We Were Not Men

by Campbell Mattinson

  I’m coming, I texted anyway, again.

  And then after a silence it was Eden who texted me. Do you want to swim? he asked.

  And I thought of swimming with Eden and it was dark and I didn’t care. My fingers seemed fat of a sudden; I was trembling. I typed, It’s raining.

  He texted, I know.

  I texted, I want to swim.

  ME TOO, he wrote back in capital letters.

  *

  I recognised the car as soon as we turned off Jubilee Street. It was Carmelina’s mum’s car. She must have turned eighteen and could now drive. I stepped out of Werner’s car and as I did he said, ‘I’ll come back.’ I stood there then and it was raining and it was both weird and it wasn’t. I had not seen my twin brother Eden in a year. We did not touch, we just stood in the rain and looked at each other. Eden didn’t look as though he was going to burst, he looked sure and tall and in control. I could smell apple, green apple. I thought this smell might have come from Carmelina. I expected Bobbie to be out front too but she wasn’t. I went behind Carmelina’s mum’s car and changed into swimmers because we were in a hurry to swim. Carmelina got into the car first and I stepped into the back and Eden sat in the back with me. We went past the cemetery on Champion Road as we headed towards The Warmies. Carmelina drove faster than Bobbie or Werner. She looked in the rear-view mirror. ‘Look at you two,’ she said.

  I looked at Eden and almost put my hand across to his knee just as Dad had on that night.

  As I sat in the cocoon of that car I saw Carmelina flick a finger at the window wipers. The rain was still bucketing down. The lights on the dash of her car were orange or amber and the vinyl of the seats was mustard but over the years the sun had burned all these colours paler. I thought of a field of pollen and how it was like we were sitting in one.

  ‘Eden’s aiming for Tokyo,’ Carmelina said.

  ‘He is,’ I said.

  ‘He told you already?’

  ‘He can tell me again,’ I said.

  ‘You’ll be with him soon,’ she said as if we weren’t yet, as if we wouldn’t be until we were in the water.

  We reached the carpark of The Warmies. The windows had fogged and the colours were like pollen. Eden said, ‘This is a moment.’

  ‘I’ll stay in the car,’ Carmelina said, not quite as a question. We stripped down to our swimmers in the back seat of her car and then we waited, we were quiet, we felt the warmth of the car seep into us and then all Eden and I did was nod and get out. I took two steps, maybe three. Then Carmelina wound her window down and called me. I turned and she said, ‘Come here,’ and I stepped in closer and she tapped the door as if she wanted me to come closer again. There were things in the eyes of Bobbie and Werner that weren’t in the eyes of Eden or me or of anyone our age. But I looked through the open car window into the eyes of Carmelina and even though it was raining, I saw that she had changed and that she had things in there now too.

  ‘I never wanted to separate you,’ she said.

  And I could have sunk to my knees.

  *

  The rain fell hard but we stepped straight into the water even though we could hardly see. There were lights, industrial lights, and every time I bobbed to the surface the water looked amber and then aqua and then red. We swam out into the same channel where we always swam but we felt uncaged and it was night and so instead of swimming towards the power station we headed to the open side to where the channel of The Warmies ran towards the bay.

  We swam a short-ish way but then stopped and looked back to Carmelina’s car and it was still raining but she’d stepped out and was standing in the rain by the edge of the water. She looked out at us. The headlights of her car shone out from behind her.

  ‘I don’t love to hate you,’ I said to Eden.

  ‘I don’t want to lose you,’ he said.

  We hung there in the water. We kept looking back at Carmelina. All we could see were shadows and lights and silhouettes. Then I said what I did not think I could. ‘I’m okay about Carmelina,’ I said.

  Straight out as if he was bursting he said, ‘I love her.’

  I wanted to say that I did too but I knew what he had said and what it would mean. ‘We didn’t swim fast enough,’ I said. I might have been referring to the Olympics and to how we’d never made the team, and maybe I was, I wasn’t sure; all I could think of was how everything always went faster or slower than we wanted.

  I hoped he would joke and that we might laugh but he didn’t, he went the other way. ‘I miss Mum too,’ he said. He said this as if it explained things.

