by Tim Winton
But had caught sight of them occasionally. Must have been the late seventies when he walked past Baby in Barrack Street one night. Tilted against a wall, one shoe broken. She looked drug-fucked, or just fucked in general. There was an awkward moment of mutual recognition but no greeting. A couple of times he saw Gemma at a distance. At a concert, a pub. Under the arm of one dangerous-looking dude or another. She was all tan and sunstreaked tresses, a leggy provocation, and by then, for the likes of him, a total impossibility. Their gazes met but Keely pretended not to see her. Remembered how his ears glowed for shame.
Last night’s dishes were still there on the sink. The heat of the day had baked stains to a glaze and the purple crust in his wineglass smelt fruity as a bishop. He washed without conviction, buried his bottles deep in the recycling crate and wiped everything down, from restlessness as much as anything.
But he was still a little buzzed. He should bag some laundry. Better still, call Faith. She’d be tickled. Curious at least. Besides, having stumbled into all these memories he felt the need to hear her voice. He looked at the clock. Singapore. Same time zone. He grabbed the landline phone, punched his sister’s number.
Faith answered from within a noisy room, a restaurant by the sound of it. He had to repeat his name twice before she understood who was calling.
Are you alright? she asked. Is it Mum?
She’s fine, we’re fine.
You don’t sound it.
Nah, I’m good.
Have you seen someone?
What?
Did you try those numbers?
Quacks and bankers, mate. You know me.
Sometimes I wonder.
Tell you who I have seen —
Tom, I’m in a meeting.
Okay, sorry. Just that I thought you’d find it … weird.
Everything’s weird just at the present. The world as we know it is choking on a bone.
Yeah?
You actually have no idea.
Well, I get the broad picture.
I doubt it.
Anyway, I’ve got two words for you.
Please tell me they’re not Lehman Brothers.
Funny.
Not that funny. Which words, Tom?
Buck. And Gemma.
Gemma Buck?
You’re quick, sis.
Blackboy Crescent Gemma Buck?
That’s the one.
What about her?
Lives in my building, mate. Same floor.
This is a joke?
Am I that funny a bloke?
Hell. Wow, that’s … weird. So, what does she look like?
Keely couldn’t help but laugh.
What? she asked.
I love that it’s the first thing you ask. If a bloke said it you’d serve him his tripe on a platter.
Aw, boohoo.
Actually she looks a bit ground down.
Wasn’t she a bit of a stunner?
I spose she was.
Listen, I have to go. Can you call me later?
Alright.
Give me another hour, okay?
Not a problem.
I’ll call you.
Don’t worry, he said, I’ll ring back.
Of course you will. Anyway, I can afford it.
I said I’d call. Didn’t I?
Love you, she said with an air of defeat before hanging up.
Yeah, he said to the ether. You too, sis.
For a moment he was buoyed by a fleeting sense of closeness. He thought of the safe mass of her in a sleeping bag beside him in the back of the station wagon. Her asthmatic wheeze, the soapy-vanilla scent of her above the smells of vinyl upholstery and wet grass. The sound of crickets. All those nights parked on front lawns while the oldies ran committees, prayer groups, demo meetings. That wheezy, sweet lump in the car up close. His baby sister, the merchant banker. He kissed the phone like a sap and set it back in its cradle.
Surveyed the empty flat a moment. Snatched up his keys.
He sauntered past shuttered shops in the emptying streets, knowing he should phone his mother. He owed Doris a call anyway and she’d probably be delighted to have news of Gemma. But he knew he wouldn’t; he could do without the loving scrutiny, her urging him to see another GP, a new counsellor, some western-suburbs employment guru who’d come highly recommended. He didn’t want the telling silences, her withering patience. For a minute or two he was close, once more, to mental uproar. But he talked himself down, the meeting came back to order.
It was still warm. A smattering of joggers and strollers abroad. There were late commuters out on the pavement, loiterers, lost souls, women thumbing phones to summon taxis. Down the main drag, a couple of Lycra-free cyclists coasted by, laughing, God bless them. In their wake rumbled Commodores full of local boys lapping the block, windows down, saying ugly things to women. Girls with tatts and skinny dogs told them to go and get fucked. A bloke tried to fly a kite off the balcony of a backpacker joint but the breeze was fluky between buildings.
