‘Pretty much,’ I said. As I unscrewed the peanut butter jar Hemi sat at my feet, hoping I might scoop her some. The light brown surface of the peanut butter was smooth and untouched. I thought of the skin on Carmelina’s face.
Bobbie looked up. ‘Hot hot?’
Eden came in and said, ‘Geri was doing her stunt driver impression again.’ He walked straight over and stuck a finger in the untouched peanut butter and then its skin was messed.
*
Nothing was said, or not at the time, but later that night, after dessert and after our showers, Bobbie poured herself another glass of wine and asked where Carmelina lived.
I hadn’t yet answered when Eden jumped in and said, ‘She’s from the new estate.’
I looked at Eden. We were twins but we were different. We jammed the same meat into the same skin but came up with different sausages. I said, ‘She lives at the back of the shop.’
‘They’ve moved,’ Eden said.
‘There are lots of new estates in the sea,’ Bobbie said. She looked into her wine as if unhappy with it but she still took another big swig anyway.
‘She lives at the shop,’ I said again.
‘I saw a letter on Mr Colt’s desk,’ Eden said. ‘She’s moved.’
‘You can trade mystery,’ Bobbie said, watching us. ‘Easy sell.’
It wasn’t the right time and I wasn’t yet ready but I raised it then anyway. I said, ‘Kids at school are buying Easter eggs as presents.’
‘I can’t think,’ Bobbie said instantly, ‘of anything more ludicrous.’
Bobbie’s words cut the air like a mower. She looked over at Eden as if for confirmation. He said, ‘It’s not my story.’ Hemi was against Eden’s leg. I patted my knee to see if she’d come and she rolled over and nestled. Bobbie wasn’t good at birthdays or Christmas but I wished she was better at this Easter.
‘Stupid Easter eggs,’ I said to Hemi.
*
Race season.
It was the first time we’d swum against fourteen-year-olds and there should have been a leap because these boys were bigger and more developed and from the gun that’s how it felt.
The pace was always on early but in this race two boys in the centre lanes went out blistering. It was the 200-metre free. I was in lane six. I saw these two boys go and I had to decide whether to match them and I started to but they were burning. I couldn’t tell where Eden was. He was on the other side of them in lane two or three. I realised that if I kept after them I’d blow up. I eased off and stayed with the pack and we hit the first turn and I was on the front of the followers in third. Then came the moment.
Somewhere between the seventy- and eighty-metre mark and with two-and-a-bit laps still to go I felt myself relax or settle. I shed the frantic and cruised as though I didn’t have to hurry even though the pace was on.
It wasn’t confidence. I didn’t have this. I did not think I would win. But I had a read on the race like I’d never felt before and what it allowed was for me to conserve.
I sailed along for nearly a lap. My head didn’t know but my body did. We turned into lap three of four. I was still on the front of the chasers. The two boys ahead were well clear but as we turned they should have been ahead by more. They weren’t pulling away. I cruised for another twenty or so metres. It seemed easy enough. I wasn’t the fastest but maybe I’d trained the most. I knew as I cruised that I could handle the level. I still didn’t know where Eden was. I got to half-way down the second last lap and then I had a thought.
I had trained like crazy and the gap could be bridged.
There was no time for halves. I had to be on them before they knew I was coming.
I didn’t breathe. I buried my head and gave it everything and more. It was like going straight from third gear to sixth.
I bridged fast. I couldn’t tell where everyone else in the race was but I got to the shoulder of the leaders and suddenly they felt close. I could feel their wake. I moved closer to the side of my lane. They were neck and neck but their positions were staggered. I could surf them.
We flipped the turn and they’d been out in front all race but now it wasn’t just two it was three. Suddenly one of them could come third. I relaxed again but only for a few seconds. I got deep breaths in. I kept my rating high. I sat right on their shoulder. I got near the front without being on it. I felt the pace go up and I went with it. It didn’t last. I eased as they did. I was tired now but I was racing.
All those races over all those years. The creek. The cold. Chasing Eden. I was forged at high speed.
