by Tim Winton
No NGO could possibly risk hiring him. And in the broader environmental movement he would always be the Great Disappointment. The deepest darkest greens thought he was a hero, but their admiration wouldn’t butter his bread.
He wondered, briefly, about the private sector. Consultancies employed all sorts of colourful folks: disgraced premiers, tycoons jailed for massive frauds, sportsmen with blemished records. There was stuff he could do – lucrative, too. But it would be mercenary work.
Of course the resource sector would take him on in a heartbeat. On the quiet. That was his Patty Hearst option – join the revolution. They wouldn’t need to parade him like a hostage; they had plenty already. They’d just pump him for intel. Plans, policy positions, databases. All those establishment donors from the Golden Triangle they could woo back to the fold with a little pressure from old school chums. A few discreet threats of a purely social nature. He’d seen it done. And who knew the who-where-what like he did? But just thinking that way made him feel grubby.
This was what happened now. It was occurring everywhere. People reduced to toting up whatever made them valuable to the market. Which was to say the bosses. They’d approached him, well before the blow-up. A big mining corporation looking to spritz up its greenwash. The bastards had more propaganda money at their disposal than most nation-states. For every eco-ad from a cash-strapped NGO they’d publish fifty lavish fakes. Top whack. Full pages in broadsheets and sixty-second prime-time TVCs. They stood some tame khaki naturalist in front of a red gorge or a bit of forest. A few lies, a couple of half-truths and there they were, all logo and soaring music. Australian Miners – nature’s greatest custodians. And not a hole to be seen. At the time he’d pretended not to understand what they were asking of him. Now he was desperate. And he knew they’d come back. There were unopened emails with jaunty subject headings he’d consigned to the ether. But he’d never do it. Anyhow, his value would only last a few weeks. He’d hardly get through betraying himself and his comrades before he found himself on St Georges Terrace with nothing but a cardboard carton and a non-disclosure agreement.
No, he was a fuckup, but not a turncoat. Which was something to hold onto, wasn’t it, Doris? Wasn’t that the upside?
The gulls gave him up as a dud prospect. He wandered past the boatlifters where someone was blasting a hull clean. The noise was like a dentist’s drill. Made his hair crackle. Sent him on to the sardine jetty with its spangly glitter of scales from the morning’s haul. It reeked, but the smell was comforting, homely.
The upside.
Who knew, maybe Doris was right. Perhaps the CCC would vindicate him. He could eventually launch civil action. Years, it would take, during which he’d be grooming his victimhood and paying for the pleasure all the while, and that would be worse than living like he was now. No, let them do their procedural polka – he just sought a bit of order, maybe a low-key job without excitement or stress. A quiet life. As himself. Because he was still largely himself, wasn’t he? Perhaps not the Tom Keely of old, but still within reach of him. His principles were intact. He wasn’t totally threadbare. Not morally. Was he?
He was staring at the blunt, pitted face of a mooring bollard. As if he’d been addressing it. Beseeching it, even. And maybe he had been. Yes, he had. But glory, look at this thing. It was massive, bovine, the size of Lang Hancock’s head. Like an inscrutable idol shorn of its horns. In the face of Keely’s puny human query the iron plug radiated mineral contempt. It was indifferent. Which was as it should be. After all, it wasn’t fair on hardware, being expected to dish out spiritual advice.
He stepped away. But for a moment he couldn’t walk straight. Too hard to navigate and manage his thoughts at the same time. He settled for a limestone boulder in the lee of a boatshed. Stared at the junk washing against the seawall above the little coomb where the old slipway had been.
No, he wasn’t so sure what he was anymore. Didn’t feel so righteous. Not after last night. It was one thing to have felt favour at last, however brief. What disturbed him was not the sex but the talk. Gemma telling him about Bunker. That was her mistake and he didn’t know how it could be undone. She thought he was safe, as if he’d earned that kind of trust. But he was just another randy bloke staring at her legs, yearning to touch, and such misplaced trust frightened him. Whole thing was a bloody mess. They had nothing in common, the two of them, just kid stuff and middle-aged loneliness. And now he was stuck with her. Or without her. Whichever. Only three doors from his hideout. Every day from here on in. With the kid. Who set something off in him each time they met.
