The Life E-Book

Malcolm Knox

• Herausgeber: Allen & Unwin
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

He looked into the Pacific and the Pacific looked back into him. Now bloated and paranoid, former champion surfer and legend Dennis Keith is holed up in a retirement village, trying not to think about the waves he'd made his own and the breaks he once ruled like a god. Years before he'd been robbed of the world title that had his name on it - and then drugs, his family, and the disappearance of his girlfriend had done the rest. Out of the blue, a young would-be biographer comes knocking and stirs up memories he thought he'd buried. It takes Dennis a while to realise that she's not there to write his story at all. Funny, heartbreaking and humane, The Life confirms what the Literary Review has known all along - 'Knox is, quite simply, a fabulous writer.'

Leseprobe

Malcolm Knox is the author of twelve books including the novelsSummerland,Adult Book, winner of a Ned Kelly Award, andJamaica, winner of the Colin Roderick Award. His nonfiction books includeSecrets of the Jury RoomandScattered: The inside story of ice in Australia. Formerly literary editor of theSydney Morning Herald, he has twice won Walkley awards for journalism and has been runner-up for the Australian Journalist of the Year award. He lives in Sydney with his wife and their two children. www.malcolmknox.com.au

First published in Great Britain in 2011 by Allen & Unwin

First published in Australia in 2011 by Allen & Unwin

Copyright©Malcolm Knox 2011

The moral right of Malcolm Knox to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Every effort has been made to trace or contact all copyright holders. The publishers will be pleased to make good any omissions or rectify any mistakes brought to their attention at the earliest opportunity.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Allen & Unwin c/o Atlantic Books Ormond House 26–27 Boswell Street London WC1N 3JZ Phone: [phone] Email: [email protected] Web: www.atlantic-books.com/uk

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Paperback ISBN 978 1 74237 761 2

E-book ISBN 978 1 74269 523 5

Printed and bound in Great Britain by eBook production by Midland Typesetters, Australia

For Lyn Tranter

He sleeps with the radio on, all-night news services.

BBC World Service, Deutsche Welle Radio, National Public Radio, news in pulses, markets, terror, earthquake, war, numbers, old voices, waves of words cart him through the night. He is dark but his dreams speak from daytime.

He likes the radio even when he is asleep.

Most of all when he is asleep.

From the word sea he fishes his up time, no alarm clock needed, early riser, alarm set inside him—

Now: Here he comes this man—

All in how you get up, all in how you plant the feet . . .

Paddle paddle paddle andpush, Go. . .

He levers his fat legs, knee-free tubes, hairy calves off the horizontal andup. . .

. . . plants his feet perfect:

. . . standing up and on his way . . .

Out of bed. Feet land in his thoughts in his thongs sore big toe, stubbed black last fifty years, stubbed by the land.

Up out of his room, wash hands, past Mo’s room, seventy-five-yearold ladies don’t sleep good, sleep with their eyes open, their ears open.

Turning a blind eye: her genius. Mo’s blind eye, 20/20.

Feels his way down the hall.

This place, this home unit: he had nightmares they’d of looked like this box him and Mo live in: blond brick, two bedrooms in a row of identikits built to confuse, who knows how the oldies find their way home from the dining hall.

Galley kitchen, bathroom with rails, bedrooms with rails, tidy garden, concrete steps. With a rail.

He is living in a retirement village. The Great One living in a retirement village.

Depends what you mean by retirement eh.

Snug two-bed unit with rails. Rails aren’t even metal, they’re white plastic. Wouldn’t hold him up if he fell on them. Diagonal security grilles on all the windows, all the doors, the screens. They’ve buggered up his diagonals, his lines he lives by, diagonals and perpendiculars, buggered up by security grilles, brown aluminium, every edge doing him wrong—

Yeah this is where he’s living.

Depends what you mean by living.

Yeah and so then this day you come in the kitchen and Mo sitting there with her and it’s a bird, and you see Mo hates her cos Mo’s blue pouchy pebbles are bright with charm but dull too, eyes like used Christmas glitter, and she’s serving Arnott’s Assorted and real leaf tea and acting like the bird’s here to marry her boy.

How you know Mo hates the BFO:

Her bright friendly eyes: if looks could kill.

‘Who are you?’

The Great Man just come in from a walk to the milk bar. Pine-lime Splice and Burger Rings. Morning tea. Got asked for an autograph. Told the grom I wasn’t Dennis Keith, though people pick me for him all the time.

How’s about ya do his autograph and be him anyway, the kid’s gone.

And why would I want to do that?I’ve gone.I wouldn’t want to be him even if I was him, so why would I want to be him when I’m not?

He’s a legend, the kid goes.

Yeah, I go.Like King Arthur.

You are him eh.

Nah, some other kid come up drag his mate away.DK died yonks back.

‘I’m fromSurfer,’ this bird goes. ‘The mag.’

We’re sitting at the melamine kitchen table in the retirement home unit. I am fifty-eight years old and eighteen stone. I am Dennis Keith, still sort of.

‘Right,’ I go. ‘Surfer.’

