Cloudstreet

  Across the Rails

  Right that moment, on the other side of the rails, in a sea of wild oats, Ted Pickles tears a girl’s brassiere aside and lays his hands on her breasts. He’s thinking she looks like Martha Vickers in that flick Alimony, and she’s looking at him with narrowed eyes, a fag on her lip and her sweater up under her chin.

  You’re a bastard, she says.

  You’ve got nice tits, he says back.

  A train comes squealing into the station and he kisses her neck, feels her go soft under him. Her nails dig into his arms and the grass flattens over them both in the train’s rush of wind.

  All Money Down

  In October the basic wage went up a quid, but the union wasn’t satisfied, it being way below the claim, though Sam couldn’t get angry—a pound was a pound. He knew that bastard Menzies would keep the screws on them as long as he lasted, and he looked like lasting forever. Anyway, the big knobs of the union didn’t seem much different from the enemy these days. You’d never pick em for workers, not in a month of Sundays, and a man’d be a fool to trust em an inch. The hell with em. It was spring and he’d be taking home a quid he didn’t have last week. And he needed the money. These days at the races, everything he backed came home hanging its arse like its back legs’d been sawn off. He hadn’t taken a win or a place since Christmas, though he figured it was all money down against the pot coming his way.

  Sam didn’t mind the Mint work so much. It cheered him up to be around the money and he wouldn’t pretend it was otherwise. The whole place filled with the stink of melting and burning, the thump of the presses and the whang of steel gates. He oiled machines and wiped them down with cotton waste. He stood on the belt line spotting for duds and took the trollies back and forth. He had no enemies there, and though they were a foulmouthed bunch of bastards, he thought they were decent sorts. Everyone had little perks but no one’d tolerate serious diddling. Any dinkum thief found himself ushered into the shadowy part of the courtyard where a few words of advice would be delivered.

  It was clear enough to Sam that the other blokes were uneasy about his stumpy hand. It wasn’t just their good nature that kept them off his back, they were frightened of having his luck rub off on them.

  Sam took to sucking big round peppermints at work, and he always had one stuffed in his cheek when it came to going out through the gates each afternoon. The security bloke frisked them all and the gates opened for them, two by two. There weren’t many coins bigger than a peppermint and it was easy to take something out now and then for the kids, though they were getting old for it now. One time he came out with a Snowy River Scheme Commencement Medallion. It was a hell of a peppermint to be sucking, but he turned it appreciatively in his cheek as the security man checked his pockets.

  Now the days were getting longer and the light was lasting, he’d walk up Hay Street in the evenings and hear the clock on the town hall toll the hour. He liked the walk in the warm five o’clock breeze better than the closepressed tram to the station. People would be hurrying along the pavements, calling, whistling, dropping things, skylarking. Pretty women would be spilling out of Bairds and Foys and Alberts. In Forrest Place, in the rank shade of the GPO, old diggers sat bathing in the breeze and swapping news pages. European fruit sellers, Baits and Italians, would be haranguing from the footpath with their sad faces weary as unmade beds, and along Wellington Street trolley buses would haul full loads of arms and legs up the hill. The sky would be fading blue. The station was sootrimmed and roaring with crowds. When a train came Sam swung up and stood in the doorway with his gladstone bag and hat in hand and he waited the three stops knowing he was young enough to be walking it, lazy enough, though, to know better.

  The day the basic wage was upped a quid, he got out at his stop and a tall, thin, long-jawed woman stopped him on the platform.

  You Mr Pickles? Sam Pickles?

  Yeah. Yes that’s me.

  Passengers faded from the platform, the train heaved itself round the bend. Two date palms down on the street waved solemnly.

  You don’t know me, and I really don’t know you, and I’ve got nothin against you or anythin, but I think you should try to control your wife. She said it in a gaspy, short winded way, and her mouth was all atremble by the time she finished, but Sam felt so black with fury that he wasn’t in the least bit sympathetic.

  And I think you should mind your own bloody business, lady.

