Cloudstreet

by Tim Winton

  The Dance

  Quick Lamb tries to get on with his life. It’s been a happy one, being part of a mob, having farm fun and long dreamy days free of things. But it’s tough now, anchored to half a house, being a glorified boarder in a city he’s never even seen before. Maybe if he could get out into the paddocks more, out where air is stronger than memory so he could at least sometimes get shot of that terrible noiseless moment when he is walking along and Fish is just gone. He’d just kept walking and his brother, Fish—the handsome kid, the smart kid who made people laugh—Fish was under, and the net was just floating across him like the angel of death. He knows it should have been him, not Fish.

  In this new house Quick has a room of his own for the first time in his life, and he’s not real sure how he likes it. The girls are all bunched together in a room the size of a dance hall down the front, and he knows they’d rather split up, being girls and all. He feels their looks in the corridor and gets the guilts. Besides, he’s not sure how he likes it, being alone. He wonders if maybe it’s a banishment, his quiet punishment for the Fish thing, but he reckons if it was that they were after, they’d bung him in with whiny little Lon. It’s a good, big room that he has, though he’s got nothing at all to fill it with. His iron bed stands like an exhibit in the middle with enough room to train a footy team on either side. It takes time to get the feel of it, what with his lonelysick wakefulness and the rumble and quake of the house going on all night like the bellyaches of a sleeping whale.

  Down the back when he’s building the chookhouse, Quick finds a pile of newspapers and magazines someone’s tied up and thrown over the fence. Now and then he opens a paper and sees a blinded prisoner of war or a crying baby or some poor fleeing reffo running with a mattress across his back, and he’ll tear it out with care, take it up to his private room and pin it to the flaky wall to remind himself that he is alive, he is lucky, he is still healthy, and his brother is not. When he works on his spelling assignments he looks up and sees the gallery of the miserable; it grows all the time and they look down at him, Quick Lamb the Survivor, and he knows he deserves their scourging stares.

  Now and then Fish comes into his room and looks about, wide-eyed and humming. Quick stiffs up with guilt, with sadness but sometimes he’ll touch his ruined brother just to hear his musical giggle. It’s the same giggle. It’s still Fish Lamb, his brother.

  Fair dinkum, Quick Lamb hates himself.

  But at night those cripples, the reffos, the starving weeping wounded on his walls wait till Quick is asleep and then they dance in their ragged borders, buckle paper and sag on their pins as they throw themselves into a weird joyous tumult over his bed. They never make a sound and he always sleeps through, but it happens all the same—men throw off their mattresses and soldiers tear away bandages and the dead rise out of the ground, inheriting the lonely quiet of the room until near morning, when they’re exhausted by happiness and freedom, and they resume their places for the dawn so that Quick Lamb might trap them again with his sorrow.

  Props

  Lester was closing up the shop amidst the long verandah shadows when a blackfella appeared on the step. It took him by surprise. He turned from the bolted shutters and the man was there. He was tall and thin, the colour of a burnt kettle, and he had a shoulderload of long dry branches.

  Wanna buy props, Mister?

  Oh. Oh. Props.

  The black man’s hair stood like a deserted beehive. His feet were bare. His toes splayed on the ground like he was as much bird as he was man.

  Gooduns. Not too much. Cut em meself.

  Wait a minute, I’ll ask the missus. Lester turned and went to go in, but stopped. Listen, you might’s well come through yerself. She’ll be out the back. No use standin about out here.

  The man hesitated.

  Can leave the props just inside the door here, if you like.

  The black man nodded. He unshouldered the sticks and stepped inside. Lester saw his eyes suddenly widen. The whites were porcelain and they seemed to vibrate. Something clicked in the man’s throat. Lester, stunned, watched him hold his pink palms out like a man with his hands against a window. He went back carefully, as if moving back in his own footsteps, his eyes roving about all the time from wall to ceiling to floor, and as soon as he was back over the threshold he turned and ran. Lester watched him go with his heart punching. The house grew quiet around him.

