Don’t hit us! calls Fish. Lestah, don’t hit us!
Lester turns, startled, and Fish yelps in fear. Lon bolts for the door but Oriel fills it like a Frigidaire.
What’s this?
Fish sobs in the corner. Lon barely breathes. Lester looks a kick behind the play, dazed again, incompetent to the moment.
I’ve never had cause before to feel ashamed of a child of mine, he almost whispers.
The eggs are burnin, Lester.
Yes, I know woman, I know. Mornin Quick, he says, seeing Quick behind his mother. Welcome home.
Quick smiles.
Fish looks up, blotchyfaced and afraid. He’s gone out. He’s light’s off.
No. It’s brekky now.
I’ve gotta go, says Lon.
Take a wrench to your neck, son, says Lester, and get your head off and see if you can’t give it a good flush out. A plumber should always mind his own blockages.
He’s a plumber? Quick asks, when Lon slams the last door in a long line of them.
Apprentice, says Oriel.
You bin gone a hundred, Quick.
Yeah. You’ve got big, too.
Fish lowers his eyes. He must be six feet tall. He’s soft and oafish, but his eyes are still bright as a child’s.
Lester comes back to the table with the black-soled eggs, their yokes petrified and split. Hardly a fatted calf is it?
Elaine and Red come in from the shop.
A what? says Red.
Hello, stranger, says Elaine.
Gawd, look at these two!
Where you bin you slack bludger?
Red, you’ve grown up.
Glad you still know me name.
There’s porridge, says Lester.
There’s always porridge, Elaine sighs.
Everyone notices Oriel hiding a smile behind her fist.
Yer mother’s not well this mornin, Lester says, rolling his eyes. She’s havin an attack of smiles.
There’s a snort, a sniff, a smirk, and then they’re all laughing like themselves from another time.
Voop
Well, says Quick leaning into the pig pen, I see you’re still with us.
The pig grins and rubs his nuts against a stump.
Did you look after Fish, you dirty old cold cut?
Voop, says the pig.
Quick heads indoors shaking his head. I’m surprised you didn’t get my bed while I was gone! he calls back, laughing, but the pig just rolls over and farts like a statesman.
In the hallway he comes face to face with Beryl Lee.
Good morning, she says.
Well, hello.
I’m the star boarder.
Pleased to meet you.
I’ve heard a lot about you, Quick.
How long have you been here?
Oh, quite a while. Your mum’s a kind soul.
She’s a battalion.
Beryl Lee laughs: nick, nick, nick. It’s the saddest laugh he’s ever heard.
He stands in the big house and hears it creak.
Matinee
In the middle of the afternoon when the house is quiet, Lester leaves Red and Beryl and Elaine to the rest of the re-stock and steps across the corridor to the Pickles side. Dolly opens the door to the kitchen and lets him in.
Where is he?
Up the coast a bit. He’s orright.
She is dressed and made up, and he hears the current in her stockings as she crosses the room for a chair.
Whatm I sposed to do? she says.
Sit tight, I reckon.
She sits and faces him. He can’t remember seeing her nervous like this; it takes the crustiness from her features so that she looks younger, more pretty than voluptuous. Lester takes the chair and sits on his hands. A pulse pecks in his neck.
You’ve got no way of raisin the money, I spose.
I could stand on the corner, she says with a snort. That’d bring in enough for a packet of smokes.
He smiles, uncertain. Men’d pay money, he knows, men’d queue up if she looked every day the way she looks this afternoon. It’s something he’s never done, hardly even thought about. Thirty years have passed since he was in the company of a woman who would even joke about such things. She grins, as if she reads his thoughts.
Sorry if I’m a bit rough for yer.
Lester fidgets.
What if they come again?
Tell em to see me, he says.
You don’t seem the fightin type, Lester.
There won’t be any fight.
Dolly pours him a cup of tea. She seems perturbed now. He’s never seen her face so different. Until now she’s always looked disgusted or just plain nastymouthed.