The evening air was heavy with salt, coffee, exhaust fumes. The vibe in town was weary and benign. It was the same joint he’d shunned this morning, but tonight it felt easier to forgive. It was a village, with all the virtues and vices of intimacy. And he knew the place backwards, had lived here most of his working life. But he had to remind himself daily that it was quite another town to him now; in his new circumstances he lived in it differently, felt its properties anew. These days he was more at its mercy, it acted on him in ways he hadn’t really experienced before. You could hate anywhere and anyone that didn’t need you. He was skint in every possible sense. Surplus to requirements. But lofting a little this evening, rising as if from a nasty bounce.
Along the Strip Keely bought a beer, drank it quickly and left before he could go on to a soothing second. Felt good about himself a moment, then thought of Doris again.
Under the date palms across from the station, drunks called querulously for taxi fare, train money, two bucks mate. Their goon bags flashed silver beneath the trees, and soon enough those hopeful, matey shouts took on the standard overtone of menace. He pressed on, over the footbridge to the wharf.
Call Doris, he thought, crossing the quay. Don’t be a weasel.
Cars streamed away from the ferry landings. At the dockside, tourists struggled to find their landlegs after the trip in from Rottnest. Others wheeled bikes, suitcases, prams writhing with squalling kids.
His mother was a brick, a saint. Which of course made everything so much worse, especially since she’d had ample time to form a view of his situation. Two years since the break-up. A whole year since his catastrophic brain-snap and all its rewards. Doris was a shrewd old bird. She didn’t miss much. He did not want to suffer her thoughtful analysis a single moment but he was pretty certain he already understood it in all its loving, pitiless permutations. Her view was undoubtedly this: that by now her only son could reasonably be expected to pick himself up amidst the wreckage of his life and make something new happen. She was, of course, canny enough to refrain from saying so. But she radiated it.
Her faithful presence, her restraint, her carefully calibrated attention said everything for her, and even absent she exerted tectonic moral pressure. She was right to be puzzled, justified in her impatience. Yes, yes, yes, fucking yes, these months had been wasted and he probably was a coward getting cosy with his own self-hatred, but he couldn’t get past the suspicion of more to come, that something worse was necessary, or at least inevitable, as if he were not yet properly shriven. But it was only a matter of time. And maybe when he struck bottom there’d be certainty, fresh conviction, a sense of immediacy he could no longer feel. She thought this was bullshit, madness even. Though he hadn’t breathed a word, didn’t need to. Doris could read him in five languages and scan him in Braille. Since his cataclysmic truth-telling, he’d felt the eloquence of her every withheld judgement and long-suffering stare. He didn’t have to guess what she thought of his morose passivity, his bitterne
ss and wounded silence, which is why he’d been avoiding her of late. It was no treat embodying something your own mother pitied, probably even despised. She loved him, her compassion seemed boundless, but her disappointment smarted more than any other humiliation. Problem was she thought he was strong, still judged him accordingly, and did not yet know he was lost.
But he wasn’t going there tonight.
He had to let it go. Doris’s scarifying empathy. The known unknown. All of it.
I have, he told himself, I’ve let it go.
Which was bullshit, really, but he kept thinking it because it seemed necessary.
I’m okay, he muttered aloud.
Which seemed slightly safer as a proposition but hardly sound.
I’m good! he announced to a startled passer-by.
And yet, righteous as he was in his misanthropic way, goodness was something of a stretch. Misunderstood Keely was. Yes. And it was true his intentions were invariably good. But only when he had them. Some days he struggled to even form an intention.
He teetered at the fulcrum of his lighter mood. Darkness sucking at him.