Girl looks at Mo. Mo looks at her biscuits.

‘NotSurfing?’ I go. Sitting in the middle of the kitchen at the end of the melamine table from the old house, DK’s last sea anchor.

‘No,’ the girl almost laughs, nervy. ‘NotSurfing. Surfer. Why, hasSurfinggot you lined up for a feature interview as well?’

Get up wash hands in the kitchen sink. You don’t like the diagonals of this sink.

Grunt: ‘Haveyougot me lined up for an interview?’

Have you, interview? Vyou, intervyou? Stop it DK wash your hands siddown.

Mo just squats there like Buddha her end of the melamine table and explains. How I should remember,Surfercalled and called and begged and begged, it’s the thirtieth anniversary of the Straight Talk Tyres, the famous day of days, and they know DK don’t give interviews but they begged and begged and when all was lost they begged again . . .

‘What’s in it for us?’ I drop in on her yeah as if I’d remember and she knows that

Mo knows the score: we don’t give our story away. We say no polite: no thanks. Then they ask again we don’t say it polite. Keeps things simpler. In the early days back in them late eighties when people was starting up all thatWhere Is DK Now?, I wasn’t available to say no. I was ‘incapacitated’, she meant to say, except what she said was, I was ‘decapitated’. When they come knocking—them magazines, biographers, movie scouts, so-called TV producers—Mo tell them ‘speak to our solicitors’. Then she give them a solicitor which don’t exist. That sent the right message sent it real well.

Their image: The Great DK, this big mysto figure: enigmatic, elusive. For a little while they dig that. But when the little while got long they stopped digging it. You weren’t an enigma, you were just unreliable. No good for film. Mercurial: good. Compulsive liar: bad. Like if you’d just had a Tarax to drink, right in front of them, you’d swear you’d had a Fanta. Your own amusement, pulling their legs. Pulling their legs right off, like insects. You saw an interview with this movie guy who been on your tail a while, had copped one of Mo’s ‘solicitor’ letters.

Not an enigma as such, this guy said about you.More like a dickhead.

By the middle nineties they stop asking.

These days nobody asks. They know our stance. We don’t want Hollywood or such to exploit us, our story. We ain’t interested. We’re permanently decapitated.

Not that they’re asking.

Now out of nowhere this bird, this magazine.

‘Not a brass razoo for our story,’ Mo goes. ‘But they’re kindly paying us five hundred for the tea and bickies.’

Money’s on the table. Ten of them puke-coloured ones. I give a shrug. Mo’s money. Mo takes care of the coin. Mo’s broken thirty years of silence and let in this girl she doesn’t like. Strange but who am I to go against my Mo.

Sometimes when they asked me to sign a contract or an autograph I do it in this magic ink pen I got from a magic set, which the ink fade out and disappear five minutes after I signed. I never hung round to see their faces when they found out, but got cacks to imagine.

‘So.’

Fussing round the kitchen pretending I’m doing stuff, fixing food or cleaning up but just fussing round really, putting off sitting down with her. Got the aviators pressed down hard on the nose. Wash hands again.

I sneak-peek the bird. She’s sunburnt, used to be brown hair now pineapple yellow. Plain face but honest. Meaty round shoulders. Pineapple shoulders. She surfs. About twenty. Or thirty. Or forty. How would I know females. Poor kid realise she’s not gunna make a living from surfing so the back door is work for the industry or write for mags and surf as much as she can, same diff in the end, industry pays for everything, calling the tune and paying the piper, and five hundred so we can’t complain eh.

In a bikini under her yellow sponsor T-shirt and cut-off jeans. So there she is

My biographer/My oh my/my bi/my buy/My bi dog walker/My bi log roller/Bugger, spit it out DK. Can’t do it.

‘So you’re my Bi Fricken Ographer.’

Sneak-peek the awe. Brown eyes, an ore of awe. White rings of awe round black and brown donuts. She’s trying to hide it, be cool girl, be cool with DK. Many moons ago The Great Man get jack of the awe.

‘Just cos you’re a pretty young bird don’t think you’re gunna crack me.’

And she likes me straight-up eh I called her pretty and nobody ever calls this pineapple-shoulder girl pretty: strong yeah, tough yeah, determined yeah, but never pretty. Gritty not pretty. She’s nuggety and tough and determined but not so nuggety and tough and determined she can’t be flattered by an eighteen-stone moustached aviator-wearing cap-wearing fifty-eight-year-old lives with his Mo in a two-bed unit in a retirement village and will never have a conversation with her when his eyes aren’t on the horizon, checking the waves, the waves, half the time forgetting what he’s saying or been asked. That will be every conversation she ever has with him: he’s not there. He wants her to know that now. But he can still colour her up.

Mo sitting there, hating the girl. Mo her poor old face stretched into her hospitality smile.

Copied from something she saw on the box.

But she’s the one let this BFO in. For five hundred. Things must be tight.

He gives her more razzing, this BFO. Does his Weird Ole DK the crazy bones legend. Oh she might crack him yeah.

