The House That Was Eureka (11 page)

The writing said that on the third day.

‘Look who’s talking,’ Evie replied. It wasn’t particularly smart, but it was better than saying nothing.

Ted stood in the phone booth down the end of Liberty Street. Wretched booths, they make them too small. Kids had gone and smashed the ledge, bloody vandals, so there was nowhere to put the letter he’d been sent. He read the number, held the letter between his teeth, dialled, and got a Telecom recording. Swore quietly, rang Directory Assistance, got another number, got through, asked for the Bankcard Collections Section.

A pert little girl took his name and put him through to a smart-voiced man. The man called him Ted, as though he knew him, what a hide.

‘Well, Ted,’ said the man, like a headmaster, like police, ‘we still want to know why you haven’t paid your account.’

On the porch over the road sat a thin, old man, watching the poor cove wrestling with his collar in the telephone box. It’s the father of those kids, he observed. He often saw him, driving off in the morning, saw him often too other times in the day, when he’d drive the Kingswood back and park it here, down the end of the street, and sit in it.

Poor cove, the old man thought. There was a dejection in Ted that the old man recognized. He’d seen it in many blokes, that look. (Known it in meself, come to that.)

Thirteen hundred bucks, Ted thought, hanging up. Evie’s mum didn’t know she’d pushed their Bankcard account $300 over the limit. Evie’s mum didn’t know that Ted had been making cash withdrawals.

On the night of her fifth day of despot duty, Evie went on strike.

‘I’m not going to do it, Mum, ever again!’

‘You bloody are, y’know.’ Ted didn’t even look up from his plate.

‘Mum, I can’t!’

‘Give it a burl, love. Now here comes an aeroplane, where’s it going to land?’ Mum was flying fishfingers into Sammy’s mouth.

‘Mum, she’s a shit!’

‘Mummy, Evie said a rude word,’ Sammy said happily.

‘Don’t talk like that in front of the kids, love. God knows, Maria’s bad enough already, worse since we moved in here.’

‘I am not!’ Maria said.

‘Yes you are,’ Jodie said pleasantly. Jodie was always agreeable. That was how she annoyed you.

‘You’re a shit, Jodie.’

‘Mummy, Maria said a rude word,’ said Sammy, even more happily.

‘Don’t swear, Maria.’

‘Evie did!’

‘Well, Evie shouldn’t.’

‘Evie-Peevie,’ Sammy chanted, ‘Evie-Peevie, Evie-Peevie, Mummy, Evie’s not eating up her aeroplanes.’

‘Mum, I
can’t
do it!’

‘Give it a burl, love.’

‘Mum, I won’t. She’s an old witch.’

‘A
real
witch?’ There was awe in Jodie’s voice.

‘You’ll bloody do as your mother tells you.’ Ted picked up his plate and slammed out to eat in front of the television.

‘Mummy, Daddy said a rude word!’

‘Just stick at it please love, for me.’ That meant that if Evie didn’t do it, Ted would get at Mum. ‘Ted wants you to do it because, well, you know, it never hurts to keep in good with the landlord. Landlady, I mean. Here comes the aeroplane, look, it’s a big jumbo, just one last mouthful, sweetie.’

‘So I’m to suffer, because Ted wants to crawl up Mrs Oatley.’

‘If you’re
scared
, Evie, I’ll go in with you.’ The idea of a witch next door made a lovely shiver go right through Maria.

‘Is that the old dear’s name, love?’ Mum said vaguely. ‘Really, love, it can’t be that bad.’

‘I’m having nightmares!’

‘No wonder, the amount you bloody sleep.’ Ted was back in, dumping his plate in the sink.

Bang. Lizzie was hammering. Every time she got a nail in one side, the wood would splinter around the nail on the other side, and the other side would swing down. The nails were too big for this thin wood, or something.

Be buggered if she’d yell and ask Pa what to do. She could hear him sniggering inside the house, inside the hallway.

‘That’s me darlin’,’ he laughed, as another nail came out and she started again. ‘If at first you don’t succeed…’

Pa was watching her through the spy crack.

‘What’re you makin’, me darlin’?’

‘A wigwam for a goose’s bridle.’ Treat him like a child.

