The House That Was Eureka (6 page)

‘Not particularly,’ Evie said. ‘Hang on.’

She ran back and put on a jumper, then quietly locked the door, leaving the light on and the radio going. Let them think she was still in there. Not that Mum would mind her going out, but Evie felt like being secretive. She got fed up, having five people around her all the time, knowing every time she blew her nose. When she got a job she’d be able to leave.

‘Come on then!’ Noel’s words came out like a yelp through the darkness
_;
His voice had broken a while ago but it still occasionally went high.

‘Come on yourself!’

From her room, the despot watched them as they sped out the back way, along the narrow lane that had been built between the fences so the dunny-can man could come along and collect the cans. The lane ran along behind a few sets of palings, then turned down into Liberty Street.

‘This way…Left here…Now up here…’ Noel muttered as he headed Evie along his special back route to Newtown Bridge.

‘Not that way,’ he cut in fast as Evie went to cross over past a corner deli. There were a couple of guys outside, big, a bit older probably than Evie.

(
Matt
, Noel thought. Matt Dunkley and Tasso Politis. When he was a little kid they used to shove him in the gutter and steal the notes the despot would write to the shopkeeper, Tasso’s father.

‘Nanny’s boy!’ they’d yodel. ‘Sookabubba, Sobbaguts!’

‘Cowardy-Cowardy-Custard,’ they’d yell, because he was too scared to take the both of them on.

Then he’d go home without the things the despot had sent him for, and he’d be in trouble again.)

Noel pulled at Evie’s sleeve and got her past and into a lane without Matt seeing. ‘This way’s much longer,’ Noel admitted. ‘But much nicer.’

Nicer! This wasn’t at all what Evie had had in mind. The idea of a walk had sounded boring enough, but she’d presumed they’d at least walk along the King Street main drag, looking in the shops, listening to the music floating out of the pubs. Back in Campbelltown, Roseanne and Evie had often walked around the shopping plaza when they were broke on a Friday night. Looking in the shops, deciding what lounge suites they’d buy when they got married, Roseanne laughing and chatting back to the guys who were walking around.

Whereas Noel’s idea involved dark back streets and darker lanes, and finally when they got to Newtown Bridge and the main bit of King Street, Noel turned down past Uncle George’s Greek souvlaki stall and led Evie through a dingy sort of empty car park that looked over the station.

‘Here!’ Noel said suddenly. They’d arrived at the front facade of a derelict, roofless building. A set of brick steps overgrown with grass led up to a gaping doorway.

Noel headed up the steps.

Evie followed.

Quite unprotesting, Evie followed, though she wasn’t in the mood for this at all. Evie followed, though, because Evie was a follower. She wasn’t in the mood for this, but she wasn’t in the mood for anything else in particular. So she followed Noel, who did everything he did with the fervour of a fanatic.

The building was an old hall, with a stage, and Noel was on the stage already, lit up by moonlight, swaying as he played his mouth-organ.

Evie was down in the audience section, looking around for a comparatively clean bit of rubble to sit down on. Still unprotesting, she’d be Noel’s audience, though she didn’t think much of him either as a person or a performer.

‘No, sit up here,’ Noel interrupted himself and sat down. Though what he liked about Evie was the way she listened, she should be able to see the landscape too.

The landscape was rooftops, thousands upon thousands of them, four or five suburbs worth of rooftops laid out before them, dissected by a criss-cross of streets with streetlights. This was the landscape you saw from this strange high cliff of a stage that was left there without its back wall or side wall. Evie sat, dangling her legs over the suburbs. She could hear the intermittent roar of the trains pounding down the tracks over there, cutting over Noel’s music.

‘Sad-eyed Lady of the Lowlands’, Noel played, thinking that though this girl wasn’t at all suitable for the part of the heroine of the song, at least it was unfamiliarly pleasant to be sitting here beside a girl on a Friday night instead of playing down to the suburbs there alone.

While Evie was thinking that, though Noel didn’t count as a guy to go out with, at least it was unfamiliarly pleasant to be sitting on a Friday night beside someone who didn’t make her feel stupid and boring and shy. When Roseanne and Evie sat on Friday nights with guys they ran into around the shopping plaza, Evie would try to think of things to say and would seem to have too many fingers to smoke as casually as Roseanne did.

After a long time of playing and not talking, Noel said, ‘I feel like a chew.’ He disappeared, then was back again a quarter of an hour later with two cans of Coke and two bulging Greek souvlaki-things with meat and salad inside huge round flaps of bread.

