and felt the shock of the cold water just below the thin warmth of the surface. He hung there, kicking back and nodding at Wani, who stood stooped like a skier, but with one hand pinching his nose; and then flung himself into the pond. When he came up he was gasping and sploshing about and for a second he had a look of undisguised fear. His black curls were half unwound by the water, and hung over his eyes and ears. Nick bobbed beside him and felt his grip on his upper arm; he let his legs wander and slide consolingly between Wani's, and with his free hand he swept his hair back, and that seemed to steady Wani, who swam off in a hasty, upright breaststroke, as if nothing had happened.
For a few minutes they pushed along in a rough circle, following the white cords strung between floating rings which marked the boundary of the swimming area. Beyond it, Nick supposed, the water must lie too shallowly over the deep soft mud. Wani swam well enough, in fact, with head up and the facetious expression of someone forced to be a good sport; he stopped at one of the rings and clung to it for a rest, with a heavy-breathing grin, and a shake of the head that seemed to say 'I can do this' as well as 'I'll get you back for it.' Nick pulled up the goggles that were bobbing loosely round his throat, and duck-dived. Under the yellowish sparkle of the surface the water was muddy green, deepening into murky brown, a world of bottle-glass colours. He twisted round, deciding what trick to play on Wani. Bubbles, dazzles from the rippling surface, stirred-up specks of black leaves swung and fled around Wani's legs, which hung there, lazily chasseing, in a princely pretence that no underwater attack was expected. And perhaps it was too childish, with Wani all at his mercy-instead of a grab or a tickle he shot up bursting for breath and laughing in his face. He would have kissed him if a watchful old gent hadn't been cruising so very close by them.
When they set off again, Nick raced ahead and came back, triumphing over Wani, decorating his steady course with curlicues, and all the while looking out for who else was there. It was hard to tell from their sleeked heads in the water; but through the smear of the goggles each figure waiting on the jetty or clambering onto the raft had the gleam of a new possibility. Nick swam close to the raft once, and kicked round it on his back, while he and a couple who were standing on it wondered if they knew each other.
After an almost complete turn of the pond Wani had done enough, and they trod water for a minute and talked while Nick glanced to left and right with his naked eyes. He loved it here but he was disappointed, it was too early in the season perhaps, he matched the calm of today and the chill of the water against the swarming heat wave Sundays of last year, the raft mad with clutching and jumping, the toilets crowded and intent, the queens on the grass outside packed like a city in a dozen rivalrous districts.
There were shouts and splashes from the raft, where a new group had converged. Nick felt the tug of curiosity and saw the chance to show Wani off and to show off to him, which was a lovely double vanity. Wani shivered and Nick said, 'You need to keep moving,' and kicked away towards the middle of the pond. A couple of dark men in black trunks were standing up, clumsily repelling a big blond muscle-queen who was trying to climb onto the stiffly lurching deck. Two other men who were crouching on the edge fell in, they half threw themselves in, like kids, and then scrambled back to join the assault. Thirty seconds of struggle followed, which some took more seriously than others, or with more thought for how they looked. Nick followed it all with smiling intensity, looking for his place in it.
Now there was a kind of truce, and everyone got back on board, so that when Nick cruised past he had a view of dangling legs, pinched dicks at funny angles, streaked hair and glistening skin, a floating tableau of men against the sky. Sex made them half conscious, half forgetful of the picture they made; they were sportsmen resting in stunned camaraderie, but some of them wriggled and held hands and breathed lustfully in each other's faces. They kicked their feet in the water, indolent but purposeful. One of them who was standing behind leant forward, out of the sky and the trees, and Nick reached him a hand and shot up and hopped out streaming as two queens plumped apart to make room for him. He stood breathing and grinning in a loose but curious embrace with the men in the middle. He had a sense of something fleeting and harmonic, longed for and repeated-it was the circling trees, perhaps, and the silver water, the embrace of a solitary childhood, and the need to be pulled up into a waiting circle of men.
'Don't I see you at Bang last week?' the man beside him said, who had put a steadying hand on Nick's shoulder and left it there.
