Dan picked up the paper, glancing at the front page, something about the mining industry, something about tax. His father had settled the pot on the flame and sat down opposite Dan, pointing to the paper. ‘Can you believe it? Do you know what’s happening?’
Dan shook his head.
‘Guess what happens here isn’t really of much interest to the folk back in Scotland, is it?’
And there wouldn’t be anything about Scotland in the papers here, thought Dan, that was the way of the world. Behind his father he could see leaflets and photographs curling under fridge magnets: a rainbow-coloured stencil of Barack Obama, the green triangular masthead of the Greens, the photographs of himself, of Theo, of Regan, of Layla, the new baby, a sticker from the TWU that read, Carrying Australia, a black and white postcard of a young Keith Richards collapsed on a chair, his eyes shut, a cigarette between his lips. There was the Aboriginal flag, the beginnings of a shopping list, and a card he’d sent from Scotland, the brilliant, still stretch of the Great Glen.
His father was still ranting, about how the resources of the country belonged to everyone, how the mega-rich mining companies had been flooding the media with their propaganda and fear, how the country was selling all its ore and minerals and wealth to the Chinese and how there would be nothing left for his grandchild.
Dan watched the espresso maker start to tremble, steam spurting from its spout; it began to whistle but his father was still heatedly outlining the country’s ills, so Dan got up and turned off the flame. He poured a coffee for his father and one for himself.
‘And the worst thing, mate, the worst thing is that Australians just sit and take it, we just let the mining companies dictate policy and we take it.’ His father was shaking his head. ‘How can that be, Danny, what the fuck is wrong with us?’
Clyde would say, ‘You’re spoiled.’ Luke would say, ‘You’re all ignorant and parochial and too far away.’ And later that day Dan would catch up with Demet and she would be raving on like his father, repeating his words verbatim, the same well-rehearsed script.
His father was staring hard at his son, his eyes narrowed, his lip curled. ‘Danny, do you care about any of this at all?’
He should have said, Of course I do. That was what his father wanted to hear and if his granddad Bill had been sitting there, Dan would have agreed with alacrity, Yes, of course I agree. The face of his father was the face of his grandfather and it would have been the easiest and wisest thing to do. Of course I do.
Dan breathed in the bitter aroma of the coffee. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Sorry, Dad, I don’t think I do.’
His father’s face twitched—as if he’d kicked him, thought Dan, as if he’d punched him in the guts.
Then his father’s chin jolted upwards, his eyes were steel, fierce and remorseless. ‘I wish we’d never said yes to sending you to that school. That fucking school did this to you.’
Dan wanted to throw his head back and explode into laughter—that would upset the bastard, that would make him hate him even more. Dan was tapping the table, wishing he could slide under his father’s steel-cold gaze—like a cobra’s, he thought; the old bastard was ready to strike, with hatred in those icy blue eyes. The two men stared at each other, across the table, neither moving, except for the tapping of Dan’s fingers on the table. His father gave way first. With a sneer; then he blinked and looked away.
He shook his head. ‘Are you going to say anything?’
There were words and sentences, arguments and explanations, justifications and resentments, they were all building inside him, in his belly, deep in his gut, syllables forming words forming sentences, and seeping into blood. But he sat still, looking straight at his father. He would not let the words betray him. Keep it in, Dan, he silently counselled himself. Don’t say a word.
His father exploded, ‘What the fuck do you mean you don’t care?’
The words were fighting to get out, they were shooting into his lungs, waiting to pitch from his throat. Keep it in, Dan, don’t say a word.
‘You were always a selfish little prick, always bloody Danny Kelly having to come first. It didn’t matter how tired your mother was from working all day, no, she had to drive you back and forth, wherever you wanted, whenever you wanted.’ His father had risen now, and was pacing around the small kitchen, the words tumbling out so fast that they collided into each other. ‘Did you ever ask about your brother, or your sister? No, you didn’t give a damn about anyone but your bloody self, all of us tiptoeing around the great Danny Kelly, all of us, me included.’
