Head of the River

by Pip Harry

  ‘They feel better already,’ I say. ‘Thanks, Mum.’

  ‘It’s early in the season, Cris, be patient and do your work. Forget about what people expect of you.’

  ‘I wish I was more like Leni. She’s so focused.’

  ‘She hates to lose. Do you remember our games of Monopoly when you were kids?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  We smile, remembering Leni wiping us off the board and draining the bank of funds. Her tantrums if she happened to lose, which was rare.

  ‘I need to keep my scholarship,’ I say, a flutter of panic rising in my chest.

  Leni and I have to work hard to keep our full sporting scholarships at Harley. In the summer we row and in the winter, it’s rugby for me and cross-country for Leni. We are expected to excel at both sports and make sure our marks are high and steady. There’s no such thing as a free ride. I’ve got to get my rowing sorted out.

  ‘It was one race, Cris. Your scholarship is safe. Now go to sleep. It’s been a big day.’

  Lying in bed, all I can think about is our race, reliving the humiliation. It all came apart at the Big Bend. We were pulling hard and Nick lifted the rating, but Stotts was closing in. Then Adam caught a crab. In rowing, a crab isn’t something you eat on a seafood platter. It’s when an oar gets trapped under the water and you can’t get it back out.

  Adam stopped rowing for a few strokes and the boat started to flop around. We lost the plot.

  ‘Come on!’ I shouted, even though technically I’m not supposed to talk from the middle of the boat. ‘Get it together! Sit the bloody boat up!’

  That’s when Stotts came past us. We were so busy watching them take our boat that we didn’t ease off the stroke side. We skewed right and headed for the bank. Charley stood up in the boat, screaming at us to row hard on bow to avert a crash. He tried to help rudder the boat around by sticking his skinny leg in the water.

  ‘Check stroke side!’ he screamed.

  Everyone on stroke slammed their oars in the water to swing us back into line. Water was flying everywhere. It filled up the bottom of the boat and sloshed around our feet.

  Miraculously it worked.

  The boat started to creak around the bend. We escaped cracking our boat in two, but the race was lost. Stotts got away, two other schoolboy first eights passed us. Dad’s shouting got louder, the worse we rowed. He yells at me in Romanian, which makes it worse. The guys like to mimic his thick accent in the sheds.

  ‘Cristian, more legs! Cristian, quick hands! Cristian, shoulders back!’

  ‘Would he just shut up?’ I panted to Adam.

  It felt like an eternity but we finally limped over the line at the Hawthorn boatsheds. All I wanted to do was collapse under a tree with a feed. The best part of regattas is getting the love at the parents’ picnic. But our coach, Mr West, aka Westie, made us turn the boat around, without even going into the bank, to row all the way back to the city. Another 8.6 ks. Sadistic.

  ‘Bring back Mr Freedman,’ muttered Adam.

  ‘Yeah, I miss Freedo,’ I agreed.

  Our old coach, Mr Freedman might have steered us to victory last year but he wasn’t coming back this season. He was on stress leave. We knew something was up when he started turning up for training in his pyjama bottoms. After Freedo left, Dad was in line for the job until some of the parents complained about his ‘grasp of English’. It was the first time I was relieved Dad hadn’t bothered to master the language.

  After a little political manoeuvring Westie was bumped up from the seconds. Around the sheds, he’s hated and feared in equal measure.

  It was like him to keep flogging us after a humiliating loss. I was sunburnt, hot, exhausted and thirsty. The skin on my hands was tearing apart like tissue paper. Still he kept having Charley call out hard pieces and asking us for more.

  Behind me, I could hear Xavier in the bow, sobbing like a baby.

  I would’ve told him to grow up but I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t join in the blubbering. Instead, I counted the bridges back to the city. MacRob Bridge, Church Street Bridge, Railway Bridge, Punt Road Bridge, Morrell Bridge and Swan Street Bridge. Until we finally pulled past the Henley staging and into the sheds.

  ‘You lot,’ Westie said when we pulled the boat in, ‘are an absolute disgrace.’

  I held a hose up to my head and let the water flow over my scalded scalp. Panting for the liquid like a dog.

