A cloud passed across the sun; the kitchen fell into darkness. The shadow played across his father, moved across the table and passed over Dan. Dan was conscious of his heart pounding, throbbing so hard it could have burst through his chest. He could feel the blood rushing through every vein in his body, as cold as ice; every hair on his body was upright, every single part of him was alive, as if he was flying, taking in the world, the scent of blood, of bone and victory. His old man was just that, an old man, his head lowered, his skinny wrists weak and brittle. Dan had won. He had beaten his father.
The wind rose outside, the branches from the silver gum drumming across the slate roof over the kitchen, and more clouds skated across the sky and the sun disappeared again. In a breath, his exhilaration had gone and all he saw was the older man across from him, too shattered to find the strength to raise his head and look at his son. Dan had won and he felt nothing at all.
His lips dry, his tongue thick and unyielding, this time Dan thought through the shape and volume and sense of words before he let them loose.
‘Dad, it’s not true that I don’t care about those kinds of things, it’s just that I have never known what to do about it all.’
The glowing rendition of the US president on the fridge door; the ink as thick as blood on the Aboriginal flag.
‘I was never that smart, you know, to figure all that sort of stuff out. All I was good at was swimming, that’s all.’
The words had been released and then they just melted away. They had meant nothing.
His father lifted his head, gave the weakest of smiles. The dark lavender half-moons under his eyes, the stubborn smoker’s lines at the corners of his mouth. ‘We should have visited Scotland, I should have taken your mum to Greece. That’s one thing I have to do; that’s one thing I have to honour.’ Dan heard the regret, Dan heard the guilt.
‘I didn’t mean you don’t know anything about the world.’ Dan pointed to the door of the fridge, where so much of the world had been pinned and stuck and posted. ‘You know so much more about the world than I do.’ He was scrambling for words that would soothe and offer peace. ‘This is the world too,’ he continued. ‘You’ve worked and raised a family and you’ve looked after us all. You’ve been a good man.’
His father was a good man. It struck him with the force of revelation, exultation, light flooding through him. His father was a good man. His father was the hero of his own life.
‘That’s all I want,’ as he spoke, it was now his face that was lowered. Now he was the one stuck, nailed to the ground. ‘That’s all I want for myself.’
His father’s intake of breath was sudden, followed by the wet crunch of words kept back. Dan looked up. He knew his father had been about to speak, about to reassure him — You are, son, you are a good man — but he’d held it back. Those were words that had to be earned. He was a good man and a hard man, thought Dan, recognising his father as a man for the first time, knowing his father was seeing his son as a man for the first time.
The two men looked at each other across the table, not daring one another, nor goading. They looked at each other cleanly.
‘Your granddad and nan are dying to see you. I know you’re heading up north to see Regan and our kid tomorrow. Do you want me to drive you over to see Granddad and Nan today?’
‘Sure.’
‘He can’t wait to ask you about Scotland.’
‘I can’t wait to tell him.’
The two men stood silently next to each other, doing the dishes. The father at the sink washing, the son drying. Neither man had spoken, neither man had uttered the words I’m sorry. They were reaching towards it, finding a rhythm in their labour, the scrubbing, the stacking, the drying and the putting away. The words loomed too large and both of them feared that they were far from enough. So they found a rhythm together, doing their task in unison, with calm and deliberate care. There was a bluish mark forming on Dan’s temple where the apple had struck him; his father’s hands occasionally shook as he worked at the sink.
His granddad Bill was waiting on the porch, sitting on an old kitchen chair. He was sitting upright, a tweed flat cap shading his eyes from the weak intermittent sun, his hands resting on the neck of his black cane. Even in the wind, even in the cold, he was sitting out on the porch, eager to see his grandson who’d been away for so long. As soon as the car turned into the street, his grandfather rose slowly, shakily, waving at them and calling, ‘Irene, Irene, they’re here.’ And his grandfather hugged him — how bony he felt — and his grandmother couldn’t stop kissing him and offering him tea and coffee and Monte Carlos and shortbread. The three generations sat around the gas heater with the orange coils, and his granddad asked him about Scotland.
‘Yes, I visited the Gorbals but they’ve knocked down your tenement a long time ago’ and ‘I went running in Queen’s Park’ and he told his grandfather what the new Glasgow was like and how Rosemary had sent her brother and sister-in-law all her love, and he told them about the summer days on Loch Long and on the west coast and how the midges had buried themselves deep into his skin, and that made his granddad laugh, hard and loud.
Dan continued to answer the questions fired at him by his granddad, by his nan, his father too; he answered the questions asked by these people who knew him best, because no one else knew him, this was all he had. He was not the strongest, not the fastest, he was not the best — he was not anyone at all, but this son and this grandson. This was where he started, this was where he began.
~ ~ ~
‘GO, DANNY, GO, DANNY, GO, DANNY, GO!’
All the kids I am competing against, all the other boys are gawking up at the benches and then they all look down the line at me. I squish shut my eyes and I can see swirls of thin red in black. I squish them real tight, my face is all hot, I reckon my skin is red all over. There is a draught coming through the pool, it is freezing and I am squishing my eyes and I am shaking. Shut up shut up shut up, I’m thinking, but of course they don’t shut up, they just get even louder.
‘Go, Danny, go, Danny, go, Danny, GO!’
I can hear her. It’s Dem, she has the loudest voice.
I open my eyes and look up at them. Sava is leaning over, banging, thrashing the seat in front of him. Boz has his hands cupped around his mouth to make his yelling even louder. Mia and Shelley see me looking up and they start waving at me like idiots. Yianni too, he’s flapping his wrists and his hands, jumping on one foot then the other, like a demented monkey. ‘Go, Danny, go, Danny, go, Danny, go!’ I’m staring straight at Dem, she’s got the biggest doofus smile on her face and she’s screaming it out at the top of her voice: ‘Go, Danny, go, Danny, go, Danny, GO!’ Only my dad is silent, he’s the only one not calling out. But he’s got a big smile on his face too. He’s nodding at me. Go, Danny, go.
I give them all a thumbs-up and then I turn to face my lane. Don’t think about them, forget about them, I tell myself. I look out at the still water. I can’t wait to dive in.
The chant abruptly stops. Some parent or official, some adult, must have said something to them. The pool goes quiet.
I am looking at the water. I have to stop myself leaping in, I have to control myself. I can’t wait. Not yet. Not yet.
The starter raises her whistle to her lips. But she doesn’t blow it yet.
Wait, Danny, I tell myself. You just have to wait.
The boys either side of me, I can tell they’re impatient too. One of them has the skinniest body I have ever seen, there doesn’t seem to be anything between skin and skeleton. The other one is shuffling from side to side, as if the race has already started, as if his feet have already started to kick.