We’ll go crabbin, said Lester, that’s what we’ll do. Down at the river.
River! said Fish, dropping his spinning bowl in a splintering crash.
Carn, love, said Lester. Orry? A feed of crabs’ll cheer you up. And the girls could do with a break.
Carn, said Hat.
Carn, said Elaine.
Carn, said Red.
Oriel poked dead limbs into the fire and sparks rose in the air like stars being born. Fish had cried himself to sleep tethered with a dressing gown cord to an old Moreton Bay fig and she could see the side of his face in the firelight. Whiskers had begun to show on his jaw. She smelt river mud and mothballs in the blankets spread on the grass. Mosquitoes hung around whining like an electric current. Out on the water Lester and the girls were laughing and the lamp swung wildly with the city lights steady behind.
She knew this scene. Her life always came back to the river. A long time ago she’d been baptized in a river. She’d kissed Lester Lamb by the river the first time long before that. And that night, that long, horrid night by the estuary at Margaret, when her men had walked on water and the lamp had gone out, that’s what had brought them here to this life with one son gone and one missing and a feeling in your chest that you didn’t know yourself anymore.
Whacko! Lester yelled, hoiking another crab into the tub. This is livin, girls.
The water was only shin deep. It was cool and the sandy bottom was ridged with tidal corduroy across which the big blue mannas were manoeuvring. Out here you could smell the fire on the beach. The sky was like a reflection of night water.
One more, Dad, and that’s it, said Hat, you’re fillin the tub.
Lester turned and saw in the light Red held up that it was true. The tin bathtub he had floating behind, tied to a belt loop, was nearly down to the gunwales and alive with the groping and grovelling of claws.
Orright. Last one.
I’m tired, said Elaine, shouldering her scoop net.
Red moved up alongside him with the lamp and Hat moved vigilantly with her elbows out, scoop ready. Lester was proud of the way he could bluff a crab one way and scoop him neatly in a back-handed gesture and send it flying into the tub.
The last crab of the night was a big gnarlclawed job, and Lester was caught off balance by all the competition. He scooped deep and tossed wide and Hat got the crab on the chest, its claw fixing firmly to her nipple beneath the old blouse. Lester could never have been prepared for the words she had to say. She jogged on the spot brushing at the squirming brooch of a thing until Lester swung the scoop to hit her fair in the chest. Hat went back in the water and the crab went back home.
When Red and Elaine and Lester got her upright, the four of them stood and listened to Oriel bellowing from the beach.
That crab was a rapist, said Red.
Red! Lester was shocked.
It’s disgustin, Red said. Even they’re the same. Ugh, males!
Hat rubbed herself and said a word that Lester would not repeat.
Oriel broke dead wood over her knee and threw it onto the flames. There was bread and butter, brown vinegar, chopped onions and tomatoes, and a drum steaming with boiled crabs. They ate, crushing glossy red claws, dragging long strands of meat from legs, and they laughed and watched the fire until Lester broke into song.
In Dublin’s fair city
Where the girls are so pretty
I first set my eyes on sweet Molly Malone—
Oh, here he goes.
She wheeled a wheelbarrow
Through streets broad and narrow
Crying ‘Cockles and mussels alive alive-oh’
Lester—
‘Alive, alive-oh
Alive, alive-oh-oh’
Fish called in his sleep. Quick? Quick?
Wherever the River Goes
With the cord of her dressing gown she ties you to the tree, Fish, even while you sleep because she knows what you’ll do. You don’t even see her, do you? But she sees you, boy, and she knows what you’ll be dreaming of here by the river, the beautiful, the beautiful the river. There’s always someone with their fingers in the belt loops of your pants. You’re aching with it while those dark angels laugh on the water without you. The river. Remember, wherever the river goes every living creature which swarms will live, and there will be many fish, for this water goes there, that the waters of the sea will become fresh; so everything will live where the river goes.