  He stuffed his Akubra on his head and went on, his bag butting against his knee.

  Well it’s my business, too! she called out, thickthroated with sobs. It’s my husband I’m talkin about. I’ve got young-ens to look after and she’s got no right. It’s a mortal sin!

  Sam went down the stairs with the fury going out of him. He walked along Railway Parade where the dandelions moved in the jaded light and by the time he had reached Cloudstreet there was only a dull soreness in him, something inevitable, something he knew he’d been resigned to for years.

  Now Black Now White

  Rose loves that weird boy, she knows it. She leaves the spuds boiling on the stove and the snags spitting on low heat to go upstairs to listen to him tinkling on the piano. If everything was like the books she reads it’d be sweet, miraculous music coming down from that bookless, windowless library up there, but its just jangly noise though Fish doesn’t thump it any more. Nowadays she can hardly get up the stairs without breaks, but she gets up without stopping this time, for fear of missing a look at Fish.

  Breathless and giddy she stands at the half-open library door to watch him with his back to her, pushing the keys gently as if marvelling at the difference in them still—now black now white, first a finger, then a full hand spread. It’s horror movie music and she thinks of some poor sad movie monster hearing bittersweet music.

  He’s big now, Fish. Fourteen and growing like a man. His hair is fair and long, half obscuring his little ears. These days his feet are on the ground when he plays.

  Rose can’t see the look on his face. She’d expect it to be a glowing, rapt expression, but it’s grim and hardset. She listens to the thang-dung-dim-tink of his music and wants only to touch him, to be friendly, and yes, if she’s honest, to get a kiss. It’s ridiculous—she’s too old for him and he’s a slow learner and a tenant and a Lamb, for gawdsake, but he’s just the grousest looking boy, and his hot blue eyes make you go racy inside. Rose steps into the room and Fish stops without looking around. Just inside the door the sickest, foulest feeling comes over her. She knows it from before, the taste of that horrible rotten smell that comes not into your nose, but straight into your mouth, onto your tongue, sliding round on you, curdling your spit till you’re ready to vomit.

  She races out and stumps downstairs, sick and hurting.

  The old man is in the kitchen, turning his hat over in his hands like a man at a wake.

  I turned the snags off, he says. The spuds look ready.

  Sorry. I haven’t got any greens ready.

  Don’t bother. Where’s the boys?

  Dunno.

  He doesn’t even enquire after the old girl. She watches him put his hat on a chair and roll his sleeves up in a distracted sort of fashion. Then he settles on her, looks hard at her. She blushes, still a bit shaky from the upstairs feeling.

  Jesus, Rose, you look like a corpse these days. It’s a crime you know, he says quietly, a bloody crime.

  I get fat.

  You haven’t been fat since you were hangin off a tit. He smiles. Now you’ve grown yer own.

  Rose turns to the stove and shakes the dark sausages round in the pan, seething with shame.

  You have to start eatin again. It’s not a joke anymore, love.

  I can’t, Dad.

  Christ, you must be starvin hungry!

  I am. But I can’t any more. I just toss it up again.

  Bullshit, you’ve just talked yourself off yer tucker. Siddown an eat some with me. Cam, it’ll help. Some warmth comes back into his voice, as if he’s tryi
ng hard to hold himself back. Come on, love. You’ll bloody die if you don’t eat.

  Dad, I can’t.

  Rose gives him his snags and spuds and goes back to the stove.

  Give yerself some.

  Dad.

  Put some on your plate. Go on.

  Really, Dad, I—

  Do it.

  You don’t—

  Do it, bugger you!

  Rose comes to the table, puts her plate down shaky and frightened. It’s not like him, it’s just not him. She can’t smell grog on his breath, just the peppermints.

  Eat it, he says. I’m not havin you starve to death in my own house. I didn’t go through a fuckin depression and a war to see my children turn their nose up at food—

  Chub and Ted eat enough, those fat bastards—

  Eat, Rose.

