House That Was Eureka (9781922148254)

by Wheatley, Nadia; Jordan, Toni (INT)

  ‘Einai orea ta mallia tou koritzei!’ The lady was gushing fast in foreign as she gently pulled and stroked at Maria’s hair.

  Maria looked towards the old man, whose eyes were on her, curious, amused.

  ‘It seems she thinks your hair’s pretty,’ the old man said drily.

  ‘Yes, pretty, very pretty hair,’ the lady knew the words now. ‘Very pretty girl.’

  That was nice. The biscuits were nice (Maria took another one) and the lady was nice, and it was so nice to hear you were pretty. The lady was so nice, she couldn’t be a witch, that was a pity, but the compliments and biscuits made up for it. I’ll find a witch somewhere else, Maria thought.

  Then the man explained to the lady about the money, and the lady let Maria sweep and gave her twenty cents.

  ‘You come back, eh?’ grinned the lady when Maria finished. ‘Tomorrow. Next day. We have cake. You come back to Mrs Maria.’

  ‘Maria,’ said Maria. ‘That’s my name.’

  ‘Is my name too,’ said the lady. ‘So we friends, eh?’

  That was how the afternoon secret started. The next day and the next day and on Saturday and Sunday too, Maria slipped off away from Jodie and Sammy and Evie and sat in the kitchen with Mrs Maria and the old man, and ate strange Greek honey cakes and nut pastries and preserved fruit, and the old man talked a bit about the olden days when he was a boy, and Mrs Maria beamed and told Maria she was pretty and let her sweep for twenty cents, and the parrot chattered in its cage and picked up the crumbs that Maria dropped in to it. It beat afternoon tea at home with Evie hands down. At Evie’s afternoon tea you got a choice between peanut butter on bread and peanut butter on toast, and Jodie or Sammy was always grabbing the jar away.

  ‘Look, just make Sammy and yourselves a sandwich,’ Evie said this Monday. ‘Then go and watch TV or something.’ She didn’t care what they did, as long as she could be alone.

  ‘You look after her, Jodie,’ Maria said. ‘I told you, I’ve got to do something.’

  ‘We’re coming too,’ said Jodie.

  Evie went into her room.

  ‘No you’re not,’ Maria said.

  ‘Yes we are.’

  ‘Oh, okay, but don’t tell Evie but.’ The main point about secrets was to keep them secret from Evie.

  As if I want to know, Evie thought in her room. She heard them traipse out the front door, one two three. Evie didn’t care what they did that day, as long as she could be alone. She felt tired, and miserable, and caught in a knot inside, so she locked herself in her room and had a sleep.

  Scrabbling, Evie felt these days. Scrabbling inside the cupboard. But she was inside the cupboard. She was Evie, a girl scratching on the door with her fingernail. Too scared to go out. Too scared to go and see. Stuck in the dark. The door swung back and open. Then there was the white face of the despot. Looking at her fearful-eyed before it disappeared.

  8

  The row they’d had that Friday night had been a good’un. Hammer and tongs they’d gone, Nobby and his mother, till nearly dawn. Lizzie had heard them through the wall.

  The next day there was a deputation by the Anti-Eviction Committee on behalf of the Cruises. They tried pleading, they tried reason. They presented a petition signed by a hundred residents of Liberty Street, and two hundred other locals. Mrs Weston threatened to call the police if the committee didn’t get off her doorstep.

  ‘And when you’ve finished wasting your time with your no-good friends,’ she added, pushing Nobby down the steps with her broom, ‘you might deign to come in like a civilized son and unblock the drain for me.’

  Nobby fixed the drain, then cleaned the silver. That was his regular Saturday morning chore.

  The smell of the silver polish, the feel of the clean white rag, the sight of all the cutlery and the vegetable dishes and the dish-covers and the eggcups and the vases and the roast-plate and the teapot and the sugar bowl and the milk jugs and the two serviette rings laid out there before him on newspaper on the kitchen table – all this had been going on for Saturday morning upon Saturday morning for as long as he could remember. This wasn’t man’s work, he thought viciously, finishing a vase, moving on to a serviette ring.

  N, he thought, idly running his finger over the engraving on the ring. N for his name, N for no one.

  In the old days, Lizzie used to come in on Saturday mornings and help him, so he could get through it fast and they could go out and play. His mother hadn’t liked it, but hadn’t known how to object.