A dark man comes flying by your tree, you see the white of his eyes and tingle with rumours of glory. The city flickers and warbles along the banks of the Swan and in their homes, along their bars and fences the people go at it as if now is all there is, grabbing, holding, loading up for the short run, others before them, millions behind, not knowing that now is always and never, as from and to will be always and never.
I’m behind the water, Fish, I’m in the tree. I feel your pulse and see you dreaming of Quick out there in the wheat, and I see you coming. Your time will come, Fish, you’ll have a second of knowing, a man for a moment, and then it won’t matter because you’ll be me, free to come and go, free to puzzle and long and love, free of the net of time.
They’re eating, Fish. And Quick is shooting, and back home, tingling himself at the black man passing overhead like an owl, the pig is singing.
The Dark, the Dark
The pig lay in his grovel hole with the full darkness swimming over him. Up at the house on the lights out empty side there were flickers at the windows. The filthy porker stirred and caught the scent. His limbs quavered and his head went up. Curtains swished up there and that stink forced itself out through the cracks in the weatherboards. The hens shook and shat, shifting on the perch, and the rooster threw himself at the wire. A dog howled somewhere away off across wind that went slushy with the sounds of birds flying. The sound of choking and laughing up there in the empty Lamb side of Cloudstreet. The pig got to his feet and went quietly but unflaggingly: Keethro mutila gogma seak seak do, asra do, kum asra do …
The rooster crowed uncertainly and a Pickles slipper came lobbing out of the dark from across the fence, landing with a crash against the dunny door.
Girl on the Switch
Rose Pickles discovered that she really could talk. The moment the big rumplebosomed lady conducting the interview finished her question, Rose knew she had it in the bag. She was off like a shot. The talk that came out of her mouth was like a spiritual inspiration: she was snappy, polite, discreet, accurate and cheerful. Around her she could hear the emporium’s turbine hum. Even as she spoke she knew she’d be joining that sound, and she’d never felt so capable in all her life. After the interview she excused herself, fought her way through a battalion of naked mannequins and threw up in the toilet.
She started in the morning.
You should start as an office girl, said Mrs Tisborn, work your way up. But you can talk and you can think, and I’m prepared to try you out on the switchboard. Don’t be grateful and don’t be late. You may learn to be grateful in time, but you may never learn to be late.
Each morning, before the heat had hold of the day, Rose got up and lit the rocket heater in the bathroom, ate a piece of toast or a carrot, and took a shower. Next door was quiet that first week. Normally there’d be the drag of chairs and the little woman’s shouts, the whole crew thumping down the stairs to a dawn breakfast, but this week they were subdued. The shop was open again but things were calm. At the steamy mirror Rose nicked odd dabs of this and that from her mother’s makeup box and pulled on the only decent skirt and blouse she had. Her shoes were scuffed and daggy and she had no stockings to wear, but no one was going to make her wear those awful black tights again with the darning scars all over them like the swamp plague. The first morning she thought she looked fair, but the moment she walked into Bairds she knew she looked like a sick dog’s breakfast and she’d have to crack hardy till pay day.
She got the train into Perth station. In the cramped carriages men smelled of serge an
d peppermints; their hair was all at the top of their heads and their ears stood out like taxi doors. The women smelled of cologne and stale sweat even this early and they seemed tired and distracted. Rose saw the veins strangling in their calves, saw how their dresses dragged up, and the way the older women’s feet seemed gnarled and disturbed by shoes whose platform soles looked better suited to knocking in nails than walking on.
West Perth rolled by and then the dark verandahs of Roe Street. From up on the rails the city looked choked. Cars, trolley-buses, surging workers, the elbow to elbow clutter of commerce. It didn’t have the plain, windy spaciousness of Geraldton’s main street, but Geraldton was barely a town compared to this. Rose liked the idea of sending herself into this furious movement every morning, and besides Geraldton had just become a childhood memory.
She crossed into Forrest Place where all the men with pinned-back sleeves and crutches and RSL badges were gathering to bitch and sigh together. The GPO was sombre and imposing. Murray Street bristled with commencement of business. As Rose went into Bairds the overhead fans were turning already and floor staff were flurrying to beat the supervisor’s opening hour walk. It was a great womanly adventure, it seemed.
