Clyde’s breathing was heavy, measured; Dan could hear the faint wheeze in it, the whistle from a smoker’s lungs.
‘And I’ll tell you what I don’t want, mate. I don’t want to be a father and I don’t want to be a co-parent and I don’t want any of that shit. I want to be forty-five and be able to travel and not have to think about little Bobbie’s school fees or little Jacqueline’s bloody dancing lessons. I like being a faggot, mate, I like it a lot and I think being free in our middle age is what we deserve for straights making our childhood and our teenage years so cuntish.’ He spat on the word, made fire of it.
‘And even if I wanted to be a dad I wouldn’t do it with Demet and Margarita. They’ll want to control their kid, she or he will always be their kid and they’ll resent it every time I disagree on what food the brat should eat and what school the brat should go to and who his friends are and who our friends are.’
He finished the whiskey and poured another. ‘I don’t want that life, pal, but that’s me. What is it you want?’
There was the rolling of the ocean, the breaking of the waves. Dan knew he had to answer. He had to concentrate, he had to find that space beyond the sounds and sights and motion of the world. He had to say something—The first fucking thing in your head, mate, just answer him, answer him, the first thing in your head, what the fuck is it?
What was it?
‘I want you to hold me.’
And Clyde did, Clyde held him tight.
An age passed. Clyde was still holding him, had carefully twisted his hand around and over Dan to pour himself yet another whiskey. Dan’s face was buried in his lover’s chest and as Clyde lifted his glass off the table the first two buttons of his shirt came open and Dan found his lips, his mouth were resting on that pale shaven chest, smooth as a boy’s. That skin was not Clyde’s; it reminded him of another man, of another boy. Clyde still smelled of the sea, it was the smell of a day long ago when he and Martin were by the sea in that big house and that night they’d shared a room. Dan knew that for all of Clyde’s insistent urging that he wanted to know Dan’s thoughts and to hear Dan’s words, there were things about Dan that he would not be able to hear, that he couldn’t have stood knowing. So he whispered into that chest, he made the decision. He would fasten his future to this man. He would make Clyde his future because there were no other futures left.
‘I want to be with you.’
Clyde pulled away from him. Words, Dan was right not to trust in words.
But Clyde wasn’t angry. He was grave and cautious but not angry. ‘I want to be in Scotland this European summer, Dan. When we get back to Melbourne, I’m going to book my ticket.’ He was gently stroking Dan’s back. ‘I want to see Mum and Dad, see my family. I miss them. God help me, I never thought I’d say this but I want to see Glasga again, I want to see home. I want to see rainy streets and people getting sodden drunk in pubs and I want to hear people laughing, really laughing, because they know it is all fucked up and they’ll tell you that, but they are also happy, they are not asking for the world. I want to be somewhere where people aren’t perpetually banging on about mortgage rates and refugees and blackfellas and how fucking great this country is, how lucky I am to be here in the luckiest country on earth. I don’t want to be told how lucky I am, I want to feel lucky. I just want to be home.’
Clyde’s hold was so tight that it was starting to be painful, but Dan let it hurt. He didn’t want to say anything that would make Clyde move away.
‘But I promise you, man, I give you my word: if you really want to be with me I will come back. Will you trust me?’
‘Yes. I trust you.’
Relief flooded through him, and with it a shudder, a small tremor that came from the realisation that a future was being made.
The only future he had.
Clyde fell asleep, snoring loudly on the sofa. Dan woke him, lifted him gently to his feet, and guided the drunk man to their bed. But he lay next to Clyde, unable to sleep. Dreams wouldn’t come. Dan quietly got out of bed and returned to the living room. There was a small shelf next to the stereo, filled with maps of Otway walks, books about the Great Ocean Road. But there were also books left behind by guests, spy stories and romances, crime fiction and kids’ books. Dan found a dog-eared copy of Dickens’ David Copperfield and sat down to read.
Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. It was a book he had read before, but he found that his mind kept returning to that opening sentence, that the words always struck him with a visceral force. He turned the pages, making sense of the sentences and paragraphs and chapters but at a distance, as if his reading were like the disconnected passive act of watching the television screen: words flowed past, sense briefly attached to them, but they disappeared from memory as soon as they’d been read. The only sustenance came from that opening sentence. He read to the point of exhaustion, and with the arrival of the soft light of dawn he was still deliberating on the challenge the question posed for him. He couldn’t think how anyone but himself could be the hero of his own life, but he knew that he wasn’t a hero.
The following weekend, Dan went to his parents’ place to pick up Dennis. His cousin had been staying there, in Regan’s old room, since he’d moved to Melbourne in the summer. Dennis was working with Dan’s father. Neal Kelly had kept his promise to his wife and given up long-haul driving when Theo had left school, starting a small business as a removalist.
Dan knew that his father respected Dennis, respected his strength and determination. He admired that the man knew work. Watching his cousin getting ready to go out, the bulge of his muscles but also the slight limp that would only worsen with years of heavy lifting, Dan understood why he had not been able to express himself in words at that disastrous Australia Day dinner. Being working class wasn’t about words, it could only be expressed through the body.
They had lunch at a pub on Sydney Road and then, wobbly from three pots of beer, they strolled into Brunswick. Dan popped into a bookshop, Dennis following him.
‘I won’t be a moment, mate,’ Dan said, searching the shelves for that book, that title that would excite his curiosity and draw him in. Dennis just stood there as the customers walked carefully around him; as always he was looking up to that canvas that only he could see painted across the sky. Dan stopped in front of the travel section, a part of the bookshop he’d never been interested in before. A young woman wearing a loose black singlet and a red embroidered bra was apologising for bumping into Dennis. He responded, ‘It’s OK. It’s my fault, I’m too big,’ and the way he spoke didn’t intimidate her—she asked him to repeat his words, and listened and understood. Her back was facing Dan; he looked straight down the aisle to Dennis and raised his thumb in encouragement before going back to the books.
His finger traced the spines, and landed on the word Scotland. He opened the book. The photographs showed water everywhere: islands and rivers and lakes. He searched for the section on Glasgow and began to read: Over the last thirty years Glasgow has enjoyed a remarkable renaissance, thanks to some serious investment in cultural venues and blue ribbon events. Dan couldn’t help chuckling. How Clyde would hate that.
‘What are you reading?’
‘A book about Scotland.’
Dennis was looking over Dan’s shoulder, examining photos of bird’s-eye views of a city: red-brick terraces, the smoky grey spires and domes of cathedrals, a few lean lonely office towers in the distance, dwarfed by masses of white and violet clouds.
‘It looks a lot like Melbourne.’
‘It does, doesn’t it? But it’s not Melbourne, it’s Glasgow and I’m going there.’
The flat planes of Dennis’s broad dark face creased in suspicion, and his brow furrowed. ‘When are you going?’
‘Not now. One day, I’ll be there one day.’
‘That’s alright.’ Dennis’s features relaxed. He let out a loud contented burp.
/> ‘Charming.’
My cousin is a lot like me, thought Dan. Not now is enough, not now is all he needs. One day at a time.
He snapped the book shut. ‘Come on,’ he said, playfully shoving Dennis down the aisle. ‘It’s time to go home.’
MUM IS NATTERING AWAY AS WE cross the bridge over the river. She’s pointing out the Skipping Girl, the neon outline of the young girl with the skipping rope, and she’s reminiscing about how when she first moved to Melbourne, when she first got with Dad, he would take her down to the Yarra, past the Skipping Girl, past the firefighters’ training centre, and they’d walk hand in hand over the suspension bridge and into the woodlands and she thought it was the most romantic place she had ever seen.
‘All that parkland in the middle of the city,’ she’s saying. ‘Adelaide has parkland, but it isn’t such a gorgeous green. And back there!’
She turns to point behind us, and I panic, reach for the dashboard, yell, ‘Mum, watch where you’re going!’ but she is still blathering on about a little pub, back there, behind the factories in Burnley Street, where they would go dancing every Thursday night.
