�You�re all obsessed,� Clyde continues. �It�s such an Aussie trait, to always go on about the weather. That�s all they can fucken talk about in Sydney. �Is it going to be sunny? Can we get a swim in?� It drives me mad.�
What would his chest look like? His nipples?
He tells me how bored he is with Sydney, that it is too white and too stratified and that the brute strength of the ocean scares him. And that it is too full of English people.
What would his legs look like? Would his thighs be solid, would his calves be firm?
And he tells me that he already likes Melbourne, that it is ugly, like Glasgow. He smiles at a young scarfed Turkish woman navigating her pram past the upturned milk crates.
Was his cock thick? Did he still have his foreskin?
What would his sweat taste like?
�My father would agree with you,� I answer. �He�s a truckie, he�s driven all over this country and he reckons it is apartheid.�
�And you, do you agree with him?�
The direct question is disconcerting. I know I am blushing. It is a question that has no adequate answer. Of course I agree and of course I don�t, there is no possible answer that can encompass the breadth of the continent.
I�m never going to see him again. Fuck him if he can�t take a joke. �You don�t get a get-out-of-gaol-free card, mate. You�re a European�you pricks caused this mess.�
It is the way he abandons himself to his chuckling that makes my mind up: I like this guy. He laughs so much he nearly falls off his crate. I am aware that everyone around us is staring. I look down.
When I look up, he is eyeing me carefully, appraising me, and it is then that he seems to make a decision.
�I was meant to come over with my partner, we�d been planning it for a year. And then the prick goes off with some Polish twink he met at a disco.� Clyde elongates the word, makes it sound ugly, makes it sound like the most hideous of words. �So I thought, fuck it, I�m going to go anyway, I�ll go to the other end of the world and see if I can forget him. And I woke up this morning and it was drizzling and I was freezing and I looked out the window of the hotel and it was grey and miserable and I realised I couldn�t remember the cunt�s face. That�s when I thought, I�m going to like Melbourne.�
We are silent for a moment, then the coffee arrives and he says, �So tell me about you.�
Slowly, hesitantly, I begin to talk. About study, about working with men with acquired brain injury. He asks more questions, asks about what Luke was like at school, and says something about how my parents must have worked hard to afford to pay for me to study at such a school.
Then I know that Luke has told him nothing about me, about my scholarship, about my swimming, what I was and what I have done. And I am grateful, but I am also hurt: maybe Luke is ashamed of me. So I don�t say anything about my past; instead I tell him about now. I hope that the now is enough.
The waitress returns to collect the empty glasses. Clyde looks down and says, �I can�t really have another.�
�That�s OK,� I say. �I guess I should go.�
Clyde looks right at me, and I notice how grey and certain his eyes are, the rigid line of his nose, the sharp cleft in his chin. He hasn�t shaved and there is a smudge of drying coffee at the bottom of his lip. He says, �Do you want to go out for a drink tonight, Danny? I was going to meet some work people but I�d prefer to have a drink with you.� He says it straight out, no hesitation.
I clear my throat. �Dan,� I say. �I prefer to be called Dan.�
�Oh.� He�s taken aback.
And I am wondering, do I want to go out for a drink with him? Don�t I just want to enjoy my version of a long weekend, walking and reading, lost in my own space, not talking, not seeing, not answering to anyone?
�Luke just keeps talking about Danny, so I thought��
�It�s OK,� I interrupt, �I just prefer Dan. Danny was a long time ago.�
His cool grey eyes are questioning but he remains silent.
So I continue. �Yeah, yeah, I�d like a drink.�
What would it be like to kiss him?
Labour Day Weekend, March 1997
‘This used to be the front entrance, but Dad had it all torn down before we moved in.’
Danny and Martin were on the balcony of Martin’s bedroom. To get there you had to step through the enormous open window, its frame carved from a heavy hardwood painted white, with lead ballasts on either side. There was just enough space on the balcony for four people. Martin pointed to the houses across the street, three- and four-storeyed with front yards as big as football fields. Houses like Martin’s.
