…
Your Dad?
You, Less.
Sisters?
Red and Hattie and Lane.
Brothers?
Quick Lamb.
You forgot one.
…
You forgot one.
Fish Lamb.
One more. Small.
Lon. That Lon. The baby.
He’s eleven, Fish. Where dyou live?
Cloudstreet. The big house.
That’s right. You’re clever enough, cobber. Wanna sing a song?
The house sad, Lestah.
What? How dyou know that?
It talks.
Lester can’t suppress a chuckle.
Fish rolls onto his side and puts a hand carelessly across Lester’s thigh. The veins in his arm are dark and dense.
It hurts.
Lester kisses the boy.
Carn, I’ll spin the knife if you come down.
The knife never lies, says Fish.
Downstairs in the cool kitchen Lester spins the butter knife and watches the light of it in his son’s eyes. Oriel is banging up and down in the shop up front and Hat and Elaine are laughing at something.
This is for who’ll see Quick come in the door first, Lester says.
The blade turns and turns, slow, slower and Lester thinks—is this all there is to it? Just chance, luck, the spin of the knife? Isn’t there a pattern at all; a plan?
Me! Me! Lestah, it me!
Lester laughs without effort. He slaps Fish on the shoulder.
Okay, this is to see who’ll be Captain of the boat.
Me again.
Don’t count your chickens before they hatch.
Ah?
Just watch the knife.
The knife never lies.
Lester can’t help but wonder.
Ghostly Sensations
Sam’s surprised to find himself sitting on the lip of the bath tub opening and closing the razor like this. It’s amazing to him that his face should look so far past him, and all the tan gone out of it, his flesh looking like a patch of sand that seagulls have walked across. It’s cool in here, and he can smell the mortuary stink of phenyle on the floor. No, this is the big surprise, finding himself here, looking down the blade, snapping it back together like somebody altogether different. It’s odd what people will do, and what they might do, what he might do. He watches his Adam’s apple rise like a plum bob in his neck. Now look at that neck, he thinks.
Sam knows he’s not the sort to go round and put the frighteners on Gerry Clay. Well, that’s what he’s telling himself. Maybe I’m just too bloody gutless to go down there and beat the piss out of him, he thinks. But, Jesus, I’m hardly the onefisted cyclone, am I? What’m I gunna do, stump the bastard to death? Hammer im with ghostly sensations? Oh, but there’d be ways, no doubt.
A picket with a nail in the end.
A sock full of sand.
Acid, any amount.
Running the bastard over, only Sam doesn’t know how to drive a car.
Rat poison.
Arson.
Hired help.
There’s some manly comfort in knowing there’d be means and ways, but they’re the sort of comfort you get from knowing a bloke can always go back to Mother when life fails him. It’s there, alright, but the consequences will get you by the nuts.
And anyway, the anger isn’t there. That’s not what he feels. It’s more the hopelessness of knowing, some elemental, inevitable thing about it. It’s loss, that’s what. Not like losing money and friends and fingers. Geez, he thought, losin’s nothin new. I graduated with flying colours from that fuckin school, after all. But this, this losing hurts. The surprise of it, the absolute shock of it. Not to have her … doing all that, but for it to hurt like this. That’s the nasty part.
He looks at his bewildered white face in the mirror. He loves his wife. He’s forgotten all about that bit, and he looks like a man who’s woken to another century. The blade is open. He can see it through the blur of water, see it shaking, coming his way like a ray of light.
Rose stepped into the bathroom with goo on her hands and there he was. She stepped back a little to let her mind catch up. She saw the mirror tilted a little and peppered with flyspecks. Towels rammed moist to the edge of fermentation through the towel rack. A bar of Velvet like hard cheese in the basin. The old man wore a singlet and tufts of blonde hair feathered from beneath it. His grey trousers wrinkled. Stockinged feet catching lint at the heels. There was real silence here. The open blade of the razor had a cheery gleam, poised there at his unlathered neck wet from tears.
Time, he said. Time.
