Come in, come in! said Oriel, brightly signalling them in and avoiding their eyes.
The stove roared, gusting hot air into the room beyond, where the riotous mob was milling.
Welcome below deck! called Lester as they went through.
Geez, it’s like the engine room, orright, said Sam to no one special.
Sit down, Mum and Dad, Rose said, trying not to bite her lip. Geez, you’re all got up.
Dolly trod on Harry who had crawled under the table, and there was pandemonium. Dolly nearly fainted with guilt and embarrassment.
It’s alright, said Rose. Relax, Mum.
Sam sat next to Fish who said: Who’s got your fingers?
Lester insisted on singing ‘The Wild Colonial Boy’. He sounded terrible, but everyone was grateful for the break, and while he was singing and squeezing, Oriel brought out the food with Elaine who passed hot plates that took the prints off a few fingertips. Out came roast lamb, cauliflower cheese, mint sauce, a tray of roast potatoes, parsnips, onions, pumpkins, cabbage, slabs of butter, hot white bread and Keen’s mustard. There was a chicken stuffed with leeks, cold ham, beetroot, and a jug of lemonade the size of an artillery shell.
Everyone passed and grabbed. Plates disappeared beneath it all.
For what we are about to receive, Lester said, stopping them all dead with his mild voice, we are truly thankful.
Amen, said Sam.
Christ Almighty, look at the food, Dolly murmured. She’s tryin to kill us.
They ate and passed and picked while Lester told them all stories that could only have been the weakest of lies, until there was steampud with jam, custard and cream. A pot of tea was hauled in, cups brought, chairs snicked back a little to allow legs to be crossed. Fish and Harry played under the table with Pansy’s girl Merrileen.
I hear you’re thinkin of sellin, Mr Pickles.
Quick put the teapot down: Mum!
Dolly rolled her eyes. Lester looked as though it was news to him.
I used to know this bloke, Lon began.
Shut up, boy, said Oriel.
Sam grinned, rubbed his nose with his hairy little stump of a hand. Call me Sam, whyn’t ya?
With the sort of smile that put Lester in mind of the old Anzac Club days, her confident, gracious, fulldentured smile, Oriel took Sam’s cup, held it out for Quick to pour tea into, handed it back and nodded.
Sam. It came to me that you were in the mood for leavin.
You were never a dawdler, Mrs Lamb.
Oriel.
Oriel. You’re still a quick one.
The old girl raised her eyebrows, as if to say: Well, that goes entirely without saying.
Dolly lit a cigarette which caused a tremor of concern round the table.
I spose youse people’d be worried about your position, Sam said.
Well, they are paid up on rent till about Harry’s twentieth birthday, you silly coot, muttered Dolly. We’d have to pay em to leave.
Well, Oriel said darkly, if we have to leave then there’s nothin to be done. It’s only a house.
I expect it’d be more wiser to buy your own by now, said Sam.
No. No, Oriel said, it does you good to be tenants. It reminds you of your own true position in the world.
Sam blinked.
A house should be a home, a privilege, not a possession. It’s foolish to get attached.
Yairs. Yairs, Sam said. There’s the practicals to be thought of.
Oriel put her elbows on the table and opened her stubby little workdark hands, leaning through them towards Sam Pickles whose understanding smile faltered somewhat.
But I have got used to it here, you know, she said. You might say I’ve come to love this awful old house. It was here for us when we had nothin. It never made it easy for us—and I tell youse, there’s times I’ve thought the place has been trying to itch us out—but I reckon we’ve made our mark on it now, like it’s not the house it was. We’re halfway to belongin here, and … I don’t know where I’d go anymore. Out there, she flung a hand in no direction at all, they’re bulldozin streets and old places, fillin in the river, like they don’t wanna leave any traces behind. I reckon Harry’ll never see the places we know. Can you imagine that? What am I gunna do—walk out into that? I’m sixty-three years old! This place has been good to me.
Everyone recrossed their legs, stirred their tea, felt a nudge from their neighbour, passed the fruitcake.
