Cloudstreet

  Oh, come on, Beryl!

  And I wanted to pick his brain about a few things. He has shadows in his eyes, that boy. I’m sure if he’d wanted to talk to me—

  He doesn’t know you, Beryl, he hardly knows his own family anymore.

  Well, anyway, I’ve decided without the benefit of getting through to him. I’m going tonight.

  But you don’t want to be a nun.

  Don’t you believe in commitment?

  I dunno, Beryl.

  Why’re you staying here with your wife? Think of the calisthenics you could have had with … other people.

  Well, I made some promises in my time.

  Beryl smiled and her whole posture seemed to benefit. And you’ll keep them all in the end, Lester. That’s you. See. And I’m the same. I’m a Catholic. I make promises, too. I love the Church.

  Geez, Beryl, it’s drastic.

  Look at this old house, Lester. Look at that tent down there. Do a room-by-room and have a look. This has always been drastic and I thank God for all of it. I’m getting married again, Lester. Be happy for me.

  It’s not natural.

  Marriage is never natural.

  Lester laughed. Oh, Beryl, you’re a bonzer.

  Beryl Lee smiled the sweetest most crucifying smile and Lester heard Fish begin to thump the piano upstairs.

  And we hardly noticed you, he said.

  But you’ll remember, won’t you?

  My oath.

  A terrible moaning came down through the floor. Beryl left him and he lay there like a sprayed insect.

  Oriel looked at Beryl and took her in her meaty arms.

  Don’t pity me, Oriel.

  Pity? You’ve gotta be usin levity on me! You see that tent? You see this non-Cathlick beatin breast? Pity, Beryl? Don’t shame a woman. I’m just sad to see you go. I’ll … probably … well, miss you.

  But we hardly ever talked.

  Talk? Those poor misguided nuns’ll teach you the use of talk, love. A woman doesn’t need talk. She needs a team. I hope you find it. You can always come back. Always.

  Beryl said her bit and stuffed her bags and everyone descended to the kitchen to make a dinner worthy of her. Lester whipped and dipped. There were scrubbers and peelers, stringers and wringers, as the stove bawled and the pots jangled up a head of steam. The big old house heaved and sighed around them. Chooks were still fighting for roosts down the back, and the pig was snoring by the time they finished eating and Lester cleared his throat to speak.

  Beryl, as head of the household I think it’s time to let you know how glad we are to have had you round. You’ve worked like a bloke and we’ll miss you, I reckon. We wanna say good luck in all you do. He looked at the others, a little uncertain, as though calculating something, and then he grinned. You know we’re not a drinkin family, Beryl, and you’ll also be aware that Mum here doesn’t agree with fluids at meals on account of the science of digestion, so in order to serve you a toast, I’ll ask everybody to charge their forks.

  And he speared a spud and held it aloft, waiting for them all to follow suit, which in the end they did, openmouthed with amazement. Yes, charge your forks, and here’s to Beryl, a jolly good fella.

  To Beryl, they all said, lamb, spuds, or just gravy on their forks, if that’s all they had left, and they bit and munched, following his lead—even Oriel whose face led you to believe she was eating live bullant.

  Nun better for our money, said Lon, who got a blow from everyone in reach except Beryl herself.

  Bless you all, she said.

  We’ll smuggle icecream in, eh, Dad, said Quick.

  Ah, Beryl laughed, you’ll bring the Church to its knees.

  I’m told that is the correct position, said Oriel stone-faced.

  In the brief, hysterical silence to follow, Lester said:

  I do believe your mother made a joke.

  Their eyes were as big as hardboiled eggs.

  Ticking

  Sam Pickles opens a gate across town with his stump sparking like a cut cable.

  The light goes out of the night sky a moment. The pig hoots and bawls. Fish goes to the window stormbrowed. A man stands in the street across the road with his great timepiece ricking and ticking.

  Lester came back from dropping Beryl off. Everyone slumped round the cleared kitchen listening to the queer rattle of the gutters.

  I’m goin prawnin, said Oriel.

