We Were Not Men

by Campbell Mattinson

  ‘I’m not either,’ she said.

  She whispered and I whispered and there was no need to but we both did anyway.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ I said.

  ‘I saw you there,’ she said.

  ‘I’m glad you did.’

  ‘I had to,’ she said.

  I said, ‘I don’t know where you’ve been.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ she said.

  ‘It’s been so long.’

  ‘Did you wait?’ she asked.

  ‘You stopped replying,’ I said.

  ‘My dad had just died,’ she said as though I hadn’t factored this in.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. I wanted to put this answer in underline, bold and italics but we were still whispering.

  I said, ‘If you haven’t lost a parent then you just don’t know.’ I said this because I thought this bonded us like iron, like it bonded all of us who have lost what others have not.

  ‘I like your sixteen-year-old lips,’ she said, that first night, the near-dark, another kiss, so much to say but we were going at speed.

  ‘I love you here,’ I said.

  ‘I’m here.’

  ‘On,’ I said.

  ‘Me too,’ she said.

  ‘Are we on?’ I asked. Although I knew we were. Already. We were. I didn’t care. I could feel it.

  ‘Your voice is deeper,’ she said.

  ‘I want to stay out all night with you,’ I said.

  ‘Yes. You can’t,’ she said.

  *

  We walked a dark path beside the Yarra River and climbed steps and at a height we stopped and kissed and then we walked to a tram stop and it was bright, suddenly, artificially bright, advertising lights, and Carmelina was there and she was warm. I sat then at the tram stop with her and waited for the next one along as if this is what we always did.

  In my head I said as I sat there with her, You’re my best other friend. As if she was up there with Eden.

  In my pocket then I felt my phone buzzing and it would be Eden and I’d reply soon but for now I only wanted this. ‘Is that Eden?’ Carmelina asked. I looked around for him but then I realised that she could feel the buzzing too, that with my phone in my pocket she could probably feel Eden’s texts vibrating against her leg.

  We looked straight ahead then as if we were tired, as if we wanted to just stay still with our legs touching.

  She said, ‘Carm.’

  ‘Calm?’

  ‘I call myself Carm now.’

  ‘Instead of Carmelina?’

  ‘I needed to change,’ she said.

  *

  We heard the noise from the tram stop. Someone had jumped from the bridge to the Yarra River below and the current would be strong, it always was, it ran to The Warmies. We ran to look over the bridge as people yelled out and boats zoomed, their lights reflecting on churned-up water, highlights of white.

  And down below in the water then all illuminated and clear was Eden, he’d been the one who had jumped, he had jeans on but he’d shed his top and the spread of his back looked colossal and his skin blazed slippery. He charged up the river like a salmon about to spawn.

  I looked down on him and I could have been confused or concerned or anything other than proud. But my arm was around Carmelina and our hips were pressed together and the smell of her was like nothing else. I looked at Eden and thought of fireworks and how he was them; Eden was my fireworks.

  *

  That night, back home at Newport, late. I hadn’t drunk enough water and it’d been warm and the house was warm too. I pulled cold mineral water from the fridge and guzzled it straight from the bottle and it tasted so good it was like summer after past summer had suddenly been spritzed and cleaned.

  *

  Eden and I were in our bedroom at Flowerdale when we heard Werner ask Bobbie, his voice low, ‘Would you come on a date night?’

  ‘Prefer a date loaf,’ she replied.

  ‘Seriously,’ he said.

  Instead of answering she said, ‘She’s back.’

  And I wondered if she was referring to Carmelina and I hoped that she was and then I heard him ask, ‘Who’s back?’

  And Bobbie said, ‘Just some girl with a positive attitude.’ And I was glad that she’d told him because I wanted everyone to know.

  And then Werner said, ‘The confidence is with Carmelina.’

  ‘I have a hate-hate relationship with that,’ Bobbie said.

  ‘Might freshen him up,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I’m buying.’

