Christos Tsiolkas - Barracuda

He shook his head.

‘You’re really good with your cousin. You know how to listen and you have patience. Thank you for spending time with him today. He really enjoyed it.’

You don’t have to thank me, he wished he could say. And stop treating him like a baby. He doesn’t want that, he can’t stand how you treat him like a child not a man. But he couldn’t figure out how to say that without hurting her. And he was confused: his family loyalty meant he should see her as an enemy — he wouldn’t and couldn’t forgive the hurt she’d caused his mother — but he didn’t want to be part of that enmity. You’re really good with your cousin . He was grateful for those words. It was a long time since anyone had said that he was good at anything. That he was good for anything.

His mother was alone in the house, in the kitchen. Two bags of shopping were on the bench; she was slicing chicken breasts. She was still not wearing make-up, in a drab dark top and shapeless black slacks. She didn’t look like his mother — Dan thought he could see Bettina in her, see the shape of Dennis’s mouth in hers.

‘I’m so glad to see you,’ she said. ‘I’m preparing something for dinner tonight, to thank Jo for having us. How did you go with Dennis?’

‘Great. I really like him.’

‘He seems like a nice man.’

Dan sat down. ‘What happened to him?’

‘He had a motorbike accident when he was nineteen. He hadn’t long had his bike. They thought he was going to die, he was in a coma for four months or so.’ His mother shook her head. ‘It was terrible — it must have been awful for Bettina.’

‘When did you find out about it?’

‘Not till a few years ago.’ His mother’s smile was wry and resigned. ‘In case you haven’t noticed, your aunt and I don’t talk very much.’

‘What about his dad?’

‘He died a long time ago. Cancer — and from what I know, which is not much, it was a slow, horrible death. She’s suffered a lot, your aunt.’

‘She doesn’t have to be such a bitch to you.’

His mother shrugged, wiped her hands on an apron, and started bashing a stem of lemongrass. It was clear she didn’t want to talk about it, didn’t want to think about Bettina.

Dan’s phone vibrated. He had a new message, from Dennis: Hope my mum didn’t break your balls . Dan texted back: All cool , and returned the phone to his pocket.

‘Do you want to come with me to the hospital this afternoon?’

Dan couldn’t believe they had to return to the hospital. His grandmother was a vegetable. She’d never know if they were there or not. ‘If you want.’

‘Thank you so much for all of this, baby.’ His mother reached into a shopping bag and pulled out a small plastic bag of chillies, and started slicing one.

‘I hope Jo and Spiro like Asian food,’ she said. ‘I can’t find a bloody wok in the house.’

It wasn’t that the food was Asian that was a problem for Joanna and Spiro, it was that it contained meat. They arrived back in the mid-afternoon, just as Dan and his mother were getting ready to go back to hospital.

‘Jo,’ Dan’s mother said cheerfully, ‘I’ve cooked us a meal, it’s in the saucepan. We can heat it up tonight.’

Biting the corner of her bottom lip, Joanna said something in Greek.

Dan’s mother’s face fell. ‘Oh,’ she said simply, ‘I forgot.’

‘What’s the problem?’

Joanna scratched her ear, obviously embarrassed. ‘It’s our Easter next week and Spiro and I are fasting: we can’t have meat.’

Dan looked at his mother. ‘Is that some kind of weird Jehovah’s Witness thing?’

Spiro burst out laughing. ‘No, mate, no! It’s an Orthodox thing — your cousin and I are both Orthodox and our Easter is next week, not this one.’

‘Right.’ Dan marched to the stove, scooped the food onto two plates, and sat at the table, beckoning his mother over. ‘We’re eating,’ he announced. ‘I haven’t had lunch, I’m famished.’

He tore into the food, relishing every bite, every explosion of spice in his mouth. He chewed slowly, extracting every possible flavour and pleasure from it. He ate with a gusto and loyalty that declared him his mother’s son.

It was just Dan and his mum in the hospital room — himself and his mother and his dying grandmother. His mother hadn’t sat down; she was standing at the head of the bed, holding the old woman’s limp, bird-boned hand.

Dan sat on the chair, flicking through a Woman’s Day, faces he didn’t recognise, faces that didn’t exist when there was no television. At one point a nurse came in, wheeling a steel trolley, all good cheer. In a mellifluous Pacific accent she asked if Antonia was OK as she stripped back the sheet and carefully disengaged and emptied the catheter bag. ‘Does Antonia need anything?’ she asked. Antonia was a vegetable, Dan thought spitefully, Antonia was just a lump of meat. But he smiled at the nurse, watching her buttocks swing beneath the thick white fabric of her uniform as she wheeled the trolley back out of the room.

Sometimes his mother would say something in her first language. It did sound like an old language, Dan thought, it sounded much more ancient than English.

At eight o’clock he was roused by a cough. The nurse had popped her head around the door to say apologetically that visiting hours were over. Dan leapt to his feet but his mother wouldn’t move, wouldn’t let go of his grandmother’s hand. The nurse came up to her and gently patted her arm. ‘Time to go, sweetheart,’ she said softly. ‘You can see her tomorrow.’

‘Oh, God, I don’t want to go back to Jo and Spiro’s. I don’t want to see any of my frigging family, even the good ones. I just want to be with you.’ His mother had the key in the ignition, her hand was on the handbrake.

‘We don’t have to,’ he said.

Dan knew what his mother wanted. Her need was flowing through her blood, and her blood and her need were flowing through him. They both wanted the same thing.

‘Do you want to go for a drink?’

It began as a small curl at the edge of her lips, then a crease, a wrinkle, that reached her shining eyes; the smile flooded across his mother’s face and found its way to his.

‘I reckon Spiro really wanted some of that stir-fry.’

His mother collapsed into giggles. ‘Poor guy, he’s a bit of a doormat, isn’t he? That’s the problem — Greek men either have to go completely macho on their wives or they’re pussy-whipped. Whatever you do, Danny, don’t get involved with a Greek woman. They’re bitches.’

Dan was looking at an older man sitting at the bar, short spiky hair bleached by the sun, brown weathered skin, and a farmer’s tan that finished at the neck and sleeves. He was scowling, but not at anyone or anything. He was drunk already, thought Dan, a few more drinks and he’d be looking for a fight. He was nothing like Dennis — he was short, unfit, with a paunch and flabby arms — but something about the way he was sitting, the way he was looking out into the distance, reminded Dan of his cousin.

His mother stirred her gin and tonic with the straw. ‘I can’t bear another night in this city,’ she said. ‘It’s so oppressive.’

Dan was drinking a vodka and tonic. It was odourless, but also tasteless: a concentrate of lemon pulp had settled at the bottom of the glass. He’d hardly sipped from it. His mother had nearly finished hers.