She’s right, said Dolly. Yer right. Yer right. She muttered, unable to look Oriel in the eye. The bloody place has got to us.
Good on yer, Doll, said Quick.
Dolly scowled back a delighted grin and looked about, as though for a miracle in the form of a loose glass of gin.
It’s twenty years soon, said Lester. He wheezed the accordion open. Twenty years.
Well, Sam said. That’s it, then.
That’s what?
We stay.
You weren’t really gunna sell, Sam? said Lester, squeezing off an allergenic chord.
No. Some Abo told me it wasn’t worth the money. Actually he said it was bad luck.
That was me! said Dolly, and I’m no Abo.
I dunno, I forget. It was election day. The bugger laughed when I asked him how he voted.
He didn’t vote, said Rose, matter of fact.
What?
Blacks haven’t got the vote, she said.
Sam put his cup on the saucer. Jesus, that’s a bit rough, isn’t it? They need a union.
Rose laughed.
Well, he was shitty for a reason, then. He basically said I was pissweak.
Remember which side of the corridor you’re on! Oriel bellowed. The language!
Well, he was right, said Dolly.
Now, now, said Lester.
More tea? asked Elaine.
Yairs. A toast.
What to?
To us, said Lester. And this old place.
Ere, ere.
God bless er, an all who sink in er.
Gawd, he’s gunna play the national anthem.
Lester! Give over.
Fish, get yer fingers out of it, let him play the song.
That’s a royalist song. Play an Australian song.
They’re all Irish.
The stove roared and hissed from in the kitchen, and heat swelled the house and pressed the families’ shadows into the wallpaper. Oriel Lamb punished her multifabric hanky, thinking that it was something at least, a gain before a loss.
All down the street you could hear them singing, those mad buggers from Cloudstreet, sounding like a footy match.
Inland
Quick was up at dawn, folding some tarps, throwing a shovel and axe into the boot of the X-ray Rugby, carrying out a box of groceries, the billy and frypan, some blankets and toys with Fish at his elbow.
Quick? Quick?
Yes, mate. Hop out the way a sec.
Me, too, Quick.
Look out. Here, hold the door open. What?
I wanna go.
No, Fish.
I wanna.
I’m sorry, mate.
Please is the magic word.
You can’t, mate. This is just for me and Rose and Harry.
And me!
Quick sidestepped him a little, but Fish pressed him against the cold, beaded fender of the car. He was big now, solid, going to fat, wetlipped and tonguesome, and Quick felt the power in the hands flattened against his chest. Oh, shit, he thought, I could do without this.
We’ll see, orright?
Fish looked sideways, considering. I wanna.
We’ll see. Just let me get packed.
Up in the old library, he woke Rose. She rolled his way in a spray of black hair, and he had a mind to slip straight in beside her without delay, but it didn’t seem the moment.
Hi.
Everything alright?
Yeah, I’m packed and all. There’s only breakfast to have. Bloody Fish wants to come, though. I’m tryin to figure out a way of telli
n him. Thought maybe he’d listen to you.
Rose lay back with Harry stirring beside her. She let out a sour burst of morning breath and closed her eyes.
Get him packed, then.
What? This is our bloody holiday! We haven’t taken a holiday in—
And neither’s he, Quick. Get him packed before I change my mind.
I’ll wait till you do.
If he wants to come, let him come.
Rose, we’ve orready got Harry to think of. Fish is a big retarded bloke and he’ll cause us a lot of problems that we could do without on a holiday.
Rose grabbed him by the shirt. Listen to yourself. Big retarded bloke—it’s Fish for Godsake.
Mum’ll never let him go.
Oh, crap, You still afraid of your mother?
Why are you so keen?
Well, he’s asked you, hasn’t he? Probably begged you, I imagine. If I said no, we’d both drive out of here feeling like a pair of right bastards. They’d have to lock him in his room and you’d go dark on me for a week. I’d be sitting with Quick Lamb the Absent for a week. I want a good time. I’ve brought Anna Karenin and I want to lie back somewhere feeding Harry with you reading it to us. Fish’ll like that, too. He’s always game for a story.
