Coach Fitz

by Tom Lee

  Both were in their early twenties and the bowler had tousled blond hair and the general air of a brickies’ labourer. I couldn’t see the batsman behind his helmet.

  I took a very relaxed approach for the first few deliveries, focusing on line and length. When I saw the batter was of some ability and that no fun would come from bowling without risk, I began to push myself further.

  At the end of my run-up, before I bowled, I focused on a sequence of ideas that produced specific repercussions for the way I conceived of my body in space. Key among these was attending to my sense of balance, which Coach had described as ‘the confederating sense’ that brought all the other senses together. I did this by imagining my body as large and stable, a feeling I activated by focusing on the way my feet connected to the ground and gave me support. This sense of stability extended beyond my body, so that the distance between where I stood and where I needed the ball to be was seemingly reduced. Bowling became less a matter of shooting the ball as one might a projectile and more a matter of placing it where it needed to be in space, inserting it into a field of possibilities where it could do its good work.

  As my anxiety at having joined a new group of people diminished and my ability to harness the advantage of this introspective technique increased, I began to trouble the batsman greatly, causing him to jump about nervously on the crease as my deliveries reared up in the manner of a cobra or a deep-sea fish lurking in the sand. Once I struck him in the ribs, causing him to double over while his friend joked and congratulated me. This was followed by two fuller deliveries, both of which rattled into the steel stumps. At the end of his innings the batsman also offered his congratulations and at their invitation I decided to stay on and bowl some more.

  The heat of the sandy earth through my feet and the sense the bush gave of imminent conflagration further encouraged me to cast off any inhibition. I bowled as though I had the ball on the end of a string. After feigning confidence initially, the new batsman soon showed signs of discomfort. In the way he doled out advice he seemed to be the authority of the two, and I began to feel a touch of sympathy for him. But even as I tried to restrain my aggression I continued to trouble him with variable bounce, in particular sharp movement away to the off side. My willingness to inhabit the virtual realm was for once affording me success in the real world. I could visualise in intimate detail the trajectory the ball would take, and allowing it to do so became as simple as turning a switch.

  My shaming of these two interlopers left me so filled with elation that I saw no other option than to run barefooted to Redleaf Pool, on the harbour beneath Woollahra Library. With sunscreen and sweat running into my eyes and my entire body throbbing with heated blood, I could hardly imagine a better way to spend an hour.

  I took off, bidding farewell to the tourists, who looked on agog as I sped across the playing fields through the backstreets of Double Bay, which now brought memories of previous performances against visitors in cricket nets, and the general sense of levity I felt whenever moving across a wide, grassy expanse.

  At New South Head Road I took the gently sloping wooden ramp through Blackburn Gardens down to Redleaf Pool, on my way passing a man with an oiled brown body, mirrored aviator sunglasses and sparse though long electric-blond hair. An assortment of fluorescent clothes lay next to him in a pile and he seemed to be muttering phatic ephemera gleaned from overheard conversations. His pose mirrored a Roman gorging himself on grapes at a banquet, though instead of food he imbibed smoke from a cigarette, and with every exhalation seemed more at home in such a public space.

  I continued on, now under the generous shade of the fig trees and pines. At the water’s edge spread an array of glistening, gorgeous bodies, stretched out on towels, inflicting their music on the surrounds, discussing the effects of the weekend and how they had attempted to remedy their various malaises with valium, coconut juice or green drinks garnished with cucumber.

  I discarded my belongings and disappeared into the welcome cool of the water, fizzing with the newly available mental entities, as I’d begun to call them, that such a sudden change in atmosphere reliably allowed me to harvest.

  After my swim I sat in Woollahra Library, reading the newspaper as well as a book about gardens and urban design. My preferred vantage in the library afforded views over the ample backyards of the house next door, known as Elaine. I sat and looked out over the tennis court, with its immaculate, sun-splashed grass, and imagined my ideal sandwich: a ciabatta roll, heavily oiled, with tomato, a few squashed olives, a sharp cheese and basil. I began to plot. In order to fill the void left by Coach Fitz I would continue her project. I would begin work on a series of thematically linked pieces of writing on the landscape of my city. I would develop a catalogue from ideas implicit in her talks’ focus on features, styles and moods of the urban environment. With this in mind I began to compose a rough list of the themes that would organise my loose curiosity: outdoor gyms, stairs and athletics ovals; rudimentary enclosures such as grottos, gazebos, rotundas, caves, telephone booths, bus shelters and public toilets; favoured aspects and specific features like footbridges and internal reserves. I would intersperse my intellectual labours with increasingly precise inputs of strenuous physical exercise, usually runs of some sort, or strength work at an outdoor gym.

  Internal Reserves of Killara

  Scanning over the suburbs online I discovered Killara, on Sydney’s north shore, featuring what appeared to be two internal reserves that might provoke a bout of extended contemplation and provide the material for my first topic. Judging by the map the two reserves appeared to adhere to what Coach described as the ‘classic’ form for internal reserves: a common green space directly encircled by the backyards of private dwellings, rather than by a road.

