drowsed on one leg in their pond. From the patio nearby came a petulant shriek, and a child’s voice in Spanish shattered the silence.
‘Consuelo! Bring me my dancing shoes. Not these ones. The dancing shoes! I told you!’
Edison sighed, rolled on his side, and shouted back:
‘Callete, Sonia! Cierra la boca!’
A young girl in make-up and ballerina costume stood up on the patio, arms akimbo, a spectacle of Lilliputian fury, and replied with a stream of abuse, to which Edison laughed.
‘She says we are gay, because we’re friends.’
Francis was puzzled. What was wrong with being happy and carefree? Was she jealous because she had no friends herself? With a mouth like that, it was no wonder. Just then, a pretty mestizo maid with a full figure emerged from the house with a pair of slippers, placed them before the girl, smiled shyly at the boys, and disappeared back into the house.
