Cloudstreet (7 page)

Right at the end of the day, at the very end of their choices, and at the bottom of the classified column, the Lambs roll into a street by the railway line and look about dejectedly. It’s Number One, says Oriel. They idle down the street, look for some scabby little bungalow until they’re running out of numbers: five, three … one. Number one? Number One is an enormous, flaking mansion with eyes and ears and a look of godless opulence about it, even now. Oriel Lamb flings the battered newspaper down and suddenly everyone’s talking at once.

Shut up!

The whole truck goes quiet.

Down on the tracks, a freight grunts along in the twilight with a spray of steam and smuts. They coast into the side of the road. From up the tree-lined street there’s the sound of someone booting a football into a picket fence. They hear water on lawns, the slap of a screen door. As it cools, the old Chev ticks and grumbles.

Go in, Lest.

Up on the second floor a blanket shifts at a window.

Quick leans around from the back. Looks flamin haunted.

Well, Oriel says without a smile, we’ll be hauntin it from now on. Go on, Lest, go in and tee it up. Tell em what we want.

With a sigh, Lester Lamb gets out and clutches his hat to his belly. He swallows the thick in his throat and stumps up to the gate, pauses, takes a breath, and goes all the way to the teetering verandah. Makes a fist. Knocks.

The door is answered by a woman. Lester Lamb takes a look and a step back, and he punishes his hat sorely. She’s got curls and lips and hips and everything, and she looks at him as though he’s a prop seller or just some other street hawker rubbish from nowhere, and when she says, Yeah? with a hip on the jamb, he’s looking for a way to get a word out.

Umm …

Jesus. Sorry mate. We’re poor, and stupid too. Try up the street a bit.

Lester takes a step forward, moving his hands.

You’re white as a ghost, she says, moving back.

The house.

She’s got a deep vee between her breasts, big as a drinking trough, and it makes him feel like a dumb animal.

Oh, you’ve come for that. I’ll get the hubby. Sam? Saaamm?

It’s limestone dust.

What?

The white on me. We came up from the country. Margaret River.

Knew a bloke from there once. Had hair growin out his nostrils.

Oh.

Saaam? Come down here, Sam. Stop buggerizin about!

My name’s Lester Lamb.

She bunches up her lips to make a hard little flower and just looks at him. From behind her, a small muscular man in a singlet appears. His blonde hair is ruffled and there’s a day’s growth on his jaw.

His name’s Lester Lamb.

There’s a moment of confusion as they’re forced to shake lefthanded. Lester sees the pink stumps and reads grief in the man’s face. He knows what it looks like. He only needs a mirror.

Come an have a look. You get half the house, half the yard, yer own dunny. The corridors are no man’s land, same as the stairs. Big bloody joint, eh.

A couple of boys stand at the head of the stairs, about the same age as Fish and Quick.

I got six kids, Lester says.

Cathlicks, eh?

No. No, nothing.

Can yez pay?

We’ll pay.

You’ll do.

Lester hears Lon crying out in the truck.

Mays well bring em in, the man says. My name’s Pickles. Then he guffaws. It’s gunna sound like a counter lunch—Lamb and Pickles.

Lester hears Oriel shushing them up out there, and he stands quiet for a moment in this big sagging joint, gives himself a second before calling them in.

Rose Pickles and her brothers saw them unloading the dust-white truck. They made a crowd standing about down there, and they looked so skinny and tired. They carried a big jarrah table in but no chairs. There were teachests, a clock, shovels and hoes, a couple of bashed old trunks. They all struggled and heaved up the stairs with that little woman barking instructions.

Cripes, Ted said. And I thought
we
looked like reffoes.

Rose opened the door a crack to see them piling gear into her old room. There were three girls, mostly older than her; the oldest looked bigknuckled and tough, the middle one walked around like she was dying slowly of some disease, and the youngest one looked pretty and mean.

Ted shook his head. Three more sheilas.

There’s three boys too.

One’s a slowbo, dja see?

Is not, said Rose.

Betcha.

If yer yer father’s son yull bet on anythin.

They listened to the thump and scrape of things moving in the other half of the house until their father came in.

Who are they? Rose said.

They’re called the Lambs.

Ted fell on the bed laughing. Gawd, we’re living with sheep!

The old man smiled. That’s their half now. They pay rent, so keep away.

Why dja do it? Rose said.

We’ve got no money, dick, Ted said.

The old man was by the window looking down at the truck. People across the road were peering from between curtains. He ran his puffy knuckles over the sill.

