by Tim Winton
He hadn’t felt it as strong and mean on him since the last day at the Abrolhos, and he knew you didn’t need to be a gambling man to know that this kind of luck wasn’t about to be wagered on.
Morning arrived, the house came alive with business. Dolly slept on, Sam felt the weight of his head on the pillow. The tingling was gone, but there was still a trace of pipe tobacco and port breath in the room. He lit a cigarette and waited. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be good. In the end he slept.
Dolly scrapes along the creaky morning balustrade, wild with sobriety. Out in the street those jackhammers have started again. She hasn’t touched a drop in four days and you’d swear they had one of those jackhammers up her like a suppository. No, they wouldn’t believe you, no fear, no fear, no bloody fear they wouldn’t. You can’t get a jackhammer up there, but for God’s sake, you know someone’s smuggled one in. A drinkless sleep is murder—any friggin thing could happen, you could dream anythin! Forgot bein sober was so dangerous. A night’s sleep crawling with dreams like a girl couldn’t imagine, truly like you couldn’t begin to imagine. Oh, the years she’s slept peaceful as the dead with just the sweet purr of static in her ears. Now look at that. What I mean is now look straight at that—the crappy threadbare old rug is slippin in and out of the old library door, like a tongue from a slut’s mouth. Lessee, let’s!
Dolly throws open the library door to see the rug rolled up and shivering epileptic in the corner by the piano where the room is fugged up with the smell of hot bodies.
She staggers out, needing a drink, and knowing it’s no use going on with this stupid sobering up, passes the grey old lady with the firepoker at the landing and turns wondering too late. She goes down the stairs arse over, slopping more than she thumps, like a bag of yesterday’s fish, and as she goes, she knows for sure she’d have done it better drunk.
Oriel pulls the tent flap to, and in daylight, with a morning’s work ahead still, slips the old King James from the bottom of the drawer. Its brittle gilding comes off in her hands, settles in the hairs on her forearms. She opens it. There they are, all their names:
Lester Horace William, born 10/10/94, Eden Valley, SA.
Oriel Esther (nee Barnes) born 31/12/01, Pingelly, WA.
Each one of them, right on down to Lon, and in pencil, the names of a stillborn and two miscarriages: John, Edward, Mary. There they all are, the Lambs in Lester’s lovely old Gothic and it seems right and just. We’re here, Oriel thinks, calm again; we’re here orright.
She stiffens. There’s screaming from in the house. She goes out armed and empty handed. And not quite running.
Waiting in the hallway at casualty, Lester and Sam shuffled, folded arms, watched the pretty nurses go past. Sam lit a fag, coughing his bubbly little smoker’s hack, and offered it to Lester who surprised himself by taking a drag on it.
Thanks for bringin us, said Sam.
Ah, we’re relatives these days, said Lester.
I shoulda learned to drive a car. Never had one or drove one in me life. There’s simple things I just don’t know about.
What about women?
Sam chuckled. Women? Reckon I know more about cars.
Lester laughed. Which do you prefer?
Sam pursed his lips, reminding himself that he still had his own teeth: I’m partial to trams, meself.
No, dinkum. I’m askin.
Gimme a horse any day.
Over a woman?
By Christ, yeah.
What about Rose … Lamb?
She’s not a woman, she’s a daughter.
Lester laughed. And yer missus in there gettin her leg plastered? Lester felt reckless all of a sudden as though he might confess an old sin to Sam right here and now. But he held himself. We’ve already taken his daughter, he thought; I couldn’t do it to him now just to clean meself of it.
Dolly? No, Dolly’s a woman, orright. She always said she was too much woman for me.
Well, Oriel’s always been too much Oriel for anybody.
And when they wheeled Dolly out, plastered up like a swearing saint, Lester was singing:
Give me Oriel in my lamp, keep me burning,
Give me Oriel in my lamp, I pray.
I should be drunk! yelled Dolly.
I should be rich, Sam murmured.
And I should be home, said Lester, herding them out to the truck.
Thank Christ, said Sam. I really thought it was somethin serious.
A broken leg’s serious enough, said Lester.
It’s a bloody gift.