He kept returning to the same phrase, he couldn’t get the words out of his head, repeating them in anger, folding them into a question. What the fuck do you mean you don’t care?
Dan wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of a response. He just raised an eyebrow and shrugged.
Dan’s father grabbed a shiny apple out of the fruitbowl and aimed it straight at Dan’s head, throwing it with such force that it ricocheted with the violence of a gunshot when it hit Dan’s temple, the apple cracking apart, the flesh exploding over the table, the floor. The juice splashed into Dan’s left eye, stinging, forcing tears.
Stricken by the ferocity of his own violence, his mouth opening and shutting, searching frantically in the sink for a dishcloth, his father, this pear-shaped, ageing man, his father was fumbling, dropping the cloth, picking it up and dropping it again. ‘I’m sorry, son, I’m so sorry.’ His father’s hair had gone white, Dan could see liver spots flecking the rough skin on the back of his hands.
Dan sat still as his father wiped his face, his hair, his neck, wiping the bits of fruit from around his shirt collar. He could have taken his father’s hands and bent them back so far that they broke.
His father was on his knees, scrubbing the floor, chasing bits of apple across the lino. Dan could have kicked him, Dan could have aimed his foot and brought it back into a kick that would have made the old man’s head and face and skull displode as completely and as messily as the fruit he’d just thrown at Dan. It would have been so easy to do, to walk away and never be forgiven. The thought of it, the simplicity of it, was like a bolt to his cock, like being famished for sex. His father was bent over, trying to scrub away the evidence. His pyjamas were falling around his buttocks; Dan could see the thin grey hairs disappearing into his arse crack, and had to look away in disgust. He sat still, smelling the juice of the fruit, he made himself stay there, not letting his body rise, because of what it could have done, what it was capable of executing.
Dan took in a deep breath. He could have killed his old man, the way he felt then he could have got up, unzipped, taken out his cock and raped his old man—that was how much he hated him. He breathed out. His father had clumped the sodden cloth in his hands and was wiping down the table. The basket of fruit shook. Dan breathed in but his body wouldn’t settle, the gaping ravenous hole inside of him would not retreat. Dan breathed out, grabbing at the sounds and syllables and fragments of words colliding inside him. He breathed in and let the words out.
‘You’re the ignorant one, Dad,’ he began, jerking his head at the refrigerator, at the multicoloured face of the US president, the blood-red earth and the night sky and the golden sun of the Aboriginal flag. ‘I don’t care about your fucking windbag American president, he isn’t saving the world, and I don’t care about the fucking Aborigines and they don’t fucking care about me and I don’t care about your fucking Labor Party and your fucking Greens—let the world burn and choke itself in greenhouse gases: no one wants to give up anything, no one wants to sacrifice anything for anyone else.
‘I’ve been to where you’re from, Dad, and the working class have gone, they’ve left the fucking building. The best of them got out long ago, they’ve moved on, and the worst of them are getting pissed and getting high and having babies for welfare cheques, and they’re exactly like everyone here, blaming immigrants and blaming refugees and blaming everyone else but themselves. There’s no difference, Dad—this is wha
t the world is like now and you think you are so much better than the other truck drivers you know because you and Mum protest against the war in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan, and you sign petitions protesting about refugees being kept in detention centres and you think that makes you special, you think that means your shit doesn’t stink, but really the refugees and the poor and the desperate, the blackfellas here and the blackfellas in the rest of the world, they don’t give a shit for any of that. They’re just trying to get ahead the best they can, and you’ve wasted all your years on caring about that shit and what have you given Regan? What have you given Theo? What have you given any of us? All I wanted was for you to support me. All I wanted was to be the greatest swimmer there ever was and you never once carried me, honoured me, supported me, did you? You didn’t, because you didn’t want me to get too big-headed, didn’t want me to succeed, didn’t want me to be anything but what you are, an old man with a chip on your shoulder about being working class and poor, banging on about your Irish roots and your working-class Scottish heritage as if that meant anything. As if anyone in Scotland or Ireland gives a fuck about you and where you’ve been and what you’ve done—I’ve been there, Dad, I’ve lived there, and if they were here, they’d say, what the fuck is this cunt whingeing about with his backyard and his four-bedroom house and his car and his truck and his family and his grandchild and all the fucking safety in the world? How dare you complain about anything, you fucking spoiled Aussie cunt, that’s what they’d say, that’s what they are saying, Dad.’