Rose pushed the door closed behind her and a ball of dust wheeled across the floor to his feet.
She saw the naked knuckles of his stump whitening in their hopeless effort to make a fist. He set the razor down with great care and began to breathe long and ragged.
A man needs to keep his whiskers down.
You need lather, Dad.
Rose went by him to the basin and washed her hands. She made a fair production of it; it took less time to shower. When she wiped her hands, she put her back to the wall and looked down upon him. She felt the blood doing its clock-work in her limbs. She got his direct gaze in passing and held it until it was clear he couldn’t look away. He looked small as a schoolboy, hopeless and frail like she’d never seen a person before.
It’s just that you feel sorry for yourself, sometimes, Rose. I’m a weak, stupid, useless bastard and that’s, that’s …
Rose grabbed his head and pulled it to her breast, felt his sobs like another heart against her ribcage. She felt pity and misery and hatred and she knew this was how it would always be.
He was right; he was all those things and worse, and he probably didn’t have much reason to close that cutthroat.
What are we all sposed to do? he said.
I dunno, she said, furious. I don’t know. I love you, Dad. You can’t do it to me. You can’t. I’d piss on your grave, I tell you I would.
Oh, you’re a hard bastard, he said with a sobbing laugh. You’re the fuckin business you are.
My oath, she said, kissing his head, steeling herself against tears, against weakness, against the great blackness behind her eyes.
You’re the one, he said, getting himself back. You’re the one, orright. You’re a good girl.
Yeah, Rose thought, I’m sixteen and I don’t eat and I fall down dizzy twice a day and now I’m pulled outta school. Oh, I’m the one.
You’ve grown up in a hurry, he said, pulling back from her and wiping his eyes on his singlet.
I wasn’t in a hurry.
But you’ve grown up.
Keep me in school.
There’s no money, love. We haven’t got a nail to hang our arses on.
It was warm in there now and the afternoon light had a twisting traffic of motes to bear.
Don’t hate me, he said.
I don’t. I pity you, Dad. Because you still love her.
And you don’t?
Oh, I stopped that years ago. It wouldn’t be myself I’d use a razor on.
Rose. People are … who they are.
Then they should change! People should do things for themselves, not wait for everyone else to change things for em!
You can’t beat your luck, love.
No, you have to be your luck. There’s nothin else, there’s just you.
Sam smiled, shaking his head. You’ll go a long way.
Yes, she thought. Africa. Paris. New York. A long way from this stinking old house and the smell of death and sick. Like a shot. One day.
The Vanilla Victory
Late in January, as summer got its teeth in and the front lawns of Cloudstreet turned the colour of underfelt and the stretches of new macadam began to bubble and boil, Oriel Lamb wiped out G. M. Clay with vanilla icecream. His morale was shot already, but she sent him packing with Lester Lamb’s Amazing Vanilla Double Cream. She hounded the ice man t
ill he began to think he was on the payroll himself. She bought in supplies of milk like a company quartermaster. No one rested in the evenings as mosquitoes crowded against the screens in the breathless dark. They turned the churns, skimmed, sluiced, measured and poured. The girls bitched over whose turn it was to be at the ice chest stacking the tins to set. Hat was having time off to go dancing with a bloke up from the country and Oriel was working her hard to pay for lost time. Oriel Lamb liked the idea that their icecream contained a few parts sweat to each gallon of milk. Lester tested and tooled about, touching up his Amazing Vanilla Double Icecream signs. He’d rather not have been at war, but it was nice to see his name in print at any rate, and the nervous thrill it gave him to be backing a winner was enough to egg him on.
The people of Cloudstreet and beyond bought the stuff before it had time to set. Even before Christmas they’d gotten a taste for it and you could see people walking beneath the Jacarandas in the cool light of morning unrolling their West Australian with the deliberation of people trying to keep their minds off icecream. Neighbours would pass in the street, nod and grumble about Menzies and Korea, careful not to look each other in the eye and give away what they were really thinking. The Subiaco Junior Cricket team could not be found one Saturday morning, forfeiting a big match, and no one needed an explanation if they lived within a mile of Cloudstreet. Oriel Lamb began taking orders a week in advance. Every gallon of icecream bought entitled customers to tuppence off the price of sliced ham, a penny off the price of spuds, and a discount on cornflour to be personally negotiated.
