Dan was teaching Victor how to swim again, reminding him how to breathe, when to hold his breath and when to expel it, showing him how to coordinate his arms and his legs, when to push back in the water, when to move forward, how to balance and feel safe in the water. Every time Victor forgot one of the instructions, and it happened often in the hour they had together: forgetting when to fill his lungs with air, misjudging when to kick and sinking under the water, Dan was there, to hold him, to reassure him, to repeat the instructions.
‘One day,’ he’d insist, ‘one day, you’re going to get into this pool and you won’t have to think about any of this, you’ll just jump in the water and it will be like walking, like breathing. It will all come naturally.’
Except he knew that for Victor none of it could come naturally. He’d even had to learn how to walk again, had to be taught how to breathe properly. But Dan kept saying that to Victor because he knew that Victor understood that everything could be relearned’ how to feel his muscles in his mind and get them to work again, how to remember to inhale and exhale without the assistance of a machine, it could be taught and it could be learned, how to navigate the world again. What had once been so natural to him that he had not had to think about it since he was an infant, all those instincts had had to be relearned after the night he’d picked up two drunk teenagers in his taxi in the city and drove them to Keilor Park. When he’d asked them to pay the fare the one in the back punched him in the head and the one in the front pulled him out of the cab and into a dark suburban street, where they kicked and kicked and kicked at Victor’s head and chest and balls and cock and back and neck and left him for dead. After that, Victor had had to learn how to breathe and move and walk again.
And to swim again.
‘He would swim all the time,’ Prasangi had told Dan the first time he’d gone to their place to take Victor for a swim. She’d explained that near their village in the north of Sri Lanka, the sea was warm and gentle, and they’d loved swimming. Victor’s wife spoke shyly, so quietly that Dan had to lean close to hear her. She’d told him how Victor had chosen his English name even before they had emigrated to Australia, even before he’d saved for years to get them there. ‘You will teach him to swim again, yes?’ she had enquired. Dan had wanted to tell her that he knew what it was to have to start over. ‘Yes,’ he had replied instead, ‘I will teach him to swim again.’
It was the shortest day of the year and the wind was merciless, the rain falling in diagonal slivers and blades. Dan ducked into Box Hill Plaza, past the Vietnamese shops displaying their synthetic-looking pink and scarlet slabs of pork belly, ribs and chops, past the Chinese grocers, the Greek delis, the Asian bakeries and the food court, and out onto the street, flipping up the collar of his windbreaker to his chin, and in the open-air mall he slipped into Russell’s coffee shop.
Russell was slouched behind the coffee machine, speaking Mandarin to the new young waiter in his white shirt and black pants. His face broke into a grin on seeing Dan. ‘How are you doing, man?’ he chortled. ‘How is Danny the Greek?’ He unleashed a rush of words and the young waiter rushed to the coffee machine.
Russell had started calling him Danny the Greek very soon after Dan had started going to the cafe. They had fallen into conversation and he’d told the man that his father was Scots-Irish and his mother was Greek. That had made Russell cackle. ‘A Greek called Dan, a Greek called fucking Danny! Who could believe that?’
‘What’s so funny about that?’ Dan had countered. ‘It’s no more strange than a Chinese man called Russell.’
‘What do you mean?’ Russell had seemed outraged. ‘I know many many Chinese called Russell, many, but Danny the Greek, that’s funny!’
Dan sat in Russell’s cafe, drinking his coffee, looking out to the mall, at the rush of people battling the rain and wind and sleet. It seemed to Dan that he had only looked away for one moment, forcing a laugh at some sick joke Russell was telling, but when he looked up and out again, the darkness had vanished and the streetscape was flooded by pale winter sunlight. The wet street outside glistened, and every surface seemed to sparkle.
Russell stepped outside, his hands clasped behind his back. He sniffed the air, peered up at the sky, and turned back to Dan. ‘It is going to be a very good day, no more cloud.’
Yeah, thought Dan, swirling the last of his coffee in the cup, it was a great day to be going to a funeral.
Until he’d applied for the job with Eastern District Health, Dan had never been to that part of town. Just back from Glasgow, bedding down in his old room at his parents’ house, his first priority was to get a job, any job. That would be his chance to start his life again, and starting life again meant work and money, and that meant a place of his own. What had scared him most on coming home was the idea of being a man in his thirties who still lived at home with his parents. He was terrified of coasting, determined to resist the temptation to just lie back, take it easy. Life in Australia could be like treading water, no, even simpler than that, effortless and much more addictive: with arms outstretched and eyes closed to the sun, like endless floating. In time your thirties became your forties and then your forties became your fifties and you’d become nothing more than driftwood. He remembered how when they first got together, Clyde would always say, ‘That’s what I miss about Glasga: at home you cannot float the way people here in Oz do, you gotta get into your boat and start fucken rowing, otherwise you’re sunk.’
The recollection brought forth an unexpected chuckle. ‘Ah, you Scots wanker, no one gets away with not rowing, he whispered tenderly to the day. ‘Everyone has to row, even here.’
He had Regan to thank for getting him going. As soon as they had seen her in Nowra, he and Theo had wanted to rescue her, to bring her back home. Nowra definitely wasn’t home. She had not long before given birth to Layla and was living in a dilapidated fibro house near the town’s ugly industrial area, with the child’s father, a bad-tempered twenty-three-year-old called Trent, with a twitching left eye, a Southern Cross tattoo on his right breast and a terror of fatherhood. He was dealing with it by smoking methamphetamine. One afternoon he had come back from visiting mates, all jittery and aggressive, and had screamed at Regan for inviting Dan and Theo to stay. ‘But they’re my brothers,’ she’d said, trying to reason with him, and he responded incredulously, ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ Dan realised with dismay that the man was being genuine. He really didn’t get it, didn’t understand how she could be loyal to family.
Theo had been unable to contain his rage. ‘What are you doing with him, sis? That piece of shit already has one foot out the door!’ Dan had kept his cool but he too was desperate to get her out of there and back to Melbourne.
Regan had shot back at her younger brother, ‘I know I can’t depend on him but I can’t go back home, I can’t live with Mum, it would drive me spare.’
‘But Mum can help you with the baby,’ started Theo. ‘You’re gonna need her help.’
God, thought Dan, now it was Theo who didn’t get it. But Dan had understood, maybe as a result of the time he’d spent away from them all. It wasn’t that their mother did not love Regan, or that Regan didn’t love their mum. But somehow when they were all growing up, their mother’s focus had been on the boys; she hadn’t meant it to be but it had turned out that way:
her sons had dominated her thoughts and attention. Regan will be alright, I don’t have to worry about Regan: Dan had grown to adulthood hearing those phrases. Regan was no doubt scared that it would happen again, that it would be Layla who received all the attention and Regan would again be sidelined, in the corner, watching it all.