  Lizzie’s wide green eyes would lift to her as she opened the door. ‘Good morning,’ Lizzie would say, all prim in her pinafore. ‘May I please help Nobby with the silver?’

  ‘We don’t need help.’

  ‘Oh, but I like to, we don’t have silver at home.’

  Never sure if the child was mocking her, Nobby’s mother would let her in, and there she’d sit singing and chattering in the kitchen as if she had a right, making Nobby be noisy and laugh.

  They used to play Crusaders.

  ‘This roast plate’s the king, and the teapot’s the queen, and the dishes and stuff are knights, and the vases are the squires, and all the cuttle-ry is the swords and lances . . . And these two rings,’ Lizzie would reckon, ‘they’re our crowns.’ Balancing Nobby’s mother’s serviette ring on her head as she polished, she’d giggle at Nobby whose head was too flat or something, and Nobby’s crown would fall off with a dull clunking sound.

  Nobby smeared polish over the ring, turning the silver to dull white, obliterating the N.

  Or they’d be invading armies sometimes, sitting at opposite ends with equal battalions, and as each soldier’s armour was cleaned he could advance on the enemy’s camp. The serviette rings were the cannon balls, and the trick was to flick them down the table when the other commissar wasn’t looking, and kill him dead.

  One day, Lizzie had had this ring of Nobby’s, and she’d flicked too hard, and it’d gone spinning off in a helix of flashing silver and apparently disappeared into thin air. They’d searched and searched, and hadn’t found it, and Nobby’s mother had muttered about light fingers and said Lizzie couldn’t come and do the silver any more.

  Six months later, Nobby had found it, in a dark corner beneath the dresser, but by then it was too late to get Lizzie back, for she’d turned fourteen and started work and she didn’t get off till after dinner-time on Saturdays.

  Nobby rubbed hard at the ring, wondering as he often did why the white polish turned to black upon the rag. A phrase of his mother’s came into his mind: ‘Too late!’ she cried, as she waved her wooden leg! Too late. Even if she could come now, they were too old to play Crusaders.

  Rubbing at the ring now white turned to black and Nobby’s mother came in and the row continued.

  ...And continued through the night and every night for eight more nights till the morning of the 25th came, and Mrs Weston put on her velour hat and went up to the courthouse and informed the magistrate that her tenant Padraic Fergus Cruise had not paid the back-rent, and so the magistrate ordered an ejectment warrant to be issued at any time between that day and June 22nd.

  9

  That first week of the school holidays was bad for Evie. Sammy still went to the play centre, because it was an all-year-round place for working mothers to leave their kids at; but Maria and Jodie were home all day, dropping crumbs where Evie had just vacuumed, slopping drinks when Evie had just cleaned the kitchen, following after Evie if she tried to go up the CYSS place, sneaking into Evie’s room if she forgot to lock it, and taking her hairbrush and using up the battery in her radio and looking in her drawers. The only time she got any peace was around four o’clock, when the three of them would usually creep off somewhere, but by then it was too late.

  By Friday Evie had had it. She washed her hair and put on some faded jeans that fitted well and a yellow sweatshirt that was like Roger’s, but without the writing, and sneaked out the back way.

  Noel was up in the despot’s room delivering l
unch and heard the slight creak of the gate, saw the despot immediately go tense and look – a cat and its prey – and Noel looked out too.

  ‘Where are you going?’ he yelled.

  ‘For a walk!’ Honestly. Wasn’t there such a thing as privacy? She tried to yell quietly so the girls wouldn’t hear.

  ‘Hang on. I’ll come too.’

  ‘I’m okay, thanks.’ What a stupid thing to say. Why wouldn’t I be okay?

  ‘I’ve got to go out anyway!’ (You’re pushing it, Noel.)

  ‘Look, I want to be by myself.’ Stormy then, but not quite knowing why, Evie ran along the lane and off down the street. He’s a schoolkid, she told herself. It was beneath her dignity to be seen on the street with him in broad daylight. That Friday night, that’d been okay, off in that place where no one could see them, but imagine if everyone saw her coming into CYSS with Noel.

  But when she got to CYSS, there was no one there who could have seen her. There was just a piece of paper flapping on the door:

  Because we’ve been

  running demos they’ve

  threatened to cut the

  funds and close this place.

