The Family Men Read online

  “What concerns me is I don’t want to see you making a mistake,” says Laurie. “One foot wrong at this stage in your career and you can kiss goodbye any dreams you might have for later. Forget coaching or commentating. You’ll be lucky to be pulling beers full-time at the local pub. And that’d just be a waste, not good for anybody.”

  “That’s right,” says Ted. “What we want is to reach a mutually beneficial outcome. Something that ticks everyone’s boxes. I think Alan would agree.”

  “I think you should leave Dad out of it.”

  “Okay. Done. Fair enough. Whatever you like. It’s not a good time, I get that. Just as long as all our cards are on the table. And what I want to make very clear to you, Harry, and I’m telling you this eye to eye so there can be no misunderstanding, is that the Club has absolute belief in you.” He jabs his finger in Harry’s direction. “That’s why I asked Laurie to bring you down here today, right to the heart of this organisation, so you can hear it from me. We have absolute belief in you on the field and we have absolute belief in you as a human being. So let’s at least consider all the options before you go heading so far down the highway that there’s no point turning back.”

  They discuss flexible game rosters, lucrative endorsement deals, scheduling inducements and his post-playing career. Harry doesn’t care so much about that but he is vulnerable on the subject of loyalty, his family’s long association with the Club – relations might be strained, but he isn’t looking to forever poison the well.

  “You know I trained under your grandad,” says Ted. “At Sunshine. Before your time. Back when they were still the Devils.”

  “And me,” says Laurie. “Here. Right at the end. He was a good man.”

  “Yes,” echoes Ted. “Everyone was upset when he retired.”

  Harry looks to the photograph of his grandfather amongst all the other player portraits hanging behind the bar, trying to line up that image of the blue and gold with the man he remembers from their school holidays up north, a ropy water rat trawling through black mangroves hauling mud crabs. Heading off at dawn as the tide went out, then returning later as it came back in; stringing them up on snapped tree branches then trekking the quarry back to the house, two to three dozen crabs between them, Harry’s arms and legs covered in sandfly bites, his limbs crosshatched in bloody scratches.

  “See, you’re making my point for me,” says Ted, following Harry’s gaze. “This isn’t just about you. Your legacy’s as much your brother’s legacy as it is your father’s and your grandfather’s. And that’s your privilege, your inheritance, but it’s also your responsibility. Have you considered the impact of your decision on them? And what about all the other people who’ve supported your career? Your mother? She’ll be disappointed. Think about all the sacrifices she’s made. I can’t imagine she’ll be too happy. Or have I got that wrong? She might have other ideas for you.”

  Harry feels a tightness in his chest, becomes aware of the chemical tang of furniture polish rising off the lacquered brown coffee table. Remembering the weight of all those crabs on his shoulders, the sharp briny smell, his grandfather explaining how mud crabs were opportunistic eaters, the larger ones often devouring the smaller ones, descending on them when they were moulting their shells.

  “It’s the pressure,” says Ted, as Harry takes a deep breath. “It can make things seem more urgent than they are. But there’s no need for any pressure. You should take your time. We’re all friends here.”

  They strongly suggest he reconsider his resignation, at least for another year.

  Eventually Harry capitulates, agrees to think it over.

  *

  The girl was the last one to arrive, the group assembled in the green room, a dank basement unit smelling of onions, with cockroach traps in the corners, the tessellated linoleum flooring worn and curling at the edges. The other women were clearly older than her but not much, mostly in their early twenties, though at fifteen anyone over eighteen was ancient. Greta did a cursory round of introductions, none of the names sticking, several of them not even bothering to look up as they finished dressing and applying their make-up. She had thought the place would be cleaner. Greta assigned her a seat (her own plastic lawn chair) under which she could store her bags. Then she handed her a pill and a glass of water. “Just a beta blocker,” said Greta. To wet her whistle and help her to relax. “Trust me. It’ll be fine.”

  The girl put on her costume, Greta helping her with some extra bright lipstick, drawing a line around her mouth first then filling it in, as she tried to contain her terror and excitement, her first professional performance and for so many local heroes. She wondered if she’d recognise any of them, could get an autograph or two after the show – but she was determined not to appear unsure of herself.

  Somewhere out of sight someone turned on a microphone, the distortion squealing through the green room like an alarm. The women were alert now. Several of them started pacing about, reviewing the routines.

  The girl watched, fascinated by their rituals – stretching their calves, decricking their necks, limbering their arms and shoulders as though it was a ballet recital, and she a junior understudy. Outside it was dark, the Southern Cross tilted in the night sky, off-kilter, a picture frame slipped off a hook. This was their world now, the punters relegated to abstraction, distantly audible as a recital hall audience might be audible backstage as patrons made their way into the auditorium, settled themselves into their seats, the girl paying lip service to the MC’s commentary the way she might pay lip service to a stranger’s telephone conversation on the bus, of interest only in so far as she recognised the odd name. But most of the jokes went over her head. And it wasn’t all meant to be funny. She tuned out again, her mind skipping from one thought to the next: what her mum might be doing now, if she was suspicious about her daughter’s whereabouts – she doubted it, too busy screwing Ray to give her a passing thought, hating her for it and then not caring, projecting beyond, thinking about her new life, on the phone to her friend Cassie, saying, I’m on the pool deck. Everyone in WA has got a pool. And then Greta suggesting, “You might try warming up too,” breaking into her reverie. “Get yourself loosened up.”