  ‘Think this is bad?’ Westie said to us. ‘You are all up for re-selection trials. Monday morning. Enjoy the rest of your weekend, gentlemen.’

  ‘I didn’t think this day could get any worse,’ Adam said as we trudged up to the showers. ‘But it just did.’

  We are never allowed to get too comfortable in our seats; our coaches use a strict algorithm of run times, seat racing and ergo trials to put the whole squad on notice every time we don’t do as well as they’d like. Ergs are the worst – seated rowing machines that chew you up and spit you out if you’re not fit. You either fight tooth and nail for your seat or face eviction into the seconds or thirds.

  ‘I’m not safe,’ I said.

  ‘Me either,’ said Adam. That freaky Sam Camero is breathing down everyone’s neck for a spot in the firsts. He’s going to have to fight me for it. I’m not rowing in the seconds this year.’

  I know that as well as patching up my fitness and losing the muffin top, I’ve got to get my head in the right place if I’m ever going to feel safe in my seat.

  Leni

  Most mornings, my hand reaches out to deactivate my alarm before it goes off. In case I ever miss my 5.20 am wake-up call, Dad is a reliable back-up.

  ‘Leni, up!’ he calls, knocking on the door.

  ‘Cristian, up!’ His voice is always louder for Cris.

  I dress quickly and pull on a heavy fleece jumper, throwing my already packed bag onto my shoulders. I jump up and down on the spot to get the blood flowing to my hands and feet. The house is dark so I flick on the kitchen light and grab a banana from the fruit bowl. I eat it, standing up, in three bites. It takes me under ten minutes to be ready to leave. I’m a morning person.

  Dad is still trying to get Cris out of his room.

  ‘It’s so cold,’ I hear Cristian moan. ‘Just five more minutes. I’ll meet you at the car.’

  ‘Cold? When I was boy we walk to school in minus fifteen. In snow! River was frozen solid, so I train indoors, in tank. You not know cold!’ shouts Dad. He’s irritated now and I wait for the explosion. Dad slams Cris’s door.

  ‘We go without you!’ he shouts. ‘Come Leni!’

  I follow Dad out to the car. He threatens to leave Cristian behind on a regular basis. Cris always makes it out to the car, just in time.

  The passenger door is broken, so I get in the back and shimmy across the gear stick to the front seat. Our car is on the street because our garage is a makeshift gym. Ropes hang from the ceiling, there’s a boxing bag, mats, weights and, of course, an ergo. Training is ever present at my house.

  ‘I leave him behind,’ says Dad, trying to start the car. The engine won’t catch. He swears at it in Romanian.

  In my head I begin a countdown until the front door flies open and Cris runs out, barefoot, carrying his shoes, hair a mess, half asleep.

  1-2-3-4-5-6 …

  There he is.

  ‘Wait!’ Cristian calls. ‘I’m coming!’

  We sit in the car for another minute while Dad tries to start it.

  ‘This car is a piece of junk, can’t we get a new one?’ asks Cristian.

  ‘You have money?’ says Dad. ‘You buy car.’

  Cristian and I hate the family wagon. I hate it even more when I ride with Adam in his family’s new BMW with its plush leather seats. In our car all the seats are torn up, springs escaping. The elements have taken hold of the bonnet, eating through the paint. It’s missi
ng a front bumper bar and the tyres are always bald. Dad said it’s not safe enough for Cristian and I to get our Ps on.

  Dad finally gets the old tank started as Mum rides down the street towards us on her bike. She’s been on night shift at the hospital and is still wearing her ID around her neck. She waves at us and Dad winds down the window and blows her a kiss.

  ‘Bye, my love!’ he calls.

  She returns the kiss, but I can see she’s knackered. She’ll go straight inside, have dinner instead of breakfast, draw the blackout blinds and sleep for hours.

  It’s 5.43 am. My day has started and hers is finishing.

  She’ll be sleeping when I’m pushing my crew down the river on the black oily water, watching the lights from the city bounce off the surface in streaks of gold, pink and blue.

