Taylor shrugged off his arm.
‘We did well,’ Danny said, grinning widely.
‘No,’ answered Taylor, his voice giving nothing away. ‘You won it. I came third.’
I was always going to win it, thought Danny. It was always mine to win.
It was dark when they got home. His dad was waiting up for them and offered Danny his hand. ‘Congratulations, Danny, I’m proud of you. So’s your granddad Bill—he was over the moon when I told him.’
Danny glanced at the clock. It was too late to ring, Granddad Bill would be in bed. He’d ring him from school tomorrow, to hear the pride in his voice.
Before he went to bed, Danny asked his mother to wake him at four-thirty as usual.
His father cut in before she could reply. ‘It’s been a big couple of days, Danny. Why don’t you take the day off tomorrow, sleep in?’
His dad didn’t understand that it was harder not to train—that when he wasn’t training he was walking through the sludge of the in-between. ‘Nah, I’m going to the pool tomorrow.’
His father’s mouth tightened. ‘Fine, but your mother isn’t taking you. She’s driven all the way to Albury and back for you—she’s exhausted. You can train if you want to, but she’s sleeping in.’
Danny breathed in, sensing that he was about to lose it and yell, which would get him nowhere; it would never move his father. He turned to his mother, whose eyes were darting between her son and her husband.
‘It’s OK, Neal, I can take him in.’
The man continued staring at Danny, as if he hadn’t heard a word his wife had said. Then he raised his arms, shrugged. ‘Suit yourself.’ He beckoned to Theo and Regan, and they ran to his open arms for a hug. ‘Well, the three of us are sleeping in, aren’t we? And I’m going to cook us pancakes with ice-cream.’
Theo and Regan loudly chorused their delight. But his father wouldn’t look at him and Danny couldn’t look at his father.
Danny watched TV as he brushed his teeth, transfixed by the constant replaying of the Perkins triumph. The commentators kept asking: was Kieren Perkins the greatest swimmer ever? But Danny was focused on the footage of the man who’d come second, the man who was forcing a smile but looked as though he wanted to weep—because second wasn’t winning, second was losing. A heroic effort by Kowalski, they were saying, a great sporting moment for Australia; they were saying that Kowalski swam an honourable race—but second wasn’t winning, second was losing.
The phone rang and his mother answered it. She called out, ‘It’s for you.’
‘How do you feel, champ?’
He swallowed his toothpaste, coughed, grimaced at the burning in his throat. ‘Pretty good I think—’
Demet interrupted, ‘We’re all so proud of you. Boz reckons he’s going to tag your name all over Keon Park station. You’re the champion under-sixteen two-hundred-metre freestyle king! How does that feel, Mr Kelly, how does that feel?’
‘Good, I guess.’
‘Good, you guess? Dickbrain, it’s fucking excellent. Are you free Saturday night? We want to take you out, kiss your arse, rub your nob for good luck.’
‘You’re gross.’
‘You’re retarded.’
The old schoolyard insults made him giggle like a little kid. Then there was a strange awkward silence. Dem’s voice rushed in to fill it.
‘So Bell Street Macca’s on Saturday?’
Macca’s on Saturday. Taylor would be in stitches, Scooter would be on the floor. He could hear them: They’re taking you to Macca’s? To celebrate? Are you serious, fucking Macca’s? He didn’t want that thought, didn’t want Demet to ever know that he could have such a thought.
‘Yeah, yeah, that’s good, Macca’s.’
‘All you can eat, hero.’
He put down the phone, caught a glimpse of the TV. They were playing the race again. Over and over and over. The hero and the loser.
At Flinders Street he fell in with a group of boys from his school but none of them said a thing about the day before, no one asked him about the championships, no one even mentioned Perkins winning gold in the fifteen hundred, even though it was on the front pages of all the papers. No one asked him about his swim. He shrank into a corner of the carriage. So he’d won a pissy all-Australian under-sixteen swimming contest. So fucking what. That wasn’t being Perkins; being Perkins was something a million miles away.