Gawd.
Go and tell them.
Quick slid onto her, tucked his head into her neck.
The things a man does when he’s in love.
There’s worse yet, Quick Lamb, I’ve got other demands.
From the forested hills, across the scarp and down into the green rolling midlands beyond, the old X-ray Rugby sputters and clatters its way east on the kind of late spring morning that promises hayfever, boiling radiators, carsickness and landscape fever. When they hit the wheatlands and they’re all sung out from ‘Roll Out the Barrel’ to ‘Rock Around the Clock’, Rose slides across the seat to snuggle against Quick.
Well? Where to?
Quick shrugs. A fishin hole somewhere.
She cuffs him. Come on, let’s decide.
It’s an adventure, you don’t decide these things.
Well, there’s Harry and Fish to think of. We need a bit of a plan.
Now she says.
Quick watches the broad breadcoloured flatness spreading before him. He’s thinking of what Sam said last night, a blackfella warning him off. It’s like the stuff he learned as a kid. Wise men and angels. Fools and strangers. Principalities and powers. Works and wonders. He sees Fish watching him in the rearview mirror.
I always wanted to see Southern Cross.
Yeah? Rose sound dubious. Why?
Dunno. The name I guess. Because of the stars. I used to watch them out here when I was a shooter.
Is it far?
A few hours more.
Okay. Let’s make a stop soon, though. Give the boys a stretch. Southern Cross, eh. That sounds like our adventure.
Lookit the water! The water! Fish yells. Lookthewater! His head shoves up over the seat and his arms spread up on the upholstery behind them. He points forward out through the windscreen at the heatrippks pooling and writhing on the road in the distance. Ah! Hurry, Quick. The water.
They pass through bald, silent wheat towns: Cunderdin, Kellerberrin, Merredin, Bodallin, inland beyond rivers, beyond rain and pleasure, out to where they are homeless, where they have never belonged.
Southern Cross turns out to be just a wheat town. Squat. Plain. With a rarefied air of boredom, almost a tangible purity of boredom that blows in through the windows as they roll down the main street past diagonally parked utes and council bins. Harry and Fish are asleep on the back seat. Dust and pollen settle on the upholstery. Rose’s eyes water and Quick can’t help but smile.
Well. So much for that idea, Rose said through her hanky. On with the adventure.
You know, it’s just how I thought it’d be.
How small our dreams are.
The main street finishes and they’re back on the highway, still crawling.
Was that what you were expecting?
What did you want—Ayer’s Rock?
I’m sorry.
It’s just a wheat town. I used to live in one just like it. I went to a church there where they actually called me Brother Lamb, and at night I shot kangaroos. It was a nice life. Those kind of towns are like heaven, in a way.
Rose blew her nose. Why didn’t you stop, then?
I only wanted to stop if I saw someone I knew.
Who’re you gunna know out here, Quick? For Godsake.
I just took a chance. A Pickles sort of impulse.
And how did the knife turn, Lambsy?
Oh, I reckon it’s still turnin.
I don’t get you at all mate. I think I married a bloody lunatic.
Out on the plain Rose sees the great travelling shadows of clouds moving with them, overtaking them, marching east.
The Shifty Shadow, she says with a chuckle that isn’t quite genuine.
They head north away from the highway on dirt roads until they come to a place called Bullfinch, which looks beyond the means or will of any bird at all.
The names of these places, says Rose. Wyalkatchem. Doodlakine. Burracoppin.
From the back, Harry begins to whinge and cry.
Harry’s cryin.
Thanks Fish.
I need a poo.
Just wait a little bit, mate.
Quick.
Hang on, we’re just lookin for a place to camp.
And generally being aimless and dithery, says Rose. Are we lost?
Fish begins to moan which sets Harry off at a higher pitch.
