Golden Boys

by Sonya Hartnett

  And suddenly the deck is swarming with children who have sensed the imminent arrival of food: a space is cleared on the table between the salads and the bread-sticks, and a platter of meat is placed down; the plates and cutlery and serviettes and food disappear in pieces so the table is like the tasty body of something and the children and adults are carnivorous birds, pecking until only scraps remain. The older boys eat on the deck steps, Avery with his injured leg stretched out, Syd with a towel around his shoulders and his hair slick on his forehead. Bastian dips a hamburger in sauce and nibbles its crispy hem; when he’s finished he snuggles into his mother’s side, his arms linked about her waist. Tabby folds an arm around him, and it occurs to Freya that her own mother never does such cosy things, and that maybe Tabby is better at being a mother than she looks, and that her own mother is worse. Marigold and Dorrie sit side-by-side on the deck’s edge, their bare feet dangling into space, messy plates on their knees. The adults sit around the table on matching canvas chairs, Joe working through a modest meal using a knife and fork and never his fingers, her mother shielding her mouth with a hand while she chews. Rex reclines, hands clasped behind his head, his long legs crossed at the knees. His apron is slung over the barbeque’s handle, as if kissing-time is done. After a few minutes he is back on his feet, filling glasses, fetching ice, flipping the music tape. ‘How was that burger?’ he asks as he passes, and she blushes because although it was delicious she now sees that it was shameful, preferring a dubious disc of offcuts to the proper food that was on offer. Even Bastian had chosen one of the hamburgers made by his mother, in which bits of parsley and diced onion could be seen.

  Her father is a man of silences. He never talks about himself or anyone else. He mustn’t, Freya’s long ago reasoned, be interested, not even in himself. So it’s surprising when he asks, out of the blue, ‘What made you become a dentist, Rex?’

  Rex, at the barbeque, turns at the waist to look at him. ‘I wanted to frighten small children.’ He winks at Freya, which makes her grin, but Joe taps a finger on his plate and says, ‘It’s probably not something you just wake up one day and decide.’

  Rex wags his head and agrees, ‘No, it wasn’t like that. But I don’t suppose it was much different from you becoming a printer. Life takes you places.’

  ‘People don’t ask me why I became a printer.’ Joe gives his plate a small shove, and leans back in his seat. ‘Whereas I guess you get asked about being a dentist pretty often, wouldn’t you. It’s that kind of job. Not one you just fall into.’

  ‘Dad,’ says Freya, because there’s an impoliteness in his tone that surely she’s not alone in hearing, and they are guests here, and he is her father around whom it’s impossible to be free of the fear that something is about to go wrong. ‘Maybe he doesn’t want to talk about it.’

  Rex, though, is unruffled. He’s been scooping the dregs of the barbeque onto the platter and now he comes to the table and sets the platter in its place, and slips into his seat. ‘Have you ever had a bad tooth, Joe?’ he asks.

  He’s not a complainer, he’s tough as a boot, but he says, ‘Of course.’

  ‘It was all you could think about, wasn’t it?’ Rex gives a quick dash of a smile. ‘It was the master of your world. Every moment of the day and night you were at the mercy of this pounding tyrant in your head. You couldn’t sleep. You couldn’t eat. Nothing was amusing or engaging. You found yourself thinking that if you have to live with this tooth much longer, you’d prefer to die. Your body seems to hate you, after all. It seems intent on driving you to your grave, and you start to think you’re happy to go.’

  Joe says, ‘Well, it wasn’t that bad.’

  Rex smiles again, reaching for some bread. Everyone, Freya sees, has stopped to listen, even the boys on the steps – although not Colt, he is the exception, he is peering at his feet smoothing dust from between his toes and paying no apparent attention at all. He must have heard it before, this incantation of misery. ‘It was almost that bad, though, wasn’t it?’ Rex says. ‘I bet that tooth ruled your life for a while there. And do you remember, when you had that bad tooth, the one person you wanted to see more than anyone else in the world?’

  ‘The dentist!’ chirps Marigold.

  ‘The dentist.’ Rex nods and sits back, pulling the crust from the bread. ‘I knew from my very first toothache that it was what I wanted to do. I wanted to be the man who could ease suffering when suffering was a person’s whole world.’

  ‘You wanted to help,’ says Tabby.

