The House That Was Eureka (26 page)

‘Don’t read at the table, son. Blow me dead, the standards have been dropping around here since I’ve been gone.’ Nobby’s words came out rough, but all he wanted was to stop them from reading and upsetting themselves before they’d eaten. ‘Eat, you two.’ He dished up the helpings, four big shares, and plenty more still left in the frying pan. ‘Here, this way.’ Showed them how to slice a pocket in a johnny cake, to sit the butter in.

Evie ate. This wasn’t how she’d envisaged it, the meeting, if ever it happened; but still, for the moment it was good – it was amazing – the first taste of johnny cake.

‘Of course, they’re no good like this,’ Nobby apologized. ‘You’ve got to cook ’em on the ashes. Not right on the ashes of course, but above ’em, on a bit a chicken wire or that, and not, like, dead ashes, you fan the coals up with your hat…’ Saying words to ease his uneasiness, saying words to test the use of them, for years he hadn’t used them much, for decades.

‘Will you show me?’ Noel was eager. ‘Will you take me out one day and show me?’

‘Sure, son.’ Nobby grinned. Maybe he’d get the hang of this having a family.

Evie was quiet. Now her eating was nearly done, she was feeling again. Feeling an itch to read the letters, feeling the need to tell Nobby the message, feeling left out suddenly from these two male people who sat grinning at each other like twins.

The despot felt it too. Here they were, back at last, and any minute would run off and play their games. She coughed, to assert her power, and he looked quick, her lovely son. Looked quick, too quick, she couldn’t meet his eyes, remembering what she’d done. ‘I wrote,’ she said, looking down, ‘many times, to say I’m sorry, but when I rang, no one answered.’

‘You’re all right. Don’t think about it.’ Feelings made him awkward. He took her arm and led her up to bed.

While he was gone, Noel and Evie read. Hatred flared inside them, for along with the letters was a press clipping about the drowning. Not from one of the big papers, just on a scrappy little sheet called the
Newtown Fighter
.

How can my uncle? Noel thought. How can Nobby? Evie thought.

When he came back down, Evie had to say it: How could he forgive her?

‘She’s said she’s sorry,’ Nobby said.

‘It’s not enough!’ Imagining herself spinning down the black water like the ring across the lino, it was Nobby now who betrayed.

Nobby reached again for his tobacco, rolled a smoke. His hands neat, thin, not wasting movement. ‘Save your spit.’

Evie was shocked. This wasn’t how he should behave. Sometimes, this last week, she’d imagined searching and finding Nobby, and she’d planned how he would be and act. Someone old, but fine, like an English actor on TV, with white skin and a wintry smile, in an elegant grey suit. She’d introduce herself, and tell him Lizzie’s message, and he would smile, his eyes light up, he’d clasp her hands in his fine white hands and be speechless with gratitude. After she’d gone, he might quietly weep for joy and then…and then…but the thens didn’t occur to her.

But now Lizzie was dead, and
save your spit
.

‘You kids,’ Nobby started again, ‘at your age, you think you’ve all the answers. Think you’ve got a monopoly on morality. Well, you’re wrong.’

Noel looked at him. I didn’t go to all this trouble to get an uncle, just so he could lecture me. I reckon I was better off before. Nobby saw, and knew the look. Like how I used to feel, when old Paddy would talk at me.

‘I’m not knocking you. I was the same.’ The words stopped. You get so used to no one to talk to, your voice gets so, you forget how to use it. Nobby tried to put a gentleness into his words, but how could these two come to him for answers when all the pat answers he’d taught himself for years were suddenly questions biting him again?
If we’d’ve tried it, if we’d had a chance, would we have made a go of it?

‘Lizzie...’ Evie said.

‘Ah, Lizzie...’ As if the thought of her had only just occurred to him.

Evie hurled it at him then. All the pressure of these weeks had been building up and up and now it burst. All the undirected anger focusing on Nobby now, Nobby who seemed to be the cause of all these weeks.

‘Don’t you care that she’s dead?’

Nobby laughed, a whistling sound coming through as his lips pulled back and his teeth locked fast to keep the scream in. Then his teeth split open and the sound filled the kitchen, the loud violent laugh of Noel that twisted out of him. ‘I’d rather see her dead than let him have her!’

‘Him, who?’ Noel said.

‘Her husband there in New Zealand.’

‘But she doesn’t have a husband.’

‘That’s the point, son.’ And the laugh burst now, the first good laugh for fifty years, and Nobby looked and laughed at their faces. ‘Pardon me, son. Pardon me, girl.’ And thumped the table in his joy.