But the evening air was all salty grace. Close to the water it smelt divine, felt merciful. And whatever bollocks he told himself, however feeble and false the positive lingo was once you stacked it up against shitful reality, the lovely, saving night stole up on him. The rest didn’t matter. For reasons he couldn’t fathom, the hopelessness suddenly lost ultimate power over him. As if for a moment the chains fell off and his heart was free. Well, on the lam at least.
He ambled along the wharf past rank-smelling sheds where the Leeuwin rode the tide on creaking hawsers. On deck, beneath the maze of spars and rigging, a dreadlocked kid stood hosing crates, the lights glancing off piercings in his face. To Keely he looked exultant, like a boy unable to credit his own youth and beauty and good fortune. To be there on a tall ship as passing strangers took note – that had to be worth something, worth basking a few minutes in the palpable sense of envy and mystery, worth prolonging a simple task like rinsing dive crates. Barely suppressing the urge to huzzah, Keely bore on past families of low-murmuring Vietnamese as they reeled in minuscule yellowtail and fingerling trevally. He turned a forgiving eye to their lard buckets of bloody water teeming with fins and white bellies and hundreds of golden tails. He didn’t stoop to scowl or tut. They were folks catching a feed: tired, shy, suspicious. They didn’t need his purse-lipped concern tonight. The concrete wharf was gummy with pollard, mired with the innards of crushed blowfish, spangled with scales. Bored schoolgirls sat on milk crates, texting, jiggling, hating to be there while their fathers and grandfathers squatted in plastic sandals, grey trousers and white singlets to thread maggots onto tiny hooks and press damp pollard into berley cages. Peaceable, calm, purposeful folks. Keely strolled on – living, letting live.
Out towards the end of the quay, in the lee of the shiny new museum, he rested against a bollard to watch a pair of romancing backpackers share a can of beer. Birkenstocks, topknots, golden limbs. They stared across at the otherworldly light of the container terminal. Their voices were soft and foreign. They sounded Nordic. And they gave off an irrepressible sense of contentment, as if this warm evening at the far end of the earth had been worth the journey. He lingered a moment, riding the swell of the contact high. Until they gave him a look that sent him on his way.
When the lift door opened at the tenth floor Gemma Buck stood waiting in some kind of uniform.
Bloody hell, she said. What’s the odds?
Hi again, said Keely as they stepped around each other awkwardly to exchange places.
Out for dinner? she asked, holding the door back with a downy arm.
Just a walk, he said. You?
Work.
In the hard light of the lift’s fluorescent he saw the supermarket logo across the breast of her tunic.
Nightshift?
Packin shelves, she said. It’s real fulfillin.
Keely smiled. Gemma tugged a bag across her shoulder. In her hand was an unlit cigarette. A moment passed and she gave a wry grin. As the door began to close once more Keely stepped into its path and let it butt his hip.
What’d you forget?
Your boy. I mean, I just …
Asleep, said Gemma.
Keely stood there with the door shoving at him, conscious of how much he’d assumed about her with no solid idea of her circumstances. For a moment he’d even thought she was leaving the child unattended.
He’s a nice kid.
Yeah. He is.
Listen, sorry about today.
Gemma shrugged.
I was a bit of a mess.
You reckon?
I didn’t mean to be rude.
Orright.
I guess we’ll talk.
Sorry?
Maybe catch up on things.
Oh. Yeah. Maybe.
Well. Let you go.
Night, she said.
He stepped back and the door finally closed.
For half a minute he stood there as the lift groaned and clanked down the shaft. Tired as he was, he knew he wouldn’t sleep. Or call his mother. He wouldn’t call Faith back, either, because it’d only set him off on some melancholy tangent. He’d watch some ancient B-movie and hope sleep stole up on him.
As soon as he’d let himself in the phone rang. He hesitated a moment, then snatched it up. Instead of Faith it was Doris.
What’s up? he asked.
I’m watching Victor Mature. Could you imagine Samson being quite so wet-lipped and doe-eyed? I don’t think so.
So, I take it Faith called you.
Yes, but love set me free.
Very funny, Mum.
I called before, she said.
I went for a walk.
Good idea.
Well, it wasn’t a Eureka moment. But yeah, it was nice.