So now he was doubly bound, trapped like a bug in a jar – addled, livid, dizzy, butting his head and turning circles. Making a damn fool of himself. Wilting in the full shock and awe of the sun, losing minutes like a man shedding dandruff. He should go home, find a hat at least, but he was so restless. And the pain wasn’t terrible. He could see fine now. Better. And the boats were everywhere, beautiful, familiar, diverting.
He got up and walked on through the clutter of docks, sheds, jetties and dealerships into the hardstandings where yachts, cruisers and workboats stood on chocks and hung in slings to be scoured and anti-fouled. The air stank of diesel, grease, paint, fibreglass, and Keely tried not to think of all the toxic crap washing into the sea. Someone else’s fight now.
He sidled between buffed hulls and scrofulous strakes, beneath stepped masts and exhaust-blackened transoms as drills and sanders wailed in the bellies of launches, ocean racers, gamefishers. He suffered a boyish twinge kicking through teak shavings and bundles of rags, cable-ties, trimmed electrical wire, steel swarf. As he thumbed a burnished bronze prop he thought again of The Folly. And was rescued from another sad jag by the sight of Wally Butcher’s clapped-out van.
He hadn’t seen the old rogue to speak to for a year or more. Wally was always in and out of these yards and in better times Keely had enjoyed running into him. Wally was old-school. But since losing Harriet, the boat and then the job, Keely had dodged him guiltily, waving at a distance or faking preoccupation. From shame. Perhaps even vanity. And it was rotten. Ducking the old coot. Because Wally was loyal as a cattle dog. Forty years of hurt and bafflement and not once had he heard the man offer a harsh word about his father.
He’d only been a boy when things went wobbly between Wally and Nev. In the days when most tradesmen were happy to work for the council or a government works department they’d gone into business together, made a go of it on their own. Just a pair of working-class blokes, they were, but they went hard at it, balls to the wall, and had begun to make some headway. Before Billy Graham and his groupies showed up. Before Nev and Doris went all ‘different’. Before Wal was left holding the rag. By all accounts the divergence hadn’t been gradual. Not that it was acrimonious, just bewildering. For the Keelys it was a sudden, radical shift, a total explosion of reality. Happened to lots of people those years, often only a momentary enthusiasm, but for Nev and Doris it was deep and lasting. In the wake of their religious conversion they were fundamentally realigned. And even for Wal, who bore the brunt, whose life was overturned in a manner less joyous, it was impressive – even frightening – to witness.
Nev did nothing in half measures. He was an all-out, open-throttle bloke, and in one blinding ‘Just as I Am’ moment he was letting the dead bury their dead. And the partnership, if not the friendship, was chaff to the winds. He just walked from the business and went out saving souls with Doris. No one could blame Wally for feeling bitter, not after what it cost him to save things singlehandedly and press on. Said it was twice the work and half the fun. He’d survived financially, but without his mate in it with him it was suddenly just work. Nev was lost to Christ. Yet by some miracle of agnostic tolerance the friendship endured. And even if Wal’s teeth were gritted he did his best to give Nev his profane and tender blessing.
Keely remembered him from Saturday afternoons in the garage. His feral sideburns like long streaks of grease as he looked up from the entr
ails of a Norton. The footy yammering away on the old bakelite radio. Wal was forever urging young Tom to pull his finger, rewarding him with a fart redolent of meat pies and lager. Evenings on the back verandah, the men sat in a pair on the bench seat from a wrecked EH, often speechless in the last light of day. You could sense something solid between them. Despite Jesus. And all the lost Sundays.
Oh, the sight of Wal in church. The only time he ever came. Staring up at Nev in the pulpit. Wal’s face blank and closed like the ex at the wedding. That’s how he’d looked at the graveside, too. Like a man spurned all over again.
Keely angled up to the familiar van. It was parked alongside an old plank riverboat some fool was busy pouring his savings into. Beneath the scaly transom, a midden of tools, rags, oil filter and sump. Between torrents of Wally’s bilious imprecation, snatches of talkback radio rose like the fumes of something noxious from the bilge. Keely stepped onto an upturned milk crate and beheld the hairy arse and the King Gees protruding from the engine hatch.
