Tim Winton - Eyrie

Keely felt Gemma watching, and wondered if he was paying the boy too much attention. He smiled at her. She gave him a thin grin of uncertainty, maybe regret. Was she having second thoughts about this, him, last night? For here they were. A woman alone. A friendless child. A man adrift.

You had a sister, said Kai.

Keely saw the boy peering his way, as if emboldened to examine him. Perhaps it was the abruptness of the inquiry or the boy’s use of the past tense that left him stranded.

Tom? Gemma said, prompting. Your sister?

Oh, said Keely. Yeah. I do. I still have a sister. Her name’s Faith. Your nan used to sleep in her room sometimes.

I don’t have a sister, said Kai.

No?

No brother, too.

Still, said Keely. You’ve got your nan, though, eh?

The boy nodded but appeared to find this fact unimpressive. Now it was one discomfiting moment after the other.

The kid scratched himself. Gemma’s irritation flared.

Look at you. Wrigglin around.

Itchy, said Kai. In the underpits.

Cause you’re a dirty sweaty little so-and-so.

So-and-so, said the boy. He seemed to be testing the phrase but Gemma took it as mockery.

Into the shower, she said with force.

What about icecream?

We’re out.

The boy blinked. Once, twice. It wasn’t incomprehension; it was protest. What a thing they had going, these two. Gemma burred up, the kid needling her blankly.

There’s no damn icecream, orright? So git.

Kai gazed at Keely a moment as if considering an appeal.

You heard, said Gemma.

The boy retreated to the bathroom. Keely squirmed a little, said nothing.

When the water ran Gemma lit a fag and sat back, cradling an elbow in her spare hand. Smoke coiled towards the open slider, grey, sinuous, reeking, and she squinted a little, following its passage in a manner that seemed studied, the way a smoker can make something out of nothing or, indeed nothing at all from something, with a struck pose and a bit of business. Not that you could blame her. Here he was, surveying her, cataloguing her really, from across the table. And sensing this, why wouldn’t a woman arm herself with a little performance? What could she be thinking in the wake of last night, having gone to bed with the ghost of a boy, a wreck like him, out of raw need or the false safety of nostalgia? She had to be wondering what she’d done and how to extricate herself, having him right here in the building. Dinner was probably a gesture of kindness, a gentle kiss-off, the neighbourly thanks-but-no-thanks.

And then as he watched, Gemma’s face was overtaken by a crooked grin.

Underpits , she said indulgently. Bugger me.

He’s a good kid, Gem.

When he was little he had eyebrowsers , too.

Eyebrowsers. I like that.

Keely relaxed a moment. He set his knife and fork together on the plate and sat back. She tilted her head, amused.

Doris taught us to do that.

Do what?

All that table manners stuff. Elbows off, elbows in. Wait for the cook to start, close ya mouth, knife and fork together at the end. May I please leave the table ?

Geez, he said. Sounds a bit uptight.

She had standards, mate. Nothin wrong with that. She knew shit. She taught me how to read, you know. And about girl things. Showed me how to plait me own hair, used to brush it for me morning and night. I used to sit in her lap and get dreamy. She smelt like apples.

So did you, he said. It was the shampoo.

Thought you didn’t remember anythink. About me.

Well. There you are.

It was beautiful, my hair. Inside I was rubbish. But on the outside, them golden plaits, I was a friggin princess. And look at me now.

It was beautiful hair, he said.

Nah, it was just trouble. Honey on a plate.

Oh? he said, as if he didn’t know what she meant.

A bloke pulled a hank of it out once. Whole bloody handful. Spose it’s one way to express your undyin love. Couple of times I nearly cut it off meself anyway. Wished I was a nun. Not that God’s any different. All hard feelins from Him in the end.

Keely had nothing to say to any of this. He was not remotely competent.

Gemma stubbed out her cigarette, raked a hand through her faded hair and gathered up the dishes.

I’ll do these, he said. You see to Kai.

Suit yourself.

Keely filled the sink and peered through the curtain. The window could have been his own. Same sink. Same terylene curtains. Same view of the war monument and the date palms on the hill. The human things were unfamiliar: the cheesy knick-knacks, the Blu-Tacked posters, the potted cactus on the bench, the happy snaps in Kmart frames. But the bare brick walls, the mean, low ceiling, the shifty parquet floor in the kitchen — they were no different. For some reason it made him smile. A totally separate life being lived in exactly the same space. That was the Mirador for you. Ten floors of architectural uniformity. And within it, all these folks resisting replication. The thought gave him a stab of fondness, for people, for shambling, ordinary folks. Yes, for just a moment he loved his crooked neighbours with his crooked heart.

Then it occurred to him as he rolled suds like lottery balls through his fingers that she was right. After all, what were the odds? Of his being him instead of Gemma. And the pair of them, decades later, finding themselves here in identical containers like the tools of some finicky technician.

As he dried and set everything on the bench behind him, he listened to Gemma and the boy in the bathroom. Then closer, in the bedroom. She had a gruff way with the kid familiar from Keely’s own boyhood but no longer approved of in middle-class circles. Kai’s voice was toneless. And Keely wondered what that was about. He could barely imagine the life the boy had endured. Endless uncertainty. Disorder. Probably worse. It’d be cruel for her, seeing her own childhood repeated like this.

On the bench, stood up in a ghastly quilted frame the colour of smoked salmon, was a photo of Kai as an infant in the arms of a girl Keely could only assume was his mother, a pretty-enough blonde partly hidden by the outsized lenses of her sunglasses. The infant Kai stared at the camera as if trying to decide what was necessary. To smile? To stay still? To keep the peace. Looking at him there, with his silky hair adrift, he could have been Gemma in the sixties.

She was sixteen when she had him, said Gemma.

Keely swung about and almost dropped the frypan. He didn’t like to think how long she’d been there. Reading his thoughts, all his social judgements, his anthropological musings.

Gem, she looks lovely.

She was. Once.

Like you, he said.

Gemma grunted, displeased.

His Nibs wants you to say goodnight.

Oh? Oh. Sure.

Keely didn’t need to be shown the way to the bedroom. But he managed to feel a little lost along the way, for it was suddenly strange territory. Harriet had nieces and nephews but Keely hadn’t been in a kid’s bedroom in a very long time. He felt a snag of panic. And sensed Gemma watching from the doorway, doubtless smiling, finding his awkwardness comical.

Given its mélange of boy-things and woman-things — Motocross posters and high-heeled boots, face creams, action figures, bras, boxer shorts — the small bedroom was orderly if not strictly tidy, and it smelt a whole lot better than his own, cigarette smoke or no. There was a queen-size bed. A couple of boxy side tables. The standard miserly built-in robe.

Kai sat bare-chested beneath a sheet. His Bart Simpson pillowlay alongside Gemma’s flouncy shams. As Keely stood wiping his hands anxiously on the back of his shorts, Gemma came in, snatched a few things from the end of the bed and went through to the bathroom.