He straightened his back, ignored the searing discomfort from his full bladder. Margarita had begun talking but he cut her off, interrupted her without apology, addressing Clyde. ‘That world you’re describing, that world in Glasgow you keep banging on about, you know, that world of council estates and drugs and three generations of unemployment? The one you want to drop me and Dem in? That’s not fucking working class, Clyde. I don’t know what it is but it isn’t working class.’
It worked. It was a sucker punch and it was now Clyde who was deflated. Margarita appeared uncertain and confused, as if Dan’s words were another language. But Demet looked up, he’d made Demet look up. He couldn’t read her expression.
Dan was exhausted. He had to piss.
Clyde quickly recovered, incredulous and incensed. ‘What the fuck are you talking about, pal? If they aren’t working class, who the fuck is?’
Dan understood that it was because he’d defended Demet. It was the schoolyard again and he’d defended Demet. He groped for words that would pacify his lover but would also be loyal to his friend. But words remained dangerous, elusive; he couldn’t move them in the direction of his ideas and notions. He saw himself slicing open boxes and stacking supermarket shelves, smelled how sour and tart his sweat was at the end of an all-night shift; saw his father driving back and forth across the sea of the Nullarbor; saw his mother cutting hair. Someone’s got to cut hair. He thought of Mr Celikoglu’s long years at the Ford plant in Campbellfield, and Mrs Celikoglu’s lifetime as a seamstress and his granddad Bill’s skill as a bricklayer and his nan being a typist: all that labour and exertion and sweat, how the body was moulded and transformed by that work.
He struggled for the words. ‘I don’t know, mate, I don’t know what those people you talk about are, I don’t know them. But they are not my class.’
Clyde and Margarita were still unsatisfied; for them the words were certainly not enough. But Demet was nodding, was mouthing something covertly to him: he catches it, can almost hear it. ‘Thank you.’
His and Demet’s daughter. There was no Clyde, no Margarita — they didn’t belong to his future.
The sounds came rushing back: the sea, the music, the restaurant.
Clyde flicked the rolled cigarette to his mouth. ‘Enough. This was meant to be a holiday.’ But his tone was conciliatory, his ire had vanished. One of his fingers was beating a double-stroke at the small of Dan’s back. ‘I’m going to have a smoke.’ He nodded shyly at Demet. ‘You coming out, mate?’
She didn’t quite let him off the hook; she waited for a tense few seconds to pass. They were all holding their breath. Then she reached for her cigarettes and followed Clyde out to the landing.
Margarita and Dan sat in an uneasy silence, watching their partners outside. Clyde said something to Demet and her response was a raucous laugh.
Margarita visibly relaxed. ‘God, they’re alike, aren’t they?’
Quick to anger, opinionated and loud but also generous.
‘Yes, they are,’ Dan answered.
The pressure from his distended bladder was now acute, he was desperate for the toilet, but he knew it wasn’t the moment to leave Margarita alone. He twisted and shifted in his chair.
The smokers returned and Clyde looped an arm around Dan. ‘So what do you say, Kelly? You up to being a dad? I was just telling Dem that a son of yours would be one handsome lad.’
Dan buckled, the pain in his bladder overwhelming, a flame torching at his heart, his lungs, as if some beast had landed on him, its weight crushing him. A son. To love, to raise and to teach. To fail.
In a fury, he twisted away from Clyde’s arm, pushing him away, clumsily rising and upsetting the table. He almost ran from the table, needing to piss, but also to get away from Clyde.
Inside the restaurant, he saw a group of people, an extended family, there were grandparents and there were children, a little girl had fallen asleep in her high chair.
