Free Eyrie by Tim Winton Page B

lost so many bigger battles, places more important in the scheme of things. When I saw those trees falling I didn’t even feel anything. But that little black cloud of birds. And the wailing hippies and the mums and dads there in their sunsmart hats, and the poor bird-boffin with his specs broken —
    Let’s not talk about it.
    I just lit up. Like a flare.
    I know. We all saw.
    And you know, it felt great. Five or six minutes. Like, I don’t know what. Like vomiting hot coals.
    Isaiah, said Doris.
    He looked at her. Those glittering eyes. The rueful smile. Saw how afraid she was for him, how long she’d kept herself in check. He was ashamed. But angry, too. That there could only ever be one subject.
    Oh well, he said, trying to draw this line of conversation to an end. Too late the hero, eh?
    Never too late, she said. Never.
    To the good fight, he said, brandishing his glass. And all our lost causes.
    Doris didn’t reciprocate. She flicked her plaits. A rattle of impatience, irritation.
    There was a silence between them. The hectoring music. Falling darkness.
    Tell me, she said. Are you married to that beard?
    Why, because you used to be?
    And what’s that supposed to mean?
    Someone said it makes me look like Dad.
    Who? Who said that?
    Gemma Buck.
    Hmm.
    You’re not going to ask about her?
    Doris shut down a moment, pushing her glass in circles.
    I thought there might be more important things to deal with. Before we got all nostalgic.
    Like what, for instance?
    Faith. She’s worried.
    She hasn’t even
seen
the beard. She’s watching brokers leap from skyscrapers. What I’d like to know is why can’t she get more of them to take the plunge. God knows, we need a cull.
    Tom, love.
    What?
    You’re being a bit of a nong.
    I imagine so.
    You can always desist, you know.
    But here I am, vindicated and persisting.
    I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have mentioned the . . . thing.
    You want me to shave the beard?
    Forget the bloody beard.
    I’m sorry.
    She took up the bottle, but he covered his glass like a man in regal control of his impulses. She refilled her own, sat back and restored herself.
    So tell me about Gemma, then, she said with a wan smile.
    Not much to say, really. I just saw her in passing.
    What does she do? How does she seem?
    Dunno, he said. It was just a chance encounter.
    Family?
    There’s a grandkid. A boy.
    Good for her.
    He glanced up, saw her appraising stare, felt the lost moment in her false brightness.
    I often think about them, Baby and her.
    He nodded, wishing he could go back, begin the evening again, but it was hopeless. He lacked the gumption to set things right, he was too accustomed to the logic of defeat. He saw it now, the rest of the meal. They’d eat in fraught politeness and leave the moment the last fork was laid down. She’d insist on driving him home. He’d protest, pile in anyway. And she’d want to come up and see the flat once and for all but refrain from asking. She’d take his kiss on the cheek like a lowball tip and wheel the boxy old Volvo away, looking game as ever, masking her hurt and disappointment as he stood limp and seething on the forecourt.
    The task at hand was getting to that final, miserable moment as quickly as possible.

K eely was halfway along the open gallery, digging at his temples, when he noticed something flapping in the security mesh of his door. Some civic announcement, no doubt: a plea for a lost kitten, a notice about building maintenance. But when he pulled it from the grille he saw it was a child’s drawing, a crayon outline of a bird. Dumpy, earthbound, like an overfed kiwi.
    Once he got inside he clamped the sheet of paper to the fridge with a magnet. At other people’s places – friends from work, people with kids – he’d always looked with an inner sneer at their fridge doors plastered in clumsy daubs. Everything their brats committed to paper was so special, so important it required immediate and prolonged display. The kids probably