Green Monkey Dreams (12 page)

‘Maybe you want to be a sailor then,' Tony asked on another occasion.

‘No. I just want to travel. You know. See the world. I want to go somewhere where things are different.'

‘Everywhere things are the same.' Tony smiled.

Matthew shrugged.

‘You will have to grow up an' get rich then. Better if you be a sailor an' see the world.'

‘Here is good,' said another of the men.

‘I'm going to find my father,' Matthew said quietly.

‘Where is he?' Tony started.

Matthew pretended not to hear and the silence grew. The old men were no fools. They understood.

‘Well,' Tony said brightly. ‘Well, I think he must be in Corfu for that is the best place in all the world. All sailors know the most beautiful place in the world. The sun never stops shining in the day and the water is warm like bathing water. Ahhh . . .'

A dark, rat-faced man snorted.

‘What, Peter?' Tony demanded.

‘An' the women,' he gasped, imitating Tony. The men laughed.

‘Women are only a memory for him,' said another fisherman. ‘Corfu is past.'

‘Corfu does not go away,' said Tony. ‘It is still baking in the sun.'

‘All things change.' Peter smiled, and toasted Tony from a small bottle of brandy. ‘Corfu is many miles away,' he said. ‘Very far. Too far for fat old men. But not for a boy.'

Those men laughed a lot. More than people Matthew knew. They talked endlessly of Greece: their youth, villages, friends and relatives dead and alive and far away. Their lives were part of hundreds of other lives. Matthew felt his own existence to be curiously barren by comparison. He had no friends and only one aunt whom he had never seen, living in Sydney. Apart from Dave and his mother there was only a faint memory of a grandmother and no memory at all of his father. Even while Matthew dreamed of freedom and independence he was drawn to the Greek men and their well-peopled memories.

Then he met Sophie. It had rained all day. He had known the men would not be there, but he went anyway to visit their ghosts. He was halfway down the pier before he realised there was someone at the other end. He hesitated, but went on. When he reached the end he saw the lone person was a girl. At first he thought she had not noticed his approach. Her thick brows were nearly joined in a ferocious frown. What was she thinking? She looked up and there was no point pretending he hadn't been staring. She was quite plain with dark, frizzy hair.

‘I know you,' she said simply, and without waiting for an answer, looked back out to where the factory haze was suffused with fading gold. ‘I've seen you before. With the men. You know what they call you?' She flicked him a casual glance to see if he wanted to know. ‘They call you the stowaway. They say you want to go away.'

She looked away again and Matthew followed her gaze. A bluster of wind brought the sea smell to him sharply fresh and strangely mingled with the smell of soap and oranges. He imagined Corfu must smell like that.

‘I'm Sophie,' she said. ‘Why do you want to stow away?'

‘I want to get away from here.'

‘What about your family?'

‘You mean my brother and mother. I want to get away from them most of all.'

‘Oh,' she said. ‘And your father?'

‘I don't even know what he looks like. There's a photo but . . .' He shrugged.

‘I know,' Sophie answered. ‘Old photos are just old photos. My family and relatives show me pictures of Greece. I don't know any of the people. I don't know what to say. It will be better once I've been there too.'

‘You're going?'

‘When I've finished school.'

He was entranced by her confidence.

‘Will your parents let you?'

‘Oh yes. They want me to go,' she said. ‘But first they want me to finish school.'

Matthew thought of his own mother and her expectations. He wondered if she wanted anything for him at all.

‘It's damp,' she said, sitting down suddenly. He sat anyway. ‘Why do you want to get away?'

‘My mother and Dave . . .' He stopped. There hardly seemed to be enough words in the world to explain. ‘They don't give a damn.'

‘My father is ambitious for me,' she said. ‘Sometimes I think my mother only goes along with him.'

‘My mother works in a shop. When she comes home she just cleans the house or fights. She just works all the time.'

‘But so does my mother,' Sophie said, surprised.

‘All the time she complains about how tired she is and how lazy I am. I can never say I'm tired or sick because she's always tireder or sicker. She's the tiredest, sickest person in the world. And she hates everybody.' He stopped, astonished at the things he had said. ‘Once she told me her mother was a real slob. Her house was a mess all the time and when she got old she went mad. She thought everyone was stealing off her. Maybe my mother thinks the dust and the mess made her mad.'

