by Erin Hortle
‘Harry!’ his mother barks, a little too late, a little too loud. ‘How are ya? This is Lucy.’
He racks his brain. He doesn’t think he knows a Lucy.
She reaches out her hand and, mechanically, he takes it in his, giving it a shake.
To his surprise the woman—Lucy—breaks out in laughter. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever felt so inadequate!’ she exclaims. ‘I mean, I know my hands are small, but they’re completely lost in yours!’ He looks down at their clasped hands. She’s right. He’s wrapped his fingers around her hand and, although she’s tried to do the same, her fingers can’t reach the edge of his palm. He lets go of her hand, and then isn’t sure what to do with his own. He doesn’t know what to say. The fact that she’s here with his mother, the fact that he’s back here at all: this whole homecoming scenario suddenly feels absurd.
Meanwhile, his mother garbles: ‘Oh yes, he’s got his father’s hands all right. I always said to Gray, I said, “Your hands make crayfish look like prawns, and they make good footy players, them hands do.” The way Harry and his dad before him used to pluck the ball out of the sky—it was like they were picking apples, you know?’
‘That right?’ Lucy says, continuing to smile up at him. ‘He might have Gray’s hands, Flo, but he’s the spitting image of you.’ Harry’s heard it before. He has his father’s figure, like all his brothers do: tall and broad but angular. When he was a teenager, his mother often joked that the lot of them were two-dimensional, like paper cut-outs of a man-shape. But Harry—unlike the others who are the old man through and through—he is his mother. Where the others have their old man’s sandy complexion, he has her swarthy skin. Her round jaw is slightly squarer on him and peppered with acne scars and stubble; his thick-lashed eyes are the same brown as hers; and his nose, while not hers per se, errs more on the side of her button than the old man’s beak.
‘Yep, chip off the old block,’ Flo says.
‘I’ll say,’ Lucy agrees. ‘It’s bloody uncanny.’ She shakes her head again then says, ‘Righto, I’m off. Nice to meet you, Harry—I’m sure I’ll see you around. Call me, Flo.’
As Harry mumbles: ‘You too’, he realises it’s the first thing he’s said since the door opened, and he feels awkward, unhappy with the way he’s presented himself. Like a bloody moron.
His mother calls: ‘Roger that,’ and together, they watch as Lucy skips down the steps and driveway, giving them a little wave before she rounds the sticky wattle and disappears from view.
Harry turns to his mother. ‘Who was that?’
‘That’s Lucy,’ Flo repeats, then clarifies: ‘Jem Allenby’s missus.’
Jem Allenby’s missus. Lucy. Of course. Harry remembers where he’s seen her before. It was at a New Year’s music festival perhaps six years ago? Seven?
‘Is that Jem Allenby?’ Packo had asked, pointing. ‘Over there.’
It was late afternoon and the sun was biting its way through the hole in the ozone layer with a sick intensity. Harry was feeling a touch feverish, sweating out yesterday’s alcohol while drinking in today’s, crushing a beer can to his lips. He and his mates were traversing the sun-yellowed hills, which provided a natural amphitheatre for the stage, upon which a wispily clad woman was warbling throatily as her band swayed and stomped behind her and a mosh pit undulated before her. Beyond the stage was more sun-bleached farmland, the lagoon, the narrows and the ocean, which was cobalt blue beneath the clear summer sky and pitching with whitecaps from the sea breeze. Where they were, further up the hill, the undertones of drum and bass thrummed beneath shouts and laughter emanating from the groups of people scattered, drinking and sunbaking, on the grass. They were threading between these groups, heading back to their campsite for shots of Bundy, if not something more prohibited, when Packo spotted Jem, not too far from them.
Jem had his arm slung over a girl’s shoulder. She wasn’t hugging him back exactly, because in each hand she carried a beer, but she was leaning into him in a way that suggested she had a claim on him. She and Jem were heading towards the stage, and trailing after them was a knot of girls, all of whom were very beautiful and moved like they knew it. They were chattering animatedly, every now and then exclaiming or giggling loudly, grabbing at each other’s arms as they spoke and nudging one another with slim hips.
