Cloudstreet (63 page)

Oriel wakes from a doze and the candle is out. The house is quiet and there’s light coming from the rim of the sky. Quick will be home soon from the shift. With news, she can feel it.

Loaded House

Lester steps out of Cloudstreet, crosses the road and looks back at it. There’s something horrible about it lately. Something hateful, something loaded with darkness and misery. He doesn’t know how much more of it he can stand.

Morning

Quick stands exhausted by the river. The old town isn’t the same anymore, it’ll never be the same. The sun is streaming out over the hills and onto the terracotta roofs of the suburbs where they’ll all be waking up to the news. It’s happening out there, he thinks, and we can’t stop it, we can only clean up after him.

Quick moves along the bluffs above the river. He won’t let himself think it, but he knows he’s looking for that blackfella. He has to talk.

The City is Howling

The city is howling with outrage. They’re talking of bringing in the army, bringing across the Sydney homicide squad, Scotland Yard. The whole city goes mad with fear and outrage.

Dolly and Rose

Out on the backstep Dolly feeds the birds their raw meat. They eye her sideways and snatch it from her to back off to a distance and hack away.

Garn, she says, you’d tear me bloody eyes out if I didn’t come with a feed, wouldn’t you?

A diesel rumbles past heading somewhere on the tracks. The birds flinch, baulk and Dolly laughs.

Well, you gutless wonders! You’d eat ya children!

She sees them now pecking at her bloated body out in the desert by the tracks that lead nowhere and bring nothing. Rose comes down smiling. Good old Rose, good old Rosie.

Bastard of a Place

Sam latches his gladstone bag, pops a morning peppermint in his mouth and steps down off the verandah where Lester is lifting the shop shutters.

Bastard of a place, he thinks vaguely, not knowing which place he really means.

Hole in the Wall

Fish stands by and sees the shade ladies pressed flat against the wallpaper as Quick opens the wall up with a saw. Wood dust comes down and makes him sneeze. There’s plaster like frost upon the floor.

Slip us the crowbar, will you, Fish.

This?

Yep.

There’s sun coming!

Quick prizes boards away, knocks a cut beam aside, and a square of sunlight breaks into the room with a shudder and a riot of motes and spirits. Fish sees the shadows with their mouths wide in horror. He grips the saw, its handle still warm from his own brother Quick.