Dan stopped, and wiped spit from the sides of his mouth. His father was sitting again, opposite him, and Dan could see in his father’s swollen frightened eyes that he had succeeded, that the man was broken, that the man was split and torn. But Dan was not finished: one final blow had to be struck. ‘You failed me, Dad. You could have carried me, you could have supported me, you could have been there for me. I just wanted to be the strongest and the fastest—I wanted to be the best and you didn’t let me, you didn’t want that for me. I wanted to be a name, Dad, I didn’t want to be an ordinary decent good Aussie bloke, I never wanted that. You wanted me to be humble and grateful and kind and considerate and socially conscious and just and honest and good and instead I am nothing.’
Dan breathed out. ‘Do you understand now, Dad? That’s why I really truly don’t care. Do you understand, Dad, why I really don’t give a fuck?’
A cloud passed across the sun; the kitchen fell into darkness. The shadow played across his father, moved across the table and passed over Dan. Dan was conscious of his heart pounding, throbbing so hard it could have burst through his chest. He could feel the blood rushing through every vein in his body, as cold as ice; every hair on his body was upright, every single part of him was alive, as if he was flying, taking in the world, the scent of blood, of bone and victory. His old man was just that, an old man, his head lowered, his skinny wrists weak and brittle. Dan had won. He had beaten his father.
The wind rose outside, the branches from the silver gum drumming across the slate roof over the kitchen, and more clouds skated across the sky and the sun disappeared again. In a breath, his exhilaration had gone and all he saw was the older man across from him, too shattered to find the strength to raise his head and look at his son. Dan had won and he felt nothing at all.
His lips dry, his tongue thick and unyielding, this time Dan thought through the shape and volume and sense of words before he let them loose.
‘Dad, it’s not true that I don’t care about those kinds of things, it’s just that I have never known what to do about it all.’
The glowing rendition of the US president on the fridge door; the ink as thick as blood on the Aboriginal flag.
‘I was never that smart, you know, to figure all that sort of stuff out. All I was good at was swimming, that’s all.’
The words had been released and then they just melted away. They had meant nothing.
His father lifted his head, gave the weakest of smiles. The dark lavender half-moons under his eyes, the stubborn smoker’s lines at the corners of his mouth. ‘We should have visited Scotland, I should have taken your mum to Greece. That’s one thing I have to do; that’s one thing I have to honour.’ Dan heard the regret, Dan heard the guilt.
‘I didn’t mean you don’t know anything about the world.’ Dan pointed to the door of the fridge, where so much of the world had been pinned and stuck and posted. ‘You know so much more about the world than I do.’ He was scrambling for words that would soothe and offer peace. ‘This is the world too,’ he continued. ‘You’ve worked and raised a family and you’ve looked after us all. You’ve been a good man.’
His father was a good man. It struck him with the force of revelation, exultation, light flooding through him. His father was a good man. His father was the hero of his own life.
‘That’s all I want,’ as he spoke, it was now his face that was lowered. Now he was the one stuck, nailed to the ground. ‘That’s all I want for myself.’
His father’s intake of breath was sudden, followed by the wet crunch of words kept back. Dan looked up. He knew his father had been about to speak, about to reassure him—You are, son, you are a good man—but he’d held it back. Those were words that had to be earned. He was a good man and a hard man, thought Dan, recognising his father as a man for the first time, knowing his father was seeing his son as a man for the first time.
The two men looked at each other across the table, not daring one another, nor goading. They looked at each other cleanly.
‘Your granddad and nan are dying to see you. I know you’re heading up north to see Regan and our kid tomorrow. Do you want me to drive you over to see Granddad and Nan today?’