  Thay all just gawked.

  Not really the season, Mum, said Quick. November at the earliest.

  There’s always prawns in the river. There’ll always be something.

  Brrr. I’m listening to the wireless, said Elaine.

  Me too, said Red.

  Yeah, said Lon.

  In the river? murmured Fish, building something out of his hands.

  You’ll be in bed, Fish.

  I’ll tell you stories, son, said Lester. He looked darkly at Oriel.

  Come on, Quick, she said.

  Eh?

  Get the net and get your togs on.

  It’s cold, Mum.

  Goin on me own, am I?

  Quick stood by the big old wireless and sucked his teeth. It’s givin in, he thought; it’s too early to be givin in.

  And I haven’t seen him for two years, Oriel said to Lester.

  Quick sighed and gave in. Heading for the door, he muttered: It’s just silly.

  Everyone else can be silly all day long in this house, so why not me a couple of hours in me lifetime?

  Out in the water it was cool but not quite cold. From the shallows outside Pelican Point where all the bigboned birds nested restlessly in sleep, Quick and Oriel could see the lights of Mounts Bay Road, the baths, the party glow of a ferry coming through the Narrows. The whole city seemed to lay itself flat upon the water. In summer there’d be fires on the beach and the sound of children, smells of boiling prawns, the lights of kids chasing cobbler along the shore with gidgie spears. Now there was just the sound of the two wading and the triangular net slushing behind between the two upright poles.

  You know, this is the first time I’ve been prawning since Margaret River, Oriel said.

  Since Fish you mean

  Yes, I spose that’s what I mean. Do you still blame yourself for it?

  How did you know about that?

  I’m your mother. Besides, it’s obvious. Fish was everyone’s favourite.

  You mean it’s true—he was the favourite?

  Oh, people say they don’t have favourites when it comes to children, but you know, son, it’s a lie we tell to protect the others.

  So you did love him more than the rest of us? Quick’s voice was dead with hurt.

  Wasn’t he your favourite, Quick?

  Quick waded. A small fish skipped away from him. All around his body was an aura of phosphorescence.

  Didn’t you love him more than all of us? Don’t you still love him more? Haven’t you always had Honour Thy Retarded Brother as your number one commandment? You see, it hurts to know you’re not the favourite whoever you are, child or parent. Did you feel guilty about leaving us, or about leaving Fish?

  Why do we have to talk about this, Mum?

  Because we’re family.

  Jesus, I hate this family stuff. It makes me sick! I don’t need all this.

  It’s all we have.

  What?

  Each other.

  Oh, come on, Mum.

  You’re scaring the prawns away.

  There aren’t any bloody prawns—Jesus Christ!

  Don’t say that.

  Oriel pulled the net and tried not to show exhilaration at having him here like this, at the two of them talking like adults together. There was something hard and resistant in him now, something he’d grown in being gone, and she knew it had been worth the hurt.

  Why are you so bitter? Because of your family or because of yourself?

  What dyou mean?

  Do you hate the fact that you come from … well let’s just say crack troops. br />
  Weirdos, Mum, flamin whackos.

  Or is it just the old business of feelin guilty about being a survivor?

  Quick almost stumbled at that. It went deep into him.

  What the hell would you know? You don’t know the first thing about feelings, certainly not mine, and damnsure not about what I feel about Fish.

  I know about bein a survivor. You think it’s your fault he died. You think it should have been you. You’re paralysed with this thing that’s eatin you, and you don’t know that it’s rubbish.

  You don’t know a damn thing about it, Mum.

  She thought about her mother and sisters up in the house cooking like picnic steaks while she lay helpless in the cellar, she saw the bullet torn wallet of Bluey her half brother with its black crust of ink and blood and the King’s stamped signature on the slip of paper. And she could feel Fish’s chest under her fists as she beat life into him with the sky kiting over her, silent as death. She pursed her mouth with her teeth set behind them.

  Have I been a crook mother?

  Quick sighed. She was upset now. He could feel the explosion in her.

  No, Mum, of course not.