He breathed in, his skinny buttocks growing numb unnoticed on the damp pier. He breathed in the smell of the girl and her serenity.

‘And what about your brother?' she finally asked.

‘Dave?' Again he hesitated. He thought of Dave drunk and Dave knocking him around. He thought of Dave yelling at his mother. There was not much to be admired in Dave and plenty to hate. Yet he did admire him. He was one of the world's survivors, leader of a gang, always just out of reach of the police. Dave had got out of school young and worked for a while in a supermarket. He had wanted to be a mechanic but after a while he just quit and stopped talking about becoming anything. ‘He thinks I'm a creep.'

‘Why?'

‘I don't belong, so I'm a creep,' Matthew said, and there was something battered in his eyes when he said that.

‘No.'

‘If my father hadn't left . . . When I find him, I'm gunna ask why he went. I used to think it was because of me. My mother told me he didn't want another kid.' He looked at her. The gathering darkness made of her face a curious plain of light and shadow, almost not a face at all, yet he thought he saw a glint of pity in her eyes and was embarrassed for them both.

‘Anyway . . . why do you want to go overseas?'

‘To see the people and places I've heard about. It sounds so good. After that there are other countries.'

Her eyes on the bay were disparaging and Matthew could see the murky bay was no match for sunlit waters and green islands.

He had walked home with her after that, pretending it was not out of his way. Her father owned a fish and chip shop. He was a big muscular man with crisp hair and a wide smile. Sophie gave him a little parcel of chips, pretending to put money in the till. They grinned at one another, sharing the crime. After that first time they had met often, sometimes by accident but always on the pier after rain. The fishermen never spoke of her to him, so he guessed she did not mention him at home. In his turn Matthew did not talk about Sophie to anyone. He had an odd certainty that would change everything.

His mother called Dave's girls sluts, and Dave, who hated wogs worst of all, what would he say? NO. It was better to keep his secret. It was unlikely his friendship with Sophie would survive the touch of his family.

Two nights ago his mother had brought home a Sara Lee cheesecake and some chips for Dave's birthday. Dave had got home drunk and late with the help of a girlfriend and two mates. The visitors wolfed down the pathetic feast while his mother watched with tight lips. Matthew had been fascinated by the girl, who was unimaginably thin with a homemade tattoo. He was struck by her eyes which reminded him of brown beetles scuttering madly.

In the play wrestling that followed, the remainder of the cake ended up on the floor with a broken plate. Later Dave passed out when the visitors had gone. In the morning Matthew heard his mother march into Dave's room and tell him to pack and go live with his animal friends. Dave sounded sluggish with his hangover and unresponsive. Matthew pulled the blankets over his head, knowing what would happen next. The door slammed open. She had been cleaning; he could smell the Ajax. She always scrubbed out the bath and toilet when she was mad. He sighed but lay still.

‘Don't think I don't know you're awake,' she said.

Matthew jumped involuntarily.

‘Huh?' he feigned.

‘Don't think you're going to laze around here during the holidays like that brother of yours. He thinks he's so great! One day he'll go just like your father.'

‘Jeez. It's the first day.'

‘There's no holidays for me. I work here and then I go out to work.'

‘No one asked you to,' Dave croaked in his hangover voice, passing the door on the way to the bathroom. He looked awful.

‘Asked?' She seemed lost for words. Matthew was surprised to see the glitter of tears. ‘No one ever asked what I wanted.'

‘Look here, I said I was sorry about last night. I was drunk so I acted a bit off. So what? It was my birthday,' Dave said, his voice caught in mixed emotions.

‘Sorry,' she snickered.

Matthew was vainly trying to look invisible. She glanced back at him.

‘You try and get a holiday job.'

‘Like me, Mum?' Dave asked. ‘I got a job. You were glad of it then. Now I'm a no-hoper.'

They stared bleakly at one another.

‘It was the least you could do . . .' she whispered.