What’s that in there, a Cummins? called Keely in the blokiest voice he could summon.
Perkins, came the gruff reply.
That’s all a Perkins needs – a greasy one-eyed butcher. Can’t this joker find a proper mechanic?
Wally hauled himself upright and peered evilly over the gunwale. It took a moment for the old bugger’s face to rearrange itself.
Tommy bloody Keely, he said with the makings of a grin. How are ya, son?
Ah, I’m alright.
Christ, by the looks of ya I think you might be kiddin yeself.
Keely laughed. Okay, he said. I’m shithouse. How are you?
I’m old, son. If anyone could find a spare paddock they’d lead me out there and put a bullet in me from kindness.
You don’t look too bad, said Keely. For an ugly old bastard.
Jesus, you look like your old man with that bloody beard. Where you been?
Oh, I’m still in town.
Don’t see you on the telly anymore.
Nah, they rissoled me.
Well, you did call that fat cunt a crook. And on the telly, no less.
I did.
So yer old man was wrong, then. The truth won’t set you free.
Keely shrugged indulgently.
So, what’ll those shit-stirrers do without ya?
They seem to be coping.
Pity, said Wal. Got used to seein ya every other night. In ya fancypants suit. Stirrin the possum.
Constraining our great economy.
Makin us all feel guilty for fuckin the world up.
Traitors to progress, Wal.
Tree-huggin homosexuals, the lottaya. Strippin the hair off a man’s chest.
Keely laughed; the old bugger was only half joking.
Need some work done?
Nah, said Keely with a grimace. Boat’s gone. Only the tinnie left. Just walking past, really.
Once a victim, eh? They get ya, boats. They’re not as much fun, but women are cheaper, son.
I thought you might’ve retired.
Who can afford not to work? said Wally, looking him up and down appraisingly.
Well, some have greatness thrust upon us.
And how’re you enjoyin it?
Don’t ask.
Hittin the piss, by the looks. So, how’s that girla yours?
Keely’s wince was enough.
Well, shit. You are in the wars.
Nah, that’s old news.
Wally wiped his hands on a rag and climbed out over the transom to sit splaylegged on the boat’s marlin-board. He was a short, fat man, bald and speckled with sun lesions. He sported a glass eye. And it was immediately evident he did not favour undies.
No bulldust, with that fluff on your face you really do look like him.
Nah, said Keely, basking a little despite himself.
You know, he’d be as old as me now. Think of that, eh? He never got old.
You’re not that old, Wal.
Well, youth has flown, sunshine. There it is. Unlovely fact.
Keely dipped his head. In this man’s presence he felt about fifteen years old.
Just think of it, but. Last time I saw him he was younger’n you.
Yeah, I do think about it. Too much, these days.
Well. We got that in common, then. That and our good looks.
Keely stood there toeing a ravaged drive belt.
He’s a hard one to live up to, Wal.
But you’re a chip off the old block, son.
No.
Any mug can see it. Out there savin the world from itself. Callin it as ya see it. And gettin ya tit in the wringer for ya trouble. He’d be proud, the mad sod.
Hey, said Keely, trying to break the drift of the conversation. You still ride a bike?
Piles and all.
Never give up the Norton, eh?
’65 Atlas.
Nev swore by the Trumpy.
Hate the Poms, love their bikes, said Wal with a grin. His teeth had not fared well.
Keely felt soft as a chamois, perilously vulnerable. He was suddenly apprehensive about what the old fella might say next.
Your mum orright?
Keely nodded.
Bloody fine woman.
She is.
How old are ya, exactly?
Forty-nine.
Truly, ya do look like him, son. At the end.
Keely felt the jab in his guts.
And I don’t say it to make a prick of meself.
No? he asked, smarting.
As a mate, son.
Really.