‘They played the best soul music, Danny, old rock and roll and rhythm and blues—I thought it was so wonderful. We’d get there on the dot of eight and we’d still be dancing when the lights were turned on at one a.m. Oh,’ she shivers, grabbing my knee, squeezing it tight, ‘I just danced and danced, and Adelaide and the Jehovahs and all that, I just imagined I was dancing away from it all. And I was!’
‘Uh-huh,’ I sigh. She’s told me this story so many times. About falling in love, with Dad, with Melbourne, with old R&B and soul. I look out the window, grab my sports bag. It’s got all my swimming gear in there and my toiletries and three changes of jocks and socks.
A few hundred metres past the bridge, we turn right and now the streets are wider and lined with huge trees. Their branches stretch out over the road, as though the branches are fingers reaching out to touch each other. The grey and the concrete and the towers of the city have disappeared, and as Mum negotiates a bend I can see the muddy river; beyond that, the office buildings and the skyscrapers look like toy models from here.
‘This is a pretty part of town,’ Mum says. She slows the car down, peering at the house numbers until she says, ‘That must be Mr Torma’s place.’
It seems weird to think of Coach having a life outside school, outside of us, the squad and our training. Until now I haven’t really considered that he would need a place to sleep, somewhere to live. I haven’t thought about him having a family or friends. I don’t reckon any of us have given a thought to him having a life outside the school, the pool, outside us.
It is a single-fronted red-brick terrace house, with green gables, a white picket gate with peeling paint and one missing slat. Concrete steps lead up to a solid door painted a metallic blue, and the paint there has also weathered; streaks of undercoat show through. There are a couple of rose bushes along the fence, wilted and untended, and a large crack that zigzags down the front of the house to the top of a large bay window. It’s not a grand house, but I like it immediately—it’s got old-fashioned elegance, and looks solid and permanent.
I go to kiss Mum quickly on the cheek.
‘Do you want me to come in, Danny?’ she asks.
I don’t want her to come in. I want to get into the house, to be with Coach and the boys, to focus on the competition in two days’ time. ‘Nah, Mum, I’ll be fine.’ I have one foot on the footpath, the other is still in the car. I am eager to get going.
But she’s clutching my hand. ‘Mate, I should be taking you to Adelaide, but you know it’s hard for me to go there?’
She holds my chin in her other hand, forcing me to look at her. I’m so impatient that I could just jerk my hand away from hers and wrench my head aside, but her eyes are so sad that I have to make myself not look away. I bring my foot back into the car and close my door.
‘By rights, you should be staying with your grandmother or my sister or my brothers, but it just isn’t meant to be, kid—I hope one day you’ll understand. I’m so sorry you don’t know your giagia, Danny, I’m so sorry about that.’
Is this what is making her so sad? I don’t mean to, but I have a big grin on my face. ‘I don’t mind, Mum. It’s OK.’
And it is OK. I don’t want to think about her family, that mad old bastard screaming in Greek at Mum, that scared old woman who wouldn’t let herself touch me. They aren’t family—they’re strangers I never want to see again.
But nothing I can say will take her sadness away. I just want to get out of the car. I want to be in the house, with Coach and my squad. ‘Can I go?’
‘Of course, Danny.’ She wraps me in one of those enormous hugs, where all I can do is let my body go floppy, just give in to it. I wait, and eventually she lets me go.
I wave goodbye to her, standing on the path. It is a relief when the car turns the corner and she is gone.
The ringer for the doorbell is a small white cube, and it hangs a little askew from the wiring. I press it. There is no sound so I press it again, and then I knock. There are lumbering sounds and then the door opens, and there is Coach. I have to take a step back. He is smiling, and just for an instant, a wrinkle in time, I don’t recognise him. It is the same heavy body, the same Bonds shirt and baggy shorts, but the smile has changed his face. I forget to say hello. But it doesn’t matter. He says, ‘Good to see you, Danny, come in, boy,’ and ushers me inside.
I am in Coach’s house.
