Tim Winton - Eyrie

The boy sucked his bit of orange with some fierceness, as if impatient.

Kai?

No, not now.

This is your dream, then?

Sometimes.

Wow, he said for something to say. That’s pretty interesting.

Can I go out? asked the boy, pointing to the balcony.

No, mate. I think we’ll stay here.

Do you have Scrabble?

Keely shook his head.

I know a tree with an owl in it, he said lamely.

The boy said nothing. Worked his way through the orange.

I gotta wash my hands.

Keely ushered him to the sink and when he’d dried his hands on the teatowel Kai picked up the book and headed for the door.

Kai? Maybe you should wait for your nan?

But the boy went ahead regardless. Keely trailed him along the gallery to 1010 where Kai was fishing a key from inside his shirt.

Kai? Shouldn’t we wait for Gemma?

The boy went in and closed the door behind him. Only a few moments later Gemma came clomping down the walkway from the lifts. She’d been gone a lot longer than twenty minutes.

What’s he up to?

I think he wanted to play Scrabble.

We don’t have Scrabble.

Me either.

Keely didn’t know how to broach the subject of the boy’s strange fantasies. Gemma seemed preoccupied, anxious to get inside.

Listen, he said. Kai asked me if I was angry with him.

Are you?

Of course not. Why would he ask that?

Maybe the bird, she said.

What about the bird?

You had the wrong bird. He knows a bloke doesn’t like getting showed up.

You’re kidding me.

Never wrong, any of yez. But look out if someone calls you on it.

Oh, man.

You said it.

He sees things.

Tom, you dunno what he’s seen. You got no bloody idea.

All he could do was nod, acknowledge it.

Okay, he said. I’m going back to what it was I was doing.

And what was that?

Not nearly enough.

I need a favour, she said. Can I come by in a minute?

Not a problem.

Jesus, she muttered, going inside. You gotta stop sayin that.

*

When she returned to rattle his screen door he was halfway through a grocery list. He’d already made his daily resolution to finally scrub the shower recess and then put it off until first thing tomorrow. He waved her in. She was barefoot. The dress was all but backless and he saw that she had a tattoo he’d not noticed before. The standard murky butterfly, in the middle of her back. And down her arm, inside her left elbow, was a burn scar the size of a coin.

What d’you need? he asked, hoping to hell it wasn’t money.

I don’t like to ask, she said, sitting opposite, tugging the barrette from her hair. But there’s no one else.

Kai’s no trouble, he said hopefully.

Gemma turned a bracelet on her arm.

It’s not that. He’ll be at school then.

When’s this?

Thursday, she said. I’ve gotta collect something from his father.

He waited.

And I was sorta hopin you’d come along.

Right, said Keely with a nervous flutter.

Won’t be any aggro, she said. Shouldn’t be. But some company’d help. Figured while you weren’t workin.

Well. Fair enough. I spose.

You don’t mind?

Not a problem, he croaked.

She leant over and kissed him on the side of the head. A flash of lust ripped through him. He laid a hand on her hip and it slipped free as she straightened.

It won’t take long.

What’re you picking up?

Just some stuff that’s ours. I’ve put it off too long. It’s not easy doin all this shit on me own.

No, it doesn’t look like it is.

When we first come here, when the Housing people put us here, it gimme the creeps, this place.

A school for Kai. Right next door.

Yeah. And work, too. In the beginning at least. It’s somewhere, I spose.

That’s what I tell myself.

There’s others with nothin after all, she said. And Kai likes it.

He’s a nice kid.

He likes you.

Keely’s heart gave a treacherous ping.

And his dad — there’s not much contact?

Restrainin order.

I see.

Anyway.

Gemma reached into the front of her dress and his balls buzzed again. From inside her bra she drew out a key tied to a dark loop of wool.

Here, she said, getting up. This morning I got a fright, that’s all.

I’m sorry. I didn’t know what to do. And then I fell asleep.

Just look in on him, willya? When I’m at work?

He nodded.

Other night.

Yeah?

You’n me. We were just lonely.

Yeah.

And I’d had a couple. You see?

Yeah, of course.

I don’t want a bloke anymore, Tom. I haven’t got it in me. But I could do with a mate.

Not a problem, he said too brightly.

Christ, will you stop sayin that? she said with an exasperated laugh.

Absolutely.

Thursday. Means you got time for a shave and a haircut.

You serious?

Wouldja mind?

She gave him a winsome, girlish grin of supplication that excited and annoyed him. But Keely thought about it, the itching nest his beard had become. What was it anyway, all this hair, but a kind of wallowing in defeat?

Honest, you’re no use to me lookin like that.

Okay, he said, from longing more than friendship.

She kissed him chastely again and when she was gone he gathered the key and held the woollen loop to his face to catch her musky scent.

Conan the barbarian was harmless enough. Between spells in the locked ward the scrofulous, bellowing vagrant was a fixture on the streets in all seasons, and at his least offensive the locals were fond of him. He did a lot of unfocused seething and roaring, his great leonine head thrown back in rage or pleasure, and although he was an infamous and copious public defecator there was some charm in knowing he did this more for effect than from need. Conan was nuttier than Queensland batshit but he wasn’t mad enough to underestimate the grander pleasures of performance; he laid it on with a trowel — and that wasn’t always just a figure of speech. Wags in cafés said it was only a matter of time before he got an arts grant. In summer he liked to colonize bits of public space — a bus shelter, park bench, beach awning — where he could hunker down in his midden, snooze, scream and drink epic quantities of beer. He was entirely harmless. Unless you offered him money, advice or help of any sort. Keely, who had over the years done all three, knew that the best way to get along with Conan was to avoid him completely. For once you fell into his noxious orbit he liked to reward you with his attention, for hours, sometimes days, and this would entail blistering harangues, buttock display, and the trumpeting of your name in public as he pinched a loaf. All in the service of extortion, for the purpose of securing free lager, in bulk. And the wily bastard never forgot a face or a name. Which was why, next morning at the beach, rinsing at the spigot and feeling semi-decent, Keely was so studious about ignoring him.

He’d come straight up between the dunes in a sweet pain-shadow, mildly revived by his swim, and he was standing beneath the shower when he caught the glint of crushed beer cans around the awning. There was a denser mass of junk in the shade where it looked as if someone had backed a truck in and dumped a load of garbage. But the sight of two horny feet protruding from beneath a candlewick bedspread was all it took to know that overnight the beach shelter had become Conan’s latest bivouac. Keely cut his ablutions short. Morning regulars jogged by, wincing as they caught whiffs of the old stager’s ruinous miasma. Some raised a conspiratorial eyebrow and grinned circumspectly, with the sort of boho-bourgeois forbearance locals prided themselves on. As Keely towelled off he observed from only the very corner of his eye the mattresses, shopping bags, rags and cartons, the profusion of empties shining in the sun like footlights around the perimeter. He was seasoned enough not to gaze frankly but found himself caught up in documentary wonder all the same. You had to marvel at the havoc one man could wreak on a place in the space of half a day.