Cloudstreet

VIII. Voices

ROSE crossed the night wet lawn and sat at the edge of the verandah to take off her heels. Cloudstreet was still, the house limping with shadows, and the sky over it all was the colour of an army surplus blanket. She was still damp under the overcoat — taffeta and tulle clung to her, cooling. It was getting pretty late in spring for an overcoat, but she couldn’t stand having every bloody dag and drongo on the bus knowing she was coming home unescorted yet again from a dance. A faint smile of sympathy was just as bad as a leer when you were all clobbered up and coming home alone.

She sat there a while in the shadow of the house, trying to fend off the twinges of hayfever she felt in her nose and throat. An easterly tomorrow would be all she needed — pollen like the Yellow Peril.

It was the same blokes at the Embassy tonight, the larrikins in suits, the quiet movers with brandy on their breath and Brylcreem in their hair. The ones with vagrant hands, the ones with bad teeth, broken noses, feet like snowshoes, bellies like baskets. The same old meatmarket with all the girls backed around the walls and the blokes perving in from the doorway. The band cranking up, and the awful rush of blood to the face as they came in to pick and choose for the night’s first dance. God, how she loved it! The itch of petticoats, the rushes to the toilet when it was clear there’d be no first dance for her, and the breathless re-entries she made to the ballroom in time for some lottery marble to grab her by the arm and say: Gday, love. Like a spin, wouldja? Oh, she got some grouse dances, and some fine old moments, but it was always Rose on the bus without a bloke to see her home. She couldn’t understand why she cared half the time; she didn’t really make big efforts to be noticed, and she didn’t quite know how she’d feel having some handsome sort bringing her to this particular doorstep, this great sagging joint with its pile of crates out front and the compost stink of aged vegetables. All its timbers were unpainted, grey, flaky. From the front, it had the appearance, with only Rose’s light burning and her blind half up, of a miserable dog sleeping and keeping an eye half open for an excitement that was never going to arrive. No, she could hardly own up to some smart love that this was where she lived. Moreover, that her family only lived in half of it.

She sighed and went inside, pausing a moment on the threshold to unhook her stocking from a splinter that seemed to live for this moment every Wednesday and Saturday. Going up the stairs, she heard the whoosh of petticoats and the electric buzz of her nylons.

In bed she listened to the sound of someone crying. There was always someone weeping in this place. So many people lived here it was hard to figure out who it was. Just a quiet sobbing, it lilted in the walls, and willed her to sleep.

Rose Pickles was twenty-four years old and a woman, though she hadn’t got used to thinking of herself in this way, and even a stranger could tell this by the girlish look on her face which she wore underneath every other expression she ever had, whether happy or miserable. She had a noticeable face — strong nose, brown unsettling eyes, and a complexion that always had summer in it. She had the Pickles shortness and their cocky way of walking. A man’d be stupid to think she wasn’t pretty, but then most men are at least a little stupid. Rose Pickles was proud, and difficult to slow down long enough to get a good look at. She never looked anyone in the eye, and as often as not, she went unseen as a result.

She voted Labor every election because she knew it would break her old man completely to have a bosses’ pimp in the family. Still, it didn’t do much good because Pig Iron Bob was still there in Canberra queening it up, and no one looked like moving him yet. Actually, she didn’t care or know much about politics; she just hated Australians who tried to be English (though she figured it was reasonable for a Pom to try to be an Australian — at least there was a future in that). For years she’d enjoyed working on the switch in Bairds, but she was bored with it now and would have changed jobs years ago if the Depression hadn’t hung so heavy over the old man. When it came to jobs, Sam Pickles threw incaution to the winds. Better the devil you know, he’d say. You’ve got a good job, now be grateful and keep it. And though she had her own ideas, Rose could never bring herself to leave.

Besides, she had fun on the switch. There was plenty of safe mischief to be had, and friends, and talk at teabreaks. Darken, Merle and Lyla were older than her, and they weren’t the marrying sort, though sometimes Rose suspected that was something they said to protect themselves. They never seemed to go out with the same bloke twice. They were loud, hearty and big, like farmers’ wives, with plenty of clothes and makeup and no one to go home to cook for.

Rose learnt ways to meet men that Darleen, Merle and Alma had been using for years, and she discovered that with a headset and a bank of wires between her and whoever she was talking to, she was as confident as all getout; full of cheek and fun, able to knock up a rendezvous with a Nice Voice in the time it took to put them through to Accounts or Hardware. The trick was to arrange a meeting at lunchtime on the steps of the GPO, to organize the bloke to stand beside the first pillar off Murray Street so you could spot him as you walked past, anonymous in the crowd, and if he was a dag, as most Nice Voices turned out to be, you just walked on and got yourself a salmon and onion sandwich at the counter at Coles till his lunch hour ran out. Still, they weren’t always dags. She got friendly with a few decent-looking blokes who took her to the flicks at the Piccadilly or the Capitol and then shouted her a milkshake or a spider before putting her on the bus home. They were always perfect gentlemen, to her vague disappointment, and at the humid discussions that went on in teabreaks between the girls from the office and the girls from the switch, Rose had to lie to keep up with the others. But she hardly had the imagination to compete. Her friend Marge from Mail Order always stole the show.

And then he says to me: Do ya knock? And I says: Not if I’m oiled. Ah, like a motor are ya? Well, I says, I do take some startin. What are ya, six or twelve volt? And I tell ya, he was all over me like a rash. I was lucky to get out of that Buick alive!

Rose could never figure out why blokes never acted that way with her, though she had a feeling about the salmon and onion sandwiches. But she wasn’t miserable the way she could remember being when she was younger. At least now she was out of Cloudstreet all day and half the night, and even if blokes did wave her off on the bus from a night at the pictures, even if she came home alone from the Embassy, at least she’d got to do the things she loved — see movies and dance.

The morning after she’d gone to sleep with the crying in the walls, about a week after the old man came home from the bush stuffed like a scarecrow with money, Rose had a run in with a Nice Voice that got her excited in a strange way.

It was barely nine o’clock when she got the call. The light came on, Rose put down the nail file and jacked in.

Bairds, good morning.

Hmm. Bairds. The voice was male and resonant and the tone wasn’t matey.

Can I help you, sir?

It’s about Earl Grey.

Does he work here, sir? I’ll have to check because the name’s not familiar.

It’s tea, love, he said drily.

Mr T. Earl-Grey, is it?

Oh, a card, are we?

Sir?

Look, I’m expecting ten pounds of tea from you people and it’s weeks overdue.

I’ll give you to Mail Order then, sir, said Rose. Gladly, she added as she plugged him through. Earl-flamin-Grey, my bum.

A moment later, he was back.

Heard that, I did. I should report you, girlie.

The firing squad in haberdashery or death by moron on the switch, it’s all the same to me, mate. Go look for Earl. And she plugged him through to Farm Supplies. He was back inside a minute.

Now listen here!

She jacked him through to Boys Wear and counted.

Very smart.

There’s a ladder in your stockings, sir.

She gave him to Haberdashery and Hosiery, and thought she could feel the old switchboard heating up. When she heard his line back, she waited only to hear him draw a breath before punching him on to Mail Order and his mysterious ten pounds of Earl. She was flushed with excitement and took a few moments to see that the switchboard was lit up like a pinball machine. The last light on the board was him again.

It’s me again.

You don’t say. Any luck with Earl?

They haven’t found it yet.

Dear, dear. Want me to put you through to the Governor-General?

You — re a cheeky bugger.

The board was lighting up again.

Well, thanks a dozen, but I’ve got to get back to work. There’s a lot of buggerizing to be done.

She heard him laugh.

Well, I’m going to keep after this tea.

Good luck, Earl.

Rose pulled the plug on him, and went to work on the rest of them before the whole three floors fell on her. Darken came in and Merle and Alma behind her. Rose glared at them; they were ten minutes late.

Bairds, good morning … just putting you through … one moment please … Where the hell have youse been? I’ve had the Charge of the Light Brigade on my hands here … Bairds, good morning …

Gawd, look who’s in a tizz this mornin!

I spose we’d better begin, ladies.

Heads on, bums down, I reckon.

But by the time they got their headsets on, the switchboard had cooled off.

You bludgers, Rose said with a smile. What have you been up to?

Oh, a meetin of minds in William Street.

Sailors, I spose.

How’d you guess?