  His fist is set on the table now, his fingerless chunk. Rose sees the pulse in his neck.

  She spears a snag and bites it in half, chews recklessly and feels it slip down greasy and fine tasting.

  All of it.

  She can’t see him for waterblur now, but she eats and lets her cheeks run.

  All of it.

  But she’s up and running for the door with it all ramming upwards in her before she can even think about it. On the back step she feels her whole guts jerk and crank. White burns in her eyes and blood roars in her ears.

  The house claps with the slamming of doors. Rose wonders if it was the food or the feeling of the library, or maybe both. She just wants to disappear.

  You orright, love?

  It’s Mrs Lamb coming up from the tent with a basket of beans.

  Lord, you look like a shadow, Rosemary. Let me take you to a doctor. Mr Lamb’s got the truck out the front.

  No, Rose gasps. No, it’s orright. Just the curse, I get like this when me time comes.

  You look like your time’ll be here sooner than you think. Wait here and I’ll organize the truck.

  Mrs Lamb.

  Don’t move.

  Rose waits till the little woman is gone right through the house and out the front before she bolts. She runs like a scarecrow, and it feels as pathetic as it looks.

  Dusk

  The library is empty. The walls flicker with a black, gleeful flinching of shade. A smell of shit and corruption rises out of the wood, causing the air to go fluid with sickness as the last notes of the departed boy ring in the room. And then the air stiffens. The shadows press in against themselves all of a sudden and dust motes freeze immobile in the air.

  Down on the street, looking up with bloodshot eyes, a dark, woolly man stands with a stick, beating it slowly against his knee, humming under his breath until the dusk claims him and the library goes back to being vile and dark and fluid.

  Night After Night

  Sam Pickles walked the neighbourhood as if defying them all, daring someone to come up and try it on him. He’d kill them, he’d kill anything the way he was. Rose kept clear of him, dying before his bloody eyes. The boys had that arrogant chemical sense about them, as if they smelled a loser. And Dolly. Good old Dolly. Well the shadow was on him, the Hairy Hand of God, and he knew that being a man was the saddest, most useless thing that could happen to someone. To be alive, to be feeling, to be conscious. It was the cruellest bloody joke. In the dark, night after night, he raised his mangled fist to the sky and said things that frightened him.

  Not a Brass Razoo

  The warm weather came with November and Rose was glad of it. No more shameful holey tights, no more sleeping under old greatcoats for want of a decent blanket. The sun levering in through the kitchen window cheered her up so much she could hardly hear what the old girl was saying. It was noon. Dolly was up early. She had the look about her of a person who’d just been making grave decisions. It made Rose want to giggle, the way the old girl’s breasts slapped together like applause under her cotton nightie.

  You know you’ll have to leave school, don’t you? Dolly was saying.

  Rose felt the dreaminess evaporating.

  What?

  We haven’t got a brass razoo.

  I wonder why. What you don’t drink, the old man gives to the bookies.

  Don’t backchat me, girl, or I’ll give you one.

  Rose sighed and looked out the window. She loved school. When she could avoid the humiliations of being poor, when she could sink back into the anonymous mass of the class, she did love it. She wanted to be a clever woman, to know poetry and mathematics, to go to Africa and discover something. She didn’t do too badly, either. Her marks were good, though they’d been slipping all year as she missed more and more days as the weakness came over her. It would have been easier if she had friends but she frightened kids off with her intensity, the hardness of her that no one would understand. A friend had to be true to death. Rose didn’t care for chums, she wanted sisters in blood and loyalty. She never went to the socials they organized with the boys’ school. Boys thought she didn’t laugh enough and her prettiness was turning to caricature the more she lost weight. Sometimes she thought she was dying and the thought strengthened her, cheered her up. It gave shape to things.

  You’ll have to get a job. It’ll help us all out.

  Oh, anything to help out, Mum. Should I still do the cooking and the cleaning, or will you be getting someone else in?

  Dolly rose and came at her with a swinging fist and Rose felt a giggle coming up in her.