Steam
A long way off, in a cloud of steam like the ante rooms of Hell itself a small man falls naked to the sauna floor feeling his heart stutter. So many women have loved him and suffered him, but none so much as his mother. Sometimes he has dreams about her, the kind he doesn’t like to think of. She’s just like the girls he chats up and backs up. She’s just … steam steam steam steam steam steam!
The Blacks and Whites
Look at that, the house’s timbers clenching right there in wild daylight. There’s no wind, no subsidence in the ground, nothing to resist, but every joint bleats there for a moment as if the place is bracing to sneeze or expel or smother. The river runs louder than a train on the midday air and the lost dead are quaking like sunlight.
Fish Lamb clumps the piano, but all that comes from it is the thick unending drone of middle C and he’s not pleased. He knows the sound of his own music, and this is not it. The musty, windowless room is lit like a rainforest floor, the greenish colour shed by the two figures pressed against the wall on either side of him, and in the dimness he sees his own stubby hands thumping the blacks and whites as his fury grows. The floorboards let out a horrible sweet smell. Curling in a snarl, the old rug quivers. Nails vibrate in the walls, and Fish keeps on with some hardfaced determination, while around him the two women bare their teeth at each other, dark and light, light and dark, hating, hurting, hissing silently until Fish, the great trunk in suspenders, heaves up from the stool, whirls and becomes an angry, heavy, menacing man for a moment, and bawls at the walls.
I hate youse you stupids! This is my house!
When he is gone, the two faces are vicelipped, and still, and even the sound of middle C falters a moment before continuing on like an electrical current.
Steel
The last part of the ride home from the station is downhill and it’s the only time the old police bike is any use at all. Quick pedals in a fit of aftershift madness with the wind frigid on his face. He feels so good, it’s all he can do not to yell out and yodel jubilantly all the way to Swan Street. He swerves around a milk truck, nips the claws of an ageing labrador and takes the last corner leaning out like a sailor. Some people are at their gates, getting papers and pints, men have their hats on, walking home from bus and train, and the sun is breaking up in the sky. He gives the bell a stiff thumb and coasts down the side of the old brick house where the wireless is on and someone is sobbing. The sound of it shakes him and he’s off the bike before it’s stopped. It crashes into the empty garage the moment he opens the back door.
Call someone Quick, says Rose, on her knees by the stove. She’s dressed for work and white in the cheeks. Call someone. I’m losing the baby.
Mrs Manners! Mrs Manners!
Quick stumbles through boxes and chairs on the verandah on his way to the landlady’s door, but she has it open before he knocks. She’s a small, startled looking English-woman with spectacles and soft pink hands.
Whatever’s the matter, Constable?
Rose’s havin a miscarry.
Oh, Lord, I’ll come.
I’ll go find a phone.
Pedalling uphill with a buckled front wheel and half a uniform on, he can’t for the life of him think what to do. A Holden passes, pulls up at the stop sign ahead and Quick has his idea.
Right, he wheezes to the driver who’s about to pull away. Police. I’m yer neighbour. I’m a husband. Me bike’s busted. Me—
What
the bloody hell is this?
Yer car’s under arrest.
Rose woke from a doze and they were still there. Her father looked so small against Quick. He hadn’t shaved and he was taking it badly enough to make her worry. She was sore, and she could feel a great, surprising bitterness coming on her, but something made her sound stupid and cheerful.
Cmon, you two, you’ve been there forever. What’s the game?
Did yer hear Quick ran over his own bike in the car? said Sam.
Yeah, yeah, he told me, Dad. I laughed.
Good. Good. It’s funny, orright. The bloke was a decent sort in the end.
The old man’s jaw was starting up a wobble and Quick kept looking about him, as if for somewhere to spit. I wish they’d go home and leave me here, Rose thought, I wish I could sic the nurses onto them and be done with it.
I’ll be alright, Dad. You can go, you know. You look terrible.
Quick looked at her and then him, pressing his lips together. Sam mashed his fist into his stump.
What is it, you two? What’ve you cooked up? You look guilty as gold thieves.