Dave shrugged and shuffled away. Matthew thought of her lugging the chips and frozen cheesecake home for his birthday. Even the good things they tried to do were somehow rotten and hopeless. He felt a rush of pity for his mother. What was there for her now? She was old and worn out, ugly and uninteresting. There would be no other man for her. Even she knew that. Alongside her, Sophie was a radiant creature, full of laughter and promise. Full of dreams.

‘And clean up your room,' his mother said as she went out.

He heard her follow Dave and start again. Matthew wished Dave would lose his temper and crack her head open or cave her face in. Anything to shut her up. He could not even take the responsibility for his own anger, yet he was aware his own fury held a capacity for violence far deeper than Dave's brief flares. His anger went underground and became a subterranean force, unseen and infinitely more ugly. It was a force as subtle and obscure as voodoo. Matthew understood that the ugliness was in him too.

‘Are you listening to me?' she snapped.

Jesus God, thought Matthew, when will she stop? Then he heard the door slam and the house was still. He lay there full of his impotent anger.

‘You're a weak shit, you are,' said Dave easily, coming to lean in the open doorway. ‘Why don't you stand up to her?'

Matthew curled his fingers tight. Dave was right. He was weak. He should have told her to piss off, like Dave did. He felt a rush of loathing for himself that nothing, even the thought of Sophie, could erase.

‘So . . .' Dave said languidly, picking at a scab on his elbow. ‘What are you gunna do?'

‘Dunno,' he answered sullenly.

Dave always made him feel like that when he was unexpectedly friendly. Those occasions were so rare and brief it was better to ignore them. Yet there was a yearning despite everything, to end the barrier between them. To get somehow close enough to make it last.

‘Dunno,' Dave mimicked. ‘Well, Miffy boy . . .' The nickname Matthew hated. ‘I guess you'll never grow up. You'll be listening to her nag forever.'

Matthew ground his teeth together until they hurt. Shut up shut up shut up! he thought. Dave suddenly flung himself across the room, landing on him.

Matthew's breath came out in a barking grunt and he lay there winded. His hands were pinned under the blankets. Dave leaned close and made a mock swipe. His breath smelled foul.

‘Yeah, that's about it too. You dog. You dog turd,' Dave sneered.

This was the way they fought. They liked it, he realised suddenly. They liked fighting because it got rid of the rage that burned a hole in you. And when it was over, they were always calmer. Dave paused, the leer fading. Matthew felt he was actually waiting for some response, like a secret code. Only I don't understand the game, he thought. He made a queer strangled noise.

‘What?' Dave asked, looking closely at him. ‘What?'

‘Nothing! Nothing! Nothing!' He screamed so wildly that Dave jumped. Matthew felt a hysterical laugh in his throat but when it got to his mouth it was a strangled sob. Tears of shame and rage forced their way onto his cheeks. It was the final humiliation. There was a heavy silence and Dave let go. Matthew kept his eyes squeezed shut.

‘You sure are a weirdo,' said Dave in a mildly surprised voice. ‘You sure are.'

‘I can't do it. I can't be like you two. I wish I could . . .' Matthew said in a low desperate voice.

There was a long silence again and finally he opened his eyes. Dave was looking at a chink of sepia-coloured light where the curtain was crooked. He looked remote.

‘You sure are weird,' he said again finally, but there was no mockery in his voice. ‘I dunno how you came to be this weird. Maybe it's my fault. You were always such a mouse, such a little weed.'

For Dave, that was a long speech. Matthew saw then that Dave too had felt the barrier between them, perhaps been repelled by it. That surprised him and for a second the two brothers looked at one another like strangers just met. Matthew thought that Dave looked like a sort of warrior, tough and a bit war worn, but somehow still undaunted. A survivor.

‘Maybe that's it,' said Dave the warrior. ‘I thought you wanted to be out of it. I didn't know. I could've showed you how to get along better.'

Matthew saw himself being sized up as a raw recruit. Dave's eyes seemed to measure him.

‘You take everything too hard. You gotta be cool. She's not such a bad old cow. But she's dumb, see? She thinks being honest and keeping the house clean is all there is. She's a pleb, y'know? Someone who thinks they're nothing. You gotta get the right way of thinking about things,' Dave said. ‘She was better before the old man pissed off. She's just all soured up over that. Don't take her so hard.'