Cloudstreet (41 page)

Lester comes back to the table with the black-soled eggs, their yokes petrified and split. Hardly a fatted calf is it?

Elaine and Red come in from the shop.

A what? says Red.

Hello, stranger, says Elaine.

Gawd, look at these two!

Where you bin you slack bludger?

Red, you’ve grown up.

Glad you still know me name.

There’s porridge, says Lester.

There’s always porridge, Elaine sighs.

Everyone notices Oriel hiding a smile behind her fist.

Yer mother’s not well this mornin, Lester says, rolling his eyes. She’s havin an attack of smiles.

There’s a snort, a sniff, a smirk, and then they’re all laughing like themselves from another time.

Voop

Well, says Quick leaning into the pig pen, I see you’re still with us.

The pig grins and rubs his nuts against a stump.

Did you look after Fish, you dirty old cold cut?

Voop, says the pig.

Quick heads indoors shaking his head. I’m surprised you didn’t get my bed while I was gone! he calls back, laughing, but the pig just rolls over and farts like a statesman.

In the hallway he comes face to face with Beryl Lee.

Good morning, she says.

Well, hello.

I’m the star boarder.

Pleased to meet you.

I’ve heard a lot about you, Quick.

How long have you been here?

Oh, quite a while. Your mum’s a kind soul.

She’s a battalion.

Beryl Lee laughs: nick, nick, nick. It’s the saddest laugh he’s ever heard.

He stands in the big house and hears it creak.

Matinee

In the middle of the afternoon when the house is quiet, Lester leaves Red and Beryl and Elaine to the rest of the re-stock and steps across the corridor to the Pickles side. Dolly opens the door to the kitchen and lets him in.

Where is he?

Up the coast a bit. He’s orright.

She is dressed and made up, and he hears the current in her stockings as she crosses the room for a chair.

Whatm I sposed to do? she says.

Sit tight, I reckon.

She sits and faces him. He can’t remember seeing her nervous like this; it takes the crustiness from her features so that she looks younger, more pretty than voluptuous. Lester takes the chair and sits on his hands. A pulse pecks in his neck.

You’ve got no way of raisin the money, I spose.

I could stand on the corner, she says with a snort. That’d bring in enough for a packet of smokes.

He smiles, uncertain. Men’d pay money, he knows, men’d queue up if she looked every day the way she looks this afternoon. It’s something he’s never done, hardly even thought about. Thirty years have passed since he was in the company of a woman who would even joke about such things. She grins, as if she reads his thoughts.

Sorry if I’m a bit rough for yer.

Lester fidgets.

What if they come again?

Tell em to see me, he says.

You don’t seem the fightin type, Lester.

There won’t be any fight.

Dolly pours him a cup of tea. She seems perturbed now. He’s never seen her face so different. Until now she’s always looked disgusted or just plain nastymouthed.

You can’t have this kinda money.

There’s savings we’ve got, he says. We live poor. It’s the way we are somehow.

You know it’ll be money down the dunny.

Lester shrugs. He feels a continent of trouble sliding his way and sees the flesh of her leg. Where the skirt is slipping back each time Dolly Pickles recrosses her leg.

What else am I sposed to do? he says.

What dyou mean?

Well, he says. We live in this house and we got our shop here and the family. If this thing turns into a proper blue we’re liable to find ourselves on the street. I mean, what if you have to sell to clear your debts?

We can’t. Not for another ten years. It’s in the deed.

Then these blokes are gunna come round and take goods to the value of. Guess which end they’ll pillage. I reckon it’s worth me insurin against that.

And that’s all?

Dolly comes across, takes his cup, and kisses him. The taste of tannin and tobacco are on her lips and her live, moving tongue. The cup falls to the floor, the saucer rolls, and she slides astride his knee and winds her hands into the elastic of his braces. Lester Lamb feels the weight of her buttocks clamping on his knee, the hardware surface of her nails through his shirt, the grate of her heels on the lino, and the speed of her mouth across his face. It’s the Saturday Matinee, that’s what it is. He can hear the popcorn going off between his ears. His dick begins hydraulicking around behind his flies, as he gets a handful of backside and draws her closer. She comes up for air like a navy diver.

You sure that’s all you’re buyin? A bit of safety?

He got up, foggy behind the eyes, rearing out of the chair with her still attached to him, and he ran her into the wall so her head hit the flaky plaster and jerked back against his chest. She slipped sideways to the table looking dazed, with her legs still round his waist and her skirt hoisted. Lester felt shock and fury, a kind of gear slip. She had her hand inside his trousers and he took her backside in hand and shoved down onto her. The silver flecks in the surface of the table stung his eyes. She had her hands over her mouth. A shoe dropped to the floor. There was a puddle of tea. The inside of her was firm and strange as sweetmeat. It wasn’t the Saturday Matinee anymore. He could hear people passing in the corridor a long way away. Her breasts heaved on her, and in the moment before he felt sick with gravity, he flew his mouth across them and bit down to keep from crying out.

Was that rape, do you think? he asked when he could breathe again.

Dolly pulled her legs down off his shoulders with a wince. I spose not. More a deposit on a hundred quid.

Lester covered his face with his hands.

You bin waitin ten years for that.

And you?

She laughed. I’ve bin waitin all my life for everything.

We’re different.

Yeah, you’re gonna go off feelin bad, an I’m gunna go to bed feelin sore. You’re not handsome, but you’re a nice fella. You’ve got ninety quid’s worth left.

No.

Very flatterin, Lester.

No, not to either of us.

You’re a churchy bugger, mate. When you get what you’re after you go off feelin awful.

And you just go off soundin awful.

Dolly laughed shakily. What do you want, cobber?

I want you not to use this against me.

I told you you weren’t buying safety.

Lester unstuck himself and tried to get organized. The job was beyond him.

Disciples

Sam woke full of burn and tingle. The stumps of his bad hand seemed to be shooting sparks. The shifty shadow was about; he knew it. Rain beat on the tin roof and he heard the dark, choppy sea rolling restless. He found his matches, lit one and got the Tilley lamp burning, and as he did so he saw a large tweedy rat sloping off, nose up like an Englishman, towards the door. The .38 lay on the deal table by the light. Sam took it up and aimed, saw the rat go stiff and thoughtful in his sights, contemplating a quick sidestep, whiskers aquiver. Yeah, a bloody pommy gentleman, you are, Sam thought. You could be a mine owner or a politician like that rodent Churchill, that nasty little fleshfeeder. The hairy hand is about, rat, so how’s your luck gunna be?

All Sam’s nerves fizzed and fibrillated. This must be what it was like when the old man could feel water in his rod, the magic of it going right up his arms like a shot from a live fence. The light shinin, the shadow fallin, the seesaw tippin our way.

The rat took a step. Sam spat and hit the door behind the rat which sent it into a panicky spin, a desperate effort to identify its opposition and face off against it. Its eyes were all over, trying to pick an exit.

I could blow your arse out through yer teeth, you little bastard.

He stamped his foot and the rat was off like the Fremantle express.

Sam sat back on the cot, took a coin out of his pocket and flipped thirty-two heads in a row. Then he began to laugh. Pickles, you prize dill, you didn’t even call. You dunno if yer winnin or bloody losin!

Heads, he said, and put the florin back in his pocket.