Cloudstreet

by Tim Winton

You won’t believe this, says the sergeant from the local station.

  Probably not, says Quick, putting his wet boots back on, still jittery.

  The kid’s been missin since this mornin. He’s the whats-isname’s kid. The Nedlands Monster.

  Quick sat there. It took a while to set on him. Him! Murderer, father of seven. The Nedlands Monster, the face of evil. That was his son he’d been holding and trying not to weep over in front of a crowd. He’d seen himself, Harry, Fish in that dead boy’s face. Quick felt something break in him as he stared at his boots.

  The poor bastard, he thought, the poor, poor bastard, sitting down there in Freo gaol waiting for the hangman, thinking there’s no news worse than he’s just heard, with this heading his way in only a few minutes time.

  The mother’s comin, said the sergeant. You better go.

  Aw, gawd, why didn’t you say before! Quick charged the door, clipped the jamb and met her on the path. He wanted to tell her something, stop and give her something to go on, but he knew he didn’t have it in him and the local sergeant would come down on him like a ton of bricks.

  The murderer’s wife. A man’s wife. A man. With evil in him. And tears, and children and old twisted hopes. A man.

  He blundered out to the BSA and nearly kicked it off its stand.

  Quick rode to Cloudstreet feeling useless as a twelve year old, reckless across the Narrows Bridge, ready to drive into the river at any second. He caned the BSA up Mounts Bay Road, leaning into curves with only wind holding him free, past the Crawley baths where he’d swum as a kid where jellyfish piled up like church camp food and the rotting stink of blowfish blew past.

  Put Yer Dukes Up, Woman!

  That very morning, Lon Lamb has taken a sickie off work. A cold feeling drifts up through the house from the shop where Oriel is making up the day’s deliveries, sorting them box by box, silent and ominous with it. She glances out now and then to see the dewstreaked paintwork of Lon’s FJ Holden. Elaine bustles beside her mother, gnawing her lip. Baking smells sweep back from the kitchen as Lester slips around doing the lunchtime pasties and singing some old wartime song. Lon and Pansy’s baby Merrileen-Gaye whimpers longwindedly on the landing outside her parents’ door.

  Aw, that kid, murmurs Elaine.

  Not her fault, says Oriel, pushing a case of fruit and vegetables to one side.

  Maybe I should go up and get her, says Elaine.

  No. I’ll do it.

  Mum.

  There won’t be any problem.

  Oriel takes the stairs one at a time. Rose has opened her door to see what’s happening. Oriel waves her back. Merrileen-Gaye has a full nappy round her ankles and she looks broadeyed and uncertain at her grandmother, who strides past and throws open the door. Pansy and Lon are naked and conjoined somehow like a seesaw. They are plank and boulder, breast and bollock naked, and not altogether prepared for this.

  We’re doin deliveries this morning, Lon Lamb, same as every mornin, and if yer not goin to yer own work this mornin I’ll thank you to be packin the Chev in ten minutes. Good mornin, Pansy. You’re lookin advanced. Ten minutes.

  Come ten minutes later, Lon Lamb is slinging crates up onto the flatbed and spitting out the foulest curses a Lamb could ever imagine. The sound of it, the sheer vicious unhappiness of it draws the household to its windows. Customers coming early stop to watch, as if they can sense the beginning of a shenanigan. By the time the truck is packed—higgledy piggledy, boxes all over—a small crowd has gathered. A shiver goes through it when Oriel Lamb steps out onto the verandah wiping her hands, squinting in the morning light. Old men take off their hats. Throats are cleared. Oriel ignores the lot of them.

  We do things a certain way in this family, Lon. It’s called the proper way. When we say we’ll do something we stand by it. Pull it down and pack it properly.

  It’s fine as it is, Lon murmured.

  You’ll lose it the first corner you take.

  I’m not takin it anywhere. I’m off work.

  Pull it down.

  Go to hell.

  It’s the word itself that sets her off. In a moment she’s charged out there, torn the side off a pine crate and got him by the ear. The onlookers are too sobered to roar with surprise or delight. Now his wife is watching, and then his daughter.

