‘By rights, you should be staying with your grandmother or my sister or my brothers, but it just isn’t meant to be, kid — I hope one day you’ll understand. I’m so sorry you don’t know your giagia, Danny, I’m so sorry about that.’
Is this what is making her so sad? I don’t mean to, but I have a big grin on my face. ‘I don’t mind, Mum. It’s OK.’
And it is OK. I don’t want to think about her family, that mad old bastard screaming in Greek at Mum, that scared old woman who wouldn’t let herself touch me. They aren’t family — they’re strangers I never want to see again.
But nothing I can say will take her sadness away. I just want to get out of the car. I want to be in the house, with Coach and my squad. ‘Can I go?’
‘Of course, Danny.’ She wraps me in one of those enormous hugs, where all I can do is let my body go floppy, just give in to it. I wait, and eventually she lets me go.
I wave goodbye to her, standing on the path. It is a relief when the car turns the corner and she is gone.
The ringer for the doorbell is a small white cube, and it hangs a little askew from the wiring. I press it. There is no sound so I press it again, and then I knock. There are lumbering sounds and then the door opens, and there is Coach. I have to take a step back. He is smiling, and just for an instant, a wrinkle in time, I don’t recognise him. It is the same heavy body, the same Bonds shirt and baggy shorts, but the smile has changed his face. I forget to say hello. But it doesn’t matter. He says, ‘Good to see you, Danny, come in, boy,’ and ushers me inside.
I am in Coach’s house.
I never notice houses, I realise now that I’ve never paid much attention to them. I know that our house is cramped and funny-looking, the sleep-out that Dad added when Theo was born is just tacked on to the laundry, and every room in our house is dark because all the windows are too small. Of course I’ve noticed the houses of my friends from school — their places are ginormous. I know that Luke’s house is modern, that his architect uncle designed it; I know that the Taylors’ house is a mansion and that Wilco’s is nearly a hundred years old. I know every part of Demet’s house; it has the same ill-begotten shape as ours. But wandering through Coach’s house, I have a dumb and childish thought and I stifle a giggle. It reminds me of Goldilocks: not too big, not too small — just right. I feel right in it. I feel at home.
The first thing I notice inside is the beauty of the ceilings. The Taylors’ houses have ceilings higher than this house, but they aren’t beautiful, I can’t remember anything about the ceilings of Martin’s houses at all, apart from their height. But the ceilings in Coach’s are sheets of rectangular reliefs, a sea of stuccoed ingots.
The front room, with the large window that looks out over the street, that window has a sill as deep as a seat, you could sit on it and watch the world go by. I can tell immediately that the front room is Coach’s bedroom. There is hardly anything in it, it’s really neat. There is a high bed with a double mattress, with shoes and slippers on the floor underneath it. There is a wardrobe with double doors; on one of them is a full-length mirror. There is a white chest of drawers next to the bed, and on it sits a digital clock and a photograph. It is of an old man and woman, their faces stern as they stare straight into the camera. The photograph is black and white but there is a faint copper wash through it. The woman is wearing a black scarf around her hair and the man wears a peculiar hat, like a cap without a visor. It is an olden — time photograph, the oldest photograph I have ever seen.
Coach sees me examining the photograph and clears his throat. ‘They are my parents,’ he announces. ‘That is my father and mother.’
I can’t help it, I say, ‘But it looks really really old.’
And he surprises me again, he tilts back his head and roars. A real laugh, a genuine and generous laugh. ‘Back then in Hungary, boy, everything looked really really old.’ He takes my bag from me and points to the bed. ‘You will sleep here.’
It is both statement and question, and I just nod my head; I can’t stop nodding.
Above the bed there is a painting, of a courtyard high on a mountain, there is a pond and fountain and below stretches a calm and tranquil sea. It looks like a fantasy, like the mansion you’d imagine if a genie were to appear and grant you three wishes. I can’t wait for morning, I’m already thinking of waking and having breakfast sitting on that wide sill, looking at the street and beyond it to the world; then turning around and gazing at the painting, imagining that Coach’s house will be my house when I am famous and rich enough to live anywhere I want to in the world. I would never feel cramped in this house, I would never feel lost.
I put my bag on the bed and Coach takes me through the rest of the house. There is a second bedroom, with a single bed in it, one small, lopsided bureau and a bank of gym equipment piled up against one walclass="underline" a treadmill, a rowing machine, barbells and a bench. A fold-out has been put next to the equipment, like a bed in the army or a camping bed. It is made up with clean sheets and a duvet. I feel pleased with myself as I look at it — it won’t be me camping out tonight.
In the shadow by the door, I suddenly spy a cluster of photographs on the wall. They are all of swimmers. Two of the photographs are ancient, in black and white, and the bathers on the guys look more like underpants. Then there are three other photos, more recent, in colour. I don’t take in the other boys: in the centre is a photo of myself, grinning like a dickhead, but proudly, clutching my shivering body at the edge of the pool.
‘That was when I won the Interschool Championships last year, isn’t it?’ I say excitedly to the Coach.
‘Yes,’ nods Coach. ‘That’s you, Danny.’ He is pointing out the other swimmers but I’m not really listening to him. He’s got me on his wall, I am smack bang in the centre. I must be the one he considers the strongest, the fastest, the best.
There is wallpaper in the hallway and a dank smell. But I ignore it as Coach rushes me through the lounge room, into the small kitchen and out into the backyard; not really a yard, not like home with all the grass and flowers and vegie garden, more like a courtyard with a set of weatherworn garden chairs. There are no flowers, no vegetables, there is only a yellow patch of grass and a path made of concrete. But it doesn’t matter, because when I look down from the slope of the courtyard I can see the lights flickering in the city below.
‘Wow,’ I say to the Coach. ‘Wow, the city is so close.’
Coach points to the back fence, to a bolted gate made of cast-off wood panelling, and he says, ‘You can walk through that door, Danny, and turn left into the alley, and if you follow it all the way then you are at the river.’
‘This place is amazing!’
I didn’t think I’d said the words out loud, but Coach is beaming, Coach is nodding his head and beaming.
We sit inside at the kitchen table and Coach slices some salami, putting it on crackers and handing them to me.
‘Wait till you have the pizzas tonight, wait till you boys taste them. Marika’s pizzas are not like that shit you eat, full of that cheap cheese and those bland vegetables.’ Coach clicks his fingers, he is almost swaying. ‘Marika’s pizzas are the best in the world. You’ll eat them, you’ll see — you’ll say, “Coach, these pizzas are the best in the world.”’
There are just three of us from the squad going across to Adelaide: Taylor, Wilco and me. Coach will drive us there tomorrow. It is not the national championships, nothing as important as that — I can’t wait till I get a chance to shine at that event—but it is an under-sixteens meet and Coach wants us to compete. He says he wants Swimming Australia to sit up and take notice, he says he wants those stuck-up pricks to see what real talent is. It is under-sixteens, which is why there is no Fraser and no Scooter, and Wilco has just scraped in. If he’d been born a month earlier, it would have been just me and Taylor. How brilliant would that have been?