Cloudstreet

by Tim Winton

  Well, look at that. You can see the backyard. Wave to Mum, Fish.

  Fish looks gingerly out of the hole in the wall and sees some woman looking up from the flap of the tent.

  Gawd, that’s better. Some fresh air. You can feel the difference already. It was enough to make a bloke wanna puke in here before. You don’t mind us using it, dyou, Fish? I mean I know it’s always been kind of like your own den.

  Fish is looking at the shadows creeping around the edge of the walls.

  Well, it’ll do till we get sorted out.

  How’s it coming along? Rose calls, hauling herself up the stairs. It’s hard to recall so much light on the landing. It pours out of the old library instead of feebly trying to get in. She comes into the doorway and rests on the jamb looking flushed and loaded.

  Well, that’s an improvement. When’s the window coming?

  Dad’s bringing it on the truck this arvo.

  Just finish the job, I hate half-finished things.

  Speakin of half-finished things, Fish’s been askin about the baby. He wants to feel if it’s true.

  Fish looks at his great barge feet.

  Cmon, Fish, says Rose. Hands on.

  Fish shuffles over. He keeps his head down and puts his smooth, pale man’s hands on her belly and smiles into his chest.

  He’s in there.

  Well, that’s what the doctor says. You could fool me.

  The ladies won’t like it.

  Oh, I think they’ll get used to being grannies, don’t you?

  You happy? asks Quick.

  It could be worse, Rose says. We’ll have a roof over our heads, even if it is the same old roof.

  It’s gonna look great. We’ll bung our furniture in, splash on a bit of paint, and whacko-the-diddle-o.

  It’s the whacko-the-diddle-o that I’m worried about, says Rose.

  Dolly finds herself at the Cloud Street Station in the long lull between Saturday evening trains. A smudge-eyed dog comes up to her and whines, slopes away. The solitary palm tree over the roof of the ticket office submits itself to the wind, and Dolly feels her false teeth slipping in sympathy. Right now, she can’t remember ever having had her own teeth out in the first place. You wouldn’t say she’s drunk, that bulky, rumpled old woman on the bench there by the platform, though she’s got a smell of brandy about her, a whiff of the old Chateau Tanunda. She just seems a little confused.

  Now and then she gets up and goes out to the edge to look down on the rails.

  They go somewhere, the bastards, she murmurs. I always wanted to go somewhere.

  A diesel hoots down the line and a man and a boy buy tickets and wait out in the evening sun beside her. She watches them, observes the way the boy hooks his finger into the edge of his father’s trouser pocket. Men. Don’t they love each other. They should be enough for each other. We’re not like that. I wouldn’t let a daughter do that. I wouldn’t. I just don’t think I could.

  The train comes into the station blowing fumes all over her. Two or three people step down, newspapers rolled in their hands.

  Doll, what’re you doin here?

  Sam looks surprised but pleased to see her.

  I’m sittin, that’s all.

  Hey, I won meself fifteen quid.

  Who on?

  That mad bastard, the Monster. I bet he’d strike within the month.

  You sick bastard.

  It’s commonsense. Anyone who kills that many has to like it.

  You should be put down.

  I’ll take you to the flicks, eh? There’s Dean Martin and Sinatra at the Ambassador. Or Hatari, that sounds good.

  I’m too old for the flicks.

  Carn then, let’s get home, I’m stranglin for a cuppa.

  I’ll give im lollies. I’ll spoil im filthy if only he comes to see his old granma.

  Carn, old girl, you’re walkin with a winner.

  No Man’s Land

  Rose settled down to read on the bed in their new room, their new home. There was an autumn chill in the air and the smells of paint and putty. She was damp still from her shower; she shivered a little, climbed in under the covers with her mound hoiking up the bedspread before her. Strange being in the house again, coming back from the bathroom down the hallway, wrapped and steaming, feeling like a houseguest or a new lodger, all selfconscious and prudish. Wireless sounds, cooking, a song coming from somewhere, the clunking of doors and a chorus of floorboards. There were two kitchens, two livingrooms, two families, and now they lived in the middle, in the old room they called No Man’s Land.