‘Most of those houses,’ he said, ‘are owned by Jews. Dad didn’t want us to live on Jew Street so he spent almost as much money as it cost to buy the place knocking down the original walls and putting the entrance on Orrong Road.’
Danny nodded as though he understood what Martin had said, though he didn’t. He thought that there was something obscene in what Martin had just told him. He also thought there was something very stupid in what Mr Taylor had done, something wasteful and ignorant. It was more information he would have to keep from his parents; his father would rant and rave, his mother would shake her head and say, How awful. And of course he would have to keep it from Demet, who would go spare. Fucking racists. He could hear her saying it. He blocked it all out. Demet and his mother and his father were in the other world. It was like his two worlds were parts of different jigsaw puzzles. At first, he’d tried to fit the pieces together but he just couldn’t do it, it was impossible. So he kept them separate: some pieces belonged on this side of the river, to the wide tree-lined boulevards and avenues of Toorak and Armadale, and some belonged to the flat uniform suburbs in which he lived.
Martin pointed to a house across the street with what looked like castle turrets on each corner, and with two tall liquidambar trees in the front yard through which Danny could see the Yarra River. ‘That’s Jacob Latter’s house,’ Martin said. ‘Ugly, isn’t it?’
Jacob was a Jew. Sometimes the boys at school would tease him and say, ‘Hey, Jacob, can you smell gas?’ If Demet were to hear them she would be furious: it was all politics now with Demet, all New World Order and Srebrenica and Arafat selling out the Palestinians on the White House lawn. She’d say that the boys who teased Jacob at school were rich racist scum. But it wasn’t like that, he knew, it was just something that happened at a boys school, you just mocked and teased and joked. Like in the showers when Scooter would joke about being careful not to drop the soap around Tsitsas or when they said to Luke, ‘We’ll-have-six-spling-lolls-and-one-sweet-and-sour-pork-and-two-flied-lice.’ It was no different to Demet and Yianni calling him a skip or a bogan, or calling Boz a blackfella or Shelley a curry muncher or Mia a Leb. It was no different, but he couldn’t get the pieces to fit, they wouldn’t go together. He couldn’t explain it.
There was a knock on Martin’s door and a soft voice called, ‘Where are you?’
‘Out here.’
Emma, Martin’s sister, stepped over the window frame and almost fell on Danny, then steadied herself on the balcony rail. In the cramped space their bodies had to touch. Danny and Martin were shoulder to shoulder. Danny stepped back from the rail, anxious about getting too close to Emma. He was sure he reeked of chlorine. He thought Emma was the most dazzling creature he had ever seen. Her blonde hair was cut short, which made her blindingly blue eyes seem enormous. She was wearing a man’s oversized white shirt with the top two buttons undone. Her neck was pale, flawless; he tried to avoid looking there, near the second undone button where the plump swell of her breasts began. Emma was two years older than he was, had just started university. She was not only the most beautiful girl he had ever seen but also the smartest. The first time he’d visited the Taylors’ house, Martin had showed Danny her bedroom and he couldn’t believe how many books she owned—a whole wall of bookcases, books on the fl
oor, a book lying open on the bed, a stack of books on her bureau, on her dressing-room table. It was like a library, her room: everywhere you looked there were books. ‘Emma reads all the time,’ Martin had said to him, and the way he said it made it sound shameful, like something wrong. Demet would have loved Emma’s room, as would Luke. Emma and Luke and Demet should meet, but the pieces just didn’t fit.
Emma smiled at him. ‘I’m really glad you’re coming with us, Danny.’
‘Me too,’ Danny blurted out, but it came out as an indecipherable grunt. It felt as though he had something stuck in his throat.
Martin smirked. ‘She likes you, Dan.’
Emma rolled her eyes and said, effortlessly cutting, ‘Marty, you’re so childish. I don’t know why you hang around with him, Danny.’ She sighed and looked out across the skyline of gabled rooftops and transplanted European trees. ‘God, I have to get out of Toorak. Living here is like private school continuing all your life.’
Martin glowered at her. ‘What’s wrong with Toorak?’
She turned to Danny, smiling. ‘Go on, tell him what’s wrong with Toorak.’