Who else is gunna go you three in a group at nine in the morning? They must’ve been at sea a good while to pick a pack of rough sheilas like you. Bairds, good morning … Oh, it’s you again.

Listen, he said on the other end, sounding sort of mature and well-fixed, why don’t we meet somewhere? You sound like a smart girl.

Only meet smart ones, do you?

Somewhere close to your work? You’re on Murray Street, right?

That’s right.

Righto. What about lunch? Let’s meet at the GPO.

First column on the left as you go up the stairs, she said. Twelve o’clock. Bring your teapot.

When he’d rung off, the switch was quiet and the others were quivering with suppressed laughter.

Looks like their mate caught up with them, said Merle.

Whose mate?

The sailors, said Alma. He wasn’t in our league. They reckon he only goes for the roughest scrubbers, and I bet he’s glad he found ya, love.

Rose smiled tolerantly across their squall of hysterics. The door opened, and Mrs Tisborn came in from the office. They ruffled themselves into sobriety and blushed guiltily.

This is a switchboard, not a fowl house!

Rose had a light on.

Bairds, good morning.

My name’s Toby, by the way.

Very good, sir. Shall I put you through to kitchenware?

What?

Rose pulled the plug on him and felt the sweat slipping down the inside of her blouse. Mrs Tisborn was prowling, the great buffer of her bosom aimed here and there.

I’ll be watching you girls. And remember, Miss Pickles, you’re still not too good for Hosiery.

Thankfully, a light came on and Rose caught it first. When she plugged it through, old Teasebone was gone.

Cor, blimey, whispered Darken. Straighten yer seams, girls. It’s stockins for the lot of us.

Penal servitude, said Merle.

You rude thing, said Alma.

It was him, said Rose. My date.

Geez, love, even Blind Freddy could’ve put a girl straight on that score. No salmon and onion sangers for you today.

Through the crowd she sees the bloke leaning on the first pillar above the post office steps, and her first impulse is to go on ahead and buy those salmon and onion sandwiches at Coles and forget the whole flamin thing. He’s not bad looking. Good suit, nice pair of shoes. Glasses, though he doesn’t seem the squinty, limp type. Hatless. A bit of an individual, it seems.

She’s too nervous for this. What’s a bloke like that want with a shopgirl like her? He’s no run of the mill lair. He’s the sort of man you pray will come out of the smoky gloom and ask you for a dance.

Rose wheels back for another look and finds herself going up the steps. Now or never, Rosie.

When she gets to him, his eyebrows rise and Rose feels herself being given the onceover. Before he can, she gets the first word in.

Gday, Earl. Haven’t strained yourself, have you?

He smiles indulgently.

Hello. I thought you’d be a looker.

Boom! goes Rose’s heart.

They stand there a full moment in the spring sunshine with people coming and going around them, posties wheeling past on their heavy old PMG bikes.

You hungry? Rose asks. I am.

Yes, yes, let’s get a bite.

They wind up at the sandwich counter in Coles and Rose forgoes the salmon and onion. They eat and Rose swings on her stool like a girl, waiting. This bloke seems different to men she’s known. There’s no big talk, no flashing of money, no nervous guffaws.

I’ll guess and you tell me how close I am, he said, wiping his fingers on greaseproof paper. You left school at fifteen. Your dad votes Labor, you play netball, you’d like to be a lawyer’s secretary and you sleep with your socks on.

Rose smiles and knows whatever she says will sound stupid. Patchy, she says, but boring enough to get me right.

What’s your name?

Rosemary.

Rose.

Yes, she says relieved.

What a talker. You need the switchboard between us, do you, before you can really fire?

I spose I’m used to it. I suddenly don’t know what to talk about.

Football? The common cold?

Just ask me out, she says.

Let’s go out together. Friday.

You’re a reporter, she says. You went to uni, your parents live in Nedlands and you’ve tried to teach yourself to talk like one of us.

Us?

Friday, she says. Meet me at Shenton Park station. Seven o’clock. Bye.

She slides off her stool, minding her stockings.

She steps out into the sunshine and has to concentrate to find her way back to work, though it’s barely a block away and she’s walked it every lunch hour for years.

Well, she thinks, hardly believing her cool delivery. Well. She wondered about her guess. A reporter? Yes, she’d seen those blokes around. Fast movers, funny, sharp, always asking and watching. Yes, he’d be right there in the thick of it. He’d know politicians and criminals. He’d be a mover and shaker. Well, well.

Toby Raven

At six-thirty that Friday, Rose was waiting outside the Shenton Park station. He lurched up in a Morris Oxford and nearly took her left hip from its moorings. The first thing she learnt about Toby Raven was that he couldn’t exactly drive. He made his way, but that’s the best you could call it. Rose climbed in, suddenly twice as nervous, and they hopped away.

Well, well, he murmured, smiling widely at her after a few moments.

Hello, said Rose.

Hel-lo.

Toby sent the car in a swoon towards the kerb and Rose prayed that he would never again feel moved to take his eyes off the road.

It’d taken all afternoon to dress for this, and she could barely move for starch; with her nervousness turning so quickly to naked fear, the sweat on her steamed up the tulle and the car began to smell like a laundry. She pulled the wrinkles out of her gloves and tried not to ruin her lipstick with gnashing as they drove beneath the long shadow of Kings Park and beside the river reclamation to the lights of the city centre.

Gawd, she thought, this should be a fabulous feeling — cruising with a beau — if only a girl wasn’t afraid of dying. She sat back as Toby swooped and swerved, grunted and grated, and took deep breaths as the colours of the city broke over her; she did a real job of seeming perfectly serene.

They passed through the high class end of town with its grand hotels and ballrooms to cross the railway bridge into shabby streets and boozers’ parks. Toby wedged the car up on a kerb with a thud that nearly put Rose’s head through the roof. He sighed triumphantly.

Let’s go in.

Rose couldn’t see anywhere likely to be an eating establishment. There were shopfronts, houses, shadowy doorways. She got out and smelled garlic.

You’ve gone to a lot of trouble, Toby said beside her. It was hard to tell what he meant, but she smoothed her great full skirt graciously all the same.

He led her to a narrow doorway where a big, bumper-breasted woman met them and took them down to a crowded, smoky room full of tables, chairs, tablecloths, candles, laughing people, chinking glass and cutlery. Great vats of spaghetti were carried past by boys, and jugs of wine that reminded Rose of nosebleeds. People seemed to be speaking all kinds of languages, and some seemed to know Toby.

They sat at a small waxspattered table, and bread was brought. It wasn’t exactly the dining room at the Palace Hotel.

Where are we? she said, trying to look pleased.

Maria’s. This is where the real people come.

Rose felt her cheeks glowing. Beaut!

How do you like your spaghetti?

Oh, she huffed, like my tea — as it comes.

He laughed. You’re not about to let me go on that tea business are you?

Listen, she owned up, I don’t know a thing about spaghetti. Or the real people. I’ll just have whatever you reckon.

Two carbonaras, he told the boy. And a jug.

Do you come here a lot? Yes, all the time. Terrific place. It’s a hideaway for those in the know, you might say. We all come here. Makes a bit of a change from the old mutton and boiled veg.

Toby smiled at someone over Rose’s shoulder and now and then she sensed an eyebrow raised.

You know all these people?

I know who they are and they know who I am. Some of us are friends, associates, old flames. I’m clubbish, you’d have to say; it’s my last concession to a bourgeois past.

Rose tried not to panic.

You okay?

Rose strangled out a yes.

You’re not nervous? Don’t be nervous. I’m quite safe, you know. Not respectable but I am able to restrain myself with a lady.

Rose smiled. She ran her fingers along the checked tablecloth.

What are you thinking? You want to go home?

We’re different, said Rose.

You don’t know a thing about me! he protested gaily.

Then tell me. What do you do?

Is a man only what he does?

No, Rose said, only what he is, I spose.

Well, Rose, you’re dead right. I’m a hack. A journalist on the Daily. I is probably what I does.

You’ve been to university, or something, haven’t you?

Ah, sharp lady.

See, we’re different.

So what?

Rose smiled. You write, then?

Well, you couldn’t call what I do writing, though I do scribble a bit in my own time. Do you read?

Yes, she said breathlessly, I read.

Thank God. Thank Jesus, Mary and Josephus, she reads! Rose, you’re a lovely girl. The moment I heard your snooty twang on the phone I knew it was love. See, we’re not so different.

