Christos Tsiolkas - Barracuda

‘And I’ll tell you what I don’t want, mate. I don’t want to be a father and I don’t want to be a co-parent and I don’t want any of that shit. I want to be forty-five and be able to travel and not have to think about little Bobbie’s school fees or little Jacqueline’s bloody dancing lessons. I like being a faggot, mate, I like it a lot and I think being free in our middle age is what we deserve for straights making our childhood and our teenage years so cuntish.’ He spat on the word, made fire of it.

‘And even if I wanted to be a dad I wouldn’t do it with Demet and Margarita. They’ll want to control their kid, she or he will always be their kid and they’ll resent it every time I disagree on what food the brat should eat and what school the brat should go to and who his friends are and who our friends are.’

He finished the whiskey and poured another. ‘I don’t want that life, pal, but that’s me. What is it you want?’

There was the rolling of the ocean, the breaking of the waves. Dan knew he had to answer. He had to concentrate, he had to find that space beyond the sounds and sights and motion of the world. He had to say something — The first fucking thing in your head, mate, just answer him, answer him, the first thing in your head, what the fuck is it?

What was it?

‘I want you to hold me.’

And Clyde did, Clyde held him tight.

An age passed. Clyde was still holding him, had carefully twisted his hand around and over Dan to pour himself yet another whiskey. Dan’s face was buried in his lover’s chest and as Clyde lifted his glass off the table the first two buttons of his shirt came open and Dan found his lips, his mouth were resting on that pale shaven chest, smooth as a boy’s. That skin was not Clyde’s; it reminded him of another man, of another boy. Clyde still smelled of the sea, it was the smell of a day long ago when he and Martin were by the sea in that big house and that night they’d shared a room. Dan knew that for all of Clyde’s insistent urging that he wanted to know Dan’s thoughts and to hear Dan’s words, there were things about Dan that he would not be able to hear, that he couldn’t have stood knowing. So he whispered into that chest, he made the decision. He would fasten his future to this man. He would make Clyde his future because there were no other futures left.

‘I want to be with you.’

Clyde pulled away from him. Words, Dan was right not to trust in words.

But Clyde wasn’t angry. He was grave and cautious but not angry. ‘I want to be in Scotland this European summer, Dan. When we get back to Melbourne, I’m going to book my ticket.’ He was gently stroking Dan’s back. ‘I want to see Mum and Dad, see my family. I miss them. God help me, I never thought I’d say this but I want to see Glasga again, I want to see home. I want to see rainy streets and people getting sodden drunk in pubs and I want to hear people laughing, really laughing, because they know it is all fucked up and they’ll tell you that, but they are also happy, they are not asking for the world. I want to be somewhere where people aren’t perpetually banging on about mortgage rates and refugees and blackfellas and how fucking great this country is, how lucky I am to be here in the luckiest country on earth. I don’t want to be told how lucky I am, I want to feel lucky . I just want to be home.’

Clyde’s hold was so tight that it was starting to be painful, but Dan let it hurt. He didn’t want to say anything that would make Clyde move away.

‘But I promise you, man, I give you my word: if you really want to be with me I will come back. Will you trust me?’

‘Yes. I trust you.’

Relief flooded through him, and with it a shudder, a small tremor that came from the realisation that a future was being made.

The only future he had.

Clyde fell asleep, snoring loudly on the sofa. Dan woke him, lifted him gently to his feet, and guided the drunk man to their bed. But he lay next to Clyde, unable to sleep. Dreams wouldn’t come. Dan quietly got out of bed and returned to the living room. There was a small shelf next to the stereo, filled with maps of Otway walks, books about the Great Ocean Road. But there were also books left behind by guests, spy stories and romances, crime fiction and kids’ books. Dan found a dog-eared copy of Dickens’ David Copperfield and sat down to read.

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show . It was a book he had read before, but he found that his mind kept returning to that opening sentence, that the words always struck him with a visceral force. He turned the pages, making sense of the sentences and paragraphs and chapters but at a distance, as if his reading were like the disconnected passive act of watching the television screen: words flowed past, sense briefly attached to them, but they disappeared from memory as soon as they’d been read. The only sustenance came from that opening sentence. He read to the point of exhaustion, and with the arrival of the soft light of dawn he was still deliberating on the challenge the question posed for him. He couldn’t think how anyone but himself could be the hero of his own life, but he knew that he wasn’t a hero.

The following weekend, Dan went to his parents’ place to pick up Dennis. His cousin had been staying there, in Regan’s old room, since he’d moved to Melbourne in the summer. Dennis was working with Dan’s father. Neal Kelly had kept his promise to his wife and given up long-haul driving when Theo had left school, starting a small business as a removalist.

Dan knew that his father respected Dennis, respected his strength and determination. He admired that the man knew work. Watching his cousin getting ready to go out, the bulge of his muscles but also the slight limp that would only worsen with years of heavy lifting, Dan understood why he had not been able to express himself in words at that disastrous Australia Day dinner. Being working class wasn’t about words, it could only be expressed through the body.

They had lunch at a pub on Sydney Road and then, wobbly from three pots of beer, they strolled into Brunswick. Dan popped into a bookshop, Dennis following him.

‘I won’t be a moment, mate,’ Dan said, searching the shelves for that book, that title that would excite his curiosity and draw him in. Dennis just stood there as the customers walked carefully around him; as always he was looking up to that canvas that only he could see painted across the sky. Dan stopped in front of the travel section, a part of the bookshop he’d never been interested in before. A young woman wearing a loose black singlet and a red embroidered bra was apologising for bumping into Dennis. He responded, ‘It’s OK. It’s my fault, I’m too big,’ and the way he spoke didn’t intimidate her — she asked him to repeat his words, and listened and understood. Her back was facing Dan; he looked straight down the aisle to Dennis and raised his thumb in encouragement before going back to the books.

His finger traced the spines, and landed on the word Scotland. He opened the book. The photographs showed water everywhere: islands and rivers and lakes. He searched for the section on Glasgow and began to read: Over the last thirty years Glasgow has enjoyed a remarkable renaissance, thanks to some serious investment in cultural venues and blue ribbon events . Dan couldn’t help chuckling. How Clyde would hate that.

‘What are you reading?’

‘A book about Scotland.’

Dennis was looking over Dan’s shoulder, examining photos of bird’s-eye views of a city: red-brick terraces, the smoky grey spires and domes of cathedrals, a few lean lonely office towers in the distance, dwarfed by masses of white and violet clouds.