  Pull it down.

  Go to hell, you rotten bitch.

  Oriel bends him like a saw over her knee and gives him the pine across the arse; once, twice, and another full swing before Lon breaks away, a feisty wildeyed man of twenty-two with his plumber’s fists up now, prancing back before her, calling:

  Cam, then put yer dukes up, woman! Put yer bloody dukes up!

  And she does. She gives him a left—quick as a snake—coming up under his nose to shake the crowd from its silence and Lon Lamb from his moorings. He goes down swinging, with blood shooting, and does not get back up.

  His feet are still planted, but his body has gone down between them completely untrellised.

  Oriel wipes a pink smear from the back of her hand, and picks him up.

  It’s still my blood, too, you know. She looks round at the grinning faces, the elbows shoving, the hands across mouths.

  These folk will help you repack it. That seems like a fair thing for a bit of entertainment, don’t you think?

  Ongh, says Lon.

  We’e cheap, but we’ve never been free.

  The little woman stands there and faces them down while Lon teeters beside her. She doesn’t go away. In the end the crowd feels shame and discomfort there in her yard, and the truck is packed in no time.

  Turning

  Quick clumped up the stairs and went into the library. Harry was asleep in his cot in the corner and Rose sat at the dresser with a candle. The mirror threw light all about as he closed the door, the candle guttering a moment. He sat on the big bed to pull off his leggings and boots. Rose wore one of his old sweaters and not much else besides. When she leant over the table he saw her cotton knickers white against her tan. She spun a butterknife on the dresser top.

  See if it’ll give me a holiday, he said.

  You need one?

  I need one. I need a holiday, Rose.

  You brood too much.

  Yes.

  What? Why’re you looking like that, Quick?

  We all turn into the same thing, don’t we? Memories, shadows, worries, dreams. We all join up somewhere in the end.

  What are you talking about?

  The gaols are full of blokes we’d swear are different to us. Only difference is, they did things you and me just thought about.

  That’s still a big difference, said Rose.

  Maybe. A second’s difference.

  What’s happened?

  I pulled a drowned kid out of the river today. You wouldn’t believe this, but it just happened to be his kid.

  Whose?

  The Monster.

  Geez.

  I’ve pulled a kid out of the river before, Rose. When I was eleven years old. My own brother. I know how it feels. I know how that poor bastard feels. And I got thinkin about my childhood, my life. I did a lot of feelin sorry for myself, those years. I used to see the saddest things, think about the saddest, saddest things. And those things put dents in me, you know. I could’ve turned out angry and cold like him. I can see how that evil little bugger might’ve just … turned, like a pot of milk.

  So you’ve given away the old good and evil? asked Rose, amazed at all this rare talk from Quick.

  No. No. I’ll stay a cop. But it’s not us and them anymore. It’s us and us and us. It’s always us. That’s what they never tell you. Geez, Rose, I just want to do right. But there’s no monsters, only people like us. Funny, but it hurts.

  Quick shook and coughed up a great tearless sob.

  You can’t do the impossible, she said.

  No, he murmured, unconvinced.

  You do need a break. Let’s go somewhere.

  Quick Lamb wept. He cried like something had f
allen on him from afar.

  Quick. Quick.

  Rose put the knife down and came to him on the bed. She pulled the sweater up and over her head and let her breasts settle hot on his chest. She wrapped her legs around him and lifted her breast, silvery with workmarks, and put it to his mouth. Her nipple like a hot coal on his tongue.

  You need me, Quick Lamb, she said. That’s why I have you. Just be happy. Be happy, Quick. It’s us. You said it yourself.