  “Here,” said one of the other women, extending her hand.

  The girl stood, accepting the offer, she and her dance partner engaging in an awkward pas de deux, step ball change, step ball change, just like Greta had taught her during their rehearsals.

  “Only the best for the boys,” she’d say as she made the girl do it again and again. Rinse and repeat. “Practice makes perfect.” Anything worth doing is worth doing well. There are no shortcuts to greatness.

  Or was that someone else? Nevertheless, it was an ethos the girl respected. It was why she was here. All part and parcel of her plan. Because what was the point of marking time at home when life awaited elsewhere? A concept she would happily have explained if anyone had stopped for five minutes to listen.

  It was nearly showtime. The atmosphere in the room changed as though they had been put on notice; backs straight, heads up, like a herd of deer as a lion approached the plain. At some soundless signal the girls were on their feet, waiting at the door. She found herself at the rear of the line marching up the steps. And then she heard the MC introducing them, the crowd going mad, a curtain opening, the lights blazing and they were on.

  *

  The media conference is called for 3 pm the following day. After the statement, a pack of journalists lunge at him with microphones, their questions thrust right up into his face. Laurie tells them to back off but doesn’t do anything to make them. Harry turns pink from all the fuss. People think he is shy around strangers, but that isn’t it. From the glare of their lights, he knows them too well – like his dad, they have the same haunted eyes as junkies.

  How he loathes them. Question after question: “Why has he done it?” “What is the matter?” “What is it all about?” He sticks to the script, reads his prepared statement, then gi
ves one-word answers. “Yes.” “Sometimes.” “Maybe.” Though the truth is he doesn’t know. Not really. All he is sure of is that he has to do something; it is either this or something much worse.

  He can see now why those kids snap. The ones who blow up their schools or prang their cars into the houses of their ex-girlfriends. Because so many people expect so much yet so little is offered in return.

  He doesn’t mean money, it isn’t about material things. It’s just that some people are forever being written up, while for others the umpire is always looking the other way. Everyone banging on about fairness and accountability when the truth is as long as you are scoring, nobody really cares what else you do. At times Harry feels that the only way to move forward is to become wholly unacceptable himself, to push the envelope until the situation is made clear.

  His father keeps saying you’d better not be doing this on account of me – such avid protestations – pundits speculating that he is exactly the reason, not because of the drinking, they don’t know about that yet (his most recent tumble off the wagon), but manipulating his offspring with his own failings – famously on record as collecting the most Brownlow votes in a career but never winning a premiership – unable to let his children enjoy their moment of glory, knowing that securing the flag will trigger an audit of the family’s past, thrusting him back into the limelight, front and centre, Harry having resigned to avoid the intense media attention.

  But Harry maintains his father’s history has nothing to do with it. Not that he’s read all the clippings, pored over the scrapbooks (the old man’s scrapes and successes). He isn’t about to either. He doesn’t need to. He already knows what they’ll say.

  HARRY FUREY ON HIATUS

  By Margo Milne-Arthurs

  November 30, 2006

  Hopes of back-to-back flags are on hold with the news that star recruit Harry Furey will skip out on training camp in Arizona and is rethinking his future.

  Furey, a first-round draft pick snapped up under the father-son rule, is ambivalent about the limelight, preferring to keep to himself when he’s not on the field. Unlike his older brother, key forward Matt Furey, who thrives under pressure, sources suggest the younger Furey’s decision is based in part on personal issues arising from the additional attention that comes with winning a premiership. The well-documented health problems and recent media exposure of the footballing dynasty’s patriarch, Alan Furey, have no doubt also contributed to the situation.

  The Club was surprised by the move but has talked with Furey and will meet with him again later this week. “A change is as good as a holiday,” said coach Laurie Holden, who has encouraged Furey to enjoy a short vacation. “It’s a long season and everyone’s tired but we are confident Furey will be back and ready to rumble after he’s recharged his batteries. We fully support his decision to take some personal time.”

  But it is not clear whether Furey has the stamina or interest to return to the sport at the elite level. “Does he have the fire in the belly? That’s the stuff that counts,” says teammate Jack Feddersen. “Only time will tell.”

  Does familiarity breed contempt or simply provide a platform for its expression? Harry has never known a time without reporters skulking around. At the playground fence, shameless, looking to him for a sound bite. Something quotable. Even a noteworthy rebuff. Always pushing for a reaction. Making up bullshit if they didn’t get what they wanted – stories of naked models riding ponies around their living room, Lolitas keeping the old man company in the bath – plying him and his brother with Redskins and other lollies through the cyclone wire, hoping one of them would eventually spill. Or tailing him from the oval to the milk bar and back again, sausage roll in hand, waiting for him to do God knows what, baiting him with choice highlights phrased as questions, a litany of tasteless crimes and misdemeanours (his father’s drinking, his drug taking, his cavorting with teenage girls, now that was an education – “Do you know anything about him providing alcohol to minors?” “Are there drugs in the house?” “Have you ever seen him smoking hash?” – incendiary inquiries, doing their best to provoke an outburst, a revelation, anything to get their byline on the front page.