Him and your mum – they never went soft, didn’t fake it, never gave up. If his heart hadn’t give out, he’d’ve been up and back at it. That was him, what I loved about him. He had that boilin thing in him. You know: Fuck this, let’s do somethin about it. Of all that churchy talk, son, it was the only thing rung true to me. Like he said, believe what ya like. Think what ya like. You’ll be judged for what ya do. Even if ya cock it up. Die tryin. You were a kid, I spose. You won’t remember.
I remember, Wal.
Well, just bloody make sure ya do.
What’re you saying?
I dunno. What would I know? Just don’t roll over and go soft. Show some family pride and stick it up em.
The old man looked at Keely a long moment, eyes lit up. But blinking, too, as if remorseful. Sensing he’d let himself get caught up and had said too much.
There ya go. Advice on life from Wally Butcher. If ya didn’t look broke I’d send you an invoice.
Always happy to listen to wisdom, Wal, said Keely tightly. Anything else while I’m down here?
Always pay cash. And try not to piss in the shower.
Shoulda brought a notebook, said Keely.
That’s all the nuggets I got, son.
Well, it’s plenty to be going on with.
Wally rooted around in his shirt pocket a moment and passed down an oil-stained card.
Give us a call sometime – we’ll go crabbin.
No worries.
And say hello to your mother.
I will.
Sure yer orright?
Yeah, he lied.
Here, shake a man’s hand, why don’tcha.
Keely shook his big, gnarled, greasy paw and stood gormlessly for a moment until Wally hoisted himself back into the bowels of the boat.
His father.
Once more.
Forever.
The father.
Keely walked homeward stung but more or less coherent, as if Wally’s bluntness had momentarily unscrambled him.
Lame that it always came back to this. Faith said he was a man who needed reminding he had a mother, a parent who had not been dead thirty-five years.
Yet there it was. The father-shaped hole in him, hot and deep and realer than any notion he had words for.
Neville Keely. Forever the young bear. How would he have fared, had he survived? This was an era for reptiles, not bears. Would he have faced
down the shellacked bump and grind of the evangelical super-church, the evil sugar-drip of prosperity theology? Imagine him taking his stolid, courageous Bonhoeffer into that swamp of co-option and collaboration. Maybe Wal was right. If not for the heart attack he might have still gone out and kicked some iniquitous arse. Or perhaps he’d have moved on to subtler work like his widow. And it was true, Faith was right, Doris had only become visible to Keely once the old man’s gigantic presence was gone. Still, he left a hell of an absence. It was harder all the time to distinguish reality from myth. And he’d known for years that he modelled himself upon a memory. Probably unwise. But impossible to let go, even now.
How could you measure up? There was no longer any grand striding towards justice and equality. In this new managerial dispensation change was incremental or purely notional. Big gestures were extinct. Even on YouTube messianic figures arose and evaporated in hours. And yet he knew his father was not just a man of his time. For all his own triumphs as an activist, the forest coupes spared, the spills exposed and species protected, there’d be no one talking about Tom Keely in thirty years. His father had exceeded the bounds of his class and refused to follow the template of his generation.
He had nine years of school to his name. Married a wharfie’s daughter, put in ten hours at the workshop, four in night school, enrolled at a provincial Bible college and took theology units by correspondence, then waded untimely into parish affairs, bringing a bit of shopfloor pugnacity to matters of the spirit. The man remade himself, then tried to refashion the entire world around him, which was his making and breaking, Keely knew it – and by comparison he felt like a coaster, the inheritor of another man’s social and moral capital. From his baby-boom standpoint of generational ease, it was hard to credit just how hard Nev had worked, how far he dragged himself, how wildly he swam against the current.
Keely only had to recall how wrong his father looked in church. He simply wasn’t a suit man, wouldn’t even consent to wearing the Pelaco shirt or brown brogues of the true evangelical. Doris said that in his jeans and workshirt he looked like a wrestler impersonating Woody Guthrie. He was for the little bloke, the reject, the no-hoper. He bellowed about saving bodies as well as souls. Keely could remember it vividly: the early excitement in the drip-dry congregation at having this rough beast suddenly among them, the parishioners thrilled at being groovy enough to hire him. And the queer cocktail of pride and shame he felt as a boy hearing Nev preach.
