Tim Winton - Eyrie

Keely sopped up the last of the tomato sauce with crusty bread and sat back, conscious of being observed. There was no wine on the table.

It’s a nice house, this, he said sincerely.

Still, you’ve always disapproved.

Not true.

In ten years you’ve never had a good word for it.

Working-class prejudice.

Oh, rubbish. That’s middle-class anxiety.

Probably.

You had a place just as nice yourself.

True.

In a street of old lumpers’ cottages — go on, say it, make the distinction.

Which cost about the same, I know.

Tom, love, you have such romantic ideas about the working class.

Oh, come on, Mum.

Really, it tickles me.

Annoys you, actually.

Well, yes. I’m not as sentimental.

You couldn’t get out of Blackboy Crescent fast enough. Could you?

I didn’t have a choice, if you recall.

Sorry, I didn’t mean it to sound so judgemental.

Really? The further you got from Blackboy Crescent, the more you wore your blue collar on your sleeve. And I know that sounds mangled but you know what I mean.

Keely winced. Because he did. Also because it was true.

And don’t tell me about mixed metaphors — I am one.

Just never thought there was any harm in being proud of my origins, he said. State housing, state schools.

But why wear it like a badge of honour? As if it’s your achievement rather than the result of government policy? The way all these people here seem to think the state is swimming in money because they invented iron ore, planted it, watered it. It’s sheer luck. And it’s luck that got you to university free of charge. You’re the product of an historical moment, a brief awakening. Tom Keely: My Struggle — it doesn’t wash, love. You were generationally privileged. You’re just another sulky Whitlam heir.

Mussels were never so expensive, he said by way of concession.

I’m not saying you didn’t work hard.

Mum, all I was actually saying, if you remember, is that you have a nice house.

Well, it’s too big, and as you can see I can’t keep up with the garden.

Geez. People’ll think you’re renting.

At this there was an indulgent silence between them.

Sometimes I wonder if I’d still be there, she murmured. Blackboy Crescent. If things had worked out differently.

Really?

I don’t know. It was your father who was restless, not me. We would have travelled, I think.

Where?

Central America, the Philippines. The liberation theology thing — we were in that together of course. Couldn’t you just see him as a worker priest?

An evangelical with a wife and two kids — why not?

Well, everything smelt different then. A sense of possibility. Vatican II and all.

Think of it, he said. Nev as a Catholic, Billy Jack takes the Pope’s shilling.

They both laughed. It was good. Better.

Anyway.

It really is a nice house, Mum. You bought it with hard work, righteous work. There’s nothing to be guilty about.

I know that. I’m comfortable with that.

Okay. Good.

I’m just worried about you.

I know.

And I suspect you’ve come to enjoy the rewards of defeat. Shopping in despair’s boutiques.

The law degree I applaud, Doris. The psych thing has become a nuisance.

So I’m told.

He pushed his chair back. It growled across the boards.

I saw her yesterday, he said. Harriet, I mean.

Don’t try to sidestep me, Tom. Last night, along with every other vile thing you had to offload, you told your sister you were already dead, and that they’d be steaming you out of the carpet for weeks.

Fuck, he said, despite himself. No way.

Perhaps she imagined it. Maybe she’s lying.

He sat there.

And you don’t remember, she said. Or you’d rather not recall.

The sun was gone. Night had fallen without him noticing. Keely gripped his knees and let mosquitoes nip at his ankles.

Tom, I think we should talk about this.

Gemma’s got a grandson.

You said.

He lives with her. In my building. There’s something about him.

Tom, I’m talking about you. Right now there’s something about you, she said, sliding a business card across the sauce-flecked table. I’d like you to go and see someone. I’ve made an appointment. You can call my doctor in the morning and he’ll give you the referral.

You’ve been busy, he said.

Want something done, ask a busy person. This bloke’s good. No scented candles, no hand holding, no bullshit.

And, listen, thanks for paying the phone bill. I meant to say. You shouldn’t have.

I prefer you to be contactable. And you’re changing the subject. Will you go?

Look, I appreciate all these recommendations, Mum, but really.

I’ve fixed it. If it’s the money you’re using as an excuse.

Gemma’s boy, he’s very economical with his facial expressions. Almost affectless.

Tell me you’ll go.

I thought you were asking.

I am asking.

When an angel asks something of you, isn’t it kind of like a command?

What’re you talking about? Angels don’t have arthritis — or a thing for Leonard Cohen.

So. Guided democracy — that’s what it’s come to in the People’s Republic of Keely?

Just tell me you’ll go.

He nodded. He wondered if, strictly speaking, a nod was actual consent, whether it constituted a promise.

*

They washed the dishes together and cleaned up the messy remains in a wary détente. He could sense his mother stepping around him tenderly, soothing him however she could, compensating for her little moment of intervention. Keely tried to spend the intervals between neutral passages of small talk ordering his thoughts, attempting to unpick strands and settle upon one memory, one idea, a single resolution, but there was a rising, teeming noise of thoughts in him like the uproar in a rainforest at the approach of anintruder.

This boy, Doris was saying. Gemma’s grandson. How old is he?

Kai.

Kai ?

I know, he said guiltily.

I spose he could be Jet.

Or Koby.

Listen to us, she said. What’s he like?

Strange, really. Smart. Very self-possessed, a bit withdrawn.

How old?

Six.

Maybe somewhere on the autism spectrum? Or just bright and lonely.

I wondered. You know, Asperger’s, something like that.

Or foetal alcohol syndrome, she said. But he wouldn’t be so bright. His mother?

Bandyup.

Drugs, I imagine.

He nodded.

The boy’ll have a caseworker, said Doris. He’ll be in the system, poor love.

He’s so serious.

So were you.

Yeah, and I turned out alright.

Has he fixed on you? This boy?

Imagine how it’s been for him.

She nodded. Please be careful, Tom. For his sake. And yours.

I am, he said. I will.

Suds splurged and gargled down the drain. Doris looked at him bravely, almost all her scepticism hidden from view.

Up close, where the sunspots and loose flesh showed, you could see she was an old woman. It never ceased to come as a shock. All the girlish hair, the sleekness and gravity. You forgot she wasn’t young anymore. She was older than, well… Julie Christie. And had she stayed in Blackboy Crescent she might have been a great-grandmother now.

Is she beautiful?

What?

Gemma. Is she beautiful?

Well, he sighed. You can certainly see she was .

Doris finished wiping down the benches and straightened the cloth too carefully for his liking.

Attractive, isn’t it, lost beauty?

Mum. Honestly.

Men like it. Gives them confidence. Then there’s the added frisson of damage. They can’t resist.

Are we looting old tutorials here or speaking from experience?