Faith says you ran into one of the Buck girls.
That’s right. Gemma.
God, she was a beautiful child. Don’t you remember that gorgeous hair?
Hmm.
She was like a little doll.
Whatever happened to them? he said. The parents.
Bunny left him in the end. John died at Port Hedland in the eighties. I used to wonder she didn’t kill him herself. Believe me, there were times when I could have done it for her.
You were good to them. I haven’t forgotten.
Tommy.
I mean, how it was, what you did.
You okay?
Mum, I went for a walk. I’m fine.
I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to —
Not a problem.
Tom, I’m not worried.
He laughed.
Why are you laughing?
Well, Doris dear, not worrying seems to be a special mum-thing.
Okay, she admitted. Caught.
I give you cause, I know.
You’re fine, love.
Anyway, tonight you shouldn’t fret.
It’ll get better, Tom.
Yeah, he murmured. I expect so.
Let’s have lunch.
No worries.
Monday?
Alright.
Call you Sunday night?
Sure.
Love you.
You too.
When he hung up, Keely realized his mother had barely asked about Gemma. It was unlike her. Perhaps it was a sign of how worried she was. Or how far she’d left the old days behind her. Maybe he’d figure that out at lunch. But his buoyant mood was gone.
He lingered near the slider, flexed his toes in the nap of the carpet, felt nothing and was not much comforted.
Felt a little thump. From whatever. Like an elbow against the wall of his skull. The tenant turning over in bed.
He gobbed a couple of Nurofen Plus. A bit of sandbagging for good measure.
Turned on the telly. And there he was in his loincloth. Victor Mature, looking camp as a row of tents. Soon to be eyeless in Gaza.
Turned
it off. Stared at his sadsack reflection in the window. Knew he’d end up back at the knife drawer any minute. For something to kick him over the edge. Tried to stare himself down. Et cetera. And blinked, of course.
A wrenching gasp and there he was. On the bed in the foetid room. Every surface dancing and flashing. A street-sweeper droned far below. Blood spritzed in his limbs as if he’d only just come off the boil.
Three o’clock. He’d been dreaming – something awful, something that had mercifully evaporated the moment he woke.
In the bathroom he sluiced himself with cool water, stood dripping a while in the half-dark before reaching for the gamy towel. The dim outline in the mirror moved in sympathy. Not really in sync. An approximation.
But when he turned for bed and stepped through the doorway there was a different form in the bedroom window, a shape too small to be his reflection, too distinct to be any kind of reflection at all.
The size of a child. Naked in the strobing, distant light. Pressed against the screen as if held there by wind-shear alone. Bare arms aloft in benediction or flight. He was calm, those moments he lingered; the boy was calm and solemn and terrible.
Then gone, like an unsustainable thought.
Keely knelt on the bed before the suddenly vacant window. Nothing there but breathless night. When his pulse finally subsided he lay down and tried to sleep. But he could feel it returning. Not the image, but the dream. In wisps and fits and flashes. Settling upon him like a dread familiar.
It was the boy. Gemma Buck’s kid. In the dream he was out on the balcony – Gemma’s, not his. And in the dream Keely was alone, wrapped in a towel in cool, cool air, impossibly cold air, not seeing the boy out there across the way until he moved. The child was three balconies distant. He was bare-chested, squatting on a milk crate, breasting the rail and dipping his head to it. His pale hair shone in the dark as he perched and bobbed, lapping dew off the iron like a thirsty dove.
And that was it. All the dream that would come safely to mind. Even this much frightened him. He sensed that there’d been more than just squatting, but he didn’t want to go there; he was practised enough at shelving what could not be borne. But the logic of something worse beat on in him for minutes until he began to feel he’d assimilated it for what it was, a harmless bit of mental indigestion. He was fine. It was all good and there was juice left in the pills, current enough to tug at him so he felt himself leaching away towards delicious sleep. And yet he could feel the pale glow of the boy there, waiting. In the swamp of his ungoverned country. Perched, pigeon-chested. Too high. Unguarded. Only a straightened leg away from toppling.