Lad turned into a Fish in the intermediate years of high school, while no one was watching. Thin, negligible boy, turned king of the pool suddenly. Like the tennis court, the swimming-pool was an unknown early years. There was in fact a tennis court partly visible behind a high screened fence at the corner Anglican Church down from the primary school. A pool though was unimaginable. (Big Kum Miso later declared he would build a swimming-pool at the new place he was raising out in Kingsbury. An unlikely claim among our group, unsurprisingly never fulfilled.)
Had there been a single excursion to a swimming pool during primary? In high school swimming outings began toward the end of first form and set off a hysterical reaction at home.
Notes to the Sports teacher, written by the young bank-teller who lived in the back bungalow with her newly-wed husband.
— Oh Vera! My dear Vera!...
The young new wife respectfully obliged her landlady.
Dear Sir, Could you please excuse.... Sign here, Auntie.
A year or two prior in the old country, mother's father had thrown himself in his winter great-coat off a pier in front of the second eldest's house on the water's edge. (Properly detailed forty years later.)
Howling when the red-blue fringed PAR AVION landed in the post-box. It brought back other, earlier howling.
This had to stop. No more!
— Stop! Now! Sada! Odma! (Mimicking her own fierce insistence at whimpering.)
Wayne had a State ranking in breast-stroke. Of all things; and no joke.
Remarkable luck for an average, fringe boy. Completely unchallengeable.
In primary school, Wayne had stood somewhere in the third or fourth rung of harmless, inconsequential boys. No football prowess, nor even cricket. Athletics zero. (Later in high school Wayne began to develop some accomplishment even in the latter. Was it hop-step-and-jump? Threatening the Junior and Intermediate Boy Champion. Basketball became a forte too—Centre dribbler.)
Kind of fish-watery eyes even in junior school. In order to overcome some childhood malady, swimming might have been suggested by the doctor. Young Wayne was much in need. Wayne Finlayson. Fish, inevitably.
Twelve years of joint schooling; the first definite appearance in his own right at some indeterminate point in the second, higher level. Early days the name itself presented a problem.
“Way” was in order. But Nnn?... (Spelling the new language presented serious problems.)
Another irregular moniker. Wayne was the only one bearing that name in junior years.
A father with a car was exceptional, when early on most of the dads rode bicycles. Older father and mother. When the revelation, the delicate secret emerged, that one of the other boys, Bill Gledhill, was adopted—his parents not his real parents at all—a certain private suspicion fell on Wayne.
Mother was a dreadful liability in her widow's weeds, scarf and mangled English; there was however no doubt about her authenticity.
With the window of the car down Wayne's father’s avuncular smile beamed unparent-like soft indulgence. None of the kids’ parents smiled like that.
Years later again, when it emerged that Wayne lived in the same street as Viddy, directly opposite Vid's house, the news seemed incredible. There was absolutely no truck of any kind between the pair—as there could not have been between the outstanding school cricket star—accomplished footballer to boot—and such a one as Wayne. (A sook and unpopular, among both teachers and classmates, Viddy was in a class of his own.)
Later again—there were numerous stages and developments—the last years of high school brought a mysterious attraction centred on Wayne, by one of the teachers. A male intermediate Science teacher became perfectly frank in his admiration.
What was that all about, Wayne? A boy groomed right under the noses of his unsuspecting parents, the school administrators & councillors?
Even in the last year of high school, the idea of poofters seemed highly doubtful to a jock. Couldn’t be for real? The flower-power hippies were beginning to upturn all the settled categories. A couple of years higher up in school, Paul Perov was alarming his Russian émigré parents, getting around dressed as a girl.
NB. News from Morrie this morning of Wayne’s passing overnight
Sept 28 2023