Pa treated
her
like a child. Just because she was a girl. Nobby was only a year older, and Pa let Nobby in the house. Pa let Nobby be the runner. Whereas she, Lizzie, a true Cruise and not a feeble-blooded Weston son-of-a-traitor, had been sent to stay around the corner at Mrs Kennet’s with Ma and the girls. Even though she’d be much better at being the runner than Nobby, for she was a better size for squeezing through the gap.

Bang. She hated Pa for that.

Bang. Hated Nobby too.

Lizzie peered through the spy crack and saw Pa’s face on the other side. Heard him grunting.

‘Heave-ho!’ she heard, and Pa’s face and the spy crack disappeared. They must be building the sandbags higher. Five foot high they were already at the door, and six feet thick. No way the cops could get in the front. For the window to the loungeroom was boarded up too, with sandbags six feet thick behind it.

‘Heave, me mates, one-two-three-up!’

Bang, Lizzie hammered.

Not that the cops would even get to the front door, for the front fence and gate and the little front yard were criss-crossed back and forth with roll upon roll of barbed wire, going up about six foot high.

‘Even better, see? than we done it at Gallipoli,’ reckoned Mr Dacey, who’d come to lend his Redfern experience to the Newtown pickets.

‘It bloody better be!’ Pa reckoned.

‘Whadda you mean! We done it great at Gallipoli.’ Mr Dacey was a fervent old digger, for all he was a Communist.

‘So great you lost!’

‘Maybe,’ Ex-Sergeant Dacey grunted. ‘But we won’t lose this one, see?’

‘That’s for certain-sure,’ Paddy Cruise agreed, though deep-down he had his worries. They could make the house a fortress, and he and the other twenty-odd blokes who’d decided to picket inside the house could barricade themselves in, could wait there for the cops…and the dear knows, the barricades were strong. Strong enough to sustain an attack by twenty cops, forty cops, coming in front and back. For there were towers of sandbags against the back door too, and against the kitchen window that looked into the breezeway, and against the kitchen side window…and all these doors and windows had been boarded up with stout palings, layer upon layer of palings first, before the sandbags were piled up and up. The only way in or out of the house now was via the diningroom window at the end of the side passage. They needed that free so the runner could come and go. Even that window, though, was three-quarters boarded and sandbagged – leaving just enough of a gap for Nobby’s skinny body – and they kept the gap sandbagged unless Nobby was actually coming through.

‘One-two-three-
up
!’ Another sandbag landed on top of the front-door pile.

‘They’ll never get in,’ said Mick Cruise.

‘That’s for certain-sure,’ agreed Paddy, as he agreed night and day. But though twenty cops couldn’t get in, and maybe forty of the beggars couldn’t get in, maybe sixty, maybe even eighty, Paddy had been in enough trouble in his life to know that if the cops were really determined they could just keep upping the numbers, and in the end no amount of sandbags could prevail. Paddy had been in the Easter Rising: had been barricaded in the post office in Dublin in 1916…where they’d been beaten.

Still, you had no choice but to make a stand. Out at Bankstown, at the edge of the suburbs, the UWM was barricading itself into another house. No one knew how that’d go either. This was all a new tactic. They were all in the dark. Still, you had to be in it to win it.

Bang, went Lizzie outside. She wished she was in it. It was barricades, like Russia and Kollontai.

‘Me darlin’s fierce with me,’ Paddy muttered to no one in particular. ‘The girl is ravin’ mad.’ To think he’d let her stay in here.

Paddy’s mind ran over the arsenal of weapons that the pickets had collected: over the piles of blue metal and broken bricks for throwing down from the balcony, for throwing out the half-boarded upstairs back windows if the cops came up the side passage; over the stockpile of sturdy saplings and axe-handles for defending themselves if the cops did somehow manage to shove back the sandbags and get in…

And it was only by pushing through the bags, Paddy reckoned, that the cops could get in. They couldn’t climb up the outside dunny and onto the scullery roof and into the upstairs that way, for Mr Dacey had covered the dunny and scullery walls with enough barbed wire even to stop the Turks.

...Maybe we
can
stop them…

...But if we can’t…

‘Me darlin’s mad.’

Even Nobby was only let in on sufferance. Only because he was skinny enough for the gap. So Paddy let him run messages, trot in with news and food, trot out to empty the piss-buckets, but at the first hint of trouble Nobby Weston was going to be out on his pink ear and the gap sandbagged up, Paddy was determined on that.

