On this particular day an unexpectedly dramatic wave had run up the beach, terrifying Sophie and demolishing the sandcastle we had so carefully been building. My sister started to wail and I, confused, had looked towards my parents for guidance. My mother was upright, peering over her sunglasses and calling for Sophie to come to her. My sister had run to my mother and been swept into her arms, and I followed slowly. I might have been fearful that I was going to be punished for my sister’s distress. I was the older child, a position in the family that always felt laden with responsibility. But my father too had half risen from his towel, had taken off his sunglasses and was beckoning me to come over. He was smiling and I started to run towards him.
His right arm was raised, he was scratching the back of his head while the other hand was gently tousling Sophie’s hair as she burrowed further into my mother’s embrace. The hair under my father’s arm seemed shockingly abundant, chestnut in colour, glistening from sea and from sweat: possibly the jolt of it, it seeming so animal, so untamed, was what was so tantalising. The summer had tinted his skin bronze, his green-grey eyes were alert and shining and full of love for me. I had no language then to name what I was experiencing. All I knew was that the shock of my father’s underarm hair was blistering, that I felt knocked off my feet, that the sand and the sky and the sun were spiralling madly around me. So overwhelming were the emotions I was feeling, so ferocious this inexplicable need to touch him, to sink into him, to press myself against him, that there seemed only one thing I could do.
I walked up to my father and, mustering all the force I could, I punched him in the mouth.
The strike would have been wildly ineffectual, but there may have been a residue of fine sand on the underside of my palm, or the angle of my blow was such that a fingernail may have gone into my father’s eye; for once I struck him he let out a curse, an almighty holler, and bent over with a hand cupped to his left eye. His outrage started my sister off again on another bout of crying. Frightened, and with no idea of what I was doing, I began to run. I ran and I ran, the sand unyielding under my feet, burning my soles; but I kept running. Within moments I was conscious of my father behind me, of his shadow looming, gaining ground on me, and then of his arms scooping me into the air, holding me tight against his chest, of my mouth on his wet skin. ‘It’s alright, Davey,’ he was whispering, over and over, ‘it’s alright, son, I’m not angry.’
•
The hair on his chest is now white, and the brown knot of his belly button protrudes obscenely from his pink, fleshy belly. I strip him of his pyjama top and he steps out of his bottoms; I have to hold my breath from the stink of his piss and sweat. I fill the small basin with warm water, take the sponge and begin to soap down his body. I wash his neck, chest, shoulders, belly; I crouch down and wipe his thighs, his calves. He turns around and the soiled white underpants drop to his feet. His buttocks sag, pale as the moon. I wash him there, spread his arse cheeks and scrub vigorously between them. I run water to rinse the shit from the sponge and when I turn back he is facing me. The hair on his groin is white, sparse, as if he has gone bald down there. His testicles, bloated, almost purple in colour, hang low; his penis is wrinkled, speckles of white along the flesh of it. Carefully I lift his cock to wash under his scrotum: it feels limp and heavy in my hand, like a fillet of chicken thigh, like dead meat.
My father’s cock stiffens at the touch of my hand.
‘Alice, Alice,’ he sighs. But there is laughter in his voice, a tone I haven’t heard in years. ‘Alice,’ he repeats as he exhales, his bright eyes staring straight into mine, ‘we shouldn’t do this.’
Alice is not my mother’s name. I don’t know an Alice. But my own cock has swelled, pressing so hard against the denim of my jeans that it hurts. My hand tightens around him.
‘Do you want me to stop?’ My voice is hoarse, my skin is flushed. I am looking at my father, I am looking him straight in the eye and he is smiling; there is strength there again.
‘You crazy bitch,’ he whispers back to me, ‘of course I don’t want you to stop.’
My fist is sliding up and down, up and down. I know the door to the room could open any moment, I know we might be caught. But I don’t stop. My father’s eyes are closed but the smile still plays at the corner of his lips. He shudders, there is a groan, his jaw trembles; a thin liquid dribbles over my hand.
I grab the sponge again and wipe him clean. He is sheepish, embarrassed, the underpants still around his feet. I open a drawer in the dressing table next to his bed.
‘Lift your foot,’ I order. Obediently he lifts his right leg, then his left, and I put a clean pair of jocks on him. He lets me dress him in freshly ironed pyjamas.
When I am finished he takes his seat and watches me rinse out the sponge. ‘How’s Jimmy?’ he asks tenderly. ‘How are the kids?’
‘They’re fine, mate, they’re fine.’ I am thinking that he’s never asked after Mick with such affection, never inquired into my life with such warmth.
He starts speaking. I sit on the bed and listen to him as he starts talking about the time we were neighbours in Coburg, the house in which his son was born but which they had moved out of before Davey started to walk. He tells me how he has never found neighbours as good as Jimmy and me, how he misses the Sunday mornings he and Jimmy would go out to the bay to fish, the weekends we’d go shooting rabbits in Dandenong.
‘You know I loved Jimmy,’ he tells me.
‘He loved you too,’ I answer.
Then there is a knock on the door and a young nurse enters, all cheer and beaming smile, a small plastic container of apple juice in her hand. ‘How are you doing, Nick?’
The cheer has vanished from my father’s face. Unperturbed, she places the juice on a tray and motions for me to get off the bed. I obey and watch her strip the sheets.
‘We’ll change your bedding, Nick, you’ll have lovely clean sheets for tonight. You’ll like that, won’t you?’
Sullen, my father turns away from her.
‘I see your son has given you a wash, Nick, and changed your pyjamas. You’re very lucky to have a son like that.’
My father is looking out of the window, at the too-perfect lawn, the ugly red-brick buildings beyond, the grey sky above.
At the doorway to his room, I look back. ‘Bye, Dad.’
He offers no reply, he doesn’t look my way. The nurse calls out a farewell but I don’t answer.
Walking down the corridor, I glance through a window to the common room. An old woman sitting in a wheelchair is rocking back and forth, back and forth. Her right arm is raised and it shakes uncontrollably. She is mouthing words but I can’t hear them. Two other women, one in a pink nightgown, the other in a lemon-coloured robe, are sitting on chairs in front of the television, studiously ignoring the woman in the wheelchair.