The Family Men

Published by Black Inc.,
an imprint of Schwartz Publishing Pty Ltd
37–39 Langridge Street
Collingwood VIC 3066 Australia
email:
[email protected]
http://www.blackincbooks.com

Copyright © Catherine Harris 2014
Catherine Harris asserts her right to be known as the author of this work.

A
LL
R
IGHTS
R
ESERVED.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior consent of the publishers.

The National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

Harris, Catherine, author.
The family men / Catherine Harris.
9781863956833 (pbk)
9781922231666 (ebook)
Football players – Fiction. Scandals – Fiction.
A823.4

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body.

For Chop and Loolai

This is a work of fiction. Like most works of fiction, it is inspired by observations of real-life experiences and events. However, none of the events described in this book has any factual basis and every character has been created by the author, so any possible resemblance of any character to a living person is entirely coincidental.

Contents

Prologue

I.
Resignation

II.
Reconsideration

III.
Renunciation

Acknowledgements

PROLOGUE

After the bang of the Grand Final, the year
ends with a whimper. Exhaustion. Anticlimax. The off-season looming as regular training sessions dissolve into the long summer days of heat, dust and sweat, the beach better suited to playing cricket than to football, the team disappearing into their secular roles, reconstituted as sober sons, lovers and family men.

The Club likes to give the boys a little send-off before they go. Something to lift their spirits, to tide them over until the new year gets started, a flamboyant gesture that says job well done. There is the annual Beer & Bangers Family Bash, but that's an all-comers affair. “Best not to bring the wives and girlfriends to
this
party,” advises Laurie (their coach) with a grin as he hands out details at the door. “Or they won't be your wives and girlfriends anymore.”

Some of the fellas laugh.

Harry tears open the crisp white card, rubs the embossed gold lettering, feels it smooth beneath his thumb.

Sportsman's Night
, it says.
You are invited
.

I.

Resignation

Harry can't take the screaming. “Stop it,”
he commands, as he plunges his fingers deep inside of her, the warmth of her body enveloping his knuckles, her skin pressed against his as she writhes beneath him, her legs forced apart by his knees, the weight of his body supported by his left hand as he assails her with his right, watching the seasons of expression pass across her face from bewilderment and joy to confusion and pain – spring, summer, autumn, winter – a library of responses articulating her shock, and then she opens her eyes and stares right at him, a fixed affront as he continues to plumb her pinioned body, her inability to get away fuelling his desire for her, a fast mounting torrent rising to a breathless crest so that he doesn't think he can hold on much longer, the will to let go subsuming his pleasure in the waiting, the delayed gratification demanding a release, his body teetering on the narrow ledge, feeling his balance falter, having to grip so that he won't fall, the solid frame of his childhood single bed a half metre above the ground, and then the slow dawning that the girl's groan is in fact his own, a sound released by his own body, the girl herself a recurring figment of his imagination, an apparition of his own making, one he is responsible for, issuing his own denunciations –
you, you did this
– hagridden, as though being judged by his own subconscious, immediately overwhelmed by a flood of disgust and shame, grateful to the rising insistence of dawn for dislodging his unwelcome dreams (nightmares, you might more accurately call them). And then he is awake. Alone again but for the sound of his hurried breath in a tiny bedroom his mother calls his lion's den.

This is Harry. Harry. Also known as Pipsqueak, Squeak, Squeaker, Squib, Two, Nipper, HRH, the Little Prince, or sometimes just the Kid, what they call the younger brother. Mostly. One of the myriad of handles directed to his face. There being plenty of other names for him behind his back. Useless. Washout. Limp rag. Spare. Your standard stuff. Nothing particularly imaginative. And nothing he isn't aware of to some extent or another. Feeling like he was born with a string of addendums: Son of … Brother of … Good for … Though rarely stated directly. Most people sticking to the script, front of house. So that typically it is Harry, a contraction of Harold, phonetic pronunciation, plain and simple. Second issue of Alan “Senior” Furey and Diana Furey, married fourteen years, separated three, divorced six. One brother (Matt), a series of loyal, now deceased pets buried in his mother's back garden (two guinea pigs, two cats, a budgerigar, and Superman the goldfish, having dodged the traditional toilet bowl disposal) and there you have it. Nothing particularly complicated about that. Yet each night is a tribulation. His mind a maelstrom of dreams, tossing and turning, the girl's face looming in and out of his delirium as he lies with her, her body sometimes willing, sometimes not, but always with that stare, as though she is wanting something from him, her direct gaze beseeching him for help.

He has always been a light sleeper but this is different. This waking in a cold sweat, his skin slippery, the mattress drenched. For a moment there he thinks he has wet the bed, that childhood affliction returned to embarrass him in his adulthood, but the damp pillow reassures him it is only perspiration, like the previous night, and the night before that, the mattress quietly staining a rusty sweaty yellow, these hallucinations occurring more and more frequently, so that he often finds himself on the couch at 4 am, wide awake and exhausted, watching music videos on TV.