Rose laughed. Toby was so confident, his face so full of mad expression, his hands seemed to crackle with animation. He fitted the din and swirl of this place.

The spaghetti came with wine and salad. Rose hadn’t eaten since breakfast, so she went to work. It was like eating kite string but the wine soon took the awkwardness out of it.

Tell me who you read, he said with a lump of cheese camping on his chin.

Oh, Gawd.

Don’t be shy.

I love books. My room is full of them. I read the whole Geraldton library end-to-end when I was a kid.

Name some names.

But Rose didn’t know names, she only remembered stories.

You name some, she said.

Toby grinned, closed his eyes: Hammett, Steinbeck, Hemingway, James Jones, Mailer, D. H. Lawrence. Xavier Herbert, Sillitoe, Camus …

She let him go on and on in a winy whirl as people brushed by with friendly nods and vats of red sauce. Their duffle coats and minks flapped, their pockets jingled, their laughter blanketed Rose Pickles in, warm as all get-out.

Rose had enough wine in her to keep calm as they jerked their way through the traffic to the Esplanade. The lights of the river seemed more beautiful than she’d seen them. The palm trees along the foreshore cast weird silhouettes.

One of the world’s strangest towns, said Toby, aiming them down Riverside Drive.

I wouldn’t know, said Rose.

Perth is the biggest country town in the world trying to be a city. The most isolated country town in the world trying to be the most cut-off city in the world, trying desperately to hit the big time. Desert on one side, sea on the other. Philistine fairground. There’s something nesting here, something horrible waiting. Ambition, Rose. It squeezes us into corners and turns out ugly shapes.

You must see a lot of things, said Rose, hating herself for sounding so wide-eyed.

Too many things.

Rose thought of morgues, cells, the steps of aeroplanes, the flash of camera bulbs. Her world was mundane and domestic in the high times. In the low times … she couldn’t even think of those times. The night wasn’t big enough for all those feelings.

Toby jacknifed the Morris into a carpark across the river from Crawley. The university clock was lit and it stood above the trees, the lamps, the water.

That’s nice, she said.

No, he murmured. This is nice.

Rose took the kiss and was surprised at how soft his skin was. She slid in close to him.

Nice is a terrible, bourgeois word, said Toby catching a breath.

Whatever, said Rose, whatever. She loved the smooching sound of the upholstery. She stopped being kissed and started kissing. She held his head, felt his hands on her back, in her hair.

Just switching you through, she murmured, trying not to giggle.

Rose Pickles, he said.

His hand was between her breasts and she left it there as the river went by and by.

Oh, Rose, you loved me. How you did. And there you go drifting by with the river, out on an eddy in a black, shiny Morris Oxford with a man who quotes D. H. Lawrence with his tongue in your ear and cheese on his chin. How you longed, how you stared at me those thundery nights when we all tossed and the house refused to sleep. It’s gone for you now, but for me the water backs into itself, comes around, joins up in the great, wide, vibrating space where everything that was and will be still is. For me, for all of us sooner or later, all of it will always be. And some of you will be forever watching me on the landing.

Back at his flat, Rose falls on the bed thinking: dammitall I’m twenty-four years old, as her acre of tulle comes away and his hands run down her legs to peel her stockings; I want him. She feels the air cool on her shins and draws him down. He slides into her and it’s as hard as the recesses of her heart and wonderful, only unlike Rose Pickles’ heart it stops beating and lurching and loses its steel and lets her down into a sad melancholy quiet. Well, she thinks, I’m a woman. She wants to cry, but ends up feeling grateful.

By the time summer came, Rose knew she was in love. Toby was clumsy and vague and she quickly discovered that he wasn’t the political scribe, the crime-chasing reporter she imagined, but the writer of a social column, a man with a notebook at a charity ball whose family name got him in the door. His real love was poetry and talk. He quoted Rimbaud by the river and Freud by the sea and Rose shut up and listened, let herself be taken along by the sheer force of him. He took her to clubs, to balls at the uni where people were stylish and confident in a way she’d never seen, and though he muttered critically in the dress circle, he took her to the pictures just to give her pleasure. They ate Italian food, Greek and Polish, drank at the Latin Quarter with Toby’s friends, and ignored all sports.

The moment she left the yard at Cloudstreet the wide world fell wonderfully upon Rose. She always met him in neutral places out of shame, and never mentioned the big old house, the squealing, romping, toothy noise of those who sailed on in it. Toby read the London newspapers and talked of escaping Perth for a real culture: Bloomsbury, the Left Bank, or Sydney at a pinch. The two of them drove in the warming evenings with the windows down and the wind in their clothes and always found themselves by the river with lights drifting round them.

Toby talked. Talked day and night about sex, about words to describe it, about how other cultures did it, about what it really meant. He gave her a plainwrapped Lady Chatterley and dared her to say the words. She dared him to bodysurf with her at Cottesloe Beach, but he stayed in the shade with an Evelyn Waugh. Rose sunbaked in her Jantzens and laughed at his passing commentary. The Norfolk pines reminded her of Geraldton. She dripped icecream on her Cole of California sundress. She read Scott Fitzgerald, discovered Henry Handel Richardson, and in the evenings cooked Toby meals in his flat and took him to bed where he was rarely as good as his word, though helpful enough in his way.

After sex, Rose went melancholy and fanciful. On the pillow beside Toby, she even imagined herself married with children, with a house in the clean new suburbs and all of Toby’s clever friends around to make her laugh. She’d wear a cashmere sweater tied loosely round her neck, her hair would always be wet and combed back after swimming, her children would be sweetfaced and adored by every passing stranger.

After lovemaking Toby went quiet, as though he’d suddenly and terribly run out of talk. He wrote poems, she discovered, wrote them in his head while they lay there subdued. She didn’t understand them if ever he showed them to her on paper. They seemed ugly and nonsensical, and as he wrote more of them and had them roundly rejected by magazines in the East his moods darkened.

She began to tell him about her life, but there were times when it was no use talking to Toby. With his friends it was no use saying anything at all. Every time she opened her mouth he’d scowl. She’d always put something into a conversation that would stop things dead. Toby’s friends painted and sculpted or wrote, though some just came around looking harried and thoughtful and did nothing at all. They knew everybody’s name, and certain names brightened their faces. They blew cigarette smoke like they were spitting. They spoke with their heads back and their eyes closed and their accents were Englishy. Rose didn’t mind them. Early in the evenings, when she was feeding them all, they showed an interest in her and once a woman painter suggested she go to night school to improve herself. She listened like a kid at a keyhole.

Rose went to work bleary and sullen. The switch girls teased her. She’s a bloody inta-llec-shul now! they shrieked, but they let up on her and bought her salmon and onion sandwiches in Coles and fussed over her when she was tired.

In the autumn Toby went into a long period of quiet, and after careful enquiry, Rose found that he was writing a book. He had hundreds of poems, hundreds, and she began to type them. In May, she was still typing. The poems were long scenes in which athletic men whispered Greek words into the ears of virgins.

Is anyone going to buy and read this? Rose asked, late one Sunday, after another weekend of typing.

Toby snorted. Probably not. Look what we’re up against. Oh, libraries’ll buy it.

Good, said Rose.

Is it?

Isn’t it?

He looked doubtful.

In May, one Sunday evening, Rose stopped typing. I’m not a typist, she said. And you’re not a poet.

You want to marry me, don’t you?

Ambition, Toby, it makes us funny shapes. You said it yourself. Let’s go to the football next weekend. Stuff the poetry.

Toby laughed.

Forget it, she said, it was just an idea.

An idea!

Yes, the switchgirl gets an idea. Call me a taxi.

I’ll call you a lot of things.

I’m going home.

Ah, the mysterious home. I always wanted to see where all these gothic strains come from.

Rose left.

For a few days it’s quiet between Rose and Toby. It rains in passionate bursts, usually when Rose is going to or from a train station. The girls at the switch are crazy and loveable, but she feels a stranger to them after these past months. She stays in at night and the house is almost tranquil except for the crying in the walls at night. She eats dinner with the old man and Chub, and with the old girl if she is out of bed in time. The kitchen smells of the pepper on the steaks, and of burning jarrah in the firebox. The Lamb mob seems quiet, subdued even. Sometimes she can hear the slow boy singing.

He’s a clever bloke, this fella of yours? Sam asks one night between wireless shows.

Oh, he’s clever enough, says Rose.

Gets a fat pocket at the end of the week, I spose?