This? But she’s dead, Evie thought, then she thought:…and then…and then…

She’d never planned those thens. Had never planned how Lizzie would be, what Lizzie would do, for she was me. In all the thinking through that week, in all the avoiding of the thinking, she hadn’t planned Lizzie as a real live person, as she’d planned Nobby; but nor had it occurred to her that she was dead. Evie remembered: ‘
Where will I go to, when I’m a dead lady?
’ Somehow, Sammy had known.

Evie cried then.

Noel felt apart, for he wasn’t feeling it. He’d only ever dreamed Nobby, never Lizzie. He wanted to reach out, feel like Evie, but he couldn’t.

‘Don’t start, girl, or you’ll set me going too.’ Nobby, awkward, then tried to mend it all with a joke: ‘And then we’ll have to mop it, there’ll be such a flood.’

It wasn’t a very appropriate thing to say. Black water swirled around Evie and Nobby.

‘So how can you accept her saying sorry?’

Nobby looked at her: accept? After fifty years on the track alone, you learn to accept it when no fish comes jumping up to be your dinner, learn to talk to your blanket who’s your only friend in the winter, learn to treat the shade as a piece of surprise. But how to teach this girl acceptance in time to stop her tears? So Nobby took the other tack. ‘Haven’t you ever done anything, felt anything, you’re not real proud of?’

(Mick’s eyes, Noel thought.)

(The years of fighting against Ted. It was me started it.)

(Mick’s eyes, Nobby thought, as I run out on him.)

‘Holy hell!’ The words flew out of Nobby now, flying out to stop him remembering his own thoughts. ‘What else could the woman do but say she’s sorry? For someone like her, that’s hard enough. It’s not as if,’ he added, his voice hard now, ‘it’s not as if it’s a bloody fairy tale, where you can change the ending.’ It’s not as if you can reach up and change the mechanical clouds.

‘So all’s well that ends well,’ Evie said, her voice adult, ironic, testing him with words Mum sometimes said.

Baiting me with my mother’s words. The questions bite, now’s not the time. At least the girl’s not flaming crying. ‘It ended fifty years ago,’ Nobby said. It’s just begun.

Evie looked at him, grasping still at understanding, but starting to get there. But there was the message still to say. ‘She wrote in my cupboard, to tell you she loves you for ever.’

Nobby nodded. ‘Thanks, girl.’

‘Tell me about her,’ Noel said. He felt excluded.

Nobby reached in his pocket for his handkerchief and silently wiped off Evie’s tears. ‘Ah, Lizzie…’ he said, letting his mind start, ‘Well, one thing you have to admit about Lizzie, she was a proudly lousy mopper…’

Bury me with fists clenched
And eyes open wide.
For in storm and struggle I lived,
And in struggle and storm I died.

ANON,
THE TOCSIN
, 1930S

They were still yarning at half-past one when Ted and Mum and Noel’s mum came in. Ted’s tie was undone and he had a carton under his arm and a grin from ear to ear. Mum and Noel’s mum were looking a bit anxious, but when they saw Noel and Evie they perked up.

‘You’re all right, then!’ Evie’s mum exclaimed. ‘And the girls?’

‘Fast asleep.’

‘How’s Nanna?’ Mrs Cavendish said quickly.

‘Fine.’ Noel felt guilty about the whole thing, the strain could’ve been enough to give her another stroke; but it hadn’t, and indeed had seemed to bring her out of the last one. She was talking. Don’t tell Mum that yet. ‘Better than she’s been for years,’ Noel added. ‘And this is Nobby! He’s my uncle. There’s so much to tell you!’

Nobby was quiet, looking at his half-sister, wondering how she’d take to the sudden irruption of a brother.

‘We saw yous on TV,’ Ted said. ‘Oh, not yous two, but that Sharn-what’s-it girl and the rest of your Dolebludger Club.’ But said it laughing, and helped himself to a chair and plunked the carton on the table. ‘Want a beer, mate,’ he said, handing one to Nobby, pulling back the ring-pull on his own. ‘We’ve a spot of news ourselves. Have you got any glasses there, Rita?’

‘Thanks, mate,’ Nobby said.

Mrs Cavendish seemed in a daze. She put four ordinary glasses on the table, went to take two back, and said, ‘Oh, dear, I should really get wine glasses for the wine.’

‘Not to worry, Rita.’ Ted opened a bottle of Summer Wine, then poured a glass for Noel’s mum, then for Mum, then for Noel and Evie.