We got to half-way down the final lap and instead of hanging on I pushed. I edged to the front. I wanted them to know me. They were bigger, stronger and older and they would take me. They knew it. I knew it. In a pure sprint for the wall they’d have me nineteen times out of twenty. And so I decided to go. I jumped again and sprinted. From too far out. But at 96 per cent of max.
I felt clear calm water for the first time that day. I led. I was eleven years old, a primary school kid. They were two years into high school. There was open space between me and the wall. And it panicked them.
They couldn’t let me win and so they didn’t. They both put their afterburners on. They went 100 per cent. They came over the top with twenty metres still to go, a touch more. It was too early. I swung as fast as I could but I had 4 per cent left and I held it. The skin of my teeth was stretched. It was frantic in there. They pushed out the lead but I waited.
The wall. It was all about timing. Maybe I was gaining, maybe they’d seized. It was too late to tell. Fifteen metres to go, ten, eight. It was time. I went faster when there was no faster left. I went 100 per cent and I tried to give more. My head spun. I couldn’t see. I reached. My vision went black. It went white. I went in and out as if all my blood was in my arms, my feet, my shoulders. I was close. I was there. I touched for the wall and my vision was blurred but I saw their fingers touch after.
They were stronger and faster than me.
But I had won.
*
I knew the hands. Eden’s. He hoisted me from the water. My chest heaved. Water flew the air like jubilation in droplet form. He looked concerned, my face blank, my vision blurred. But he’d watched it unfold and didn’t need to be told.
‘You’re all right,’ he said. He made it sound as though we’d won it together. ‘You’re all right,’ he said a second time, beaming.
I wanted in that moment to jump on a horse and charge across a field with my elbows splayed wide and my arms pumping hard.
And then I focused on Eden and he looked fine and normal and like he’d just been out training.
‘Definitely a Hardacre,’ Bobbie said to me, sweeping towels about us. And she hadn’t yelled or spoken with any special volume but I felt like she had in her head.
‘Dark horse,’ she said, her eyes glowing.
And then Eden said in a voice like buttered toast. ‘He’s a racer,’ and he hugged me and it was as real a hug as you ever could feel.
‘Now for you in the fly,’ I said.
‘Won’t beat Lamprierre,’ he said, referring to the current Under 15 fly king. We’d seen him plenty and we knew he was good.
‘Don’t worry about Lamprierre,’ Bobbie said. ‘Every time he gets a pay cheque he thinks he’s a millionaire.’
And then an official approached to congratulate me. ‘Qualified for the Nats,’ she said. In Under 15s. As an eleven-year-old.
And then Bobbie turned to the official and placed a proud hand on her arm. ‘Got a bit of mongrel in him,’ she boasted.
*
We were on a roll. Every day is critical but some are more critical than others. The 100-metre butterfly and we weren’t done yet. Eden was still fresh. It was his turn.
‘You fly too far below disaster,’ Bobbie urged Eden minutes before the next race. ‘Your risk management,’ she added, ‘is awry.’ She looked around the pool. ‘Lots of swishing of manes,’ she said as she tilted her head highe
r.
I turned away. I had gone deep in the freestyle and for long enough for it to matter. I had re-fuelled and re-watered but I still might be shot. The race would know. I’d throw myself at it.
‘Win or learn,’ Bobbie said, still on at Eden.
The blocks. The start. I felt fidgety and nervous. I always did. Eden was ready and loose. He always was.
We jumped. The gun fired again. False start. I knew it wasn’t me. We swam to the side.
‘You okay?’ I said to Eden.
He looked but that was all. An official went to him but only in passing. It was lane seven. Disqualified. It wasn’t Lamprierre. I was in lane three, Eden in two, Lamprierre in five. We stepped back onto our blocks.
I looked around then at the noisy hall of swimming. There were so many people. There was cheering and bouncing, kids running and being yelled at to walk. I thought of the blood racing through all the bodies in the hall. The dreams and ambitions. The life. I found Bobbie in the crowd. She had both hands on a towel and was clutching it to her mouth. She was calmer in close-up. I turned for Eden. He rolled his head from side to side, slowly. He stared straight down the pool. That night on the road when he’d drawn lines in the fog on his car window.