Harry would never approach girls like that. He sensed the power they had to humiliate. Something about them screamed of high school hierarchies. He hoped that Jem would pass by, oblivious. But Mitch Saunders—who was more a hanger-on than a mate—noticed Jem and hollered. Jem looked over, saw them, and the expression on his face grew smug. He shepherded his harem towards them, weaving through the groups on the grass.
‘G’day, fellas,’ Jem said, but the girls barely glanced at them—none of them, not even the one who was so obviously with Jem. Instead, she disentangled herself from Jem and moved off a few metres, engrossing herself in her friends’ conversation and drinking, somehow classily, from one of her tinnies.
Harry thought: Where on earth could Jem have found a girl like that? But of course, Jem lived off an ab-licence silver spoon. Why wouldn’t he have a girl like that?
‘You’ve got it sorted, ay, bruv?’ Mitch said to Jem. While all he was doing was echoing Harry’s thoughts, Harry noticed that the way he said it was kind of aggressive.
But Jem just grinned and said: ‘This is Lucy.’
Upon hearing her name, she nodded to them, but it was obvious that she barely saw them, and she went back to talking to her friends before Jem had the chance to finish off the introductions.
‘You might’ve seen her around. She’s just moved to the peninsula,’ he explained.
‘Just her, or all of them?’ Mitch asked.
‘Nah, just her. The others are mates of hers from Melbourne. Uni.’
‘Shame,’ Mitch said, and gave a sad little shake of his head. And then he said something—Harry can’t quite remember what, but he remembers that it was bloody embarrassing not only because of the words, but because he spoke at much too loud a volume, which meant he caught the attention of the girls, who looked in their direction and so saw the way he grabbed his crotch and jostled his dick and balls as he spoke—along the lines of: ‘Could do with a bit more poon about. Seems like you’ve got more than enough to go round, ay, bruv.’
Not surprisingly, the interaction ended there.
Harry still can’t figure out why Mitch had behaved like that. Perhaps he was offended because the girls had refused to give him attention and he wanted to punish them for it; perhaps he resented Jem for snagging a girl like Lucy and wanted to humiliate him. But then, it wasn’t particularly out of character for Mitch to behave like that and, in any case, either way, it didn’t work. All he had succeeded in doing was looking like a knob and humiliating himself, along with Harry and the rest of their mates.
Mitch Saunders, hey? Harry hasn’t seen him in years. Somehow, he can’t reconcile the Mitch he knew—the one who used to snort lines of MDMA off his dashboard outside parties and chant: ‘Hoover! Hoover! Hoover!’ from his car window at girls walking down the street—with the Mitch of today, the Mitch that Packo had told him about last night, the Mitch they now call Straight-Bat Saunders: new local cop, new husband of Sammie Mackenzie of all people, new father of twins.
God. He wonders if Lucy had remembered that day, if she’d recognised him just now. He hopes like all hell she hadn’t and he feels a seeping dread at the thought of her telling Jem she’d met him, and Jem reminding her that it wasn’t for the first time. He hopes she isn’t too close with his mother so he doesn’t have to see her much, run the risk of seeing her recognise him and have his budding shame confirmed by her disdainful gaze.
‘How do you know her?’ he asks his mother uneasily.
‘Oh you know,’ she says airily, ‘we’ve done some pickling. Now, I’ll give you a hand with your stuff.’ She makes towards the car.
‘Don’t,’ he says. ‘I’ll get it in a bit.’
‘Righto, cuppa it is then,’ she says, as if they were the only two options in the world and he’d made his choice.
When the boys were little, they would jostle to sit in Gray’s armchair, all elbows and squawks. Eventually, they would wedge themselves in, shoulder to shoulder like birds perched on a powerline, and they would press their hands over their mouths to hold the giggles at bay while they waited for their father to get back from whatever it was he had been doing: taking or making business calls, pulling or setting the pots, tinkering in the shed, doing the dishes—Gray was good like that. Eventually, he would walk into the room. More often than not his hair would be stiff with salt spray. If he had a crayfish—red-armoured, spindly-legged and thrashing against his grip—he’d hand it to Flo silently and then turn to his children, carefully keeping his face expressionless. He’d pause for a moment before raising one eyebrow.