Well, he gets more than me, Dad. He writes gossip during work hours and drivel in his free time.

Sounds like the life to me.

Oh, Dad, you silly bugger! she laughs.

Rose leaves the room before she clouts him one.

At the window by the landing Rose looks out on the backyard, lit softly by the lamp in the tent and the dunny light on this side that Chub’s probably left on, Chub who’s never had a job, Chub who eats and sleeps. It’s wet and lush out there, wild on the Pickles side of the tin fence, bountiful on the Lamb side. Rose unplaits her hair, and watches the shadow of the little woman in the tent. She’s been out there years now, and everybody in the street knows about it. No one knows why she’s there. She works all day in the shop and goes out there at night. It looks warm, the colour of that tent, and close and private. Yeah, she can see why a woman’d move out there to have some life of her own. It occurs to her that she hasn’t spoken to Mrs Lamb for a year, maybe two.

There’s a creak on the boards behind her. She whirls around to see Red Lamb.

It’s pretty hair you got.

Rose looks at her. Red is a year older than her, but Rose has always thought of her as some years her junior. Her red hair is cut flat and short, and it occurs to Rose that if the girl waits long enough it’ll actually come into fashion, especially if she had a tendency to hang around at the Snakepit and be a widgie. But she can’t see it. Red has the look of a hopelessly sporty girl.

Thanks. Thank you.

Red steps up on the landing beside her and peers out through the rainspatter on the window.

Your mum’s still up and about.

She’s a saint, you know. There’s no one else like her alive.

They stand a few moments like that, like two strangers waiting for a bus. Rose smells hard Velvet soap on Red.

Well, good night, says Red.

Yeah, g’night.

Rose watches the shadow in the tent. Rain falls without a sound.

In the night, Rose woke with cramps and had to stuff the pillow under her belly and lie like a baby on her front with her legs drawn up under. It was a horrible pain, the beginnings of a bad period, but she was grateful for it. Any period was a good period. Men had taught her that much. But it was severe alright. She’d get the old man to call her in sick in the morning. It’ll shock him, she thought, he doesn’t believe in missing work. Except to lie low. Well, maybe it’s the same. I’ll be lying low.

Some girl was blubbering in the house again. There was no one here anymore as young as that voice. Sorry sport, she thought; I’ve got my own problems.

At noon, the old girl came up in her dressing gown with a letter.

It’s from Ted, she murmured. He’s in South Australia. He married that girl who was pregnant. He’s a jockey. Can you believe it — he doesn’t weigh nine stone. You orright?

Rose nodded. Geez. I’m an auntie.

And I’m a grandmother. Never even knew about the weddin. I love a weddin.

Right there on the bed, the old girl got a weep on, and Rose found herself with an arm around her, patting the back of her head, smoothing the crumpled, smokestained bangs.

I’m old, Dolly bawled. I’m old.

She stayed there until she seemed exhausted by it all, and Rose laid her down on the bed.

What’s wrong with you, anyway, love? Why you off work? Dolly murmured beside her on the pillow.

Oh, the painters are in, that’s all.

God was laughin when he made women.

Rose lay there and listened to her mother fall asleep. She smelt of Guinness and lemonade. Rose put her hand on the old girl’s big arm and then she took it away again.

When Rose woke, it was evening and she was alone. Someone came hammering on her door. The old man.

Rose. Rose! There’s a bloke here!

Oh my God.

Says his name’s Tony.

Oh, please, she thought.

And then in came Toby himself, wildeyed and lurching.

What the hell are you doing here?

A poem! Someone’s taken one of my poems.

Don’t spose you’re insured? said Sam in the corridor.

Rose Pickles pulled the blanket over her head and laughed.

I’ll bung the kettle on, said Sam.

We’re invited to the editor’s house, said Toby.

Now? said Sam.

Tonight.

Then I will put the kettle on.

Put the bloody kettle on, Dad.

Sam gave an awful wink and went on his way.

How did you find … us? she said, trying to neutralize her tone.

Oh, the girls on the switch. They remembered the street, though none of them knew the number of the house. Once I found the street it was easy. Seems everybody knows this place. They were all talking about some woman with a tent? Anyway I found it.

Rose pulled the blankets around her.

You’ve been dark on me, Rose.

Congratulations on the poem. Who took it, that poonce from the university?

Oh, Rose, show some taste, some decorum.

I said congratulations, didn’t I?

You’re not the same girl I heard on the switch last year.

Well, I know about Earl Grey tea now and I’ve read Rimbaud. And his … imitators.

Nasty, nasty.

Don’t bloody patronize me.

Jesus, Rose, it’s my big day. I’m asking you out to a do. I’ve cracked it at last. They’re welcoming us in.

That mob? I thought you were avante garde or whatever.

Cmon, Rose. Be nice.

Nice is an ugly word.

You’re a sharp girl, Rose.

And I type like a demon.

Oh, don’t sulk. Cmon love. We’ll drink champagne and lose ourselves. I’m sorry for barging in on your … hide-away. Look pretty for me, alright? I’ll be by at eight.

There was a photographer from the Daily waiting on the steps of the Dalkeith mansion when Toby and Rose arrived starched to the gills, and the coincidence was not lost on Rose.

Who are these people, anyway?

Oh, uni people, old money, the usual literary establishment.

What’s the editor’s name again?

George Headley. He’s edited Riverside since the ivy started growing.

This must be important to you.

Ah, she loves me.

The door opened. Rose felt her shoulders sag in fear.

Toby Raven, said Toby to the big silver man.

And friend, said Rose.

Welcome to our little nest. Come in my boy.

Rose crept in behind Toby. A jazz combo played in the hallway. A buffet table filled the dining room and forced its trestled way into the huge, dark, heavy panelled livingroom. Leather furniture, jarrah bookcases, elephant’s feet, hatstands, squirish paintings on the wall squeezed Rose into her dress. From the huge windows she saw the slick lawns, the gleaming backs of cars, and below it all the lightmoving river.

Out in the sunroom men had gone into a huddle, and spotting them, Toby bolted their way. Rose did her best to seem unhurried and unflustered. She found the wives and girlfriends in the kitchen and was immediately loaded up with a tray of beer and Porphyry Pearl.

Run that past them, would you dear? An old pinkhaired woman said.

Rose stood among the men and heard Toby giggling nervously. She wanted to go. She was thinking of ways already.

Ah yairs, someone was saying, Katherine and Henrietta are alright in their way, but what we need is more Tobys, don’t you think?

Harumph!

Yairs.

My oath.

I mean I particularly like that bit where you liken the fallen beast to the Korean soldier.

Toby looked ashen: Um?

Ah yairs, and the stuff about the old barbed wire bridle.

Rose looked at Toby and sensed him knowing it. His lips gone almost brown in contrast to his face. He began to giggle. He’s never written a poem about barbed wire or war in his life, thought Rose. He’s a gossip columnist who writes sex poems.

Thought of a funny, Raven?

Toby tittered in some air: Did you like the bit where he whispers Homer in her ear?

General silence, then a slow rumble of amusement.

That’s it, thought Rose, knowing Toby knew it too. It’s a balls-up. They’ve got the wrong man, wrong poem. She wanted to go now. She couldn’t bear to see him humiliated like this, but neither could she be seen with him. She felt it so clearly here of all places; she despised him as much as pitied him.

You should let us have some comic work, Raven, said George Headley.

Toby’s giggle mounted another sentence: Well, well, well, actually I’ve been thinking of some very comic, funny, funny material inspired only today. Rose, tell them about where you live. Tell them about the lady in the backyard who lives in a tent. Tell them about the slow boy you used to love.

Rose shook in sick surprise. Toby went on in desperation.

You see, fellows, I’m working up this grotesquerie about … well there’s this shopgirl and a famous writer and …

Short story?

Oh, oh, oh longer.

Sounds promising.

Tell them Rose. Tell them!

Rose dropped the tray, felt the shower of bubble and glass fizz as she went. She went past elephant’s feet and dinky triangle sandwiches, through the deep darkness of the house while poor desperate Toby called, Tell them about my poems! Men roared and whaled with laughter and Rose heard Toby’s terrible miserable giggle outside the front door, across the glittering lawns and down the street as she went coatless and blank into the cold. The river was down there, black and moving. The river.