‘Why don’t you both go for a walk,’ Mo cuts in all cheery like you’re shy lovebirds. ‘It’s walk time anyway, Den. Go on.’

Clock the clock. Eleven thirty. No choice. It’s walk time.

Down the hill. In my kingdom. Marine Parade. Centre of the surfing universe, Billabong and Globe and Rip Curl and Quiksilver and Roxy and who knows what, greatest concentration of breaks in the known world, greatest concentration of rip-off merchants and sunglasses salesmen and the streets of gold brick lay down their red carpet every day The Great DK come down for his constitutional.

Don’t say much just taking in the sights.

‘This where you’ve always lived?’ she goes.

I take her two more blocks before I speak.

‘Live in the tube. Always did. Yeah.’

‘In the tube, right.’

‘The ones wondering what I was doing when I wasn’t in the tube, they made up stories about me.’

‘Made up stories.’

‘They couldn’t handle me. I left it all in the water. And so but they needed more from me, so they made up their stories. The myths. The Great DK. The Legend. All bull. Here. This place. Where it all began. But didn’t really.’

The DK guided tour: take her down Rainbow Bay, palm trees and grassy verges and concrete canyons of holiday units. Streets you follow, streets you avoid, you’re on automatic. She wants to go left at the bottle shop but a certain corner got its own forcefield and you head off other way. The kerb gutter’s been done over with crazy paving. Agave trees everywhere, remind me of me: sharp leaves, roots stripped bare, public display, what you see is what he’s got.

The boulder at the mouth of the path between the car park and Snapper Rocks. Locals’ boulder. Used to be The Pit. Used to be spraypainted with a locals’ warning.

Now spraypainted:

She sees me back home. Hand on me elbow work me up the steps. Cos

I won’t grab that rail . . .

Her questions she won’t ask about the unit, the retirement village.

The diagonal security grilles buggerising me diagonals. Plastic rails on the steps, plastic rails in the bathroom, plastic rails in the shower.

Never, Dennis, never grab your rails, first rule of . . .

BFO don’t ask him nothing about The House, so he doesn’t hate her. Let her back next time.

Day me and Mo moved into this unit was the day I started waking up at three in the morning and riding to The Other Side.

He can’t remember being a kook. Fifty years ago. Or maybe he never was. Maybe he just turned up one day and . . . yeah . . .

Every night he’s out there. Every morning two hours before dawn. Nobody sees him. He tries not to see himself, lumbering fat old kook.

Goes out there every night or or morning yeah that black cold hour too late for night too early for dawn.

Hour when the cops come drag you off.

Out in the dark his chopper in the garage with the Daihatsu Charades and Toyota Camrys and Mazda 3s and Hyundais them safe little toy cars, then yeah this one Sandman panel van sprayed purple and orange . . .

Grabs his chopper by the throat walks it up the driveway, rode it when he was twelve years old and eight stone, rides it now he’s fifty-eight and eighteen.

Never lost this one. Never loses nothing.

His fat legs, knee-free tubes fold round the wheels and he’s off in the dark out the gates, away, he’s out, busted free, breakout! Thongs pump through the retirement roads and roundabouts, his mouth opens and shuts round each cross street, he’s on his highway and zips through shops and past servo and on causeway and out of town, out of here, over the river and now his nostrils open to the night-time stink of onshore salt and mangroves and frogs, life at last, he can smell frogs and it’s deeper than dark, the darkest dark where nobody won’t never see him . . .

The lights of town a long way behind, The Great One doesn’t throw no shadow in the shadows, big blob on a pushbike in his sleeping T-shirt and his sleeping boardshorts and his thongs, and he’s off scot-free yeah.

He homes in on the stick hidden in trees, the stick in the sticks. The nest.

Parks the Malvern Star, leans it in the scrub and pulls out stick.

Moonlight on fibreglass.

A bird scoots.

Tinkle behind him as the chopper falls on a root.

Yeah but but what he hears is tomorrow’s swell through the scrub over the dune, through the sea grass, over the dune down the path across the open stretch, up the channel . . .

He’s here. On The Other Side. Where no-one come.

Only way he can do it. Only way he can get them off his tail, stop them watching.

The way it has to be, has to be, whatever will be, no—

He will make it what it will be.

Yeah . . .

But he can’t be watched.

Steps into the ink.

Creatures blindness fear.

No: memories.

Paddles into yesterdays.

Makes ripples with his hands and sees Hawaii, North Shore, Sunset, waves the same no matter how big or small.

Or like Lisa said: you see waves you see music . . .

Beneath him the board half sinks, poor old stick wondering what’s it done wrong to end up here under an eighteen-stone kook.

Puts his fat hands under his big round boobs, should get a bra, wonder the boys don’t wolf-whistle him down the beach, or maybe they do.

Maybe they do yeah.

Pushes up to sit and for a sec thinks he’s got it at last, but nah not this time, over we go, a wobble and a check and over we go . . .

Can’t even sit on his board in the water. Can’t balance: glug, not even a splash.

Weeks of nights he spends paddling trying to sit up but over he goes. Brings him to tears.

