Christos Tsiolkas - Barracuda

Her gaze unsettled him and he had to force himself to match it. As soon as his eyes caught hers, she looked slightly away.

‘I had the most delightful Orthodox Easter on the south coast of the island.’ She tapped the table, her lips pursed and she was, momentarily, shockingly ugly. ‘Now where was it?’ Annoyed, she tapped the table again. ‘Old age is shit.’

He didn’t know how it could be; perhaps it was the confident enunciation of each syllable, but it didn’t sound like swearing, it didn’t sound crude.

‘It doesn’t matter. We were there for the entirety of Holy Week and I remember the black-clad widows leading the procession along the cliff top on Good Friday. The chanting, the incense, everyone holding candles, the ocean booming below us — it was magical.’

The old lady’s eyes were moist. He felt that if he looked right into the black of her pupils, he might see the mirror of her memory, a candle flame and the crashing ocean.

‘Does your mother observe Orthodox Easter?’

‘Mum’s a Jehovah’s Witness.’ It just came out because he didn’t want to admit that he didn’t know what Orthodox Easter was, how it was any different from normal Easter.

The old woman’s head jerked back as if she was recoiling from something distasteful.

‘I mean she was ,’ Danny said desperately. ‘She’s not a Joey anymore — she can’t stand them.’

The old woman nodded approvingly. ‘I can quite understand.’

Danny couldn’t bear how stupidly relieved he felt.

‘And your father?’

What? He caught himself just in time. ‘Excuse me?’

‘Was he a Jehovah’s Witness as well?’

‘God no, he really hates them. Dad doesn’t believe in God.’

The old woman was unmoved. ‘And he’s not Greek?’

‘My nan is Irish and my granddad is Scottish. But Dad’s an Aussie, he was born here.’

‘So it was both sets of grandparents who were the courageous ones, it seems.’

Why can’t you just leave me alone? Toes on the floor, heels up, heels down.

‘And where do you live, Danny?’

‘Reservoir.’

He wondered if she’d ever heard of it, whether she knew where it was. She sniffed and looked down at the table. For a moment he was outraged, thinking that she wanted nothing more to do with him. The year before, at Scooter’s birthday, held in a small park in Hawthorn, Scooter’s neighbour, an Indian woman with a necklace of smooth white pearls against the coffee-coloured skin of her neck, had sat down next to him and asked, ‘So you are a friend of Paul’s?’ and he had said yes, and then she had asked, looking away from him, a little bored, ‘And yes, you live in Hawthorn as well,’ not even a question, and he had replied, ‘No, I live in Reservoir,’ and she had just stood up, with her plate and her glass, and walked away from him, like he had farted, like he had sworn, like he smelled of dirty-pissy-scummy Reservoir.

But the old woman didn’t ignore him. She brought her head in close to his, till he thought their foreheads would touch, and she whispered, ‘Listen to them.’

He brought his heels to the floor.

It was twittering and fluffery and gossiping and nonsense. The ladies were magpies and the men were crows and the children were farmyard animals, and even Emma, even Martin, they were all bleating like sheep. It was empty silly noise, about schools and lawyers and stocks and college and shopping. It was crap, it was shit. Across the table, Alex, who wasn’t prattling on, wasn’t jibbering and jabbering, winked and raised a near-empty wine glass. His mother laughed softly and raised her own glass. No one else had noticed, they were too busy chattering. Alex mimed having a cigarette and stood up, set down his napkin and left the table.

The old woman sighed. ‘He is here under sufferance,’ she announced, not bothering to lower her voice; no one was listening. ‘His sisters and his brothers have outdone one another in their race to marry the biggest fool.’ She cocked her head, trying to make out some of the conversation. All Danny could hear was shopping blah markets blah house prices blah school fees blah shopping blah and more shopping blah and interest rates blah and then more shopping blah. The old woman whispered, ‘Come closer.’

Danny lowered his head.

‘I’ve always admired the working class, my dear, always. Like us, you know exactly who you are. But look at them.’ She waved a hand dismissively at the others at the table. ‘They have no idea how abysmal they are. Lord, how I detest the middle class.’

Danny looked into her bright shining eyes and knew he had just been given a gift, but he didn’t know how to unwrap it, could not figure out how to accept it. The old woman shrugged and rose from her chair, dropping her napkin onto the table.

Mrs Taylor looked up. ‘Mother,’ she blurted out, ‘you musn’t smoke.’

‘Oh, fuck off, Samantha,’ the old woman replied as she followed her son out to the courtyard.

The smile on Mrs Taylor’s face was stretching, a cartoonish elongation, as if her cheeks were attached to some invisible puppeteer who was pulling two sticks as far apart as they could go. She sat there with the smile spreading, a parasite taking over her whole face. She was a balloon about to burst; and if that were to happen, thought Danny, the table, the room, would be covered by her skin, and it would not be flesh and blood but plastic and rubber and glass.

When one of the silent kitchen ladies started cleaning up and the other one brewed the coffee and the tea, everyone gathered in the lounge room to give the old lady her birthday gift. Everyone was polite and charming to Danny — Mrs Taylor would smile over at him, asking if he needed anything, and Martin’s cousins included him in their conversations — but he found that he had nothing to add. They didn’t talk about music or movies or politics — they didn’t talk about the world. It was all memories of holidays in Lorne, holidays in Sorrento, people they knew. Only when the subject turned to sport did Danny find the courage to say something, to mention their preparation

for the championships in October. But even then, Vincent had to stifle a yawn, with Danny in excited mid-sentence. Vincent apologised, urged him to go on, but Danny knew he had bored him. The conversation moved on and he couldn’t find the space to finish what he’d been saying. I’m going to win, I’m going to master butterfly and I’m going to win . He hugged that thought close. And I’m going to prove to Coach that I can win in the freestyle. He would beat them all, and the next time he saw these people again, they would be asking him questions, they would want to know all about him .

They were polite and charming but the whole time he felt as though there were secrets eluding him, that he was being excluded from something. It was as if they were looking over his shoulder even when they were looking straight at him. He knew that somehow everything about him had gone around the room, that everyone knew that he lived on the other side of the city, on the north side of the river, that he was on a scholarship to the college, that his father drove trucks and his mother cut hair. Somehow they all knew.

Except for Virginia. She too was uncomfortable, her eyes darting from face to face as she tried to follow a conversation, but as soon as she started to join in, the talk always shifted, she was always a beat behind. ‘I’m studying law,’ she began, he could hear the pride in her voice, but already the talk had moved on from university. She slumped back onto the sofa and Danny wanted to tell her not to try so hard. How could she not know that?

‘Did you go to school with Emma?’ he asked, trying to be polite. ‘No,’ she answered sharply, not even offering a name for her school, and he guessed that meant she was ashamed of it. He had learned from his own time at school that it probably meant she hadn’t even attended a state school, she couldn’t claim that with bogan pride: it had to mean she had gone to a piddling private school, probably Catholic, somewhere out in the suburbs. He wanted to tell her that they didn’t like it when you tried so hard. He tried to make conversation, to put her at ease, and she nodded and smiled but he could tell she wasn’t listening. He remembered the old woman’s words. Virginia didn’t know who she was, and so she would always be a step behind. She wasn’t like him; she didn’t know how to win.