  Legend’s Son Goes Berserk (the one time he fell for it).

  And then this current attention, which confounds him because he can’t imagine there is anything left to be said about his family; their entire lives having been stripped and spread, bent back on themselves for public consumption – assignations and separations, resignations and reconciliations, deaths and divorces – so that they have become almost new again they are so worked over. New yet empty, dispossessed of anything they ever once possessed, whatever it was they ever housed now lodged beyond themselves in some plastic location neatly furnished by the press.

  At school, the kids used to have a field day giving him and his brother hell whenever a new story broke. Your dad’s a fuckin’ loony, they commonly said. A bullshit artist. A quitter. That, or that he was a stupid junkie. A drug pusher. The grim reaper. Such eloquence from the mouths of fourteen-year-olds (all confirmed and correctly educated in the politics of sin and resurrection, none of them having the compassion to keep their traps shut). Charming little chips off their older blocks.

  Matt seemed to be able to tune them out. “Fuck ’em,” he’d say, his teeth red from the sugary contraband.

  Fuck them!

  Harry practised but he never felt any better for it.

  He knew what the Bible said about turning the other cheek, but he would have been much happier with a gun.

  As soon as they are finished he goes into the bathroom, leans over the sink, the stained porcelain muffling his hurried breath.

  It is the rumble of the sea inside of him. The quiet roar of a shell held up to his ear. Shhhhhhhhh … But there is no peace. All he can hear is the music. Still.

  I’m a sexy mama (mama) …

  It was so loud at first that he didn’t actually notice it until it stopped, the atmosphere quickly dropping in temperature and then heating up again as Marty “Lightfoot” Karnahan (a retired journeyman and Sportsman’s Night veteran) took to the stage to welcome them all to the event.

  “Good evening gentlemen,” he enunciated deliberately, each word given ample space, an audible leer, the sound distorting as some technician adjusted the microphone levels backstage. “I’m happy to see so many of you here on this players’ night of nights. And from what I understand – if last year is anything to go by – this is not a night for the faint of heart, so I trust you’re busy fortifying yourselves.”

  The room erupted in cheers and stomping.

  Marty was about six foot tall and chunky in his tight tuxedo and crimson velvet cravat, the waves of his unnaturally bright hair held in rigid whorls but for one determined ribbon that drooped above his right eye like a flaccid windsock. “Before I start, the manager has asked me to request that, for health and safety reasons, none of you get up on top of the chairs and tables during my standing ovation. No seriously, that’s what he said. Personally, I don’t have a problem with it, but he doesn’t want you blokes getting carried away.”

  As Marty ran through another icebreaker or two – What’s the difference between kinky and demented? Kinky is using a feather, demented is using the whole chicken; How can you tell a blonde’s been in your fridge? There’s lipstick on the cucumber – Harry sensed a presence behind him, Jack’s boozy breath blowing down his neck.

  It was an occasion for celebration and reflection, Marty running through a history of the Club’s achievements culminating in that year’s premiership flag, acknowledging the contribution of various people along the way. Then he was done with it, the first formalities of the evening, and it was time to move on to the real attraction. “So let’s get this party started, shall we?” he said, picking up the microphone stand and moving it stage left. “Kicking off tonight’s entertainment, they’re sweet and sexy, the Honey Traps. Always a pleasure. Let’s make them feel welcome—”

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bsp; Jack leant in and raised his voice to be heard above the applause. “Welcome to the big league, Nipper. You’re in for it now.”

  Margo is waiting for him when he comes out of the bathroom. “Are you okay, mate?”

  Okay? Mate?

  No.

  He smiles at her. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  She is like a pit bull, Margo. Holding her own at those media events. Never taking offence at the crap they sling at her. At press conferences he always looks for her, doesn’t feel right if she isn’t in the crowd.

  She jots something in her notebook. He tries to peek but she won’t let him see. “What is it?” he asks. “Come on. I’ve got a right to know. Is it about me?”

  She holds it to her chest. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours. What do you say? Do you want to tell me what this is really about? Why didn’t you go away with the boys for the footy trip, and why aren’t you going to Arizona? Is it about your dad? Did something happen at Sportsman’s Night? You never called me back. You said you’d ring me if you had any news, but you didn’t. Is the Club putting some kind of pressure on you?”

  Harry thinks he might faint, the corners of his vision blurring, a bird’s wings fluttering, a barrel closing out. He considers returning to the bathroom, but figures she’ll probably follow him inside, someone as familiar with the interior of clubhouse changing rooms unlikely to be intimidated by a simple “Gentlemen” sign on the door. “You know, I really don’t have time for this,” he says, one of his mother’s favourite lines, and turns to walk away, duck and weave, wishing he could run, that the room would miraculously open out before him and that he could disappear.

  This is the thing about modern football, gaining possession of the ball is much easier but it is no guarantee you can make good use of it.