Cloudstreet (23 page)

Now and then Rose tried to see the whole business as hilarious; it was like being in the first chapter of a fairy tale about a sweet girl with a nasty but beautiful step-mother. But the pleasure wouldn’t stay with her more than a moment or two. There was too much shame, too much cowering under the neighbours’ eyes, too much agonizing embarrassment going to school with a black eye or a fat lip—no, it was too real.

Ted and Chub were lazy and careless like boys were, and they were no use at all. Ted was the old girl’s favourite. Rose often saw her patting and stroking him when she was half shickered. Ted didn’t seem to care what she did at all. And the old man—well the old man was the same as ever. He’d come home tired and quiet from the Mint and shrug his shoulders. On Saturdays he’d go out to Ascot and lose the week’s pay. Rose was clever enough to steal a bit of his pay each week, going through his shirts for the laundry, but it was never really enough. She bought groceries from next door and small household things in Subiaco, but the money never went far enough to buy the boys and her new things for school, or clothes, or small treats. If the old man had a win there’d be plenty for all, but mostly it was the bookies who had the wins.

This summer Rose had started to get thin. She went dark in the sun, and on the holidays she’d caught the train to Cottesloe Beach nearly every day and gone without lunch to pay for it. She looked light and lithe and the old man joked around about it.

One Sunday noon in the new year and the fresh decade when the summer days were cooling off toward autumn, the old girl surprised her in the bathroom and she had to grab for a towel to cover herself. Her mother was bleary and sore headed.

Yer gettin skinny. Look like a bloody skeleton. I hate it. People think we starve yer.

Rose said nothing. It pleased her somehow to know that it annoyed the old girl. She watched her smear on all the makeup she needed these days to look halfway decent. Dolly was getting old and puffy. Smoke was curing her brow and cheeks and she had to try very hard to look her best.

Their eyes met and Rose smiled menacingly before leaving the room.

From then on, Rose got thinner every day. The old woman went into rages and the old man bit his lip. She was sixteen and scaring herself.

A Desertion

At first Oriel Lamb thought that vaudeville was undignified. Since way back, since the Bible-believing days, she’d defended dancing and music, but getting up to make a fool of yourself and sing nonsense songs seemed morally dubious. It was hard to shake off the idea that Lester’s vaudeville act would somehow bring disgrace to them all. But when she saw how the old diggers loved it, how they stomped their crutches and held their bellies and sang along, she couldn’t see the harm in it.

It was hard to remember how he’d got into the whole business. Someone from the army band had been recruiting, or drunk, and suddenly Lester was up there on stage, one Saturday night, starting in on his noseflute before they’d even finished ‘God Save the Queen’. And now it was 1950, and the Anzac Club had Lester Lamb on the bill almost every Saturday night. Though she’d never let on, she was proud of him. Vaudeville was something he was good at, something legendary from his past that was actually true. Most Saturday nights she’d hear him from the club kitchen where she kept the urns boiling for tea and buttered pumpkin scones and set fresh Anzacs out on the club china. She could hear Lester on the Jew’s harp, comb and paper, the noseflute, and nowadays the ventriloquist’s dummy he’d bought in a pawnshop for a mysterious sum.

He’s a right card, the other women would say, a real bonzer.

A real dag, love. Oh, to have him round the house.

Oriel rolled her eyes. Women!

People knew the Lambs now, were a little afraid of them even. With or without the children they travelled to and from the club in a Harley and sidecar. Pedestrians always looked twice at the dummy whose jaws flapped alarmingly in the wind.

The Anzacs were what the Lambs believed in, the glorious memories of manhood and courage. The nation, that’s what kept the Lambs going. They were patriots like no others. The thought of World Communism put fear in their hearts. Oriel had dreams about Joe Stalin—she knew what he was about. They weren’t political, Lester and Oriel, but they were proud and they offered themselves to the nation.

It was at the Anzac Club one night that Quick came into the kitchen and told her he was leaving.

Go over to the sink and wash your mouth out with soap, Mason Lamb, she said, not pausing from kneading the oatmeal mixture for her next batch of Anzacs.