The anticipation would kill them. They would press their lips tight, and their bubbling giggles would turn into whinnies of excitement as they squirmed.
Then he would be on them.
He was a big man. Not fat, but long and sharp: all limbs, all joints, even his nose and chin were angular. He had those extraordinary hands, the size of hubcaps, with thin, dexterous fingers that were at least twice the length of Flo’s. (How she misses those hands!) He was the best tickler in the south, Flo used to tell the boys.
‘You are the luckiest boys alive. Your dad is the best tickler in the south.’
Parenthood turns you nutty.
Gray’s face would crack into a wicked grin as the boys squealed.
Once they were in bed, he’d flop into his chair. He’d stretch his long legs out, resting his feet on the coffee table, and busy himself with the newspaper. Sometimes the telly would be on in the background, its chatter filling the room. Sometimes it would be the radio. He’d puff away on one of those damn cigarettes, and sip at a cup of milky tea. Gray had such a distinctive way of drinking tea—distinctive only because it looked so incongruous on him, the big fisherman that he was. Rather than letting his hands monster the cup, he would pinch its handle between his thumb and forefinger and sip daintily like a lady at high tea. That’s how she remembers Gray best: tranquil in the soft evening light, long legs propped up before him, teacup poised in his fingers, sea salt dusting his hair, his eyebrows, his whiskery chin.
Flo remembers this as being their evening routine, as something that happened, night after night, characteristic of her life, then. But if she’s honest with herself, the memory is too idealistic to have been commonplace. It was something to aspire to; even then, probably easier to imagine than to live. In all likelihood, most nights, the boys would have ruined it for themselves as they scrambled for the chair: the elbows and squawks would’ve turned into fists, knees and expletives. There would have been tears. Rather than looking on, glowing with maternal pride, she would’ve shouted and perhaps slapped. Gray would’ve appeared, frowned, hoisted the boys over his shoulder and tossed them into their bedrooms then slammed the doors shut on them without a word. He would’ve prowled back into the living room, thrown himself into his chair, caught her eye and said: ‘Gotta love the little arseholes I s’pose.’
And then they’d both have laughed, because of course they did love them.
And now look. One of those little arseholes is sitting there, in Gray’s chair, tranquil in the soft evening light. His long legs are stretched out, his feet are propped on the coffee table, and he’s sipping a cup of milky tea, dainty as anything.
He looks up and catches her staring. ‘What’s going on, Mum?’ he says.
‘Nothing,’ Flo says. ‘I was just thinking it’s nice to have someone about the place again.’
Harry grins at her. ‘It’s nice to be back,’ he says.
‘But why?’ The words burst from Flo’s mouth; she can’t help it. He’s been back a week, and she’s held it in, hoping he’d volunteer the information himself. But he hasn’t, and she’s got to ask at some point, doesn’t she?
‘Fuck, I dunno,’ Harry mumbles. ‘I had a nice day on the water with Packo today, and there was that cray in me pot. I mean, you can’t really ask for much more than that, can you?’
‘No,’ Flo says. ‘I mean, why are you back for good? What are you going to do? You can’t just craypot all your life.’
‘Could if I had a licence,’ Harry counters.
‘Good luck getting one of them,’ Flo mutters.
Harry nods. ‘True that.’
‘I’ve still got your dad’s scale fish licence, you know,’ she says. ‘You can have it if you want it.’ She’d been leasing it out for a bit of income these last years, supplementing her pension with it, but she doesn’t really need it—not if he wants it.
‘Good to know I’ve got options,’ Harry says. He pulls himself to his feet, scoops up his empty cup then hers, and wanders into the kitchen, whistling tunelessly.
The tap starts running.
‘Leave that, Harry. I’ll do the dishes in a sec,’ she calls.
‘Don’t worry about it, Mum,’ he calls back. ‘You have the night off. Put your feet up.’
Flo frowns, irritated. She doesn’t really want the night off; she doesn’t have anything to do with it, and she’s sick of aimless evenings. But at least tomorrow evening won’t be aimless. Tomorrow evening Lucy’s coming over to knit those knockers, and Flo can’t believe how excited she is for it. She squeezes her own breasts in anticipation, then catches herself and looks up at the archway to the kitchen. But it’s okay. Harry’s elbow-deep in the foamy sink. He didn’t notice anything.