  Coming

  Autumn comes and the long, cool twilights before winter hang over the rooftops of the city full of the sounds of roosting birds and quiet leaving. Down in the yard at Cloud-street, down there in the halls and channels of time Fish and the pig exchange glances and dumbly feel the weather turning inward. The pig is battleworn, leathery beyond the threat of butchery and scarred like the trunk of an old tree. Fish handles him sweetly and without talk, just touches him on the moist plug of his snout and stands. What are you thinking, Fish? Do you feel that you’re going, that you’re close? Strange that you should be so hard to read these last stretching days. It should be rushing, like the whole planet is rushing down its narrow, fixed course. But I can’t read your face. I stare back at you in the puddles on the chilly ground, I’m waiting in your long monastic breath, I travel back to these moments to wonder at what you’re feeling and come away with nothing but the knowledge of how it will be in the end. You’re coming to me, Fish, and all you might have been, all you could have hoped for is turning for you like the great river, gathering debris and nutrient and colour from every twist and trough of your story without you even knowing. The house is clear, the people are coming to things day by day and it’s all that’s left. No shadows, no ugly, no hurtings, no falling down angry. Your turn is coming.

  Get a Haircut

  Sarge, said Quick coming into the dry warmth of the office looking like a wilted celery, Sarge I—

  Take a week off, Lamb, you look like shit.

  Sarge, I—

  Go now before I look at the roster and change me mind. And get a haircut.

  Where will we go? said Quick that night in bed. We could go crabbin at Mandurah, or go for whiting at Parrys. There’s fish up at—

  No fishing, said Rose.

  What?

  No fishing. There will be no fishing.

  But it’s a holiday, love.

  This time it’ll be a holiday without fishing.

  Quick lay there, suddenly without reference. Well, what would you like to do?

  Rose turned into his chest and lay her hands flat on him. Let’s just fill the car up and drive.

  And drive?

  And drive.

  That’s …

  Not the Lamb way, I know. It’s not practical, it’s probably not even safe, but for once we can just go. We’ll make it up as we go along. We’ll just … go.

  Sure you wouldn’t rather go fishin?

  Rose turned her nails into his flesh and he shook the bed with trying not to scream.

  Lester on His Knees

  Lester pulled the Harley over in the fresh, antiseptic street and lifted his goggles. He looked at the scrubbed bricks, the dinky letterbox, the planted lawns of Rose and Quick’s new place. They’d been out here getting it ready. So, this was where they’d be. Lester looked up and down the silent street. He got off the bike, dropped his helmet in the sidecar, went down the side of the house and fell on his knees to pray. Somewhere, a long way away where there was still a native tree standing, a kookaburra laughed up a cyclone of derision which brought a flush to Lester Lamb’s cheeks but did not keep him from his prayer.

  Voting Day

  Sam Pickles came back dejected and alone from the polling booth knowing his vote hadn’t done the country a stick of good, and that those tightfisted boss lovers would be back for another term, sucking up to the Queen and passing the hat round to the workers again with smiles on their faces. When he turned into Cloudstreet the sun was on the rooftops and a man stood alone across the road from the big house. Sam shambled on up to him, lit a fag and held it out to the stranger.

  Ta.

  He was black as a bastard.

  Got yer vote in?

  The black man just smiled. He had a Ned Kelly beard and an old grey suit on with a pair of red leather shoes that must once have cost a fortune. The toes were cut out, and the man’s toenails were horny as a rooster’s.

  Well, not that it’s much use. It’s a boss’s country straight up.

  The black man sniffed, still smiling. Only the bosses don’t know theys the bosses, eh.

  Sam blinked.

  You live there, said the black man.

  Yeah. I own it. Don’t tell anyone, but in the new year I’m gonna sell it. Some rich bastard’ll come along, bulldoze it and build a fuckin great block of flats on it. Salmon pink bricks, five storeys, ugly as sin. And I’ll do orright.

  Sam looked away from the house and found the black man looking at him. Jesus, thought Sam, paint him white and he might be me old man. The black man’s stare put a foul sweat on him. He damnnear asked for his smoke back.

  You shouldn’t break a place. Places are strong, important.

  Bloody place is half fallin down orready. Can’t hurt to give it a helpin hand.

  Too many places busted.

  Sam wandered half across the street, his hands in his pockets, his stump tingling a little. He turned back to the black man. I mean, lookit that joint, willya?

  You better be the strongest man.

  Sam looked at him. He felt blank. All he noticed was the way the black man’s shadow came out on four sides of him like a footy player under lights at training.

