There is a pause.
‘I don’t want to fight with him anymore. I’d like to think it’s because I’m growing up but I think it’s because he’s dying.’ ‘He is, you know. He is dying.’ My anxiety takes over and I blurt out the words.
Barney keeps talking, as if he has not heard me. ‘He’s not like your dad; he’s not generous. Though Dan would call your father sacrificing. He was always a lot of fun but lousy on being there. Never sent enough money, never thought to ask if we had enough to eat.’
I remain silent. I’ve heard this before but tonight it sounds different: there is no bitterness, no anger.
‘I told him that I’d be happy to stay.’ Barney looks over at me, then quickly turns away. ‘That we would both be happy to stay and look after him.’
‘And? What did he say?’ I try to keep apprehension out of my voice.
‘He said he doesn’t want that.’ His chuckle surprises me. ‘He said he’d hate to do that — to clean up someone’s shit, to have to feed them and wash them. So he doesn’t expect anyone to do it for him.’
Barney turns and looks at me. His eyes shine enormous in the dark. ‘Do you love me?’
I’m surprised and answer instinctively. ‘Of course. Why would you ask?’
‘I don’t know. Tonight I just want to hear you tell me it. Just tell me it.’
I hold him tight and tell him how much I love him, tell him how I want to always be with him, tell him how my gut, my heart, my cock all burn for him. The words come out easily. I can trust every single one of them.
•
Next morning we take Dan to hospital. It is St Vincent’s, near the city, and we decide that the chunky Valiant will be too much of a bitch to park.
Dan rings a taxi. ‘I can’t be bothered with public transport anymore,’ he explains.
‘Go ahead, blow my inheritance,’ his son answers drily.
While Dan is in hospital, Barney and I take a walk up to Oxford Street. It has been a few years since either of us has been in Sydney and Barney keeps exclaiming over the changes. Many pretty and fit young men walk past us, and I catch a few eyes. Barney ignores them all. We turn into Crown Street and he walks into a small Vietnamese coffee shop. ‘Can we just get a coffee?’ he asks the young guy behind the counter and the man nods yes.
We take a seat and I use a chopstick to sketch lines in the sugar bowl. ‘Why come here?’ I ask. ‘The coffee will be crap.’
‘To feel normal,’ he almost shouts. He quietens down. ‘Sorry, babe, this bloody town gets glitzier and more superficial every passing year. And whiter. Where have all the ethnics gone?’
I break out into a grin. ‘You’re just a sucker for wogs.’
‘Definitely,’ he agrees. He leans over and kisses me. We are interrupted by the waiter who serves our coffee. He looks indifferent.
‘You reckon that was alright?’ I ask when he leaves.
‘What was alright?’
‘Us kissing.’
Barney laughs. ‘He works in Darlinghurst, mate. I’m sure he’s seen worse.’ He pauses and pours sugar into his coffee. ‘What makes you think he’s straight?’
The question embarrasses me. ‘I just assumed it,’ I admit. ‘Why, what do you think he is?’
Barney shrugs his shoulders. ‘How would I know?’
After coffee we take a walk around Surry Hills. Barney points out houses and shopfronts to me. This is where he played soccer. That’s the house he lived in when he first came to Sydney. We pass a corner pub, its door wide open to welcome the breeze. Inside, a few old men are drinking beer, huddled around a cheerful barman. Across the street, a fancy café with discreetly angled table umbrellas is pulling in a younger, more stylish crowd. Barney stands precariously on one foot, his other raised inches off the ground. He is staring across at the café.
‘That used to be. . that used to be. .’ He puts his foot down firmly. ‘Not a café. An old couple used to fix radios in that shop.’ He turns around and enters the pub. ‘Let’s have a beer.’
•
Barney and I have never had much money. That makes a big difference; that’s why we are still together. Money, as the song goes, does change everything. Who you know, what you know, how you know. Rich people don’t mix with poor people, not necessarily out of conceit or malice, but maybe because they can’t understand the anxiety that comes from worrying about money. I’ve noticed that you can never talk to a rich person about money, whether it’s paying the rent or getting screwed at work. They get uncomfortable. No matter what they might say they believe, a rich person can never trust a poor person. And vice versa. At some point, over some dumb argument, the rich person will utter the words: that’s mine, I paid for it, I own it. And there’s no fucking way the poor guy can compete. I don’t have to explain any of this to Barney. He understands automatically.
In fact, he goes further. ‘It’s a different world, idiot,’ he once screamed at me. ‘I thought you understood that.’ It was early in our relationship and I had bragged to some university friends about how Barney was selling sticks of dope. ‘They’re rich kids and they don’t have to break the law. Don’t ever trust them.’
Being poor means you have to break the law. That’s how it works. They make laws about everything, to protect everything. It’s breaking the law not to pay a fine; it’s breaking the law not to pay back credit; it’s even breaking the law to steal sugar sachets from a restaurant. If you’re poor it’s hard to live within the letter of the law and survive; even harder to do that and have a good time. It is impossible to do both. Barney never lets down his guard around the rich, not even when he was at uni, where he first met them.
‘You and me,’ he told me soon after we’d met, ‘we got here because of our brains. The rest of them are here because mummy and daddy have got money.’ His smile was radiant. ‘That makes us better than them. And they know it.’
•
The next few days rush by. I cannot shake the feeling that I am intruding. The father and son spend hours together while I take long, solitary walks through the neighbourhood, check out the coffee shops and write stilted, distracted journal notes. I watch a lot of television. One evening we visit Sheila and I relax a little. Barney loosens up around his mother, loses the distilled intensity that he has with Dan. Sheila herself, loud, kind and abrupt, responds affectionately to her son, and he feels free to argue with her, to bait her. We arrive back at Dan’s very drunk.
As soon as we open the door the heat hits us. The night outside is warm but the heater is whirring furiously and Dan has wrapped a blanket around himself. He is watching our Bonegilla footage.
‘Dad, you should be in bed.’
The old man ignores him. ‘What’s this?’
Barney and I sit down and we watch the limpid colour of the video. Barney has framed me staring out of a broken windowpane. I’m unaware of the camera and my eyes seem huge, very bright.
‘It’s Bonegilla. My father was at the migrant camp there when he first arrived in Australia.’
‘When was that?’
‘Nineteen fifty-nine. The camp lasted into the late sixties, I think.’
Dan is racked by coughing. Barney fetches a glass of water. On the screen a sheaf of yellow grass obscures the gnarled timber wall of the Bonegilla administration hall.