  The props stayed just inside the door for two days until Oriel seized them and shoved her washing lines up with them.

  The Lamb Girls

  The time it took to fold a lace hanky, that’s all it took for Hat Lamb and Elaine Lamb and Red Lamb to know that they liked the city better than the farm. Cloudstreet was like somewhere out of the movies. All of them loved the staircase; they’d never even imagined a place with landings and banisters before. Hat liked sliding down with her skirt up around her ears, but Elaine wouldn’t contemplate that kind of activity, even though she was Hat’s twin. Elaine imagined sweeping down with hoops in her skirt and a bustle, to a cologne-smelling beau with his hat in his hand. Red, who was only twelve, just liked to spit from the landing and hit the sad little cactus in the terracotta pot in the hall.

  People came into the shop and there were the Lamb girls, the unmistakeable Lamb girls with their dresses sewn from the same conglomerate of scrap material their mother seemed to tack together in bolts, and their severe hairdos and priceless complexions, their efficiency and sharpness. All of them knew how to count, and the twins had begun to take other forms of arithmetic as well, especially when soldiers came into the shop, bored and fatheaded. Sometimes Yanks came in flashing their big teeth, slapping on the accent thick as bread. They were boys with the voices of men, and it sent the Lamb girls absolutely troppo. Hat had a broad smile and she was starting to look like a woman. Elaine was already prone to ‘spells’ and she never smiled much for fear of seeming young and simple. Red was just a tomboy, she didn’t think about smiling or not smiling. There was a gap, now that Fish wasn’t being the ratbag of the family, and Red was out to fill it. She beat boys at cricket and she terrorized the bike sheds at school with the way she could throw a punch.

  The Lamb girls didn’t speak to each other much, but when they did they all agreed that things were on the up.

  Medicine

  By May, when a chill had come into the nights and the street was subdued and indoorsy after dark with the Lambs’ chooks racked along their perch like mumbling hats, and the air so still you could hear the sea miles off and the river tide eating at the land, Lester and Oriel went to bed bonesore but grateful. It was a time when they talked like the old comrades they were, the way they’d bedtalked in those early farm years before the Depression when the kids hadn’t yet crowded them back into reputation and role.

  You know what I miss? Lester said. The singin, that’s what I miss.

  Talkin church again. Lester yull always miss singin, army, church or school.

  Worldly songs are pretty, love, but the old church songs, they’re beautiful, you gotta say it.

  Yairs, she said, it’s true enough. But we shouldn’t talk about it. It’ll only upset us.

  Strike, we hold a grudge, Orry.

  My oath, she grinned in the halfdark.

  The house shifted on its stumps. Their new rooster crowed itself stupid ten hours short of daybreak.

  Quick’s lookin blue, said Lester.

  Well, Oriel murmured, that’s natural enough.

  Blames himself, thinks we blame him.

  Don’t we?

  Lester turned onto his back to see the ceiling mottled with streetlight. I don’t know. I know it’s not his fault. Why would it be? It’s just what happened.

  But do you blame him?

  Lester said nothing.

  We blame him, she said. And I blame you. And God.

  It scares me, he said, hearin you think like that.

  Me too, she said. I can’t help it. I’m a sinner, Lest.

  Do you e
ver wish you were like her next door?

  Oriel sniffed. Mrs Pickles? No. I couldn’t take ten minutes of it.

  She’s hard as nails.

  Hard as lard, you mean. I’m the one hard as nails.

  Lester coughed out a laugh.

  We can’t help it, Oriel said vaguely, none of us can.

  You always said people can help anythin and everythin.

  That was once.

  What about Fish?

  Least of all Fish.

  No, no, I meant what are we gunna do with him?

  We’ll give him the gentlest life we can, we’ll make it the best for him we know how.

  Lester agonized. How do we know what’s best? How do we make him happy? What does he think?

  Oriel thought about this. It’s like he’s three years old …

  You know, Lester says, almost giggly with relief, we’ve never talked about him like this since it—

  Lester be quiet, I’m thinkin.

