EGGHEAD’S SILLY GAME

Every other Sunday since the end of the season, Laphead’s dad, Egghead, has hosted Ashley and me for lunch at their dry few acres out of town. After cautiously eyeing each other’s coaching efforts from opposite ends of the pool after we first hit town, the dads joined forces in midsummer to take turns training their instant team of two. Soon I was handing Egghead cryptic poolside coaching notes from Ashley, always in an envelope jokily addressed, ‘To The Swimologist’. After a quick scan, Egghead would stuff the contents in his back pocket with a belly laugh. The pair obviously hit it off. (Egghead runs the local jail, and Ashley, of course, the drive-in theatre. ‘I pull ’em in, and you haul ’em in,’ was Ashley’s take on their civic roles at our first lunch.) Training in Laphead’s lane was fine, except in our lap breaks when he kept making these odd coughing-through-the-nose sounds, like the letter K had broken away from some word in there and he had to hack it out. When I asked, ‘What’s with the noises?’, he told me that sportsmen were supposed to breathe in through the mouth and out through the nose. I’d heard this theory before, but only from coaches Ashley called antediluvians. Anyway, I felt Laphead took it way too far. He didn’t use his nose only to exhale, but turned it into a double-barrelled snot-gun — you could hear those palate-ripping discharges coming underwater. He did the dry version when he ran.

The dads had contrasting coaching styles. Ashley strolled the side of the pool with hands clasped behind, gazing up, glancing sideways, whistling the odd ditty, flinging an occasional loose foot upwards. But when Egghead took us he was a statue at the end of the pool, his right hand in constant contact with the block, one foot resting up on the pool coping. Standing there in the low sun, he might have been General MacArthur if not for the baldness, singlet, and concrete-splashed thongs.

Their home’s an old weatherboard workers’ cottage on fat knee-high stumps, every surface painted white, Australiana bric-a-brac on every hook and shelf. Out on their paddock sit a few quaint drays and buggies which will soon be earning their keep as wedding-photo props. Mrs Egghead serves a formal lunch, bringing a pot of tea when we’re all seated, then the main course, followed by more tea, accompanied this time by scones, cream, and jam. The whole operation runs well over an hour.

At first, Ashley enjoyed coming out. It was a chance for the town’s new power-coaching duo to discuss conditioning and technique while basking in the company of champion sons. But lately he’s been losing patience with always having to watch Laphead finish his running training in the hot sun before lunch; my lane mate’s also a budding cross-country champion. ‘We just come out for lunch, for Christsake,’ Ashley spits through his teeth today after cheering Laphead into his final lap. Driving home after our previous visit, he even threatened to turn up half an hour late next time to teach Egghead a lesson, shaking his head and huffing, ‘I’m tired of his silly game.’ But today we arrived on time again because we’re apparently giving them one last chance. And again we’ve waited twenty minutes in the sun; there is not one tree or shed near where Egghead stands in his terry-towelling hat, yelling, ‘yip-yip-yip,’ stopwatch in hand to keep his son honest. And of course Laphead must now shower after all that perspiring, so that’s another wait inside.

In our last visit, Mrs Egghead proposed I go and join Laphead in the shower, and I wondered why she was so keen for me to hang starkers with her son for ten minutes. ‘I swam a few hours ago, thanks,’ I lied to her — I didn’t train on Sundays. ‘And that’s my point,’ she said tartly, either unaware or not even caring that I was lying. ‘Chlorinated pool water’s actually far cleaner than shower water,’ I added helpfully, suspecting she knew I never washed; I began darting anxious glances at Ashley for backup. But she relented, leaving me free to dine in my lather of nervous sweat and eau de chlorine. Who does she think she is, I wondered angrily — my mother?

Another time, when I’d stupidly found myself alone with her, she stopped me halfway across the kitchen, set her jaw in a funny way, and said in some old-country accent, ‘You know, my husband’s a very good man.’ There was no response to this that wouldn’t have betrayed the panic of a first alien encounter, so I faked a reply to Ashley outside instead. ‘Sorry, Dad, I’m coming right now,’ I called, skipping out the back door.

‘They must think we’ve nothing better to do on a Sunday, to keep us waiting for Laphead,’ Ashley moans in the walk back to their cottage. I search hard to remember what’s better, and it is nothing — a long hot one.

