THE SEA

Back in Sydney for reasons only Ashley knows, we’re in the cushy front bedroom of what he calls a Federation brick bungalow, as guests of a Greek couple and their grey-skinned little boy. Through the venetians is the sports field of South Sydney Boys’ High, where I start my first-ever day of high school soon.

Because it’s midwinter, I’m not in training, but Ashley suggests we ‘go and check out’ the off-season laps being done by my old Maroubra club mates in the new South Sydney Junior Leagues Club pool. ‘Almost everyone in Sydney trains through winter now,’ he lectures. My response, ‘okay’, is the least I can do to feed the idea, yet not enough to prevent the following evening’s visit, when I’m daunted by the sight of scores of bodies stitching the length of every foggy lane in a vast, atrium-encircled indoor pool.

On Saturday, we visit Ashley’s old swimming mate Sep Prosser at his new Woollahra indoor pool, where one of his offsiders, the great John Konrads, offers me some tips. I’m instructed to swim ten laps of backstroke keeping a scrap of rubber fixed between my chin and chest, apparently to keep my head still — and it’s suddenly the weirdest sensation to be floating in this strange above-ground, concrete-walled pool. It’s like I’m bobbing in an overfilled bath and I’ll spill over the side if I go crooked and bump into a wall from all this focus on a silly bit of rubber. And I see not the usual waterline view of coaches’ hairy legs walking by, but only upper torsos sliding up and back like tin ducks in a sideshow shooting gallery. Anyway, now that the coaches have turned their backs to chat, it looks like I was just given this scrap of rubber to keep me busy and make my neck stiff so that old Sep could boast to Ashley how much I’ll have improved on climbing out, and could we now please kindly leave?

At the education department in the middle of Sydney for my grade placement on Monday, I’m interviewed by a nice tall busy lady whose long floral skirt never stops whirling around her like a dance partner, while Ashley sits in the reception. Half an hour of written tests later, she returns me to Ashley where we’re to wait for the placements officer, adding cheerfully, ‘Well, he’s smart enough,’ and I wonder what sort of report says ‘smart enough’. Soon, a man with a weightlifter’s body, presumably the placements officer, sprawls to face us on the settee opposite, his arms gathering its whole length and his legs spread. His trousers are a size small, he’s wearing a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches, and his hair cut is a fierce short-back-and-sides with the top raked back like a pelt of glistening echidna quills. When our Holden idles between tall city buildings ten minutes later, Ashley turns the radio down, leans across, and asks gravely, ‘What on earth did he have in those trousers?’ And we laugh our way out of town.

In my school enrolment interview on Friday, the vice-principal gets chatty and suggests I might be a descendant of the famous social reformer Lord Shaftesbury; the Lord’s actual name was Anthony Ashley-Cooper, seventh earl of Shaftesbury. At first I’m thrilled he picked up on this, but soon wonder if he really is some sort of history buff or if Ashley tried to gloss the appearance of blow-ins from nowhere; it wouldn’t be the first time. ‘I’m not too sure,’ I tell him. ‘My father seems to think so.’

When I head down the hall for my first day of high school on Monday morning, the Greek mum waits in an excited hunch near the door. She’s in a padded cream dressing gown buttoned to the neck, collar flipped high like an Elizabethan lady’s, and smiling with a keen, glazed squint. When I pause at the door, she slaps up my blazer shoulders with a cranky frown, slips my tie knot to a near-choke, and plants a blockbuster kiss on my cheek.

After school, Ashley and I are shopping in Anzac Parade when he dives into a phone box, leaving his grocery parcel and me outside. ‘Quick call about a job,’ he says. I’m still at the half-open door when he starts dialling and hands me his handkerchief with instructions to fold it into a small square, and when I hand it back he stuffs it into the mouthpiece. I don’t know whose ear he’ll be chewing through that snot rag, but wonder how he expects to be heard clearly. When he finally talks into it, his voice is much higher and faster than usual, and then his hand snakes back to close the door on me.

Our visit to watch my old club mates train must have made an impression on Ashley, because on Saturday we’ve pulled up at the Coogee RSL indoor pool, where I’m supposed to do some easy laps for my own introduction to winter training. We’re still parked outside, where I’m saying I don’t feel like it; I want to wait until we settle somewhere or return to Brisbane. ‘But we’re already here,’ he barks, ‘so you’re not backing out now.’ After a bit more back and forth, I say, ‘Shut up,’ I’m slapped, and we’re heading back to the Greeks.

