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Sweet sixteen today and I’ve only been kissed once, by Nicole Parker. Terrific but ended badly. Regret at my lack of experience was weighing heavily on my mind as I sat in one of the fleet of minibuses taking Year 10 to see

CHARLES DARWIN: VOYAGES AND IDEAS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD

at the National Maritime Museum in Pyrmont.

Our first stop was a re-creation of Darwin’s cabin; a flimsy hammock was strung up above a table and chairs. Having been to the exhibition twice already, Tibor Mintz assumed the role of personal guide, unaware of my personal connection to the subject.

‘Darwin shared it with two others,’ he said. ‘Charting coastlines was the main point of the voyage, not his specimen-collecting.’

‘It would’ve been awesome sailing around the world,’ I said.

‘Except that he suffered from terrible seasickness.’

‘Still, what an adventure.’

Starkey poked my back. ‘Why are you hanging out with T-boring? Come and check out Darwin’s crabs.’ He pulled me over to the display of crabs caught on the epic voyage, on loan from Oxford University. ‘Do you reckon they flew over first class?’

‘Sure,’ Nads said, cuffing his head. ‘They were served oysters and champagne on take-off, dickhead.’

I broke away to check out the drawings and watercolours of South America’s flora and fauna. Who’d have the patience to record everything so meticulously? There would’ve been so much work in pickling all the insects, and skinning and stuffing animals. Lucky Darwin had a trusty cabin boy, Syms Covington, assisting him. I bet they had some interesting conversations as they chowed down on roast turtle.

Heather Treadwell, leader of the Crestfield Bible Study Group, and David York, staunch atheist, were having a discussion on the existence of Noah’s ark beside the display of flesh-eating plants. David was arguing that the larger, more ferocious animals would’ve devoured the smaller ones before the first drop of rain fell. Heather countered that God can do anything because he’s God – including creating man fully formed, without the involvement of evolution. Having been a member of the Fire Station Church for six months, where they preached quite a literal interpretation of scripture, I could appreciate where Heather was coming from, but evolution is a scientific fact.

‘Show them your backside and win the argument for the atheist,’ Homunculus said distinctly. I thought Heather and David had heard him too because they both turned and looked at me at that exact moment. I skulked away, scorched by shame.

During lunch, Starkey spread a rumour of a bikini parade at the upstairs exhibition, EXPOSED! THE STORY OF SWIMWEAR, and persuaded a group of us to sneak in and check it out. When Nads and Mullows realised he was bullshitting, they punched him and left. But three black-and-white photos on the walls caught my eye.

The first was of Australian swimmer Annette Kellermann posing in front of a painted ocean backdrop, foot resting on fake stone. She was wearing a thigh-length one-piece with tights underneath. The caption said that Harvard professor Dudley Sargent had measured thousands of students and, finding Annette’s proportions closest to the Venus de Milo, he’d declared her the perfect woman. I guess she was the 1910 version of Vienna Voronova. A year later, Annette was the first woman to swim with a mermaid tail in a film and, five years after that, the first big star to do a nude scene. Serious legend.

Beneath was an 1890s shot of American performer Hilda Groot swimming with a mermaid tail in a tank at Coney Island in New York. Standing outside the tank on either side were two men poised to spear each other with tridents. One had virtually no limbs, with his hands and feet appearing to be attached directly to his torso, making him very short. The other was tall and well built. Their names, according to the caption, were Paulo Esposito and Edwin Stroud.

Holy smoke! Edwin Stroud: he was the author of My One Redeeming Affliction. I googled him on my phone, but the only relevant results I found directed me back to his biography, which I had at home, and the website for the EXPOSED! exhibition. My curiosity about this Stroud guy was off the charts.

The bottom photo had been taken a few years earlier than the second at Pyrmont Baths, which were once not far from the museum. Ten scrawny boys in old-fashioned vested swimming costumes are sitting on the edge of the tidal pool, arms around each other’s shoulders. Another boy is sitting apart from them, and not looking at the camera. He is Edwin Stroud at sixteen. His stark isolation caused a lump of sadness to rise in my throat. I glanced back at the photo above, of him with Paulo and the mermaid. ‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘Things get better for you.’

 

At home, I went straight to the book and flicked through the pages, looking for images, but there were none. The thrilling coincidence of seeing those two photographs was still buzzing in my head, and I was impatient to discover exactly what Edwin’s affliction was now that I knew he’d become some sort of aquatic performer. I wanted to jump ahead to the point where he makes an appearance in his own biography. But then I recalled Pop Locke telling me that, ‘Once a person connects with their ancestry, they’ll never be alone again.’ Learning about Edwin’s parents would help me understand him better. I would allow the story to unfold as the author had intended.