  Do I lie?

  No.

  Do I cheat?

  No.

  Steal?

  No.

  Fornicate?

  Well, I’ll have to check on that with the neighbours. I reckon the tent’s a dubious sign. And to his complete surprise, she laughed.

  Don’t be a drongo, Quick.

  He pulled the net. Now they were inside the bay at Crawley where the uni glowed like a cathedral up there behind the peppermints.

  What’s wrong with me?

  Mum.

  Carn, what’s my problem, Quick?

  Quick had never known his mother to be like this. It was exciting and unnerving. He could no longer tell how she’d react. It was like having a dead shark in the boat. A dead shark always seemed dead enough, but the buggers had a habit of coming to life and taking your feet off.

  You don’t have enough fun, maybe, he ventured, a little breathless.

  She made a little popping sound with her lips. It sounded ominously slight.

  No one takes me to dances anymore.

  Geez, Mum, you’re always at dances.

  Yes, and I’m either organizin them or playin the piano. Your father’s always on the stage, and I can’t even remember if he knows how to dance. I used to dance with my daughters until I lost out to men, and Heaven knows I dance better than every one of them. And my sons never stooped to dancin.

  Stoopin’d be right, thought Quick. It’d be like dancin with a teachest. But she’d made her mark; she was right enough.

  Let’s face it, Mum, he said, suddenly reckless with courage, you do everythin better than anybody. It’s just that you’re flamin bossy.

  She laughed. I’m glad you see things my way.

  Quick pulled with her to the beach, and helped empty the net of its cargo of jellyfish and gobbleguts and other useless small fish. He had a boyish impulse to kick her in the shins and run, just to have her after him, awful and reliable with it.

  The strong are here to look after the weak, son, and the weak are here to teach the strong.

  What are we here to teach you, Mum?

  Too early to say.

  They set off again, down toward the deep end and the baths. Quick was real tired now, and cold. Oriel strode out in her hard little granny shoes, feeling quivery inside. She wondered how far things had gone between Beryl and Lester. She wondered what instruction there was in it for her. Sometimes she couldn’t think what jerrybuilt frame was holding her together. It wasn’t willpower anymore. She’d gone past that lately. She only had will enough to make everything else work, these days. There was never enough left for her. She was like that blessed truck of Lester’s, running on an empty sump.

  I’ll take you to a dance, Mum. The best. I’ll shout you to the Embassy.

  Hmm. Their sandwiches are dry.

  How do you know? Quick said, miffed.

  I sell em day-old bread. There’s an arrangement.

  Quick guffawed. You are bent, then.

  No. I’m astute. You ever heard anyone complain about supper at the Embassy ballroom?

  No. Never.

  Well, there you are.

  Quick pulled for a while, and a strange sort of question came to him. The strong can get rich, Mum. You know. What would you do if you got rich?

  Get poor again, I expect. I’m surrounded by fools, you know.

  Seriously, though.

  It’s a silly schoolboy question.

  It isn’t. You just don’t want to say.

  She surged ahead and forced the pace a little. The water was hard and cold now. He was right; she didn’t want to say.

  That was when they came upon the wild wheeling mob of prawns that came brawling out of the deep unlit gutter near the baths, and swerved in panic, beating against Oriel and Quick’s legs, skipping and bouncing into the net, ricocheting like crossfire, breaking the surface of the water in an unearthly frenzy. When they got to the beach, gasping and whooping, with the net near splitting with its freight, they had to lie on the sand a while before taking off their clothes, shorts, trousers, singlet, spencer, shirt, pullovers, hats, and tie knots in them to make bags because the five gallon drum just wasn’t enough. They rode home nearly barebummed through the back streets with the sidecar awash with prawns, and they sprinkled a mist of river as they ploughed through the sleeping streets.