  Leave off! the old man yelled from the doorway.

  The old girl stopped.

  Don’t you touch her, Dolly. Don’t you put a finger on her, or—

  Or what, you weak mongrel?

  The old man had his doublebreaster on, and the hat with the feather in it. The room smelled of shaving soap all of a sudden. He was dressed for the races.

  Or you’ll be out on the street where you fuckin belong.

  Rose got ready for a full tilt brawl. In a way it was a relief. There’d been a silence in the place for the last year or two, an aching, torniqueted quiet, and now it felt like coming to something. But Dolly just went past him and out the door. In the room next door the bedsprings groaned.

  The old man smiled. Thought I was gunna get snotted, for a sec there. Get some clobber on and come to the races with me, eh? You can have a bet. I’ll buy ya bag a chips.

  Rose shook her head. The old man shrugged.

  Bag a lettuce leaves?

  Carn Fish

  Carn Fish, says Lester. Hop up and come out. It’s a nice day. You can take your shirt off and get some sun. Can’t lie on that bed all day. Carn, yev got legs and arms. And ears Fish, are you listening?

  It’s a worry to see Fish like this, hardfaced, flat on his back, looking at the ceiling in a way you can never be sure about. He’s getting big now, and Lester can’t help but wonder what it’ll be like in a couple of years when the boy’s as big as him and brimming with all that aimless strength he’s storing.

  When he can be got out of the room and downstairs he’ll sit at the kitchen table and spin a china bowl wah-wah-wah on the table with a joyless sort of concentration that draws all attention from around him. If you’re standing at the sink or stoking the stove or even going by the door, that wah-wahwah, the science, the balance of it, the way he can do it like that, it draws you over, and you stand and watch, see his big fingers wrap on the china and send it topping across the polished jarrah surface. But he can only do it when he’s not upset or agitated. When the boy is angry or frightened he can barely walk straight. It’s a sight, an awful sight, to see him bellowing mad. He actually looks blind with rage. He’ll stagger and stumble, lurch into doorframes and walls and not find his feet again. He’ll lie there kicking and rolling like a bull in a bog with the most bestial, furious, hurt noise a body could imagine.

  It frightens Lon and even the girls get scatty when it happens. Oriel turns into a pillar box, and Lester feels his teeth trying to force each other back into his jaw. It’s a hard and unlovely thing to see, and they’re not a
lone in flinching from it. From out of time and space, those long glass planes of separation and magnitude, it’s impossible to witness again and again without grief and wonder. Across the planes all things still play themselves out, all fun and fear, all the silliness and quaking effort, all the bickering and twitching, all the people going about the relentless limited endeavour of human business, and the sight of your body rolling like that, bursting with voice and doubleness, reminds you that the worlds are still connected, the lives are still related and the Here still feels the pangs of history. Those who’ve gone before do not lose their feelings, only their bodies. I stare out from behind the sideboard mirror and see you there, Fish. I don’t forget.

  Fish! Lester says down there. Fish, get up. Come on, boy. Please?

  Wanna go in the boat with Quick.

  Lester sighs and sits on the bed beside him.

  Quick isn’t here, boy.

  We see the stars. Up in the water.

  Thank God he’s old enough still to take himself to the outhouse, Lester thinks. I couldn’t bear it if it was worse than this.

  Quick’s gone away for a while, Fish.

  I want the water, Lestah.

  I’ll take you down to the river sometime, son, when your mother’s finished drivin Mr Clay off her mind. But even as he says it, it tastes like a lie. He knows Oriel will never let him near the river again.

  In the boat. Up in the water.

  Hey, listen. I know. You can have a boat in the back. That’s it, I’ll get you a boat to have here. Dyou like that, mate? With oars and everything. You can even go fishin. Waddyasay?

  Fish looks at the ceiling.

  What’s your name? Lester prompts.

  Fish.

  Fish who?

  Fish Lamb.

  What’s your proper name?

  Samson.

  Who’s your Mum?

  …

  Who’s your Mum?