Lester Lamb found himself bringing two truckloads of goods back from the metro market each dawn. Cloudstreet became an official tram stop out on the main road, and ladies swung down with wicker baskets right outside G. M. Clay-Ex AIF to walk down the blistering street and join the queues. They paid in advance, they fainted on the verandah, they pleaded. Lon sold lemonade to those waiting in the sun, and the Pickleses’ cocky shrieked Fair Dinkum regular as a timepiece.
When Oriel Lamb saw a woman buy eight quid’s worth of icecream one morning, a husband’s full weekly pay, she knew that the battle was over and it was time for law and order before looting broke out. G. M. Clay closed up shop and Lester Lamb tried to scale down production without immediate success. The iceman wept, as though he’d been relieved of his post. Angry letters, unstamped and nasty as a note from a church elder, turned up in the mailbox. But in the end Oriel called a halt and put up signs: NO MORE ICECREAM. CHEAP HAM.
It was January 19, 1951. The Lambs slept the sleep of the victorious.
In the morning Oriel went down to Cambridge Street, picking her way past enquiring shoppers, to see G. M. Clay. She’d decided to let him stay on. After all, he had a family to feed. By way of reparations, he would be compelled to paint out the Ex AIF part of his sign, and thereafter no more need be said. But when she knocked on the doors, only Mrs Clay was there.
What do you want? Mrs Clay looked at her in disbelief. She had the eyes of a weeper, and the morning light was not kind.
I came to talk to your husband, factually.
Well, e’s gone. That’ll deprive youse all of a laugh.
Where’s he gone to?
It’s a big state. Anywhere he likes, I’d say. He’s got all the money that was left. No flies on him, eh. Mrs Clay gave out a bitter little laugh. Her hands shook in her apron pockets.
I was here to offer him a settlement. What’s he left you to live on?
Nothin. Not a bent penny.
How long’ll he stay away?
Oh, he’s off for good. Told me to marry Father O’Leary if I needed a bit of—
The children?
Mrs Clay sobbed. She sounded like a dog choking on a string of bacon fat.
You need a job, Oriel Lamb said. She shifted on her sandals like a fighter. Come and work with us. There’s room in the house. You could bring the children.
Mrs Clay sagged against the door jamb and a squadron of sweaty kids hauled by on rattling bikes. Oriel Lamb watched her shuddering and sucking in breath every now and then.
Go away, said Mrs Clay. Just go now.
I’m offering you a job, a home.
And I’m telling you to go to Hell!
I’m … I’m sorry, said Oriel Lamb who had not said those words since 1911.
Go to Hell! Mrs Clay slammed the doors to.
Oriel Lamb walked home the long way, taking it in. Not for a moment had she thought … not by a long way … There was the offer and it was refused and a grey shame settled on her in the hard summer morning light.
There would have to be food parcels delivered daily.
A weekly allowance.
She’d see to it right away. She’d not let it pass. This was a sin. It was her, because of Quick. This was what the heart did to you. This was what happened when you lost a son, another son, and now she knew how it must have felt for that Sam Pickles waking one morning to see the bandages, to feel the tingling but know that there was only a space.
By the embankment, as the trains swept by, Oriel Lamb wept the sound of a slaughteryard and the grass bowed before her.
Mrs Lamb Weeps
Rose Pickles sometimes thought maybe she’d steal Fish Lamb and run away with him. She thought of the places they could hide outside Perth, little fishermen’s shacks behind dunes and estuary curves that they could sneak supplies into to live a quiet life in love. She still watched him out in the yard as he rowed the old dory hull with two sticks and looked up into the sun as though it was a pool of water. She’d meet him on the landing and breathe a kiss onto his ear in passing. She’d watch him standing at the window snapping his braces against his chest. He was gentle and soft and … But she knew it was a stupid, silly dream she had. Fish was barely more than a baby in the head and his looks were going as he got older. In a couple of years he’d be big and fat and brutish. Yes, he’d make terrible scenes in public places and have to be locked in his room, maybe even strapped to his bed. She wasn’t stupid enough to think it wouldn’t happen.
