He bought the present, put on his jacket and prepared himself for the jolt of returning to the freezing air outside.
Darkness had enfolded the city, and he was shaken by a recollection of Glasgow as present and sharp in his mind as the final image retained when awakening from a vivid dream. He had to steady himself against the solid wall of an office tower to reassure himself that he was indeed in Melbourne. And within a beat of his heart, between breaths, the memory of the other city had gone and the ground beneath him was once again firm. He knew where he was. He walked to the end of the street, heading towards the underground station at Melbourne Central, but as he did so, he was thinking about Clyde. It had been a long time since they had been in touch; he would send an email tomorrow, just a short note. It was through Clyde’s city that he could bring forth memories of his former lover, as if the map of the city was a mirror that reflected the man. Clyde and his city belonged to one another, it was impossible to think of one without the other.
He decided against going underground. The wind swirled around him, bringing a chill but it was also bracing, exhilarating. He pushed against it, almost running into it to stop being pushed back by it. It had the power of an ocean current. It howled around him.
Dan stopped. A poster in the window of a travel agency had caught his eye: a double-decker bus, a black cab, London Bridge, Buckingham Palace and the Tube. And at the bottom of it, the five thin intersecting rings of the Olympic Games. That old unsettling spasm, he could sense its echo, but from a distance; all he needed to do was breathe out and it subsided. He would be going there, he’d be a month away, all he’d be thinking and dreaming about would be the Games. He saw his reflection in the glass, his pale face, the thick stubble on his cheeks and chin, the messy hair in need of a cut, and it occurred to him that even if he had been the strongest and the fastest and the best he would not be there, he could not be there, he would already be too old for there.
Dan stepped back from the window with a grin, dug his hands deep into the pockets of his windbreaker and kept walking. At the lights on the corner of Little Collins Street he found himself next to a throng of students, all talking excitedly about the night ahead. They were so young that they could brave even the remorseless wind, the merciless cold. Except for one of the women, who wore a mini-skirt and the flimsiest of tops; she was hugging herself, her teeth chattering, her shoulders trembling. One of the boys grabbed her, nestled her into an embrace, and she gratefully fell into him. The lights flashed green and Dan was carried across the street with them all, the boy and the girl still huddled together. He found himself swept along by two currents, the ferocious dance of the wind and the steady pace of the group of students. He could hear their chatter about drinking and school and this nightclub and that bar, but he let their words fall without collecting them, he did not need them to make sense. The elfin shivering girl reminded him of Katie the first night he’d met her, in the pub. And the sinewy tall boy who was embracing her, protecting her from the bitter night, all finely muscled limbs, he could be Luke. And another of the boys, flaxen-haired, with freckles on the bridge of his nose, he could have been a shaggier version of Martin Taylor, and if the girl next to him had been wearing less make-up, she could be Demet. There was a boy on the edge of their group, who had let his hair grow long; he walked ahead of the others, diffidently but purposefully weaving through the oncoming crowd. Dan was tempted to reach out to him, to touch him lightly on the arm and say, I recognise you, I see myself in you.
On the journey home, Dan sat huddled between a beefy council worker sleeping with his head slumped back and a sharply dressed young man talking loudly into his smartphone. Dan looked out into the darkness, to the reflection of his face in the grimy glass of the train window. He stared so intently at the ghostly spectre of himself against the sea of darkness that everything else dropped away. He was alone in his world. Belonging: that was something he had once had and now it was gone. He turned away, sifting through the patterns of light and colour till they formed shape; he became aware again of the phlegmy snores of the council worker, the inane posturing of the man on the phone. The air in the carriage was fetid and stuffy; he wanted to be back in the sharpness of the cold night. Everywhere he looked, people were playing with their screens. They didn’t seem human.
The faces all locked in concentration on their phones: Dan wondered why it had seemed so unsettling just a moment before. Belonging, he knew now, was the wrong question. The contest between country and nation, the tussle between home and roaming, here and elsewhere, all the relentless claiming and the ever-shifting mapping, none of it could settle the question that had mattered most to him since he’d found himself moored on dry land: was he, Danny Kelly, Psycho Kelly, Danny the Greek, Dino, Dan, Barracuda, was he a good man? He needed to answer that first, and then all would fall into place.
He perceived his shape, his self, emerge from the black of the shadows outside the speeding train.
He belonged to water. And water, he was now convinced, was made of the same substance as the sky. Dan rolled his shoulders; he missed the touch of Clyde’s kisses on his tattoo. In the feel of his lover’s lips on his inked skin, that too approached a sense of belonging. He had trouble recalling the man’s face, but he knew how to revive that memory of touch. And the conviction that Clyde had been a good man.
The train moves forward and he is still, he allows the machine and its engines to carry him. He is listening without hearing, watching the world without seeing it. Dan closes his eyes. He imagines the ceaseless motion carrying him from one end to the other of this enormous island of infinite horizon. He draws the arc of the end of this world in his mind, sees the train hurtling off the tracks, leaping into the sun, diving and plummeting, into the depths of the ocean. But the train has grown wings, its arc is the pearl thread of moonlight banishing its shadows from the night. The train has sprouted wings and it is soaring.
