Tim Winton - Eyrie

Keely pulled the door to behind him and headed for the lifts. Probably wasn’t him. But he needed to know.

As the lift door peeled open he startled an Indian granny emerging with a fully laden supermarket trolley. He stepped aside, smiled like a cretin and caught the door before the lift set off again. The school bell echoed up the shaft. At the fourth floor two emo kids tried to squeeze a desk and an office chair in, and after a few moments of trying to help them, he got out and took to the stairs.

By the time he got to the ground floor he was blowing and his spine felt as if it had been hammered up through the base of his skull. He bowled through the lobby and out into the hot light, shuffled breathless to the corner, but at street level everything was different. A blur of moving bodies, the sun glancing off vehicles as they purred by. Shopping bags blowing free, snagged in jacarandas. Hijacked supermarket trolleys abandoned in every alley. Spilt drinks, gobbets of food on the pavement. Gulls feasting, fleeing, banking back for more. A truck in reverse, all beeps and diesel fumes. And kids, hundreds of them still fanning out everywhere. He wondered how many had noticed Kai’s absence today, whether there was a single girl or boy in this spreading mob who’d actually missed him, who’d even notice if he never returned.

He wheeled around, causing mothers and infants to clutch and cower. He climbed onto a street bench to scan the crowd. There were single men, blokes in suits, tradies in hi-viz, but no solitary lurker he could distinguish from the endlessly moving parade, no leering thug in tracksuit pants and gamy runners, no fag, no tatts, no beanie. He was too late.

He pushed back through the crowd, conscious he was bothering people now, frightening them a little. He was a fool to have come down. He’d left Gemma and Kai up there alone and whoever he’d seen wasn’t just gone — he could be anywhere.

The lift wormed its way uncertainly up the shaft. He willed it on, shuffled in agitation and the Sudanese woman with the little girl in cornrows avoided his gaze. He knew what he looked like — there were others in the building: you saw them jounce and fidget every day, sweating and panting by the laundromat. Keely smiled at the woman reassuringly, but it only seemed to alarm her more.

He took the gallery at a trot and his knock on Gemma’s door was too emphatic. He saw the momentary flash of the spyhole before the chain slid back.

Oh, Tommy, she said. Go and take a shower. You bloody stink.

They ate dinner together. Gemma cooked, almost defiant about it. Keely had no appetite but he knew better than to leave food on his plate. Things felt strained enough between the three of them as it was.

He was at the sink afterwards, trying to find something amusing about being elbow-deep in suds again, when Gemma’s phone chirped on the bench behind him. Kai was in the shower. He heard her cajoling him from the bedroom. Tonight her fractiousness had a hint of wear in it, as if she were running out of fight. Maybe she’d go south after all. He’d call Doris.

It was just a single chirp, a message.

He reached for a towel and dried his hands. When he opened the phone there was no text, just an image. One of three.

Kai at the school gate. That round face, the unguarded gaze, the white hair to his shoulders. The second pic was the teddy bear. Horrible and yellow against the door grille, hanging as he’d found it, dangling from one leg. And the third was Gemma. Walking in the street. Carrying her shopping. Taken this afternoon.

He sensed her in the doorway before she spoke.

The fuck you doin?

Close the door, he said.

Bloody tell me what to do.

Please, Gemma. Close the door.

She glowered but pulled it to. The water ran on in the bathroom. He gave her the phone. He didn’t know how he was going to tell her about the teddy bear, the fact he’d found it and said nothing. Best he didn’t go there. Her face was instantly wild.

Get him into bed for me, will ya?

What’re you doing?

Makin a call, she said, moving past to the sliding door. She stepped out onto the balcony and closed it behind her. He rapped on the glass. Watched her a moment until she turned and glared. She motioned for him to leave her alone. He went through to the bedroom, called to Kai to wind things up in there, that it was time for bed.

Kai and he were paging through the raptor book without much pleasure when Gemma appeared in the doorway.

Be out for a few minutes, she said.

Where? he asked.

I’ll be back for work.

Stay here, Gem, he said, conscious of Kai’s attention. Really. I mean it.

Just something I forgot, she said. A girl thing.

He got up from the bed and followed her to the door. Gemma, I’m serious.

Don’t forget the chain, she said, averting any attempt at discussion.

And she was gone. He went back in and sat on the bed. It was a while before Keely noticed the boy surveying his sun-damaged hands. Kai drew his own from beneath the sheet and turned them over, examining them. Keely laid a hand on the boy’s palm. Kai seemed uncertain about this. He lifted it a moment as if weighing it. Then he ran a finger across the veined back of Keely’s mitt, the lined knuckles. Keely’s hands were pulpy from hot water and looked a little swollen. He had no idea what the boy was thinking. He let him turn his hand over, trace the creases in Keely’s palm.

You’ll get big old blokes’ hands like this one day, said Keely.

I wake up and I’m the same as you, said Kai. Like, I’m dreamin. Then I am you.

See? That’s imagining. You’re seeing in your head what it’s like in the future, to be a grownup, to get old.

No, said the boy, giving Keely back his own hand. That’s not it.

*

Gemma came in at eight-fifty. She was shaking and glassy-eyed. She smelt bitter but had no time to shower before work.

Where’d you go? he whispered, pulling the bedroom door to.

I told you, she said, shucking her dress and pulling a tunic from the plastic laundry basket on the coffee table.

What happened?

Don’t ask me, it’s a lady thing.

I don’t believe you.

It doesn’t matter what you believe, she said, zipping the tunic and stepping into her shoes.

Don’t go, call in sick.

I can’t, she said, tipping a compact and brush onto the kitchen bench. Not tonight.

Keely watched Gemma assemble herself. It was a mystery to him that a woman could arrive as a ruin and reconstitute herself in moments. There was still something shaky about her as she smoothed herself down and checked her reflection in the sliding glass door but she had assumed an armour that hadn’t been there a few minutes before. He didn’t believe she was going to work tonight. But why the uniform?

Can you stay? she asked, turning for the door. Will you be here?

Of course. I’m on at seven.

Okay. Good. I’ll be back in plenty of time.

Whatever it is, Gem, don’t do it.

Just work, she said.

I don’t want you to.

She shot him a game smile as she pulled the door to and after she was gone he puzzled over the false note it struck.

He sat up till midnight. He felt the urge to call Doris, to speak to Faith, but he didn’t know what he could say that wouldn’t sound as if he were coming to pieces. But he was okay tonight. He was straight, sober, making himself useful. He had a job to go to in the morning. He was not mad.

The Mirador gulped and whistled. He paced the unblemished carpet of Gemma’s livingroom, he watched the channel lights, the low constellations of tankers riding out in Gage Roads.

It was only night, just an ordinary darkness, and he was still and merely himself.