'I think not,' said Nick, who in fact had never been there. But he carried some memory-print of this man, some unplaced excitement. It took him a moment to realize that he used to see him at the Y, last year perhaps, in the showers there; and a moment more to confirm that as Nick had grown slowly and unseriously heavier, the Spaniard, if that's what he was, black-haired and lean, with large rosy nipples, had grown perceptibly thinner, into an eerily beautiful, etched-out version of himself. He leant lighdy on Nick now, and seemed almost to shrug off this undeniable fact, or perhaps to challenge him to see it, but not himself to allude to it in any way, unless by a lingering, fearful glance. Nick twisted casually away from him, and what came back gleaming out of the blur of memory was his round bottom and the tiny black curls just showing when he bent over: an image which also reminded him of Wani. He scanned the water blandly, and thought that perhaps he had gone in-just then the fun began again, the Spaniard abruptly dive-bombed, everyone shouted, and the raft itself groaned and creaked. Nick hopped around, laughing and shouting something himself into the unavoidable drench after drench as people jumped in. And there, in the wallow, was Wani's face, almost tearful with concentration as he tried to avoid the reckless arms and legs of the other men and find a moment to clamber out.
'Hello, darling!' said Nick, and went down on one knee to help him heave himself up. Wani didn't answer and didn't smile.
A few minutes later it was almost calm again. They were sitting there beside a man of fifty with thick grey chest hair and a restlessly sociable manner. His much younger friend, a Malaysian perhaps, was swimming some way from the raft, cruising other men outrageously, and doing clever duck-dives which made his trunks come off. 'Oh, he gives me some trouble, that one,' the man said. 'Look at him.' Wani smiled politely and turned to Nick; he wasn't used to meeting people like this, in the near-naked free-for-all of a public place. 'Don't get me wrong, though-it's all good fun.' The man waved cheerfully as if the boy was paying him even the faintest attention, and said, 'He's devoted to me, you know. I don't know why, but he is.'
'What's his name, then?' said a rough-voiced man, who was squatting behind them.
'He's called Andy.'
'Andy, yeah?' said the man. 'Here, Andy,' he shouted, getting to his feet, 'show us your arse!'
'He will!' said his old protector. 'He will!'
The raft shook and on the other side of them a sleekly muscly man twisted up out of the water and landed with a promising thump on the boards. Nick saw Wani glance across at him from under his long lashes, as if assessing a new kind of problem or possibility; Nick himself had seen him here last year. He was balding and dark eyed, round faced, with a nice long nose and the lazy but focused expression of a man who thinks of nothing but sex. Nick remembered his idling gaze, the huge dark pupils that seemed to fill his eyes, and the curving weight of him in his black trunks. His stomach was a smooth curve outwards as he sat, and it seemed his destiny to be fat, but for now the fat was held in easy balance with the muscle.
Wani was sitting with his knees drawn up, his hair swept back in shiny waves but bunching and tightening again as it dried. He had got back some of his social poise, and with it an oblique deprecating manner, as though afraid he might be recognized or fancied. The older man talked across him to Nick. 'He's getting so particular,' he said.
'Aha…' said Nick.
'KY not good enough any more, apparently. We have to have some other substance called Melisma. Then Melisma's not good enough, apparently, either. We're moving on to Crest. But you have to be careful, don't you, with these awful rubber johnnies. I never thought the day would come… What do you use?'
'Should keep him nice and clean, anyway,' said the rough-voiced man, who was clearly taking quite an interest in Andy. 'Crest's a kind of toothpaste, mate,' and shortly afterwards he dived in and swam powerfully in his direction.
'I'm Leslie, by the way,' said the older man.
Wani turned his head and nodded. 'Hi. Antoine.'
'Now where would you be from, I wonder?'
'I'm Lebanese,' said Wani, with a quick dry smile, in his driest English accent. Nick watched his aquiline profile and smiled mischievously. He liked to see another man acknowledge Wani's glamour, it gave him a quick jealous shot of the passion he had felt for him since Oxford, which was lust enlarged and diffused by mystery. Now he was