  It was a queer room, this. Even when she was alone in it the place felt close, crowded. Certainly it was better than it had been. Hell, she could remember a time when she wouldn’t even step inside the door. As a kid she’d hear music coming from here, Fish’s weird piano fugues, and she’d come to the door to watch him, but it took a lot to get her to come inside. Fish didn’t play in here at all now it was their room, though the piano was still there in the corner beside her dresser and the old sea trunk she stored her linen in. They’d even brought her old desk, the one the old man had bought her with winnings and never taken back to pay old debts. Quick had knocked up a few pine shelves for her John O’Haras, her Daphne du Mauriers and Irwin Shaws. No one touched that piano but sometimes Rose swore she could hear a note in the room. She listened hard at it when she set her mind to it in the middle of a sleepless bellyrolling night, and though she knew she heard a quiet unbroken sustained note in the air, she couldn’t be sure it wasn’t just the sound of silence ringing between the curtains and the sofa, in the new painted walls themselves.

  Rose preferred the window open a little way and the curtains shucked back to ease her claustrophobia, even though she knew it meant having old Oriel monitoring them from her tent flap below. Quick seemed so damn happy to be back here, she could barely believe it. Being here relaxed him. He skylarked on the landing with his sisters, sat in the Pickles kitchen with Dolly like he’d been going in there all his life. She remembered the queer glow on him the morning he came off the shift with the idea to move back. He was glowing like a kid’s night lamp. Deep in, when she let herself think it, she was glad to be back, even though it was this place. True, she felt a little guilty about it; it seemed like a surrender to her and she’d made up her mind a long time ago to neither surrender nor go back. She’d been trying to escape this place so long, and now here she was, married to a Lamb, having his baby and living back in the thick of it. The old man’d put it down to the Shifty Shadow, but it was their decision. So here she was. She couldn’t say she was unhappy. Even this queer joint felt safer than a normal house, certainly it felt better than Mrs Manners’ lonely bedsit. She didn’t mind the noise that much; at least it was a sign of company and its protection. Oriel came up with pillowslips patched together from old pyjamas and made Rose do exercises that almost split her fanny to bits, but it didn’t seem so bad somehow. Autumn came on and then winter and Rose grew big, so big she was disgusted with herself, but in the mirror her face was the face of a living woman, not a girl threatening the world with her death. She thought about Dolly, poor Dolly who was weak now, and confused, and needing love. Maybe she owed the old girl some of this happiness. She’d sit in the sun with her again today, hold her hand. She smiled at herself in the mirror and made herself laugh, and Fish came in. She let Fish lay his hands on her. He squawked with joy when the baby kicked and rolled under the skin of her drum.

  The ladies won’t like it, he laughed.

  Quick came home grimfaced but he brightened at the sight of her.

  I’m trying for a transfer to Traffic, he said.

  Given up on fighting evil?

  This bastard’s got us beaten.

  Will they let you move?

  He shrugged.

  Well, I never liked you prowling about all night knowing you might run into him. Now there’s a baby to think of.

  Yeah, he said, unconvinced of his own motives. Yeah.

  S
lipping

  It’s well after two and cold as charity in the cowering streets of Nedlands when Quick hears the BSA howling through the streets. It’d be Murphy come looking for him for sure. Something’s up. A headlight swings into the street and Quick goes to meet it.

  Get on, says Murphy.

  What’s up?

  Christmas, what do you think? Hold on.

  When they get there, only a street away, the CIB have a car outside the house already and an ambulance is squealing down Broadway.

  They go in and the body’s still there on a sofa, a hole in her forehead.

  Babysitter, says the dick with the notebook. The baby was still asleep when the parents got home.

  We’ve gotta do something, says Quick. Bugger it, we’ve gotta do something!

  Yeah, says the dick, start by makin us a cuppa, willya?

