The Labyrinthine Way - 2. We're not in Kansas Anymore

The Labyrinthine Way

Chapter II

We Aren’t in Kansas Anymore.

Mum finally stopped the car. I had spent the last 20 kilometres caught between equally disturbing phenomena. On the one hand, Mum’s composure had finally broken. As the road flashed by and the distance from our old life increased, she began quietly sobbing, all the while trying to pretend that she wasn’t.

Then, my equilibrium shot, I tried to focus on the world outside the car window to block out the sound of Mum’s strangled sobs, but this provided no comfort. As we passed Drysdale, the road on either side gave way to paddocks, rolling fields of green with the occasional cow, a few grape vines or olive trees here and there. For a kid who had grown up in the most suburban of suburban environments, the geographic transformation was almost as unsettling as Mum’s emotional break.

It was not that I was unfamiliar with the country. I had spent many days in my life on my uncle’s farm or in other parts of rural Victoria while my dad connected with the passion for the life he had left but never really abandoned. It was another thing, however, coming here to live, knowing that school was 30 kilometres away, past cows and fields, that there was one bus to the city each morning and each afternoon, and that all the friends and familiar places I had known were now more than 100 kilometres away. And that they would remain that way for the foreseeable future.

The anger welled up again, anger and pain, as quickly repressed as felt. Caught up in a bargain in which I was involved but never consulted, I felt I had to make the best of it. I didn’t matter – that much I had learned over the years – so there was no point fighting the inevitable.

Quietly getting out of the front seat, I smelt the tang of salt air as I studied my new home for the first time: a long, low brick house with white windowframes. I hadn’t even seen it before, though the description I had been given matched what I saw now. It seemed nice enough, but I doubted it would ever be home: just a place I lived.

At least one passenger still in the car seemed totally unfazed. I opened the back door to be greeted by the same silly grin I knew well. True to form, my canine friend had managed to get his ears flopped round the wrong way, exposing their insides, while his tail started the peculiar corkscrew wagging that was his very own version of ’walkies’.

Taking his lead, I let him out of the back seat, whereupon he immediately tried to take me for a walk to explore. We had left training to far too late, and so Bianco was completely unsullied by any need to answer human commands. I kind of liked him that way, if the truth be known. At least one of us was free.

“Well…we’re here,” was all Mum could say when she finally composed herself enough.

Yes. But where is here? That’s the question.

The door opened, and Dad came out looking tired but pleased. He had gone on ahead with the truck and had made a start on unpacking. There was light in his eyes, at least, and I hadn’t seen that for longer than I could remember. Perhaps it would be okay, I hoped. It would have to be.

“Well, how do you like our new home?”

“Great, Dad. Should I help you with the unpacking?”

“Better get the mutt sorted first, Chris. His kennel is ready in the back yard.”

Chagrined, I remembered I had, attached to a lead from my hand, a sizeable, energetic, black-fur ball still politely requesting attention. With a grin down at my best mate, I led him into the back yard through a side gate. The yard consisted of a small lawn area, a brick barbecue immediately behind the house and then a plunge over a cliff down to the back fence. Well, at least one of us is going to enjoy this. Bianco loved running through undergrowth, getting in touch with his inner wolf, and here he had about a quarter acre of primeval jungle on the side of a hill all to himself.

After I let him off his lead, he scampered off to do what dogs do, mainly sniff and urinate at regular intervals. While he was suitably occupied, I looked out from the yard towards the ocean. Down from the hill and across a few houses below us, I could make out a line of large pine trees and between them, the grey/blue expanse of ocean. So I really was by the sea. Port Phillip Bay to be precise – calm, cold, moderately polluted, but the ocean, nonetheless – and it was now about 100 metres from my bedroom window.

“Well Bianco, we’re not in Kansas anymore.”

He seemed unconcerned. Running back up the hill with the remains of a tennis ball he had somehow sniffed out of the jungle, he did his usual head twist and tossed the grimy mess at me in a not-so-subtle request for entertainment. With a sigh I sent it back down whence it came. I guess this was home now.

The nightmare came again that night. I hadn’t had it for a few days, but with all the stress of the move, I guess it was inevitable that it would be back. Always vivid, never sparing the details, it invaded my subconscious and smacked me around with the subtle grace of a wrecking ball.

It always started in the hallway in our house in the city. I had come back from hockey training and gone straight to take a shower, leaving Dad to his quiet morose moments alone in the lounge. Coming out, I was startled to find him waiting for me, the whiskey bottle as usual in his hands and, as usual, mostly empty. He also had my school record book in the other hand, and he was in a towering rage.

“What’s this? You were found cutting classes again? How many times is this? You know you are special, we have put enough effort into your education, and you have the brain for it, though God knows where it goes at times. You should be getting perfect marks, instead your marks are dropping, then you are cutting classes and getting detentions. What is wrong with you? Are you trying to get me angry?”

“No, Dad,” was the only reasonable response. I had tried not getting him angry. As the depression took hold of him, along with the whiskey, it seemed that there was nothing that I could do to make him proud except perhaps be perfect, and I was no good at that. The more I tried, the worse it got until I was too tired to try anymore.