There’s somethin I have to tell you, Rose, love. I figure there’s no use tellin you tomorrer when you’ve started to feel better.
Quick nudged the old man: Carn, Sam.
I got a telegram today from Adelaide.
From Ted?
No, from his missus. Ted died yesterday. In the sauna. He was tryin too hard to get his weight down. His heart just went. They reckon he was a decent jockey, though he rode em too hard too early. He’s dead, an that’s what I had to tell ya.
Well, Mother’ll be upset. Thank her for coming in.
She broke her leg, Rose. I didn’t get time to say it.
Ah, the Shifty Shadow strikes.
He was a good boy.
No he wasn’t, he was a bastard. Go home, Dad, I’m tired. My baby died.
She felt Quick looking at her in puzzlement, but she couldn’t look him back. She felt like she was made of steel. It was shiny and bitter and it shone all around like starlight. She was steel and Quick couldn’t know. No one could know.
The One
With a huge and terrible moan, Dolly reached the window and kicked it out with her plastered foot.
My baby!
She fell back on the floor, breaking her nails in the rug, foaming and spitting and squealing till she was hoarse. Her breasts flapped on her, and her nightie rode up to expose her naked, mottled body, her angry slash of a vagina, her rolling bellyfat and caesar scars.
They killed my baby! Him, he was the one I loved, you useless spineless two faced bastards! Heeee was the one. He was the one. He was the one. You can all go and fuckin die because I want him back. He was the one.
In the library the shadows danced. Oh, how they danced. Can’t you still see the evil stink coming through the cracks, Fish, the swirling rottenness of their glee turning to gas across the rails, the rooftops, the tree crowns of the city? Take your hands off your ears, Fish, and listen to it.
Two Florins
Rose just wouldn’t be comforted about the baby, and in the end Quick knew there was nothing he could do. In bad moments he wondered what it was in him that brought these disasters on people. Even his posting to Claremont seemed to bring no relief. For two months after Ted died and the miscarriage, Rose worked on at the switch, getting thinner all the time, looking darkeyed and ghostly when she got home. He cooked for her and she didn’t eat. She had little to say as they washed up together, and when he put on the blue for the night’s shift she picked listlessly at it as he straightened up.
A whole night of pinchin pervs in the public toilets, he’d say. Maybe I’ll get a lost dog or a burgled brooch. It’s tough out on the streets, love. Don’t you worry about me?
I just worry about how many bikes you’ll go through before you make commissioner, she’d say with a weak effort at a grin.
Everythin’ll be orright in the end, love.
Yeah. That’s what they say.
When Rose quit work and stayed home, Quick knew it wasn’t because she’d had enough of Bairds or that the company’d had its fill of her. She was just too weak and spiritless to get through the day any more. He could hear her moving aimlessly all day in the next room as he tried to sleep. She picked up every cough and cold passing through. Clothes hung on her as though she was made of wire. Quick did his shifts glumly, filled in break and enter reports, and rode that mongrel beast of a cycle round and round Claremont until summer came.
When it came down to it, Quick knew he was missing Cloudstreet. There was so much quiet now between Rose and him, and Mrs Manners in the front never made a living sound. The house didn’t heave and sigh the way Cloudstreet did; it wasn’t restless in any way at all, and there weren’t the mobs brawling through, the clang of the shop bell, the rattle of crates and smokers’ coughs, the tidal sounds of people stirring up and settling down. This was orderly, calm suburbia. This was merely a list of things missing. And the new house, their dream? Well, it went up bit by bit and Quick sometimes went out just to look at it, the brick box with its red tile roof same as all the other half-finished houses in the street. It looked empty and he’d lost his way with it somewhere. He couldn’t imagine them living in it. And Rose just didn’t want to talk about it.
One night in December when Quick had the late shift, he was working on the occurrence book at the spanking new Claremont station with only the Sarge asleep in the cells to keep him company, when in walked the old man with a fifty pound mulloway on his shoulder. Quick snapped the big ledger shut and stepped back.
Strike a light!
The old man dumped the great fish on the counter. It was silver and gillheaving, fresh from the river.
I just couldn’t wait to show someone, boy. And I knew there wouldn’t be another livin breathin soul as’d appreciate it like you would.