Dark shadows form under his eyes. He looks like he has a sinus infection.

His mother thinks it is the flu, or a vitamin deficiency, or some other lifestyle-induced malaise – sweating, racing heart, a smothered feeling – brought on by a poor diet and overdoing it. “Too many takeaways,” she says, her explanation for everything (not that she is offering to cook). Or, too many late nights, or his body reacting to the influence of someone she doesn't like, or some combination thereof. “You should have gone on the footy trip,” is her bottom line. “Everybody needs a little R & R.”

“Yes, probably,” answers Harry. The path of least resistance, to agree. He doesn't want to get into it with her, the whys and wherefores of him not joining the rest of the team for their traditional end-of-season jaunt overseas, unable to get his mind around it, the unbearable prospect of more of the same in Bali or Las Vegas or Honolulu – massages on the beach, pulled pork at the luau, Jack and Eddy spanking the cocktail waitresses, his brother tooling it up in a hula skirt. And he is hardly going to tell her about the girl. It is not exactly a mother's business, that kind of information, unseemly to know those details about one's children's private lives. Sordid. That's what the newspapers would probably call it. Sordid or seedy or smutty. The tabloids' three favourite words when it comes to describing their family (a not so holy adjectival trinity), as though they are incapable of anything wholesome and clean, the entire brood dedicated to giving public offence. Certainly Diana has enough on her mind (isn't there always something) without having to digest that information; if not them then work, hocking promotional merchandise to desperate businesses looking for an edge, the house littered with random pens and stickers, catchy slogans from companies long bitten the dust. Though maybe he should have told her the truth. Maybe that's what he needs, to get it off his chest.

His wardrobe, once part of a strategic childhood fort complex, sits impassively in the half light; the bookcase stacked with atrophied games, Battleship, KerPlunk, lining the shelves as uselessly as the football trophies atop his chest of drawers. Harry sits up, tries to control his breathing, concentrates on inhaling through his nose, exhaling through his mouth.
And breathing in, count for two, and out, count for two
, until his pulse settles down, his palms clammy against the sheets, imagining himself inhaling the energy of the sun or some shit,
let its warmth loosen your muscles
, as counselled by the Club's yoga instructor, Andrea (pronounced on-dray-uh, she is quick to correct, lest anyone mistake Camberwell for Epping), a pretty twenty-something brunette (aren't they all pretty?) in bare feet and bright Lycra pants, brought in once a week to teach the boys relaxation exercises and to improve their flexibility.

They are well attended, those yoga sessions, all attention focussed on her shapely arse, as she bends and twists in front of them (balancing in the tree position, sticking her ankles behind her ears), demonstrating a series of impossible poses for them to emulate as the lads apply themselves to her instruction, lying face forward, hips pressed to the ground, pretending to concentrate on their technique. He inhales again, slowly, and then allows a quick release, the taut moons of Andrea's neat defined behind something to fix on, crowding out the other images until he feels himself calm down.

It's the not-knowing that's eating him up. Margo does her best to get it out of him, tossing around a handful of names – Tiffany and Brandi, Candy, Keely, Bella, Estelle – but she still isn't decided. There are so many to choose from. Though she is leaning towards Brandi. That sounds about right. “Come on, tell me, am I close?” It's an appropriate name given the situation.

“Name? Whose name? What situation? What are you talking about?” says Harry, though he knows exactly, he knows immediately.

“The stripper,” says Margo. “The girl.”

Yes, Sportsman's Night. That would serve him right for ringing her back. But you don't ignore a call from your favourite “aunty” (self-appointed). Or four calls.
No good deed goes unpunished.
He hadn't wanted to talk to her – he'd tried forgetting – but guilt had got the better of him even though he had nothing to report.
You know it's “no comment”, Maggie
, he'd imagined himself saying, his pet name for her, picturing her rolling her eyes as he said it, the way she always did, before correcting him:
It's Margo, not Maggie, how many times do I have to tell you?
Which typically only egged him on. Yet, it didn't change anything, he'd inform her. There was still nothing to write home about.
I promise
, he'd add, anticipating her fake disappointment. And then,
Oh, Harry
, from her. All part of the game they played – because it was true, if he did ever have any news she was the first journalist he'd call – the way she courted him and he, in turn, courted her. But that was another conversation.

“A good show, was it?”

“What are you getting at? I don't know anything about it,” he continues, a ridiculous pretence, because of course he knows. They all know. They were all there. Were all involved to some extent or another. Knowing is par for the course.

“You and everybody else,” says Margo.