Bang bang three four

Mrs Scab come out your door…

Lizzie had the rhythm right now: hammering, it seemed, was like skipping. Once you got it nice and steady, the nails just slipped in straight and stayed there. Happy for a moment now despite pa, despite Nobby, Lizzie hammered in time with Maudie and Bridget and Kathleen and Fee out there in the street.

Bang ten

Start again

Lock her up in a dingo’s den.

There, Lizzie’s sign was up.

Up too was Mrs Weston, right up at the loungeroom velvet curtain, peering out through a chink into the street, pressing her forehead against the cold glass to ease it. The pounding sound went on for ever now, the rhythm of the children’s feet tapping on the pavement like a wicked metronome, the small feet of the little girls, the banging of the hammer, the big shoes of Elizabeth, who ran out now, clambering through barbed wire to join them, her too-big shoes pounding out her hatred now upon the pavement.

Over the rope

And under again...

The rhythm of the skipping made the pain in Mrs Weston’s head, but it eased the pain in Lizzie’s. She was just a body, keeping time, ticking off the seconds till the trouble came, jumping off the energy that stored up in her soul without release.

Jumping, she hated less, for she was hating more these days, hating Pa now for her exile, hating Nobby for his luck, hating Nobby too because she’d shared with him her secret. But hating most that thing in that house. That was the cause of the trouble with Pa, the trouble with Nobby.

Nobby turned into the far end of the street, running full pelt down. His mother watched him from the window, Lizzie watched him from the pavement: his face on fire, his eyes shining, the effort of the run making two bright spots on his pale cheeks. They both noticed how tall he’d become as he ran straight past the both of them without a glance, past and off up the dunny-can lane, round to the back to get into the house and men’s business.

A man sits with the despot. He’s a big man, tough, but he’s not tough tonight. He pulls at his collar, to make it looser; his shirt seems too tight under the arms. He’s scared and ashamed. He’s out of work, and trying to get work. He has no savings, and he can’t pay the rent. Once again he pleads with the despot.

‘I’ll pay it all, soon as I get work. If you can just bear with me a bit…’

The despot’s eyes don’t warm to him. She has thin lips, and a wide mouth that is set into a straight, unrelenting line.

He’s never begged in his life before.

‘It’s the kids,’ he says, ‘they’re my worry.’ He’d be all right himself, if she threw him out. He’d move, go interstate or somewhere, and look for work. But you can’t have kids without a roof over their heads.

There’s no discussion. She won’t budge.

Next door, Evie sings ‘Jump!’ on the trampoline in the backyard in the dark. She’s out there every spare minute she’s home these days.

One/two/three/Jump!/One/two/three/Jump!

‘As I skip and I jump!’

Ted and Mum and the kids are getting her down. Making lunch every day for that old bag is getting her down. Having to think about Roger at CYSS and wonder if ever he might like her, is getting her down. The sound of Noel and his music is getting her down. Not having a job and money is getting her down. Stopping herself from thinking about lots of weird things is getting her down. (The trampoline at least gets me up.)

The other day, Evie found long black hair in her hairbrush. Jodie and Maria go into her room and brush their nitty hair with her brush, but this was black hair, and their hair is blonde, that white-blonde colour with a trace of green from chlorine swimming pools. Mum’s the only person in the family with dark hair, but mum’s the last person to go into her room and use her hairbrush, and anyway, Mum’s hair is short.

Evie goes right up into the air and over in a somersault, then down, jump, jump. It eases Evie’s head, somehow, the rhythm of the jumping. She’s just a body keeping time.

Next door in her room in the dark the despot watches from her window the girl who’s neatly jumping, beating out the time.

Evie sings:

Over the rope

And under again

She lives in that house

And she gives me a pain

I wish she’d go off

And fall under a train

As I skip and I jump…

At Bankstown and at Newtown

We made the cops feel sore.

We fought well

And they got hell

As we met them at the door.

We met them at the door, boys,

We met them at the door.

At Bankstown and at Newtown

We made the cops feel sore.

ANON,
TRADITIONAL VERSE, 1930S

Noel woke from the gun dream, and it was morning. He’d had that dream since he was a kid, but it was getting more urgent. These days he often woke with the memory of the cold metal against his chest, but today he could still feel it sticking into his ribs.