Stick squirts out towards the bank. He wades over, bungs it under his chest paddles back in water so shallow his toes scrape on the slimy bottom . . .

Stretch his mind he can see Sunset, Pipe in the ripples he makes when he falls off his board . . .

But DK you’re not even in the sea. The sea would bring real waves, knock him down and for good, drowner waves for a drowner on his drowner fricken board. Should be going out on a learner board in little learner waves on a bright clean sparkly day like all them learners.

Worse than death.

Not even in the sea. He’s in the lagoon. In the dark. In the night. Over The Other Side. Over the causeway. Out of town. Away from the curse, away from the whispers, away from the dead. In the morning.

Tears.

Nobody sees him cept the one he’s trying to kid.

Alone where nobody can see him thrashing and falling and inviting all the bad back in, opening the door, all the bad and the waste, death and the waste, murder and the waste, waste and the waste . . .

Heis waste.

Collects itself up like bluebottles on the high-tide line, and the high-tide line is that seventy-five-year-old lady back there, only one who knows, right now lying awake in her bed wondering can she still pretend when he gets back to wake up and not know, pretend they had a normal night sleep and now for breakfast she make his muesli, like she made it since the year dot, he’s hungry as usual, surfers are always hungry and he’s no exception and when the surfing went away the hunger didn’t . . .

She’ll ask has he done his greens and his whites and his blues, same questions every day, her blind eye 20/20, her pretending she isn’t the only one who knows . . .

. . . yeah . . .

She knows.

She’s the high-tide line it collects round:

His Mo.

Do anything for him.

Back into town. In the unit, wash hands, creep past Mo’s room. His bed has a deep dent in it like a trench or a burrow. When he climbs back in the salt has dried on him. Radio’s still on.

A big old lady Mo is, genuine big and genuine old, everyday cotton floral print house dresses balloon out like shrouds/like clouds/like mushroom clouds over the stalks of her legs still fine and slim and not a vein in them, she lets them show, legs like Rod’s, surfer legs, lolly legs . . .

She’s got a stack of different dresses and they’re all the same. House dress floral print in pale blue, in pale pink, in pale green, in pale yellow, in pale grey, in pale blue, in pale pink, in pale green, in pale yellow.

Mo was always the big flower folding me in, called me her little bee hiding in her petals. But before she was big she must of been small and yeah but she doesn’t like to talk about it, ‘hardscrabble’ is her word, dunno what it means but I know what it means, hardscrabble, her lot, sixth of twelve, country town but in one them streets of country towns like streets of the suburbs of the cities, houses butted against each other: chainlink fence, cracked concrete drive, fibro garage, buffalo grass lawn, fibro cladding, lino floors, fibro walls, terry towelling bedspreads, reek of damp and mothballs.

Chainlink, cracked concrete, fibro, buffalo grass, fibro, lino, fibro, terry towelling, damp and mothballs.

They was Catholics and her parents thirsty ones, her dad a driver her mum a womb. The ‘walking womb-dead’ Mo calls her. They guzzled and grizzled. Mo tried to grow up fighting versus eleven other mouths. Parents too thirsty to step in and umpire. Mo grew up fast, or slow, hard to tell she says.

Chainlink, cracked concrete, fibro, buffalo grass, fibro, lino, fibro, terry towelling, damp and mothballs.

They fought for something to eat something to wear, was always someone fighting you and someone pally with you but never the same one, so she said, a crew of twelve but not a crew or a team at all, every man jack for themself, and mother and father too thirsty for words and off to the races Saturday and home drunk to drink some more. Thirsty work, being Mo’s parents.

Amazing bit was, she said, her mum and dad loved each other and enjoyed each other’s company, preferred each other over the twelve. She wondered why they had nippers at all. They had a true romance. When they shot through on the spree they shot through together left the eldest nippers to look after the rest. To fight and fight and gang up and backstab and lie and it was nasty and brutal, Mo always says, nasty and brutal, shaking her head, not the time to go into the details, not now it’s so long ago, not even back when it wasn’t so long ago yeah nasty and brutal.

Chainlink, cracked concrete, fibro, buffalo grass, fibro, lino, fibro, terry towelling, damp and mothballs.

They bring her up to not know nothing about nothing except how to fight to get to the end of the day, get food in her tum and a corner to sleep in. She had this sister who didn’t like mash potato, snuck it in scrapes under the edge of the table when no one’s looking. After the meal’s over Mo creeps back in the kitchen and under the table and picks off potato dried hard as clay. Chips! Hard days eh.

She sure didn’t know nothing about boys and what boys done with girls, and this from a girl with four brothers, but four brothers meant seven sisters and when there’s seven sisters it’s the sisters rule, the brothers aren’t boys, they’re just terrors and fighters like rats. Not boys.

So she didn’t know what boys done. With girls.To.

She won’t talk no more. Maybe the BFO’ll crack her open on the details. The girls home, the nuns, the running away. The rest of it.

Chainlink, cracked concrete, fibro, buffalo grass, fibro, lino, fibro, terry towelling, damp and mothballs.

And screaming. Someone always screaming at the top of their voice.