There was no time for reading, anyway. I had to write a report about what I’d learnt today at the museum, and Mum, Venn and Nana Locke were meeting us soon in the city for my birthday dinner. The first full family meeting since the separation. With Venn having spilt the beans on Dad’s fateful ‘indiscretion’ and nobody else knowing that I knew, the awkwardness indicator was nudging catastrophic.

Dad changed his shirt twice before I got him out of the apartment. William Street was warm and sticky, heavy with the smell of an approaching storm. We walked past three campervan rentals, a pawn shop and two prestige car dealerships before stopping at a small alcove, stale with piss. There was a door with no handle, covered with scabby poster remnants advertising festivals and bands I’d never heard of. Stencilled on the manky collage was the word V e n e e R.

The door opened before we’d knocked, revealing a slender woman in a miniskirt almost as wide as a bandaid, holding a metal clipboard.

‘Good evening, Mr Locke. The other members of your party haven’t arrived yet. Perhaps you’d like to wait at the bar?’

The bar was schmick. The counter and tabletops were printed with vintage Kings Cross images embedded with twinkling LEDs. Checking out the other patrons, I realised we were the uncoolest people in one of the coolest bars in Sydney.

‘Name your poison,’ Dad said. ‘It’s your sixteenth birthday and we’re toasting your grandfather tonight.’

I looked at the drinks list and chose the ale with the best name. ‘Lampwick’s Cigar.’

‘Two Lampwick’s IPAs,’ Dad said to the barman, who winked and pulled the beers. We carried them to a corner table.

‘To Pop Locke,’ Dad said. We chinked glasses, and the first sip of a frothy cold beer with my Dad was bitterly magic. I shared a story from a couple of years ago, when Pop took me night-fishing on Pittwater. Venn’s boyfriend, Elliot, had taken the tinnie out for a spin the day before without telling him, and left it almost empty of fuel. So Pop and I became stranded in the middle of the bay at midnight and started rowing back. Pop prayed that God would have mercy and rescue us and, sure enough, ten minutes later a fishing boat came by and picked us up. Pop bemoaned the diminishing number of fish in his favourite spot to the skipper, who, upon dropping us off at the wharf, appeased him with an enormous kingfish. Pop used to joke that it was the biggest fish he’d ever caught.

Tonight the beer started making me feel pretty damn fine about getting melancholic, as Dad began telling a story from when he was my age and helped Pop build an extension on their tiny fibro cottage in Blacktown. Before he could finish, three women appeared on a monitor above the bar. Nana Locke was fanning herself, Mum was checking her make-up and Venn was looking incredulous at the deceptively low-rent façade – the grungy veneer of V e n e e R. I skolled my beer before the miniskirted lady let them in.

‘Here’s a sight for sore eyes,’ Dad said, and gave Venn a kiss on the cheek, which she appeared to accept with suprising equanimity. He then went for Mum but she air-kissed him as she would a colleague. Nana Locke had earlier stipulated that the evening was to be a celebration and that nobody was to become maudlin – and she’d dressed accordingly, in a floral smock and trousers. But when we hugged, I sensed the hidden depth of her grief in the tightness of her grip.

We all sat, and Venn pulled a silver package from a paper shopping bag and gave it to me. ‘Joyeux anniversaire, mon frère. It’s just a book.’ She beamed with anticipation as I tore off the foil.

‘Brilliant. The Picture of Dorian Gray. It’s on my reading list.’

‘That’s why I got it,’ she said. ‘Don’t you like it?’

‘Of course he likes it,’ Dad said. ‘Tell your sister you like it.’

‘I already said brilliant.’

‘I’ve written a birthday message on the inside cover, so it can’t be returned.’

I opened the book to read the message and a green bill fluttered out. ‘A hundgy!’ I sniffed it. ‘Fresh mint – mighty generous of you.’

‘Actually, Nana slipped that one in.’

Nana winked at me. ‘It’s from Pop as well,’ she said. ‘And so is this.’ She handed me a small box wrapped in red paper, which I removed intact. Inside the box was a mint-green jar of Swiss Valley Hair Pomade™. ‘I finally began going through Pop’s belongings,’ Nana said. ‘But I just couldn’t bear to throw anything away. And I know how much you two loved your visits to the barber.’

‘Thank you for the best present ever,’ I said and then without warning, hiccupped.

Mum’s face darkened as she examined, then sniffed, my schooner. ‘You’ve been drinking beer?’

‘It would seem that way,’ Dad said.

‘Have you seen the ad with the drunk teenager wobbling on a tightrope? One in three hospitalisations of young people results from alcohol consumption.’

‘That PSA was one of ours. It’s one in four.’