Chlorine stung the air. It made me think of Mum, of detergent, of clean pure custard. I stretched my arms out behind. I had been there and beyond and I could face anything. The starter called our mark. He told us to set. I thought of a car windscreen, wide and smashed open. I thought of a rear-view mirror, tiny. I felt my head spin, like a car.
The gun fired and we leaped.
Lamprierre shot away. He was always going to. I went faster than I should have. I had something more than nothing. I worked. I pushed for sustainable or what I thought it might be. And then I pushed some more. I would pace Eden, be his lead out. I knew he’d push steady, power on, never slow, grind us down. But he could do more and I wanted him to. This was his event. I was hurting and I would pay but I was doing it for him.
We went past the 40-metre mark. Lamprierre was away but not by too much. We scuttled along. I squeezed that bit harder. I decided to bury. I put my head down and turned my rating up high. I gave everything to the turn, flew in, got my timing right, exploded off. I looked across and I’d made ground. If Eden was still with me then he was in this. It was time to look. I gulped for breath and looked around for my brother.
Eden wasn’t where I thought he’d be. He wasn’t coming. He wasn’t because he was already there. He was ahead of me. His moment was now and he was about to gun Lamprierre down.
My job was done. I eased. Eden was there, right there. He had that flitting style, almost soundless, a needle through water. We were sixty metres in, forty metres to go. It was a race between two. I was gutted and done. I kept on regardless. I moved closer to the rope, to Eden’s side. Eden did too. The movement was there, the slippery snake, his legs flipping torrents of water and air. I slipped lower. I wouldn’t make third. It didn’t matter.
Except that I then felt Eden shift or slow or something not right. We edged closer when we should have moved apart. He had the fitness and he had the condition. The hot channel at The Warmies, just like Dawn Fraser. The creek. The pool. Werner yelling at us from the bank. He had our parents, our dead parents. We swam on sadness. He had so much he could burn.
I looked over. I saw Eden’s face as plain as our mum’s. He rose and swept and plunged again. And then he looked over at my lane like a farmer over the fence, as if the first thing he thought was to offer me a hand.
In a race. In the heated heart of it.
And then he surged on, off down his lane.
I could barely hold my stroke. The other swimmers came and swallowed me whole. Eight starters, one disqualified, one behind me. Sixth. I should have done better.
But all I could think of was Eden. And as I did I realised something important. There are many ways to win and Eden planned to do it by losing.
*
My brother. Suddenly then I wanted to hug and hit him at once. In the midst of a race Eden had slowed as if he should wait for me. There was that time just after the accident when we raced in the creek and he hadn’t really tried and it had made me feel stupid. We were still in the pool and we should have been getting out but he ducked under my rope and I swam to him. ‘Are you letting me win?’ I asked or accused.
His hair was thicker than mine. I wanted to pull it and I wanted to hold it.
He looked at me and we were both covered in water and he said, ‘Who are we?”
And we were brothers and grandsons though we were learning at both.
So I said, ‘I’m not stupid you know.’
And he said, ‘We’re twins.’
And I said, ‘Don’t let me win.’
And he might have laughed or even looked away but he didn’t, he looked calm. ‘When you’re out in front,’ he said, ‘I can’t lose you.’
*
‘You’re the index,’ Bobbie said.
‘No I’m not.’
‘He tracks you,’ she said.
‘What’s the index?’ I asked.
‘What everyone’s trying to beat.’
*
‘Who won the men’s 100-metre fly in Beijing?’ Werner asked across the vines. We were helping Bobbie pick the last of her cabernet franc.
‘Depends who you ask,’ Eden said.
‘Go on,’ Bobbie said.
‘Phelps in 50.58,’ Eden said like a whip.
‘Good good,’ Werner said. ‘And who was winning in training?’
