Christos Tsiolkas - Barracuda

What am I doing here?

The Monday of that week had been Valentine’s Day, his first day at Cunts College. His mother had taken a day off work and driven him all the way to the school gates. She’d also arranged to pick him up after practice at the new pool. ‘Only today,’ she’d warned him. ‘From tomorrow you catch the bus and the train.’

They drove for what seemed like hours, down the spine of the city then across to the east, stuck in gridlocked traffic, inching ever closer, everything getting greener as they went, the houses getting bigger and further apart. He was sulking all the way, his face pressed against the car window. He didn’t want to go to a new school. It’ll make you a better swimmer . He didn’t want to change to a new pool. It’ll make you a better swimmer . He didn’t want a new coach. It’ll make you a better swimmer . His mother stopped outside the gate that didn’t look like it belonged to a school, that should have belonged to a mansion from the movies, a mansion with a thousand rooms and with butlers and maids and ghosts. The walls were solid bluestone, the ironwork of the gate was black and shiny, the school emblem set on a plaque over the bars and covered in gold leaf: a lion rampant with a crown on its head, its paws resting on a crucifix; there was a burning torch and Latin words. Beyond the gate, the drive wound to a massive grey-stone building with two wings and a huge dome. It looked more like a temple, thought Danny, than a school building. Behind it the grounds stretched out endlessly, with no visible fence, no shops or warehouses or homes to be seen.

And then there were the boys. The boys in single file, the boys in pairs, the boys in threes and fours and fives, in the lavender-and-yellow striped jackets and the charcoal thick long pants that Danny had put on with great discomfort that morning, the striped tie that he didn’t know how to knot, that his father had tried to knot for him last night, but hadn’t been able to do it, had kept knotting and unknotting, knotting and unknotting till he was cursing the school for taking his son, cursing the scholarship for making it possible, cursing his wife for wanting Danny to go there, cursing the tie, fucking bloody shit of a tie, and all the time Danny was thinking, He is cursing me , he is cursing my swimming. The knot in the tie was now pushing into his Adam’s apple, it was the flat of a knife pushing against his throat. The crisp white shirt his mum said he had to wear, that had made his dad curse even more. ‘Why new shirts, what was wrong with his old shirts, what the fuck’s all this shit costing us?’ ‘Nothing!’ his mother threw back, raising her voice, the danger there, and Danny had seen his father waver. ‘It costs us nothing, the boy’s on a scholarship,’ to which his dad had replied, his own voice now lowered: ‘I still don’t see why it all has to be new. I don’t know why his old school pants and shirts aren’t good enough.’

Danny’s mother retorted something under her breath, in a tone that indicated the subject was closed. She hadn’t wanted Danny to hear it. But he had. ‘I don’t want him to be embarrassed, I don’t want him to think he doesn’t belong there.’

The gold leaf of the lion’s crown and the crucifix and the burning flame. Cunts College. It’s my first day at Cunts College, thought Danny.

His mother pushed him out of the car and he was trying to hide in the folds of the jacket which seemed heavy on his shoulders and the thick fabric of the trousers was chafing the skin between his thighs and behind his knees. He thought he must stink of chlorine, and that he must be walking like a retard, he was walking slowly up the drive that seemed too long and too wide, too grand for a school, all that bluestone and gravel, all those statues and granite steps, the buildings reeking of the centuries, not looking like a school, no portables, no concrete sheeting, looking more like a cathedral, a cathedral where the Pope would live. Danny walked up one two three four five six seven steps, following the stream of boys through an arch and into an entrance hall as big as a house, taller than a house, lined with stained-glass windows that towered above him, smooth cream walls from which portraits of old men stared down at him, all moustaches and bald pates.

Boys were pushing past him and around him and in front of him and behind him, and they had the clearest skin he had ever seen and the best cut hair and the whitest and most perfect teeth. He felt dirty and ugly and he was conscious of the pimples on his brow, the chain of them on his chin, the ugly red welt of them along his neck. The boys were all shouting to one another, they all knew each other but no one knew him and he was pushed, pummelled, carried through another entrance of granite and bluestone and he was now on a clean cobblestone path that wound through an expanse of immaculately mowed lawn, perfectly level, perfectly green, not a trace of dry yellow in the grass. A gardener was working in a patch of gold and lavender flowers. The boys rushed past, ignoring him, but Danny halted, watching his wrinkled face and sunken cheeks, and Danny smiled. The man didn’t return the smile; instead he looked down at the flowers and kept weeding around them. It was then that Danny realised that the flowers were the colours of the school uniform, that even the flowers here had an order. And it was beautiful and overwhelming because he had never before seen such turrets nor imagined such opulence and he wondered again where the squat ugly portables were, the ones that were furnace-hot in summer, wondered where the dry piss-yellow ovals were, where the graffiti was. And then a bell rang, not a siren, not a drill in your ear but a real bell, like a church bell, and the boys all suddenly disappeared and it was just Danny there and the gardener who wouldn’t look at him, who only looked down at the ground, at the yellow and purple flowers the colour of the school uniform and the school crest. The flowers that none of the boys noticed. And in that moment, Danny thought of how much the girls at his school, his old school, the real school, with the shitty portables, the ear-ripping electronic bell, the tags and graffiti on the ugly stretcher-brick walls, how much the girls would love to walk past a garden filled with such lovely flowers. But of course there were no girls here, no girls were allowed at this school.

That thought was terrifying. That thought made him want to run away.

It’ll make you a better swimmer.

That’s when he heard: ‘Hey, you, what are you doing here?’

The first words anyone said to him at Cunts College: What are you doing here?

It wasn’t a teacher who was asking the question. It was an older boy, flaxen-haired, clear-skinned except for a dark birthmark the size of a thumbprint on his left cheek. He marched across the yard to Danny.

‘What house are you in?’

House? Danny stood there, confused, trying to decipher the question. He wasn’t going to live here; there was no way he was going to stay in these grounds a minute longer than he needed to. He knew that boys boarded here, slept here. He wasn’t one of them, he would never be one of them.

‘You’re new, aren’t you?’

Danny could answer that. ‘Yes.’

‘Name!’

‘Danny.’

‘Surname!’

‘Kelly.’

‘Right, Kelly, I’m Cosgrave. I’m a prefect.’

Cosgrave seemed to think this should mean something to Danny. He wasn’t sure what it could mean. It meant that somehow this older youth was in charge, that somehow this older youth was perfect. Perfect golden hair, perfect clear skin.

Cosgrave sighed impatiently and pointed across the lawn to steps leading to the main building. ‘March.’