  I look out the window at the empty streets and listen to the birds chirping and calling to each other. I love early mornings. I feel like I’m seeing the very best of the day.

  Cristian

  When I make it to the car Dad’s humming with anger. But instead of giving me an earful, he’s complaining about Westie holding more selection trials. It’s our third batch of seat racing in a few months.

  ‘Flogging, flogging, more flogging. Where will that get you boys?’ he says. ‘Is not only muscle that gets a boat across line first. Is eight oars in perfect time. Like dance. All people working together. Perfect timing. Perfect balance. Cristian, your crew can win, but you have loser coach.’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ I mutter.

  ‘He’s strangling your confidence. Forgetting technique. What good fitness if you can’t row together?’

  ‘Yeah, all right, Dad, can I have some time to concentrate before the trials?’ I ask, putting on my headphones in case he hasn’t got the message.

  Dad was lucky to get me out of bed this morning. He’s lucky every morning. When he first bangs on my door I play a head game where I try to get my big toe onto the floor. If I can get my foot out of bed, then the rest of my dopey body will follow. Today, the toe wanted to stay in bed. I sometimes wish I lived a normal life. Get out of bed at 7.30, eat breakfast in front of the TV and take an 8.18 tram to school. That sounds too good to be true.

  I look out the foggy window, my eyelids heavy. The only other crazies out at this time are truck drivers, loaded up on caffeine and uppers for long hauls, and cyclists getting in some early clicks. I wish we were going on a holiday, driving up north as far as the car would take us. Up to the beaches and the warm, soft waves. I don’t want this car to stop. Because when it does. When Dad pulls into Boathouse Drive, I’ll have to face some very loud music.

  Nobody ever rowed in the seconds and had the school pay their fees. I could kiss my chances of being rowing captain goodbye, too.

  Leni

  When the recess bell goes, I run down to the Year Eleven common room to find Cristian. I saw him crying on the bank and rumour has it he’s out of the firsts after this morning’s racing. As I walk into the room I see Audrey sitting in the far corner next to the windows, beading a necklace. She’s with her friends – my old friends. Marion, Yvette, Lucy. The four of them sitting quietly, working on various crafty projects. I fight the urge to drift over to them and sit down. I miss them.

  It was only supposed to be a one-time thing. I’d have lunch with Adam, realise we weren’t a love match, and return to my well-worn spot in my semicircle of mates. The girls that I loved for their odd quirks and refusal to speak, dress or act like anyone else at Harley. I’d relate my brief crossover to the dark side of popularity and school would go on as it had for the past two years. Handing in our assignments early. Crafting. Laughing. Being spectacularly uncool (and being totally cool with that). Instead, one lunch date with Adam changed the path of my friendships. And I let it.

  When it became clear Adam and I were a couple I tried spending recess with Adam and his friends, going back to my old group for lunch. Gradually, at his insistence, I extended my Adam-time to recess and half of my lunchtime, too. But by the time I made it back to Audrey and the girls, I was lost – missing all the threads of conversation and the things that were important to them.

  I didn’t know Marion’s dog Stevie had died, Yvette had a clarinet solo in the orchestra or Lucy was a runner-up in the state fencing champs. I didn’t know Audrey had decided she was in love with her boyfriend, Kieren. I started to feel like they were talking about me behind my back. Traitor. Turncoat. Two face. Wannabe popular.

  One lunchtime, I can’t remember now which one, I didn’t go back to the girls to sit down. I stayed beside Adam and listened to him talk. I let the minutes slip away. Trying to be in two places at once was too hard. I gave up.

  The next day Audrey gave me a dirty look as I walked past her and Lucy in the front row of the science labs, down to the back where Adam sat.

  ‘You’re not sitting with us at all anymore? Is that it?’ she asked, jumping out at me as I walked out at the end of class. She was close to tears, her features softening.

  ‘We’ve been friends since Year Nine, and you dump us for Adam Langley and the beautiful people?’

  Year Nine. Mrs Curtain made us partners in English and Audrey let me sit with her group at lunch. Even though she’d cultivated those friendships since primary school and I was just the new scholarship girl. A ring-in. She’d saved me and I’d betrayed her. Slowly and creepily by moving my body from one side of the common room to the other. I was scum.