Behind the Staff Only door Mrs Tisborn was waiting. Rose went in and surrendered gladly to her training.
The switchboard was a fearsome altar of a thing that first week. Mrs Tisborn stood behind and hissed instructions while Rose searched for the right jack, the right hole, the right cord, the right number, the right moment. The headset clamped her skull and the mornings went on as though time was fiddling the books, but Rose learnt quickly and it wasn’t long before Mrs Tisborn’s violet breath was receding. Near lunchtime on the second day she could relax enough to comprehend who else was in the room, and at the break she met the Girls on the Switch—Darleen, Merle, and Alma.
Ole Teasebone given yer the runaround this mornin, love? What wuz yer name again?
Rose.
Yull be right. Yull put a hurdle in er girdle, won’t she loves? Eh, girls?
Rose found it difficult to distinguish Darken, Merle or Alma by voice alone because they sounded so alike. They spoke with a cackling kind of pegnosed lilt and laughed like they were being dug in the ribs by a shovel. They were roughmouthed and irritable, with the eyes of rouged cattle. They showed her where to get the best pie and chips in Murray Street, the very thought of which kept her off lunch in general, and they introduced Rose to the addiction of listening in. They were silly, dizzy scrubbers, and she liked them. They were the grousest ladies she’d ever met.
On the train home that Friday, she missed her station because something awful had come into her mind. The switchboard girls reminded her of her mother. The only thing that helped was their bovine bad looks and the fact that they laughed a lot. Just plug em in an shut up, Rose, that’s all yer need to know.
Yeah, she thought. That’s all I should need to know.
On pay day she gave the old man half her pay and he laughed and gave it back. On Saturday morning at teabreak, Rose bought herself a pair of Nightingale Seamless Stockings and a jar of Helena Rubenstein’s Estrogenic Hormone Cream. On the way home, the train carriage wasn’t big enough for her.
Geoffrey Birch Came Calling
Geoffrey Birch from Pemberton came calling for Hat. He was handsome and dull, with knees as big as soup plates, and Hat thought he was simply gorgeous. He took her to dances in his FJ Holden. He laughed at all of Hat’s wisecracking jokes. He loved her.
It disgusted Red, who imagined them smooching in that FJ down by the river. Elaine was sad and jealous. She liked having Hat around and she wanted a man.
Oriel flicked the shop lights off and on at midnight Fridays so Cloudstreet looked like a ship beacon and the FJ looked like a marauding enemy vessel.
Lester started putting a few bob aside for a wedding. He wondered if Geoffrey Birch knew he was courting the marble champion of the world.
And Hat? Hat was away with the fairies.
Jacks and Jills
Shove the jacks into the jills, says Alma at the switch. Rose blushes and laughs.
Good morning, Bairds, can I help you?
Bairds, good morning, sir, can I help you?
Can I help you?
Bairds.
Hello? Hello?
One moment.
I’m sorry, this is Bairds. Oh, you want beds!
Putting you through.
Jack into Jill! yells Darleen, and they all crack up.
Gawd, love, why don’t you feed yerself Good morning, Bairds.
Merle’s in love with a dwarf Bairds, good morning.
Good morning, Bairds yer a liar, she’s lyin.
Putting you through he’s shorter than Mum’s pastry!
Short ones’ve got fat thingies Good morning, Bairds.
Well she’s hardly the eye of the needle One moment madam.
Youse sheilas are gettin fouler every year Can you hold?
He’s never asked me, thank you, sir.
Disgustin Bairds.
Bairds.
Bairds.
Exhausted from not laughing, Rose ploughs through every day with a crazy happiness. She takes home pay and the pavement smell of the city. She puts on a bit of flesh. She eats. The world looks different.
