House That Was Eureka (9781922148254)

by Wheatley, Nadia; Jordan, Toni (INT)

The last Evie had seen of Noel, early yesterday morning, he’d grabbed the gun from her and crawled back through the hole. Then she’d heard him being sick next door.

  Evie hadn’t done despot duty that Thursday or Friday. She hadn’t felt up to it. Noel can do it. Or the old bag can starve, for all I care. Evie had simply slept all day Thursday, slept and dreamed and woken and slept and dreamed and woken, sleeping each time through questions and more questions, waking each time with a worse headache, the sleeping wore her out. She’d wanted to go in and talk to Noel; but the memory of Roseanne’s voice still made her squirm: ‘It’s Noel. Your boyfriend. Remember?’ Remember? I remember too much…

  Ted came back in looking shitty. ‘Wouldn’t open the bloody door. Snuck out on the balcony in his pyjamas, yells down that he’s sick, then snuck back in again, lazy little beggar. You’re a good match, you two, I’ll give you that. You and your boyfriend.’

  My boyfriend. There it was again. Evie said nothing. Was Evie-Peevie.

  ‘Don’t act dumb with me,’ Ted said. ‘You can fool your mother with your trampolining and your young-for-your-age act, but I know Lover Boy was in your room at sparrow’s fart yesterday morning, I heard his voice in there when I come down to make a cup of tea because I can’t sleep because he’s kept me up half the night with his bashing around and his ruddy mouth-organ.’

  Evie didn’t try to explain. You couldn’t explain things to Ted. Plus she couldn’t say anything, because of the gun. Evie didn’t know why, but she knew the gun had to be kept secret. In her dreams, the questions tormented her. ‘Where is it? Where is he?’ And Evie would shake herself awake, she was scared she’d tell them. Though tell them what, when she was awake, she didn’t know. One of them was a policeman, big, who yelled at her, like Ted was doing now.

  ‘But if you think I’m worried, you can have another think. Long as your mother doesn’t know, I don’t care what you do. I’ve got better things to worry about than you.’

  ‘And I’ve got better things to worry about than you!’ Evie ran, slammed the door behind her. She felt sick. Him suggesting that her and Noel…

  4

  That weekend, Evie put off telling Ted and Mum that people wanted to come around to their house and make a video. And she put off going in to see Noel too. She wanted to see Noel, to ask what he’d done with the gun, to tell him what Sharnda had told her, but she couldn’t stand the thought of going in after what Ted had suggested.

  That weekend, Noel lay in bed, with the gun hidden beneath it, lay there feeling sick. He was sick sometimes, into a white plastic icecream container that he’d brought up to his bed.

  His grandmother, in her room, was restless. Writing interminable notes, that she erased. On Thursday and Friday, while Noel’s mum had been at work, Noel had heard her mumble-whinning to her mates. On Saturday and Sunday she was silent, but all the time writing.

  At one stage on Saturday he took pity on her. Went into her room and offered to play noughts and crosses. She liked games, the despot. That was about the only thing she’d done when he was a kid. She’d played games with him. Ludo and snakes and ladders and sometimes battleships and noughts and crosses, but more usually euchre and five hundred and solo and even poker. She’d played hard, making no concessions to his age, never faking it to let him win, and in the card games they’d played for cents; so that he’d spent his childhood being hundreds of dollars in debt to her and doing chores to work it off.

  That was the one issue he’d ever heard his mother row with her over. ‘You could let him win sometimes. Or you could forget the debt.’

  But the despot wouldn’t budge: ‘No one ever let me win!’ For the despot loved the power of victory as a child does, rubbing it in. ‘I’ve won! I’ve won!’

  I’ve won. She didn’t say it that Saturday, but Noel could see it on her face, the greedy anticipation that Noel would put his nought there, and she would put her cross here, and make a line and beat him.

  But in her haste the despot had slipped. Noel drew his nought here at the bottom and not there at the top and it was Noel who made a line.