‘As long as we’re home in time for Daniel Boone, I don’t mind,’ I reassure him.

Today’s lunch is a replica of all the others. I spend even more time ogling ancient showbiz posters tacked on their kitchen wall, once-glossy monochrome bills touting Egghead’s previous gig as a stage magician. That’s him with top hat, wand, and white gloves, his tuxedoed bust encircled by homemade glitter stars. He never lets on how he went from magician to jailer, but there you go: his final trick, perhaps. Through a window, I see his Black Maria van parked near the street, so everyone driving past can see this is where the tough prison boss lives.

When Egghead pours himself and Ashley a cold beer, Laphead and I pour tea from a Raj-era teapot in a blizzard-grade cosy. Ashley’s always first to toast. ‘Make your miserable lives happy,’ he roars. I’ve never heard this strange toast from anyone else’s lips, and sneak a glance at Mr and Mrs Egghead for their reaction, but both smile famously as glasses clink across the table, so I suspect it’s some quirky toast from his Singapore days, or a private joke between Egghead and Ashley (his other toasts are a simple ‘Happy days’ and ‘Salud’). Egghead never seems to change out of his prison-guard uniform at home, a khaki drill-cotton ensemble of shorts and many-pocketed and pleated shirt. Sitting opposite, I can’t help checking out his neck skin; it’s loose, goosy, ruddy, and hairy. And yes, he’s bald as an egg, with only the finest rusty down in certain light. Suddenly he decides there’s been too long a pause in the conversation. Typically, at such awkward moments, he stiffens his back and stretches his arms under the table to declare in a grand, shiny voice, ‘Aah, yes.’ He must get three or four aah-yeses out with each lunch, the s left hissing like it’s pissing out a fire, and I secretly treasure their strange reassurance as if even the most relaxed settings are a train wreck in the making.

For our next visit, Ashley finally makes good his threat to turn up half an hour late. The moment their paddock swings into view, he curses, ‘Christalmighty, he’s still got that kid out in the hot sun.’ Pacing from the car, he apologises to Egghead for the flat tyre we didn’t have, gushing, ‘Poor Laphead must be nearly dead, you’d better get him inside.’

But Egghead scoffs, ‘The boy’s made of tougher stuff than that, and we’ve still two more laps!’ (We’ve?) After pulling up, Laphead seems set to faint when he learns of his extra circuits and that they’ll need to be done in two minutes apiece. His nose is now clacking out so many double-barrel K’s that he greets us with a spittle-charged ‘Ksh-hello’ before flopping at the hips like an old wallet, hands planted on the ground in quadruped exhaustion.

Driving home, Ashley considers reducing the lunches to monthly. I find this odd because we recently moved out of town just to be near ‘the Heads’, as we now call them; I’ve even switched to Laphead’s high school, where I’ll start after the holidays. This time we’ve rented a front sleep-out from a German family in a Queenslander perched above a disused rail cutting. We cook breakfast on our portable stove — Ashley likes me to start the day with steak and eggs — but at night we eat inside with the family. Or at least I do, since he’s at the drive-in till midnight.

We miss the next lunch with the Heads, partly because I’ve come down with bronchitis. Each evening while I’m bedridden, with Ashley at work, the German grandmother enters our room to feed me soup for dinner. ‘Eat your zoop to be strong,’ she snaps with each spoonful, before stripping my bed of its damp sheets to replace them with clean ones. ‘Gut night, zlip tight,’ she calls, closing the door.

Now well enough to get around again, I’m seeing a Brisbane specialist after a local doctor detected a heart murmur. (Ashley’s concerned because his brother had a hole in the heart.) After dabbing about with cold stethoscopes and palpitating every inch of my torso as I take jumbo breaths, the specialist beckons Ashley and me to his desk, where we’re given a long lecture on advances in diagnostic technology and heart surgery, the mention of which makes mine sputter and race. But now he plants his hands grandly on the desk to pronounce my heart ‘good as gold’, and I don’t care if this isn’t a textbook diagnosis, as long as it gets me out of here. ‘Yes, a little noisy,’ he sighs, but apparently that’s typical for young sportsmen like me, particularly after a bout of bronchitis.