Keep your voice down to a scream, Mo used to scream at me and Rod. We thought it was funny. She was funny.

How’d she get to stay funny after all that? Thathardscrabble? But she was. She tease us and kid us and pull off our bedspreads in the morning sing out,Hands off cocks and put on socks! Wakey wakey, hands off snakey!

How’d she do that?

She never took a drop of alcohol that’s for sure. Or I never saw her. Said she had an allergy.

She never did no exercise neither. Said she had a bone in her leg.

I tried alcohol but it didn’t agree with me neither. It disagreed with me. I disagreed with it. We agreed to disagree, drink and DK, kept each other at arms length.

What Mo said about drink:We agree to disagree.

She stayed funny among all that cracked concrete, fibro and buffalo grass. And the stink of tinned meat cooking in a saucepan of boiling water. How they knew it was dinner time.

Or at least, she made me and Rod laugh.

The BFO’ll ask me about them rumours went round and round in my heyday: DK a foundling. How he been living on the beach, the rocks eh, till Mo picked him up—tough, yeah. Rumours. How DK’s real dad, this rumour Rod himself started up as a joke when we was trying to raise coin to send me to Hawaii, was Duke Kahanamoku (yeah, the resemblance is amazing if you take away the colour of me skin and eyes and hair . . . ).

I’ll tell the BFO she better ask Mo, and this is a good answer to protect me and protect Mo, cos if there’s one person the BFO is more scared of than me it’s my Mo, and the nicer Mo is to the girl the scareder the girl is of Mo, so if there’s anything I don’t want to talk about I’ll say to the BFO, ‘Girl, you’re gunna have to ask Mrs Keith on that one.’ It’s as good asWell yeah . . . but no!

Better. Cos she’s not gunna ask.

I nick out in the dead of night the dead of morning, the hour when the cops come raiding. They raid me now they won’t find me there. But they haven’t raided me since me thirties, the eighties, so fat load of good it’s doing me. I wish they could raid me now, wish I could of said back then,Come back in twenty-five years boys.

I get it all lined up: Ride in on a wave of radio words, legs over the bed, past Mo’s room out the diagonal grille door, down the steps (don’t touch the rail!), in the garage, past the oldies’ cars,Oldsmobilesyeah, out through the shrubs and toy roundabouts, over the causeway, stink of frogs and mangroves, pedal my chopper to my bush, down chopper, pick up stick, wade in the lagoon and and water’s warm as soup left to go cold. The phosphorus lights up to greet me, fairy lights.

Can sit on my board now. Wobbles but holds. I’m not tea-bagging. Can hold my head high. The nose points up out of the water like a great big prong and it hits me how dickly the whole thing always was.

Never hit me at the time but but yeah how it always was. How it never was.

I didn’t realise.

Must of been obvious to everyone else but. The way I sat. Big nose at ten o’clock while every other kept his down under the water . . .

But I can sit up on the damn thing, flap round big meaty paws scare them mangrove birds into the air.

Least you can still scare someone.

Get the stick back in the bush, meself back onto me chopper, back onto the track, back on the road, back over the bridge, back through the sleeping streets, back in the sleeping house, back in me sleeping trench.

Radio still on.

And it’s still dark.

Then the morning when the BFO is already here and she’s with Mo and they’re having a cup of instant coffee andlaughing.

Real laughing.

Long time since that.

I come in the kitchen in sleeping T-shirt and sleeping boardies and aviators. They look up at me like I’m just this feller who lives there who’s got up out of bed.

Not like I’mme, and yeah they’re laughing.

I say nothing. Get my muesli into the bowl, fill it with milk, sit me end of the melamine table. Starving.

Every day same big bowl of muesli, same brand filled with milk. It’s not there, I go nuts.

They didn’t have that brand in Hawaii . . .

Mo telling her about Joe.

Joe Blow, Mo’s bloke, Rod’s dad. Joe was a racing identity, a tinker, a tailor, a soldier, a travelling salesman, a colourful character.

Joe give her a home.

Joe always creeping off from it.

Joe no good to anyone, cept when he come home he get her up the duff again.

‘Could of been more,’ Mo says, ‘he got me duffed every year after Roddy but they wouldn’t take.’

The last ones standing, Rod and Mo. Yeah and DK don’t forget DK.

Laughing like a pair of old girlfriends:

She’s telling the BFO:

‘Everyone wanted me to get rid of Joe. Give Joe Blow the throw! Like an advert jingle it was. But you know what? I couldn’t get rid of him cos he was never around to get rid of!’

What they’re laughing at.

And then she goes Joe liked her pregnant cos he liked the look of her, you know, and she cups her hands round the chest of her house dress round the pale green floral print and I’m sick to me stomach and the BFO giggles behind her hand, and now I know as I mow down my muesli that they’ve forgot I’m here at all, I can’t believe it, the BFO must of put something in Mo’s instant coffee get her yammering away like this, I’m embarrassed and disgusted and I get up and take my muesli and try to find somewhere else to eat it but the unit this hellhouse is too small and I don’t like anywhere else can’t sit anywhere else but my end of the melamine table and so yeah, I sit back down to listen to this girlie talk about howhardscrabbleMo’s married life was moving from one place to the next, every year up the duff, Joe off doing his whatsit wherever he was, notbeing got rid of, denying her the pleasure, all round the countryside, and she’s getting pregnant in boats, on the dinette of a caravan, in a raging thunderstorm, none of them taking but, and lucky too cos she’s got her boy Roddy and never enough to feed him with . . .

