The Naked Drinking Club (23 page)

‘She sounded just like you. I think she wants you to call your grandfather.’

‘Shit, something must be wrong.’

‘God, I’m so fucking stupid to forget, sorry, man. Is somebody sick, do you think?’

‘Something like that. I haven’t spoken to her for a long time, but I left this number with the nurses at my grandfather’s home. I need to call, or hear the message – do you still have it?’

‘Yeah, sure, it’s on the office machine, come with me.’

The office was cooler than the rest of the building and offered some relief from the increasing humidity. Anaya sat on the desk and rewound the machine.

I sat in Greg’s chair; I felt I needed to be sitting for what I feared might be terrible news.

‘No, wait.’ I put my hand on top of Anaya’s as she was about to press ‘play’. ‘I’m scared, I’m dreading this.’

‘Do you think something bad has happened?’

‘Why would she phone me here? This could be one of those moments you want to reverse in life, so I want to stay for a while before it happens, do you know what I mean?’

Anaya ran her thumb along the side of my hand, which despite the dread of the current situation sent my body into some sort of drug high, and an ache directly between my legs.

‘You know something, Kerry, I do understand.’

This was a rare moment with Anaya, and I felt better
equipped
to deal with it after my talk with Joyce. She was being unusually real and I liked her this way; up until now I had had nothing from her but inconsistencies and games.

‘Let’s switch the fan on,’ I said.

Keeping our hands the way they had been, she leant over the desk and turned the switch on. The fan purred and moved back and forth between us, blowing our hair over our faces.

My heart was pounding, and the anticipation of what my mother was about to tell me, mixed with the excitement of a nearby Anaya, was giving me a dry, thirsty mouth. I swallowed and tried to moisten my lips with my tongue.

‘Here, have some of mine,’ she said, noticing.

I’d left my beer in the kitchen. I swigged from hers, happy to be near her mouth. I had never been sure what I liked or hated about her. She had been nothing but cold and annoying and deeply untrustworthy since we’d met. But she was extremely beautiful, far more than anyone I had met before, and I suspected it was her beauty that allowed her to get away with so much.

‘Come on, play the message now, then you can phone home,’ she said, realising I had gone off into a trance.

I released the pressure on her hand and she pressed ‘play’. I heard a beep, then the voice of my mother. I sat back in the chair and listened.

‘This is a message for Kerry Swaine, it’s her mother phoning from Scotland. I’m not sure if this is her number or not, the nurses gave it to me – I haven’t got long.’

My heart was in my mouth – who hasn’t got long? I couldn’t bear anything happening to my grandfather when I was away. I would fly home immediately and borrow money from my mother, if I had to.

‘I’ve only got so much change, I’m calling from the home, you see, and the nurses have been telling me that she’s desperate to speak to her grandfather. He’s with me now, we’re using the pay phone at the home. I thought I would try and get her to speak to him. Never mind, I’ll try some other time. Tell her she can call if she wants and I hope she is enjoying herself and looking after herself, that’s all.’

There was a delay before she put the phone down. I heard
my
grandfather make a gargled speech noise, of one word, which he repeated three times before my mother said ‘yes’ to him in the way you would speak to a child. Then the line went dead.

I fell back into the chair and sighed relief.

‘You see, it’s OK, yeah, they are both OK.’

‘Yeah, they’re both OK,’ I mumbled.

‘OK.’

‘Anaya?’

‘What?’ she said, more softly than usual.

I wanted to ask her how she felt. About me, about here, about Greg and about life. I nearly did, but couldn’t quite let go, just yet.

‘Nothing, nothing, it’s OK.’

‘Come on then, better go and have a drink with the others, and gear up for the trip.’ She smiled warmly, and then clicked her tongue in the roof of her mouth.

‘Sure,’ I said, wondering if I’d missed the moment for ever.

I switched off the fan, and we left the office. She led the way and I watched her perfect body move down the corridor and back into the lounge area with the others. Tonight of all nights, I could do without them. Somehow I felt weary of all the jokey bullshit, at least for the time being.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE

EVERYBODY TALKED NON-STOP
at the start of the car journey, and then quickly ran out of steam. Even though we’d been in the car together many times, it felt different because we were going away on a big trip, which made us feel like kids. Scotty reading out our names from an imaginary clipboard, to which we all replied, ‘Here, sir.’