‘Phelps,’ Eden said, suddenly buzzing, ‘was beaten the whole way. He was never going to win. He was seventh at the final turn. But at the last second he lunged and somehow he came up first.’ He said this as if the dream for him was to come from behind and win.
‘Who was winning in training?’ Werner kept saying.
‘Dunno,’ Eden said.
‘No one remembers who wins at training,’ Werner exclaimed.
‘Crocker,’ I said.
‘Had a shocker?’ Bobbie said.
‘World record holder going in,’ I said.
‘Exactly,’ Werner said.
*
Every Thursday when the final bell went everyone filed out of school except for Carmelina and me. Her mum couldn’t pick her up until just after four. Those thirty minutes opened out to us like a road to someplace else.
We’d stroll out to the dry barren oval and walk across the onion grass and lie down and stare at the pale blue sky and watch the white doves tumble. Some days we’d hang about the swings, others we’d sit against the lemony walls of the shelter sheds and look across the oval at the scoreboard, its twin telephone poles jutting at each end.
The week after the State Championships we sat on that bench with the scoreboard in view and she reached into her bag and pulled out an Easter egg. It was the size of a toy football. I swallowed then but not from hunger. I’d hoped she wouldn’t remember.
The egg was covered in electric gold foil. This foil had a shimmer and a brightness but it was nothing compared to the energy of Carmelina, who glowed as she lifted the egg towards me. She held the bright gold egg in one hand as she reached down to close her bag. As she bent down I looked out at the pale empty oval and the unfinished scoreboard and knew that if Mum was home I’d run there now and beg her. I wished I had something I could give to Carmelina.
Carmelina handed the gold egg to me and I took it.
‘It’s big,’ I said. I wanted to explain why I hadn’t bought her anything, that I didn’t have the money, that Bobbie thought it was ludicrous. There’s indignity and there’s daylight, Bobbie had said at random sometime, I couldn’t remember why.
Carmelina sensed my squirm. ‘It’s just from our shop,’ she said. Then she added as if it was not a big deal, ‘Would Eden want one?’
‘I’ll give him half of this,’ I said rapidly. And then I felt okay to add, ‘I haven’t got you anything.’
‘It’s just from t
he shop,’ she said again.
I would have sat there uncomfortable but Carmelina took us straight to someplace else.
‘I always felt nervous,’ she started, ‘when I spoke to my dad. My own dad.’
I wondered as I tried to think of something to say whether the gold-wrapped egg would melt there in my hands. ‘I never felt nervous with my mum and dad,’ I said stupidly.
‘I know,’ she said. ‘I mean, yeah.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. I motioned to the egg as if I was still thanking her for it.
The southern end of the shelter shed was the coldest part of the school. It was always in shade, its face to the sea breeze. But that day for once it felt warm there. As the wind came in I felt it picking at the sweat under my arms.
All I could think to say: ‘Sometimes I feel, I don’t know, almost happy when I hear that something bad has happened to someone else. I shouldn’t say that.’
I wanted then to ask Carmelina whether she still lived at the shop or whether she’d moved, as Eden had said. But when I looked up at her face it looked set and so I hesitated and then I felt a small part of the chocolate egg soften and collapse in my hands. Instead then I said, ‘I would.’
‘I would,’ I said a second time and straight after, as if time was running out. ‘I would kiss you,’ I said. I felt determined right then to be specific and clear.
‘Kiss me?’
‘One day.’
‘You’ve thought about it?’
‘I’d like to,’ I said.
She didn’t touch me, smile or lean in for a kiss, though maybe she eased back against the wall, slightly.
After a pause she said, ‘I’ve thought about it too.’
She looked out at the oval. We sat close but with our backs to the wall. Eventually I sensed her head tilt slightly towards me, not so that we were touching but enough for me to be sure. I turned towards her and took her in. Her head was tilted just down enough for me to see the white centre line where her hair was parted. I could see the whiteness of her scalp at close range. For a fraction of a second I thought of my mother’s head and more specifically of my mother’s hair; sometimes when Eden and I were small we’d play with it as she talked on the phone.
We Were Not Men Page 13