He lagged behind the other boys as they walked from the station to the school. Luke was standing in a crowd and he peeled off and came over to wrap an arm around Danny, but even he didn’t say a thing.
He could see Taylor and Fraser, and Scooter and Wilco and Morello all huddled together. Taylor said something and they all laughed, of course they laughed. But didn’t they know that Taylor came third? Didn’t they care that he was a loser?
Danny went into the Great Hall for assembly. He didn’t hear the morning prayers, didn’t hear Principal Canning ponce on about this great school this and this great school that. It didn’t matter what medals Danny won. They didn’t want him, he didn’t belong there.
But then Luke was shaking him, grinning, pointing him towards the podium. And Principal Canning was looking down at Danny, looking straight at him and clapping. Luke pushed Danny into the aisle and then everyone was clapping, the juniors and the seniors, even the teachers, everyone was applauding and then they were starting to cheer, the whole school was shouting out his name, Danny Kelly, Danny Kelly, Danny Kelly! His school was shouting out his name. He was walking towards the stage and one of the seniors, Cosgrave, held out his hand and Danny shook the older boy’s hand, and then another prefect, Radcliff, came forward and Danny shook Radcliff’s hand. His name was thundering through the Great Hall and as he climbed the steps to take his place next to Principal Canning he looked down to see Luke jumping up and down, cheering like a maniac, like it was the proudest moment of his life, and all the boys, all the teachers, were standing, stamping their feet, cheering and clapping. Coach was there, looking stern, but he too was standing, he too was clapping. Danny searched the sea of faces, looking for Taylor; he was shaking Principal Canning’s hand but all the time he was trying to find Taylor, and when he did spot him, Taylor winked and raised his arms, clapping above his head, and then called out, so clearly and so loudly that he could be heard above all the other cheers, ‘Good on ya, Danny Kelly. Go, Barracuda!’
Danny froze. Tsitsas took up the call, and so did Wilco, so did Scooter, and now they were all yelling, Barracuda! Danny wondered, was this an insult? Had it all been planned? He felt helpless, standing there next to Principal Canning. There was no way possible for him to give it back.
‘You psycho.’ Taylor’s voice again carried above the din. ‘You dangerous crazy psycho! You barracuda!’
And Tsitsas and Wilco, Scooter and Fraser, they took up the chant.
Barracuda. Barracuda.
And the rest of the boys joined in.
Barracuda.
And even Coach, even Frank Torma was calling it out.
Barracuda.
Calling it out, clapping, stamping, cheering. All cheering for him.
‘Barracuda!’
‘Danny Kelly!’
‘Barracuda!’
‘Danny Kelly!’
Then he felt it. Then it really meant something.
That afternoon, as Danny was getting ready for training, Frank Torma came into the locker room. He walked past the others and went straight up to Danny, who held out his hand, grinning.
Torma just looked at it. ‘Where were you this morning?’
Danny’s hand hung limply, just hung in nothingness.
The Coach didn’t give him time to answer. ‘There are no excuses for missing training. Got it?’
‘I got it,’ mumbled Danny, letting his arm fall.
‘And what happened in the relay yesterday? Did you give it your best effort? Did you give your team your all?’
The blood rushed to Danny’s face. He’d been feel
ing so good, he’d been feeling so high, and now his skin was on fire and his body was ice. Coach had made him ashamed.
That shame made him look up, made him stare Frank Torma right in the face. Give it back, send it back a thousand times stronger.
No more ice, then, just the fire, but it no longer burned. ‘I think I did good,’ he answered, slipping out of his jocks. ‘Yeah, I reckon I gave it my all—it was the others who weren’t any good.’
Come on, hit me.
Hit me.
Come on.
Then Coach made a sound, deep and dirty, right from the very centre of his body, the sound of spitting. It was so full of disgust and so repellent that Danny flinched. He hadn’t spat, but Frank Torma had made his point.