The Danish and I agreed to have turns sitting in the middle, as it was less comfortable than being able to lean against the window. I went first, to get it out the way before I got sleepy.

Jim joked at ‘I Spy’ and started with W, which right on cue I guessed was windscreen. The Danish pretended to be little children in the back and stuck their fingers up at various motorists. Scotty went a joke stage further and showed his arse out the window. Then Jim said something uncharacteristic.

‘Listen, it’s a beautiful day, why don’t we drive to our first place, which is about two hundred Ks away, check into a site, get ourselves sorted out, because we’ll be staying there for the next few days, and then just have some time off and a laugh?’

We all cheered and clapped.

‘Now you’re fuckin’ talking, mate, and I like what you’re saying,’ said Scotty.

‘Can we stop at the bottle shop and pick up some beers for the journey?’ I asked.

‘Oh God, what have we let ourselves in for?’ said Jim, which we all took to be a yes. Scotty howled like a mad dog. I nudged the Danish, who seemed like they could take it or leave it, either way. They were normal drinkers, they liked to
have
their version of a good time, but they had, like most normal people, a cut-off point. There was no madness there.

In the car I felt secure, surrounded by the others; I was filled by a rare sense of belonging. Jim was the dependable parent/teacher who would rescue Scotty and me no matter what happened. Scotty was my cheeky annoying brother, and the Danish were quiet, weird cousins visiting for a short while. I wondered what Greg and Anaya would be if they were with us. I decided Greg would be a sleazy alcoholic uncle, whom I didn’t ever want to sit next to. And Anaya would have to be an overseas exchange student visiting for the summer, whose humour nobody got. She couldn’t be related, because the scenario would end with us being in bed together.

My turn at the window caused me to daydream happily, watching the road signs pass overhead on the Pacific Highway. They said one hundred and fifty kilometres to Newcastle, which was bizarre. I asked Jim about it, who was a constant source of information on almost anything. He explained that nearly all Australian places were named after areas in Britain because of the original settlers, and most of the strangely pronounced names were linked to Aboriginal words. I imagined him chalking it all up on a board, and then switching on an overhead projector.

I longed for the day that I would be settled enough to take all that stuff in, and go to libraries and look up things about the places I was about to visit. I went to an art exhibition with my mother once, but I felt anxious about other things and couldn’t concentrate. I looked over at the others immersed in the paintings, and felt envious of the ones with the headsets on, with that taped information stuff being piped into them.

Jim had some golden oldies station on which was perfect. Scotty complained that he never got to play his Red Hot Chili Peppers’ tape. Jim told him to fuck off, then apologised to the back seat for his language. Then Freda Payne’s ‘Band Of Gold’ came on, and halfway through Jim switched it off and said Scotty could go ahead and put his shite on. I watched Jim’s eyes in the mirror blinking more than usual, and his jaw tensing in the way that mine does.

Scotty kept the case of Castlemaine that we’d picked up
from
a bottle shop on the floor of the front seat underneath him, where it was slightly shaded, and the two of us helped ourselves. Jim stuck to one can because he was driving, while the Danish refrained from having any at all, even though they’d eventually joined in the excitement over getting some beers in the first place.

I slumped down in the seat and closed my eyes, leaning my face against the window until the sun on it made me drift off. Later, the sun streamed down on my thighs. The Danish and I all wore shorts, our hot legs resting against one another, a familiar occurrence by now.

I woke up just as I sensed the car was pulling in over some gravel, and opened my eyes when the engine stopped. Jim stretched out over the steering wheel.

‘Shouldn’t have had those beers last night. I’m shattered and we haven’t even come that far.’

Karin rubbed Jim’s shoulders in a half-sleep state, and he moaned appreciatively. We all looked as though we’d woken up at the same time. I leant forward and messed with Scotty’s hair. He was still asleep on account of the four beers he’d had in a hundred and fifty kilometres. He looked out of the window as he came to.

‘Fucking Newcastle, man, what a dump,’ he said, all redeyed and stinking of booze-sleep breath.

‘Scotty, you stink like a bloody brewery,’ said Jim, shoving him over towards the passenger door. Scotty farted, and we all quickly got out.