  ‘Can’t we be friends outside school?’ I asked, feeling myself burn with shame for even suggesting it. My parents didn’t raise me to drop my friends the minute a boy paid me attention.

  ‘Why? Because we’re too daggy to be seen with on school grounds?’ she spat.

  ‘That’s not it at all. Adam just wants me to sit with him. We are going out.’

  ‘And what do you want, Leni?’

  She had a good point. What did I want?

  ‘I don’t know. I want things to go back to how they were.’

  Audrey gave me a hurt look and I realised we were both crying.

  ‘Too late,’ she said. ‘You have your Prince Charming now. Us trolls will leave you alone.’

  She did leave me alone. For a while.

  I’d look on wistfully as she strode around school on uniform-free day wearing a long flowing green dress with a plaited headband and triangle sleeves. Her medieval look. The rest of the school wore jeans, T-shirts and thongs.

  I’d shift through photos on Facebook of her and Kieren charging the field at role-playing weekends, dressed up with chain mail and swords. I’d linger as I walked by her and the girls at lunch and sneak a look at how far they’d come along with their quilts, beanies and charm bracelets.

  The ice broke one day at the tram stop. Audrey and I arrived at the same time and got on together. Accidentally choosing to sit in the same booth, our knee caps banging. We looked at each other and Audrey laughed.

  ‘This is silly,’ she said.

  ‘I know,’ I said, relieved. ‘I miss you.’

  ‘Me too, Leni.’

  ‘What are we going to do?’ I asked.

  ‘What was that thing you suggested about being friends outside school?’ Audrey asked. ‘We could try it?’

  That was how our ‘outside hours’ friendship began. We’d meet up after school and on weekends sometimes. She invited me to a medieval party at her house. Adam was at his family beach house and I felt like myself again. We all drank from silver goblets. Audrey sang an old medieval song in parts with Marion. Yvette played the clarinet. Lucy gave a fencing display. I smiled so much my cheeks hurt.

  Back at school Audrey would wink at me across the common room and sometimes left a pair of earrings or a bracelet in my locker.

  I knew we could make it work, even if I was Adam Langley’s girlfriend.

  Adam is standing in a rowing group, deep in
conversation. I can tell they’re talking about Cristian, because they stop when I come near.

  ‘Where’s Cristian?’ I ask.

  Adam rests his hands on my shoulders. It’s meant to be reassuring, but I find it suffocating and shake him off.

  ‘Relax, Leni.’

  ‘Don’t tell me to relax, Adam. Is he in or is he out?’

  ‘Out. But what did you expect? This morning was a disaster.’

  He’s right. This morning was one of Cris’s worst rowing moments.

  ‘I’ve got to find him.’

  ‘He’s gone home,’ Adam says. ‘Sit down. I’ll get you a MILO.’

  ‘I don’t want one.’

  ‘Okay, I won’t bother then,’ Adam says, hurt. He’s always trying to do nice things for me and I’m always pushing him away.

  We look at each other intensely for a few seconds. Our relationship is filled with weird, off-key moments like this. In the beginning we papered over the cracks with romance. Flowers, hand holding and lavish dates. After six months it’s getting harder to bridge the gap. The only true thing we have in common is rowing.

  ‘I’ve got to revise for an English test now,’ I say.

  ‘See you at the gym at lunch? Weights?’

  ‘Yeah. After my run.’

  I’m already in clean gym clothes, ready for more training. I have a T-shirt that says: Row, eat, sleep. Repeat. That’s how my life is. I run from morning training at the river to lunchtime land training to after school on the river and weekends are back-to-back regattas until April. At least we get Tuesday afternoons off. It’s heaven.

  On Tuesday I feel like a regular girl.

  Cristian

  I’ve been dropped from the firsts. Westie hung me out of the boatshed balcony and let go. I came screaming to the ground and smashed into a million pieces. That’s what it felt like anyway. I had a meeting with him, our rowing director and the head of PE. They said it’s temporary until I get my fitness and my weight back on track.