Cloudstreet (30 page)

A dark man comes flying by your tree, you see the white of his eyes and tingle with rumours of glory. The city flickers and warbles along the banks of the Swan and in their homes, along their bars and fences the people go at it as if now is all there is, grabbing, holding, loading up for the short run, others before them, millions behind, not knowing that now is always and never, as from and to will be always and never.

I’m behind the water, Fish, I’m in the tree. I feel your pulse and see you dreaming of Quick out there in the wheat, and I see you coming. Your time will come, Fish, you’ll have a second of knowing, a man for a moment, and then it won’t matter because you’ll be me, free to come and go, free to puzzle and long and love, free of the net of time.

They’re eating, Fish. And Quick is shooting, and back home, tingling himself at the black man passing overhead like an owl, the pig is singing.

The Dark, the Dark

The pig lay in his grovel hole with the full darkness swimming over him. Up at the house on the lights out empty side there were flickers at the windows. The filthy porker stirred and caught the scent. His limbs quavered and his head went up. Curtains swished up there and that stink forced itself out through the cracks in the weatherboards. The hens shook and shat, shifting on the perch, and the rooster threw himself at the wire. A dog howled somewhere away off across wind that went slushy with the sounds of birds flying. The sound of choking and laughing up there in the empty Lamb side of Cloudstreet. The pig got to his feet and went quietly but unflaggingly:
Keethro mutila gogma seak seak do, asra do, kum asra do …

The rooster crowed uncertainly and a Pickles slipper came lobbing out of the dark from across the fence, landing with a crash against the dunny door.

Girl on the Switch

Rose Pickles discovered that she really could talk. The moment the big rumplebosomed lady conducting the interview finished her question, Rose knew she had it in the bag. She was off like a shot. The talk that came out of her mouth was like a spiritual inspiration: she was snappy, polite, discreet, accurate and cheerful. Around her she could hear the emporium’s turbine hum. Even as she spoke she knew she’d be joining that sound, and she’d never felt so capable in all her life. After the interview she excused herself, fought her way through a battalion of naked mannequins and threw up in the toilet.

She started in the morning.

You should start as an office girl, said Mrs Tisborn, work your way up. But you can talk and you can think, and I’m prepared to try you out on the switchboard. Don’t be grateful and don’t be late. You may learn to be grateful in time, but you may never learn to be late.

Each morning, before the heat had hold of the day, Rose got up and lit the rocket heater in the bathroom, ate a piece of toast or a carrot, and took a shower. Next door was quiet that first week. Normally there’d be the drag of chairs and the little woman’s shouts, the whole crew thumping down the stairs to a dawn breakfast, but this week they were subdued. The shop was open again but things were calm. At the steamy mirror Rose nicked odd dabs of this and that from her mother’s makeup box and pulled on the only decent skirt and blouse she had. Her shoes were scuffed and daggy and she had no stockings to wear, but no one was going to make her wear those awful black tights again with the darning scars all over them like the swamp plague. The first morning she thought she looked fair, but the moment she walked into Bairds she knew she looked like a sick dog’s breakfast and she’d have to crack hardy till pay day.

She got the train into Perth station. In the cramped carriages men smelled of serge and peppermints; their hair was all at the top of their heads and their ears stood out like taxi doors. The women smelled of cologne and stale sweat even this early and they seemed tired and distracted. Rose saw the veins strangling in their calves, saw how their dresses dragged up, and the way the older women’s feet seemed gnarled and disturbed by shoes whose platform soles looked better suited to knocking in nails than walking on.

West Perth rolled by and then the dark verandahs of Roe Street. From up on the rails the city looked choked. Cars, trolley-buses, surging workers, the elbow to elbow clutter of commerce. It didn’t have the plain, windy spaciousness of Geraldton’s main street, but Geraldton was barely a town compared to this. Rose liked the idea of sending herself into this furious movement every morning, and besides Geraldton had just become a childhood memory.

She crossed into Forrest Place where all the men with pinned-back sleeves and crutches and RSL badges were gathering to bitch and sigh together. The GPO was sombre and imposing. Murray Street bristled with commencement of business. As Rose went into Bairds the overhead fans were turning already and floor staff were flurrying to beat the supervisor’s opening hour walk. It was a great womanly adventure, it seemed.

Behind the Staff Only door Mrs Tisborn was waiting. Rose went in and surrendered gladly to her training.

The switchboard was a fearsome altar of a thing that first week. Mrs Tisborn stood behind and hissed instructions while Rose searched for the right jack, the right hole, the right cord, the right number, the right moment. The headset clamped her skull and the mornings went on as though time was fiddling the books, but Rose learnt quickly and it wasn’t long before Mrs Tisborn’s violet breath was receding. Near lunchtime on the second day she could relax enough to comprehend who else was in the room, and at the break she met the Girls on the Switch—Darleen, Merle, and Alma.

Ole Teasebone given yer the runaround this mornin, love? What wuz yer name again?

Rose.

Yull be right. Yull put a hurdle in er girdle, won’t she loves? Eh, girls?

Rose found it difficult to distinguish Darken, Merle or Alma by voice alone because they sounded so alike. They spoke with a cackling kind of pegnosed lilt and laughed like they were being dug in the ribs by a shovel. They were roughmouthed and irritable, with the eyes of rouged cattle. They showed her where to get the best pie and chips in Murray Street, the very thought of which kept her off lunch in general, and they introduced Rose to the addiction of listening in. They were silly, dizzy scrubbers, and she liked them. They were the grousest ladies she’d ever met.

On the train home that Friday, she missed her station because something awful had come into her mind. The switchboard girls reminded her of her mother. The only thing that helped was their bovine bad looks and the fact that they laughed a lot. Just plug em in an shut up, Rose, that’s all yer need to know.

Yeah, she thought. That’s all I should need to know.

On pay day she gave the old man half her pay and he laughed and gave it back. On Saturday morning at teabreak, Rose bought herself a pair of Nightingale Seamless Stockings and a jar of Helena Rubenstein’s Estrogenic Hormone Cream. On the way home, the train carriage wasn’t big enough for her.

Geoffrey Birch Came Calling

Geoffrey Birch from Pemberton came calling for Hat. He was handsome and dull, with knees as big as soup plates, and Hat thought he was simply gorgeous. He took her to dances in his FJ Holden. He laughed at all of Hat’s wisecracking jokes. He loved her.

It disgusted Red, who imagined them smooching in that FJ down by the river. Elaine was sad and jealous. She liked having Hat around and she wanted a man.

Oriel flicked the shop lights off and on at midnight Fridays so Cloudstreet looked like a ship beacon and the FJ looked like a marauding enemy vessel.

Lester started putting a few bob aside for a wedding. He wondered if Geoffrey Birch knew he was courting the marble champion of the world.

And Hat? Hat was away with the fairies.

Jacks and Jills