‘Uncle George feeds me for free,’ Noel said, ‘if I play a few songs for him.’

So they both sat there, munching slowly without talking, licking off the meat and tomato-juice that tended to run out the bottoms of the souvlaki-things and down their arms.

‘You’re very quiet tonight,’ Evie finally said.

‘I’d noticed that too,’ Noel said.

It was good there, peaceful and happy. A change from the tension of the two houses in Liberty Street. Evie and Noel sat for a long time dangling their legs over the suburbs, comfortable for once at simply being who they were, where they were, that Friday night in the middle of May 1981.

Nobby and Lizzie had been together since the Cruises moved in next door, when Nobby was seven, when Lizzie was six. That was ten years ago. Nobby had virtually moved in next door too that day, for from that day he’d spent every free possible minute there, with Mick and Lizzie, and also Colleen and Maire; and later with Bridget and Kathleen and Maudie and Fiona too, as one by one more daughters were born and the house grew more crowded.

‘Bog Irish,’ Nobby’s mother always said. ‘Breed like pigs.’

Nobby wouldn’t say anything. He’d just kiss his mother on the cheek and slip in to 203 through the hidey-hole, and play with Lizzie. Then when the games were finished, he’d slip home again to roast dinner and piano music, while next door they’d be having a stew. Sometimes he’d feel like a traitor to both sides. But then he’d slip off fast again, to play with Lizzie.

Lizzie was always the closest, even closer than Mick. Mick was sometimes Nobby’s mate, and sometimes he wasn’t. Mick was older, and much solider than Nobby and Lizzie, and it used to take the two of them together to lick him. Lizzie could fight like a bag of cats, but by herself she didn’t have the weight. And at the beginning Nobby had been a lousy fighter, because of having been brought up by his mother alone.

Lizzie still fought like a bag of cats. She was on the edge of the crowd now, on the other side from Nobby; standing there tense, obviously only half-listening to the speech, watching the road across Newtown Bridge, the road that the cop waggon would come from, if it came. The cops sometimes came and broke up the Friday-night street meetings. Arrested the speaker and anyone else who got in their way. Last week here they’d arrested Jack Sylvester, the bloke who was up speaking now. And then Mick and big Paddy Cruise had tried to grab Jack back, and they’d been lumbered too.

Lizzie was angry tonight, Nobby could see. Her face clenched in anger. Spoiling for a fight. Nobby grinned: Lizzie would love to get arrested. It would satisfy her Irish martyr-blood. Her Bolshevik daydreams.

‘I wish I was Alexandra Kollontai,’ Lizzie often said, imagining herself greeting Lenin at the Finland Station in 1917, fighting on the barricades.

And four times now when there’d been a brawl with the cops, Lizzie had wormed her way into the middle, flailing out with tight fists. Despite which, each time the cops had simply picked her up and tossed her out. Like a fish you catch that’s not worthwhile.

‘It’s not fair,’ Lizzie complained. ‘It’s just because I’m a girl. If I was
you
, they’d let me fight.’

If Lizzie was Nobby.

If Lizzie was a bloke, like Nobby.

But if Lizzie was a bloke like Nobby then she wouldn’t be in there fighting, because when Nobby saw a brawl with the cops starting, something inside Nobby froze. He couldn’t act.

He felt his blood as something thin.

He felt Lizzie felt he was weak.

Maybe she didn’t know? Probably she did. She’d never understand.

Lizzie with her wildness flying.

Lizzie with her flaming soul.

Lizzie with her anger tonight, clearly busting for another go.

Nobby tried to get around closer to her, but the crowd was too big. About five hundred head, he calculated. Of course, people always got drawn like moths to light when Sylvester was speaking. Silver-tongued Sylvester, they called him. He was National Secretary of the Unemployed Workers’ Movement.

‘...
And so, fellow workers,’
Sylvester’s voice flowed out easily over the crowd,
‘I’ll wind up now by reminding you of the main demands of our movement. One, that the dole be doubled. Two, the dole to be in cash instead of these lousy coupons. How can we pay rent, when we’ve got no cash to pay with? Three, any government relief work to be paid at full trade-union rates. And four, the end to evictions…’

The crowd broke in and cheered. By this year, 1931, Australia was fully in the hold of the Depression, and it was common to see families thrown onto the street for not paying their rent. It was the middle of May now, and with winter approaching it was all the more urgent to force the government to stop landlords evicting people. Nobby was in the Anti-Eviction Committee of the Newtown UWM.