‘I’m not putting up with that on this trip, let’s get that straight, right now.’

Everybody except Jim was in fits of laughter.

‘You’re not sleeping in the same van as me; you’re sleeping outside like a dog.’

Scotty howled again. Jim waved a map around, fanning the area.

We sat on a picnic bench overlooking the sea, eating burgers and fries and Coke in the Stockton Beach tourist park, which prided itself on its vans being fifty metres from the beach itself. It was late afternoon, with a slight breeze coming off the water.

I asked Scotty why he was called Scotty.

‘A lot of people think it’s because my folks were Scottish, but it’s not.’ He had beetroot stains on the side of his face, and ate with his mouth open. I could see Jim suppressing laughter as he spoke.

‘No, it’s because when I was a kid, me and my old man used to watch
Star Trek
repeats, that’s all. My old man would sit in the armchair like the captain, yeah. But I would be pretending to fix it, like, ’cause I wanted to be a mechanic – that was what Scotty did – so the old man started calling me it, and it stuck. Just got used to it.’

‘He piloted it, didn’t he?’ I asked, jokingly, knowing full well that it was Chekov.

‘What, the fuckin’
Enterprise?
No, mate, he was the mechanic, the engineer, wasn’t he?’

‘Thought he was up front, all doom and gloom, always going on about being doomed.’ Jim spoke in a bad Scottish accent.

‘No, that’s
Dad’s Army
, you’re thinking of Frazer. You’re getting your Scottish characters mixed up,’ I said.

‘Do you mean, “Beam me up, Scotty”?’ asked Andrea, which was the only thing she’d said in about four hours.

‘You sure Scotty wasn’t the driver? Thought he was always worried about where the ship was going,’ said Jim.

‘Mate.’ Scotty was the last to finish his burger, chewed his final mouthful, scrunched up the paper it was in and wiped his mouth with the serviette, then looked directly at Jim like he meant business. ‘Do you know what?’

I could see Jim was winding him up.

‘What’s that, Scotty?’

‘Not being funny or nothing, but I know you’re a teacher and all the rest of it, and you know loads of stuff, like, but I’m telling you, Scotty was the fucking mechanic, all right?’

‘You sure? Thought he sat with the Russian guy, driving.’

The three of us were laughing a little, as well as Jim sniggering, but Scotty appeared to have lost his sense of humour during the car journey and his post-beer nap.

‘Just lay off, mate, you’re buggin’ me now. I mean, do you think I was flamin’ named.’ Scotty slurred a bit.

‘“Flamin’ named”? I thought you were named Scotty, not flamin’. Are you sure about this flamin’ naming?’

Karin and I rolled our eyes at each other over Jim’s bad dad’s joke. Scotty looked like he was going to kill Jim. But the more he got annoyed, the more Jim kept winding him up, all the time covering his mouth with his hand and shrugging his shoulders with laughter.

‘I think I know what the person I was named after did, mate. He was the fuckin’ mechanic, all right? Now back off.’

Jim turned his back, pretending to look out to sea, but we could all see him wiping the tears away from his eyes.

Scotty shook his head in disbelief, muttering, ‘Fuckin’ smart-arse-know-it-all.’

We were all forced to look out to sea to try and avoid Scotty’s expression, which was too funny to look at by now.

‘Ah dear.’ Jim coughed in an attempt to compose himself. ‘I tell you what, we’re lucky we found this place; the view.’ Jim could no longer make polite pretend conversation, and spluttered all over his last few words about the view, breaking out into full and open hysterics, which set Karin and Andrea off. I wasn’t laughing with quite the same gusto as the others. I felt sorry for Scotty, who played the part of the group moron so well, because he tried so hard all of the time.

‘Ah, mate, that’s it, you’ve really pissed me off now. I’m going for a fuckin’ lie-down.’ He got up to walk off but Jim kept at him.

‘It’s no good, Captain, I’m giving her all she’s got.’

Scotty turned in his tracks and walked back to Jim and kind of squared up to him.

‘So if you knew what Scotty said, how come you didn’t know what Scotty did?’

The problem was, there was not one part of Scotty that could see anything funny whatsoever about the conversation and the levels of animosity he was putting out to Jim.