The Coach snarled at all the boys as though he detested them, ‘Get in the pool. Now!’
He was kicking. Barracuda. Breathing in. Fury. The water parted for him. Barracuda. Breathing out. Fast. The water shifted for him. He breathed in. Barracuda. The water obeyed him.
Dangerous. He breathed out.
I HAVE COMPLETED THREE CONSECUTIVE NIGHT shifts, two I was rostered on for, one that I filled in as a favour to Barry. I am looking forward to the long weekend, or rather my version of a weekend. It is Tuesday morning, dawn has just been overwhelmed by the fierce sun rising in the east, and Hassan, the old Sudanese gentleman who runs the Half Moon Caf� in the mall, is hosing down the footpath outside. He hasn�t opened up yet but he�s brewed me a coffee anyway, and I sip it gratefully, huddled under the shop awning, the mug keeping my hands warm. It is the final week of the semester break and I don�t have a shift at the halfway house till Saturday afternoon. For the next three days there are no assignments due, no one I have to feed, no one I have to bathe or clean up after. It feels like freedom.
But then my gut plummets. I remember: I am catching up with Luke�s friend tomorrow. The cocoon of stillness has gone. My joy evaporates, instantly.
It was an email, out of the blue. The subject heading read: Danny, is that you?
I had to make concessions to the twenty-first century when I started college, when I began the diploma in community services. I still don�t have internet at home. If I am honest, I am fearful of what I would do if I had the leisure to roam that still-uncharted territory on my own. If I am honest and accurate, it is the world of pornography and anonymity that compels me and terrifies me. It is just a hunch I have, that, lured into the world of the screen where I don�t have to reveal myself, not my voice, not my body, not my truth, I would be engulfed and be lost, roaming that world. When I swam�how strange that phrase sounds to me, as absurd as if I were to say �when I was a woman�, so distant and so foreign is that experience to me�no one had to tell me not to masturbate, to insist that it would dissipate and corrupt my will. I just knew. As I think we all did, all of us boys, in the team, in the heats, in the competitions, in those pools and in those change rooms, we all knew what giving ourselves over to another thrill that could equal swimming would do. And now I know it about porn and about the internet. I know how it taints desire, how it poisons memory and corrupts time. I have a second-hand laptop given to me by Regan on which I do my course work. I log on at the TAFE library or the Vietnamese internet caf� on Main Street. I save my work on a USB stick and I print it off at the library.
I feel a stab of something like pain. It must come from thinking back to the swimming, recalling being back with those boys. A rush of shame sluices right through me, as real as a blade disembowelling me from my groin to my throat. Those boys. The shame: the weight and the cost and the dishonour of what I have done.
I sigh so deeply that Hassan turns around. I�m OK, I say apologetically, and he doesn�t answer. He leaves the bucket upturned just outside the caf� door and goes inside to fetch his broom. But not before he squeezes my right shoulder gently. Again, wordlessly. He�s been making me coffee for close to a year and�apart from the most generic of pleasantries�I still don�t know if he can speak English at all.
It is the email from Luke that has unsettled me. I thought at first that it must have been Demet who gave him my email�
[email protected]: my initials, my birthday. His first message was cursory�Danny, is that you?�but since my equally brief response�yes, mate, it is�he has been emailing me every fortnight or so, with news of China, of work, of family, sending me photos of Katie and their child. He had found Regan through Facebook and she had passed on my email address. Are you on Facebook, Danny? he asked. No, I typed back, I haven�t heard of it. I enjoy his letters, am proud of my friend, the shy fragile Eurasian boy who is now an executive in China, who emails me photographs in which he wears expensive suits and has a stylish haircut, and who has mastered both tennis and squash and lives in that exotic-sounding place Shanghai, a city more populous than the whole of my vast country. You have to come over, he wrote, and I replied, Do they accept ex-cons in China? A week later I logged on at a computer at Sunshine Library and I read his six-word response: Lie on your visa application, dickhead. And then three capital letters: LOL. I was puzzled and had to ask Sophie in my class what it meant. �Laugh out loud,� she snapped, her eyebrows arching, appalled at my ignorance. �Oh my God, Dan, get with the program!�
Katie has a friend, a classmate from the university she attended in Glasgow. All I have been told about him is that he works in film and television, �in production�. He has been living in Sydney for over a year and is only now making his first trip to Melbourne. And Luke couldn�t help it; when he asked if I could meet up with this man Clyde, he joked that it was no surprise that Clyde had been in Australia for nearly two years but had not yet bothered to visit Melbourne. Arse end of the world, Luke typed.