Two Old Girls
One night at the Anzac Club while Lester was going dispiritedly through his routine, Oriel met a widow. You could tell she was a survivor, a leftbehind, by the far off look in her eyes and the way her tall, gaunt frame bent forward. Oriel could spot weakness and need a mile off.
Do you believe in Hell, Mrs Lamb? said the woman filling the urn.
Oriel gasped. It was like being struck in the face. Who are you?
Beryl Lee, Mrs. Hubby went down with HMAS Perth. I come down here to—
You’re lonely.
Beryl Lee subsided like a folding chair. Tears rolled down her face from her wild fargone eyes. Oriel held her close, felt the woman’s eyelashes against her shoulder.
You strike me as a Christian woman, sobbed Beryl Lee. That’s what I thought. That’s what they say.
If ever I should strike you Beryl, you’d think different.
Oh, Lawd, oh, Lawd.
People stood and watched. Even Lester gave up and stared from the stage. Two old girls, short and tall, hugging like kids.
Hell?
Hell is like this. It’s this cowering in the bottom of the cellar far from the smouldering trapdoor, between pumpkins and tubs of apples. It’s the smell of a karri forest rising into the sky and the bodies of roos and possums returning to the earth as carbon and the cooking smell falling through the dimness like this. Trees go off like bombs out in the light and the cauldron boils and spits all about. Hell is being six years old and wondering why you’re alone in the dark and no one else has come down yet. It’s the sound of your own breathing, the salty stink of your bloomers, the way the walls have warmed, the flickering cracks, the screams like a thousand nails being drawn, the hammering, throttling noises, the way the rats are panicking and throwing themselves against things. Hell is that shallowbreathing trance you slip into, the silence that goes on and on until it’s grown outside you and fallen on the world. Hell is when you hear noises in the world again, though nothing in yourself, and men’s voices make your throat cry so raw that light bolts into the cellar with a gout of ash and charcoal and the burning taste of air. Hell is when you’re dragged out past the black bones and belt buckles that are the others who never came down, out onto the powder white earth beneath the sky green as bile and swirling with vapours. Hell is the sight of your father’s face streaked with the ride, the twitching cast on him, the registration of facts. Hell. It’s only you left, and you’re awake.
Oriel woke and it wasn’t quite dawn. She lay there in the dimness until her heart settled back a little. With the edge of the blanket she wiped her eyes. Without washing, without making out her daily work plan, she left the tent ungowned and ran to the house, gum
bling along like a spud crate to go room to room in the dim house checking that all of them were still there, that it wasn’t only her left again. All of them breathing in their beds, helpless and sweet in sleep. And Quick’s empty bed where she sat thinking while Fish snored.
Oh, how she hated to be a survivor, to be left. It had been a lonely girlhood for Oriel, even when her father remarried. She was a leftover from some other time, an embarrassment to him, a rival for her stepmother who wasn’t much older than her. But she learnt to be strong; she grew it in herself. When her halfbrother Bluey, who she loved like blood, left her on the dock at Albany, climbing the gangway and shouting back over his shoulder: Don’t worry, Or, I’ll bring a Turk back on the end of me bayonet! she knew she was pushing further into the kingdom of survivorhood. Her father was often away buying horses and there’d be only Oriel and her stepmother and the children. She grew steel in her.
Or.
Either, Or.
She could never find the choices. Even when Lester came by, there was no alternative. Things had gone so far, so much had not been said, the smouldering silence of the house was not something that could be chosen any longer. Besides, he made her laugh the way Bluey had. He was a character, a dag, and pretty soon she loved him.
Oriel went downstairs to where Lester slept. He snored like a teachest being dragged across an iron roof. There was no malice in that man, you had to give him that. She still loved him, the Randolph Scott look of him. Oh yes, yes, there was a Hell, there were Hells abounding, and if there wasn’t a Heaven then there was this, the sleeping, the helpless, those that were your own. She was a sinner, she knew, and proud, and angry at God to the point of hatred, but she knew that she’d made a fortress for her own and for whoever sought shelter there, and that it was good, worthy, and priceless.