Cloudstreet (52 page)

Well, it’s a step down from Tony from the uni, murmured Sam, rolling a fag philosophically, but he seems a good boy.

That’s all he is, Dolly said in disgust. A good boy.

Rose had never felt so much iron in her. There was this feeling of striding, of invincibility that she’d only ever had in dreams before. She shifted in her stance against the kitchen wall and felt the soreness still. There was nothing they could say, that anyone could say, to take this from her.

You up the duff?

Leave it out, Mum!

They’ll think you are anyway. Six weeks is gunna look lovely.

Not that having things look lovely has been your enduring obsession, Mother.

I’m thinkin of you, you silly little bitch.

Good, that makes two of us.

They’ll hate it.

You mean you hate it.

That woman’ll tear you to bits.

Chub came in.

What’s all the yellin?

I’m getting married to Quick Lamb in six weeks.

Oh. There any bacon?

It’ll be a bloody dry weddin, Sam said with a look of wonder.

Not if we’re payin for it, it won’t, said Dolly. No flamin fear!

Oh, murmured the old man. I forgot that. See, I knew I won that two-up money for something.

You mean you’ve still got it? Dolly looked appalled.

Under the mattress. Lost me nerve there for a while, I did.

This is so funny, so bloody hilarious, said Dolly, not managing to sound amused. She wants our blessin, but she won’t ask for it.

She’s proud.

Stop smirkin like that, the both of yuz! said Dolly.

What do you reckon, Dad?

Oh, you know me, I’ll always back an outside chance.

Rose kissed him and felt the urgency of his embrace until she could count the fingerless knuckles in the small of her back.

He’ll have to come an see me.

He’ll come.

We’ll get free fish, I spose.

I reckon it could be arranged.

They’re gettin this place off us, bit by bit, said the old girl. We’re signin ourselves over.

Give’s a kiss, Mum.

Go to buggery.

Grandeur, Almost

In the end, after six weeks of tears and tizzes, Quick stands up there at the front of the church with Fish at his side and the family sweating behind him. In his hired suit, Fish looks like he could run the Liberal Party and make a killing. Quick can hardly believe he got his way. There’s organ music, the smell of mothballs and pious bookdust. He catches a glimpse of his mother’s magnificent look of forbearance and injury; her hair is bowled over in a frightful series of curls, hardly a monument to straightliving and modesty. It’s almost like a helmet she’s lowered on her scone for protection against passion. The old man beside her sits reedbent and curious, tie knot resting like a spare Adam’s apple at his throat. Quick can’t remember noticing his baldness as being so advanced. They look so old, the two of them. The knife never lies … should have spun the old knife, he thinks, just for a laugh. Though maybe we could do without predictions today.

The high ceiling reaches into a cobwebby dimness with weak streaks of light blunting themselves against one another from opposite sides of the church. It’s almost grand, but a good compromise, he thinks, between pooftery High Church and shoebox Baptist.

You got the rings? he whispers to Fish.

Yairs. Fish pats his pocket.

Need a wee?

No. Not yet.

Won’t be long now.

Someone’s asleep in this house, too.

Ssh, now. They’re here. Oh, gawd, they’re havin a barney out on the street.

A few Lambs and Lamb customers twist their necks to see a moment of sparring between bride and mother before the organ lets loose with a volley of notes which sound like a call to order.

She’s comin, Quick! Fish has lost his shonky statesman composure. He begins to bob and grin.

Orright, I can see. Keep your hair on.

Fish reaches for his hair in surprise, though neither powers nor principalities could move that head of hair, such is its cargo of Brylcreem.

Dolly Pickles plots a course and tacks down the aisle to her seat at the front, great spinnaker of a hat resting at last. Chub rolls up beside her, wearing so much babyfat he might have hired it for the occasion. And then they come. Here they come. All that flaming gorgeous brown hair swinging visible under the veil, and the little nicotine stained man alongside, leading with his arm crooked, crippled hand on his hip.

Cor, says Fish.

Ssh, mate. She looks orright, eh.

Mister Pickles is small like a dog.

