What He Knew
A series of interconnected short stories from my 2018 collection "Degrees of Separation"
What He Knew
(March 2012)
It wasn’t as if he had always wanted to do ‘the Bridge Walk’; that was something for tourists and people without any imagination. You didn’t get a true sense of a place by standing hundreds of feet above it, stumbling along some narrow walkway whilst being battered by the wind, the tether to a steel cable your only true security. You got to know a place by being in it, immersed in it, knowing its people, understanding the culture, the nuances.
Which, in a nutshell had become his problem. He did know the city. He knew the bus routes, the cut throughs, the good restaurants and the bad, the places to avoid after dark. He knew the good discos and clubs, the bars where the most beautiful chicks hung out. He knew the best time of day to take the ferry to Manly, where to catch a wave; the beaches the tourists didn’t know about. He knew the mountains, the coast roads, the back roads. He knew every blade of grass in his neighbourhood; he knew the neighbours - hell, he’d even slept with one or two of their daughters!
And now he could add ‘education’ to that inexhaustible list because he’d been all the way through the system and come out the other side. He knew it wasn’t a dead-end, not really. He knew the ultimate reward of his studies was to open doors, to reveal the future fanned out in front of him, displaying all her wares and offering him a choice, temping him to take his pick. It was a prospect that should have seen him excited, enthused; he should have been a young man on the cusp of a new adventure. And he was. But the adventure he wanted was not the one presented to him. And why was that?
Because everything he was being nudged towards, presented with, encouraged to try, clumsily and badly seduced by, bribed with, gifted - everything was predicated on him remaining in Sydney. It was an assumption everyone seemed to make, almost as if he had delegated some of his decision-making to them.
“You’ve got some great possibilities, Matt,” his mother had said just a few evenings earlier. “Not everyone gets options at companies like IBM or the Commonwealth Bank.”
“Mum, they’re not called ‘options’.”
“Well, whatever they’re called, they don’t just hand them out to anybody. You do realise that?”
And of course he did. He knew that based on his grades, his academic ‘track record’, he stood pretty high in the pecking order. One of his friends, Dill, called it ‘The Draft’: likening getting a job to the way NFL teams in the States chose new players straight out of college.
“Dude, you’re first or second round pick!” Dill had said.
But Matt didn’t care. He recognised what great opportunities he might have with firms like IBM, and how, if he did well, they could almost literally open up the world to him. The problem was that he didn’t want to wait; he didn’t want to have to work in an office for two or three years - to ‘do the hard yards’ - before he could leave Sydney. And he knew he didn’t have to. Some of his friends, Dill included, were taking some time out. ‘Travelling’ was the euphemistic phrase they used. Most were just going to bum around Asia until their money ran out. And what then? Back to Sydney?
Rightly or wrongly, Matt had come to equate leaving Sydney with freedom and so the sequence of events had become of paramount importance. If he followed his mother’s plan, it would be job and career first, leave Sydney second. That was perfect for her for all sorts of reasons, but the wrong way round for him. Dill’s plan was to leave Sydney first - though in his case there was no second step in the ‘travelling’ plan. It was a fundamentally knee-jerk rebellion against ‘the system’ that had become conventional; and if there was one thing Matt wasn’t, he wasn’t rebellious. At least not in that way. And although he hadn’t said as much, Dill didn’t think Matt was the ‘travelling’ type either. If he had, Matt argued to himself, then he would have invited him along to Vietnam or Cambodia or wherever the hell Dill and his ‘Dudes’ were going.
Leave Sydney first, step one. But for Matt there had to be a solid step two - which was why, after some short interviews at their local offices, he’d already arranged places on three internship assessment centres in London. These were just two weeks away.
He was telling his mother today, as soon as he’d finished ‘the Bridge Walk’ and picked up his plane ticket.
Part of him had felt the need to say goodbye to Sydney; after all, she’d been good to him. The only question was how? Matt had considered a final round of doing the things he liked best - his favourite bar, disco, beach, park - but that had promised to be too long and drawn out. He’d seen a flyer for ‘The Bridge Walk’ and he’d thought “Why not?” For many people it was the first thing they did when visiting the city; for him it would be pretty much his last. And he could stand at the apex and try and pick out all his favourite places in one fell swoop. It would be comprehensive.
And it hadn’t disappointed. Having reached ground level again and divested himself of his hi-vis, helmet and harness, walking through The Rocks he found himself surprised just how effective it had been, how much he had been able to see. Indeed, at that moment he felt sufficiently impressed to see himself recommending the experience to anyone in London who might ask him what to do in his home town.
“I know it’s cheesy, but do ‘The Bridge Walk’; you’ll get to see so much. And if I were you, do it just before you leave, not when you arrive.”
He was convinced that way round was better. The importance of sequence again.
Leaving the travel agency had - not literally - brought him down to earth with a bump. Hands in his fleece pockets as he walked back toward the bus station, he couldn’t help but allow his fingers to feel the boundary of the ticket he had just collected; it was as if its edges, hard and defined, had for the first time made what he was about to do real. A one-way ticket to Heathrow, London.
