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.
When the old lady ripped the shiny red paper away from the canvas to reveal the painting, Virginia put her hand to her mouth, her eyes bright, as though the present were being given to her. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she gasped. The old lady looked up, showing them all the canvas. The thick black lines seemed furious to him then, and he thought that the woman’s face was as angry as it was sad.
‘What do you think, Danny?’ The old lady ignored Virginia. ‘Do you like it?’
He shuffled through his words, discarded them, let them tumble back into his throat. ‘It’s b-beautiful,’ he finally stammered.
‘Oh Danny,’ she scolded, taking in the painting, ‘that’s so trite.’
Emma spoke up. ‘It’s fierce,’ she said, and her grandmother nodded approvingly.
‘That’s right.’ She smiled at Emma. ‘That is absolutely right.’
Danny wanted to say, That’s what I feel looking at it, that’s the word I wanted to use. He wanted to throw it back at her. If he could have cursed her he would have. He hated her more than anyone else in this room. He wanted to say to Virginia, coiled tight, humiliated beside him, Throw it back at her, give it back to her, tell the old bitch she can stuff her new canvas up her wrinkled old vag. He caught Martin’s eye and mouthed, ‘I’m going to bed.’ Martin looked coldly at him without responding.
The old lady offered her cheeks for Danny to kiss. He didn’t let his lips touch them.
In a sleeping bag on a mattress next to Martin’s bed he let out a series of sharp stinking farts, feeling sluggish, engorged by all the rich food. He wished he was at home, that he could set the alarm for four-thirty and that his mum would drive him to the pool. Swimming in the Taylors’ pool wasn’t enough, he felt caged in. First thing tomorrow he would go to the ocean and swim. He needed the space, the unrestrained power of it, the relief of being in surging, untamed water.
He awoke when Martin came into the room. In the darkness he could hear the boy kicking off his shoes, unbuckling his belt, throwing off his shirt, peeling off his socks. He could smell the mint from the toothpaste that Martin had used. The sheet and the doona were being pulled back, he heard Martin settling into bed. There was his own breathing and there was Martin’s breathing. There were the knocks and shudders and rumblings of an unfamiliar house, the flush of a toilet somewhere down the hall, the groan of pipes. There was his breathing and there was Martin’s breathing, and behind that was something else, a vibration, a slow, steady pulse, getting faster. Martin’s breathing was no longer in sync with his, it was shallow, quickening, and Danny knew that on the bed above him, Martin was beating off, the faint putt-putt-putt of the bedhead knocking the wall, breaths escalating. Danny knew, as Martin must have known, that he shouldn’t be doing it, that it was wasted energy; no one had told him that but he knew it because every time he had given in to the urge he had felt his strength and power drain away, spill from his body, felt that weakness at the end of the frenzied tugging, the slackened muscles, the spent, listless body. But sometimes he couldn’t help it, sometimes he lost the wrestle with himself, and this was one of those times, this once would be OK, and Martin doing it, them both doing it together, that hoarse and shallow breathing, the squeaking mattress, it had to happen. Danny’s hand reached down to his own erect cock and he pushed apart his legs and in the small cavity allowed by the sleeping bag rubbed up and down up and down on his shaft, and there was the putt-putt-putt of the bedhead knocking the wall and there was the whistling slide of his fist against the fabric of the sleeping bag and there was his breathing getting faster and there was Martin’s breathing getting faster and then Danny heard a constricted groan from above and he answered it by choking on his own relief, swallowing it back, as the warm globs of semen flowed all over his fist. He whimpered and then there was silence. He heard Martin’s breathing; he brought his own back in sync with that of his friend.