  Day after day, Quick feels himself slipping. It’s sadness coming on like the old days, the vast seamless hopeless weight of sadness looking for a place to rest. Willpower, he tells himself, willpower. But it’s useless. Even on lonely night patrols that week he sees misery pictures dancing in the darkness. Indo-Chinese, shark victims, President Kennedy’s dead baby, lynched negroes with newsprint faces. He’s beyond willpower. He’s getting hopeless like the Quick Lamb of old. They’re losing. There’s someone out there killing and doing evil and he’s losing the fight with them, and day by day it gets him further into despair.

  Does the Poo Hurt?

  Fish finds Quick weeping in the outhouse.

  Does the poo hurt, Quick?

  But Quick says nothing.

  Fish stands by the old pen where the rugged survivor of a pig rubs against a post. He goes up to the dunny door.

  Quick?

  It’s orright, Fish.

  Doan cry.

  No.

  The ladies like it.

  Go back inside, mate. Leave me alone, orright?

  Fish goes obediently.

  Somethin’s Up

  Somethin’s up, said Murphy. The CIB know somethin, they’re settin somethin up. Even the papers know about it.

  Hmm? said Quick by the urn looking at his own handcuffs.

  The weapon. The papers are goin quiet. We’ve got him rattled, the sick bastard.

  I just wish it’d stop rainin, said Quick.

  You wouldn’t notice yer own balls ringin vespers, said Murphy.

  I could drive trucks, said Quick.

  Jaysus, said Murphy.

  Oh, see down there, Fish, see down there something happening at last. A tip, a copper’s hunch, an old couple coming across a .22 under a bush above the river. And the net closing.

  On Sunday, Murphy was on the shift fresh from midnight mass.

  They got him, he said.

  Who’d you get it from, said Quick, the priest?

  Father of seven, said Murphy, can you imagine?

  Sure, mate.

  I know a journo.

  And I know a load of bollocks.

  The Sarge came in: You hear the news, Lamb? They got him, the Monster.

  Who told you, Sarge? said Quick.

  Murphy knows a journo.

  That’d be bloody right, said Quick. He just wouldn’t let himself believe it. No, they’d have this mad bastard hanging over their lives from here on in. He was here to stay.

  Lamb? Lamb!

  Sarge? What was that?

  The phone was for you, you galah. You gone to sleep on us? Constable!

  Sarge?

  Get home.

  Sorry, Sarge. It’s just I’m … It won’t happen again.

  Go!

  But Sarge!

  Get him home, Murphy.

  But why? Quick pleaded.

  Because yer about to be a father.

  It’ll be in the morning papers, shouted Murphy riding through the streets on the single sidebanger.

  My baby? said Quick.

  The bloody murderer, you nong.

  Oh, him.

  Him

  Him. Already they’re bundling him into a paddywagon, disappointed at the size of him, the hopeless look of him ambushed and frightened and suddenly not winning. He’s just a frustrated man with a hare lip who’s gone back to his lifetime of losing, and the pathetic sight of him robs the detectives of the feeling they’d expected. The Nedlands Monster, the man who made the town a city, who had gallows written all over him. Him!

  Wax Harry

  All these months Rose has been rehearsing the whole business in her mind, the steady buildup of contractions, the developing stages, the orderly nature of nature, but what she finds when the contractions come is that this baby means business now and to hell with stages and order.

  The house wakes inside a minute and Lester goes downstairs like a falling cupboard to finish up naked and grazed on the corridor rug below. Pansy comes down scowling, with Lon behind. Fish wanders out with his slug tilting gamely from his pyjama bottoms.

  Get to a phone, Lon. Lester calls once his specs are in place. Tell Quick to come!

  Rose stands up for a few musclecranks and decides that she won’t try the stairs alone. They are flurrying about down there like maggots in a Milo tin and she’s having this squeezebox routine every minute or so. She sits down, puts a pillow in her mouth and she can hear a motorbike coming already—or is it her pulse backfiring?

  Quick comes hammering upstairs. I’ve gotta get her to the hospital!

  Get the truck started! says Lester.