It’s weird, having someone else in the house again after all this time on her own.
‘I reckon I can show ya how to do the nipple,’ Flo says, ‘but it’s bloody fiddly, so if you want, I can just do ’em both while you sort that wool into the colours you want in each knocker, and then we can do the breast bits together.’ She peers at the pattern, frowning a little. ‘Nipples aside, I reckon the breasts themselves will be as much of a challenge as you’ll need, what with having to get the hang of using double-pointed needles.’
They’re sitting in the living room. On the coffee table before them are two bottles of beer and the rainbow bird’s nest of wool that Flo had dumped there just moments before. Most of the lengths of wool are bound in little bundles already, but some have come undone and tangled in among the rest.
Lucy grimaces. ‘Double-pointed needles?’
‘Sounds more complicated than it is. You’ve just gotta make sure you don’t twist it.’
‘Right. Well, yeah, you do the nipples, I’ll sort this wool.’
‘Roger that. What coloured nipples do you want?’
‘Black?’
Flo snorts.
‘What? They’ll go with everything then.’
‘Fairo.’
They get to work, Flo clicking away at the nipples, Lucy unravelling, sorting and matching wool.
‘How’s it going having Harry here?’ Lucy asks.
‘Oh, it’s good to have him back,’ Flo concedes grumpily. ‘I just wish he’d tell me why he’s here.’
‘Does he have to have a reason?’
‘Well, I don’t know. But, I mean, it doesn’t seem like he’s moved back here for anything in particular. He was making good money in them mines and he’s packed it in for nothing and I’ve tried asking him but he doesn’t say nothing. He just goes fishing and potting.’
The conversation falls, and in the absence of their voices the room fills with the click click, click click of Flo’s needles, the rustling of wool, and the whirr and gurgle of the fridge in the kitchen.
‘Is it so weird that he’d want to come back here?’ Lucy ventures. ‘I mean, that fly-in fly-out lifestyle must be pretty soul-destroying.’
‘Oh yeah, but the money’s good. And, like I said, he’s not really doing nothing here. And he doesn’t seem to want to.’
‘Maybe he just wants a holiday for a bit,’ Lucy says, and
although her words are shaped to a mild and reasonable tone, they make Flo feel ashamed. Coarse, even. But she wonders if she only feels like Lucy’s judging her because Lucy’s observation mirrors what she’s been thinking of herself and she wonders, for the umpteenth time: Why am I being so hard on him?
‘Must be weird having him back,’ Lucy prompts gently.
‘It’s all a bit disorientating,’ Flo confesses. ‘Stuff that used to be normal annoys him now. Like the other day, when I was trying to make him breakfast, he said to me: “I’m not a kid anymore, Mum. I can do it.” And I know that he’s not a kid anymore but I’m still his mother, you know?’
‘Well, I reckon Harry’s lucky to have you, Flo,’ Lucy says, looking at her earnestly. ‘And I reckon he’ll figure that out. I dunno. When I was sick, my parents came and visited me all the time, and initially it was weird because they were living with me and Jem for, like, weeks at a time. At first, I felt awkward about it. I scrubbed the bathroom to within an inch of its life before they arrived, which isn’t what you want to be doing when you’re having chemo. But then, it was like we settled into a rhythm and I wished they could’ve been there the whole time. When they were there it was so easy—not that Jem was a bad nurse or anything but parents just know how to look after you quietly, don’t they? Or maybe it’s that it’s easy to let them, but you have to want to let them, if that makes sense? And that can be hard at first, when you’re used to looking after yourself as an adult. Harry will figure out how to let you in. He probably just needs time.’
‘Yeah, well,’ Flo says, but she feels different. She feels like she’s not alone. Look at both of us here, busy like this, she thinks. She’s suddenly so content she feels she could burst.
‘Tell me about Gray?’ Lucy asks, and Flo’s surprised that the mention of his name doesn’t bring that pang of deep loneliness, like it usually does.
Flo smiles. ‘Gray, hey? Where do I start?’
‘Start with his hands,’ Lucy suggests.
