How it feels

by Brendan Cowell

‘I love you, Cronky,’ he said. ‘You know that.’

  The ribs man was running from the car as I left, Albert banging on the pan in delight.

  I bailed out the back door and into the sleeting rain to see my first-ever girlfriend.

  The Rydges was big and there were many parts to it; you took one wrong stairwell you ended up in the staff car park, or the hotel kitchen or just some weird inexplicable bit. It was late and I was afraid of being spotted by the women, so I edged round the hotel foyer into the restaurant, where I ran into all of them enjoying Cosmo’s beneath a rotunda. The women all screamed and waved, smoking like fuck.

  Nina stood up instantly, concern flitting across her beautiful profile; she knew there was a reason for my presence. I told her, in a whisper, that Courtney had called me. She said Courtney had gone to bed an hour ago. I nodded as she gave me the room card, then I kissed her on the cheek and pretended to leave via the front door, waving to the bridesmaids and associated women-types, then darted behind the reception desk to the elevator.

  The bridal suite was on the seventh floor. I slid the card in and opened the door and a warm rush of blood went up then down me. Heart-shaped pillows, white linen, an Arthur Streeton on the wall. Next to the bed were two side tables with matching ornate reading lights. On Courtney’s side were her thick-rimmed reading glasses, Marlboro Light cigarettes, a Samsung mobile and a copy of The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. I snuck further into the room, and there it was. Hanging by the window, before a landscape of chunky, uncompromising rain and waif-thin bolts of yellowy lightning, was Courtney’s wedding dress, swinging lightly in the frame of the large window like it had all but gone and hanged itself on its own. I could picture her in it, swaying and smiling like the pale angel she was. I stumbled towards the dress and held it to my face; it smelt like life. I moved my arm up inside the dress as far as it would go. I took out my cock and wanked it, feeling up the inside fabrics and textures of the gown. It didn’t take long, there were layers of joy to aid me here; within a minute I let out a deep, primal moan, jacked on the carpet and left the room.

  *

  The beach roared loud from east to west, and nowhere a human, just black sky, white sand and ghostly, quivering figures in the wind, be they birds or actually wind. Wind making sand dance, or just wind. Every step I took confirmed the dumb drama of the situation. Why had she brought me out here, what game was this? She knew I was cosy with her man, nestled in booze and silliness, with our own kind, with good joy, big and good joy, and so she had to pull me out and make the night here, bring it back to womankind; weddings were all theirs, whether they wanted them or not. In this line of thought I considered returning to Gordon’s place and abandoning the SOS altogether, but the memory of her voice on the phone gripped me, the weakness in it, the dislocation; that little-girl-lost sound threw me back down the shore every time I turned towards Elouera. I was all but on my knees, thumping the sand, when I heard my first name thrown out into the wetted air.

  I followed the echo of that one strong syllable down the beach towards the rock pool where the sand ends and the esplanade begins. A figure formed fully in view, mingling with nature by the water’s edge, yards of brown hair whipping about in the wind, hair that I had held in my hands and smelt. Hair so clean and flowing it would make my adolescent dick hard just seeing it in a scrunchie on Mondays in rollcall.

  ‘Neil,’ she said, softly, and the weather turned, like Nirvana did so abrasively from verse to chorus. The ocean was screaming now, cut up into pieces by a new, ungracious wind. And she was right there before me, in her drenched green cardigan that gripped her small breasts like cling wrap. ‘Do you think I am doing the right thing?’ she asked, tears in the pit of her eye sockets.

  ‘What?’ I asked, wiping my eyes to see her clearly.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ she said, pulling a length of wet hair from her mouth. The waves ripped, swung and danced behind her.

  ‘What about tomorrow?’ I asked. ‘You’re getting married.’

  Her face twisted. ‘Yes,’ she whispered, as vulnerable as fruit.

  ‘That’s it, right?’ I asked her, and she nodded. ‘You love him,’ I said and she did not nod. She did not shake her head either; she just stood there, inches from my frame, staring at my chin.

  ‘I’m just so scared something bad will happen.’ She started to cry and I grabbed her and held her against me, I could feel the toughness of her nipples, hardened by wind, against my ribs and I liked it.

