Cloudstreet (15 page)

What can you tell him, Fish? Right now, while you’re down there on that side of the water with your strange brain and your black, wide eyes. What do you understand enough to say? You stand there in the morning and the afternoon and see Quick all closed, white and hard. Motes rain down. The sun is alive. The whole house is shaking with sound. Why won’t he look at you? How do you bear it? How can you just stand at the end of his bed like that, with the patience of an animal? It’s like you’re someone else down there, Fish. Or does it just hurt me to think it’s not so?

Debts

Every morning the old man came up to see Quick and sit on the end of his bed and sigh. Quick lay under the sheet, smelling all the trapped stinks and odours, and through it he could see the shadow of the old man moving in front of the window.

How’d ya be, son? the old man said quietly. He seemed to know something was wrong, but he was stuck for some way of fixing it.

Quick was glad it was him coming up and not his mother. She’d be too busy getting the shop open for the day and anyway, she’d be liable to just hook him out of bed, kick him in the ring and send him on his way. He didn’t know why he was staying here in bed anyway; he just knew he didn’t want to get up and it had something to do with Wogga McBride.

The second day Lester had a better idea of what was wrong. Quick heard him rustling a newspaper theatrically, walking up and down, stopping now and then to say: It’s a flamin tragedy, Quick, an honest-to-the-Lord flamin tragedy.

Quick didn’t think about that wet teatowel snap of Wogga McBride disappearing. Neither could he let himself imagine what had happened after, how Wogga would have been dragged and ricked and torn and wedged and burst and broken. He thought about nothing like that. Quick thought about nothing at all. He listened to the grinds and groans of the house. Flies went about their mysterious business. Ticking noises came from in the walls. The cocky next door squawked and quipped. Below, the bell clonked on the shop door. Sometimes, when the hunger drifted over into dreaminess, he forgot he was Quick Lamb at all. It excited him to discover how quiet he was inside.

On the third day the old man came in and rustled a newspaper, and then Quick heard scissors going, hissing through paper.

A lot of sad people on the wall, Quick. What’re you doin with em? What’s it mean?

Quick said nothing.

Knocks me round to see you like this, boy. You’ll starve to death. Look at these poor sods—you don’t wanna be like them. You don’t need to be. You’ve got a roof over yer head, family—well, we’re not much I know, he chuckled. But, strike. Here—

Quick saw the shadow cross him and hover. He heard him thumbing a couple of tacks into the wall.

There. Another one. That’s yer schoolmate, if you really wanna feel miserable. They’re buryin im in Fremantle tomorrow. Be dressed by eight. After that we’ll go down the wharf for some fish and chips.

Quick set his jaws. He realized suddenly that he was aching; he was sore and tight in the guts and he stank.

No.

It’s for Fish. He’s worried.

No.

Quick heard the old man cross the room and slam the window down.

Christ Almighty, boy, if you care that much about someone from school, why don’t you care about yer own blood? You know damn-well your brother is busted in the head and he’ll never grow up right. The least you could do is let him be happy. Don’t torture him, Quick. And us. You don’t need to be like this—it’s a lie, a game, and yer not helpin anyone at all. Yer feelin sorry for yerself and it’s making me sick. Don’t pretend to Fish. And then the old man’s voice got quiet and dangerous. You and me understand about Fish. We were there. We were stupid enough to drown him tryin to save him. You remember that. We owe him things, Quick. We got a debt. All we can do now is let him be happy, let him be not too confused. I can sit here and talk and get nothin back for as long as it takes to get angry enough to swat your arse and send your mother up to deal with you. But Fish, he’ll wait. He’ll wait till you say something to him. Don’t you forget about Fish, boy. Not as long as you live, or your life won’t have been worth livin.

Quick heard the old man go out then. The door closed, and it was like the room was roaring. He’d never heard his father say words like that.

In the dark that night, Quick tried to pray, but nothing came. He knew it wouldn’t come for any of them anymore. He felt the hunger raving in him.

