Breath by Tim Winton

Author:Tim Winton
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781742536996
Publisher: Penguin Group Australia

There were several major swells that year as big lows rode up out of the Roaring Forties, but we spent more time waiting for them, discussing them, imagining them, than riding them. Winter had its many interludes when for weeks on end the wind turned sideshore and brought swell in at hopeless angles, and there were days and days of dark, squally chop when the sea was a misery to behold.

I watched the weather maps and waited for Sando, perpetually in a state of anguished anticipation. Somehow I’d gotten used to a certain underlying level of fear. When it was gone I missed it. After a huge day at Barney’s or a rare session at Old Smoky I came home charged – the euphoria lasted for days. But when it dissipated I became restless, even anxious. I couldn’t concentrate at school. Whenever I condescended to go fishing on the estuary, the old man complained that I twitched and jiggled like an alky, that I wrecked a good morning out.

I took to running in the forest. I rode out to the rivermouth and back flat-strap. I did what I could to wear myself out, but at night I still lay awake, turning, sighing, waiting.

At school Queenie Cookson passed a note, via intermediaries, to outline my many flaws (I was moody, selfish and inattentive) and notify me that I was, forthwith, relieved of my duties as boyfriend. I did my best to take it badly but in truth I was relieved.

In the troughs between big days, Loonie was infinitely more resourceful than me. Having been addicted to danger all his life he could always find a pulse-raising challenge. That year he drilled a peephole in the pressed-tin wall of the pub’s storeroom and forged an entirely new means of putting himself in peril.

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