  ‘Nothing bad is going to happen,’ I said. ‘Not with you.’

  ‘How can you know?’ she said, pulling away from me, but hanging onto my shirt. She banged her fists against my chest. ‘How can you know I won’t have a boy and he won’t go shoot his head off, or hang himself? How can I know that won’t happen to me?’

  ‘Because your son will be strong.’

  ‘Tommy was strong, and he left. He’s out there somewhere!’

  It hit me, stupid me, why we were down at South Cronulla beach, right across from The Point and Shark Island where Tommy had surfed religiously, famously. She was about to do the biggest thing in her life, and without him.

  ‘Gordon is so strong and you are so brilliant, your children will know themselves so well, things like that will never happen,’ I said, and she let go of my shirt, turning away like it was all so ugly she simply could not look at it.

  ‘Do you really think I’m pathetic for staying?’

  ‘Staying where?’ I asked.

  ‘In Cronulla. For never travelling or moving to the city.’

  ‘I used to,’ I said. ‘But now I wonder if I’m stupid for leaving. All I did was make silly shows and destroy a woman from the inside out.’

  ‘You did more than that.’

  ‘I think you’re about to do all the things that life is really for, and whether you went overseas or not, this is the best thing.’

  ‘You look down on me, don’t you? Because I never left.’

  ‘I could never look down on you, Courtney.’

  ‘I had to stay. I needed to look after Mum.’

  ‘I know that.’

  The wind and the sea threw her hair up and with it all she knew.

  ‘Do you think Tommy will come?’ she asked me, retreating away to the rocks, all coy now as the storm hummed and simmered.

  ‘ To the wedding?’ I followed.

  ‘To watch me marry Gordon.’ She climbed up onto the shelf, nearly slipping on the mossy rocks.

  ‘He’ll be watching,’ I said and she laughed darkly, turning on me now.

  ‘As if you fucking know,’ she said. ‘You just make it all up!’

  I hated her suddenly, this game was fucked and boring and I just wanted to go back and eat the fatty ribs Albert had ordered and get more fucking drunk, but instead I followed her up onto the slippery rock shelf.

  ‘You’re a fraud,’ she said, throwing a rope of seaweed at my legs. She was close to it, the creamy waves rushing up to her knees, pushing her forward and back like a reed.

  ‘I told you everything he told me,’ I said.

  ‘Stop with the fucking bullshit, Neil! For one fucking second!’

  My heart sank but at the same time I didn’t care, I’d lost interest in what people thought of me, I was dead in that way too.

  ‘Did Tommy say any of the things you told me?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Did he say those things about Gordon?’

  I shook it more.

  ‘Did he speak through Stuart at all?’

  I paused, looking down at my purple, shaking hands.

  ‘I felt him there, I swear I did…’

  She started crying; shaking her white and purple face at me. And then a wave pushed her down onto her front and her hands both split open on the barnacles, drawing out fast blood and one primal scream from deep down within the girl. I crept over to her, lifting off my hooded jumper and wrapping her hands in it, folding and rolling it over. Waves rolled past and through us. She lifted her f
ace and stared at me.

  ‘Come away with me,’ she said. ‘Let’s run. Let’s do everything we talked about when we were kids, let’s just fuck off out of here and go, the two of us, seriously, let’s go now, let’s get the bus to anywhere!’ She took my neck and gripped it hard. She would go too; I could feel it in the pulsing of her thumb.

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘I can’t do that to G .’

  ‘You can lie to me though,’ she said, ‘about my brother.’

  ‘I can’t take you away, we’re not kids anymore.’

  ‘You are,’ she said, ‘the same gutless child.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I said, and she discarded my hand.

  The night enclosed us, the seagulls squawked their discontent. Just let me die here on this beach and you can all eat me alive – Mum and Dad, the birds the teachers the waves the wedding party.

  ‘I can’t be here with you anymore,’ I said. ‘I have to go.’

  ‘You should go,’ she said, facing the sea again. ‘After the wedding you should go away forever, and leave us all alone, don’t call, don’t write, and just disappear into thin air, please.’