You can’t have this kinda money.
There’s savings we’ve got, he says. We live poor. It’s the way we are somehow.
You know it’ll be money down the dunny.
Lester shrugs. He feels a continent of trouble sliding his way and sees the flesh of her leg. Where the skirt is slipping back each time Dolly Pickles recrosses her leg.
What else am I sposed to do? he says.
What dyou mean?
Well, he says. We live in this house and we got our shop here and the family. If this thing turns into a proper blue we’re liable to find ourselves on the street. I mean, what if you have to sell to clear your debts?
We can’t. Not for another ten years. It’s in the deed.
Then these blokes are gunna come round and take goods to the value of. Guess which end they’ll pillage. I reckon it’s worth me insurin against that.
And that’s all?
Dolly comes across, takes his cup, and kisses him. The taste of tannin and tobacco are on her lips and her live, moving tongue. The cup falls to the floor, the saucer rolls, and she slides astride his knee and winds her hands into the elastic of his braces. Lester Lamb feels the weight of her buttocks clamping on his knee, the hardware surface of her nails through his shirt, the grate of her heels on the lino, and the speed of her mouth across his face. It’s the Saturday Matinee, that’s what it is. He can hear the popcorn going off between his ears. His dick begins hydraulicking around behind his flies, as he gets a handful of backside and draws her closer. She comes up for air like a navy diver.
You sure that’s all you’re buyin? A bit of safety?
He got up, foggy behind the eyes, rearing out of the chair with her still attached to him, and he ran her into the wall so her head hit the flaky plaster and jerked back against his chest. She slipped sideways to the table looking dazed, with her legs still round his waist and her skirt hoisted. Lester felt shock and fury, a kind of gear slip. She had her hand inside his trousers and he took her backside in hand and shoved down onto her. The silver flecks in the surface of the table stung his eyes. She had her hands over her mouth. A shoe dropped to the floor. There was a puddle of tea. The inside of her was firm and strange as sweetmeat. It wasn’t the Saturday Matinee anymore. He could hear people passing in the corridor a long way away. Her breasts heaved on her, and in the moment before he felt sick with gravity, he flew his mouth across them and bit down to keep from crying out.
Was that rape, do you think? he asked when he could breathe again.
Dolly pulled her legs down off his shoulders with a wince. I spose not. More a deposit on a hundred quid.
Lester covered his face with his hands.
You bin waitin ten years for that.
And you?
She laughed. I’ve bin waitin all my life for everything.
We’re different.
Yeah, you’re gonna go off feelin bad, an I’m gunna go to bed feelin sore. You’re not handsome, but you’re a nice fella. You’ve got ninety quid’s worth left.
No.
Very flatterin, Lester.
No, not to either of us.
You’re a churchy bugger, mate. When you get what you’re after you go off feelin awful.
And you just go off soundin awful.
Dolly laughed shakily. What do yo
u want, cobber?
I want you not to use this against me.
I told you you weren’t buying safety.
Lester unstuck himself and tried to get organized. The job was beyond him.
Disciples
Sam woke full of burn and tingle. The stumps of his bad hand seemed to be shooting sparks. The shifty shadow was about; he knew it. Rain beat on the tin roof and he heard the dark, choppy sea rolling restless. He found his matches, lit one and got the Tilley lamp burning, and as he did so he saw a large tweedy rat sloping off, nose up like an Englishman, towards the door. The .38 lay on the deal table by the light. Sam took it up and aimed, saw the rat go stiff and thoughtful in his sights, contemplating a quick sidestep, whiskers aquiver. Yeah, a bloody pommy gentleman, you are, Sam thought. You could be a mine owner or a politician like that rodent Churchill, that nasty little fleshfeeder. The hairy hand is about, rat, so how’s your luck gunna be?
All Sam’s nerves fizzed and fibrillated. This must be what it was like when the old man could feel water in his rod, the magic of it going right up his arms like a shot from a live fence. The light shinin, the shadow fallin, the seesaw tippin our way.