. . . yeah . . .

She worked. She worked in pubs. She worked in laundries. She worked behind the desk of a SP bookie counting his money. She worked doing typing for a mayor. She always worked. When she needed someone look after Roddy she dump him on her friends, always the same:

Chainlink, cracked concrete, fibro, buffalo grass, fibro, lino, fibro, terry towelling, damp and mothballs.

She tried going back to live with her mother and her father but they were still all tied up in each other they were lovers, they still drunk and drunk and shot through on the spree together, they were old ones now pickled in drink, but pickled together, together, no room for their sixth and her nipper.

Their grandson.

No room for Rod, no time for Roddy.

So Mo gone back to Joe. Or back to the place where he’d find her when he come back. On again with the Mo-Joe Blow show.

This is where my muesli is done and I walk out the house, and the BFO doesn’t even notice I’m gone.

. . . yeah . . .

I go for a walk round town,mytown. All the park benches been replaced by wooden seats shaped like surfboards. Everything round here that could be shaped like a surfboard, is. Signs, plaques, letterboxes, outdoor showers, even windows: all the same shape, like the place has some kind of surfboard-sickness on the brain. Seems the only things that aren’t shaped like surfboards anymore are surfboards.

I go for a walk tomymilk bar. Don’t need to say, don’t need to pay. Pine-lime Splice and a bottle of orange Tarax. Ta, Bob.

‘No worries, DK.’

‘No worries, Bob.’

I don’t mind this new Bob. They’ve changed over the years, folk who own my milk bar, changed too fast for me, but the first one was Bob back when I was a grom, and I can’t keep up so whoever they is they’s all Bob to me.

Two groms and this bird ask me for an autograph.

I do me usual. Low growl like a mangy mongrel—

‘What’s that mean?’

Smaller of the grommets holding out a bit of newspaper, today’s paper that is, and a Bic biro.

‘Like, can you sign this Mr Keith?’

I look at it like he’s asking me to do the Su Fricken Doku. I look at him but he can’t know that; my trusty mirror aviators on.

The same aviators I had when . . .

‘Sign? What’s sign?’

Low mongrel growl. How cranky old dogs get.

He nods holding his nerve. They can hold their nerve with this fat old man they can hold their nerve looking over the falls of an eight-foot face sucking up behind Snapper . . .

I draw breath waiting . . .

The bird steps forward and I think she’s gunna say ‘Please? Pretty please with sugar on top?’

But instead she lifts up her singlet. Just like that. She got a bikini on. With her thumb she points to the brown V on her chestbone . . .

. . . yeah . . .

The Enigmatic Legend, the King of the Point, The Man, The Great Man, drops their Bic biro on the cracked concrete footpath.

Chainlink, cracked concrete, fibro, buffalo grass, fibro, lino, fibro, terry towelling, damp and mothballs . . . ‘Me Splice’s melting,’ I go. They watch me waddle off. No laughter no laughing no giggling.

Grom’s getting mad at the bird. They aren’t seeing his royal fatness wobble up the hill. Me knee-free tubes lopsided. He’s going off at her for cruelling their chances. ‘No respect! You gotta have respect!’ His barking at her, last thing I hear.

I love the youth of today. They don’t know a fricken thing and if they were told it they’d turn their back on it. Cos they know everything already. The rumours about Lisa belong to their parents and cos they belong to their parents the rumours is just that, bullshit to the kids.

I love them kids.

Except for the fricken BFO who’s set up camp at the red melamine table with Mo when I get home and now they’ve got buttered slices of white bread, a plate of wet iceberg lettuce leaves, slices of tomato, processed cheese, chicken loaf, Peck’s Anchovette Paste, help yourselves ladies, sure, be my guest, don’t mind me and the thing is they

I wash hands, plonk down at the head of the table, the man of the house, The Man of the Point, the Legend, the King, the one three kids are down there now in the break telling stories about, new stories about King Dennis The First down the bush telegraph, the surf telegraph, the coconut wireless, up the coast on the salt breeze, all of them talking about me, about me, about me . . .

And I’m listening to my Mo on about herself:

‘Ah the sixties. Not much fun them years, not much “Sixties” happening for the Keith family.’

‘When Joe left us without the keys to whatever house we was living in and we stayed in the Salvos hostel for six weeks till he showed up again.’

‘When we had no rent money and live in a fishing shack on The Other Side, dirt floor, no electricity, no stove, no running water.’

‘When Joe turned up late at Rod’s christening and the priest sang out, “What’s the name of the nipper?” and Joe’s meant to say, “Rodney Brian Keith”, but instead he forgot the nipper had a middle name and he sang out, “His name’s Rodney Keith, isn’t it!” so that my boy gets christened “Rodney Keith Keith”.’