  I nodded at the holes in the rocks, then walked on up to Cronulla Street and took a cab to Bundeena. It would cost at least sixty bucks but I did not care about the money, I couldn’t go back to Gordon’s place, she was written all over me.

  34

  There was a wedding on and it was my duty to distract the bride. I walked back inside the surf club leaving Kirkwood to fix herself up. The walls were dressed with wooden plaques announcing the loyalty of club members, and framed black and white photographs of lifesavers lined up and reeling rope out to a buoy through their bare hands, chests puffed out, dressed in identical one-piece swimmers, a giant flag waving away in the wind beside – those halcyon days.

  As I entered the hall heads turned towards me like clowns at the Easter Show and I wondered where my speech was, I could not feel it in my pocket anymore. Fuck, I’d just wing it: ‘They’re a beautiful couple, really complement each other, fire and rain, joy to be around, health and happiness, babies and Rottweilers.’

  With this in mind I angled towards the drinks table to see my best friend vodka but Courtney was upon me, her hand in my armpit, her face red and flustered, she was in a flap but still, always, delightful.

  ‘Gordon, I mean, Neil, where have you been?’

  ‘Hey?’

  ‘Where is Gordon? They’re about to resume speeches and no one has seen him. He hasn’t left, has he?’

  I wished he had and I could take her away now.

  ‘He wouldn’t do a runner would he? We’re already married! What’s there to be afraid of?’

  ‘Shhh, Courtney.’

  ‘There’s only one more song to dance to then the speeches!’

  I took her hands in my hands and moved my lips near her ear. ‘Well if there’s only more song to dance to we better dance to it,’ I said, and led her onto the floor without even waiting for her answer. I winked at the DJ who then pressed play on that Green Day song about having the time of your life, and our bodies were against each other, drifting clockwise to the melancholy riff. Her hair smelt like Wella Balsam and modesty as it flicked and feathered my nose and eyelashes. We were dancing now, and there was no one else in the room, it was true.

  ‘Where is he?’ she asked me, so quiet but somehow more harsh.

  ‘He’s not far,’ I said, ‘he’ll never be too far.’

  I prayed this song would never end, though I feared it was less than three minutes.

  ‘And you?’ she asked me, calmer now, her body dropping into mine for the purpose of this dance, this stalling waltz.

  My eyes were closed and I was listening to her body move within this realm of ours; every shift in hand, every glance of breast on shoulder, every tilt of neck or spill of breath was mine and I would feel it all, as we both did on those glorious walks and wanders of our collapsed youth.

  ‘Me?’ I asked her. ‘Where will I be?’

  ‘Will you be far?’

  ‘Last night on the beach you made it clear to me…’

  ‘I always want you near me,’ she said. ‘That’s what I hate about you.’

  ‘I always want you near me too; even in London I missed you.’

  ‘I missed you every day,’ she said, and I believed her, though I could not see her face. I moved my hand up her back and circled her fine spine.

  ‘What is it?’ I said. ‘What is this thing of ours?’

  ‘Gordon worries about us, you know? He worries I will run away with you one day. That I will just wander off – even with children I’ll run to you.’

  ‘Can you see that?’ I asked her, and in the perfect dark we spun.

  ‘I love Gordon,’ she said to me, in earnest.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he will never break my heart,’ she said, and it landed like a seaplane on a millpond, it just slid on in and rested there as truth.

  ‘But is that love?’ I said and there was no response, we just danced, spinning and prancing one step two step and back one two.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘After Tommy I don’t know what anything is.’

  ‘Is Tommy with you now?’ I asked her, and her breath faltered.

  ‘How dare you ask me that?’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said.

  ‘He is but he isn’t, I don’t feel him so much anymore, I don’t feel anything.’

  ‘But love? You said you feel love?’

  ‘I feel disconnected to everything; it’s all away from me.’

  ‘Courtney, so do I. I feel completely disconnected from everything, I feel numb, nothing moves me, nothing reacts, nothing’s there.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I know you do. So do I.’

  ‘Then what are you doing here?’ I gripped her to know.

  ‘Neil, don’t,’ she said, dipping her head.

