An Open Swimmer (8 page)

‘Books,' his mother murmured, smoothing the wrinkles of his bed. ‘Always used to have your beak in a book. Ever since I can remember.
Robinson Crusoe
,
The Swiss Family Robinson
,
that
little skinny book you read at school . . . here,
The Old Man and the Sea.
A writer, you said, that's what, Mum. And you'n Auntie Jewel would sit out there in the afternoons, planning your career. Scribbling those little poems. Didn't know who was worse, you or Jewel. Those funny little love things she used to write. She was a dear.'

Petals fall like scales onto my hand . . .

Jerra half-smiled, feeling the wall.

‘You used to read everything, once. News, pamphlets, magazines. Even the
Digest
.'

‘Yes.' He smiled truly. ‘Even the
Digest
.'

‘Why is it you don't read any more, Jem? The hardbacks, all the old writers. What about Laurie . . . Laurie, no Lowry, the drunken bum.' She found
Lunar
Caustic
on his shelf and worried it out. ‘That's him.'

‘Dunno, Mum.' Jerra didn't look. The books turned him cold. ‘It just wasn't real. You kid yerself, sometimes.'

‘You used to say it was more real than anything.' She shrugged, pulling at her cardigan. She gazed at the curling photos, dusty on the wall, and pointed. ‘Where was that again, love?'

‘Near Esperance. I forget.'

‘Lovely.'

‘Yeah. It was.'

‘Who took the picture?'

‘Sean. Sean did. He had the camera.'

He glanced out onto the street.

‘Haven't seen our Sean for a while.'

Sprinklers rattled.

‘Have you seen him since the trip?'

‘No,' he lied.

Coming back from the river, he had gone into a bar. Lunch time, and it was crowded with smoke and the smells of powdered bodies swirling in the crush. Office girls laughed. A race-caller jabbered. He bought a beer and found a red table with Vinyl seats. As he nudged the bitter foam, Sean came in, hesitated, then recovered and sat down.

‘G'day, mate,' he said cheerily.

‘Hullo, Sean.'

‘How's things?' He flicked back his tie. The name tag looked impressive and a bit pathetic.

‘Orright.' Jerra pushed a soggy coaster.

‘Got a job, yet?'

‘Nah.' He smiled. ‘How's the shirts?'

‘Well as can be expected, I s'pose. Which reminds me, I'm due back.' He stood, leaving a handmark on the hot red of the Laminex. ‘Listen, I'll drop by soon and we'll go out somewhere on a weekend, orright?'

‘Yeah, sure,' Jerra said into his beer.

Then only the smoke and the races. And the beer was awful.

‘ . . . can always remember it. Auntie Jewel would never have forgiven me for sending him there. Such a rough mob at that school.'

‘Eh?'

‘Auntie Jewel.'

‘Talk about being sent.'

‘Well, Sean's Dad thought it was for the best.'

‘His best. Runs in the blood.'

Through sand.

‘Everything's alright between you and Sean, isn't it, Jem? Nothing happened while you were away?'

‘Nothing.'

‘Hmm?'

‘Ah, it's okay, I suppose. We just . . .'

‘What?' She picked a piece of fluff from his jumper.

‘Oh, I dunno. It's not the same, any more.'

‘Oh, Jerra, what happened?'

‘
Nothing.
Hard to explain.'

She ran a palm along the shelves.

‘All those years. Since you were babies.'

‘Yeah, I know.'

She sucked her top lip.

‘Wasn't it a good trip? You did come home early.'

‘Oh, it gets to the point where it's a bit of a drag. Seems you spend all your time sitting round keepin' the fire going.'

‘I'd better get tea on.'

He lay back on the bed.

‘Don' think it's all me. You don't know him any more, Mum.
I don't either.' Or maybe I do, he thought. Only too well.

‘Jerra.'

‘All those years, his old man prancing around, droppin' her in hospital every time they slipped up. Having
him
here, like an adopted son, or something. Sean doesn't give a turd. You raised somebody who doesn't wanna remember. We're dirt!'

‘I'm going downstairs for the tea.'

‘Downstairs! I wish you'd sell this place, if it was ever bought. We don't belong here.'

‘You speak for yourself. Your father and I do.'

‘'Cause you were weak? Or was it more complicated than that? It stinks. Maybe we are a bit dirty? It makes yer feel grubby.'

‘What rubbish you talk!' His mother blinked. ‘All this lying around has softened your head. Come down and peel the potatoes.'

‘There's things you haven't told me, isn't there?'

‘Jerra, of course not!'

‘Is it about this house?'

‘Don't even know what you're talking about.'

‘No, neither do I.'

‘That's not a bad poem,' he said.

‘A bit soppy?'

‘Only a bit. The sand bit's good.'

He mouthed the words, and she stretched in the sun.

‘The sand bit, yes,' Auntie Jewel whispered.