  I came out and there was no stopping me and even the way my feet moved felt brighter and Werner stepped away from Bobbie and faced me. He’d just asked her out and she’d made a joke of it and he said to me, ‘My maximum heart rate is meant to be 158 but today on the bike I topped out at 174.’

  And I didn’t say anything because there was nothing I could say and because I figured he was talking to Bobbie through me.

  And I guess I smiled or I may have appeared smug and Werner said, ‘We’re all more than what people think we are.’

  Bobbie turned then and it wasn’t about Werner, it was about me. ‘You’re going to grow up,’ she said, my face all puppied with hope, ‘and invest in oil and gas.’

  *

  Spring 2014. The chronology becomes important. We were sixteen years old.

  Carmelina texted me to say that it would be warm the next day. She wanted to wag sport and go swimming and she wanted to go somewhere different. We planned then to meet at the pools of Newport Lakes. They used to be a bluestone quarry. I’d never been there to swim but I knew they were set deep in the landscape and were more like craters than lakes.

  The day turned out even warmer than they’d said but it was windy and there was no one around, not even people walking dogs. Carmelina stripped off and she wasn’t a girl anymore and when I saw her in her swimwear I was alert but more than that I was scared because she was not the same river, it was true.

  We had both grown and changed but I worried that she had changed more because I’d kept looking back to see where she’d gone.

  What happened. We baked in the sun and I said we should swim and she said it was too deep and I strutted in without her. I was in full training; I was going for the Olympics. I swam slow at first but then I put in a burst. The water felt dead and choppy but I flashed across it anyway. When I returned I was puffed but only briefly and Carmelina slid her arms around me and then we were both wet from the lake.

  No one else was there and suddenly things were urgent. She ran her hands over my chest and I was no longer a boy, I was older. We moved away from the water and scrambled about the walls of the landscaped quarry. Soon we were pressed to each other against a dry rock face. I had my back to the rock with her pushing into me.

  There was rock above us, an overhang, almost like a cave. There was earth above us too, we were twenty metres from the top. We kissed with our arms around each other and I went to shuffle my feet or to change position and I slipped and reached out and there was glass there in a crevice of the wall, a rock of it, deep amber into cola, I’d never seen a rock of glass like it. It must have been dug up from the quarrying.

  I thought as I touched this glass, strange I know but I did, how hard it must have been for Mum to grow and to carry us twins, to give birth to two, how much it must have hurt, how scared she must have been.

  Carmelina leaned back in and I dropped the cola-like rock of glass and she didn’t stand and wait or grab for what I wanted but instead she pulled me to her and grabbed and encouraged my hand and when I didn’t go far enough she grabbed it again and pushed it deeper. I felt her then and it was like nothing else and she was like glass and like water and like a kind of swimming that I could touch. I had no real idea what I was doing but I did something. I went to put my other hand up her top and she’d put a loose shirt on and I struggled. She broke and whispered to me that there were buttons and that I should use them.

  She was right
but I didn’t. I pushed my hand up her shirt and it was awkward but the side of her stomach and the start of her back felt so incredible it might even have felt better than winning. She seemed almost to climb onto my hand and I opened my eyes and her hair had blown across my face so that it felt as though I was buried. She stayed on me and I would have kept moving except that she grabbed my wrist and hurried me to a spot. She broke again from kissing and her mouth was on my ear and she said, ‘I can’t breathe.’

  And I said, ‘Are you okay?’

  And she said, ‘Don’t stop.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said.

  ‘I couldn’t breathe,’ she said.

  ‘We’re kissing,’ I said.

  ‘Let me breathe,’ she said.

  ‘Are we rushing?’ I asked.

  ‘I have to,’ she said as if she really did.

  *

  We walked to the bus stop and waited. She told me then that she had a part-time job and that she now worked at McDonald’s. I asked her which one and what days she worked and she said not to come when she was on. I listened to her and began to feel like I did at the start of a race. The bus took time to come and other people were waiting and she kept standing up and sitting down and then she leaned in and kissed me with an open mouth right with everyone there. I had my eyes closed as we kissed but I opened them and through perspex I looked at the building of the Newport Library. It was shiny and new but it had a curve to it. I broke away from the kiss but we were still close. I said, ‘I want more.’