  ‘Fuck, Courtney!’ I said, too loud, and the end of the track was near enough. I pushed her out in front of me and with the light ravaging my eyes I pleaded with her to make one true thing of all of this, one true thing and now.

  ‘How?’ I said. ‘How can you feel that way and be here now?’

  ‘I think,’ she said, with a tear in one eye and a smile in the other, ‘I think because I am disconnected, I can love someone, and properly,’ she said to me. ‘Because I can see them for who they are. We were too in love, you and I. Neil, it cannot work for any length of time. It’s too much with you.’

  ‘I’m too much?’

  ‘For me, you are, yes, and I am ashamed to say it.’

  ‘So you choose this instead?’ I gestured to her dress.

  ‘No,’ she said, placing my hand on her stomach. ‘I choose this.’

  There was a child beneath my hand, and that was why she spoke of it last night by the sea, her fear of ‘the kid’ becoming like the rest of us failed fellows who were brought up on manicured lawns by idyllic beaches beneath the orb which draped us in golden sunlight – the blessed fellows who chose their own exit before it came to them, the lemming boys who wandered up the cliff and dropped away without a change of expression, blindly fading out in perfect unison, un-keen on what might come to bear on this land, in the mall, in the marriage, in the marketplace. She’d said she’d run away with me too, fucking fickle – you’re fickle, you said, ‘Let’s go away from here,’ and I should have done – I saw this now so clearly, I should have taken her hand, her new foetus, her big green eyes, and shown them somewhere else, but I only ever jumped when there was no netting, and I only ever stayed when the parade was on down the road, all I did was wrong here, and that was why I had to go, like how she said last night, ‘away from here forever’.

  I met her stunned and stunning face with mine and yes, I kissed her full on the mouth. There would be no speech, there would only be what was necessary, and in this world it was ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’. Her mouth opened up and I pressed into its wetness, my thumbs coasted over those cheekbones
for the last time, and the disconnected were connected.

  And then the sound of trampling feet emerged from the distance, mixed with the sound of old vinyl, scratchy and suggestive. I raised my head from the shelf of her lacy shoulder to see Gordon, dressed in a bright white Elvis outfit flickering with glitter and mad purple flares, skid out of the corridor and into the main hall. He wore a big black wig and his face was red with performance anxiety as he screeched to a halt a few metres before us and hit the first, ravaging line of the 1956 remake hit ‘Hound Dog’.

  The bass and drums followed in as the night turned slow before me. Gordon, my best friend, my pathologically shy friend, who had a conniption every time the teacher asked him to come up to the board, who never even sang the anthem out loud in assembly, who would rather fork his eye out than make a speech – was performing ‘Hound Dog’ in front of a two hundred strong crowd, and I couldn’t help but feel it was for me, or against me. His voice was low and I guess it vaguely resembled the man, but still it was a struggle for me to watch him forcing out the rockabilly number with exaggerated choreography and iconic Presley affectations. It was gratuitous – for there was no need to be Elvis tonight, no need to impress her at all with this fat dead guy; you have won her already, my friend, with sheer perseverance and nobility, why the flamboyance? That’s the way I tear things down, not you. And my heart sank further to my belly when halfway through the number he noticed the loaded, ripe expressions on my face and Courtney’s, our hands still in each other’s grasp, and the crowd that circled round us were not laughing, nor were they smiling, but staring open-mouthed at this repulsive controversy that took place when there was love in a triangle.

  Gordon stopped and dropped his fake microphone before the guitar solo even took place. He gestured to the DJ to kill the track and there was silence in the room, but for the scraping of a couple of chairs on wood and a run of high coughs. Gordon’s shoulders fell down in misery; he shook his head at the floor and I knew it well. Courtney dropped my hands and just stood there next to me, remembering her vows, and the dress she was wearing. He was smiling insanely at me but there was no surprise in his eyes. This was what he had expected. Then he cast his eyes over to Courtney, who whispered, ‘Gordy, we were just waiting for you,’ but he wouldn’t be having this, the King would not fall tonight, or any night, so he hopped up onto the podium and grabbed the authentic microphone, which screamed and squealed in his sweating hands.