  So we’re having a

  picket down at CYSS

  Headquarters.

  11–2

  Come along!!!

  It was all double dutch. Evie didn’t know what a picket was. Except for a picket fence. They’d had one of them in Campbelltown, painted white, out the front. In between the wide neat green lawn and the wide neat green nature strip. Evie suddenly felt homesick, and wished she could talk to Roseanne. Roseanne made her feel stupid sometimes, but she lived next door and was always there to talk to. Evie was lonely. An emptiness inside her.

  Evie caught the bus back to Newtown Bridge and instead of going straight home she cut down past Uncle George’s and sat by herself for a long time on the stage above the suburbs, till it was time to go and get Sammy.

  When she got home she realized she’d forgotten to lock her room.

  ‘I did not!’ Maria screamed.

  ‘I did not!’ screamed Jodie.

  (Noel heard the shouts from next door. He was in the kitchen, getting the despot’s afternoon tea.)

  They did not go in there, Maria and Jodie reckoned.

  ‘Then how come the bloody cupboard’s open, how come the top drawer’s open, how come you’ve got my hairbrush in your hand, Jodie?’

  ‘I did go in there but only just a minute ago, I didn’t open the cupboard, I just got your hairbrush,’ Jodie agreed.

  Jodie was a round kid, placid as a fish, and usually Evie didn’t mind her. It was Maria that drove Evie mental. Skinny, spiky, secretive Maria.

  But this day Evie grabbed the brush off Jodie and shook her.

  ‘Liar! You’ve been in there all afternoon, the both of you!’

  Just as Jodie burst into tears Ted came home, then Ted yelled at Evie, then Evie burst into tears just as Mum came home.

  ‘They get in my room! They hang around and follow me and use my brush on their nitty hair.’

  ‘We do not!’ Maria screamed.

  Mum sighed, and took her shoes off. ‘Why can’t you two just leave Evie alone?’

  ‘But there’s nothing else to do,’ Jodie said reasonably.

  (‘You could go and see Mr Man,’ Sammy said; but Maria grabbed her and dragged her into the loungeroom.)

  ‘I’m just an unpaid babysitter!’ Evie complained.

  ‘Unpaid!’ Ted yelled. ‘Are we meant to pay you, as well as keep you?’

  ‘I pay my board!’ Evie gave Mum twenty dollars each week, out of her thirty-six dollars dole.

  ‘It’s the rent that’s the worry,’ Ted muttered.

  Then Evie slammed into her room and locked her door while Mum burst into tears.

  Rows, Noel thought, hearing the noise from next door. Rows.

  On Sunday night he heard another one. Not the words, just the voices. This one was in the room next to his: Evie’s parents’ bedroom.

  ‘You did what?’ said Ted.

  ‘I bought a trampoline,’ said Evie’s mum. ‘That’s why I went out yesterday morning. They’ll be delivering it tomorrow.’

  It was late, too late for a row, but she hadn’t been game enough to tell him till now.

  ‘Just think, darl, how much the girls will get out of it, Jodie and Ree and Sammy, I mean. It’ll fit in the backyard . . .’ (That was about all that would fit in the backyard; you couldn’t swing a cat in this place!) ‘And it’ll give them something to do in the holidays. And Evie can teach them…’

  Evie had been in the A-grade trampoline team at school; it was the one thing she’d been really good at. She could do somersaults, and everything. But better keep off the subject of Evie, her mum thought.

  ‘...And the girls will love it,’ Evie’s mum repeated. By ‘the girls’ meaning his girls; or meaning him to think she meant his girls. For really, the trampoline was for Evie.

  Evie had been looking pale since they’d moved here . . . she must be lonely without Roseanne…the trampoline would give her something to do when she was home alone all day…That was how Evie’s mum’s mind was working.

  Evie’s mum didn’t know that Evie really had no urge any more to jump up and down on a trampoline.

  Plus, Evie’s mum thought, it would keep those other two out of Evie’s hair…

  Ted hit the roof. How much and take it back and where’d she get the money from, and so on.

  ‘Three hundred and fifty,’ Evie’s mum admitted. ‘But it’ll last forever, darl. And it’s okay, I got it on Bankcard.’

  ‘Bankcard! But you can’t use Bankcard!’

