Theo Mallier: Growing Pains

1982

   In 1982, Mark Thatcher got lost in the desert, unemployment visited three million people, the Falklands War started and ended, inflicting on Simon Weston a life-changing experience, and Kielder Water was opened. Michael Fagan visited the Queen in her bedroom, Channel 4 was launched, and Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ made its contribution towards his world domination.

   Prince William was born in this year, and those that died included Philip K Dick, Arthur Lowe, Terry Higgins, Douglas Bader, and Grace Kelly.

   School summer holidays were something of a chore for those that came from the Meadowell Estate. There wasn’t enough money to do all the things that others did: holidays abroad, car trips, days out to see what the country could offer to bored young children. A closed school meant no teachers to baby-sit the offspring for six hours a day and created the worrying necessity of having to find money to provide meals normally paid for by the state.

   Long lazy days and summer nights were an attraction for those that looked forward to the holidays, but now those people had to interrupt their sedentary lives to put up with entertaining their children for six weeks as well.

   George Mallier was no such entertainer. His six children had to amuse themselves, and the cheaper, or freer, the better. The freest was Tynemouth beach, and Theo’s brothers and sisters would walk there and back most days, spending the whole day playing beach football with a taped-up tennis ball, collecting winkles to eat later from salt-boiled water, and using the North Sea as a toilet.

   On this grey summer day, the Malliers were in one corner of the open-air pool, using dried shells as counters in a game of Ludo they had brought with them, and occasionally flirting and arguing with those that came near them, when Theo wandered off to the other corner, away from them.

   As he stood at the corner of the pool, just hearing the faint sound of The Jam’s ‘Town Called Malice’ spitting its anger at careless listeners, he looked at the softly-whispering waves from people already in the water, then felt two sets of hands grab each of his arms and swing him backwards.

   As a three-year-old, he was used to being swung in the air; a person either side of him would take his arms and swing him, all the while singing ‘whhheeeee!’. He smiled in anticipation of what was about to happen, but the expected event was not about to happen. Instead, mid-whhheeeee, the hands let him go, and the last noise Theo heard before he hit the water was two teenage voices shouting ‘sink or swim!’

   Marc, Theo’s eldest brother, heard Theo’s child-scream before he plunged below the surface. He stood for a second, transfixed as the slow-motion action took place in the other corner of the pool, then started to run.

   Theo splashed in the water, trying to stay afloat, trying to stop his head from going under, but after a few seconds, the shout of ‘sink or swim’ was being answered.

   He started to sink.

   In those few seconds, as Theo’s lungs began to fill, and as Marc raced towards him, the two teenage boys who’d thrown him in stopped laughing, as it dawned on them that they may have just killed a three-year-old boy

   They were motionless, agape, as Marc dived into the water after his brother. The pool was ten feet deep, and Theo had almost touched the bottom, when Marc reached him, grabbed him round the waist, and headed for the surface.

   As the rest of the people around the pool started to notice what had happened, they formed a watching crowd as Marc reached the surface with Theo, and two men pulled them out and placed both of them at the side of the pool.

   The greatest stroke of luck Theo had that day was that one of the men worked as an ambulance man, and immediately started gently to pump Theo’s small chest with one hand, stopping now and then to try and breathe some life into Theo’s small, lip-cracked mouth.

   Marc watched helplessly as the man worked on Theo’s pale body. He looked at the man as he worked, noticing the lamb-chop sideburns and anchor tattoo on his shoulder which simply said ‘Warwick’, and stared at Theo’s face. It was lifeless, eyes closed, mouth open, and his body lay limp and unresponsive to the man’s efforts.

   The crowd grew, all staring at Theo, willing him to come back to this world. They were at the same time shocked, still, awe-struck; tears starting to well in those that had hearts.

   Then it came.

   A cough from the ground, followed by a long stream of dirty, grey water that spread across the poolside floor, tracing the gaps in the mud-stained tiles, and mixing with the discarded sweet wrappers and half-chewed, used ice-lolly sticks, the jokes on them long gone.

   Theo was alive again, and the crowd breathed again with him, experiencing a collective sigh of relief as they heard more coughing and spluttering. Theo was ridding his body of the deadly, clear poison, which brought tears as it flowed from his mouth and, particularly, his nose, introducing a smell that he would always recognise. 

   When the man thought most of the water was gone and the boy was breathing normally again, he turned Theo onto his side, making sure his head was almost facing the ground in case any of the water still had to leave him. He then turned to the crowd around him and said, ‘Somebody call an ambulance’ to nobody in particular.

   As two girls made off and ran to the nearest telephone box, the relief was not more evident in anybody than in Marc, though that relief quickly turned to anger.

   The two teenage boys that had thrown Theo into the water were still there, hiding as much as they could behind the crowd, but when the crowd started to dissipate, they were exposed again. Marc stood up and looked at them, and as he did, he was joined by four other boys from his school year. The five stared at the two teenage boys, whose faces showed their fear as they realised what was about to happen to them.

   Theo did not know then, or at any other time during his upbringing and early adult life, that from that moment he would always struggle to cope with water. If he’d had any idea how it would return to haunt him thirty years later, his new toddler tears would have filled the pool over again.