  ‘You wanted to be a hero,’ says Joe.

  ‘Joe!’ says Elizabeth.

  But Joe is scornful. ‘You wanted – what, a bit of power over people when they’re weak?’

  ‘Dad!’ Freya’s face flames so red it must glow: she’d slap her father, stab him, pick up the platter and swing it at his head. But Rex says, in a hearty voice, ‘My goodness, I’ve never thought of it like that! Here I was thinking I just wanted to be of some use! I never realised it was all about power.’

  He gazes around the deck, smiling broadly, like a lighthouse, and everyone at the table – the next-door neighbours, the shy lady, Elizabeth, Tabby, Freya more than anyone, Freya as if her life depends on it – smiles back as forcefully as they can. ‘Maybe I’d better throw in the towel!’ Rex laughs. ‘From now on, my patients can just put up with their pain. Some of them certainly deserve it. What do you reckon, Bas?’

  Bastian jerks to life. ‘Yeah!’

  ‘A hero. A hero. Goodness me. I’ve never thought of that.’ Rex, chuckling, drops the mutilated bread onto his plate and smears his fingers on a tattered serviette. ‘Although one thing I do know, and I’ll tell you this, Joe: if I was a hero, I’d charge a lot less money. Or maybe a lot more? One or the other.’

  His guests laugh and laugh enthusiastically. Freya laughs too, though nothing is funny. Colt, she sees, hasn’t looked up from his feet, but he has gone still. He must have been listening after all – listening to Freya’s father prove himself as mean as she told them he was. It should make her feel better, but she’s washed with dismay. ‘Is it too soon for dessert?’ asks Tabby as the amusement fades. ‘We don’t want to keep you forever, shall I serve dessert?’

  There’s a rush of chair-shunting, plate-stacking, table-clearing, door-swinging. Desserts are brought out, fruit salad and cake and ice-cream and pavlova, and the younger children jostle jealously at the table for their share. ‘You must have been cooking all day!’ marvels Elizabeth, and Tabby says, ‘Oh, I bought the pavlova, I only did the cream and passionfruit.’ Marigold shivers and says, ‘I hate passionfruit,’ and Freya could thump her, her whole family is monstrous, she can scarcely swallow the cake. She begs for the night to be over, and her life with it. The boys eat hurriedly and then move back into the garden, Garrick grabbing the BMX but not before he has taken a cleansing plunge in the pool, bombing off the top rung of the ladder, splashing Bastian when the boy comes within reach. The plaster on Avery’s knee is black, petalling at the edges; he and Declan and Colt ride the skateboards down the driveway. Syd, who waited for Garrick to vacate before slithering into the water, claws his way around the bottom of the pool like an otter exploring a river. Joe stands at the rail watching him, and when Rex comes to stand beside him the men glance sideways at each other, and Freya feels sick with trepidation. But all Rex says is, ‘What do you know about building, Joe? I’m hoping to extend the deck around the pool,’ and although Freya has never known her father to build anything, never even seen him swing a hammer, he answers as if he knows exactly what he’s talking about. And Rex, instead of being angry, laughs and nods and asks questions, and changes his plan to encompass Joe’s idea: and Freya is completely confused all over again about the way the world works.

  As soon as the cake and ice-cream are finished, Peter finds reason for grizzling: Elizabeth says, ‘We should go.’ All the adults decide to leave at once then, though it’s hardly late: everybody stands up as if there’s a race to get out the door. S
alad bowls and sandwich trays are rinsed and returned, and Tabby gives Dorrie a little purse of clingwrap containing the sugar flowers from the cake. ‘You coming?’ Avery asks Garrick, who is still haring about on the BMX. ‘I don’t have to leave just ’cause you are,’ he answers, but Declan says, ‘Yeah you do, everyone’s going home.’ Garrick says, ‘Bloody hell!’ and throws down the bike. Freya looks at Colt, who quirks an eyebrow, and she finds with surprise that she’s not cross or fearful or hurt, just as Rex had not been – that, in fact, her heart is fizzing. And she cannot understand what is happening, why the world keeps changing every time she thinks she has a grip.