The flight itself would be an adventure, of course. Being naturally frugal - especially having lived with just his mother for the past three years - he had taken pretty much the cheapest option available, a routing that involved three changes of planes and extended what should have been a journey of twenty-four hours to one almost twice as long. He knew he would have to try and sleep on the planes as much as possible, or grab some shut-eye on those hard, plastic airport chairs. But it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter that he would arrive in London tired, disheveled and - probably - a little pungent; all that mattered was that he was arriving. The address of the hostel he had booked for his first week was laser-etched into his brain.
Having found a seat on the bus to Greenwich, Matt knew he had about thirty minutes before he would walk through the front door of their home; thirty minutes until he needed to break the news to his mother. He had decided not to wait any longer. Now that the die was cast - now that he could feel his ticket in his pocket and there was no going back - he had no reason to procrastinate. Doing so would only make it harder, probably on both of them.
And that would have been doubly unfair. His mother would not take his news well, he was convinced of that. Since his Dad had walked out on them, they’d had to knit together as a team, tight and indivisible. Matt liked to think that was more for her sake than his own, but he wasn’t entirely stupid. There had been reasons his Dad had left them, some of which, he had to admit, were entirely understandable. His Mum could be domineering; she had a way of wearing you down. He’d watched her gradually emasculate his Dad, driven him to a point where he just gave in. You can, Matt knew, only do that so many times. He knew she was trying it with him over his ‘options’. Of course she wanted the best for him, but she must also have considered what the alternatives were - what real options Matt had - and there was no way any of them could have been favourable to her. Perhaps she was a little scared. Perhaps she was living in fear of the very scenario she was just about to face. And Margie knew what Dill was planning. Perhaps she was afraid that Matt would do something similar, even though she knew he’d never go travelling with Dill.
“He’s a pimp,” she’d said one day. It was the fiercest criticism she could give someone without swearing. ‘Pimp’ was her go-to word when she really wanted to berate someone. Usefully it wasn’t gender specific. When she’d heard rumours that Matt had been having sex with Casey from next-door-but-one, she’d said “I know that can’t be true, Honey, ‘cos she’s a pimp of the first order.” In his room later that day, Matt had smiled to himself; she’d been both wrong and right.
The bus pulled onto the harbour bridge and Matt looked up involuntarily. He couldn’t see if there was anyone walking it from this angle, but guessed there might be. Soon they would be through Milson’s Point and heading beyond North Sydney towards Crow’s Nest. He’d get off by the church and walk down Anglo Lane. Watching the buildings blur past him, Matt smiled. Anglo Lane; that seemed appropriate, considering where he was heading.
For no specific reason, he found himself remembering the first time he’d had a drink with his Dad. Maybe it was the liquor store the bus had just paused outside as it waited for some lights ahead. They’d gone to a football match; all the way out to see Western take on Melbourne. It had been his eighteenth birthday about a month before. As they made their way home, his Dad had dragged him into a bar.
“OK big man,” he’d said, smiling, “what’ll it be?”
Matt tried to pretend that he knew nothing about beer, even though he’d been secretly drinking on-and-off for a couple of years now at friends’ houses or parties. He remembered choosing something he didn’t like but that was well advertised on TV. His Dad had laughed and ordered him something else instead; one of Matt’s favourites, as it turned out. That had been the only time he could recall when his Dad and he had hung out as ‘mates’. It had been a little difficult; awkward and a bit clumsy. But nice enough in a way. Of course, his dad was already on the slide at that point. Two months later he’d be gone.
He tried to imagine how his Mum would be after he’d left. He would stop her coming to the airport; there could be nothing good for either of them in a scene there. He didn’t think he would weaken at the last minute, but you just never knew. Best remove that possibility from the equation. She’d be hit hard, that was certain, but Matt was confident she’d cope. She did when his Dad left. And she had enough friends where they lived. Pat, Fliss and Callie on Carlotta, Bridget just round the corner; they all liked Margie. He suspected Bridget would be her rock - certainly if Megs, her daughter, was anything to go by. He’d miss Megs he suspected, even if she had told him to “fuck off” when he tried to undo her bra that time at Dill’s sister’s party.
He found himself wondering about the girls in London. What were they like? He knew there was a large Aussie community there, so he was confident that he’d find somewhere to fit in. But he was even more interested in things that weren’t Australian. It was a cosmopolitan place; maybe he’d find a Spanish girlfriend, or one from the States, or even Peru! Who could tell? That was all part of the adventure; components of the option he had chosen.
Someone else rang the bell for his stop, so he stayed sitting until the last minute. Once on the pavement he checked his ticket again - there it was, those sharp corners - and then started down Anglo. It was a little chillier than he remembered, so he zipped up his fleece. It would be summer in the UK, though someone had told him that the weather was shit even then. He’d already packed most of his things - the ones his mother wouldn’t have missed - in his large blue rucksack, now hidden under his bed. After today there’d be no reason to keep it there. He could finish his packing in the open. It might help his Mum come to terms with the fact that he was really going. Turning into Carlotta, he pulled his keys from his jeans pocket. The front door would probably be open, but just in case.
After a few yards he could see the tail of his mother’s blue Nissan poking out of the driveway. She was home then. He guessed that was a good thing, considering. Walking up the drive, he leant on the front door’s handle and pushed. From inside he could hear the radio in the kitchen.
“I’m back!” he shouted.
For links on where to buy Degrees of Separation, click here.