  He waited. Lester thought about poor old Fish, that skylarking ratbag turned brainless overnight. There’d been times he’d thought the kid was better dead than to have to live all his life as a child, but he knew that being alive was being alive and you couldn’t tamper with that, you couldn’t underestimate it. Life was something you didn’t argue with, because when it came down to it, whether you barracked for God or nothing at all, life was all there was. And death. Oriel began to snore. Lester gave up waiting and went off himself.

  Having both watched parents hurried to the grave by medicine, Oriel and Lester weren’t chuffed about doctors. Neither had stepped inside hospital or surgery since childhood. The children were born wherever they were. Hat and Elaine in the kitchen at Margaret. Quick in the lockup of the police station, Red in the saddle room, and Lon was born at the side of the road in the shadow of the broken-axled Chev. Hard work and plenty of food, that kept the quacks away. And a bit of care, Oriel would say. She could fix most ills with a bit of this and that. She conceded that doctors were like governments: it was possible that they served some use though it didn’t pay to put them to the test.

  But the ache of their doubt about Fish got hold of them and besides, it looked like victory in Europe and they were feeling optimistic, so they found themselves in a surgery across the tracks that week telling a quack their story.

  He was a waistcoat and watch chain type and he spoke like the pommy officers Lester remembered from his days in the Light Horse. He put a light down Fish’s throat and then in his ears. It got old Fish giggling. The doc looked puzzled and amused. Oriel munched her lip. Lester kept his hands on the boy. Fish stood there with his shirt open and his eyes flicking all about.

  What’s your name, boy? the quack asked.

  Fish Lamb, said Oriel. Samson.

  Fish, said Fish.

  Mrs Lamb. I’ll ask and he’ll answer.

  Very well.

  Why do they call you Fish?

  It’s the name, said Fish.

  Hm. How old are you, Fish?

  Nine.

  Ten next month, said Oriel.

  Mrs Lamb.

  Can you count to nine?

  Nine, said Fish.

  Yes.

  I’m big.

  Indeed, said the quack. Fish, where do you live?

  In the family. With Quick. Lestah.

  Who is this? the quack asked, pointing to Lester.

  Fish grinned. Lestah! My da.

  And who is this, Fish?

  The bright look stayed on Fish’s face, but it became a look of suspension.

  Who is this lady?

  Oriel set her teeth in a smile, her jaw tight enough to break.

  Fish?

  Lester, he doesn’t see me.

  Who is she, Fish?

  Please, Doctor, this—

  Fish looked past her into the wallpaper, his features bright and distracted.

  The water, said Fish.

  On the wallpaper there were waves and jumping mullet and sails.

  Queer, said the quack.

  Oriel got a hanky out for the eyes.

  How long was he under the water, you say?

  Lester shrugged. A few minutes. He was caught up in the net and my lamp went out—

  Yes, yes. And you revived him Mrs Lamb?

  Oriel looked at Fish but couldn’t get his gaze. Yes. And I prayed.

  The water, said Fish.

  And you didn’t take him to a doctor, or a hospital?

  We thought he was better, said Lester. A miracle, you know.

  Hmm. Like Lazarus, eh, the quack muttered; Jesus wept.

  But he’s retarded, said Oriel, it’s like he’s three. We had to potty train him again, start from scratch.

  You mean he’s improved?

  A bit, yes.

  A boy would have more than this regression after an experience like that, said the quack. He shows no spastic tendencies at all.

  He blacks out.

  No speech impediment. He seems alert, aware, sane. This is not what happens. Now I—

  Are you saying we’re liars? Oriel growled. Do you think we’d come here not telling the truth?

  Mrs Lamb—

  Because I am a woman whose word has been respected as long—

  Oriel! Lester’s voice was shaky with momentary authority.

  This boy seems traumatized. There’s nothing physically wrong with him. Are you sure he hasn’t been through a great shock of some kind that would explain his obvious … retreat?

  He’s been alive and he’s been dead, said Lester. One of those was bound to be a shock.