Por, what’s that bloody—
I told you, Quick. But I told!
Oh, fuck a duck, he’s shat himself.
Maybe we should have gone fishing after all.
Quick pulls over by a roadside ditch. The paddocks lie away on every side, waist high in wheat. The marbled sky hangs over them.
Now what?
Now you hop out and clean him up.
But Rose—
Don’t look at me because I’m the woman.
I do Harry’s nappies—fair go.
What a big boy. Now you can do your brother’s.
Orright, orright. Come on, Fish. Stop blubberin. Hop out.
Late afternoon sun slants onto their backs in the roadside silence where only the tick of the cooling motor can be heard, the clink of a belt buckle. Quick kneels to take down Fish’s trousers. He sees the white rolls of fat, the ramshackle patchwork of his undies, and it’s not a body he recognizes.
Fish turns his head aside in shame as Quick slides the shorts off. Quick gags a moment before slinging them down into the ditch, glad his mother isn’t here to see the wanton waste. He pours water over his hanky and begins to wipe shit away.
Bend over, he murmurs, the way he’s murmured a thousand times to Harry.
The size of him, the stubbornness of shit in the black hair of him, the thought of how they’ve come to this threatens to break something in Quick’s throat.
Rose leans out of the window and goes to hurry them up, but closes her mouth. The sill of the car door is warm beneath her arm. Against the back fender Fish’s whole putty body is jerking; his buttocks shiver while Quick hugs his legs shaking with emotion as the wheat bends a moment to the breeze that has sprung out of the very earth itself.
Spaces
In the end they stopped looking for places because there were only spaces out here, and they found some mangy trees back off the road a way where they could make a fire, stretch some tarps from the car roof and fry sausages. The paddocks swallowed the pink pill of the sun. They went quickly grey and cool and then it was dark. The broad patch of uncleared mallee stood shadowy on one side, the luminous wall of wheat on the other. With its long quiet flames, the fire lit Rose and Harry and Fish and Quick while they ate. It warmed them when the sausages were finished, when the bread and butter were gone, the apple cores cast off. On blankets spread on the dry ground, the four of them lay
wakeful and dreamy. Above them the black sky looked crisp with its stars and configurations. Dots as worlds, and milky smears as worlds of worlds.
That’s the Southern Cross there, said Rose. It looks better in the sky.
You feel like it’s hanging over you like the top of a cathedral, Quick said with Fish’s arms around him.
Water, said Fish. All the water.
Look, his face is shinin. The moon’s on your face, Fish.
There is no moon, said Rose.
Fish rolled onto his back beaming and the sight of him stirred them deeply. Harry began to snore. Rose wrapped him in an old army blanket and got out a little bottle of brandy. Before long, Fish slept too, shining in the shelter of the tarp with Quick and Rose watching over him, sharing the Chateau Tanunda in little squinteyed swigs.
Remember the night in the boat with this stuff?
Quick nodded.
What do you make of this house business? All the oldies staying on.
I think they’re right, he murmured. I reckon they belong to the place. Gawd, everyone knows that house. They know the shop, our families. It’s like they’ve built something else from just being there. Like—he laughed at himself—like a house within a house.
Yes.
I just couldn’t bear to think of em all leavin and those mongrel developers gettin their hands on it.
Tell you a secret, said Rose.
Orright.
You won’t believe this.
Try me.
I can’t bear to think of any of us leaving. We belong to it, Quick, and I want to stay.
What? What are you talkinabout? What about our place? After all this trouble. Our own place!
I don’t know about our place, Quick. I like the crowds and the noise. And, well, I guess I like the idea, it’s like getting another childhood, another go at things. Think of it: I’m in this old house with the boy next door and his baby, and I’m not miserable and starving or frightened. I’m right in the middle. It’s like a village, I don’t know. I have these feelings. I can never explain these feelings.
But you hate family stuff.
Rose laughed. But it’s two families. It’s a bloody tribe, a new tribe.
Don’t you want to be independent?