Sydney Noir by John Dale

Author:John Dale
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Akashic Books
Published: 2018-12-12T16:00:00+00:00

THE RAZOR

by Robert Drewe

Lavender Bay

One humid Sunday morning when the scent of frangipani hung heavily in the air, Brian Tasker stood in his yard overlooking Lavender Bay while his mother-in-law shaved his body.

Sunlight bounced off the fence of oleanders and frangipanis and flickered through the native fig trees clinging to the cliff behind the house. The cliff marked the boundary of Luna Park, the harborside fun fair, and between the loops and slopes of the dormant roller coaster that came to rumbling, screaming life every sunset, a mirage quivered on the surface of the bay.

While Dulcie Kroger was kneeling and spreading shaving cream over her son-in-law’s legs, he tried to concentrate on the way the mirage lapped like a windswept lake on the boat shed roofs across the bay. But once his mother-in-law began wielding the razor, working upward from his size-thirteen feet, up his shins and calves to his thighs, he found it difficult to maintain interest in an illusion.

* * *

During dinner the evening before, he’d mentioned something Don told him at training.

“Guess what?” Brian said to his wife Judy and her mother as he dug into the five courses Dulcie had served him. “The Yanks have had a bright idea—shaving their bodies before a race.”

“Seriously, Brian?” Judy’s eyes twinkled. Even after six months of marriage he still found her wide-eyed look and little-girl giggle appealing, even provocative. “Shaved all over?”

A delicate creature to look at, but her chirpy laugh, blond bob, bright nails, and arms like twigs hid her intensity. Though full of energy, she seemed to hardly eat. Compared to his meal—tonight it was chicken soup and thickly buttered bread, six lamb chops and vegetables, a plate of potato and egg salad, a dessert of sliced bananas and ice cream, and cheese and biscuits, washed down with two glasses of milk—hers was miniscule: a single chop, a smidgen of mashed potatoes, and a smattering of peas to push around her plate.

“All over?” her mother repeated.

“Shaving down, it’s called,” Brian explained. “The whole body. All the exposed parts anyway. They reckon it makes them swim faster.”

Don Wilmott, his longtime coach, had picked up this intelligence from an American friend who’d observed a training session of the swimming squad at the University of Southern California. “Shaving down eliminates drag,” Don told Brian as he dried off after his afternoon of one hundred laps in the North Sydney Olympic Pool. He’d been Brian’s coach ever since Junior Dolphins, where he’d recognized the talent of the skinny nine-year-old who was swimming to help his asthma. More than a coach, really. A mentor, almost a father figure. Then through all the high school and district victories over his teenage years, and the regionals, and his successes at state level. And now, if all went to plan, to the nationals and the selection trials for the Australian team.

“We’ll give it a shot,” Don went on. “They say you feel transformed. Smooth and slippery like a fish. The psychological effect alone is supposed to make you swim quicker.

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