  The despot didn’t even deign to look at him. Carefully lifted the bottom corner of the transparent magic sheet and erased Noel’s nought, then filled one in for him up the top, put her own cross down the bottom, and slashed a line through her crosses and won.

  ‘But that’s wrong, Nanna. It isn’t what happened.’

  She looked then, fixed him with her eye, then wiped the whole page clean and wrote:

  ‘IF I WRITE IT DIFFERENTLY, IT HAPPENED DIFFERENTLY.’

  You’re a cheating old woman, Nanna. Then Noel thought: No, not an old woman, just a kid. For that was how kids thought.

  Once when Noel was about seven, Matt and Tasso and another kid called Billy had knocked him down and taken the shop note that Nanna had written. Too scared to go home yet again without anything, Noel had bought some random things, then written a note with those things on it.

  When he’d got home, the despot had hit the roof. Peanut butter instead of sugar, jam doughnuts instead of cornflour, and what was this Donald Duck pencil sharpener? ‘This isn’t what’s on the note, boy!’

  ‘Yes it is, Nanna.’ He’d proved it to her.

  The despot hadn’t been amused. Had sent Noel to his room. Where Noel had lain, sobbing at the injustice of the world, for in his seven-year-old mind the second note had quite replaced the first and he couldn’t see why he was being punished. If I write it differently, that’s how it was…

  ‘Okay, Nanna,’ Noel said on the Saturday, but didn’t ask her if she’d like another go. He’d learnt as a child: games to the despot weren’t to be played with, they were real.

  So that weekend, Evie sat in her room, putting off everything. She wanted to see Noel, but she couldn’t go in.

  That weekend, Noel and the despot were sick in their rooms, and Noel’s mum scuttled around the house, popping through their doors like a nervy lizard from a crack, trying to wait on them both. Took food to the despot, which she waved away. Took food to Noel, who couldn’t eat without being sick later into the white icecream container. She wanted to get the doctor, but they both baulked.

  ‘I’m not sick!’

  (Just dead I’m dead got a bullet in me head.)

  ‘I’M NOT SICK!’

  (Just alive, not dead, battling on a roof with an unwanted life while the children jump up around me like slates into the sky.)

  So all Saturday and all Sunday morning, Evie didn’t see Noel.

  On the Sunday afternoon, Sharnda came around to show Evie some photocopies of some documents she’d used when she’d written her thesis. Ted answered the door.

  ‘Hello, I’m Sharnda, is Evie home?’

  Ted looked at her as if Evie had no right to have visitors. But let her in. Jodie and Maria stared and whispered, started to giggle, then hid their mouths behind their hands. Sammy joined the game. Sharnda felt shy, tried to explain herself, talked loud over the television football.

  ‘I work up at the CYSS centre.’

  Ted really got going then. Raving on about dolebludgers, like someone on talk-back radio. What you should do with people like that is turn the radio off. But Sharnda had to go and do her social worker bit.

  ‘One of the problems of young unemployed workers is that their parents refuse to believe that they can’t get work, whereas in actual fact…’

  ‘How can you talk to me!’ Ted exploded. ‘Coming in here with your fat salary, telling me how to run my family. You live off the unemployed!’

  You’re half-right, Sharnda thought. But probably not for long, mate. ‘The way things look, they’ll cut off the funds for the centre and I’ll be unemployed myself in a couple of weeks.’

  Ted looked sharply at her, but said nothing.

  All the time this was going on, Newtown battled Souths on TV. Maria took advantage of Ted’s involvement and switched channels.

  ‘Turn that back, miss.’

  Sharnda’s eyes were
roving around the walls. But in fifty years the house had been painted and repainted, wallpapered and rewallpapered, and there were no marks that could be bullet holes in the plaster…This is all a far cry from ’31, Sharnda thought, as she observed the pine-and-vinyl chairs, the roller skates, the white-tile coffee table, the bright professional photo of bright modern smiling people (though Evie wasn’t smiling, she noticed), the TV set where Newtown was just scoring a goal. Ted and Sharnda both let out a cheer.

  ‘Looks like they’ve a chance this year, Newtown,’ Sharnda said.