He woke and saw it. The people in all the pictures on the wall—they were dancing and there was Wogga McBride jitterbugging along the tracks. They were laughing, all of them. He’d never known such terror as coiled in him right then. He got out of bed, ran into Fish and Lon’s room and climbed into bed with Fish. He lay awake there with his brother’s sleeping body beside him until dawn. When the sun came up he began to weep. Fish woke.

What you laughin for, Quick?

The Kybosh

It was strange that Lester should get up before her on a nonmarket day. Oriel Lamb found a bowl and a teacup on the kitchen table, and that’s all. She sat down with a sigh and rested her head on the wood. It could only be bad. To be up early, to have gone somewhere without a word, to have taken the truck. The fresh summer sun tilted at the window. She saw the pale blue promise of heat out there. An engine whistle blew. Oriel looked at her hands. They were farmer’s hands. Women told her they were men’s hands. She watched the way they squared up to make fists. She rested them on the table. Her knuckles were like dirty blocks of ice.

There was something wrong with men. They lacked some basic thing and she didn’t know what it was. She loved Lester, but a lot of loving him was making up for him, compensating. He was never quite up to anything. She knew he was a fool, but it wasn’t the same thing. Her father had been the same. He was a kindly man, big and thin and softlooking, but without enough flint in him to make his kindliness into kindness. As a child she could tell that he thought well of people, but he never had the resolve to make his feelings substantial. He never did anything for anybody but himself. Like when he remarried. Oriel’s mother and sisters died in a bushfire that razed the farm and the house. Her father was so broken by the event, that after she was dragged alive from the half-collapsed cellar almost mad with fear and shock and guilt, and after he’d killed his last pig to fix her burns, it was
she
who nursed
him
. She always had the feeling he would have just faded away, had she not mothered him as they moved from property to property on neighbours’ charity until she’d earned enough from kitchen work and dairymucking to buy them a moth-eaten old tent to take back to their place and start again. She made it a home for them until the darkness stemmed in him long enough for him to think of going on with his life. And when he remarried he told Oriel it was to give her another mother, though she knew perfectly well it was to give himself another wife. Her stepmother was a strong girl, and though she hated her, Oriel knew she couldn’t help being strong when she had such a weak man to live with. Oriel continued to love her father, but she knew that loving a man was a very silly activity; it was giving to the weak and greedy and making trouble for yourself.

Even Bluey dying in Palestine. Killed because he was careless, the swaggering underage horseman from the colonies showing how young and fearless he was, and in her bitterest moments Oriel thought of it as a betrayal, that for Bluey there was loveliness but not love. If he’d loved her he would’ve come back made sure of it.

Lester came back alright. She danced with him at the Woodanilling victory dance, another strange boy gaunt with malaria. He laughed a lot, seemed bemused by the way Oriel fastened herself to him. That’s what men had, those bemused grins. She’d seen it in him all along, from courtship to the farms, the police force, the oddjobs, oh, the endless trail of oddjobs … she’d known it right along. But what could you do? Be like that poor wretch of a woman next door?

These days she wished she could take it to the Lord in prayer, but there was nothing there anymore and there was no choice but to grit and go on. She didn’t mind the army. The army was the nation and the nation gave her something to believe in. Him, too, that’s why he joined up again so suddenly when there wasn’t even a war on. But on a Saturday morning before anyone was up, he wouldn’t be at band practice, he’d be somewhere he shouldn’t be.

Elaine came downstairs with a headache already.

Where’s Dad?

He’s out on business.

To be sure, Elaine smirked.

Don’t wrangle with me this morning, my girl, or I’m liable to put the kybosh on your Saturday.

I’ve got a headache!

These days you are a headache. Put the kettle on.

Oriel Lamb tromped out the back to the privacy of the dunny and latched the door with great care. Whatever was going on with that husband of hers would need the kybosh put on, too. But today she wasn’t sure she was up to men.

Like a Light Shinin