Cloudstreet (45 page)

Quick sighed and gave in. Heading for the door, he muttered: It’s just silly.

Everyone else can be silly all day long in this house, so why not me a couple of hours in me lifetime?

Out in the water it was cool but not quite cold. From the shallows outside Pelican Point where all the bigboned birds nested restlessly in sleep, Quick and Oriel could see the lights of Mounts Bay Road, the baths, the party glow of a ferry coming through the Narrows. The whole city seemed to lay itself flat upon the water. In summer there’d be fires on the beach and the sound of children, smells of boiling prawns, the lights of kids chasing cobbler along the shore with gidgie spears. Now there was just the sound of the two wading and the triangular net slushing behind between the two upright poles.

You know, this is the first time I’ve been prawning since Margaret River, Oriel said.

Since Fish you mean

Yes, I spose that’s what I mean. Do you still blame yourself for it?

How did you know about that?

I’m your mother. Besides, it’s obvious. Fish was everyone’s favourite.

You mean it’s true—he was the favourite?

Oh, people say they don’t have favourites when it comes to children, but you know, son, it’s a lie we tell to protect the others.

So you did love him more than the rest of us? Quick’s voice was dead with hurt.

Wasn’t he your favourite, Quick?

Quick waded. A small fish skipped away from him. All around his body was an aura of phosphorescence.

Didn’t you love him more than all of us? Don’t you still love him more? Haven’t you always had Honour Thy Retarded Brother as your number one commandment? You see, it hurts to know you’re not the favourite whoever you are, child or parent. Did you feel guilty about leaving us, or about leaving Fish?

Why do we have to talk about this, Mum?

Because we’re family.

Jesus, I hate this family stuff. It makes me sick! I don’t need all this.

It’s all we have.

What?

Each other.

Oh, come on, Mum.

You’re scaring the prawns away.

There aren’t any bloody prawns—Jesus Christ!

Don’t
say
that.

Oriel pulled the net and tried not to show exhilaration at having him here like this, at the two of them talking like adults together. There was something hard and resistant in him now, something he’d grown in being gone, and she knew it had been worth the hurt.

Why are you so bitter? Because of your family or because of yourself?

What dyou mean?

Do you hate the fact that you come from … well let’s just say crack troops.

Weirdos, Mum, flamin whackos.

Or is it just the old business of feelin guilty about being a survivor?

Quick almost stumbled at that. It went deep into him.

What the hell would you know? You don’t know the first thing about feelings, certainly not mine, and damnsure not about what I feel about Fish.

I know about bein a survivor. You think it’s your fault he died. You think it should have been you. You’re paralysed with this thing that’s eatin you, and you don’t know that it’s rubbish.

You don’t know a damn thing about it, Mum.

She thought about her mother and sisters up in the house cooking like picnic steaks while she lay helpless in the cellar, she saw the bullet torn wallet of Bluey her half brother with its black crust of ink and blood and the King’s stamped signature on the slip of paper. And she could feel Fish’s chest under her fists as she beat life into him with the sky kiting over her, silent as death. She pursed her mouth with her teeth set behind them.

Have I been a crook mother?

Quick sighed. She was upset now. He could feel the explosion in her.

No, Mum, of course not.

Do I lie?

No.

Do I cheat?

No.

Steal?

No.

Fornicate?

Well, I’ll have to check on that with the neighbours. I reckon the tent’s a dubious sign. And to his complete surprise, she laughed.

Don’t be a drongo, Quick.

He pulled the net. Now they were inside the bay at Crawley where the uni glowed like a cathedral up there behind the peppermints.

What’s wrong with me?

Mum.

Carn, what’s my problem, Quick?

Quick had never known his mother to be like this. It was exciting and unnerving. He could no longer tell how she’d react. It was like having a dead shark in the boat. A dead shark always
seemed
dead enough, but the buggers had a habit of coming to life and taking your feet off.

You don’t have enough fun, maybe, he ventured, a little breathless.

She made a little popping sound with her lips. It sounded ominously slight.

No one takes me to dances anymore.

Geez, Mum, you’re always at dances.

Yes, and I’m either organizin them or playin the piano. Your father’s always on the stage, and I can’t even remember if he knows
how
to dance. I used to dance with my daughters until I lost out to men, and Heaven knows I dance better than every one of
them
. And my sons never stooped to dancin.

Stoopin’d be right, thought Quick. It’d be like dancin with a teachest. But she’d made her mark; she was right enough.

