Tim Winton - The Turning

Sky, said Dyson. This is Ricky.

Hi, the girl murmured.

Lo, said Ricky.

There was a brief moment of bewilderment when grace was said. After all the crossing and amens Ricky glanced at Dyson for reassurance. Then hunger got the better of him and he ate unselfconsciously.

The talk was of the town, how the harbour had finally been cleaned up and the whales had returned and brought new tourists to the place. There are wineries now, said Don, and good wine like this one. Dyson didn’t have the heart to tell him he’d given up the booze but he knew that Marjorie wouldn’t have missed the fact that his glass was untouched. The food was simple and hearty and the kitchen sleepy-warm. It was nice to be with them again after all this time. The Keenans were good people and he felt bad that he’d left it so long to come and see them. After all, he’d been closer to them at one stage than he was to his own mother. A long time had passed since the business with him and Fay. He told himself he needn’t have been so anxious.

Ricky pleased Marjorie by taking a second helping of everything. Rain lashed the windows and though he was sober Dyson felt as safe as a man with four drinks under his belt. Eventually the kids sloped off shyly to watch TV. Marjorie made a pot of Irish breakfast.

You don’t need to explain about your wife, Peter, said the old woman, pouring him a cup. We know already. We’ll spare you that.

News travels fast, he murmured, stung.

Small town, mate, said Don. Don’t we know all about that.

Well, said Dyson, doing his best to recover. That pretty much explains why I’m back.

There was a long, hesitant silence. From the loungeroom up the hall came the antic noise of a cartoon. Dyson wondered if that huge ruined sofa was still there in front of the TV. A lifetime ago, on the same cracked upholstery, he felt the hot weight of a girl’s breasts in his hands for the first time, and it was odd to think of Ricky and Sky up there.

Sky, he said. She’s Fay’s?

They nodded.

Staying with you for a while?

Oh, said Marjorie with a tired smile. We’ve had Sky on and off for years. Most of her life, I spose.

Ah, said Dyson.

Well, said the old man. Like you, Fay’s had her troubles.

She doesn’t live in town?

No. She’s been all over.

In trying to mask his relief, Dyson scalded his mouth with tea.

We thought of suing for permanent custody for the child’s sake, said the old man. But it’s a dead loss. Welfare and the courts — it’s all about the rights of the mother no matter what.

Anyway, said Marjorie with a forced cheeriness that made it plain she’d cut Don off before he got into his stride. It’s worked out well just going along the way we have, unofficially. Things are coming good in the end. Fay and you are in the same sort of boat in a way. You know, recovering. In fact it’s amazing you’re here, Peter, because Fay’s due here any day. Maybe you two can catch up.

Well, said Dyson in alarm. To be honest I’m not—

It’s been very hard for us, Peter, said the old lady. Life doesn’t turn out how you plan it. And it’s difficult when you’re old, when you think that your job’s done and you can rest a little. You’re not prepared for dealing with the kinds of things we’ve had to deal with, to live through.

Stinking, filthy bloody drugs—

Don.

She’s abandoned a child, said the old man. She’s stolen anything we’ve ever had. We’ve spent all our savings on treatments and debts and she’s brought thugs and crims into our home and frightened the tripe out of her mother. She’s put us through a living hell.

But, said Marjorie emphatically, we have our precious Sky. And we’re past the worst and we forgive and forget. Don’t we, Don?

Yes, said the old man subsiding, contrite, in his chair.

And we’re grateful for small mercies.

Dyson drank his tea. His mouth felt scoured now. A junkie, he thought. You couldn’t honestly be surprised. It would explain the rash of calls a couple of years ago, the breathless messages on the machine.

We always loved you, Peter, said Marjorie.

Loved you as our own, said Don. Gawd, we even thought you’d be family in the end.

She needs safe friends, said Marjorie. Clean friends. She’s putting her life back together.

And we need a break, son. Now and then. Just a blessed rest.

You’re a good person, Peter. Say you’ll think about it. Say you’ll come and see her.

Dyson felt the heat of the stove in his bones. He looked at their ravaged faces. And rain peppered the window.

Dyson had no desire to see Fay Keenan. When she called that time he did not respond to her messages. He bore her no ill will but he did fear the force of her personality. The intervening years had not diminished his memory of the time, almost the entirety of his high school life, that he’d spent in her thrall. They began as fumbling fourteen-year-olds when he was her father’s most promising player and she was the flashy captain of the girls’ hockey team. They were a major item, a school scandal, infamous for their declarations of eternal love and the heroics of their lust. By the age of sixteen the love was gone but the lust lived on in a kind of mutual self-loathing. Their relationship had boiled down to a futile addiction, a form of entertainment for their classmates who saw them as a bad show which refused to go off the air.

Dyson’s mother disliked Fay but the Keenans took to him. To the Keenans Fay and him were just two talented kids taking life by the throat. What they didn’t seem to see was how strange and pathological the whole affair became. How these kids isolated themselves in their passion until they became friendless and obsessed. They didn’t see them destroying each other. As a boy Dyson relished the warmth of the Keenan home and although the Catholic business mystified him, he recognized them as people of virtue and kindness, even forgiveness. By comparison his own mother seemed dry and inflexible. She looked down on the Keenans because Don worked for the railways. Dyson came to love them and in later years, when it was all over, he wondered if the whole grisly thing had lasted so long because he liked to be around the Keenans as much as their daughter. But that was just sentimental. What kept Fay and him together was sex. It was a habit only catastrophe could break.

Right from the outset there was something mesmerizing about Fay Keenan. She had a cockiness, an impulsive brio that was exciting. Dyson was never a courageous boy. Even in football he was talented but weak-willed. The coach’s daughter had real guts. She was so pretty, so lithe, with a wicked laugh under all that blonde hair. Fay was smart, too. At school she coasted shamelessly. Her parents were convinced that she was destined for medicine or the law. She could really talk up a storm. Yet in the end Dyson hardly heard anything she said; he settled for the curve of her neck, the heat of her mouth, the spill of her hair across his body, and even when all they had to say to one another was carping ugliness, he was too well-fed, too passive, too lazy to break it off and move on. For the last two years of school they were miserable. They had their disaster and Fay failed her exams. They were just another small-town story. And in the way of such stories they met years later, stoned at a Christmas barbecue in the city, and screwed in a potting shed from which they staggered full of regret and recrimination.

It was so tawdry that it should have been comical, but Dyson could only see the damage they’d done each other.

A week after his dinner with the Keenans, Dyson took Ricky and a boy from his class out to Jacky’s Bridge to fish for bream after school. The boys were new friends and still shy with one another and right from the start it was clear that the fishing idea was a dud. He didn’t know what it was. Maybe they were too young or fresh to each other for the stillness required, but within ten minutes they were restless standing out there on the bank so he packed the gear and led them up to the bridge itself.