Silhouettes

Quick couldn’t get going again. After he got back with his family, he found that Cloudstreet had a hold on him, and though he couldn’t think why he should stay in the place, half falling down as it was now, empty of children and rarely the scene of much fun at all, with the old girl muttering to herself out in the tent half the night, the old man inside telling lies and glooming everyone up by trying to sound cheerful, Lon growing pimples and a snarl, Red with her beak always in a book confirming the frailties of Homo Sapiens, Elaine pinching her temples with a migraine and continuing a five year engagement with some bloke he’d never actually met, he kept his old room and helped out in the shop, drove the Chev which sounded these days like a chaffcutter, and watched the summer come, then autumn, winter, spring.

The kitchen floor kept him busy. One morning, the whole mob came down for breakfast and the floor had a list on it that caused the lighter chairs to slide down the hill into the stovefront and the sink. Quick got under the house with a couple of truck jacks to crank and pack it, but next day the slope was back. He jacked and packed three times, but each time the floor came back to an ideal walking surface for people with short left legs. In the end Red had the idea of nailing blocks on the floor and gluing chair and table legs to them on the down side, no slope, no sliding. In a week the old girl herself had taken on a new gait. She now walked more like a bosun than a sarmajor. The Lambs were a crook bunch to look at once they got their sealegs.

Fish lay on his bed with the crystal set, day and night. He said little. Sometimes he didn’t even come down to tea, and not even Lester could get him down. Oriel had lost power over him long ago, a defeat that you could read in her face every time Fish came shambling by.

Late in summer, Quick found the boat the old man had bought years ago, the one Fish and he had rowed from Freo when they were kids. It was still beached and upside down at Crawley, so he scraped it, patched it, caulked and painted it so that in the evenings he could row down to the narrows and put out lines for mulloway, flathead and bream. He was comfortable out there on the water, alone with the city lights and the quiet pressure of the outgoing tide. The river was a broad, muttering, living thing always suggesting things that kept his mind busy. Every important thing that happened to him, it seemed, had to do with a river. It was insistent, quietly forceful like the force of his own blood. Sometimes he thought of it as the land’s blood: it roiled with life and living. But at other moments, when a dead sheep floated past, when the water was pink with storm mud, when jellyfish blew up against the beaches in great stinking piles, Quick wondered if it wasn’t the land’s sewer. The city had begun to pile up over it as the old buildings went and the ugly towers grew. But it resisted, all the same, having life, giving life, reflecting it. On clear nights you could see lights in the hills and the scarp beyond the city. He remembered the wheatbelt, that great riverless domain, and recalled himself charging madly through the wheat. I was looking for this he thought. The river. Quick watched the few old battlers who still netted the river for a living, and it was from observing their silhouettes with pity and admiration that he came upon a job for himself. He’d supply the shop with fish! It was a good mile from Cloudstreet to the nearest fishmongers, and he’d seen all the Baits and Greeks moving in, these past few years, and the lengths those coves would go to just to buy a decent piece of fish. He went home and put the idea to Oriel who claimed it as one of her best, and the next day Quick was buying nets and setlines, looking out for a cheap seagull motor, and feeling pleased with himself. Actually everybody was happy. Quick felt like his own boss again, Oriel felt like everybody’s boss again, and everybody bossed. The fish sold. The shop prospered. Late of an evening, you’d see Sam Pickles down there, hat back on his head, gladstone bag in hand, weighing up a couple of pounds of crabs for himself. Geez, I forgot how much I miss the smell of fish every day, he’d say. I been in the city too long. I’m gunna up an orf one day, he’d say to nobody special. I’ll be orf like a shot.

Fish started coming out of his room late in the afternoons to watch Quick mend his nets over the frame he’d knocked up down the backyard. At first it was a surprise to see him. Fish poked his fingers into the mesh the first time, then left the net alone thereafter, but he continued to leave the wireless and come down to watch.

Can I come, Quick? he’d ask, sitting with his chin on his knees. He was big and rolylooking nowadays, and not handsome like he’d once been. Lips wet and turning; a squint of incomprehension that five-year-old boys learn to hide.

Not tonight, no.

When? How many sleeps?

Mum says no, Fish. She doesn’t want you on the river.

I like it.

Yeah, I know, cobber.

But I’m big!

Quick looked up from his work. Yeah, that’s true enough, I reckon.

Carn.

Carn what?

Carn, take me.

I just told you, Fish.

You did once. You took me one time. Remember? We goed in the stars.

Quick snapped an end off and put the net down. We were kids, Fish. We were asleep. It was a dream. And we were hungry, remember?

Strange, but he’d forgotten about that night. There were so many things he just didn’t think about.

We saw.

Nah.

And Quick knew he was lying. God Almighty, the things he’d decided not to remember, not to wonder about. Was it a family thing, this refusal to wonder? There were plenty of things to chew over if you let yourself, if you’re the type. Things happen — when you’re a kid, or sick or asleep or maybe a bit stupid — they happen, and maybe it’s best to leave it there.

Fish would head off towards the pig who slouched up against the fence in his smelly enclosure, and Quick would hear him talking. To a bloody pig.

Some nights the old man would come out with him. Lester was unusually quiet out there on the river. It was a relief to have him quiet these days. At home, in the shop, he was painful with talk. He’d rattle like an Owen gun, whipping off chronic old jokes from his standup days at the Anzac Club, tell stories that couldn’t possibly be true or even listened to, but even on the river he got quietly philosophical in the wee hours.

I remember my first ever memory, he’d say. I was on my father’s shoulders in the dark. It was raining, and we were crossin a creek that had burst its banks …

Oh, Dad!

What?

That’s bullshit.

It’s not, the old man murmured with emotion.

You tell such lies, said Quick, trying to sound gentle.

I know. Lester began to weep: But that’s true. It happened. Even if it’s only a dream, I know it happened.

Hey, its orright.

I’m gettin old and stupid. I’m an old showoff and me family’s ashamed of me.

Come on, Dad, I’m sorry, orright?

I just miss the playin and singin. I don’t tell lies about anythin important. You know, boy, I just like stories.

You shoulda been a poet.

Henry Lawson. No, too sad for me. Old C.J., that’s who I shoulda been.

Who?

The Sentimental Bloke.

Oh.

The river ran slow beneath them while Lester blew his nose and Quick thought about his father’s life.

No one’s ashamed, Dad. Aren’t you happy? You’ve done things.

Yeah, I’ve done things, boy. And I’m happy when I don’t think about it.

About what?

Not measurin up.

To what?

Your mother. Oh, she’s good about it and all, but a bloke can’t avoid it. You know, I was in the cavalry at Gallipoli, but as a cook. No wounds. And she lost that brother. You can’t compete with a dead hero. You can’t beat the dead.

You don’t have to, they’re dead.

But they stay, Quick. That’s one thing you’ll learn. The lost will stay with you.

Quick listened to the water under the boards. It was a strange sensation, having your father talking to you more or less like you were equal.

Dad, why’s she out in that tent, then?

Oh, she’s got ghosts of her own.

Tired of ordinary mortals, I thought.

Well, people disappoint her.

She’s a queer bird, the old girl.

She’s a fighter, said Lester. She wants all the answers.

What do you want, Dad?

I just want to be liked. She doesn’t care about all that — well she tries not to. I always wanted to be loved, that’s all. When I was a kid I wanted to be a hero. Hah! Your mother came along and I wanted to be loved by her. And I was. Still am I reckon. I wanted people to think well of me. And I wanted to be loved by God.

Were you? All those things?

I figured I was. That’s how I saw it.

You don’t believe in yourself, Dad, that’s the trouble.

Does anyone?

Mum, I spose.

No, not even her.

So what … what dyou live for?

The old man laughed: The family, Quick. Your mother’n me always had that in common. Take away the family and that’s it, there’s no point.

Our family? Us. Come on!

It’s why I don’t shoot meself quietly in the head with the old Webley. If I did nothin else in me weak old life, Quick, I know I had a family and I enjoyed every bit of it. Hell, I made youse laugh, didn’t I? We had fun, all of us, didn’t we?

Quick thought about it. They lived like some newspaper cartoon — yokels, bumpkins, fruitcakes in their passed down mended up clothes, ordered like an army floorshow. They worked their bums off and took life seriously: there was good and bad, punishment and reward and the isolation of queerness. But there was love too, and always there was music and dancing and jokes, even in the miserable times after Fish drowned.

Quick? Boy? Didn’t we?

My oath, Dad.