  She put her head to my forehead and said, ‘Not now.’

  I said, ‘I love you.’ This had come out as if it was natural and as if I’d been saying it for years.

  She said, ‘Maybe soon.’

  I thought maybe we weren’t talking of the same thing. I said, ‘I want to see you more.’

  She didn’t laugh then but she smiled and she was direct, she was almost like Eden. ‘I thought you wanted sex.’

  I laughed too then because it was incredible. I was sixteen but all I wanted with Carmelina was to be with her. I heard the bus as it swerved around the turntable and she got on and left. I watched the bus as it moved away and it moved slow but I could have watched it roll forever.

  *

  Instead of going straight home to Jubilee Street I walked by the fenced edge of the old quarry and that was where I saw the bag. It was a paper bag, brown with red writing on it. It moved as if there was something in it. I didn’t pick it right up but I unrolled the top and looked. The head of a kitten peeked out and then another and then another. All of these kittens were ginger with white feet. These kittens were so tiny it looked as if they were only a day or two old. I looked around and there still wasn’t anyone about and the kittens must have been dumped though I couldn’t believe that anyone would do that. They were just babies, they weren’t even proper kids or juveniles yet. I scooped the bag up and cradled it and suddenly that discarded paper bag was precious. I carried it towards home and the wind was behind me and I scurried along at pace. I imagined as I felt the kittens moving inside the bag that I was our mum and that I was feeling us kicking inside her tummy. I could feel the warmth of the kittens coming right through the bag though it was a hot day and it might have been coming from the sun. I thought of Carmelina and of every moment we’d had. I walked towards home with the bag of kittens in my arms and I thought of Werner up there by himself on the hill back at Flowerdale. I wondered what it was like for him during each week when we were in Newport and he couldn’t come to visit. I knew already that I would take a kitten up to him to see if he wanted a play.

  *

  Bobbie had this way of putting a new doona cover on. Instead of getting the corners and pulling them through she’d climb into the cover itself and pull the doona in with her. If you watched her you’d see her rolling or rumbling around on the floor as if she was wrestling. When I got home that afternoon, Eden was in our room and Bobbie was on the floor inside a doona cover. She was like the bag of kittens except bigger. It was always funny watching her roll around but I got on then and offered to help. She climbed out to accept and that was when she saw the kittens.

  ‘I’m not really a cat woman,’ she said.

  She reached out though and took one of the kittens and half of the doona cover was still on her. I thought then that kittens must get thrown into bags and tossed out car windows every week because Bobbie didn’t ask a single question, she just cupped that kitten in her old hands. ‘Look what the cat dragged in,’ she said and it was clear that she wasn’t talking to me. She contemplated the kitten as if it was a stock. ‘How much is your good heart going to cost?’ she asked, though as she did she drew her kitten close into her chest. ‘Liquorland kittens,’ she said, seeing the red writing on the paper bag, ‘they’ll be full of fleas.’

  She looked up at me then and Eden came in and a kitten trotted straight over to him. ‘Where’d you go?’ Bobbie looked at me and asked.

  ‘The quarry,’ I said.

  ‘Swimming?’ Eden said because I always swam with him.

  ‘Is it safe?’ Bobbie said.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I mean it’s not but it is.’

  ‘Cheshire cat,’ Bobbie said, nodding at me as she looked at Eden.

  *

  The next time we were at Flowerdale I took one of the kittens and walked up the hill to Werner’s. We’d left Newport straight from school and the day was still bright with sun. I hadn’t told him that I was coming and I could have texted but I wanted to surprise him. I thought of Werner a lot now. I wanted him to think of me as more than just the kid down the hill. I went to knock on his door but before I did I heard him punching at the bag around the back. I hurried there and I had the kitten in front of me and it was soft and tiny and whether he liked cats or not I thought that he would like to see it.