Quick leaned against the laminex counter and saw the gold flecks in it.

I’m going bush, Mum.

There’s a bar of Velvet just beside you.

I didn’t think you’d appreciate me doin a bunk and not explainin.

Up on stage, Lester was singing:

Chicory-chic chala-chala-

You’ve got no money.

Mum—

No trade.

—in a binanaker bollicka wollicka, can’t you see—

Mum—

We not good enough for you?

—chicory-chic is me!

I’m going.

Everyone was laughing and clapping, and now they were headed for the counter for tea and cakes. Oriel rushed to the urn and felt the steam in her face. She wanted to grab Quick now, swallow him in a hug and pin him to the floor. He couldn’t go, he was one of hers, he wasn’t old enough, he wasn’t ready. Men with broad-cracking grins and hat lines in the oil of their hair broached the counter and made clunky, well-meaning jokes to hurry her along. She was trapped.

I won’t have a scene, she said, turning to the urn again.

But Quick was gone.

Hat, Elaine and Red came in to help pour the tea. They were all giggle and guffaw, teased by old soldiers and a few not so old. Oriel brought up trays full of cups, each with the Anzac insignia, to be filled, and she went into a trance of composure.

Somehow the seven of them stay connected to the Harley as the old man sends it through the Terrace, whumping up onto the flat stretch along Kings Park Road and then sending them all blank with terror as he hangs a right into Thomas Street. Their collective wailing sounds like a siren. The wind burns Oriel’s eyes. She squeezes Lon between her and Lester on the pillion, and hears Fish laughing. The girls scream, cowering around Fish in the sidecar. As they hit the railway line the vibration silences the lot of them. Oriel feels like her bowels have suddenly risen into her ribcage. Lester’s already gearing down for Cloudstreet. The dummy’s arm rises in the wind. They look like an army in retreat.

Quick hears the piano thundering as he half falls, half runs downstairs. It’s not music, only noise, and it scares the hell out of him. He has a duffle bag on his shoulder which beats his back as he goes, and as he swings into the bottom hallway, Rose Pickles, coming out to see what all the noise is, takes it full in the face and goes down cold on the floor. He’s almost to the back door before he realizes, but as he turns to go back he hears the Harley gunning down Railway Parade, and so he stops and gets out the door to the yard and runs. Past the redspattered tent, the vegetables and chooks, up over the back fence and down the embankment along the tracks. The wild oats whip his legs and he bolts, sobbing in the dark.

Rose Pickles had herself almost upright before the Lamb mob came brawling in the door, fanning out like infantry, roomby-room, upstairs and down and she was trying to slip back in the kitchen doorway when Mrs Lamb finally noticed her and seized her.

Good Lawd! Les, get the medicine box. What happened love, quick tell me what happened. Oh, Quick.

Rose felt the little woman’s square head on her shoulder and then her whole boxy weight against her. She just wasn’t strong enough to support her, and Mr Lamb came downstairs the moment Rose teetered back into the kitchen with Mrs Lamb weeping on top of her.

Sam Pickles came running. He saw Rose and Oriel on the floor in the doorway. There was blood and both of them were bawling, but he couldn’t make any sense of it. Lester Lamb was there, too, standing like a man to whom feeling helpless is no great surprise. Their eyes met.

What—the bum dropped out of the world?

More or less, said Lester. More or less.

And the Pig Won’t TaIk

Fish goes down the back to the pig but the pig is saying nothing. The chooks pick and scratch in their sandy run. The ground is dry with the end of summer and the big house is quiet. No Quick. He’s gone. He didn’t say. You should say. A boy should say. He feels sick right in his middle. This is sad. Lestah says it’s the sad that makes the sick. It makes him hungry for the water again. Some nights he can’t sleep for the hungry in him, and in the mornings he just wants to be bad and put poo on the walls and eat sand like a baby. He doesn’t like the sound of them crying. He wants Quick. He doesn’t care what they want. He just wants to be bad. And the pig won’t talk.

That Ted Pickles