  They’re drifting down the driveway with Bastian trotting round like a chatty satellite when they notice someone is missing: Syd hasn’t come out of the pool. ‘I’ll get him,’ says Declan, and Colt and Freya follow him back up the driveway to the side gate. ‘Come on, Syd!’ Declan calls, but their brother answers with only a rude splash. ‘Go and get him,’ Freya tells Declan, but Rex, who’s appeared behind them, says, ‘I’ll do it, you two get going.’ He saunters across the yard, clapping his hands for the boy’s attention, crying, ‘All water babies out!’

  Syd’s head pops up, streaming, gummy-eyed; the water is cold, and as he climbs down the ladder in the glare of the outside lights he looks bleached to the bone. His towel is on the path, wet and bundled like a drowned cat, but Rex holds out a dry one, something plush which must belong to the family. He drapes it around Syd’s shoulders and with his big hands dries the boy’s arms and chest and legs, not slipshoddedly, as Syd might dry himself, but thoroughly and with order, as if it’s a job to do properly or not at all. He wipes Syd’s tummy, his ears, the drips that run down his face. Syd, feather-light, is knocked this way and that, but he doesn’t resist, so it’s all done in moments; then the boy grabs his clothes and runs to his siblings, wearing only his bathers. ‘Wait for me,’ he says, as if they weren’t already. Declan says, ‘Get going,’ and shoves him in the direction of the street. Freya, as she goes, waves a hand at Colt. ‘Bye,’ she says. And he looks at her swiftly, but says nothing.

  Their father has drunk just enough to do what, for the children, is the most exciting thing any human being could possibly do: he rummages in the garage for the tin of petrol, and as Elizabeth retreats into the house saying, ‘You’re crazy, you’ll kill yourself,’ he clears back his audience, swigs a mouthful of petrol, and, as the children watch in bitten-lip awe, holds a lit match to his face and blows out a streak of flame. Spectacular, impossible, their own private circus: the children cheer like savages. Marigold screams, ‘Do it again, Dad, do it again!’ and he does, brightening the fair heads of his offspring with dragon-fire. He takes another mouthful and blasts at the sky a spear of orange fire, and they hear its ragged breath, feel its brawny punch, catch its brilliance in their eyes. ‘Again, again!’ shouts Dorrie, but Joe gags, ‘Oh no, that’s enough,’ and staggers indoors, half-poisoned, spitting as he goes. The sky is dark, and the air is much cooler, but Freya lingers in the yard after Avery and Garrick are gone and her siblings are all inside, remembering how this day started, and the points at which it pivoted from ordinary to appalling to unforgettable.

  Colt helps his mother bring the last plates in, then folds up the deckchairs and lugs them to their corner of the laundry. The bicycles and skateboards lie strewn about the yard, and he wheels the bikes into the shed and wipes down the skateboards before returning them to the playroom. Never in his life has he left a possession outside to be ruined by the weather. Bastian is more careless, and Colt walks around with a bucket picking small abandoned vehicles out of the mulch. There are scraps of food dropped about, and he throws them deep into the garden. The earth surrounding the pool is muddy from Syd’s splashings, and the muck sticks to Colt’s bare feet; he washes them clean under the tap. He looks around but there is nothing left to do outside, and the sky is purple now, overcast by night. Through the window he sees his father moving from fridge to drawer to kitchen counter, his face with its shapely jaw and halo of mahogany hair very calm, quite expressionless, as if the drawer and fridge contain nothing, and nothing was what he expected to find. Even when he opens his mouth and makes some reply to Bastian who must be at the table or in the hall, his face is as empty as something never used. He lives within his body, Colt thinks, like a frightened person might live behind a strong wall. But Colt had seen him rattled tonight, and he knows that, inside, his father will still be shaking.

  He brushes his teeth at the bathroom sink, staring as he does so at his reflection in the mirror. He looks a great deal like his father. He has the same heavy hair, the same black-lashed eyes. His nose, like his father’s, is square at the tip. He snarls at the mirror, sees his father’s white teeth. Even the hand around his toothbrush, with its oversized knuckles and flat fingernails, is the same. It is as if he is being dragged remorselessly to a place he’d rather not go. He spits in the sink, turns the tap off tight. There’s nothing he can do about how he looks.

  Bastian is in bed, proclaiming like a roosting bird his final thoughts of the day. ‘Mum, will I have a tuckshop order tomorrow?’