‘I concede,’ Mum said. ‘Wrong yet again.’

‘Concession noted and accepted.’ Dad lifted his empty glass. ‘Cheers.’

‘Don’t be smug, Lance. Buying alcohol for your underage son is the giddy limit of hypocrisy. Especially considering his test drive into oblivion last year. What were you thinking?’

‘We were just toasting my father on the anniversary of his passing.’

‘Don’t use your father as a scapegoat – it’s undignified. He was a lifelong teetotaller and wouldn’t be at all impressed.’

Nana Locke caught my eye and gave a little shrug. Well acquainted with Bombay Sapphire and fond of an after-dinner sherry, she stayed out of the quarrel. The miniskirted woman arrived in the nick of time and escorted us by tiny elevator to an elegant underground cavern – soft, with rounded edges and dark-chocolate walls – and seated us in a booth that had a glowing orange teardrop suspended from the ceiling.

Pre–family crisis, dining had always been a communal affair, with a lot of plate-sharing. Tonight, when Mum refused to try Dad’s entrée, he twirled some squid ink spaghetti on his fork and held it to her mouth. She pushed his hand away, causing three slick worms to drop onto her cream silk top. Dad dipped a napkin in water.

‘Don’t even,’ Mum said and went to the ladies, Venn in tow.

Things settled during the mains until Dad asked if Mum had ‘any interesting little projects on the boil?’

‘That’s a teenie bit patronising,’ she said.

‘I’ve always spoken like that.’

‘The dawn of self-awareness.’ Mum lifted her glass for the waitress to fill. ‘I’m producing a big launch for a prestige client. But it’s all a bit hush-hush right now.’

Dad touched the side of his nose. ‘Mum’s the word.’ He steered the conversation to Venn, and she revealed that she’d chosen to study naturopathy instead of law. Dad’s brow furrowed in an expression of subdued disappointment. He asked Venn a few loaded questions, which she answered with the deftness and conviction of somebody who’d practised their response.

Defeated by the rhetoric he’d trained her to use, Dad relented. ‘Whatever you think’s best.’

Nobody ordered dessert. There was no cake. Nobody even suggested singing ‘Happy Birthday’, which was a massive relief. Nana Locke looked at her wristwatch and brought proceedings to an end by announcing that it was almost ten, and that she should get home because her neighbour Glenda was dogsitting Tippi.

On the way out Mum said, ‘Oh I almost forgot,’ and gave me a Westfield gift card, which must’ve required a lot of thought.

‘Wow! Thank you. I don’t deserve it.’

‘Nonsense.’

Despite the friction and occasional snide jabs, I wished the whole family had been walking home together. Instead, Dad and I said our awkward goodbyes to the ladies outside the restaurant and began walking up William Street. Halfway up, the storm broke, so I shoved the paper bag holding my presents under my shirt and we ran.

Back at the apartment, showered and dried off, I began reading Dorian Gray. He’s a handsome rooster who’s so full of himself and afraid of his looks fading that he sells his soul, committing his life to total pleasure-seeking without physical consequence. A portrait of him, painted by an artist called Basil, starts to bear the signs of his ageing instead, and becomes increasingly grotesque. Mr Field asked us in class to make note of how Oscar Wilde treats the notion of living a double life, and compare it with Robert Louis Stevenson’s treatment in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

‘Shouldn’t be a stretch,’ Homunculus said. ‘You’re a bit of an expert on the double life.’

‘Please be quiet,’ I said.

But Homunculus wouldn’t shut up. ‘You’ll be making your screen debut on Friday the thirteenth.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Deb Gelber is filming you for stroke correction in swim clinic tomorrow. Good luck with that.’

A new level of dread gripped me at the thought of the nub not only being exposed, but also recorded and shown to the rest of the squad. Hoping that a sniff of the Swiss Valley Hair Pomade™ might alleviate my panic by transporting me to happier times, I jumped out of bed and looked for it in the paper bag. It wasn’t there. It wasn’t in my room, or the kitchen or the bathroom. I called the restaurant to find out if I’d left it there. Nobody answered – there was only a recorded message directing the caller to book on their website.

I returned to bed, distraught and furious at myself for losing something so precious to me. Sleep eventually arrived in the form of a tiny elevator cabin with carpeted walls like the one at V e n e e R. I asked the operator, a shadowy figure with his back to me, to take me down to the restaurant. He pushed a button and the cabin descended. But it continued down past that level. Deaf to my pleas, the operator kept pushing buttons, taking us lower and lower underground, faster and faster, until I shouted, ‘WHO ARE YOU?’

The lift stopped with a spine-cracking thud. The operator turned around and I looked into his terrified eyes. The operator was me. The door opened and somehow it was already Friday morning.