  *

  We should have made for shore then but we didn’t, we swam on. We headed further out into the bay. As we swam I dipped under and stayed there as if I’d just tumbled the turn in a race. I watched Eden from under. We were just mucking about but still I marvelled. He was so light and so strong that he almost seemed delicate. I thought then of his dream and of Tokyo and how he might need me. I floated then and hit the surface and I dragged in so much air that I risked taking to the sky and flying. Eden looked over at me and his teeth were white and flashing. We kept swimming. We were older but we were just like we’d been that day in the cornfield, so excited. A freight ship reared up and it was made of bold red metal. We were a nut and a bolt, the live chapter of a long line of people. We stopped and waited the ship out and we didn’t turn, we just swam out even further. We were twins; we were Jon and Eden Hardacre, we were together, and we were swimming.

  *

  And then I thought of Bobbie. And when I did, I don’t know why, but even in that cold watery expanse it made me remember Fuzzy’s caravan of honey. I’d been living at Flowerdale but I wanted to be home in Newport and I wondered if we could go to that caravan but not with Fuzzy or Geri or even with Carmelina but just the three of us, Eden and Bobbie and me, eating honey, scooping it. I spoke then and the city’s lights seemed amber and suddenly I felt urgent. ‘I want to go home,’ I said, stopping. ‘I want us with Bobbie.’

  Eden looked at me and the water was dark and the rain still spattered. We were a long way from shore. ‘She went to Flowerdale,’ he said as if he thought I would know.

  ‘But she was drinking,’ I said.

  ‘She went when I was out,’ he said.

  The water was cold and I shivered and as I did I went under. I was seventeen and not yet an adult but I thought of the broken bottle on the doorstep and how Werner had told her he’d given up on her and how hope had to swim faster than depression and how Bobbie didn’t know that I was with Eden. I thought of the empty house at Flowerdale and how Hemi was dead and how tired she’d sounded on the phone. I remembered her saying once that hurt is a two-way valve and how she might be a sinkhole just waiting to cave in.

  I thought how there was just one bottle left of the wine she’d made with Jack.

  ‘We have to go,’ I said. I was about to say ‘hurry’ but Eden just turned, he burst straight for the shore and I charged straight after as if it had suddenly rushed into our minds that we were not with Bobbie when we had to be.

  *

  The lights were on at Flowerdale and Bobbie’s car was there but the house was empty. I’d called Werner and he’d driven us and Carmelina had stayed in Newport. I ran straight down to the cellar and that final bottle was gone and we were about to head out when Eden called to us to stop. He turned then and walked straight to the door of Bobbie’s bedroom. The lights in the living room felt harsh and cold and I wanted to turn to the picture of Mum so that it could warm me. Eden opened the door to Bobbie’s room and stepped in and I rushed after because I had to. The bed was made, it was flat and final. We saw then that someone had walked through the room without being careful of the dust. We both moved, we both looked, we both checked the same thing. We looked for our Grandpa Jack’s pyjamas but beside the bed there was nothing. The pyjamas were gone. I thought of our mum’s garden and how she’d wanted to grow her family in it, but Bobbie was now our garden and she was planted in us.
r />   We ran. We went through all the rooms again and into the garage and the woodshed. Werner headed up the hill to look in his house. We grabbed torches and followed him down the drive and then went up to the vineyard and the cornfield and through the sheds and equipment. It had stopped raining but the ground was drenched and as we moved we sloshed.

  ‘Is that her?’ Eden said.

  It was away, a long way away, but across the paddock and towards the creek there was a light or what looked like one. We moved that way and made good progress but then the groundwater got deeper and our feet went under.

  ‘Is it flooding?’ Eden said.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said.

  We had seen our creek rise and even flood but we had never seen it break its banks. We moved on and the water was slow but it was spreading. ‘Bobbie,’ Eden called out.

  The light we had seen from a distance swung around then and it was her and we were sure. As her light swung we saw that she was surrounded by water and that it was swirling fast.

  I thought then that Bobbie had probably been down by the creek in the dark because she’d been trying to find me. I thought then, though I didn’t want to, that at seventy-six years old, Bobbie had just spent a year tearing between Flowerdale and Newport because the twins in her care were fighting.

  And then Eden said something.

  ‘Can she swim?’ he asked.

  I looked at the water and it was above her waist and rising.