‘When we was living in the country and Joe’s trapping roos and Rod put kero on the open fire and singed all his hair off. In hospital—’

—loads of hospital stories—Rod with meningitis, Rod with hepatitis, Rod with an infected tooth, and Mo, Mo had to go in a lot for herself, with mysteries, mysteries, always mysteries that left them in some stranger’s home for a few weeks Rod fighting with their kids till it all got too rough and Mo come out in the nick of time—

Rod causing trouble with a capital T—

When Rod sconed some kid with a hammer.

When Rod scalped some kid with a crowbar.

When Rod flayed some kid with a sander.

When Rod got some kid with the back of a knife.

When Rod pushed the bar heater onto a kid.

When Rod pushed a kid off a high fence and that kid got mauled by the neighbour’s standard poodle.

When her and Rod live in a caravan in someone’s backyard.

When they live in someone’s granny flat. (Chainlink, cracked concrete, fibro, buffalo grass, fibro, lino, fibro, terry towelling, damp and mothballs . . . )

When they pitched a tent in someone’s backyard and live in that.

When it blew away.

When Mo give up and left Rod at an orphanage, a Catholic boys’ home, just like she been at one years earlier, and when she realised she’d went full circle, orphanage to orphanage, shot through on to shooting through, nuns to priests, she raced back and took her boy out of there and the paperwork took her best part of the day but it taught her a lesson, taught her the final lesson, and this is when she scrounged up the deposit—Whack!—bang down on a house.

TheHouse.

Bang, she smack her hand on this very melamine table, here it is, a deposit, on a house, and it happened to be fifteen minutes’ walk or four minutes’ ride on a chopper from the finest point break on the east coast and finest point break in the known fricken universe. You ask me.

Bang. Down goes the deposit.

Her and Rod got the house. The House.

Rod didn’t know nothing about nothing. When he asked Mo did they own the house now she said,We’re all in debt to the bank, we owe all our money to the bank now, and Rod didn’t get it, he couldn’t sleep he was so scared, he had nightmares about pipes and factories and darkness and noise, factory noise, cos he thought she owed so much coin she never pay it back and they’ll come take the house away.

And then young Rodney Keith Keith discovered that point break and stopped thinking about the bank.

And he discovered someone else for a change.

When her and Rod move to the seaside, the Gold Coast, the coast of gold, the salt air up their nostrils, allowed at last to go to the pound and get what Rod always wanted which was a dog, and the dog she got him was this beagle cross called Sam . . .

And Mo worked peeling and veining prawns.

And Rod collecting bottles from the beach rubbish bins to trade in for twopence each, making ten bob on a good day which he’d then take to the butcher and buy a bag of bones for Mo to make a week’s soup with . . .

And . . .

And . . .

And . . .

When . . .

When . . .

When . . .

The BFO come all this way to listen to my life story and instead what she’s getting is Mo and Rod. I’m hardly even in it. I’m the King of the Point, The Man, the Legend, the Enigma, and the BFO isn’t even listening to me or asking me ONE SINGLE QUESTION . . .

But she is. I catch the sly flash of white under her black eyelash, not so much awe now she’s over the awe, and I can see, I see, how she reckons she’s setting me up, bringing me to the boil, where I’ll be so jack of listening to Mo on and on about herself and Rod and their flaminghardscrabblethat . . .

How brain damaged you think I am girl?

The BFO, trying to make me jealous.

Instead she gets me upset.

I lock meself in me room.

When she come back the next day I don’t come out.

Mo has to keep her entertained.

When she come back the next day I don’t come out.

Mo has to keep her entertained.

When she come back the next day I don’t come out.

She gets tired of Mo.

And that’s what makes me real upset.

BFO’s mistake: kidding herself she has an open mind, that her story isn’t already wrote.

What makes me upset?

When she goes:

‘So Mrs Keith there’s this bit you’ve skipped over.’

And you can hear a pin drop but it’s not a pin, it’s the BFO’s heart.

Through the wall between my bedroom and the kitchen I hear Mo scratch round and save the day.

‘Ah then love, you mean Shangrila.’

!

. . . yeah no, don’t want her to get me started on The House, I start I won’t finish, and that wouldn’t be fair on me would it.

Every inch. Every square cubic inchlet of The House I knew nahknow.

It was a QUEENSLANDER House, I remember the word. Me first memory. Even though I was a Queenslander I never heard there was houses with the same name. QUEENSLANDER. And it has a name on a plaque by the front door:Shangrila. Mo said Shangrila is Chinese for This Is It We’re Set.

The QUEENSLANDER was wooden on stilts with lattices downstairs round the stilts and big airy rooms with fans and a sleepout veranda surround the kitchen and heaven on twelve sticks. It was half a house really, this boarding house that been down on Kirra beach and the owner had sawed it in half and put one half on a truck and send it up the hill. Cos it was a boarding house it had lots of tiny crooked rooms upstairs and down. Mo didn’t like them but Rod thought it was a ripper all them rooms nobody needed, scuttled through like a rat, like a dirty little possum, every square inch. Eventually Mo begin knocking out a few walls with her bare hands to make bigger rooms to live in.