  Evie’s mum laughed. ‘We’ve never used it since the day they issued it, darl. There’s a thousand dollars, just sitting there.’

  ‘Hardly sitting there,’ Ted muttered. ‘It’s going back tomorrow.’

  ‘No, darl.’

  Rows, Noel thought next door. Family rows. They never had them in his family: at least, not yelling ones. Mum didn’t yell, she was as quiet as a little lizard, and the despot didn’t yell, she wrote angry notes, and then made them disappear.

  10

  On the night of Monday 25 May, Nobby packed a few clothes in a sugar-bag and went in next door.

  ‘Emigrating is it, son?’ Paddy Cruise smirked at him.

  ‘I thought I’d move here.’

  ‘Well have another think.’

  ‘And a mug of tea while you’re doing it.’ Mrs Cruise pushed the pot to him. This boy was the second son she’d never had. She’d patched him up dozens of times when he’d been in a scrap and was too scared to get some iodine from that mother of his.

  ‘And when you’ve finished, you’ll kindly take your little swag and go back in to your mam,’ Paddy said.

  ‘She’s no mother of mine.’

  Paddy gave it to him then. Full and strong. How his mother had given her life to bringing him up and how the poor woman could trip maybe, fall upon the stairs, and her be lying moaning in her blood and no son to hear her.

  ‘I hate her,’ Nobby said.

  ‘That’s as may be,’ said Paddy. ‘I do too, m’self. But things aren’t desperate yet. They never execute the warrant straight away. There’s still time for her to change her mind. With perhaps a little gentle persuasion. And till things get desperate, you’ll kindly stay and protect her. Life might soon be a bit of a strain for your good lady mother.’

  So Nobby took his sugar-bag home, and then began to lead a split life as the gentle persuasion that Paddy had referred to was exerted upon Nobby’s mother.

  For the UWM began to picket.

  Every day that week, from morning till sundown, Nobby and Lizzie and Mick and Paddy and twenty or thirty more stood outside in the street with banners and placards.

  NO EVICTIONS

  UNITE, FELLOW-WORKERS

  DON’T LET THE BAILIFFS SHIFT THE CRUISES!

  The little Cruise girls and the other kids from the street ran and pl
ayed around the picket line, cheering the pickets, yelling things up at the heavily curtained windows of Nobby’s mother’s place. And they skipped to the rhythm of the new skipping songs that had grown out of the occasion.

  One two three four

  Mrs Scab come out your door

  Five six seven eight

  Pa is waiting at your gate

  Nine ten start again

  Lock her up in a dingo’s den

  One two three four...

  At tea-time Nobby would eat with the rest of the pickets at the Cruises. And then go in next door to sleep in his own bed in a dark house completely silent. Nobby wasn’t talking to his mother.

  ‘Well, is she coming round d’you reckon, son?’ Mrs Cruise said on the Friday night.

  ‘She won’t ever,’ Nobby said, drying and drying a tin plate.

  ‘Here, give me that, you’ll wipe off the enamel.’

  It was wearing the boy out. His face was pale and strained. It was like the Civil War all over again, Mrs Cruise thought. And this lad split like Ireland and her Lizzie going on like a great stupid and not helping at all.

  For Lizzie was all for trouble. Jumping around on the picket line till her skirt near fell off, skipping and singing up at the windows like young Maudie and Fee, pushing Nobby further and further.

  ‘Come on, Nobby, get me a paint brush. It’s one side or the other. If you reckon you’re on our side, you will.’

  So Nobby had taken out his latch-key and gone into his mother’s house, had got his mother’s paint brush and taken it back so Lizzie could write in whitewash on the footpath outside his mother’s gate:

  DOWN WITH SCABS AND CLASS-TRAITORS.

  NO EVICTIONS FOR THE UNEMPLOYED.

  It’d be funny if it wasn’t desperate, Mrs Cruise thought. That poor woman all alone in there, acting like stone to her own son, and all because she fears my larrikin of a Lizzie who’s too young in the head to care. For Lizzie might be sixteen, she might have done grown women’s work for two years, but her mother always reckoned she was a very young sixteen. Whereas Nobby was betwixt and between.

  Mrs Cruise put a stop on her sympathy. That poor woman was to be the cause of her own children sleeping God-knows-where.