  On a particularly rainy Sunday I took the train north, with a backpack full of bread and cheese, a sheaf of basil and a small vessel of olive oil. I got off at Killara Station and followed Marian Street to the Pacific Highway.

  There was an abundance of lush vegetation, with large numbers of tall gum trees, gullies fringed by ferns and small palms, and a general build-up of wet bark, leaf matter and branches. The terrain was more hilly than the inner west, which along with the dense vegetation gave a sense of things crowding in. The fuzz of the steady rain against my hooded coat further heightened the sense of immersion.

  It would have been easy to miss the entry to the first reserve, Ticket of Leave Park, had I not been armed with my phone to show its location. It was marked out on the street by an anonymous metal gateway between two houses and a path in the grass worn through to dirt. It was as close to everything one might hope for in an internal reserve. The large back fences of some of the houses were the only blight on an otherwise perfect realisation of this particular form. I was confronted with a majestic stand of Sydney blue gums as I entered the park and I experienced that much sought after transition from the mundane to the sacred: from the pleasant enough monotony of the street front to this set-aside gathering of vegetal elders overlooking the yards of the houses which give form to the space.

  I stood for a while in the rain and it became clear to me that the notion of a circle of dwellings built around a unifying locus spoke to some profound anthropological instinct which from that point on I ought to satisfy at every opportunity.

  Energised by the first reserve’s exceeding my expectations, I continued on in the increasingly heavy rain, the lower half of my shorts and my shoes now thoroughly saturated. The entry to the next reserve was as easy to miss as the first, marked out by an inconspicuous sign and a small diversion in the concrete footpath. Larger even than Ticket of Leave Park, Jinkers Green featured a lush lawn, less heavily treed than its predecessor and with a more varied elevation profile. A well-preserved patch of wet sclerophyll forest spilled out into the open lawn, a remnant of the once dominant vegetation that had thankfully been allowed to flourish.

  I decided the dense bush would give me decent enough shelter from the rain
for my lunch, so I began to pick my way carefully through the tangled undergrowth. The vegetation became increasingly thick. It gave me the sense I might vanish into its centre, which I imagined as a dark void patrolled by spiders and yellow-eyed birds. I reached a small cleared space carpeted by large sheets of bark. I lay down my rain jacket on the ground and unzipped my backpack. The heavy static sound of the rain was interspersed by the occasional louder plop of a droplet on a larger leaf nearby. I took out my ciabatta and began to perform what was perhaps one of my most impressive skills: cutting bread and other products in my bare hands without a board, outwards from my body to prevent crumbs and juice getting on my lap.

  A friend once observed this and suggested, albeit ironically, that I ought to go on tour.

  I assembled my sandwich, working quickly because of the rain: tomato slices, shavings of cheese, basil, olives and enough oil for a small car. After the blur of eating I lay back on the ground. I closed my eyes to exist only in the sounds of the rain and my breathing and fell asleep.

  When I woke the rain had cleared. Although I couldn’t be sure, I had the sense that it was just before dark. Had I slept that long? Mild panic set in and I quickly pulled together my things. I charged out of the bush to find the reserve now peopled by mothers and children in colourful clothes playing games, some children forming small gangs, while their mothers talked and gestured, others standing alone looking at small objects in their hands and seeming to mutter things to themselves about a world which only they could perceive. I put my head down and walked quickly back towards the exit of the reserve, noting the wet, lime-white branch of an adolescent eucalyptus that dipped down to chest height, the name Hayley cut into its bark.

  I walked back to Lindfield Station in a mild sweat, noting further tracts of land devoted to the bush. Water was still rushing through the drains. Grand houses in the Spanish Mission style were intermixed with more humble suburban types built from red brick, with white-painted railings which led up to entrances above twin garages. The bush continued to drip all around, the glistening piles of bark and thick wet leaves at varying gradations illuminated by the low sunlight.

  It was only from the safety of the train that I began to reflect on the peculiar sense of disorientation and the portents that are often produced by sleeping in an unfamiliar location. I recalled an otherwise inconspicuous scene from the movie Scream which had a forceful impact on my adolescent mind and continued to fascinate me. The scene involved Neve Campbell’s character, Sidney Prescott, falling asleep on a couch near a window sometime late in the afternoon. The small town in which she lives is abuzz due to recent murders and a suspected serial killer on the loose. Emotionally bound up in these happenings, Sidney is further disturbed because it is the anniversary of her mother’s death. Based on those details the atmosphere of the scene ought to be grim, yet seems almost a party, with the young school-goers provoked into saturnine celebrations. When Sidney wakes from her sleep it is dusk. She is alone in the house and the last of the day’s light is fading. To me there was something more significant about the timing of Sidney’s nap than the gruesome crimes committed routinely throughout the narrative. I’d found I would establish a subtle yet profound sense of place on the rare occasion in which I’d managed to disorient myself in an unfamiliar environment through sleeping in it, and often thought of making deliberate journeys to certain locations to let them enter my dreaming brain.