  ‘Can she swim?’ Eden asked again, demanding.

  I thought then that I’d been angry with Bobbie, that I’d been blaming her in my head, that I hadn’t forgiven her for that night when I’d felt humiliated.

  ‘Can she swim?’ Eden asked again but softer this time as if his own words had just then sunk in.

  We’d spent our whole life swimming but we looked out across the run of floodwater and as we did her torch flashed and turned and we thought we were a love song and yet we didn’t even know; Bobbie, she was our world and our everything and we didn’t even know if she could swim.

  We’d never even asked.

  I thought for a second how Fuzzy had stepped forward in the souvlaki shop but when it was my turn I’d run.

  I said, ‘She was trying to find me.’

  And then Eden moved. First. He moved first.

  He tossed his torch down and shot forward as if the water was honey and as if the air was faster. He charged in, running at first but then under, then swimming. He burst out in butterfly, his arms windmills, like a world record was at stake, like he would beat it.

  ‘Mum,’ I said as if it had slipped out, but the truth was that I had meant it.

  ‘Boys,’ Bobbie called out, like she was pleading. As she did she raised an arm and it had a bottle in it and something white and in the ray of my torch it looked like a flag.

  I flung my light down then and jumped in too, freestyle, following Eden.

  But almost as soon as I started I felt it, and as we raced for her the feeling got worse. Bobbie was upstream and the current was too strong and it was dark and the water was rising. We could swim, we were world class, we’d trained all our lives for this. But I thought right then that we could not swim fast enough. The floodwater was hard, it was impossible. I knew it suddenly, I knew it deep; the Olympics was a dream but this current was real.

  It was raining and dark, we were swimming in water, it felt thicker than that. I liked to say that I had not cried since Mum and Dad died, that I was a dam filled with tears that had been kept for special. I swam towards Bobbie then, I swam behind Eden, I didn’t think we’d make it. As I swam I started rewriting things in my head, rewriting Bobbie, rewriting love. Long before I stopped swimming then I broke fully and I broke well. There were two of us but there was only one of Bobbie.

  *

  At some point, not long after, Eden reached out and touched his hand to the scar on my forehead as if Mum was there and he might feel her.

  But that was later. Now, the creek. Eden and me, Bobbie.

  The trees, the logs, the farm, the water. We could have given up; she was a fair way from us and the creek now was raging. There’d have been no shame if we had. But I thought of those words KEEP TRYING. I thought of the story in Geri’s letter, of our mum and how she kept going when she didn’t really have to. And so I dug in. I went with Eden. I clawed at that water as if I was in the last race on earth. I didn’t think we’d make it but then somehow we did, we made it upstream to our Bobbie.

  And when we did we clung to her, we both. And almost immediately Bobbie did the most miraculous thing, the most amazing. She had a torch in one hand, a bottle in the other. She had the bottle wrapped in Grandpa Jack’s pyjama bottoms. But even so she lifted her arms and ached them around us and pulled us straight in like a bird tucking its eggs back in and under.

  And we felt her arms, all cold and trembling. We felt her hug us. And we knew it, immediately, the moment she touched. We’d finally made it, all three of us, to where we belonged.

  Water banked around us. We could make it back from here; we could go with the current. We stood there though in Bobbie’s arms and as we did I couldn’t stop thinking that Bobbie was awesome and that’s what she was. She’d stood by us forever and for longer than that. I thought of her cornfield and of how we had once run careless through it. I thought of the day we drowned Hemi and how she’d kept staring back at the water. I thought of Grandpa Jack lying beneath a tree with an apple on his back.

  I spoke then. I was talking to Eden but I was also talking to Bobbie. ‘She’s not just our grandma,’ I said, ‘she’s our mate.’ I said this as if a mate was the world’s most sacred thing. I said this as if we had somehow, in some way, let our mate down and that because of this we were not yet men.

  Eden spoke then. He knew that Bobbie could hear. ‘She’s had our back the whole time,’ he said.

  I said, ‘Let’s get her home.’

  Bobbie said, her voice both trembling and slurred, ‘I’m giving you everything I’ve got.’