  Ted looked at her dubiously. ‘Why would you care?’

  ‘Because I live here.’

  ‘Evie’s out the back,’ Ted said. ‘Go on through.’

  ‘I never used to back Newtown,’ he added, ‘but now I’m here I reckon I might as well.’

  As Sharnda went through the kitchen she heard his voice floating out after her. ‘The people you should worry about is blokes who’ve worked all their lives and then lose their jobs. They don’t have CYSS centres and social workers. Who gives a stuff about them!’

  Sharnda knocked at Evie’s door and heard ‘Come in!’ She stepped in uneasily, feeling shy with Evie too now, but not with Noel, who wandered in from the back way, white-faced and sick-looking, meandering in like he had a right to be there, a boy Sharnda recognized from when she’d been up outside Coles on a Saturday morning handing out pamphlets about an unemployed workers’ rally and he’d been there, playing his mouth-organ.

  Sharnda handed them the first of a stack of photocopies.

  SYDNEY MORNING NEWS

  FRIDAY JUNE 19 1931

  DESPERATE FIGHTING

  Communists and Police

  BARRICADED HOUSE STORMED

  Barbed Wire Entanglements and Sandbags.

  The most sensational eviction battle Sydney has ever known was fought between 40 policemen and 18 Communists at 203 Liberty Street, Newtown, yesterday morning. All the defenders were injured, some seriously, and at least 15 of the police were treated by ambulance officials.

  Only one man was hit by bullets fired at the walls of the house by the police, and it is not known how the injury was inflicted. Probably the wounded man was struck by a bullet which had been deflected in its path.

  Entrenched behind barbed wire and sandbags, the defenders rained stones weighing several pounds from the top floor of the building on to the heads of the attacking police, who were attempting to execute an eviction order.

  After a desperate battle, in which iron bars, piping, rude bludgeons, and chairs were used by the defenders, and batons by the police, the defenders were dragged, almost insensible, to the waiting patrol waggons.

  SHOWERS OF STONES

  Shortly before dawn, 50 police and detectives approached the building.

  The two-storied house, a terrace, was fantastically barricaded on the outside by barbed wire. All doors and windows on the ground floor were reinforced with towering stacks of sandbags which reached to the ceilings. Every stack was about 6 feet thick at the floor and weighed probably half a ton.

  When police reached the pavement outside the front fence, a terrible shower of stones rained down on to their heads.

  POLICE DRAW REVOLVERS

  After a short consultation, the police drew their revolvers. At a word of command they commenced firing steadily at the balcony railing behind which the men were crouched.

  HELP FROM LANDLADY

  Leaving one group to continue the barrage, another group of police led by the Inspector in charge knocked upon the door of the adjoining terrace at 201 and were admitted by a woman, who is the owner of both properties.

  Shortly afterwards, five police climbed from the balcony of 201 to the balcony of the besieged house, and succeeded in driving the defenders inside.

  Were it not for the help of the landlady, the inspector in charge stated later, the police task would have been extraordinarily more difficult, so well barricaded was the house.

  ATTACK FROM REAR

  Meanwhile, a further body of police approached the house from a back lane and made a concerted rush on the back door.

  By this time, summoned by the frantic calls for help from the guards on the ground floor, most of the men on the top floor rushed down the staircase to the small dining-room. It was here, in near-darkness, that the terrible hand-to-hand combat occurred.

  Diving one by one through the narrow breach in the sandbags, the police steadily met the terrific onslaught of the besieged men.

  Wielding bludgeons improvised from iron bars, palings, and wooden batons pulled from wrecked furniture, the guards made frantic efforts to repel the invading police.

  The room was absolutely bathed in blood. Practically every man was bleeding from one or more wounds. Insensible men lay on the floor, while comrades and foes alike trampled on them. The walls were spattered and daubed with blood stained hands.

  One by one the defenders fell. Those who were still on their feet were overpowered, and handcuffed.