  I’m not going in that bloody truck! yells Rose, putting her head to the wall where a vicious white old woman looks down aghast at what’s pinning her knees.

  The Rugby’ll never start in time!

  I’ll start the Harley! says Lon. She can go in the sidecar.

  Oh. Gawd Aggie! Don’t bother. I’m having it right here and now.

  Lie down, Rose!

  I can’t.

  Elaine gets her back on the bed.

  Lester slips quietly off to get Oriel, but she’s inside already with her gown sleeves rolled up and her specs on awry. Sam stumbles into the corridor.

  Fire?

  Baby.

  Oh, gawd. Dolly’s out to it.

  Rose sees Oriel coming up the stairs two at a time with her mottley forearms swinging, her boots a-creak, and she’s never been so grateful to see her. Already Rose is bearing down. She can’t help but push.

  Hot water, towels, boiled scissors and a laundry bucket! Oriel barks, and some purpose comes into the gathering.

  Oohhhghm!

  Rose feels herself lifted like a child. The library light comes on. There’s the bed.

  Take a rest, love, you’ll tear your insides out. Fish, go to your room.

  No.

  Uughnnmmaah!

  Let’s get this nightie off. Good Lord who made us—there’s the head.

  Outside the Harley blurts up, sending out a volley of backfires.

  No shoutin, no shoutin, the old woman says. We’ll frighten the creature.

  Quick comes in with patched towels as Rose draws herself up on her knees and strains with the sound of air through the neck of a balloon. There’s gooseflesh big as acne on him. His mother’s down there making a footstool of herself, her hairy bum showing shockingly in the gap in the back of her gown. Rose has fistfuls of fabric at Oriel’s shoulder; she hoists with each burst of power.

  Rose sees the stars and moon in the walls, the weft and weave of timbers behind the two strange spiritous women pressed away from her. It’s like she’s looking into the room on herself and Oriel because one is old and the other a girl, but the girl is black, bruise-coloured and the both of them are straining and it doesn’t make any sense at all without oxygen in your head. Fish is at the piano, fisting it out all of a sudden and the women fade and for a moment Rose is frightened it means she’s dying. They’re fading, fading.

  Here we come!

  Ohmygawd, said Quick, about to howl.

  The Harley revs impatiently.

  Fish lets off a burst o
f wild singing. It sounds like a flock of galahs passing or a man strangled in a cement mixer.

  Get the cord, Quick, take the cord.

  Gawd, the baby’s got his fingers crossed.

  Ahhhh! goes the mob in the doorway.

  You mean it’s a boy?

  Wait a sec, love, we don’t—

  He’s all there, orright.

  Don’t worry, Sam calls shaky from the doorway mob. We all are, too.

  Haah! goes Rose.

  Lookathat.

  Fish, cut it out!

  The room goes quiet. The spirits on the wall are fading, fading, finally being forced on their way to oblivion, free of the house, freeing the house, leaving a warm, clean sweet space among the living, among the good and hopeful.

  He’s lookin at me, says Fish, shambling over. Oriel reaches out with one bloody hand to push Fish’s dick back into his pyjamas.

  Rose knows it’s only her, it has to be only her, but the house is shaking.

  Give him here, give him here.

  Cover her up.

  Oh to hell with it, Rose says, now you’ve all seen me bits.

  They all circle around like a two-up school, peering down.

  Thank God, says Lester, weeping fit to sweep away his specs. Thank God, thank God.

  He’s perfect, says Rose, and he’s gonna have sisters.

  Pass the bucket, Elaine.

  You’re not puttin im in the bucket? Sam protests.

  She’s got a placenta to come, you ignorant man, Oriel says with a grin.

  She hasn’t got her teeth in, thinks Lester grimly, she could’ve slipped her teeth in.

  Wish Dolly could’ve seen it.

  Shut up, Dad, and gimme a kiss.

  After me, says Quick.

  Don’t get slushy, says Elaine.

  Red shoulda been ere, she’s the nurse.

  Nah, she hates people’s bits.

  She’ll be dark on us for doin it without her. She hates to miss out.