But look at him down there on the front fence with the hot easterly in his long hair. Didn’t it take half your sense away and all your breath?
Rose saw Mrs Lamb come blubbering down the street. Crying. Like a person. Mrs Lamb crying. Rose saw her fall against the gate grabbing at Fish who didn’t move, who just looked across the road where no one was, straight as a board with his mother’s arms around him. Oh, it hurt to watch, even after the surprise, it hurt to see.
Rose went downstairs exhausted with emotion, tired, brittle with feeling. She sat in the kitchen for an hour looking up jobs in the paper.
And then her own mother, missing all night, came in dressed to the gills and bleeding.
Bad, Worse, Worstest
Dolly stood at the sink and ran the water. She put the dishrag to her face and set her teeth. That was something, still having the teeth. Through the kitchen window she could see, with one eye at least, the fruit trees and the shadeless brown stretches, the tin fence and the powerful calm.
Good morning, she said to Rose.
Rose rustled her West Australian.
Dolly felt the hard chill between them. She turned, wringing blood out of the rag, and let her daughter see what Gerry Clay had given her as a parting gift. The whole side of her face was the colour of a stormcloud and rising angrier by the minute. Even now her left eye was closed. Her nose and lip bled a little still, and the knuckles of the hand holding up the rag were skinned raw. Rose looked up and took it in without expression. She didn’t even seem suprised, and in a way Dolly was grateful that there’d be no hysterics. There wasn’t much of a girl left in Rose, she knew. Dolly didn’t know whether to be proud or ashamed.
Want some ice?
Hngh! Got any icecream? Dolly felt tears coming and she was burning with a wild, unfocused hatred.
Rose went to the icebox and Dolly saw the brown sticks of her legs as she chipped at the block.
Ta.
S
he wrapped the ice in the rag and held it over her eye and before long her whole body seemed to have cooled, while all the time Rose looked on without moving. The old man’s cockatoo screeched out on the back step.
Ah, what a mess.
Rose said nothing. Dolly made her way to the table and sat down. It was no great shock that things should go from bad to worse to worstest. Right now, she couldn’t feel a thing, and this had to be the lousiest day of her life.
I used to wish you wouldn’t grow up to hate me, Rose. That’s what I used to think.
Rose’s lips were set together, as though she was exerting great control over herself.
And then you grow up an hate me anyway. Well, yer have yer hopes.
Rose folded the newspaper, then folded it again.
Hoping is what people do when they’re too lazy to do anything else.
People can’t do everything they wanna.
They just want some things more than others.
Dolly sighed.
Okay, so you hate me, let’s leave it at that. I’m sore.
Did you hate your mother?
Dolly got up. I need to lie down a while.
You didn’t answer.
Me whole face is fallin off.
I’m gonna love my children, I swear to God.
Lookit this. This is what you get from men.
Some men. Other men!
All men!
Dolly didn’t have the fight in her. Any other time she’d have been across the room, tearing and slashing, but she felt weak and giddy.
You shouldn’t hate me, she said, turning for the door. It doesn’t help. Ya shouldn’t do it.
Like you say, people can’t do everything they wanna. Anyway, I’m used to it now, Rose said, as Dolly went out the door, and then suddenly she was shouting: And besides, I’ve gotten to like it. Hating you is the best part of bein alive!
Climbing the stairs, Dolly had the old question come back. Bad mother, or no mother at all? Christalmighty, she should know the answer to that one by now.
A Closed Shop
The Lambs closed up shop and stayed indoors. The house was quiet. Outside cicadas rattled and the grass burnt in the summer sun.