‘Sure.’
‘He can’t wait to ask you about Scotland.’
‘I can’t wait to tell him.’
The two men stood silently next to each other, doing the dishes. The father at the sink washing, the son drying. Neither man had spoken, neither man had uttered the words I’m sorry. They were reaching towards it, finding a rhythm in their labour, the scrubbing, the stacking, the drying and the putting away. The words loomed too large and both of them feared that they were far from enough. So they found a rhythm together, doing their task in unison, with calm and deliberate care. There was a bluish mark forming on Dan’s temple where the apple had struck him; his father’s hands occasionally shook as he worked at the sink.
His granddad Bill was waiting on the porch, sitting on an old kitchen chair. He was sitting upright, a tweed flat cap shading his eyes from the weak intermittent sun, his hands resting on the neck of his black cane. Even in the wind, even in the cold, he was sitting out on the porch, eager to see his grandson who’d been away for so long. As soon as the car turned into the street, his grandfather rose slowly, shakily, waving at them and calling, ‘Irene, Irene, they’re here.’ And his grandfather hugged him—how bony he felt—and his grandmother couldn’t stop kissing him and offering him tea and coffee and Monte Carlos and shortbread. The three generations sat around the gas heater with the orange coils, and his granddad asked him about Scotland.
‘Yes, I visited the Gorbals but they’ve knocked down your tenement a long time ago’ and ‘I went running in Queen’s Park’ and he told his grandfather what the new Glasgow was like and how Rosemary had sent her brother and sister-in-law all her love, and he told them about the summer days on Loch Long and on the west coast and how the midges had buried themselves deep into his skin, and that made his granddad laugh, hard and loud.
Dan continued to answer the questions fired at him by his granddad, by his nan, his father too; he answered the questions asked by these people who knew him best, because no one else knew him, this was all he had. He was not the strongest, not the fastest, he was not the best—he was not anyone at all, but this son and this grandson. This was where he started, this was where he began.
‘GO, DANNY, GO, DANNY, GO, DANNY, GO!’
All the kids I am compe
ting against, all the other boys are gawking up at the benches and then they all look down the line at me. I squish shut my eyes and I can see swirls of thin red in black. I squish them real tight, my face is all hot, I reckon my skin is red all over. There is a draught coming through the pool, it is freezing and I am squishing my eyes and I am shaking. Shut up shut up shut up, I’m thinking, but of course they don’t shut up, they just get even louder.
‘Go, Danny, go, Danny, go, Danny, GO!’
I can hear her. It’s Dem, she has the loudest voice.
I open my eyes and look up at them. Sava is leaning over, banging, thrashing the seat in front of him. Boz has his hands cupped around his mouth to make his yelling even louder. Mia and Shelley see me looking up and they start waving at me like idiots. Yianni too, he’s flapping his wrists and his hands, jumping on one foot then the other, like a demented monkey. ‘Go, Danny, go, Danny, go, Danny, go!’ I’m staring straight at Dem, she’s got the biggest doofus smile on her face and she’s screaming it out at the top of her voice: ‘Go, Danny, go, Danny, go, Danny, GO!’ Only my dad is silent, he’s the only one not calling out. But he’s got a big smile on his face too. He’s nodding at me. Go, Danny, go.
I give them all a thumbs-up and then I turn to face my lane. Don’t think about them, forget about them, I tell myself. I look out at the still water. I can’t wait to dive in.
The chant abruptly stops. Some parent or official, some adult, must have said something to them. The pool goes quiet.
I am looking at the water. I have to stop myself leaping in, I have to control myself. I can’t wait. Not yet. Not yet.
The starter raises her whistle to her lips. But she doesn’t blow it yet.
Wait, Danny, I tell myself. You just have to wait.
The boys either side of me, I can tell they’re impatient too. One of them has the skinniest body I have ever seen, there doesn’t seem to be anything between skin and skeleton. The other one is shuffling from side to side, as if the race has already started, as if his feet have already started to kick.