~ ~ ~
THE WATER GOES ON FOREVER, I HAVE my feet in the sand and I am sinking, the waves are coming in and going out and I am sinking and I laugh because I think that I am going to fall over and Dad says oops you go and he holds me and lifts me up and the sun is close and I put up my hands and I think I can reach it and then Dad swings me again and again and I am flying in the wind and I am scared that he is going to toss me in the water. No no Dad, I scream, don’t chuck me in the water. He holds me tight and his skin is itchy rough where the sand covers his shoulders and he is patting my back saying, No no I’m not going to do anything to you little fellow. I’m looking back at the beach, Mum is lying on the big big red towel, Regan is next to her picking up sand in her hand, she is picking up sand and it is falling through her fingers picking up sand and it is falling through her fingers. Mum is sitting up and looking at me she is waving at me and I stop crying and I wave back. She has a big big belly a big round belly where my brother or my sister I want it to be my brother is growing, she lets me touch her big big belly says Can you feel your sister or your brother growing every day he is growing. I wave back, my chin is on my dad’s shoulder he is standing up and I am taller than anyone at the beach my dad is the tallest man on the beach he is the giant on the beach and when he holds me up I can touch the sun the sun is close to me when he holds me up and I look up at the big big sky and look out to the big big sea and the sun and the sky and the sea they are going to forever. Put me down, Dad, put me down and he laughs, I slide down, my feet in the sand I can sink back in the sand the water that comes in and goes out that water he says is the tide and when the tide goes out it is going to sleep and when the tide comes in it is hungry for little boys and it will EAT YOU ALL UP! Come in, Danny, come into the water with me and I say No, no, I don’t want the water to eat me up and he laughs and says It won’t eat you up, the tide is out now. But what if it is waking up and the water is hungry I can feel it around my feet it is grabbing at my feet it could take me in and I will be in its mouth like the boy in the whale and I say No, Dad, no I don’t want to and he is holding my hand and says Come on, I won’t let go Danny and he is holding me and the baby waves are coming around my feet and then the mummy waves are coming around my middle and it’s so cold so cold that I say No no Dad I don’t want to and he says It’s OK Danny I won’t let go, and I am pulling and fighting him because when the daddy waves come they will pull me into their mouth and they will eat me and I scream No no no and Dad lifts me up again and his skin is cold and wet but he holds me closer and I am higher than the daddy waves and they can’t get me and he is walking into the water and we are walking into the tide but I am being held by my dad and he is bigger than the tide he is stronger than the tide and the tide must know this because when the tide reaches my father’s middle it stops and is still and the water is calm and Dad says I’ll have my arms beneath you, I won’t let you go, Danny, I promise, and I lie on the bed of the water like I learned how to lie on the bed of the pool and the sun is nip nip nipping at my eyes but Dad is in front of it and Dad is so big that he can make the sun disappear and Dad is smiling and his skin is wet so it shines like metal and the pictures on his arms and the picture over his heart they are lines as blue as the sky and I close my eyes and the water carries me and Dad’s hands are my pillow and they are my mattress and he says I’m going to just let go, for a second, just for a second, Danny, but I’ll catch you, I promise I’ll catch you and I take a deep breath and his arms are gone but I am still lying on the water and he is laughing and smiling down at me bigger than the sun and he says See, Danny, you don’t have to be afraid of the water, do you, do you want to try and swim, and those words make me scared again and I fall into the tide and the tide gobbles me up and the tide is in my eyes and my nose and my mouth and I am fighting the tide as it gobbles me up and Dad has lifted me, Dad has lifted me to the sun. He drops me again and my feet thrash and my hands hit and hit and I know that I have to hit the tide if I can just keep hitting the tide it won’t get me so I thrash and I bash and I punch and I am moving on the bed of water, and I am flying, it is flying, this is what it is, it is leaping and gliding and rushing and the tide can’t get me and Dad is calling out Not so fast, mate, not so fast, but I’m not scared anymore and the tide can’t get me, I am in between the tide and the sun, if I keep thrashing I could reach the sun and I want to be as high as the sun I want to be as high as my dad and he is behind me he is next to me he is flying past me and he calls back Can’t reach me, can you, mate, and I try so hard oh I try so hard to beat the tide to win against the tide and I’m hitting and thrashing and my legs are tired and my arms are sore and my eyes are stinging from the water but I won’t stop and I have reached him and Dad grabs me, he holds me tight, my face is against the picture on his chest and my cheek is lying on the hairs and the skin of his chest and I am breathing so hard that my heart is my breathing and Dad holds me and says This all belongs to you, son, all this belongs to you, he is holding me with one arm and the other arm is stretching out over the sea and stretching up to the sky and it touches the sun because when I look up I can see the flame burst through his finger where it has touched the sun and he says All this, Danny, all this belongs to you. I breathe in and out till my breath and my heart separate and Dad holds me and carries me back to the beach where Mum is sitting up and her giant belly is so big it looks like it will pop just like a balloon when it gets too big, and Regan squeals because Dad is still holding me and I am dripping from the sea and the drops fall on her and she squeals again and she looks up, she looks up but she can’t see me because Dad is holding me and he is the tallest man on the planet and he is so tall that I am above the sun. He is a giant and I am his son and we are both, together, stronger than the tide and we are both, together, bigger than the sun and higher than the sky. He is holding me tight, so tight that I am sinking into him and we are standing still but standing still we are flying. He is standing between the sun and the sea against the sky and though we are standing we are flying. Together, we are flying.