Dad, it’s beautiful.
Kept me windin a good half hour. Took him at the Brewery wall.
Just then, the fish convulsed with dying, shook scales and mucus all over the joint and coughed up a plug of blood.
Well, that’s it for him.
Beautiful.
Think we better … get it out, Dad?
Oh, gawd, yeah. Sorry. Back in a sec.
Quick wiped things down with the urn cloth and poured a cuppa for the old man who came back in, excitable as a kid.
Quiet?
Deadly, said Quick. I just wish somethin’d happen.
Wish for somethin nice to happen. There’ll be crook things all along the way.
Yeah, maybe. How’s Cloudstreet?
Oh, quiet as the grave. Your mother’s … outside a lot. The girls are seein fellas. Lon—well who knows what he’s doin. Dolly next door’s got rid of the limp but she’s hittin the sauce. Sam’s losin again.
How’s Fish?
Quiet, quiet. Lies on his bed all day with that wireless goin. Gets a bit rowdy some nights, talkin and singin and things. Says the house is angry. Good old Fish.
Yeah, old Fish.
Miss you, Quick. All of us.
It’s hard at the moment, Dad. Rose is so crook still. She’s wastin away.
I wasn’t meanin to bother yer.
Want another cuppa?
Nah. Lester looked around the smoke stained office with its rows of binder files, notices, mug shots, the old Imperial on the desk, the government ashtrays.
Too quiet, isn’t it?
That’s what I mean, said Quick.
No, I mean everythin. Cloudstreet, the town, the lot.
Quick shrugged, not understanding.
I sound like Sam Pickles, but I got a feeling. Oh. I almost forgot. Look.
Lester put two coins down on the bench.
Florins, Quick said.
1933.
The year Fish was born.
Have you kept em?
No, I only found em tonight.
Down the river?
In the fish.
What
?
He coughed em out with the hook. Out they came, mintfresh. Like a sign. I’ll give em to Fish.
He won’t know what they are.
Who does? I’ll drill holes in em and he can hang em round his neck.
Dad, there’s a law against that.
Aw, there’s laws against everything and no justice at all. Take it from an old walloper. Look after yer missus, Quick.
Quick was alarmed at the old man’s sudden kiss and he was wiping his face as Lester shuffled out.
Weathering It Out
Sam Pickles went to work to earn his pay packet and on the weekends he delivered it faithfully to the bookies and came home broke but not greatly troubled. A long time ago he’d decided that this was to be a straight up and down life of bad luck, and besides the odd shift in the shadow, there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it except go on losing. If anything, he figured there was some strength in knowing the way things were—it gave a bloke security, something to believe in. People knew who he was. At the Mint he was the sentimental favourite—old Sam the Stump who’d been around since the war and wasn’t much use at anything except being a familiar part of the place. On the racetrack he was old Sam the Slump, the bloke whose luck was running at a temporary low which began at birth and would probably stay with him to the coffin. Everybody loved a loser, especially a loser of such romantic proportions. He was a cheerful little bloke, always with a wheezy laugh and a fag to give. You knew he was probably right when he said he’d have made a brilliant jockey if he’d thought of it in time, if his father hadn’t died, if the luck hadn’t gone nasty on him. And at work or on the track, you put up with him saying things like that because he never said them often, and as some lark said, he was too stupid to feel sorry for himself. Dolly was always completely shickered when he got in these days. She drank with a will and an energy he hadn’t seen for years. Snoring beside him in bed at night, she gave off a formaldehyde stink that got so bad he moved into Rose’s old room. He knew he didn’t have a chance trying to figure women out. They were always set on killing themselves. Now Rose was starving herself again like when she was a teenager. He never saw her, and young Quick seemed to be at a loss. One was bloating up like a fat spiritous pile of moans and the other was trying the disappearing act again. He was buggered if he knew what to do. He’d lost a son; it seemed fit that he’d lose the rest of them. Well, there was Chub, but Chub was too lazy to get off his arse and make any trouble; nothing would get rid of Chub. He was apprenticed to a butcher who’d become a depressed man.