  The Whole Damn Cake and Candles

  From above, the two-up circle looks like a sea creature, some simple hungry organism in the water of night. A sea anemone whose edges rise and fall as bodies press and spread with two glittering morsels turning and dangling in its maw. Two coins spinning above the pulsating mouth, catching light and shining to tantalize. But they’re men down there and the coins’ light shines on them the way the sun and moon have never done. A swearing, moneyflicking, beery mob of blokes dancing to the music of the toss, the dance of chance. They call in intercession, they pray and whine and moan as if those two big crosspainted pennies can hear them. See among them the little fella with the stump and the mad light in his eyes, crazy as a crusader, mad as a cut snake, driven as a dog. It’s the look men have in their eyes when they go green to war—one eye on duty and the other on the spoils—when they can’t wait to step beneath the spinning pieces to see whether they’ll be torn in half by them or feel them lob safely and full of promise at their heels. He’s not a young man anymore, the little fair fella. Beneath the noise of the crowd he’s wheezy and his veins are swollen. His back aches, he’s thirsty, hollowgutted, in need of a smoke, but he stays planted to the spot awaiting the certainty of his blessing. And down it comes again like manna. Men hush at the sight of it, though he doesn’t even nod. He puts another fistful of notes down and hears the grumbling. He must be the only sober man here tonight, and he tries to decide what this feeling is like, being the lone man, the onehanded man, the man pushing on into the darkness of the rest of them. Like Christopher-bloody-Columbus, that’s how it feels, he thinks; sailin out, knowing you’re not gonna get to the edge and fall off the bleedin map, at least not before you bump into a whole continent of treasure with the angels on your side. Pennies go up and stay there a heartbeat or two, as men wring their hats and wait. Sam’s heart almost explodes with devotion.

  From the outside, if you don’t share the love of the game, if you don’t know these men, it’s still cause for wonder. How they love it, how they dance and sing in the dragon’s jaws. And Sam Pickles. If you hated his guts you couldn’t help but be affected by the sight of him, the prince of losers, winning the bank. The whole damn cake and candles.

  Feast

  Dolly grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him close before he’d even got in the kitchen door. She was shaky and sober and ready to scream out of fright and worry and she could barely believe she was clinging to him like this. Drawing back and drawing brea
th, she saw there wasn’t a mark on him. His trousers were stuffed like a mattress. Before anything could happen, Rose came in the door, fresh from the dance.

  Well, look at you two.

  They peeled off each other selfconsciously. The three of them had the flesh of new people. For a moment.

  Laughter echoed from across the corridor.

  We could sell them! Elaine said, putting out a huge china bowl of brown vinegar. The table was spread with newspapers, and the first steaming, red pile of prawns was upon it.

  No fear, said Oriel, unable to stop a smile.

  Be a good few quid, Mum, said Lon, who was the first to shell. The meat was longer than his hand.

  No fear, Oriel said again.

  Why not, Mum? Red slid a prawn around the vinegar bowl. There’s so many.

  They’re gunna keep jumpin outta me pockets fer years yet, said Quick.

  You’ll always be comin the raw prawn, said Lester to a uniform groan.

  We can’t eat em all, said Red through a disgusting mouthful.

  Watch me, said the old man.

  They’re a gift, Oriel murmured. And you don’t go floggin off a gift.

  Quick and Lester raised eyebrows at one another.

  You don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, said Red, quoting from somewhere or other.

  Yeah, said the old man, laughing, you send it to the knackers before it can take off with your vegies.

  Where’s Fish?

  He’ll be asleep.

  Go up and check, said the old man to Quick. He might want a feed himself. Hey, an you might’s well knock at the Pickles hatch and ask em if they want to join us. I think they’re still up.

  That raised a few brows and stopped a few jaws, but Oriel nodded. Yeah, fair enough. Share n share alike.

  And after midnight the Lamb kitchen was full to the boards with the lot of them. It wasn’t till Lester got the broadest, leeringest wink from Sam Pickles that he remembered disaster and discovered that he’d been saved. And then some.

  Up in the library, Fish asked the shadow girl why she wouldn’t come out, but she said nothing. She was always either crying or angry and nothing else. He played her a tune and she stood beside him, but he couldn’t tell if it made any difference.