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“Just that I've asked around. No one's talking. They don't even answer my emails.”

“It's the footy trip. What do you expect?”

“All having too much fun, you reckon?”

“Yeah. And maybe there's nothing to say on the subject. Why do you assume there's more to it?”

Margo laughs. “Come on, Harry. Not even a wig and a pair of fake boobs? On Sportsman's Night? That's not going to fly. I didn't come down in the last shower. Someone's got to have drunk too much. Done something stupid. Who are you trying to kid? Jack was there, wasn't he? And there's no show without Punch, so Eddy too.” They are the team's other pair of brothers, foundation of the Club's legacy drive, “We are
the
family club”; five years older but with a third less talent and chips on their shoulders to boot. “Would you have me believe that those two sat around behaving like perfect gentlemen?”

She is right, he knows she is. How could he have thought it might be otherwise?

Like all of them, he had dressed carefully for the evening, fastening his cummerbund, then adjusting his tie; Michelle, the girl at the formal-wear company, having recommended a clip-on model, unless he was experienced at tying a bow tie (which he wasn't), though even with the clip-on he still needed to be mindful of the band, she'd warned him, that it didn't shift around his neck too much throughout the evening, affecting the position of the bow – they didn't want him looking lopsided (a dead give-away that he was wearing a ready-made).

This was his inaugural year, the first time he'd been eligible to attend the Club's night of nights (the management board self-consciously old-school, restricting the minimum age to twenty-one). Last year he had been just six weeks shy, and while the administration would have turned a blind eye, not so his mother, who let it be known that if it was up to her neither he nor his brother would be attending this year either, there being plenty of other opportunities for them to enjoy themselves without resorting to this institutionalised, legitimised debauchery. “I just can't understand why you'd want to upset me like this,” she'd said when they told her they were going anyway. “The Bible says you're meant to honour your parents. Don't my wishes mean anything to you?” But it isn't about pleasing her or not pleasing her. At the end of the day what matters most is being seen as a team player, a good bloke, one of the boys. Would she really mean to deny them that?

He inserted the black opal cufflinks through the buttonholes, double-checking their fit, his mum having threatened to kill him if he lost them, belonging to her father as they had, her only heirlooms (she didn't want him going, but if he insisted on being there then at the very least he should look good). “Here,” he'd said, handing them back. “I don't have to wear them, Mum. Or better yet, you wear them. I'll stay home.”

“Over my dead body,” said Matt. “You're coming with me, like it or not” (it wasn't an occasion for pretty companions and his brother hated turning up to places alone).

Harry was nervous. He knew how these things went, the elaborate pranks, everyone keen to test the mettle of the young guys (him); at very least a dacking or a lap dance was in order (shades of the Under 16s, soggy biscuit competitions at training camp, sculling port between rounds, the seniors taking bets on who would yak first). It was a rookie's rite of passage.

“Just keep your wits about you and don't drink too much,” advised his brother, though as if he would have. He didn't want to be caught with his pants down.

Still, he wore his best pair of jocks.

Precautions.

As they waited at the hotel registration desk for their room keys, Matt reminded him to keep a low profile. “Watch your back, is all I'm saying. I'm not saying anything'll happen. Just that it wouldn't be unheard of if it did.”

Margo rephrases her question. “Did Jack and Eddy do anything untoward, anything you think I'd like to know?

Harry wants to smash the phone against the wall but knows it will only make matters worse, that he has to see the conversation through if he has any hope of throwing her off the scent. Bugging him for dirt, and nearly four weeks later too. Just when he has almost convinced himself it might be possible to sweep the whole tawdry affair under the proverbial rug, that if he just keeps trying eventually the memory might fade, be diluted by time until it is forgotten, as all bad dreams are eventually forgotten (who inventories their dreams?), overtaken by the relentlessness of the present, the constancy of the new. Though if that is the way it works then surely his dad should have forgotten by now. And surely he should have stopped obsessing about her too.

The girl, the girl, the girl. Tiffany or Brandi, Candy or Keely, Bella or Estelle. He hadn't thought a name could make such a difference, but it does.

Without a name the girl is still just an idea. A face in the crowd. Anybody. Nobody. A fantasy, a fiction. Someone capable of being bypassed, overlooked, omitted, let go. With a name, however, she becomes a real person, rounded and central, whole and present. Which isn't to say that Harry doesn't believe she is a real person already. But a name bestows a history and a context. A backstory, the reporters like to say. Somewhere to have come from. Someone to have been. These details having a nasty way of overlapping with other details, overlapping and expanding, becoming bigger stories, more prominent stories, systematic and involved, with sources and quotes and witnesses to events all corroborating each other until they have a proper beginning, middle and end, the kind summarised by a double-width headline you might see on the front page of the daily newspaper, the kind of newspaper Margo writes for.