When I leave for school on Monday, Ashley says he’ll pick me up for lunch; apparently we’ll drive to the beach somewhere. This is odd, I’m thinking; it’s never happened before. On the lunch bell, I go straight to the school gate and soon we’re heading down O’Sullivan Avenue and crossing Anzac Parade before winding along Fitzgerald to the beach. I notice he’s brought something to eat, though it’s just this miniature Tupperware tub on the seat between us, a faint impression of crackers under the lid. (I’d seen us buying lunch at a cafe.) But we don’t stop at the beach. We climb Marine Parade instead and swing onto the headland where other lunch cars are parked. Suddenly it’s dark and blowy, hovering gulls jerking on gusts like L-plate puppets above the first few cars. But we don’t join these; we must be going further for privacy. Neither do we pull up at the middle pack, but cruise through a last scattering to within a pool width of the cliff — trust my father to want to outdo them all! And we keep on, not accelerating but at a steady roll. When do we stop? I wonder. Suddenly the only future I can see is sideways, and as I jump out the door Ashley throws himself across the seat to make a clutch, his hand brushing my leg, but I’m already on the gravel. Yes, fantastic! ‘Get back in,’ he barks, still stretched sidelong on the bench. Not on your life! I glare back, dusting myself off and jogging for the road, while he does a three-point turn and rolls the car back. To be on the safe side, I head twenty metres down Marine Parade to wait; across the road, the unshaven cafe owners watch from their flickering servery. Nothing’s said heading back to school.

After school, Mrs Greek invites — orders — me to sit at her kitchen table, where I position my legs in front of the chair she pulls out; with gentle pressure on my shoulders she eases me towards the formica’s white swirls. Today she’s teaching me about her birthplace, and opens a waiting atlas to the western Hellas coast, and an island spelled Lefkas.

‘Leff-kuss,’ she proclaims. ‘Now you say!’

‘Leff-kuss,’ I say back.

‘No, Lefk-garce,’ she corrects.

‘Lefk-garce?’

‘No-no, Levvv-f-garze!’

There must be tiny differences I’m not picking up, maybe because I wasn’t raised among rocky outcrops and Thalassa like her. I know about this Thalassa because I glimpsed it on a travel brochure on this very kitchen table on my first day here. (‘What’s Thassala mean?’ I’d asked Ashley afterwards. ‘I think you mean Thalassa,’ he explained, ‘the sea.’)

Of course, I’m never going to say Lefkas perfectly, like the Swiss teacher at school who can’t help saying ‘Chermans’ for Germans and ‘walley’ for valley, and Indians who say ‘garment’ for government. I give it one last shot: ‘Leff-vvv-guzzz?’

‘No-no-NO!’

Suddenly I’m teary because I hate being wrong every time. My left hand has been resting on the atlas all along, and she’s had hold of my wrist, squeezing and pushing sometimes like it’s a tiller on the map’s sea. Is this squeeze to hiss a longer s? This nudge to Turkey for a softer k?

‘LEVFKGUZZ-UH,’ she says one last time, a little growly. When I can’t reply, she sighs loudly before abandoning the tiller and slapping both hands on the sides of her dressing gown to huff, ‘You definitely not coming to Lefkas with us!’ and we’re both laughing. I get a history lesson instead. She mentions the name Periander and tells me confusing facts about an isthmus. Is she saying Lefkas wasn’t always an island: that some rich old king cut a canal through it for his olive ships to pass? And I’m in her little Sydney kitchen 2000 years later and care?

When her husband enters the lounge room on Saturday as I watch pop songs on TV from their mustard settee, he’s all yacht, his big singlet-spinnaker-belly lifting him along. He breezes in, looks at me, the TV, then me again, disappears back to his wife in the kitchen, and returns (did I hear her shoo him back?). He stays this time, swings his belly my way, and then back to watch Ray Brown and the Whispers singing ‘Wonderful World’. When Ray warbles, ‘Don’t know much about his-tor-y, don’t know much ge-ol-ogy,’ Mr Greek turns to me and mutters, ‘This singer, he don’t know much, don’t he?’ When I finally get it and reply, ‘Yes … no … yes he don’t — doesn’t,’ we’re roaring like pirates.