Tim Winton - Eyrie

He couldn’t help but think of all the charity kitchens only a few blocks away, the underclass gathered alfresco for a sandwich and an industrial brew. Invalid pensioners, denizens of the dosshouses, park sleepers, wharf rats, outpatients of the failing mental health service. At this rate he’d be joining their number soon enough. He guessed rough-sleepers and drunks had their own resolutions and rituals of deferral. Street shouters were armed with excuses; he’d heard their litanies of grievance and misunderstanding. He’d slot in handsomely. If only he wasn’t so soft. The moment would surely come. And then he’d hit the final barrier, the stubborn middle-class conviction that his was a special case. When really he was just a creepy fuckwit poncing through town full of peace and love because he’d got his rocks off. A tipsy grandma desperate for a root had hauled him into bed and given him a blowsy seeing-to. His triumphal glow was pathetic. And that was nothing when you thought of the aftermath. Her confession. To which he’d listened distractedly, still pawing her, like a grimy priest who couldn’t distinguish her needs from his own. He disgusted himself. In an instant he felt oblivion stalking, crackling, flashing behind his eyes, and he welcomed it, deserved it.

His glass shattered on the pavement. The saucer wheeled inwoozy arcs at the feet of startled loungers. One arm flapped independent of him and as he stood and fled he clawed it into submission with the other, breaking into a shambling run through a wilderness of spots and sparks.

Furious blank.

A kind of.

Kind of.

Kind of turbulence.

Suddenly down by the marina. Standing, walking. Sleepwalking, really. With gulls like empty thought bubbles overhead. How many minutes had he lost? Ten? Twenty? Closer to forty. Jesus!

Okay.

Tamp down the panic.

Okay.

Nothing you can do about it. Well, nothing you’ll let yourself do. Being what and who you are.

Alright. Whatever.

So.

Here he was.

The marina. The fishing-boat harbour. Prawn trawlers, crayboats. Yachts. Boardwalks. Finger jetties.

He must have had something in mind. During his little lapse in transmission, while the test pattern flashed on and on inside. Some destination, a plan, a notional refuge that eluded him for the moment. But here he was. The marina. Where, yes, he had spent a lot of time in better days. Their little sloop that Harriet referred to as The Folly. Okay, he thought. This is where you’ve brought yourself. Old circuits firing. So walk. Walk it out, walk it off.

And as he did he let his safer thoughts unsnarl themselves slowly. Could only think of them as coloured wires now. All brittle, everything ginger. Couldn’t get straight, shiny lines anymore, no orderly layout like something fresh from the shop floor. But he could separate them, more or less, even if they were still nested around that awful pulsing void, the dread he’d been hauling about the past few months. It had no size or shape. Its origins obscure. It was his own dark planet. Within him. And there was absolutely no point in giving it direct attention; it was simply there, he accepted it now, thrumming like something about to detonate. But with sufficient will, bending every perilous thought aside, keeping all wires from touching, you could shrink it from something planetary to just a blemish, a fleck, like a tiny bit of shadow-matter tracking momentarily across the sun. Safer, better, not to look. Took such a shitload of energy, though, powering it down by mental force. Just to make some space and turn your thoughts to lesser mysteries. Like how to make a living, first and foremost. Because it really was conceivable that before Easter he could be working on his grimy street tan like those poor buggers lining up outside St Pat’s. If he didn’t pull up, if he didn’t shake this self-pitying jag he was giving into day upon day, it wasn’t just possible but inevitable. He couldn’t let Doris keep propping him up. She’d paid his phone bill. He owed it to her to get his shit together.

He shuffled away from the boardwalk and the tourist traps, tailed by a posse of gulls. Busy little pricks, gulls.

He thought about going back to teaching. Still possible, wasn’t it? If he could tidy himself up, get his nerves in order. It would weird people out, having him there again, considering what he’d been doing. He was too long out of the game. Things had changed. And now public education was like bearbaiting. He’d faced down proxy thugs of all species, from robber barons to the unions. But he shivered at the prospect of being left alone in a room with thirty 15-year-olds. Maybe something non-contact, a support role? Which had its own complications. Given that he’d probably burnt a few bridges in the bureaucracy over the years. There were heads of department who’d make certain his applications were regrettably unsuccessful.

Which left what — gardening, driving a taxi? For all his skills and achievements these were his best chances and he should bloody well get used to it because to the pollies he was poison, too dangerous, too likely to say something uncomfortable. A decade and a half of supreme self-control and in a few minutes he’d rendered himself a rogue forever. In the media he was a heretic, a traitor to progress.

No NGO could possibly risk hiring him. And in the broader environmental movement he would always be the Great Disappointment. The deepest darkest greens thought he was a hero, but their admiration wouldn’t butter his bread.

He wondered, briefly, about the private sector. Consultancies employed all sorts of colourful folks: disgraced premiers, tycoons jailed for massive frauds, sportsmen with blemished records. There was stuff he could do — lucrative, too. But it would be mercenary work.

Of course the resource sector would take him on in a heartbeat. On the quiet. That was his Patty Hearst option — join the revolution. They wouldn’t need to parade him like a hostage; they had plenty already. They’d just pump him for intel. Plans, policy positions, databases. All those establishment donors from the Golden Triangle they could woo back to the fold with a little pressure from old school chums. A few discreet threats of a purely social nature. He’d seen it done. And who knew the who-where-what like he did? But just thinking that way made him feel grubby.

This was what happened now. It was occurring everywhere. People reduced to toting up whatever made them valuable to the market. Which was to say the bosses. They’d approached him, well before the blow-up. A big mining corporation looking to spritz up its greenwash. The bastards had more propaganda money at their disposal than most nation states. For every eco-ad from a cash-strapped NGO they’d publish fifty lavish fakes. Top whack. Full pages in broadsheets and sixty-second prime-time TVCs. They stood some tame khaki naturalist in front of a red gorge or a bit of forest. A few lies, a couple of half-truths and there they were, all logo and soaring music. Australian Miners — nature’s greatest custodians. And not a hole to be seen. At the time he’d pretended not to understand what they were asking of him. Now he was desperate. And he knew they’d come back. There were unopened emails with jaunty subject headings he’d consigned to the ether. But he’d never do it. Anyhow, his value would only last a few weeks. He’d hardly get through betraying himself and his comrades before he found himself on St Georges Terrace with nothing but a cardboard carton and a non-disclosure agreement.

No, he was a fuckup, but not a turncoat. Which was something to hold onto, wasn’t it, Doris? Wasn’t that the upside?

The gulls gave him up as a dud prospect. He wandered past the boatlifters where someone was blasting a hull clean. The noise was like a dentist’s drill. Made his hair crackle. Sent him on to the sardine jetty with its spangly glitter of scales from the morning’s haul. It reeked, but the smell was comforting, homely.