He is at the head of the table, he is pudgy now, carrying a weight he never had at school, he is thick-bellied and his hair is thinning. And it is then he recognises him. He is calling out to a little boy at the end of the table, he is saying, ‘There’s ice-cream, Michael, you can have ice-cream,’ and it is Tsitsas, he recognises the boy’s voice in the man, and Dan spins on his heel, knowing he daren’t walk past them, and goes back to the table and takes his seat and Demet and Margarita are talking but their words make no sense. Clyde is examining him anxiously and saying, ‘You alright, pal? You OK?’ but his words fall like blows and Dan can’t breathe, he can’t manage his lungs, his lungs won’t work and he is going to turn blue and he thinks what a mistake it was to come here, to their world. He could never take a son here, he could never bring a child here because they know who he is and they know what he did and he can’t breathe, why can’t he fucking breathe, and now the others are frightened and Demet is half out of her chair and there it comes, it comes, the blessed relief. He hungrily devours the air, sucking it in in heaving gulps.
I’m sorry, he says quietly as the warm stinging fluid fills his crotch, slides down the back of his legs and starts a terrible slow drip drip onto the wooden decking of the jetty. All he can see is the soiled, screwed-up white napkin on the table, filthy and stained from their meal.
He bolts from the table, knocking his chair flying, off the deck and across the boat landing, through the adjoining grassland, his shoes pounding, staggering on the unstable sand, making for the waves, ignoring the puzzled looks and cries of the teenagers on the beach, lurching and splashing into the water until it has reached his waist, until the unexpectedly icy water has covered the humiliating warmth and wet and stink of his drenched trousers. This is me, he thinks, and the shame is almost comic, it reveals exactly what he is and who he is. A life lived in and only through shame, it clings to him, it rises like the sun within him every morning, and it is there waiting when he sleeps. He lives in the shame, he reeks of it. And then, the next thought: I am in water.
But the water doesn’t want him, the water is repelled by him. He hears his name called, can make out Demet’s urgent, frightened plea, the shock in Clyde’s voice. He turns from the unwelcoming sea to meet his friend, his lover, who are rushing to him. Margarita is hiding back in the shadows, fearful, disbelieving. He smiles weakly at her. She’s finally seen who he is.
‘Dan, what happened?’ It is Clyde who has spoken but it is Demet who has got to him first. She takes him in her arms, holding him, ignoring the wet, not caring that he is dripping the ocean on her. She smooths back his hair, she caresses his cheek. Without words; she knows to not use words.
‘Dan, what the fuck happened?’ Clyde snaps it out. He wants words, he wants explanations.
‘I’m sorry.’ Dan’s teeth begin to chatter. Even in the mild warmth of the summer night, all he feels is the cold. ‘I’m sorry, mate. I pissed myself.’
A young girl nearby on the beach begins to giggle, and one of the boys with her lets out a loud hoot.
Dan doesn’t care. That’s what I am.
They lead him back to the apartments, Demet on one arm and Clyde on the other, Margarita treading warily behind them. He is aware of people stopping, turning, couples and families sitting at the footpath tables, all turning to look. Back in the apartment, Clyde says briskly but gently — with fear, there’s fear in his voice now—‘You have to get in the shower, warm yourself up, babe.’ The whole time he’s in the shower, Clyde stays in the bathroom, won’t leave him alone.
He comes out in a robe and Demet doesn’t want to leave, she’s insisting that Dan wants her to stay and he is relieved that Margarita says firmly, ‘No, Dem, let’s leave the guys alone.’ And Demet is kissing him, on his brow, the top of his head, on cheeks, his lips, she keeps saying, ‘I love you, Danny, I love you, and I’m sorry we put you on the spot, you don’t have to make a decision, Danny, and whatever decision you make is the right one,’ and Clyde has his arms crossed and Margarita is pulling at her girlfriend, saying, ‘Dem, he knows that, let’s just go,’ and even at the door, even on leaving, Demet turns around and says, ‘I’m sorry, Danny,’ and then says, ‘I love you, Danny,’ and he just wants her to go, just go. Because he knows she loves him and it isn’t enough. There’s not enough love in the world to cleanse, to eradicate, to scour away the dishonour of who he is.