You’re wastin yer brains out here on the river, son. You should be usin yer brains.

I like it, Dad. The water makes me happy, lets me think.

You need some ambition.

What big ambition did you have, apart from wantin to be a hero?

Nothin. I just wanted to be a good man.

That’s all I want.

Well, there’s time. A whole river of time, Quick. Easy to be a good man out here — there’s no one else to think of. Lester pointed to the lights above Perth water where the city hung and the suburbs began their outward roll. But up there, that’s the test.

Quick rowed on the slackening tide while the old man crooned a hymn from times back.

That year Quick worked the river from the narrows, where the bridge was going up, down to Blackwall reach where stolen cars and hot pistols were thrown from the cliff into the impossible deep, and even as far as East Fremantle in the shadow of the soap factory and the foundries where the channels ran full of fish, where now and then on the incoming tide, a body might be found, some wharfie, sailor, drunk and king hit. He got plenty of time out there alone to think, and by the beginning of winter, he knew that he really was wasting his time. The fish were selling, the shop was doing well, but he was operating inside a routine. He liked to be on the water, he liked the business of nets and line and fish, but he knew it was a postponement of something.

One afternoon, he gave in to Fish, smuggled him into the Chev before dusk with the wireless still chirping up in the fuggy room, and enough closing hour business in the shop to confuse things.

They drove down along the cliff at Peppermint Grove where in the last light of day, the great, lazy broadness of the river was exposed to them, turning light in insect movements, pricked white with the slackbellied yachts setting out for a twilight run around the Mosman Spit and Claremont water beyond. Fish gasped.

Haaaah! The water!

That’s the stuff, orright.

You good, Quick.

Ah, dry up, Quick said, smiling.

Haah.

You know the rules?

I have to have string.

I’ll tie your belt to the seat so you don’t fall out, and you have to wear this.

Quick pointed at the bouquet of plastic net buoys, each the size of a man’s head, that he’d strung together.

It’s like a hula belt.

What?

Just wear it. Not now, you nong, wait’ll I get you in the boat. I’ve gotta park the truck first. It was like being kids again, nicking off and going fishing. They moved east, upstream, working the banks and gutters all the way through Claremont where the houses were shabby and colonial, to Nedlands water where the lawns stretched up from the water to configurations of houselights you’d only expect to see on luxury liners. Just before midnight they came upon a batch of cobbler that were easy spearing in the shallows. Fish lay across the bow with a torch strapped to his wrist, peering down into the water, mystified by its loss of reflection. He could see down into the milling mobs of smelt and gobbleguts and the ribbed sand bottom until the batteries began to give out. Then he found the dark water more exciting and Quick noticed how precariously he hung over the side, was glad he’d made precautions.

You hungry? There’s some cold pies in the box. Cmon, we’ll take a breather for a while. Get back in the bottom, it’s cold. Where’s your beanie?

In my pocket.

Put it on, it’s cold.

Don’t boss!

Who brought you out in this boat? Whose boat is it?

It’s our boat, all of us. I remember.

Well, so you do, thought Quick, ashamed.

Cmon, let’s have somethin to eat. The cobblers can wait.

Not lookin at them.

Just the water, eh?

Yep.

You’re a character, orright.

Fish got down in the bottom of the boat. A wind was springing up from seaward bringing in that chill Rottnest air. They ate cold meat pies, discards from the shop, and drank hot, sweet tea from the Thermos.

What’re we gonna do with ourselves, Fish?

Eat pies more. You go to sleep. I’ll watch.

You happy?

Yep.

Always?

I get happy sometimes. Not you.

Oh, me, I’m the original glumbum.

I like the water.

You remember what happened to you in the water, at Margaret?

Is it a story?

It happened, but it can be a story.

I know a story. The house hurts, you know.

What’s that?

A story.

There’s someone on the bank there.

Some people cry.

Shut up, Fish, someone is crying. It’s late to be out. Stay down.

In the story, Quick—

Shut up and stay down! he hissed.

Quietly, Quick punted them in under the shallow of the low wall that held the river back in storms. The keel ground along the shell grit at the edge, losing water. He was right. There was someone up there crying, but out of sight, in the lee of the wall.

Is everything orright up there? he called. There was a startled squeak, and a scrape of shoes on cement. A figure rose from behind the wall. Quick held the Tilley high, but succeeded only in blinding himself. He heard a honk of noseblowing.

Sorry, I didn’t mean — he stammered.

Quick Lamb, she said. That bloody house won’t leave us alone, will it?

Quick looked at Fish who was smiling fit to sin.

Hypothetical, as the Smartbums Say

She wipes her eyes again and looks at him with his puzzlement plainlit by the lamp swinging at his cheek. The brother is down in the boat, luminous in his own way, huge in sweater and cap.

Well, fancy this.

It’s Rose, says the slow brother, Fish, the one she used to watch through door cracks and curtains.

From next door?

She’s not happy, Quick.

Any chance of a ride?

Where to? says Quick.

Oh, doesn’t matter.

Here, hop in.

And the moment she gets in the boat she can’t stop howling. She holds back on it like a carsick kid trying not to toss, but it only increases the tearing in her throat. Now and then she gets a glimpse of Quick rowing and the other one watching her, both looking like they don’t know whether to go on fishing, head home, or paddle her around till dawn. Now and then she gets her breath back and composes herself for a bit of polite chat, but she loses the lot at the last minute to end up head down in the stink of nets and pots and the mire of her own hanky. In the end she dozes, exhausted. When she wakes she sees they’ve been fishing again, but now the slow one is asleep up in the bow under a tarp. Horror-faced cobbler squirm around in a tub beside her, all with white patches where their stings have been torn out. She smells the heat of the lamp behind her, hears the dip of oars, and Quick Lamb’s orderly breathing. There’s a man’s greatcoat across her shoulders. Her backside is alive with pins and needles.

Wanna fag? Quick asks.

Thanks, I don’t smoke.

Fair enough.

Have I been asleep long?

Oh, an hour, I reckon.

Jesus.

You must be pretty upset.

How many cobblers have you got?

Three dozen, maybe.

Do you catch them on a line?

Nah, we spear em with a gidgie in the shallows. Easy work when a bloke can get it. We’re just settin nets now.

City lights drift by, but only the boat and the river move. Rose can hardly recall feeling as awful as this, though it’s a surprise that it’s not worse.

I’ve got some Chateau Tanunda in that coat, if you want a swig, he says.

No, it’s alright.

No smokin and no drinkin — do your parents know about this?

Spose it is a bit of a laugh, really.

Think I’ll take a snort meself. Couldja find it?

Rose gropes around inside the pockets with their crusty dried flecks of bait, pencil stubs, pieces of string and chips of Buttermenthol.

Think I’ll have a splash myself, after all that, she says.

He takes the bottle from her while she’s trying not to cough it all into the cobbler trough.

Well, that’s cheered you up, he says with a laugh.

It’s beautiful out here, she says, turning round to sit facing him. He stands, punting along with effort.

It’s cold.

Where are we going?

I was about to consult you on that. Actually, I’m beginning to wonder meself. This hasn’t turned out a regular night, you see.

Your brother.

Yeah.

What’s the story with him?

He sighs. The dark water moves by like the black glass of a dream’s beginning. After a while she knows she’s upset him. God, what a clumsy bitch I am, she thinks.

Sorry. I didn’t mean to be so blunt. It’s just that, well, your mob and mine never really talked much, did they. I’m sorry.

Doesn’t matter.

Is he out with you for any special reason?

Oh, he’s been after me forever about coming. Mum an Dad worry. I smuggled him out. He’s knackered. Snores like a bugger.

Rose reaches for the brandy again to take another pull, and the Lamb boy lets the oars drag a few moments passing it to her, watching her drink. The lamp is strapped in against the gunwale beside her; she puts a hand to it for warmth.

What are you like, Quick Lamb?

What sorta question’s that?

Can’t you answer it?

Rose watches his features straighten in offence, a moment, before easing back into the soft, boyish lines from a few seconds before.

What’m I like? He takes up the oars again. Even in a coat and beanie he looks thin. A bit lost, I spose.

The lost Lamb.

Yeah, I feel sheepish about that.

Neither of us is likely to get a show on the wireless, you know.

Oh, I thought my joke was a bottler. It was yours that was on the nose. Gawd, yer smilin.

Nah, it’s only a rumour.

Why’d you ask the question?