Danny didn’t know what to say, what was expected of him. Was it a trick question, a challenge, a plea, a joke? Toorak was the most expensive suburb in Melbourne: was that what she wanted him to say? But everyone knew that. The more confused he was around her, the more entranced with her he became. He wondered what her skin would be like to touch, what her breasts would feel like. He thought, I am an astronaut and she is another planet. He thought, Is that childish? Toorak was also another planet. He didn’t answer and Emma turned her back on him.
Somehow, he couldn’t exactly work it out, but from that dismissive turn, he knew he had failed her.
‘Are you packed? Mum wants to head off soon.’
‘Yeah, we’re packed.’
We’re packed. He liked that Martin included him straightaway, instinctively. Martin and Danny—it was now nearly always Martin and Danny. At school, in the pool, it was now all Kelly and Taylor. All the boys knew, assumed it. Kelly and Taylor, mates. They were going to the beach, to another Taylor house, to celebrate the seventy-fifth birthday of Emma and Martin’s grandmother. Martin could have invited Wilco or Fraser—his family had known theirs forever—but Danny was the one to be invited. Wilco hadn’t complained, Fraser hadn’t said a word. It was Martin and Danny, that was how it was.
Emma pulled a packet of cigarettes out of her jeans pocket. She was about to put one in her mouth when Martin shook his head. ‘You can’t smoke up here, the smoke will go into my room.’
‘I’ll shut the window.’
‘I don’t want your filthy cancerous smoke in my face.’
Emma licked a finger and raised it. ‘The wind’s coming from the north,’ she announced, and gently pushed Danny to one side so she could get to the other end of the balcony. ‘I’ll make sure not to exhale in your faces.’ She lit her cigarette and Martin shut his window with a bang.
‘You’re a cow.’
Emma blew smoke into his face.
She had perfect skin, thought Danny, they both had skin like the surface of milk. Martin’s skin would be rough and Emma’s skin would be soft. That would be the only difference.
He was in the back seat with Martin and they were joking around and gossiping about school and talking about swimming. Mostly they were talking about swimming. The Australian Championships were on in October in Brisbane, and he was convinced that both he and Taylor would be there. He wanted to go to the Pan Pacs, he wanted to prove himself there, but the Coach said that it wasn’t the year, that it wasn’t time yet. But he wanted to prove himself against the world, not just Australia. It had to be the world now, it had to be the world if he was to have a chance of getting to Kuala Lumpur next year, to Sydney two years after that. ‘Be patient,’ said Coach. ‘You’re not ready yet.’ How Danny resented that phrase, hated it. Danny didn’t think it was a matter of patience, he thought it was all about competition, that it was only in the pool itself, in his control of the water and of his breath, in the being in his body not in his head, that he would prove he was ready, that he could beat them all.
‘Be patient,’ said Coach. ‘This is not your time.’
He would prove him wrong. He knew he was ready. First the Australian Championships, then the Pan Pacific Games, then the Commonwealth Games, and then it would be the Sydney Olympics. He was certain of it, he had it all mapped out. He would be there.
Martin flicked him across the thigh.
‘What?’ said Danny. Mrs Taylor was looking at him in the rearview mirror.
‘Mum asked you a question.’
‘Sorry, Mrs Taylor.’ Danny leaned forward. Mrs Taylor’s skin was orange, a colour Danny had never seen on humans until he met Martin’s mother and Scooter’s mother and Fraser’s mother. It was a skin cured like smoked meat by the rays of the solarium, then lathered with lotions and oils and creams.
‘I was wondering if you had been to Portsea before, Danny?’
The house was actually in Sorrento, on the wrong side of Portsea—Emma had told him that. Martin had told her to be quiet. Danny knew from the boys at school that Portsea was better than Sorrento.
‘No, Mrs Taylor, I don’t think I have.’
‘But you’ve been to Rosebud, haven’t you, maaate?’
