Cloudstreet (26 page)

The day the basic wage was upped a quid, he got out at his stop and a tall, thin, long-jawed woman stopped him on the platform.

You Mr Pickles? Sam Pickles?

Yeah. Yes that’s me.

Passengers faded from the platform, the train heaved itself round the bend. Two date palms down on the street waved solemnly.

You don’t know me, and I really don’t know you, and I’ve got nothin against you or anythin, but I think you should try to control your wife. She said it in a gaspy, short winded way, and her mouth was all atremble by the time she finished, but Sam felt so black with fury that he wasn’t in the least bit sympathetic.

And I think you should mind your own bloody business, lady.

He stuffed his Akubra on his head and went on, his bag butting against his knee.

Well it’s my business, too! she called out, thickthroated with sobs. It’s my husband I’m talkin about. I’ve got young-ens to look after and she’s got no right. It’s a mortal sin!

Sam went down the stairs with the fury going out of him. He walked along Railway Parade where the dandelions moved in the jaded light and by the time he had reached Cloudstreet there was only a dull soreness in him, something inevitable, something he knew he’d been resigned to for years.

Now Black Now White

Rose loves that weird boy, she knows it. She leaves the spuds boiling on the stove and the snags spitting on low heat to go upstairs to listen to him tinkling on the piano. If everything was like the books she reads it’d be sweet, miraculous music coming down from that bookless, windowless library up there, but its just jangly noise though Fish doesn’t thump it any more. Nowadays she can hardly get up the stairs without breaks, but she gets up without stopping this time, for fear of missing a look at Fish.

Breathless and giddy she stands at the half-open library door to watch him with his back to her, pushing the keys gently as if marvelling at the difference in them still—now black now white, first a finger, then a full hand spread. It’s horror movie music and she thinks of some poor sad movie monster hearing bittersweet music.

He’s big now, Fish. Fourteen and growing like a man. His hair is fair and long, half obscuring his little ears. These days his feet are on the ground when he plays.

Rose can’t see the look on his face. She’d expect it to be a glowing, rapt expression, but it’s grim and hardset. She listens to the thang-dung-dim-tink of his music and wants only to touch him, to be friendly, and yes, if she’s honest, to get a kiss. It’s ridiculous—she’s too old for him and he’s a slow learner and a tenant and a Lamb, for gawdsake, but he’s just the grousest looking boy, and his hot blue eyes make you go racy inside. Rose steps into the room and Fish stops without looking around. Just inside the door the sickest, foulest feeling comes over her. She knows it from before, the taste of that horrible rotten smell that comes not into your nose, but straight into your mouth, onto your tongue, sliding round on you, curdling your spit till you’re ready to vomit.

She races out and stumps downstairs, sick and hurting.

The old man is in the kitchen, turning his hat over in his hands like a man at a wake.

I turned the snags off, he says. The spuds look ready.

Sorry. I haven’t got any greens ready.

Don’t bother. Where’s the boys?

Dunno.

He doesn’t even enquire after the old girl. She watches him put his hat on a chair and roll his sleeves up in a distracted sort of fashion. Then he settles on her, looks hard at her. She blushes, still a bit shaky from the upstairs feeling.

Jesus, Rose, you look like a corpse these days. It’s a crime you know, he says quietly, a bloody crime.

I get fat.

You haven’t been fat since you were hangin off a tit. He smiles. Now you’ve grown yer own.

Rose turns to the stove and shakes the dark sausages round in the pan, seething with shame.

You have to start eatin again. It’s not a joke anymore, love.

I can’t, Dad.

Christ, you must be starvin hungry!

I am. But I can’t any more. I just toss it up again.

Bullshit, you’ve just talked yourself off yer tucker. Siddown an eat some with me. Cam, it’ll help. Some warmth comes back into his voice, as if he’s trying hard to hold himself back. Come on, love. You’ll bloody die if you don’t eat.

Dad, I can’t.

Rose gives him his snags and spuds and goes back to the stove.

Give yerself some.

Dad.

Put some on your plate. Go on.

Really, Dad, I—

Do it.

You don’t—

Do it, bugger you!

Rose comes to the table, puts her plate down shaky and frightened. It’s not like him, it’s just not him. She can’t smell grog on his breath, just the peppermints.

Eat it, he says. I’m not havin you starve to death in my own house. I didn’t go through a fuckin depression and a war to see my children turn their nose up at food—

Chub and Ted eat enough, those fat bastards—

Eat, Rose.

His fist is set on the table now, his fingerless chunk. Rose sees the pulse in his neck.

She spears a snag and bites it in half, chews recklessly and feels it slip down greasy and fine tasting.

All of it.

She can’t see him for waterblur now, but she eats and lets her cheeks run.

All of it.

But she’s up and running for the door with it all ramming upwards in her before she can even think about it. On the back step she feels her whole guts jerk and crank. White burns in her eyes and blood roars in her ears.

The house claps with the slamming of doors. Rose wonders if it was the food or the feeling of the library, or maybe both. She just wants to disappear.

You orright, love?

It’s Mrs Lamb coming up from the tent with a basket of beans.

Lord, you look like a shadow, Rosemary. Let me take you to a doctor. Mr Lamb’s got the truck out the front.

No, Rose gasps. No, it’s orright. Just the curse, I get like this when me time comes.

You look like your time’ll be here sooner than you think. Wait here and I’ll organize the truck.

Mrs Lamb.

Don’t move.

Rose waits till the little woman is gone right through the house and out the front before she bolts. She runs like a scarecrow, and it feels as pathetic as it looks.

Dusk

The library is empty. The walls flicker with a black, gleeful flinching of shade. A smell of shit and corruption rises out of the wood, causing the air to go fluid with sickness as the last notes of the departed boy ring in the room. And then the air stiffens. The shadows press in against themselves all of a sudden and dust motes freeze immobile in the air.

Down on the street, looking up with bloodshot eyes, a dark, woolly man stands with a stick, beating it slowly against his knee, humming under his breath until the dusk claims him and the library goes back to being vile and dark and fluid.

Night After Night

Sam Pickles walked the neighbourhood as if defying them all, daring someone to come up and try it on him. He’d kill them, he’d kill anything the way he was. Rose kept clear of him, dying before his bloody eyes. The boys had that arrogant chemical sense about them, as if they smelled a loser. And Dolly. Good old Dolly. Well the shadow was on him, the Hairy Hand of God, and he knew that being a man was the saddest, most useless thing that could happen to someone. To be alive, to be feeling, to be conscious. It was the cruellest bloody joke. In the dark, night after night, he raised his mangled fist to the sky and said things that frightened him.

Not a Brass Razoo