  As I rounded his house he thumped at the bag with a force much greater than I’d seen him use before. Black shorts and an old grey singlet, no shoes, that’s all he had on. He didn’t have his back to me but it was late before he saw me and then only from the corner of his eye. He turned and I rushed the kitten out towards him and as I did I noticed that the skin around his eyes was blue or black but that his cheeks were red or orange and that white streaks of salt ran down his face and onto his singlet. I didn’t recoil because by then it was too late.

  I knew straight away that he’d been crying and that he was trying to whack it out of himself. When he spoke then, he spoke slowly and as if he was tired. The soft tiny kitten was right in front of him but he didn’t acknowledge it. He said ‘Mate’ to me. He said it as if he’d spoken a whole long sentence.

  For a while that was all he said. He turned and sized up the boxing bag and his fists rocked up and down as though he was waiting for an opening. He took his time even though he knew that I was watching. I looked at him and the shadows were blue and the sun coming over the trees was ochre or pink. He didn’t smell of sawdust but he looked like an old piece of wood. We weren’t a hugging family but I wondered whether I should step forward and change the kind of people that we were. I knew and had known for some time that I wanted Werner to put his arms around me and most especially for him to press that scar on his chest flat against me. It was the closest thing I knew to the injuries that Dad would have suffered in the crash.

  ‘Been a bit lonely, mate,’ Werner then said, as if I was his mate and he didn’t mind saying. The kitten gave out a squeak then as if I had squeezed it too tight and we both looked at it and its eyes looked as though they were pleading.

  I stood with Werner and we looked from the kitten to the old blue punching bag. It swung from side to side, the sun sinking behind it. ‘I want to go out with your grandma,’ Werner said, then paused. His voice had an edge to it, a frayed edge. ‘But she won’t give me the chance.’

  *

  Saturday night in Altona North. Carmelina was going to a party at a house in one of the Avenues. We had a race the next day and the party was with her friends and I sh
ouldn’t have gone but I didn’t want to miss her. I wanted Eden to come too but I couldn’t think of a way to ask and then out of nowhere he said that he’d come if we left early. ‘A lot of people won’t get there till then,’ I said, though I was rapt that he was coming.

  ‘Non-swimmers,’ he said.

  ‘Ten-thirty,’ I said.

  ‘You don’t win on race day,’ he said. ‘You win seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day.’

  ‘McDonald’s is your oyster,’ Bobbie said. We’d stopped on the way to the party. Bobbie stepped back and said she didn’t care what we ordered but as soon as we selected she butted in and said, ‘Don’t get crispy.’

  ‘I thought you didn’t care,’ Eden said.

  ‘Well, I do,’ she said.

  When we got to the party Carmelina was out the front of the house. Instead of normal clothes though, she had on a clown outfit. It was white with pale blue and pink. It wasn’t your average clown suit, it was more fitted, but it was still a clown suit. She sat on a low rock in the front garden with three boys standing around her. It was dark but every time she looked up at them the street light caught her face.

  ‘I’m so embarrassed,’ she said as we walked up.

  ‘She thought it was fancy dress,’ one of the other boys said.

  ‘My brother,’ she said as if it was his fault.

  ‘Yeah,’ one of the other boys said and laughed, and as he did I realised that these boys were older than us, that they were more her brother’s age. I looked back along the street then and both the road and the nature strip were jammed. Car after silent car had a P plate on it. I knelt down to Carmelina. ‘I feel so embarrassed’ she said again but she smiled then as if she wasn’t really. ‘I’m going to kill my brother,’ she said.

  ‘Classic,’ one of the other boys said as if she’d been talking to him instead of directly to me.

  ‘Are you Eden Hardacre?’ one of the other boys then said. It was a question but he said it as if he was announcing him. Everyone including Carmelina and me turned to Eden. He hadn’t yet joined the group. He leaned against the side front fence and his clothes were black and the Colorbond fence was tan but his face was lit and so too his hands.