The day he came home from the beach, after the police and the ferrety reporters.

‘Sean, she's dead.'

‘Yeah.' Sean closed the door of his bedroom in Jerra's face.

Falling against the wall, sick with it, Jerra cried out.

‘You called for your mother.'

‘Get fucked, Jerra. Just get fucked.'

‘You're a bastard! Sean! You don't bloody care!'

Laughing. Behind the door. Jerra wanted to see his face.

‘So she's dead.'

My love seeps like water through sand . . .

Buried alive.

Papers and cans rolled along the tacky bitumen. Seagulls scrabbled over a pizza, picking at the vomitty stuff, pulling it out of each other's beaks. Goatee-ed surfers were sitting on the bonnets of their vans. Boards piled up on racks, bright, glossy. A paunchy man with a metal detector combed the sand, stooping, straining it through his fingers.

There was a hole punched in the bin next to Jerra. Around the rusty puncture was scratched:

Salt crusted the cyclone wire of the fences. People were leaning, talking, brushing the bleached hair from their eyes.

‘I s'pose they told you about last night,' said the old lady on the bench next to him. She was chewing, chewing. There was nothing in her mouth, not even her teeth. She chewed a bit more.

‘No.' Jerra put his feet up on the fence in front. He watched the swell breaking through the diamond pattern of the wire.

‘Young people. Don't know what to do with themselves.'

He knew she was including him. He had the hair.

‘Yeah.'

‘That young boy. In the telephone box.'

‘What did he do?' He felt he had to ask.

‘Went crazy. Kept sayin' things. That they'd done to him. That no one would help him. Kept yellin' out, “Listen – listenlistenlisten —”'

‘Then what?'

‘Blew his own head off. In the telephone box, over there.'

‘God —'

‘If someone don't put 'em away, they do it themselves.' She chewed.

Jerra kicked the bin. It toppled over, spilling its slop. The birds came.

Graffiti. Etched into the red paint. A few people watched from the pinball joint. Jerra opened the door. The clockface of the dial, the chipped receiver, dangling like a tendon.
DIAL THE WORLD DIRECT
with cigarette-burn punctuation. There were different graffiti on the glass and the ceiling. A chip of sky showed.

Jerra walked past the shopfronts, aching. On a picket fence, somebody had sprayed:

And he wondered if the bloke had seen it. Maybe he'd written it. Sean would've had something smart to say, poor bugger that he was.

Silence nicked and sliced by the sound of cutlery. Dessert on the table before anyone spoke. Jelly shivered as elbows shifted.

‘Over at the Home today,' said his father, smacking the flat red of jelly with the back of his spoon.

‘Hmm?'

‘I said, I was over at the Home today.'

‘Yeah?'

His mother glared, flushing.

‘Granpa doesn't look too good.'

‘And I should go over and say the last good-byes, eh?'

‘Wouldn't hurt you.'

‘Come on, Dad. How many times now? He pretends he's scaling the last wall every time he wants to be the centre of interest. Ol' wombat.'

His mother clapped the plates together, scraped the fat from cold chops, and threw scraps onto a sheet of newspaper.

‘No way to speak about your grandfather.'

‘Arr —'

‘No one goes over to see him much any more,' said his father, pressing an imprint into the jelly.

‘He drove them away.'

Newsprint was crumpled into a flat parcel. Dark stains appeared. It went into the kitchen tidy.

‘Oh, Jerra,' said his mother, ‘you just don't make sense any more. Your grandfather, now. Never complained when
you
were the favourite grandson. All the stories. About the war. Helped you write your poems.'

‘Yeah, Mum.'

‘Hardly spoken to him for years.'

‘Since Gran died.'

‘What's that got to do with it?'

A chair shuddered. His father left the table.

‘I'll be going over tomorrow with your mother,' he said as he went upstairs.

‘Now look what you've done.'

‘I didn't do anything.'

‘Story of your life, my boy,' she muttered, squeezing detergent.

‘And others',' he said.

‘Who do you love?'

‘Nobody.'

Granma sipped.

‘Course you do.'

‘Boys don't.'

‘Granpa did.'

‘That was the olden days.'

‘You love me, your ol' Granma?'

‘Yes.'

‘See? You're fibbing.'

Jerra squirmed at having it drawn out of him.

‘What about Mum?'

‘When she's not sad.'

‘Dad?'

‘When we go fishing. He's grumpy sometimes.'

‘Who else?'

‘No one.'

‘Sure?'

‘Auntie Jewel.'

‘Oh?'

‘Her pomes.'

‘What about Grandad's?'

‘Just blokes, blokes, blokes. They talk stupid an' never do anythink.
Got the pip wiv yearnin' 
—'

Granma placed her cup roundly on the saucer. Dragonflies hovered over the hydrangeas.

His father's head beat slow time on the steering wheel. Sunlight lulled Jerra almost back to sleep.