The rat took a step. Sam spat and hit the door behind the rat which sent it into a panicky spin, a desperate effort to identify its opposition and face off against it. Its eyes were all over, trying to pick an exit.
I could blow your arse out through yer teeth, you little bastard.
He stamped his foot and the rat was off like the Fremantle express.
Sam sat back on the cot, took a coin out of his pocket and flipped thirty-two heads in a row. Then he began to laugh. Pickles, you prize dill, you didn’t even call. You dunno if yer winnin or bloody losin!
Heads, he said, and put the florin back in his pocket.
His back hurt again, the way it had all day since he went walking down through the heath country back from the river. He had lumps there, like the beginnings of boils, the kind of boils he could remember having as a kid. Oh, those afternoons over the old man’s knee biting into an apple while the old bloke tore clean rags and squeezed through them with his thumbs, pinching the skin of his backside to ̵decarbuncle him’ quick as could be managed. Be brave, the old man’d say, and you’ll be laughing it orf in a sec. A cove only has to be brave for a few minutes of his life. Ooh, I’ll bung this on me toast tonight! And he’d laugh across the final lancing scream that Sam, nose deep in apple, came out with.
Boils! he called in disgust, and tossed the florin. Tails it was. Well, it matched. He decided to be satisfied.
A few days of this and they’d be chookraffling him to the nuthouse.
Right then he heard a motor. He looked at his watch—1:15. He turned out the pressure lamp, reached for the revolver.
Headlamps forked up over the hill and swung down among the trees. Sam went to his knees by the window. Now he’d see which way his luck was runnin. It was hanging over him like a cold dark cloud tonight, and he knew it was momentous, but there was no way of reading it—salvation or his head on the block.
Well, whoever it is, they’re comin my way, he thought. A man’d pay coin of the realm for a peaceful leak right this moment.
He ducked as the headlights came swinging his way. With his back to the wall beneath the window, he could see every feature in the shack, the chair and table, cot, shelf, pots and buckets, all with long, tearing shadows from the light barging in through every crack in the tin walls.
Sam? The motor cut short. He heard the handbrake. Sam?
Sam fidgeted. The .38 felt like a laundry iron in his hand. He’d never shot a pistol before in his life. Should he break the glass first and then fire, or shoot straight through the window? He tried to think what they did at the matinee.
The door opened.
Sam? You there?
Friend or foe?
Tenant.
Shit, you scared me.
Get the lamp on.
When the lamp came up Sam looked white and shaky. As he stood there shiftfooted by the door he scratched his back, squirming.
You got the money, then.
What’s wrong with your back?
Friggin boils.
When did they come up?
Today.
Don’t scratch em.
I’m feelin lucky.
Let’s get you packed up.
Sam swatted the bird from his shoulder, but a claw caught in his singlet so that the cockatoo flapped in a fit of squawking and crapping, upside down, suspended from behind Sam’s neck. Lester reached out to unhook the bird which took a piece out of his hand the size of a snapper bait.
Dammit to buggery! he yelled.
The bird got free, flew straight into the window and crashed to the floor where it lay groaning like a floored boxer.
You orright? Sam said, laughing.
Yeah, but you aren’t. They’re not boils you got there. It’s ticks. Roo ticks.
Bugger me!
We’ll have to get em out. You smoke don’t you?
Yeah, what—
Roll a smoke thin and tight and give it to me.
I don’t—
Come on, you’re wastin time. When you’re finished take off your singlet.
What you gunna do, for Chrissake?
Burn em out.
Wonderful. Bloody marvellous.
You won’t feel a thing except those little fellers reversin out in a hurry.
Sam lay on the cot while Lester went over his back finding the little pointed butts of the parasites and applying the fag end.
I’ve got a plan, Sam said, wincing.
What plan?
For the money.
I thought we’d just drive you straight back to town an you pay em off.
No, I feel lucky.
Oh, you look lucky.