I finish my coffee, I walk home, I read one hundred pages of Dostoevsky�s The Devils, immersing myself in the nineteenth-century novel, in all its digressions, its cul-de-sacs, its world in which fate determines destiny far more ruthlessly than does choice or desire, where youth is cruel in its creativity and righteousness. I don�t want to talk, I don�t want to struggle to find words and conversation. I don�t want to be in this world. But I will do it for Luke. I will meet this Glaswegian, we will have a coffee, I will be polite and answer his questions about my city. The thought of it brings a smile to my face. I am the last person to ask about what to do and where to go in my town; Luke should have asked Demet. I will put this stranger in contact with her. And then I will have peace.
Once again, I will be safeguarded by my solitude.
The first thing I notice about Clyde is that his accent reminds me of Granddad Bill. There is a similar bass tone and rumble to his voice, the same lilt to his speech. I want to close my eyes, just listen to that voice, masculine, musical and resonant, as if someone just notched up the treble in his voice box by a degree. Then I notice the sparse cadmium hair on his wrists, and it is disconcerting how much I want to lay my fingers there. It has been so long since I touched another�s skin.
It took me an age to decide where to meet, as if it were a date. I paced up and down my bedroom, unable to make up my mind. First I thought it should be the city, of course he would want to see the city, it is his first time here. Then I decided against it, as I didn�t know where to go in the city. I wondered if it wouldn�t be best to meet just down the road from my flat but I quickly decided against that option. It was a train ride out, it was the suburbs; why would he want to see the suburbs? I finally settled on a small caf� in Brunswick where Demet took me a few months ago, a small place so nonchalantly trendy that you have to sit on upturned milk crates, so chic that sitting there hurts your arse. Then I spent a fitful night wondering if I could remember exactly where it was, so first thing the next morning I walked to the internet caf� near my flat and googled a map of Brunswick. I located Demet�s house and traced the route we took, where we turned left onto Sydney Road and how far we walked before we took a right. I worked out exactly where the caf� must be.
I texted Clyde the location of where
we would meet.
Ten seconds later I got a text back. Cool, it read. Looking forward to it x. I stared at that x for an age, astonished. It seemed so audacious. I didn�t dare text back, I could never sign off in that way. x.
Clyde has finished his coffee. There is a chilling wind blowing up the street but he wants to sit outside where he can smoke. I wish I had thought of bringing a scarf. It is spring but winter hasn�t yet unwrapped itself from around the city, and I am shivering. A young waitress with Islander tattoos on her arms comes out, picks up our empty glasses, and asks, �Another?�
Clyde looks across at me. �Yeah, sure,� I say, �I�ll have another,� and he grins. As she walks back inside I mumble, �Sorry about the shit weather.�
His answering laugh is as strong and hoarse as my granddad Bill�s. He pretends to look at a non-existent wristwatch and says, �I cannot believe it. A half hour has passed and it is the first mention of weather.� His grin broadens. �I think I�m going to like you, pal.�
Pal. I like the word�it is unfamiliar but warm. Pal.
We are surrounded by students, girls in op-shop jackets buttoned to the collar, with seventies tinted sunglasses; guys in tight black jeans and Converse sneakers.