I never notice houses, I realise now that I’ve never paid much attention to them. I know that our house is cramped and funny-looking, the sleep-out that Dad added when Theo was born is just tacked on to the laundry, and every room in our house is dark because all the windows are too small. Of course I’ve noticed the houses of my friends from school—their places are ginormous. I know that Luke’s house is modern, that his architect uncle designed it; I know that the Taylors’ house is a mansion and that Wilco’s is nearly a hundred years old. I know every part of Demet’s house; it has the same ill-begotten shape as ours. But wandering through Coach’s house, I have a dumb and childish thought and I stifle a giggle. It reminds me of Goldilocks: not too big, not too small—just right. I feel right in it. I feel at home.
The first thing I notice inside is the beauty of the ceilings. The Taylors’ houses have ceilings higher than this house, but they aren’t beautiful, I can’t remember anything about the ceilings of Martin’s houses at all, apart from their height. But the ceilings in Coach’s are sheets of rectangular reliefs, a sea of stuccoed ingots.
The front room, with the large window that looks out over the street, that window has a sill as deep as a seat, you could sit on it and watch the world go by. I can tell immediately that the front room is Coach’s bedroom. There is hardly anything in it, it’s really neat. There is a high bed with a double mattress, with shoes and slippers on the floor underneath it. There is a wardrobe with double doors; on one of them is a full-length mirror. There is a white chest of drawers next to the bed, and on it sits a digital clock and a photograph. It is of an old man and woman, their faces stern as they stare straight into the camera. The photograph is black and white but there is a faint copper wash through it. The woman is wearing a black scarf around her hair and the man wears a peculiar hat, like a cap without a visor. It is an olden–time photograph, the oldest photograph I have ever seen.
Coach sees me examining the photograph and clears his throat. ‘They are my parents,’ he announces. ‘That is my father and mother.’
I can’t help it, I say, ‘But it looks really really old.’
And he surprises me again, he tilts back his head and roars. A real laugh, a genuine and generous laugh. ‘Back then in Hungary, boy, everything looked really really old.’ He takes my bag from me and points to the bed. ‘You will sleep here.’
It is both statement and question, and I just nod my head; I can’t stop nodding.
Abo
ve the bed there is a painting, of a courtyard high on a mountain, there is a pond and fountain and below stretches a calm and tranquil sea. It looks like a fantasy, like the mansion you’d imagine if a genie were to appear and grant you three wishes. I can’t wait for morning, I’m already thinking of waking and having breakfast sitting on that wide sill, looking at the street and beyond it to the world; then turning around and gazing at the painting, imagining that Coach’s house will be my house when I am famous and rich enough to live anywhere I want to in the world. I would never feel cramped in this house, I would never feel lost.
I put my bag on the bed and Coach takes me through the rest of the house. There is a second bedroom, with a single bed in it, one small, lopsided bureau and a bank of gym equipment piled up against one wall: a treadmill, a rowing machine, barbells and a bench. A fold-out has been put next to the equipment, like a bed in the army or a camping bed. It is made up with clean sheets and a duvet. I feel pleased with myself as I look at it—it won’t be me camping out tonight.
In the shadow by the door, I suddenly spy a cluster of photographs on the wall. They are all of swimmers. Two of the photographs are ancient, in black and white, and the bathers on the guys look more like underpants. Then there are three other photos, more recent, in colour. I don’t take in the other boys: in the centre is a photo of myself, grinning like a dickhead, but proudly, clutching my shivering body at the edge of the pool.
‘That was when I won the Interschool Championships last year, isn’t it?’ I say excitedly to the Coach.
‘Yes,’ nods Coach. ‘That’s you, Danny.’ He is pointing out the other swimmers but I’m not really listening to him. He’s got me on his wall, I am smack bang in the centre. I must be the one he considers the strongest, the fastest, the best.
There is wallpaper in the hallway and a dank smell. But I ignore it as Coach rushes me through the lounge room, into the small kitchen and out into the backyard; not really a yard, not like home with all the grass and flowers and vegie garden, more like a courtyard with a set of weatherworn garden chairs. There are no flowers, no vegetables, there is only a yellow patch of grass and a path made of concrete. But it doesn’t matter, because when I look down from the slope of the courtyard I can see the lights flickering in the city below.