Time for youse to be in bed. You got school.

I hate the new school, Chub said.

It’s not new.

I hate it.

Get to bed.

Chub followed Ted out the door and they banged it shut.

You shouldna done this, Rose said.

I’m your father.

That night Rose Pickles lay and listened. A little kid cried, and one of the girls as well. Trains rolled thumping by. Lightning flared now and then, but there was no thunder.

A long time after the house went quiet, she heard a door open across the hall. She got out of bed and pulled the door the tiniest bit to see a boy in pyjamas at the landing window looking out at the starless sky. In a moment of light she saw his face turn her way. His eyes were black. He was beautiful.

Across the Corridor

That autumn the street seemed full. There were always Pickles kids and Lamb kids up one end of the street throwing boondies or chasing someone’s dog. Sometimes they squared off at one another like opposing platoons. Most times they acted as though the other group didn’t exist. Everywhere they went they made a crowd, albeit a quiet one considering neither tribe spoke to the other. People stared at them from passing trains. Neighbours winced in anticipation of gang fights.

The war got bogged down in Europe.

Oriel Lamb supervised the digging up of their half of the backyard and it was a sight to see all the Lambs down there on their knees in the black dirt planting seedlings of onion and cabbage and the withered, shoothairy fists of old potatoes. Lester Lamb tied rags and bottle caps in the almond tree to keep the birds away. Wire was unrolled to fence off a back corner and Quick Lamb built a fowlhouse from broken teachests and an old forty-four gallon drum he found under the house.

Fish Lamb stood beneath the almond tree and watched the rags fluttering on the frame.

Down the street Oriel Lamb met a neighbour who had some pullets for sale. They talked friendly for a while and Oriel Lamb came home with four hens and a rooster for the price of a smile.

Fish Lamb put his fingers in the wire, hooked them in as though it was all that held him up, and watched the white hens fatten and flutter in the warm sand.

In the park at the end of the street the flame trees and the Moreton Bay figs covered the grass with their broad, brittle leaves that Dolly Pickles kicked up in drifts as she walked alone when the children were at school and she was waiting for the copper to boil in the laundry or she just couldn’t stand to be in that big old place anymore, avoiding the plain gaze of that little Lamb woman as she went stiffbooted about her neverending business. Just the sound of those boots coming her way was enough to get Dolly looking for an exit. That woman was plain. Plain and plain bossy, and under Dolly’s roof.

During the day, with the children at school, the house on Cloud Street became relatively quiet except for Lon Lamb playing on the stairs and the occasional hissed quarrel from either side of the corridor.

The evenings were the most difficult because there was only one bathroom in the house and twelve people to be washed. Then there were children shouting and complaining and the halls were full of dark looks.

There, was an uneasiness about the whole place. The Lambs sat around their table on fruit crates and stools eating the food that Oriel cooked on the gas ring by the bucket they had for a sink. Sometimes in the quiet before a meal, when Lester Lamb stumbled quickly and uncomfortably through Grace, the house went quiet enough so they could plainly hear the crack of wood in the stove across the corridor. No one looked up. They’d just go on with their eyes grimly shut until the old man got through his halfhearted thanks so they could eat and talk and fill up the space that seemed to loom at them from all about. Across the way the Pickles family ate their chops and mashed spud quietly and it often looked as though they cowered at the cattle noises from across the hall. It was like an invasion had taken place. Sam Pickles shook Worcestershire sauce about and tried to be jolly, but the others brooded, sculpted their potato, raised an eyebrow.

It went on for weeks.

The Knife Never Lies

It’s a circle of silver blur on the table, almost solid with motion so that you’d swear you could see their laughing faces reflected in it as it spins. They drum their hands on the tabletop, the girls screaming and elbowing each other, Lon bouncing up and down on his chair, Fish clapping with a roar of glee as Quick closes his eyes and moans in dramatic apprehension. At the head of the table, Lester Lamb holds up his finger.

Remember, this is for who washes up tonight.

And this week! Red says, getting her pink elbows up in the air. All this week.

The knife never lies, you know, Lester says. It always knows best.

You shouldn’t teach em such heathen stuff, Oriel Lamb murmurs with a smile. The room smells of gas, lamb stew, mildew in the wallpaper. A fire of rotten pickets snaps and quavers behind them, beginning to warm this back bedroom that’s become their kitchen. Jars and bottles stand on shelves made from packing cases, and dented pots and baking dishes stand about in order.