  Perhaps he was under a few seconds, enough to give him—

  Minutes, said Oriel. No heartbeat. Another minute, two even, before I got him back.

  You could think about a psychiatrist.

  Lester swallowed. If his … his brain is damaged, can a shrink fix it?

  No. He might help hysteria, trauma and so on. You could think about a specialized home for him …

  Oriel picked Fish up in a swoop. There’s no home as specialized as mine, Mister!

  Lestah! Lestah!

  Mrs Lamb, sit down.

  Come on, Lester.

  Fish, asked the quack, where do you want to go?

  The water, the water!

  Oriel crashed through the waiting room like a fullback.

  Fast! said Fish. Fast!

  VE

  While they slept, Sam Pickles nursing his tingling stump, Oriel Lamb snoring beneath her eyepatches, the house stumps grinding beneath them, the wallshadows flitting and dancing and swirling up a musty smell in the darkness, the war ended in Europe.

  Before dawn, word was out at the Metro Markets where Lester heard it, dropped what he was doing and drove home, punishing the old Chev across tramlines and through stop signs until he throttled it, smoking and steaming, into Cloud Street. He went through the door like a stormtrooper.

  Victory in Europe!

  And the wireless was on somewhere.

  Unconditional surrender!

  VE Day.

  Lester barrelled into the kids’ room. No school today! VE Day.

  What? said Red, always snaky when woken.

  VE Day!

  Violet Eggleston? What’s she done, that dag?

  Who?

  What?

  The war. The Krauts are out.

  Oh.

  What about the Japs? said Quick from the hallway.

  The Japs are still in.

  We’ll get em, said Quick.

  Anyway. Hitler’s dead.

  Hitler didn’t bomb Darwin, said Quick.

  Tokyo’ll go, said Red.

  Gawd, said Lester, what a mob of glumbums.

  Wait’ll Violet Eggleston finds out, said Red, she’ll think it’s for her.

  The kids climbed back into their beds. Next door the Pickleses were laughing. Well, thought Lester, that’s that then.

  A Fish Forgets

  Fish hears the winter rain hissing on the tin roof. When lightning
flashes he sees the fruit trees without leaves down there in the yard. On still nights, cold nights, clear frosty nights, he hears the river a long way off across the rooftops and treecrowns. That’s something he does remember. But he forgets so much. He doesn’t remember being a real flamin character. He’s forgotten all his old ways, how people loved him, people’s names, his daily jobs. Before, he’d likely as not tie your shoelaces together while you weren’t noticing, but nowadays he can’t even get his own shoes on, let alone lace them. School learning has evaporated in his head, horseriding, stone-skipping, fartlighting, limericks, stars, directions, weather, rabbit trapping, beetle racing. From the outside, those are the things you can tell about him. Mostly, he just forgets to grow up. Already Lon is thinking of Fish as the baby of the family.

  He knows Quick, Lester, Lon, Hat, Elaine and Red, but he can’t seem to place Oriel. Either that or he sees her and ignores her. He just looks through her like she’s not there, like she’s never been there.

  It’s like Fish is stuck somewhere. Not the way all the living are stuck in time and space; he’s in another stuckness altogether. Like he’s half in and half out. You can only imagine and still fail to grab at how it must be. Even the dead fail to know and that’s what hurts the most. You have to make it up and have faith for that imagining.

  Fish is still strong and beautiful. That Rose next door sees it. She watches him. Mostly Fish is quiet. He talks, but not much. He likes to stand around in the yard and see birds. He likes the way things move in the wind. Wind excites him. When he feels breeze on his face he smiles and says, Yes. Winter days now, he stands out in the westerly that blows down the tracks from the sea and it closes his eyes with its force.

  Hello, wind!

  He loves to sing. He knows ‘The Old Rugged Cross’, ‘Blessed Assurance’, ‘Bringing in the Sheaves’, whole strings of them. Lester brings out the accordion some nights after tea and Fish moans along. Music seems to make him feel good. Music and spinning things.