Tim Winton - Eyrie

Last night’s dishes were still there on the sink. The heat of the day had baked stains to a glaze and the purple crust in his wineglass smelt fruity as a bishop. He washed without conviction, buried his bottles deep in the recycling crate and wiped everything down, from restlessness as much as anything.

But he was still a little buzzed. He should bag some laundry. Better still, call Faith. She’d be tickled. Curious at least. Besides, having stumbled into all these memories he felt the need to hear her voice. He looked at the clock. Singapore. Same time zone. He grabbed the landline phone, punched his sister’s number.

Faith answered from within a noisy room, a restaurant by the sound of it. He had to repeat his name twice before she understood who was calling.

Are you alright? she asked. Is it Mum?

She’s fine, we’re fine.

You don’t sound it.

Nah, I’m good.

Have you seen someone?

What?

Did you try those numbers?

Quacks and bankers, mate. You know me.

Sometimes I wonder.

Tell you who I have seen —

Tom, I’m in a meeting.

Okay, sorry. Just that I thought you’d find it… weird.

Everything’s weird just at the present. The world as we know it is choking on a bone.

Yeah?

You actually have no idea.

Well, I get the broad picture.

I doubt it.

Anyway, I’ve got two words for you.

Please tell me they’re not Lehman Brothers.

Funny.

Not that funny. Which words, Tom?

Buck. And Gemma.

Gemma Buck?

You’re quick, sis.

Blackboy Crescent Gemma Buck?

That’s the one.

What about her?

Lives in my building, mate. Same floor.

This is a joke?

Am I that funny a bloke?

Hell. Wow, that’s… weird. So, what does she look like?

Keely couldn’t help but laugh.

What? she asked.

I love that it’s the first thing you ask. If a bloke said it you’d serve him his tripe on a platter.

Aw, boohoo.

Actually she looks a bit ground down.

Wasn’t she a bit of a stunner?

I spose she was.

Listen, I have to go. Can you call me later?

Alright.

Give me another hour, okay?

Not a problem.

I’ll call you.

Don’t worry, he said, I’ll ring back.

Of course you will. Anyway, I can afford it.

I said I’d call. Didn’t I?

Love you, she said with an air of defeat before hanging up.

Yeah, he said to the ether. You too, sis.

For a moment he was buoyed by a fleeting sense of closeness. He thought of the safe mass of her in a sleeping bag beside him in the back of the station wagon. Her asthmatic wheeze, the soapy-vanilla scent of her above the smells of vinyl upholstery and wet grass. The sound of crickets. All those nights parked on front lawns while the oldies ran committees, prayer groups, demo meetings. That wheezy, sweet lump in the car up close. His baby sister, the merchant banker. He kissed the phone like a sap and set it back in its cradle.

Surveyed the empty flat a moment. Snatched up his keys.

He sauntered past shuttered shops in the emptying streets, knowing he should phone his mother. He owed Doris a call anyway and she’d probably be delighted to have news of Gemma. But he knew he wouldn’t; he could do without the loving scrutiny, her urging him to see another GP, a new counsellor, some western-suburbs employment guru who’d come highly recommended. He didn’t want the telling silences, her withering patience. For a minute or two he was close, once more, to mental uproar. But he talked himself down, the meeting came back to order.

It was still warm. A smattering of joggers and strollers abroad. There were late commuters out on the pavement, loiterers, lost souls, women thumbing phones to summon taxis. Down the main drag, a couple of lycra-free cyclists coasted by, laughing, God bless them. In their wake rumbled Commodores full of local boys lapping the block, windows down, saying ugly things to women. Girls with tatts and skinny dogs told them to go and get fucked. A bloke tried to fly a kite off the balcony of a backpacker joint but the breeze was fluky between buildings.

The evening air was heavy with salt, coffee, exhaust fumes. The vibe in town was weary and benign. It was the same joint he’d shunned this morning, but tonight it felt easier to forgive. It was a village, with all the virtues and vices of intimacy. And he knew the place backwards, had lived here most of his working life. But he had to remind himself daily that it was quite another town to him now; in his new circumstances he lived in it differently, felt its properties anew. These days he was more at its mercy, it acted on him in ways he hadn’t really experienced before. You could hate anywhere and anyone that didn’t need you. He was skint in every possible sense. Surplus to requirements. But lofting a little this evening, rising as if from a nasty bounce.

Along the Strip Keely bought a beer, drank it quickly and left before he could go on to a soothing second. Felt good about himself a moment, then thought of Doris again.

Under the date palms across from the station, drunks called querulously for taxi fare, train money, two bucks mate. Their goon bags flashed silver beneath the trees, and soon enough those hopeful, matey shouts took on the standard overtone of menace. He pressed on, over the footbridge to the wharf.

Call Doris, he thought, crossing the quay. Don’t be a weasel.

Cars streamed away from the ferry landings. At the dockside, tourists struggled to find their landlegs after the trip in from Rottnest. Others wheeled bikes, suitcases, prams writhing with squalling kids.

His mother was a brick, a saint. Which of course made everything so much worse, especially since she’d had ample time to form a view of his situation. Two years since the break-up. A whole year since his catastrophic brain-snap and all its rewards. Doris was a shrewd old bird. She didn’t miss much. He did not want to suffer her thoughtful analysis a single moment but he was pretty certain he already understood it in all its loving, pitiless permutations. Her view was undoubtedly this: that by now her only son could reasonably be expected to pick himself up amidst the wreckage of his life and make something new happen. She was, of course, canny enough to refrain from saying so. But she radiated it.

Her faithful presence, her restraint, her carefully calibrated attention said everything for her, and even absent she exerted tectonic moral pressure. She was right to be puzzled, justified in her impatience. Yes, yes, yes, fucking yes, these months had been wasted and he probably was a coward getting cosy with his own self-hatred, but he couldn’t get past the suspicion of more to come, that something worse was necessary, or at least inevitable, as if he were not yet properly shriven. But it was only a matter of time. And maybe when he struck bottom there’d be certainty, fresh conviction, a sense of immediacy he could no longer feel. She thought this was bullshit, madness even. Though he hadn’t breathed a word, didn’t need to. Doris could read him in five languages and scan him in Braille. Since his cataclysmic truth-telling, he’d felt the eloquence of her every withheld judgement and longsuffering stare. He didn’t have to guess what she thought of his morose passivity, his bitterness and wounded silence, which is why he’d been avoiding her of late. It was no treat embodying something your own mother pitied, probably even despised. She loved him, her compassion seemed boundless, but her disappointment smarted more than any other humiliation. Problem was she thought he was strong, still judged him accordingly, and did not yet know he was lost.

But he wasn’t going there tonight.