Cloudstreet (72 page)

That’s the Southern Cross there, said Rose. It looks better in the sky.

You feel like it’s hanging over you like the top of a cathedral, Quick said with Fish’s arms around him.

Water, said Fish. All the water.

Look, his face is shinin. The moon’s on your face, Fish.

There is no moon, said Rose.

Fish rolled onto his back beaming and the sight of him stirred them deeply. Harry began to snore. Rose wrapped him in an old army blanket and got out a little bottle of brandy. Before long, Fish slept too, shining in the shelter of the tarp with Quick and Rose watching over him, sharing the Chateau Tanunda in little squinteyed swigs.

Remember the night in the boat with this stuff?

Quick nodded.

What do you make of this house business? All the oldies staying on.

I think they’re right, he murmured. I reckon they belong to the place. Gawd, everyone knows that house. They know the shop, our families. It’s like they’ve built something else from just being there. Like—he laughed at himself—like a house within a house.

Yes.

I just couldn’t bear to think of em all leavin and those mongrel developers gettin their hands on it.

Tell you a secret, said Rose.

Orright.

You won’t believe this.

Try me.

I can’t bear to think of any of us leaving. We belong to it, Quick, and I want to stay.

What? What are you talkinabout? What about our place? After all this trouble. Our own place!

I don’t know about our place, Quick. I like the crowds and the noise. And, well, I guess I like the idea, it’s like getting another childhood, another go at things. Think of it: I’m in this old house with the boy next door and his baby, and I’m not miserable and starving or frightened. I’m right in the middle. It’s like a village, I don’t know. I have these feelings. I can never explain these feelings.

But you
hate
family stuff.

Rose laughed. But it’s two families. It’s a bloody tribe, a new tribe.

Don’t you want to be independent?

Quick, I don’t even know what it means anymore. If it means being alone, I don’t want it. If I’m gunna be independent do you think I need a husband? And a kid? And a mother and father, and inlaws and friends and neighbours? When I want to be independent I retire. I go skinny and puke. You’ve seen me like that. I just begin to disappear. But I want to live, I want to be with people, Quick. I want to battle it out. I don’t want our new house. I want the life I have. Don’t be disappointed.

Quick took a suck on the brandy. Disappointed? Love, I’m putrid with … with happiness. I’ve been wantin to tell you for months.

He rolled a big dry mallee root onto the fire and a carnival of sparks went up reeling. Kangaroos thumped through the wheat invisible. The earth smelt golden.

Why
did
they call you Quick? I never knew.

Come on, I told you plenty of times.

In the night Quick woke with the moon white on his face, and Fish was awake beside him, kissing him on the cheek.

What’s the matter, Fish? You cold?

The moon was all over his face, or it seemed to be until Quick saw that moony light was coming off Fish himself.

There was a long, steady rustling in the wheat, rhythmic as the sound of sleep. Quick thought of a herd of roos grazing, but it came closer and was too musical to ignore. He propped himself on an elbow and saw a line of figures moving between the trees. Fish sat up beside him and let out a gasp of delight. Quick shook Rose awake and saw the black widening of her eyes. They were children, naked children. Placid faced, mildly curious, silent but for their footfalls, rising from the ground like a mineral spring, following the faint defile of the land to a gravity beyond them, faces and arms, eyes and legs travelling in eddies, some familiar somehow in the multitude that grew to a vast winding expanse, passing them with a lapping sound of feet. Rose sniffed, awake, but none of them spoke anymore, not even Wax Harry who watched curious as the tide of naked children swirled around them, dizzying, heady, making a vortex, an indrawing whirl deeper than exhaustion, until the stars were low enough to touch their eyes heavy, and the great adventure of sleep took them back. The children parted the wheat like the wind itself and took all night to pass.

Soon

Can you see, Fish, see me close as a whisper in the tidespace your longing has made? Pouring through a tiny crack we are, running to the sea which will not fill with us for we came from it and return to it, and this moment they have seen us too, your gift to them, the man, the woman, the baby, a gift bought with pain and shortening. Soon you’ll be a man, Fish, though only for a moment, long enough to see, smell, touch, hear, taste the muted glory of wholeness and finish what was begun only a moment ago down there where the fire crackles by the bank and those skinny girls are singing, where the light is outswinging on the water and your brother laughing. The earth slips away, Fish, and soon, soon you’ll be yourself, and we’ll be us; you and me. Soon!

Stayin

Quick and Rose drove home wild as kids, roaring down the scarp into the city with a happy madness up their noses like lemonade bubbles. Harry and Fish roistered in the back with the fractured light upon their faces.

Quick pulled onto the front lawn at Cloudstreet as Elaine was opening the shop and the first dogs were gathering to beg out in front of the big old hemiplegic looking joint. The X-ray Rugby burst open with them all tumbling out wild as kindergarteners at lunchtime—Rose, Harry, Fish, Quick—taking Elaine so much by surprise that she dropped the shutter and damnnear brought down the wall with it. Windows opened, and the house grew heads. Roosters crowed up a panic, and dogs began to bark.

You’re not due home, said Elaine who tried not to shout.

We’re havin a picnic, said Quick. To celebrate.

What picnic? said Sam, hoisting his gladstone, fingering his work hat. Celebrate what?

Bush fever, said Lester, wiping flour from his arms.

What’s this foolishness? roared Oriel, emerging from the shop. It’s Wednesday morning, work to be done.

They’re celebratin, said Sam.

All of us, said Quick.

We’re staying, said Rose.

No,
we’re
stayin, said Lester.

You’re
stayin? asked Oriel, lifting the shop shutter again. The heavy old tin flap quivered in her hands as she scrutinized Rose, the girl who took her son from within.

Long as it takes, said Rose.

To do what? As it takes to do what?

To get old and die. To count the angels on the head of a pin, I dunno. To get sick of it. A day, a week, a Test Match, a session of parliament, a decade, I don’t know.

Oriel’s fingers gave out and the shutter crashed to with a whang that sent a couple of weatherboards fluttering down from the top storey in sympathy.

Till the bloody walls come down, Oriel!

A dozen slack jaws wind up smiles as dust rises from the verandah.

Picnic, you reckon? says Lester.

Dolly goes inside for a hat.

Twenty years, said Quick.

What the hell, said Sam, throwing down his gladstone bag.

Don’t stand there, youse bludgers! yelled Oriel. Pack the Chev, lock the shop, grab a hamper. Let’s go to the river. Let’s do it right for once!

Moon, Sun, Stars

On the long grassy bank beneath the peppermint trees and the cavernous roots of the Moreton Bay figs, they lay blankets and white tablecloths which break up in the filtered sunlight and they sprawl in their workclothes and stockings, rollers in, buns half out. Out of the crates come hams, cold chickens, lettuce salad, hardboiled eggs and asparagus, potato salad and shredded carrot, chutney, bread, a jar of anchovies and a vat of pickled onions. Lemonade, Coke, ginger beer, squeezed juices and a hip flask of Chateau Tanunda. A collective groan goes up at the sight of the white linen napkins that Dolly hauls out.

A weddin present, she says. Could never think of a decent bloody reason to get them dirty.

The university clock chimes and a rowing team slides past with the sun in its eyes. A formation of pelicans rises bigbodied from the water, the sweet coppery water where jellyfish float and blowfish bloat and the slow wheeling schools of mullet divide and meet without decision.