“Well you know what to do.” Yes, I did. I had been on the receiving end enough times in the last months to know all too well.

Walking slowly to the bedroom with Dad behind me, I heard the usual whispering sound as his belt was withdrawn from the loops of his pants. I had come to know that sound to the point that merely hearing it was enough to get my hair standing on end. Would it be a simple beating this time? Would it be a bad one? Would he leave marks again? Maybe I would have to cut PE tomorrow, which would mean another detention, which…I shut my eyes against the inevitable cycle and resolved to weather it one more time.

I would have, too, but for some reason he decided to lecture again. I had been tripped up several times at training, one of my school nemeses deciding that hooking his stick under my feet when doing drills so I would tumble over was so fun that he would do it again and again. My legendary lack of coordination was now transformed into a visual gag so effective even the coach was laughing. I had fumed all the way home, rage building and building, desperate to hit out for once. It was really just bad timing that explained what happened next.

Dad took another swig of whiskey, then ruefully noted the bottle was empty. “You are such a disappointment. You have such gifts, but you refuse to use them. You are so lazy. If we hadn’t pushed you, there is no way you would have got that scholarship. Now I see I need to push you again. Maybe then you will stop embarrassing us and start being the person I know you can be.”

Embarrassing. I think that was the word that did it. I felt like an embarrassment all my life, as if the whole world was laughing at me, as Nathan Oakes did at training that afternoon. My face too ugly, my body too large and ungainly, accent too proper, language too adult, completely hopeless at sport, shy and socially awkward. My brain was the only thing I had, but apparently it was an embarrassment, too. Pain, anger, fear, hopelessness all welled up before I could control them and found expression in that charged moment.

“Embarrassment? Disappointment? Maybe I am, Dad, but what does that make you? You have been screwed over in your career, and you’ve been waiting in limbo while they wait to kick you out rather than do anything about it. You drink enough booze to kill yourself, and you get worse every week. What am I supposed to do? If I’m an embarrassment, maybe that’s because I remind you too much of yourself.”

The low snarl was the last sound I heard before pain exploded in my face. Dimly I registered blood and assumed that either a fist or the whiskey bottle had smashed into me. Falling to the ground, I next felt a crushing sensation in my fingers on the left hand when I tried to protect myself, then I was thrown on the bed. I felt the belt strike me, but not on my bum as normal, but harder, and right down my back. And he just kept on hitting, blows falling all over my prone form, harder and faster and never ending. At first I was screaming, then I was too hoarse to scream, but the blows kept coming. Then, mercifully I blacked out.

I came awake in my bed, crying, shaking like a leaf, bile registering in the back of my throat. Momentarily disoriented in the new surroundings, I ran into unfamiliar edges in the dark before finding the bedside light switch. I knelt on the carpet, vomiting into my waste-paper bin, then finally under some control, raised my head and looked out the window.

In the distance I could see the lights on the foreshore and further over, the line of lamps on the pier leading out to the moorings. There was activity on the pier, so the fishing fleet would be putting out. It must be about 3 a.m.

Sitting now, watching the activity in the distance, I remembered the nightmare again. It was amazing how the memory was so vivid. I could remember every hit, every sensation, even the smell of whiskey on Dad’s breath, the taste of blood in my mouth.

After it had happened that time, I had awakened with Mum in the room, a look of horror on her face, and Dad nowhere to be seen. We had never spoken about it, but things did change then. Mum agreed that Dad could take a redundancy, and we would move back to the country where he was comfortable. In exchange, Dad would get off the booze. If there was an agreement spoken or unspoken about the beatings, I never knew, but there hadn’t been a recurrence in 3 months while I had healed physically. Dutifully, I had sat a scholarship exam and gotten a scholarship to a school in Geelong, so I had done my part. We could continue as if nothing had happened – except a pleasant sea change.

Now here we were, with a chance at a new start. For Dad, it seemed to be working. For me, it seemed some memories were determined not to let go. I reached around tentatively and felt the scars on my back where the belt buckle had torn off chunks of skin. For some reason they always ached after the nightmare came.

Staring out the window, I gave a mental shrug and decided that sleep was impossible, so I would start exploring this new world. Maybe some sea air would heal me.

Slipping out the front door, I tried to stay quiet so I wouldn’t wake Mum and Dad and headed off into the night. Dressed only in shorts and a t-shirt, the midsummer night still felt cold, but I barely noticed as I walked around the corner and down the street leading to the foreshore.

I dimly remembered Portarlington, a town I had been through on the way to other towns when I was young, but it never registered in my consciousness much. The beach was poor, the town nothing special: a place to pass through but not to stay in. I remembered a long pier with shops at its start, most vacant, and lots of boats moored along it.

The town had become almost trendy, part of a phenomenon driven by a T.V. show called ‘Seachange’ that had popularised the small coastal towns of the Bellarine Peninsula. Still, it retained that air of quiet decay of almost but not quite mattering, unlike Ocean Grove or Barwon Heads or Queenscliff, all larger and with surf beaches. Portarlington was content to remain a backwater, with one pub, one petrol station, and a lot of retirees. It was also now my home.