  I wondered then, before we even managed Bobbie from the water, if Mum would be proud of us, if she could be, if she wasn’t. Bobbie wasn’t good at remembering birthdays or at thinking up things for Christmas. But she’d given us one big gift. The most precious one. She hadn’t asked for Eden and me to land in her life and yet she’d given us every last ounce of herself. I’d taken this for granted all this past year and then like a kid I’d just put out my hand for more.

  They came then. Werner had called the police, an ambulance, any number he could find. We were twins, Eden and me, we were usually different. But not then. When the ambos tried to prise Bobbie from us, both Eden and I said what we’d waited for ten years to say. ‘You’re not taking her from us.’ We said this the same, because we had to, because she had hold of us.

  *

  A new day. Bobbie with car keys in her hand, nowhere to go, towels. We stood out front of our house in Flowerdale, Werner there too. That feeling came over us, that one where things are about to go unspoken, though it was time and we knew it. Time for home.

  We moved for the car. I could tell that Werner wanted to come too. Bobbie looked at Werner then in a way that I had never seen her look at him before. He hopped straight in the car with the energy of a little kid. There were four of us then, four of us driving in a car between Flowerdale and Newport. We were silent. I wished we could play ‘Shining’ or that song we used to hear at school, the one they played out of tune, ‘A State of Graceful Mourning’, except in tune now.

  We made it to Newport and Carmelina was asleep in her car out the front and we didn’t wake her, we walked straight inside, and when we did Bobbie pulled out an envelope. It was old and bare but I knew what it was before I even should have.

  I moved first. I took the envelope as if it was water and I’d slipped straight into it. Eden followed me. Bobbie too. I led us through the house, along the faded Axminster carpet, through the filled-in verandah with cork on its walls. Mum’s vegie
patch was there, I looked and someone had made it immaculate. There was a half-cut pumpkin on top of the fence. We helped Bobbie over and then jumped over too. We saw Geri standing in the window. Eden went to where the steel caravan was, to where the bees buzzed, to where they went home. I thought of the honeycomb in there, all that honeycomb. And as I did, Big Ronnie came bounding, Little Ronnie too. They jumped and they licked, their long hair flowing. Behind them Fuzzy’s vegie garden was flush with green.

  All my life I had walked past Geri as if I was hiding. I turned around then and looked at her in the window. She looked tiny, she always did, but I smiled at her then, and she smiled back, and when she did she looked bigger.

  And then Eden tried the door of the caravan, and it opened. The three of us stepped in, turned the yellow light on, closed the door behind us. The smell was overwhelming.

  ‘We’ll put boxes out today,’ Eden said as if it was time now for us to make our own honey.

  Maybe there were two, maybe there were three, maybe there were more. But there were bees locked in the caravan with us, buzzing around our heads and about the light. Eden pulled a chunk of honeycomb from a rack just like Fuzzy had done. He broke some away and handed some to Bobbie, and then some to me. Out of its holes the sweet sun poured. We took to it as if it was medicine, as if it would heal, as if it was dinner. It smelled of thistles and flowers, it smelled of then and it smelled of now.

  Mum’s stuck-down hair came out from the envelope, and when it did it was sticky.

  We stood oozing honey, Bobbie and my brother and me, as I held Mum’s russet-brown hair up to the globe, the bees all excited. The light seemed to beam right out from it, as if it had brought the sun in from outside, because it still could, because we knew it was still possible.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  When I was a kid I lived in a quiet suburban street and from the time I was born until the time I turned eighteen it seemed as though house prices stayed more or less the same and, perhaps related to that, no one ever moved away. I hardly talked to anyone in this street and yet so many of the people living in it somehow managed to sink themselves deep into me. This book is partly inspired by this street of people and especially by my direct neighbours, one of whom was a suburban beekeeper when no one else was, the other of whom seemed nervous and kind in enormous measure. It’s also inspired by the house and the land and the creek my grandparents lived on at Flowerdale, just out of Melbourne, and by the great sadness brought on by the fact that my extended family and I can no longer walk that land. I wrote this book with a heart full to bursting and while it is fictional it is also a story in which everything means something to me. I started writing it when I was twenty-two and didn’t finish it until I was fifty-two and through all those years almost all the words were changed many times over and yet the character of Eden remained constant. My best friend at high school was named Eden. I don’t see him anymore but I’ll never forget the times he stood up for me when I didn’t have it in me to do it for myself.