Tim Winton - Eyrie

The upside.

Who knew, maybe Doris was right. Perhaps the CCC would vindicate him. He could eventually launch civil action. Years, it would take, during which he’d be grooming his victimhood and paying for the pleasure all the while, and that would be worse than living like he was now. No, let them do their procedural polka — he just sought a bit of order, maybe a low-key job without excitement or stress. A quiet life. As himself. Because he was still largely himself, wasn’t he? Perhaps not the Tom Keely of old, but still within reach of him. His principles were intact. He wasn’t totally threadbare. Not morally. Was he?

He was staring at the blunt, pitted face of a mooring bollard. As if he’d been addressing it. Beseeching it, even. And maybe he had been. Yes, he had. But, glory, look at this thing. It was massive, bovine, the size of Lang Hancock’s head. Like an inscrutable idol shorn of its horns. In the face of Keely’s puny human query the iron plug radiated mineral contempt. It was indifferent. Which was as it should be. After all, it wasn’t fair on hardware, being expected to dish out spiritual advice.

He stepped away. But for a moment he couldn’t walk straight. Too hard to navigate and manage his thoughts at the same time. He settled for a limestone boulder in the lee of a boatshed. Stared at the junk washing against the seawall above the little coomb where the old slipway had been.

No, he wasn’t so sure what he was anymore. Didn’t feel so righteous. Not after last night. It was one thing to have felt favour at last, however brief. What disturbed him was not the sex but the talk. Gemma telling him about Bunker. That was her mistake and he didn’t know how it could be undone. She thought he was safe, as if he’d earnt that kind of trust. But he was just another randy bloke staring at her legs, yearning to touch, and such misplaced trust frightened him. Whole thing was a bloody mess. They had nothing in common, the two of them, just kid stuff and middle-aged loneliness. And now he was stuck with her. Or without her. Whichever. Only three doors from his hideout. Every day from here on in. With the kid. Who set something off in him each time they met.

So now he was doubly bound, trapped like a bug in a jar — addled, livid, dizzy, butting his head and turning circles. Making a damn fool of himself. Wilting in the full shock and awe of the sun, losing minutes like a man shedding dandruff. He should go home, find a hat at least, but he was so restless. And the pain wasn’t terrible. He could see fine now. Better. And the boats were everywhere, beautiful, familiar, diverting.

He got up and walked on through the clutter of docks, sheds, jetties and dealerships into the hardstandings where yachts, cruisers and workboats stood on chocks and hung in slings to be scoured and anti-fouled. The air stank of diesel, grease, paint, fibreglass, and Keely tried not to think of all the toxic crap washing into the sea. Someone else’s fight now.

He sidled between buffed hulls and scrofulous strakes, beneath stepped masts and exhaust-blackened transoms as drills and sanders wailed in the bellies of launches, ocean racers, gamefishers. He suffered a boyish twinge kicking through teak shavings and bundles of rags, cable-ties, trimmed electrical wire, steel swarf. As he thumbed a burnished bronze prop he thought again of The Folly . And was rescued from another sad jag by the sight of Wally Butcher’s clapped-out van.

He hadn’t seen the old rogue to speak to for a year or more. Wally was always in and out of these yards and in better times Keely had enjoyed running into him. Wally was old-school. But since losing Harriet, the boat and then the job, Keely had dodged him guiltily, waving at a distance or faking preoccupation. From shame. Perhaps even vanity. And it was rotten. Ducking the old coot. Because Wally was loyal as a cattle dog. Forty years of hurt and bafflement and not once had he heard the man offer a harsh word about his father.

He’d only been a boy when things went wobbly between Wally and Nev. In the days when most tradesmen were happy to work for the council or a government works department they’d gone into business together, made a go of it on their own. Just a pair of working-class blokes, they were, but they went hard at it, balls to the wall, and had begun to make some headway. Before Billy Graham and his groupies showed up. Before Nev and Doris went all ‘different’. Before Wal was left holding the rag. By all accounts the divergence hadn’t been gradual. Not that it was acrimonious, just bewildering. For the Keelys it was a sudden, radical shift, a total explosion of reality. Happened to lots of people those years, often only a momentary enthusiasm, but for Nev and Doris it was deep and lasting. In the wake of their religious conversion they were fundamentally realigned. And even for Wal, who bore the brunt, whose life was overturned in a manner less joyous, it was impressive — even frightening — to witness.

Nev did nothing in half measures. He was an all-out, open-throttle bloke, and in one blinding ‘Just as I Am’ moment he was letting the dead bury their dead. And the partnership, if not the friendship, was chaff to the winds. He just walked from the business and went out saving souls with Doris. No one could blame Wally for feeling bitter, not after what it cost him to save things singlehandedly and press on. Said it was twice the work and half the fun. He’d survived financially, but without his mate in it with him it was suddenly just work. Nev was lost to Christ. Yet by some miracle of agnostic tolerance the friendship endured. And even if Wal’s teeth were gritted he did his best to give Nev his profane and tender blessing.

Keely remembered him from Saturday afternoons in the garage. His feral sideburns like long streaks of grease as he looked up from the entrails of a Norton. The footy yammering away on the old bakelite radio. Wal was forever urging young Tom to pull his finger, rewarding him with a fart redolent of meat pies and lager. Evenings on the back verandah, the men sat in a pair on the bench seat from a wrecked EH, often speechless in the last light of day. You could sense something solid between them. Despite Jesus. And all the lost Sundays.

Oh, the sight of Wal in church. The only time he ever came. Staring up at Nev in the pulpit. Wal’s face blank and closed like the ex at the wedding. That’s how he’d looked at the graveside, too. Like a man spurned all over again.

Keely angled up to the familiar van. It was parked alongside an old plank riverboat some fool was busy pouring his savings into. Beneath the scaly transom, a midden of tools, rags, oil filter and sump. Between torrents of Wally’s bilious imprecation, snatches of talkback radio rose like the fumes of something noxious from the bilge. Keely stepped onto an upturned milk crate and beheld the hairy arse and the King Gees protruding from the engine hatch.

What’s that in there, a Cummins? called Keely in the blokiest voice he could summon.

Perkins, came the gruff reply.

That’s all a Perkins needs — a greasy one-eyed butcher. Can’t this joker find a proper mechanic?

Wally hauled himself upright and peered evilly over the gunwale. It took a moment for the old bugger’s face to rearrange itself.

Tommy bloody Keely, he said with the makings of a grin. How are ya, son?

Ah, I’m alright.

Christ, by the looks of ya I think you might be kiddin yeself.

Keely laughed. Okay, he said. I’m shithouse. How are you?

I’m old, son. If anyone could find a spare paddock they’d lead me out there and put a bullet in me from kindness.

You don’t look too bad, said Keely. For an ugly old bastard.

Jesus, you look like your old man with that bloody beard. Where you been?

Oh, I’m still in town.