  Moving House

  As Christmas approached I took account of my financial and domestic situation. After several nights in a row of interrupted sleep, and a suspicion there was now more than one huntsman living in the Odyssey, I decided moving into a house was within my means, that it was a wise decision if I wanted to rest my body after the stress from training as well as be able to invite people over for dinner. The dream of living in my car had run its course and I had begun to hanker for an increased quantity of flat surfaces, space for storage, walls for artwork and posters, locations for indoor plants, and the sense of security that comes from thicker walls and immobile foundations.

  I began the process of searching various websites, and put out a request on social media asking if anyone knew of anyone with a spare room in their house. Within a week I had three places lined up to check out, two through friends of friends, the other through an ad on Gumtree.

  The first house was in Cooper Street, Surry Hills, the bottom room in a terrace. I was to meet James at nine on Saturday morning. We sat on the couch in the filthy living room while the theme tune to Mario Kart looped on the television. The house was dark and damp, even for a terrace. Numerous cockroaches moved about surreptitiously and small shards of broken glass were scattered on the brown tiles in the kitchen. In the tight, overgrown garden, the old outdoor toilet now functioned as an improvised pot for asthma weed and other anonymous plants typical of Sydney backyards. A litter of kittens and their mother scuttled out under the back fence into the alley. James spoke in a husky, rapid voice and asked me questions about my work and what I liked to do in the evenings. I could tell he didn’t mind a beer. I had made up my mind already before the interview began, and crossed Cooper Street off the list.

  The second house, in Stanmore, was rented by a friend of a friend on Facebook, Emma, and her boyfriend, Tom, both of them studying agricultural economics at Sydney University. They had an immediately endearing manner and served me a tea and scotch finger biscuit in the backyard. I didn’t like the shag pile carpet or the largely bricked-over garden, but I could see myself living there. The bathroom smelt of geranium soap and the sound of aeroplanes overhead punctuated our chat. I had lingering concern about how close the house was to that of Coach Fitz, less than a kilometre away on the other side of Parramatta Road. I said bye to Tom and Emma, undecided.

  The final house I inspected was on Edward Street, Darlington. Another terrace, more or less exactly the same structure as Cooper Street but far better kept. I met the older brother of a friend, Nick, who lived there with three others, Jo, Lachlan and Chloe. My room was on the second level, next to the shower. It looked out onto the narrow, but pleasant enough, backyard. I sat down and had a glass of water with Nick in the living room, where Jo and Lachlan were watching rugby league on the television and scrolling on their phones. I could smell garlic.

  Nick and I went out into the backyard, which had an outdoor toilet and a shabby-looking vegetable patch which Nick excused by pointing to the lack of direct sunlight and the competition for nutrients from the large fig in the corner. Lachlan had converted a forty-four gallon drum into a barbecue and Nick said it made great smoked tomatoes. Out the back was an alleyway where the neighbourhood bins stood in disarray. I liked the surprisingly abundant canopy cover and the proximity to Redfern Station and the Glengarry pub. The suburb had a sheltered yet open feel, with a relatively diverse elevation profile. I began to hope Nick had taken a liking to me and enquired about his work as an actor. He had repeated speaking roles in various Australian television shows with which I was familiar, and was currently doing some performance and presentation workshops for corporates. We spoke about his younger sister Jessica, who was in Singapore studying public policy. When he mentioned that he planned to swim some laps this afternoon, I was only too keen to discuss my growing obsession with running. Showing me his phone, he introduced me to an app called Strava, a social media platform for athletes. It allowed you to record and share your training sessions with followers, he told me, and gave you a breakdown of pace as compared to other runners, riders or swimmers all over the world. I wondered whether Coach was on there.

  Nick told me he’d get back to me by the end of next week. I said goodbye and pondered having a schooner up in one of the pubs on Abercrombie Street, but thought it might be weird if any of the housemates saw me in there drinking alone. Instead I made a beeline for my favourite falafel joint, Savion, in North Bondi, where I planned to sit with a newspaper for a while before going for a swim and a workout on the outdoor gym.

  The moving
process was relatively streamlined. I had my whole life in the Odyssey. I didn’t know whether to add the few implements of cutlery and cooking apparatus I had to the already overflowing drawers in the kitchen. Instead I left them in the car for emergency picnics. On my first night in the house we got pizzas from Gigi’s in Newtown and watched a film where Jean-Claude Van Damme played himself. Jo worked in a club as a ‘door bitch’ so she said goodbye to begin her shift at eight. Lachlan and Nick threw questions back and forth about Van Damme’s earlier films, which American states they would prefer to visit and the best pizza restaurants in Sydney. I chimed in with the insight that I was glad we were so close to Brickfields, which was among my favourite bakeries. This led to a discussion about bread and bakery treats, as was my hope, and the conversation soon turned to plans for us to go on food safaris around Sydney.

  At a point in the discussion Nick began to speak in an exaggeratedly posh South African accent, then made a seamless transition to performing as a character whose identity was unclear to me. Lachlan clearly knew the routine and began to laugh. But for me, said Nick, for what I want, Whale Bay would be perfect. He then switched roles and began to act out a dialogue: It’s not Whale Bay, Mum, it’s Whale Beach. Yes, I know, but for me, for what I want, Whale Bay would be just right. This went on for some while and I found myself joining in with the laughter as Nick got steadily more animated and began to gesture and walk around the room.