Rose comes smiling, wet-eyed and triumphant. She knows exactly what she’s doing, and it’s what she tells herself every few feet. It seems a ridiculous way to walk, this tightrope shuffle, and if she doesn’t take her mind off it for a moment, she knows she’s going to keel over. How priestly the priest looks coming down beside Quick with his sumptuous bits and pieces, and how Fish … how Fish …
how
is Fish making that noise, that sound?

Up the front, before the man in costume, Fish Lamb is singing, or saying, or something. He has the ring box in his hand that he shakes like a maracas and holds high as he sways and bobs, lobbing his head about on his shoulders, eyes closed, with complete assurance he goes on, stopping the bride in her tracks and setting dogs ahowl outside the windows. No one grabs him. They all believe it can’t go on. But he goes on, right on, until there’s a sweat on him and on everybody else, and he falls silent, then down, and in the end, asleep.

The organist finds his place and gets back on his trembly way. The bride steps up, white as her outfit, to meet the groom who wears a smile that looks borrowed.

They don’t exactly fill the RSL hall with their bodies, but some huge, pentup feeling makes the place seem crowded as families and friends, punters, customers, neighbours find their tables by way of chinky giltlettered namecards and sit down to the chook and two veg with gravy, jugs of beer, sherry and lemonade. They get through filthy telegrams, Lester’s speech turns into a string of the most awful, wonderful fibs and damnnear gets to the brink of vaudeville, Dolly gets shickered altogether on beerglasses of sweet sherry, while Elaine weeps and mopes; Hat and hubby talk about council rates and renovations; Red dances with strange blokes and swats their hands away heartily as she swoops round the floor. Chub eats. Sam dances with his daughter, nimble as a midget and pinches her back from blokes who cut in. Lon Lamb gets quietly stung by spiking his lemonade with sherry until in the end he’s camped down under the tablecloth, too un-coordinated to get off his back and avoid the sight of all those ladies scratching themselves discreetly under the table. At the very end, Quick and Rose lounge together, tired and jubilant with their clobber askew and their hair losing ground, while a very strange thing happens. Oriel Lamb hoists herself wearily from the chair she’s occupied all evening at her end of the bridal table, crosses the floor to where Dolly Pickles sits frightening a group of young men with the kind of jokes she knows, and asks her to dance. There’s no one else on the floor. The band sits around lighting fags and chatting up girls until Oriel catches the drummer’s eye. Quick sees his mother’s face: something massive has been summoned. Rose feels his grip on her tighten as her mother sits there losing resistance by the moment. The music strikes up quietly. Dolly puts out her cigarette. The lairs look horrified. Oriel Lamb takes her by the hand and waist and they move out onto the floor in a slow rhythm that sobers the entire place. The short, boxy woman slips around gracefully, holding the old beauty up, and turn by turn something grows.

They look so bloody dignified, says Rose. So proud.

As they wheel by like a miracle, there are spectators weeping.

Outside in the Chev, Fish Lamb is sleeping.

IX

The House is Trembling

C
LOUDSTREET
was torpid with shock for days after the wedding. The Lambs worked in a strange calm; it was unlike them to be so quiet. Lester forwent the noseflute solos to schoolkids on the verandah. Oriel spoke in a low murmur. The Pickles side of the house, always quiet (except when Dolly was on a binge) became mute altogether. Dolly and Sam found the silence companionable at times and there were moments when their eyes actually lit upon each other in Rose’s absence.

But the quiet between them all went unnoticed on Cloudstreet because the Water Board started fooling with diggers and pipes, testing out their new machinery.

The sixties are here, said the supervisor with great enthusiasm.

Yeah, said Lester Lamb, thinking of his age.

You can’t turn back the clock.

No, said Lester, but you don’t have to wind it either.

Men are outside digging the street. Fish Lamb stands at the window tapping the butterknife against the panes—chink, chink, cachink—watching the black man across the street. A truck rolls by with a load of huge pipes. The black man is gone in the dust it leaves, and from behind Fish, across the corridor, comes the old keening noise again. He sits on Quick’s old bed and dust rises from the quilt. The house is trembling.

How Small Our Dreams Are