  His mother answers from her bedroom, something which Colt, drying his face, doesn’t properly hear. ‘Did you write I get a doughnut?’ Bastian asks. ‘A strawberry doughnut? Is it the one with jam? Can you make sure? Last time they gave me the one without the jam.’

  Again his mother answers, something soothing, and Bastian subsides. Then his voice lilts out: ‘Colly, where are you?’

  Colt sits on his bed, facing the trophy boys. They are always running, running, striving to be somewhere. Most of them have one raised foot which will never touch the ground. ‘What, Bas.’

  ‘Will you help me carry my bag in the morning? It’s really, really heavy.’

  Their faces are blurred and sightless, their mouths sealed with gold. Already he is losing the memory of what his old friends looked like. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What?’

  Colt lifts his voice. ‘I will.’

  ‘Uh. Colly?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t like it when Garrick rides the BMX. He’s too rough.’

  Colt slips his t-shirt over his head, reaches under his pillow for his pyjamas. ‘The BMX will be all right.’

  ‘He’s going to break it.’

  ‘No he isn’t.’

  ‘If he breaks it, I will kill him. I will stick him with a knife.’

  ‘Bastian.’ Their father speaks from the front room. ‘Quiet now. School in the morning.’

  He is not a child who requires two tellings, and goes silent. Colt steps out of his jeans and underwear and into his pyjama trousers. He checks his schoolbag, which is packed and ready, his homework long done. He excels at school, is a clever and diligent boy who has never brought home a bad report card, and never will. He doesn’t know what he will do with his life, but he knows what he won’t do. He zips the bag, goes to the door and draws it almost shut.

  He reads in bed for a while, trying not to think. The television is on in the front room, his father watching alone. Eventually Colt switches off his bedside lamp, and the room goes dark. Shortly after, he hears the television likewise turned off. He hears his father walk down the hall to the bathroom, where he brushes his teeth and uses the toilet and washes his hands as if they’re covered in soot; then he tours the house, checking the doors and windows, switching off the last lights. He goes to the bedroom he shares with Tabby, and Colt is surprised to hear the mild voice of his mother. She could have been asleep by now; she could have pretended to be asleep.

  She says something, and Rex replies. There are many walls between the bedrooms, and Colt can’t clearly make out the words. He hears just the tone, something like the shush of waves. Normally he wouldn’t listen, wouldn’t want to listen, but tonight something had happened that doesn’t usually happen. Joe Kiley had seen something less impressive than what he was supposed to see. Colt sits up on an elbow, and it seems to help: he hears his fa
ther say, ‘I’m not in the mood to discuss this.’ Tabby answers, and her voice has a pulled thread: Rex replies, and his voice has a spine. Tabby speaks again, and Rex answers sharply, almost endlessly: ‘I’m puzzled as to why you’d even mention it. Puzzled and disappointed. I’m extremely tired, and I wish to go to sleep. I was under the impression you were on my side, Tabby. Please let me know if that’s not the case.’

  It’s a tone Colt has heard his father use before, a kind of arrogant whine, the sound of some frustrated night-hunting animal or an accused prince. It drags Colt back to the old house, the knock on the door which came without warning one evening, the faces in the hallway like concrete masks over faces he knew. The hung heads, the rubbed jaws, the ones who didn’t look up from the carpet, the others who stared like snakes. He’d taken Bastian to his room and they’d sat on the bed, and although he couldn’t answer Bastian’s questions he had known what was happening the way a body knows it is mortally ill. Now, in this new room, he curls up on the bed, drawing the blankets to his shoulders and the pillow over his face; but the sense of a nightmare follows him under, like a song he cannot shake.

  For a couple of days Syd becomes obsessed with Christmas, having caught the fever of imminent gift-getting from his sisters. He and Marigold and Dorrie make lists of things they want. Dorrie’s requests run to plastic babies and fluffy animals, as well as to shoelaces, which is odd. Marigold wants polka-dot bed linen, which is also odd. When Syd thinks of what he wants, he pictures the Jensons’ playroom but writes one word: skateboard. ‘How long until Christmas?’ the little girls ask, and Syd unhooks the calendar from the kitchen wall and shows them. Only the flip of a page, yet still it is weeks, box after box of days. Marigold magnets her wishlist to the fridge, but Dorrie, disheartened, throws hers away. A page is a lifetime to her.