Free A Short History of Richard Kline by Amanda Lohrey

looked out to the water. The ocean was calm and shimmered in the hazy evening light. In one corner of the terrace a thickset man with a beard was wiping down the metal plate of a primitive wood-fired barbecue. Below him, on the grass, two small boys in wet bathers chased a featureless brown mutt around the yard.
    Julie introduced me to Kieran as ‘my clever cousin’, and I thought this was not perhaps the best start. Kieran shook my hand a touch too firmly and went on with preparations for the barbecue, while Julie and I looked out over the rooftops and spoke the lingua franca of Sydney life: real estate. All the while I was alert to Kieran, his intense preoccupation with the barbecue, the way he sighed as he adjusted the firewood and poked at loose woodchips, and I wondered if he was not so much gruff as tired. He moved with the stolid weariness of a man who had worked all day in the sun.
    â€˜Kieran’s been working on his boat all day,’ Julie said, as if reading my thoughts. ‘He bought this old whaling dinghy off a friend and now he’s restoring it.’
    Kieran looked up through a waft of smoke. ‘Huon pine, beautiful timber.’
    â€˜Why don’t you show Rick the boat?’
    Kieran poked at the fire again. ‘Like to have a look?’ he asked, and his asking was a courtesy, as if to say: I don’t want to bore you with this.
    â€˜Sure.’
    The boat, covered by a tarpaulin, sat in the side lane. Kieran became more animated as he removed the tarpaulin and ran his palm along the polished surface of the wood. Now he was at ease and happy to deliver a laconic discourse on glues and varnishes. Every now and then he would pat the side of the boat, as if it were an old friend, and nod his head in confirmation of its worth, while I did my best to ask the right questions. I thought the shape of the boat ugly, too wide in relation to its length, which gave it a squat appearance, but the wood was ravishing, a golden honey hue with the softness of a subtle grain. I saw that you could have a relationship with this wood and was about to ask where it came from when Julie leaned over the terrace and said, ‘Let’s eat. The kids are getting ratty.’
    â€˜Such beautiful wood,’ I said, looking up.
    â€˜Well, enjoy it,’ she said tartly, ‘because by the time they finish logging old-growth forests there’ll be none of it left. They’ll have to put boats like that in a museum.’
    â€˜Now then, Jules, you’re winding up into a rant,’ said Kieran, quietly, looking ahead. His eyes were hooded and his weathered lips set firmly against causes.
    With this, I felt a prick of annoyance; I did not like to hear my cousin rebuked. But Julie seemed oblivious. She had moved away to the other side of the terrace, where she was calling to the boys. Her husband had thrown out the net of his words but she was not caught.
    Up on the terrace, bread and salads were laid out. Kieran set about the serious business of searing the meat while the boys, Ryan and Matthew, whooped around the garden. Conversation over dinner was broken but accommodating. The boys, though shyly deferential to the visitor, were ragged with fatigue from a blustery afternoon on the beach with their mother. After they had tired of tormenting the dog, they whined and fought over who would ride the bike around the lawn and show off for the visitor. At last, Julie rose with deliberate calm and bundled them into a bath.
    Despite the way they had interrupted my every sentence, I was sorry to see them go. Watching them reminded me of the hours I had spent with Gareth, in that same enchanted hour of dusk, our subliminal sense of the light of the day falling away behind us, our innocent faith in its renewal.
    With the boys in bed, we settled into recliners on the deck and sniffed at the smell of meat and barbecue smoke, still wafting tantalisingly in the air. Kieran wasn’t much of a talker and