‘
No more evictions! Down with the filthy landlords!
’

Nobby found his voice bellowing on after the rest of the crowd had hushed. He hoped Lizzie hadn’t noticed.

‘Oh yeah? We’ve finally seen your true colours, Sunshine.’ It was Mick at Nobby’s side. He spat on the ground at Nobby’s feet, and walked off.

The crowd was dwindling fast now Sylvester was finished. Lizzie was still in the same place, still tense as a cat, but she was turned around looking across straight at Nobby. Her face still spoiling for a fight.

Nobby wondered what he’d done.

‘Here, Pa, want a hand?’ He went over to help Lizzie’s father roll up the banners.

‘I can manage m’self.’

So Nobby collected up pamphlets that had fallen on the ground, working his way around to Lizzie.

‘Sorry I didn’t make it for tea.’ Nobby always ate with the Cruises before Friday-night meetings. ‘Didn’t get back till just now.’

‘And what makes you think you’d have got tea? You’ve a hide, Nobby Weston.’

Lizzie walked off fast after the half a dozen or so others who were carrying the gear to the Railway Workers’ Hall overlooking Newtown Station. Her shoes had been issued by the Lady Mayoress’s Relief Fund and were three sizes too big. They clattered fiercely on the pavement.

Nobby stared. In ten years Lizzie and he had never had a row. He trailed after her, then sat on the stage and waited while the others stowed the stuff. It wasn’t just the Cruises. No one was speaking to him. He swung his legs off the edge of the stage and waited.

‘Hey, Lizzie!’

The others had gone. Lizzie was up at the door, about to turn out the light.

‘You can stay there long as you like, Nobby Weston. Just shut the door properly when you leave.’

She flipped the light out, leaving him in darkness.

‘Whadda you think you’re playing at?’ Nobby was wild himself now. Jumped off the stage and twisted his leg. Then ran through, hurdling chairs, knocking a bench flying, as he chased the shape he couldn’t see, chased the sound of her quick running breathing. Out on the gravel, over to the fence, then down through the lantana bushes to the back of the hall, and up the stairs of the fire escape. Grabbed her at last on the landing, a thin wild shape panting as it tried to open the door that led backstage.

Lizzie still didn’t give in. Fought him hard with her fists now, pushing him back against the landing railing. Down there glowed the lights of Redfern and Mascot and Alexandria, and Nobby felt the rusted iron of the rail wobble against his weight.

‘For Christ sake, stop girl! We’ll both be gonners!’

But she wouldn’t stop. Nobby felt the depth of that distance drag them down. Both falling, two bodies clasping stick-arms, both spinning down to death. (Like one day, years before, when the world went whirley and they slipped off a shed.)

He slapped her then and grabbed her fists, pulling them round behind her back, pushing her down onto her knees. Winning. It was Lizzie who’d taught Nobby to fight. Then let his own body sink down to sit on the landing, holding her fast in case she started again.

But she was done. Her breath coming out noisily in coughs.

‘Give in?’

‘Just wait till I get me breath back.’

But she didn’t try again. The coughing built up and up till she felt her whole body taken over by the huge coughs that started way down in her lungs and skipped their way up her windpipe.

‘Hey girl, girl.’ Nobby slapped her back to try to stop it. Sometimes these attacks of hers would go on for half an hour or more. At last it finished.

‘I hate you, Nobby Weston,’ Lizzie said. ‘Bloody bronchitis.’ She’d had it on and off since she was a kid, and it always came on specially bad when she was upset.

‘Sorry. But I had to find out.’

‘What?’

‘Why you were sour on me. Why all of you were.’

‘You know. You dirty traitor. You and your mother. Turning on your own class. Kicking kids out into the street. And then you have the hide to come tonight and cheer your scabby guts out, Big Comrade Nobby Weston from the Anti-Eviction Committee!’

Nobby looked out over the lights. Alexandria, Redfern, the back of Newtown, Macdonaldtown. Workers’ suburbs full of houses that the workers couldn’t afford to rent. There were strings and strings of houses there, whole terrace blocks in some streets, sitting empty now that their previous tenants had lost their jobs and had to move out. Hundreds of empty houses, and for every empty house there was a family now homeless, or near enough as made no difference. If they were lucky, they’d have squashed themselves into a relative’s house; if unlucky, they’d be out living under bags and bits of tin in the unemployed camp at La Perouse. Families who’d had to move when their landlords kicked them out.