I don’t know. Actually, I was just wondering. We live in the same house, what is it, fifteen years now, and I suppose I don’t even know who you are. Hey, I remember that time years ago you clobbered me on the stairs with a bag — knocked me down, you rotten sod, you remember that?

He just rows. No. Don’t think so.

Well, you were in a hurry.

You grew up pretty good lookin, Rose.

Ta.

Funny, the way he says it; it’s like there’s no intention behind the observation, as though he doesn’t mean it to be an embarrassing personal sort of thing, but just a general comment. Rose flushes, not because he’s said it, but for it’s plainness.

How come you do this?

Fishin? Reckon I’d do it after work anyway, if I had a routine job, and seein as I can’t figure out what the hell to do with meself, it’s pleasant enough and pays me way. I just haven’t got any ideas, you know, about what to do. Me old man was sort of restless, goin from thing to thing, the sorta bloke who needed the army but wouldna thought of it till the war came along. Spose that means we’re weak.

No, I reckon it’s just normal.

You look the ambitious type to me.

You come from a big mob, remember. You’ve been sheltered a bit.

He nods. Maybe you’re right. I never thought about it like that.

Rose can’t help but laugh.

What do you think about all day?

I reckon I’m tryin to figure out what I lost. I keep figurin I’ve lost somethin somewhere.

Something to do with him? She points back over her shoulder where Fish sleeps in the bow.

I reckon my whole life is to do with him. It’s a sorta mess.

You really love him, don’t you.

Everyone loved him. He was the funniest, stupidest kid in the whole bloody world, an everybody loved him.

Jesus, Rose thinks, there’s fire in that hole.

He’s my brother.

Geez, I’ve got two of them, and I couldn’t say I even liked them.

You woulda loved him, Quick murmurs.

I probably did, Rose thinks: I reckon that’s probably the way it was.

What’re we doin out here in the cold, anyway? he says.

Talking.

You wanna go home?

She shakes her head.

Well, how’d you like to work while you talk?

Fair enough.

They set nets with numbing fingers as the city grows silent around them, all the streetlights out along the foreshore, houses darkened beyond. Pelicans flap and stir invisible. Now and then a mullet will jump, a prawn come skipping like a stone. Quick lets them drift along gutters with a handline out in case of a passing mulloway and Rose tucks herself down in the bottom of the boat beneath the greatcoat with small slugs of brandy to keep herself awake. She feels unaccountably happy and she knows it’s not just the Chateau Tanunda. For a long time, an hour maybe, they don’t speak at all. When she closes her eyes it feels like she could be anywhere. What happened earlier tonight is becoming hard to believe; the whole time with Toby, it’s receding so quickly as to be a little alarming. Listen to yourself now, she thinks. You even speak differently. He talks like someone out of Dad ‘n’ Dave and you try not to smile. Oh, you learnt well, Rose. Strange, but she can’t feel any anger. All her life she’s been angry, and now she can’t feel it, when she should feel it strong and hard like metal under her skin. For a while she debates the idea of telling Quick Lamb where she’s been, what she’s just come through, but one look will tell a girl he doesn’t need to know. Actually, he’s so damn incurious as to be a bit startling. She watches him with the line in his fingers, the low light of the lamp easy on his jaw, and sees how far back in him his mind is, how he has a strange tranquillity riding across the heat she saw a while ago with that brother business. It doesn’t seem like resignation, just some time-biding patience that’s new to her, not fierce like her determination to make something for herself, but firm all the same. Like an old, old man waiting for something he’s been promised.

Why do you get that look on your mug?

He stirs a little. I’m just fishin.

You reckon we’d be any good married to each other?

Gimme that bottle! he says.

Ssh! You’ll wake your brother.

Gissit!

In the end he reaches, grabs and hurls the bottle out across the water.

Jesus Christ! What’d you do that for?

Don’t talk like that, I don’t like it.

It’s my mouth, mate.

And yer sittin in my boat.

Rose hauls the smelly greatcoat hard about her. She’s still pretty bloody sober, thank you very much.

Just a question, you know. Hypothetical, as the smartbums say.

You’ve been around with smartbums—1 wouldn’t know.

So you know more than you let on.

It’s a house, not a—

Walls have ears.

Well, you should know, he says. We’re even louder than you are.

Oh, you noticed? It’s like living next to a cattleyard.

You’ve done orright from us.

And you from us, I’d have thought. Well, here we are showing our colours. No civil war, fair enough?

Fair enough.

You’re true blue, Quick Lamb.

Thanks, he says, with a sudden smile.

Now answer the question.

Dwellingplace

Rose and Quick burst into the empty dark library while the rest of the house sleeps. Fish is down the hall snoring. They close the door and cut into the stale dead air with their excitement. They could be children, they breathe so hard, standing apart from one another lit by only the glow of their faces and the heat of their breaths.

I just stumbled into Heaven, Rose says.

Quick just stands and smiles.

You believe in Fate?

He shakes his head.

This isn’t happening, she says.

Not yet.

They meet, two points of light sparking up the dark, their mouths gentle upon one another, shocked into sobriety in seconds. Around them the shades hover and hang, twitching.

I know you all of a sudden, she says.

We’re nuts, he said. We’re gunna be embarrassed afterwards.

No. We’re gonna be something else altogether. Come here, here. Here, Quick.

Then suddenly they’re going off like a bag of penny bombs, clawing at each other’s clothes, talking into skin and opening up while all about the fretting, bodyless shadows back off, mute and shaken in the face of passion, the live, good, heat of the young.

Rose’s shoulders slope sweetly under Quick’s hands, and she presses into his belly, finds his nipples at her fingertips as she takes him down to the jaded flowers of the library rug where they roll and warp as though they’re in some limitless spring paddock that’s heady with petals, and pollen and bellowing with sweet energy.

The girlshadow and the hagshadow go limp and open-mouthed, slipping down the walls torn by their halfness. They see the living find curves and dips in one another and hear electric whispers building in their space. Press against the walls, press against themselves, press against the barrier unseen that holds them here. It’s love pressing them, see how it distorts their meatless shadows into swatches of darkness, forcing them against the transparent skin of time.

Rose wraps him in her legs, knots over him with hands and mouth and hair, while Quick sprinkles her with sweat, shaking as he is, finding her just … just food for him. Across the knots of their discarded clothes they slide and clinch, he with fishblood and her blood on his fingers, she with brandy on her breath, both of them openeyed with a surprise that turns to recognition, and together they make a balloon of heat inside the cold nausea of that dead room whose timbers twist and creak; a new dwellingplace. Love rattles the wallpaper and darkness recedes into itself a fraction when they shout exultant into each other’s mouths.

After they’re dressed and gone, hurrying out into the daylit house with news for the world, their sudden love remains in the room, hanging like incense.

Outside Chance

Oriel Lamb had nothing to say. Her son stood at the flap of the tent in his undershorts with the creeping sun behind him, and she had nothing to say at all.

It’s probably a bit of a shock, he said.

Oriel stepped into her boots and took a Bex for the headache that could only be minutes away. She made her bed while he stood there, set things straight on her dresser, trimmed the wick of the lamp.

Mum?

Aren’t you cold?

Yeah, but—

Go inside and light the stove.

Just then someone started to laugh up in the Pickles side of the house, the kind of laugh that’d see a person in the casualty ward if it went on much longer.

Well, I see Mr Pickles has just been informed, said Oriel.

Don’t see what’s so funny, said her son.

The laugh toned down to a fitful giggle that sounded safe enough for the moment. A window on the ground floor slid up and Dolly Pickles put her head out; she looked truly vile with her hair imploded, a fag on her long bottom lip. She shook her head, pulled it and her dishwater bangs inside, and ground the window down again.

Go inside, Quick. I want to get dressed.

He went, she pulled the flap to, and sat on the bed, wrinkling it in a most unsatisfactory way.

Inside, Lester Lamb was looking for Quick. He knew damn-well that Fish had been out all night with Quick in the boat, and that the old girl would go mad, but he’d seen, too, the troughs full of fish still out on the truck with all the local cats fighting and gorging on them, and he knew he had to get to the boy before she did, because he just couldn’t imagine what’d happen if she saw.

He went quietly from room to room in the strangely subdued house which felt like a storm had been through while they were all asleep to leave the atmosphere thick and exhausted, until he got to the back door and saw Quick coming. He motioned to Quick to come quickly, the boy seemed eaten by dread all of a sudden.