  How did you vote today, mate?

  The black man dropped the smoke and toed it. He walked away shaking his head, his shadow reeling out all sides of him as he went.

  Gift Horsed

  On Sunday morning, early, Dolly threw a chunk of beef into the long, wild grass. The maggies came swooping; you could hear the whooping of their wings as they came from out of the sun, wheeling round to land at her feet. Dolly’s hands looked younger with the blood and juice of meat on them. They trembled, those hands, but the birds were used to it. Now and then one of the boldest would come and take meat off her palm and the force of the peck, the beak hitting her skin through the meat sent a thrill into her.

  The last birds hopped through the bloody tangle of wild oats, checking the ground for remnants. Dolly’s back ached, squatting the way she did, but she stayed there to watch the impassive heads of the magpies, trying to see a sign of disappointment or of satisfaction, or gratitude, and smiling when they left abruptly at the sound of a footfall.

  Jesus, you’ll be cookin rice puddin for em next, Sam said behind her.

  So you got up, eh? Here I am, up before you.

  Sam stood by her, weight on one leg, with his hands in his pockets. I’ve got a bloody hangover.

  Well, that explains it. You’re still a two pot screamer.

  I was thinkin.

  Never think n drink at the same time. Makes you miserable. What about?

  Oh, Gawd, everythin. What we’re gonna do about Chub, retirement. The house.

  What about the house? Dolly’s haunches hurt now, but she stayed where she was, with the breeze rattling up her thighs.

  Well, it’s the twenty years come summer. Joel said we could sell after twenty.

  That was to protect us all from you.

  Fair enough.

  But what?

  Sam scratches the inside of his calf with the heel of his shoe. I thought, well, twenty years is up. We could sell. They’re goin mad in this town, buyin the old and buildin the new. We could make ourselves a pile.

  And you believe in luck!

  What?

  Did you earn this place?

  No. You know that. Joel gave it to me. Us.

  You think it’s good luck to sell what someone gave you as a present, a gift?

  He sighed. Joel was the luckiest bastard on earth.
/>   It didn’t keep him alive this last twenty years.

  Yeah, but it kept us alive.

  Dolly spat on the ground and laughed bitterly. What’s kept us alive is that friggin woman. A dead man and an ugly woman. Vanilla icecream, pasties and mullet.

  It’s a bloody horrible old house, Doll. We could do what Rose is doin—build a new place, out in a new suburb. This is old.

  Oh, it’s not so bloody horrible. Jesus, you hate the place!

  Dolly sniffed. I don’t know about that. What was the horse’s name, the one Joel made all his money off?

  Eurythmic. What a horse that was.

  What is it they say about lookin a gift horse in the mouth?

  My God, woman, you’re the evillest bitch.

  Dolly laughed: You dunno the half of it.

  We must be fuckin mad.

  Below Deck

  The night before Rose and Quick’s trip, Oriel put on a dinner in the big room where Lester slept. The bed was taken out and two tables were laid end to end, draped in a great white cloth that stank of mothballs and the Reader’s Digest. It was getting stupid, Oriel decided, the way Rose and Quick wandered from kitchen to kitchen, not knowing who they were supposed to eat with, and besides, if they ate with the Pickleses it was a sure bet that poor Rose’d do all the cooking, and on the night before her first holiday in years, it wasn’t right that the girl should cook. Anyway, it would save all kinds of embarrassment if a gesture was made, a compromise sealed, and they ate together. Oriel had a headache the moment she conceived the idea. But it had to be done. Someone had to take the initiative. Also, and she could barely admit it, the prospect of not having Harry and Rose and Quick in the house depressed her. After their holiday, now that their new house was finished, they’d be leaving Cloudstreet for good. It was weakness this silly dinner. It was hanging on to them, but Oriel considered she had the right to a bit of clinging.

  When the big room was full of noise and laughter, Sam and Dolly came knocking. Red let them in. They looked overscrubbed and shaky. Fish was rolling soup bowls, Lester was giving the accordion a bit of a hiding, and Lon was telling a joke that no one could possibly approve of.