Let’s face it, Mum, he said, suddenly reckless with courage, you do everythin better than anybody. It’s just that you’re flamin bossy.

She laughed. I’m glad you see things my way.

Quick pulled with her to the beach, and helped empty the net of its cargo of jellyfish and gobbleguts and other useless small fish. He had a boyish impulse to kick her in the shins and run, just to have her after him, awful and reliable with it.

The strong are here to look after the weak, son, and the weak are here to teach the strong.

What are we here to teach you, Mum?

Too early to say.

They set off again, down toward the deep end and the baths. Quick was real tired now, and cold. Oriel strode out in her hard little granny shoes, feeling quivery inside. She wondered how far things had gone between Beryl and Lester. She wondered what instruction there was in it for her. Sometimes she couldn’t think what jerrybuilt frame was holding her together. It wasn’t willpower anymore. She’d gone past that lately. She only had will enough to make everything else work, these days. There was never enough left for her. She was like that blessed truck of Lester’s, running on an empty sump.

I’ll take you to a dance, Mum. The best. I’ll shout you to the Embassy.

Hmm. Their sandwiches are dry.

How do you know? Quick said, miffed.

I sell em day-old bread. There’s an arrangement.

Quick guffawed. You
are
bent, then.

No. I’m astute. You ever heard anyone complain about supper at the Embassy ballroom?

No. Never.

Well, there you are.

Quick pulled for a while, and a strange sort of question came to him. The strong can get rich, Mum. You know. What would you do if you got rich?

Get poor again, I expect. I’m surrounded by fools, you know.

Seriously, though.

It’s a silly schoolboy question.

It isn’t. You just don’t want to say.

She surged ahead and forced the pace a little. The water was hard and cold now. He was right; she didn’t want to say.

That was when they came upon the wild wheeling mob of prawns that came brawling out of the deep unlit gutter near the baths, and swerved in panic, beating against Oriel and Quick’s legs, skipping and bouncing into the net, ricocheting like crossfire, breaking the surface of the water in an unearthly frenzy. When they got to the beach, gasping and whooping, with the net near splitting with its freight, they had to lie on the sand a while before taking off their clothes, shorts, trousers, singlet, spencer, shirt, pullovers, hats, and tie knots in them to make bags because the five gallon drum just wasn’t enough. They rode home nearly barebummed through the back streets with the sidecar awash with prawns, and they sprinkled a mist of river as they ploughed through the sleeping streets.

The Whole Damn Cake and Candles

From above, the two-up circle looks like a sea creature, some simple hungry organism in the water of night. A sea anemone whose edges rise and fall as bodies press and spread with two glittering morsels turning and dangling in its maw. Two coins spinning above the pulsating mouth, catching light and shining to tantalize. But they’re men down there and the coins’ light shines on them the way the sun and moon have never done. A swearing, moneyflicking, beery mob of blokes dancing to the music of the toss, the dance of chance. They call in intercession, they pray and whine and moan as if those two big crosspainted pennies can hear them. See among them the little fella with the stump and the mad light in his eyes, crazy as a crusader, mad as a cut snake, driven as a dog. It’s the look men have in their eyes when they go green to war—one eye on duty and the other on the spoils—when they can’t wait to step beneath the spinning pieces to see whether they’ll be torn in half by them or feel them lob safely and full of promise at their heels. He’s not a young man anymore, the little fair fella. Beneath the noise of the crowd he’s wheezy and his veins are swollen. His back aches, he’s thirsty, hollowgutted, in need of a smoke, but he stays planted to the spot awaiting the certainty of his blessing. And down it comes again like manna. Men hush at the sight of it, though he doesn’t even nod. He puts another fistful of notes down and hears the grumbling. He must be the only sober man here tonight, and he tries to decide what this feeling is like, being the lone man, the onehanded man, the man pushing on into the darkness of the rest of them. Like Christopher-bloody-Columbus, that’s how it feels, he thinks; sailin out, knowing you’re not gonna get to the edge and fall off the bleedin map, at least not before you bump into a whole continent of treasure with the angels on your side. Pennies go up and stay there a heartbeat or two, as men wring their hats and wait. Sam’s heart almost explodes with devotion.

From the outside, if you don’t share the love of the game, if you don’t know these men, it’s still cause for wonder. How they love it, how they dance and sing in the dragon’s jaws. And Sam Pickles. If you hated his guts you couldn’t help but be affected by the sight of him, the prince of losers, winning the bank. The whole damn cake and candles.

Feast