You’ve left the fish out! he hissed.

Oh, gawd!

What’s the matter with you?

I’m gettin married.

Today?

No. It’s—

Good, well let’s get the fish in.

The cats yowled and spat as Lester and Quick heaved the troughs down and hauled them inside. The house was waking quicker than usual. Through the shop and into the kitchen they went.

It’s a good night’s worth, son.

I’m gettin married, Dad. I’m marryin Rose next door.

Good gawd!

The old man threw himself onto a chair which slewed on its joints and collapsed beneath him, sending him onto the floor on his back. Pieces of wood slid down the lino like broken tackle on a reeling ship.

She’s so … pretty, Lester said without breath. I’ve hurt me back.

It’s gunna be orright, Dad.

Let’s wait for the X-rays.

No, I mean—

Good Lawd! bellowed Oriel walking in on them. For pity’s sake, let’s be sensible about this!

He fell over, Mum.

Sit down over there!

Red burst in. Good on ya, Quick. I knew you weren’t completely useless. You don’t deserve her.

Elaine followed, white, peaky, outraged.

Well, Lon’s asleep as usual, said Quick, and Fish’ll be down drectly.

Who’s gunna declare the meeting opened, then? said Red, grinning.

I’ve hurt me back, said Lester.

I’ll second that, said Quick, delirious with apprehension.

Get off the floor, Lester, said Oriel.

The floor’s yours, Dad, said Quick. The meeting’s opened.

Oriel Lamb began to weep. It sounded like trains colliding.

Well, it’s a step down from Tony from the uni, murmured Sam, rolling a fag philosophically, but he seems a good boy.

That’s all he is, Dolly said in disgust. A good boy.

Rose had never felt so much iron in her. There was this feeling of striding, of invincibility that she’d only ever had in dreams before. She shifted in her stance against the kitchen wall and felt the soreness still. There was nothing they could say, that anyone could say, to take this from her.

You up the duff?

Leave it out, Mum!

They’ll think you are anyway. Six weeks is gunna look lovely.

Not that having things look lovely has been your enduring obsession, Mother.

I’m thinkin of you, you silly little bitch.

Good, that makes two of us.

They’ll hate it.

You mean you hate it.

That woman’ll tear you to bits.

Chub came in.

What’s all the yellin?

I’m getting married to Quick Lamb in six weeks.

Oh. There any bacon?

It’ll be a bloody dry weddin, Sam said with a look of wonder.

Not if we’re payin for it, it won’t, said Dolly. No flamin fear!

Oh, murmured the old man. I forgot that. See, I knew I won that two-up money for something.

You mean you’ve still got it? Dolly looked appalled.

Under the mattress. Lost me nerve there for a while, I did.

This is so funny, so bloody hilarious, said Dolly, not managing to sound amused. She wants our blessin, but she won’t ask for it.

She’s proud.

Stop smirkin like that, the both of yuz! said Dolly.

What do you reckon, Dad?

Oh, you know me, I’ll always back an outside chance.

Rose kissed him and felt the urgency of his embrace until she could count the fingerless knuckles in the small of her back.

He’ll have to come an see me.

He’ll come.

We’ll get free fish, I spose.

I reckon it could be arranged.

They’re gettin this place off us, bit by bit, said the old girl. We’re signin ourselves over.

Give’s a kiss, Mum.

Go to buggery.

Grandeur, Almost

In the end, after six weeks of tears and tizzes, Quick stands up there at the front of the church with Fish at his side and the family sweating behind him. In his hired suit, Fish looks like he could run the Liberal Party and make a killing. Quick can hardly believe he got his way. There’s organ music, the smell of mothballs and pious bookdust. He catches a glimpse of his mother’s magnificent look of forbearance and injury; her hair is bowled over in a frightful series of curls, hardly a monument to straightliving and modesty. It’s almost like a helmet she’s lowered on her scone for protection against passion. The old man beside her sits reedbent and curious, tie knot resting like a spare Adam’s apple at his throat. Quick can’t remember noticing his baldness as being so advanced. They look so old, the two of them. The knife never lies … should have spun the old knife, he thinks, just for a laugh. Though maybe we could do without predictions today.

The high ceiling reaches into a cobwebby dimness with weak streaks of light blunting themselves against one another from opposite sides of the church. It’s almost grand, but a good compromise, he thinks, between pooftery High Church and shoebox Baptist.

You got the rings? he whispers to Fish.

Yairs. Fish pats his pocket.

Need a wee?

No. Not yet.

Won’t be long now.

Someone’s asleep in this house, too.

Ssh, now. They’re here. Oh, gawd, they’re havin a barney out on the street.

A few Lambs and Lamb customers twist their necks to see a moment of sparring between bride and mother before the organ lets loose with a volley of notes which sound like a call to order.

She’s comin, Quick! Fish has lost his shonky statesman composure. He begins to bob and grin.

Orright, I can see. Keep your hair on.

Fish reaches for his hair in surprise, though neither powers nor principalities could move that head of hair, such is its cargo of Brylcreem.

Dolly Pickles plots a course and tacks down the aisle to her seat at the front, great spinnaker of a hat resting at last. Chub rolls up beside her, wearing so much babyfat he might have hired it for the occasion. And then they come. Here they come. All that flaming gorgeous brown hair swinging visible under the veil, and the little nicotine stained man alongside, leading with his arm crooked, crippled hand on his hip.

Cor, says Fish.

Ssh, mate. She looks orright, eh.

Mister Pickles is small like a dog.

Rose comes smiling, wet-eyed and triumphant. She knows exactly what she’s doing, and it’s what she tells herself every few feet. It seems a ridiculous way to walk, this tightrope shuffle, and if she doesn’t take her mind off it for a moment, she knows she’s going to keel over. How priestly the priest looks coming down beside Quick with his sumptuous bits and pieces, and how Fish … how Fish … how is Fish making that noise, that sound?

Up the front, before the man in costume, Fish Lamb is singing, or saying, or something. He has the ring box in his hand that he shakes like a maracas and holds high as he sways and bobs, lobbing his head about on his shoulders, eyes closed, with complete assurance he goes on, stopping the bride in her tracks and setting dogs ahowl outside the windows. No one grabs him. They all believe it can’t go on. But he goes on, right on, until there’s a sweat on him and on everybody else, and he falls silent, then down, and in the end, asleep.

The organist finds his place and gets back on his trembly way. The bride steps up, white as her outfit, to meet the groom who wears a smile that looks borrowed.

They don’t exactly fill the RSL hall with their bodies, but some huge, pentup feeling makes the place seem crowded as families and friends, punters, customers, neighbours find their tables by way of chinky giltlettered namecards and sit down to the chook and two veg with gravy, jugs of beer, sherry and lemonade. They get through filthy telegrams, Lester’s speech turns into a string of the most awful, wonderful fibs and damnnear gets to the brink of vaudeville, Dolly gets shickered altogether on beerglasses of sweet sherry, while Elaine weeps and mopes; Hat and hubby talk about council rates and renovations; Red dances with strange blokes and swats their hands away heartily as she swoops round the floor. Chub eats. Sam dances with his daughter, nimble as a midget and pinches her back from blokes who cut in. Lon Lamb gets quietly stung by spiking his lemonade with sherry until in the end he’s camped down under the tablecloth, too un-coordinated to get off his back and avoid the sight of all those ladies scratching themselves discreetly under the table. At the very end, Quick and Rose lounge together, tired and jubilant with their clobber askew and their hair losing ground, while a very strange thing happens. Oriel Lamb hoists herself wearily from the chair she’s occupied all evening at her end of the bridal table, crosses the floor to where Dolly Pickles sits frightening a group of young men with the kind of jokes she knows, and asks her to dance. There’s no one else on the floor. The band sits around lighting fags and chatting up girls until Oriel catches the drummer’s eye. Quick sees his mother’s face: something massive has been summoned. Rose feels his grip on her tighten as her mother sits there losing resistance by the moment. The music strikes up quietly. Dolly puts out her cigarette. The lairs look horrified. Oriel Lamb takes her by the hand and waist and they move out onto the floor in a slow rhythm that sobers the entire place. The short, boxy woman slips around gracefully, holding the old beauty up, and turn by turn something grows.

They look so bloody dignified, says Rose. So proud.

As they wheel by like a miracle, there are spectators weeping.

Outside in the Chev, Fish Lamb is sleeping.