Danny punched Martin on the shoulder, just hard enough to remind him who had the bigger muscles. Martin’s attempt at a wog-boy accent was pathetic. Danny had been to Rosebud, and to Dromana and Rye, where all the wogs and bogans went for summer. He had loved Rye as a kid, loved that the water stayed shallow for so far that you could go out from shore until your mother and father and sister and brother had almost disappeared from view, become just dabs of colour on the yellow sand, shimmering reflections vanishing in the sun’s haze. Danny sat back in the car, ignoring Martin. His smile felt like it could crack his whole face open, that it could explode, like in a science-fiction movie. All that mattered was that he would swim better and faster and stronger than Martin. Better, faster, stronger.
Sorrento was the most beautiful place he had ever seen. It was nothing like Rosebud, nothing like Rye. It was the green of it, the streets shaded by tall, thick-limbed trees. It was the blue of it, on one side the placid waters of the bay, and then, as the car crested the ridge of the peninsula, the roiling ocean came into view. It was the gold of it, the bright sunshine of early autumn, the tanned shoulders and torsos and limbs of the people sitting outside the cafés and the bars and fish-and-chip shops.
The house was the most beautiful house he had ever seen. The length of the dwelling was hidden by ivy and shadowed by a giant red bottlebrush that towered over the front yard. Room after room after room came off the seemingly endless dark corridor and then suddenly they were in a cavernous open space; one entire wall was floor-to-ceiling glass that looked out to the sea, a black leather sofa ran along the length of the room. There was an expensive-looking stereo system, a large-screen television, shelves crammed with games and books and sports equipment, another sofa in front of the television, and four black leather armchairs spread haphazardly across the space. At the far end of the room, double doors opened onto a dining room and beyond was the kitchen. Danny walked up to the window and looked out to a gently sloping yard. There was a tennis lawn, an immaculately neat garden bed, and beyond that, ocean, miles and miles of ocean.
Emma came up beside him. ‘It’s almost an isthmus,’ she explained. ‘So from the back garden there are steps down to the ocean beach.’ She turned and pointed to the other wall. ‘Behind that is the bay beach, maybe a five- or ten-minute walk.’
‘It’s j-just so incredible,’ was all that Danny could manage to stutter.
Mrs Taylor called from the kitchen, ‘Martin, show Danny where to put his bag.’
‘OK. And then we’re going swimming.’
Mrs Taylor made a peeved sound.
‘We have to train,’ Martin insisted.
His mother
came into the living area, absent-mindedly scratching at her white bra strap, just visible beneath the open neck of her light blue linen shirt. She walked over to a cabinet and opened it. ‘I was going to order us some fish and chips.’
‘We have to train. We’ll all eat after practice.’
It couldn’t be, but it sounded as though Martin was giving his mother an order. But Mrs Taylor didn’t seem to mind; she was twisting the silver bracelet on her wrist as she examined the shelves of bottles in the cabinet. Danny heard her say, ‘I told your father to order Bombay Sapphire gin—he knows she only drinks Bombay Sapphire,’ as he followed Martin out of the room.
‘Are we going to swim in the bay or the ocean?’ asked Danny, and Martin gave him a what-the-fuck-are-you-talking-about? look.
‘In the pool, of course, dickhead,’ Martin answered.
Standing naked in the bathroom, his Speedos in one hand, Danny looked down at his body. His chest was chiselled and strong, his biceps seemed enormous, and so did his calf and thigh muscles. What wasn’t changing was his height; while Martin was getting taller, Danny wasn’t growing at all. That was all he prayed for, that he would grow taller. That was why Coach said he wasn’t ready, why he had to be patient, why the Coach had changed his training, his workout, even his stroke. ‘The butterfly is your stroke, Danny. Your body dictates your stroke.’ But he didn’t want the butterfly to be his stroke. When he dreamed, when he saw the medal around his neck, the flash of the cameras, heard the anthem playing, it wasn’t for the butterfly. ‘It’s your stroke,’ the Coach insisted. ‘Take heed of your body. It’s your stroke.’ He didn’t want that body, he didn’t want that stroke.
The Taylors’ pool was in-ground and built just below the courtyard; you could sit on the tiled edge and look over the ocean, you could see the sunset from the pool.
Danny said to Martin, ‘I’m doing freestyle.’
Barracuda Page 9