‘Ah...I don’t think…’ Mrs Cavendish had meant the other two glasses to be for Ted and Nobby, but they were drinking from the can.

‘Once in a while,’ Ted said. ‘They’re not kids any more, y’know. An’ after all, it’s not every night a bloke wins two jackpots.’

‘
What?
’ This on top of everything else. Evie’s voice pitched up high, and she burst out laughing.

‘Call me a liar if y’ like, but at ten o’clock see – I was a bit ahead already – but anyway, ten o’clock comes, an I’ve been on the same machine all night, so I think I’ll just have a go at the next one, no one’s been playing it, so I put m’ twenty cents in, and bugger me if she isn’t a jackpot. Five hundred dollars! That puts a shine on things, I think. ’Cause to tell you the truth, well, I’ll tell you later. Anyway, it’s ’cause it’s m’ birthday, I reckon. So anyway, I stop a while, then just before midnight, I think to m’self, I’ll just have another go for m’ birthday, so back I go to the first machine an I put m’ money in an there she blows again. Six pineapples. Five hundred dollars. Six pineapples. Talk about knock me over. Talk about something coming when it’s needed. It’s ’cause it’s m’ birthday, I reckon.’ He passed Nobby another can.

‘Happy birthday, mate.’

‘Thanks, mate. Best birthday I’ve had in years. ’Cause to tell you the truth...’ He turned to Evie again, then went a bit awkward.

‘Because to tell you the truth, love, which even
I
didn’t know,’ Evie’s mum said, ‘because he didn’t tell me till he got the money, well, Bankcard’s been going Ted because he already owed them a thousand he’d been paying the rent with, before I bought you your trampoline, so anyhow he couldn’t pay them, he couldn’t before, because he’s out of a job, which even
I
didn’t know…’

‘Since when?’ Evie couldn’t believe it.

‘Ah, since about the week after we moved here. Y’know I come down here cause the boss reckons he’s got a big contract in the city, an’ when we move here he lays me off.’

Evie was quiet, because you should be serious to show sympathy, it was like hearing of a death or something, but Mum was smiling, and Ted was grinning, and Noel’s mum and Nobby were heating up the fry-up, and Noel was pouring wine into the two mums’ glasses, and then into Evie’s and his, and then Ted burst out laughing, and so did Evie.

‘You secret dolebludger!’ Evie said, trying to make her voice pretend to be someone on talk-back radio, but it just wouldn’t, she was laughing so much.

‘I
reckon
, pal,’ Ted said. ‘Will you give me an in, down the club?’

‘Talking of which,’ Evie’s mum said, looking more like a mum and worried again now, ‘As Ted said, we saw it all on TV.’

(Not quite all, thought Noel, thought Nobby, thinking of the gun.)

‘The twelve-thirty news,’ Noel’s mum said, ‘And they said it’d been on the ten o’clock too. Were you here with them?’ she asked Nobby, feeling quite strange, there were lots of things to talk about, but she thought it best to let Ted and his family get their talking done first. Noel had said this man was family, and she presumed he must be, no one, lord knows, would come waltzing in wanting to be part of this family unless they were, it was hardly the kind of thing you’d be an imposter to. But if he was family, there’d be years and years for him to explain, and besides, Noel’s mum wasn’t the sort to really question things.

‘Here?’ Nobby said, ‘That’s for sure.’ He glanced over at Noel and Evie who were looking a bit green around the gills, remembering suddenly the dreadful mess in at 203.

‘Ah, Mum...’ Evie started.

‘Long as the girls are all right…’

‘And Nanna...’

‘God, long as you’re all here okay, what’s a bit of mess?’ Ted stretched happily. ‘You spend half your time cleaning up after the girls, reckon you’re entitled to make some of your own once every blue moon.’ (Everything’s so much easier now I’ve my troubles off my chest. And Evie suddenly doesn’t seem to buck against me any more.)

‘We’ll start on it now,’ Noel said quickly.

‘It’s not going to run away. Your uncle here and I’ll give yous a hand with it in the morning. After all, as it’s Saturday it’s not as if I’ve got to pretend to get to work, or anything.’ Ted laughed.

The next morning, they’d just started when Sharnda and Roger and Di rolled up in the truck.

‘Hey, we won!’

‘Won what?’

‘Whadda you think!’

Sharnda had a big bundle of the morning papers that she handed around in a rush.

Sydney police were taken by surprise last night when a thousand young unemployed workers went on a rampage in a Newtown street in protest against the threatened closure of the Newtown CYSS (Community Youth Support Scheme) Centre.