Lester rested the glowing end on the tail of a tick and watched it shunt out like a dog from a snake hole. You’re gunna look like a fly wire door when this is finished.
There’s a big two-up game tomorrow.
It’s already tomorrow. Where?
I’ll show you, said Sam.
It’s stupid.
You said you’d get me the money.
I got it. To pay off your debts and keep trouble away from Cloudstreet.
Well I’m gonna do that and make us some money.
Us?
Well, it’s your money. I reckon you deserve a dividend.
I need a horsewhippin, Lester thought. For this, for a lot of things. You’ll lose it, Sam, he said.
Don’t bloody talk like that, I know when I’m gunna win.
Well why don’t you win more often?
I’m a dill for excitement.
I could do with a little less excitement.
You’re gutless, Lamb.
You just remember one thing, mate. I haven’t given you the money yet.
I’ve got the .38.
A man who can’t drive a car could never use that thing.
Want to test that little theory? Listen, I’m gunna win. Me stump’s bloodynear glowin. I know it.
There was a sweat on Sam’s face, and his eyes were bright. Lester didn’t know whether to admire or pity him. It was too late to save the money now. In any case, he thought, aflush with shame, you can’t deny a man a chance when you’ve just had his wife on the kitchen table.
Carn. Get up and pack.
You’re in?
No, you’re in.
Where’s that … Sam then? said the bird trying to get up. Where’s that Sam?
Wakings
At dawn, and the first raw-throated stirrings of hidden birds, Cloudstreet floats soundlessly from the gloom to join the day. Down on the tracks a Fremantle freight creeps past under a limestone sky, and in her tent, towelling the water from her face and chest in a manner so delicate as to be secretive, and to someone who knew her, completely uncharacteristic, Oriel Lamb feels the vibrations in the duckboards. When she’s finished washing she applies a little talcum powd
er and dresses in her floral frock, stockings and hardsoled sandals which look more like work boots with ventilators cut into them. She notes again the ugliness of her feet all distorted with corns and bunions. She still remembers her own bare running feet on the dirt of the home paddock when the world was a place given by God for the pleasures of children, when all that was good was unbroken. Oriel empties her washwater onto the seed pots outside and comes back in to make her bed and tidy the shelves, clear the card table that is her desk. For ten minutes, with the help of the rimless spectacles she needs now, she reads the Reader’s Digest and makes pencil marks beside instructive passages. The early morning ‘quiet time’ as she calls it, has proven impossible to shake off. But it gives her time to meet the day, steel herself, put on the full armour as she used to say. She finishes up, tidies the table again and feels the mulberry tree hanging over the tent like a cloud. It’s still early, she’ll give them another half hour before reveille—it’s been a hard week since the wedding, what with Quick turning up and keeping them on the lookout like that, and the hole that Hat has left in the company. Another loss. Oh, if she thinks about everything that’s been taken from her over the years—Lord, it’s like the longest subtraction sum invented. She can’t help it, the feeling is on her and she’s furious. It’s a sickness, selfpity, it’ll eat you up, woman, you know it. It’ll eat the day and worm into your labour and weaken you. She puts her square, red fist on the table, watches it like it’s a paperweight. Up the back the pig snorts like a priest chanting. Fowls begin to scuffle. She hears water in the sewerage pipes beneath the garden path. Someone is up.
Elaine waits till the stove finishes smoking and makes sure it’s properly alight before waking Beryl Lee. Back in the kitchen they lay out the bacon and yesterday’s eggs. Elaine stands at the back door in the cold morning air and sees movement in the tent. The New Guinea beans Fish planted have overtaken the yard, the great hairy, veined creeper enclosing the chookyard and the pig’s den, the whole of the back fence and each side, right through the other vegetables, across the apple and orange and lemon trees, right to the door of the tent itself. Elaine can’t think how the thing has been tolerated this long. There’s even a tangle of it in the mulberry tree, and in the first sun, a-shine with dew, you can see a bean hanging above the tent the size of a man’s arm.