Walking now along the foreshore, the smell of rotting seaweed warred for prominence in my nostrils with the smell of the ocean. It was close to high tide, and I could hear the waves gently breaking on the beach. Finding a section of wooden fence to prop, I took up a seat and looked out at the ocean, seeing the blinking lights of the shipping channel and in the distance the yellow glow of my former home, Melbourne, only 40 kilometres as the crow flies across the bay but more than 100 by road. Oh, how I wished to be a crow.

Sitting and shivering, I started remembering the day I learned we would be coming here. Dad was sober, and unusually reflective. As usual, when he was in a mood, he was quoting poetry – of a quality to match his mood.

On this occasion, he was sitting at his desk, staring out into nothing, and quoting from “The Hound of Heaven”. It was Dad’s favourite, and I had learned it by heart, both to please him but also to try to understand him. What secrets were contained in its foreboding and frankly religious text that could help me unlock his heart? I still didn’t quite know. For what I knew of Dad, he was not a religious man, and the image of God chasing the reluctant sinner through the passages of his own mind seemed to jar with my understanding of him. I had gained my own views of its significance for him over time, and my own resonance to the poem had also grown with each reading. There are many things we run from, as I well knew, including our own selves.

Sitting now with the moisture-laden breeze coming on shore into my face, I started to recite the lines, part benediction, part epitaph;

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;

I fled Him, down the arches of the years;

I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways

Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears

I hid from Him, and under running laughter.

Up vistaed hopes I sped;

And shot, precipitated,

Adown Titanic glooms of chasmèd fears,

From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.

But with unhurrying chase,

And unperturbèd pace,

Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,

They beat—and a Voice beat

More instant than the Feet—

‘All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.’

Lapsing into silence, I was startled by a cough nearby. Looking to my left, I saw, sitting on a bench under a pine tree, a dark figure illuminated only by the slight glow of a cigarette end. Before I could say anything or even become too alarmed, the figure moved from under the tree and into the light, indistinct shadows transforming into the figure of a girl – about 6 feet tall, and, as she came closer, about my age or older and, I noted, really attractive.

Embarrassed as always, I waited for her mocking laughter or harsh contempt but was destined to be shocked instead.

“Wow. That was great. What is it?”

“Um….it’s part of a poem called ‘The Hound of Heaven’ by Francis Thompson.”

“Cool. I like it, and you recited it really well. I’ll have to ask my mum about it.”

I stared at her, thrown by this turn of events. Eventually she grew tired of my silence and gave a quick smile, dropping the cigarette, crushing it under her feet and holding out her hand in one fluid motion. I was smitten somewhere between the grin and the cigarette. Her dark flowing hair, deep intelligent eyes and sexy voice merely iced the cake.

“Kristen Davies.”

“Um…Chris Ryan.”

“So…how long are you staying here?”

“I live here now, as of today.”

Finally, I had managed to surprise her, it seemed, as her eyes went wide.

“God, I didn’t think anyone lived here except old people and us.”

I had to laugh at that; it tallied with my view of Portarlington so well; it was as if she read my mind.

“So, where do you go to school, Chris?”

“Um…I’m starting year 10 at Morrison College.”

Now it was her turn to laugh.

“Snap! I’m in year 10 this year at Morrison, so we will be seeing more of each other. I’m glad. I never thought I would have someone from my school in the town. I will have to tell Mum; she will be pleased.”

“Why, what has your mum got to do with it?”

“Hah, she is a teacher there, in English.”

Oh, fuck…I knew the name was familiar…I had a Mrs. Davies for English this year. God help me, I was falling for my English teacher’s daughter on the first day in town.

“So Chris…can I ask you a question?”

“Yes, anything.”

“Why are you sitting on a beach at 3:30 in the morning quoting poetry?”

The room was grey: grey paint, grey furnishings, grey blinds. I guess it was meant to be non-confrontational, a total abnegation of any colour or form, just pure function. If they wanted it to be non-distracting, they could at least have ensured the air conditioning worked, for after a while the greyness entered my mind, and the dank stuffy atmosphere lay like a clinging pall over my consciousness. About an hour, tops, then I needed a break -- air, water, colour, any sort of stimulus, really, as well as a couple of paracetamol.

Doctor Weissman seemed to know the room’s special qualities and knew when to take a break.

“So, Chris, we are making progress, though slowly. I thought you would never open up about your father, though we will need to go back there, at least I have some understanding now. Just out of curiosity, did you tell Kristen that night anything about why you were there?”

“No. I made up something about being unable to sleep because of the waves. I did tell her some things later; in fact, I thought at one time she was the one person I could really trust, and I told her more than I had told to anyone else at that time.”

“I notice you used the past tense then, Chris. What happened? I ask because I understand a Kristen Davies tried to visit you here, but you refused to see her. “

“I need a break!” was my only reply. That, too, would come in time, but not now. Not just now. I had had enough for one afternoon.