In the backyard there’s banana trees and rubber trees and palms and big tropical flowers, hibiscus and whatnot.

Shangrila didn’t have no views of the beach. It had a view of the neighbour’s house but that was also a QUEENSLANDER so nobody didn’t mind.

It had a view of the cemetery over the back fence.

Sam loved the QUEENSLANDER except being a beagle he was always following his nose first asking questions later. Mo built this big wire fence round the backyard but Sam dig a hole under it. Her and Rod filled in the holes and Sam get his nose under the gate and push the latch up and get the thing open and he’s off, down the road, sniffing foxes or whatnot. Her and Rod called him Houdini.

It was like he didn’t want to be with them.

But then he gets tired of wandering and plonk himself someone’s front doorstep and they read the phone number on his tag and he had a name, Samuel J. Keith, and then the phone call and it’s Christmas all over again.

Cemetery wasn’t strictly Catholic or Jehovah’s Witnesses or whatever, it was allsorts. Buddhist, Hare Krishna, Church of England, you name it. Only place on the Gold Coast where all them minorities could go and be left in peace. Dunno where they come from, there wasn’t none at the local school cept for a couple of Chinese, they must of been trucked in from all over south Queensland. They all had separate sections, like it mattered to the Hindus to give the Muslims a wide berth even if they was all pushing up the same daisies.

Sam got off on rooting round the gravestones and mausoleums. Thought he’d died and went to heaven. Why he was always pulling the Harry Houdini under the back fence: he liked sniffing among them zombies.

Sam and Rod was always in that cemetery. Played chasings and hideand-seek and always laughing and clowning round. Played in there at night heaps. At first it was a bit scary and Rod creep the crap out of the mourners who come in there by jumping out behind a tombstone. But laughing and horsing about was his way of getting over the spookiness. The louder he was, the less chance the undead had to come crawling up his spine. Sometimes people’d shoo him away there was a funeral or whatnot going on, but Mo said he brought new life to the graveyard. It was filled up with mango and avocado and banana trees and them coloured flowers, hibiscus and frangipani and that. Pretty nice place if you weren’t dead. Great view of the ocean if you can stand up to see it.

And so yeah it was one night Sam barking his head off in the graveyard. Mo says her and Rod come running, they think Sam’s scoped some zombie or what have you.

‘So me and Rod creep out there, it’s twilight hour, not dark but not light,’ she goes, Mo to the BFO this is, ‘and I’ve got a torch. We’re creeping so light me knees are knocking. Sam’s growling away at this little stone crypt, you know, bone house thingy, and Sam’s no growler I’m telling ya, so it’s strange all right. He’s off his rocker. There’s a doorway half open. Rod’s whimpering behind me, saying “Don’t go Mo, it’s zombies in there.” And then so I go first with the torch and poke it through the doorway and I see something move and I scream the top of me lungs. There’s a pair of eyes shining in the torchlight. I turn to Rod and say, “Don’t worry love, it’s a possum. Go back to the house.” But I know it’s not a possum and so does Roddy. Me hands are shaking like a leaf. I say: “Hello?” And the eyes move towards me. I’m ready to run when I feel a hand on me back. I jump a mile in the air, but it’s only Rod. He hasn’t gone nowhere. He’s rooted to the spot. “What is it, love?” I go. And Rod’s looking at the eyes. He can see better than me. Or he recognises. And he goes: “It’s him, Mo.” “Who?” I say. “It’s him. The sea urchin.” “The what?” And Rod starts pissing himself. Hard to tell if he’s laughing cos it’s funny or it’s a reaction to the nerves. “I seen him down the beach,” he goes. “I tried kicking shit out of him but he run away. He lives in The Pit.” “Eh?” I go. “What you on about? What Pit?” And Roddy just starts laughing, not nasty but kindly, like, and moves past me into the entrance of the bone house and goes: “Come on, matey, come out here!” And I look back into the bone house and I can’t describe it, how filthy he was, how shrivelled and pathetic and frightened, he was feral, you know? People use the word feral but they don’t know what it means, or they wouldn’t use it anymore if they saw a kid like this. Feral. He was an animal. He couldn’t talk, only grunt. But when Roddy calls him, like he’s calling a pet animal, the dirty little thing shuffles out half cripple half sideways. He won’t look at me. He looks at Rod or Rod’s ear and there’s something in the pair of them, I can’t put it in words love, but you knew something was up, something like . . . yeah nah, I dunno, but they’re in cahoots eh, I can just see it all in that look of theirs, he come out of the bone house and that’s it, I remember telling meself, this is us, this is our family, me and Roddy and Sam and this little sea urchin thingy, is it a boy, is it a mar fricken supial, Lord knows. I know I’m meant to find out whose he is and that, and do the paperwork and what have you, he must be someone’s eh, but this other little voice is telling me he’s mine. That’s what he is. He’smine.’