  HOSTILE CROWD

  From the moment of the police arrival, a crowd hostile to the police, numbering many thousands, began to gather in Liberty Street. They filled the street for a quarter of a mile on each side of the building until squads of police drove them back about 200 yards and police cordons were thrown across the roadway.

  At times the huge crowd threatened to become out of hand. It was definitely antagonistic to the police. When constables emerged from the back of the building with their faces covered in blood, the crowd hooted and shouted insulting remarks. When the defenders were led out they were cheered. When one patrol waggon containing prisoners was being driven away, people standing well back in the crowd hurled stones at the police driver.

  ‘THE EUREKA STOCKADE’

  An examination of the house revealed a crude sign over the front door, re-naming the house ‘The Eureka Stockade’.

  This was an example, the Inspector in charge stated, of how foreign Communists would even pervert glorious moments in Australia’s history for their own nefarious ends.

  (In the Eureka Stockade of 1854, the foundation stones of Australian democracy were laid when miners gallantly fought against armed troopers).

  TREATMENT OF INJURED

  Practically every combatant was treated by the Newtown Ambulance at Newtown Police Station, after which the majority of the defenders were taken to Royal Prince Alfred Hospital.

  Twelve police suffered injuries to practically every part of their bodies and 2 were taken to hospital in police motor cars.

  Of the 18 defenders, the most seriously injured were: Michael Cruise, 18, shot wound in left arm, cerebral concussion and lacerations to head; Padraic Cruise, 41, head injuries; Lester Dacey, 54, head injuries; Joseph Isaacs, 30, fractured hand; John Murchison, 31, fractured skull; Brendan Riley, 43, head injuries; John Kennet, 19, head injuries; Cecil Kennet 21, head injuries; Gino Bellotti, 35, head injuries; Jack Finley, 26, head injuries; Reg Bly, 29, fractured skull.

  ARRESTED MEN CHARGED WITH RIOT

  The 18 men arrested were charged that, being armed with sticks, staves and other weapons, they riotously assembled to disturb the peace, and continued to riot for half an hour.

  This is the first time a charge of Common Law Riot has been brought in Australia.

  TENANT IN TROUBLE

  It is believed that the tenant, Padraic Cruise, migrated to Australia in 1916 after being in trouble with the authorities in Ireland.

  SEARCH FOR GUNMAN

  It is alleged that after the police commenced to fire upon the front of the house and shortly before they made their way onto the balcony, a gunman was seen on the balcony, pointing a gun down at the police.

  Police state that the gunman appeared to be a young man of pale complexion, and is not one of the pickets arrested.

  ‘MYSTERY’

  No gun has been found on the premises, despite careful police searches. The arrested men deny all knowledge of a nineteenth picket.

  The alleged
escape of the man despite the fact that the front entrance, the back yard and the back lane of the premises were completely surrounded by police is described by police as a ‘mystery’.

  YOUNG GIRL

  In the search for the gunman police discovered a young girl cowering in a cupboard, but careful questioning revealed that she’d seen nothing of the battle.

  The police are still conducting their enquiries.

  Noel and Evie sat on the bed, reading together. Every so often, Noel would look quickly at Evie, or Evie would glance fast at Noel. ‘Help from landlady,’ Noel read out loud, and they knew they were thinking the same thing. Then right at the end Noel began to hiccough badly. Search for gunman. He felt Evie tense, next to him.

  ‘Police discovered a young girl cowering in a cupboard,’ Evie read out loud and shuddered.

  Neither of them spoke to Sharnda of the gun they’d found. Neither spoke of dreams, or the despot.

  ‘Did they find him,’ Noel spluttered through his hiccoughs, ‘that gunman?’

  ‘No,’ said Sharnda. ‘If he existed.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Evie demanded.

  Sharnda told them then that she’d scoured the papers for any account of police finding a gunman, but there was nothing. Over the next four days the Search for the Mystery Gunman had got three more mentions in the Sydney Morning News – all along the ‘police-are-conducting-their-inquiries’ line – a passionate but uninformational account in Black’s Weekly, and an even more colourful editorial in the worst of the afternoon rags…