But now Lizzie was dead, and save your spit.
‘You kids,’ Nobby started again, ‘at your age, you think you’ve all the answers. Think you’ve got a monopoly on morality. Well, you’re wrong.’
Noel looked at him. I didn’t go to all this trouble to get an uncle, just so he could lecture me. I reckon I was better off before. Nobby saw, and knew the look. Like how I used to feel, when old Paddy would talk at me.
‘I’m not knocking you. I was the same.’ The words stopped. You get so used to no one to talk to, your voice gets so, you forget how to use it. Nobby tried to put a gentleness into his words, but how could these two come to him for answers when all the pat answers he’d taught himself for years were suddenly questions biting him again? If we’d’ve tried it, if we’d had a chance, would we have made a go of it?
‘Lizzie...’ Evie said.
‘Ah, Lizzie...’ As if the thought of her had only just occurred to him.
Evie hurled it at him then. All the pressure of these weeks had been building up and up and now it burst. All the undirected anger focusing on Nobby now, Nobby who seemed to be the cause of all these weeks.
‘Don’t you care that she’s dead?’
Nobby laughed, a whistling sound coming through as his lips pulled back and his teeth locked fast to keep the scream in. Then his teeth split open and the sound filled the kitchen, the loud violent laugh of Noel that twisted out of him. ‘I’d rather see her dead than let him have her!’
‘Him, who?’ Noel said.
‘Her husband there in New Zealand.’
‘But she doesn’t have a husband.’
‘That’s the point, son.’ And the laugh burst now, the first good laugh for fifty years, and Nobby looked and laughed at their faces. ‘Pardon me, son. Pardon me, girl.’ And thumped the table in his joy.
This? But she’s dead, Evie thought, then she thought:…and then…and then…
She’d never planned those thens. Had never planned how Lizzie would be, what Lizzie would do, for she was me. In all the thinking through that week, in all the avoiding of the thinking, she hadn’t planned Lizzie as a real live person, as she’d planned Nobby; but nor had it occurred to her that she was dead. Evie remembered: ‘Where will I go to, when I’m a dead lady?’ Somehow, Sammy had known.
Evie cried then.
Noel felt apart, for he wasn’t feeling it. He’d only ever dreamed Nobby, never Lizzie. He wanted to reach out, feel like Evie, but he couldn’t.
‘Don’t start, girl, or you’ll set me going too.’ Nobby, awkward, then tried to mend it all with a joke: ‘And then we’ll have to mop it, there’ll be such a flood.’
It wasn’t a very appropriate thing to say. Black water swirled around Evie and Nobby.
‘So how can you accept her saying sorry?’
Nobby looked at her: accept? After fifty years on the track alone, you learn to accept it when no fish comes jumping up to be your dinner, learn to talk to your blanket who’s your only friend in the winter, learn to treat the shade as a piece of surprise. But how to teach this girl acceptance in time to stop her tears? So Nobby took the other tack. ‘Haven’t you ever done anything, felt anything, you’re not real proud of?’
(Mick’s eyes, Noel thought.)
(The years of fighting against Ted. It was me started it.)
(Mick’s eyes, Nobby thought, as I run out on him.)
‘Holy hell!’ The words flew out of Nobby now, flying out to stop him remembering his own thoughts. ‘What else could the woman do but say she’s sorry? For someone like her, that’s hard enough. It’s not as if,’ he added, his voice hard now, ‘it’s not as if it’s a bloody fairy tale, where you can change the ending.’ It’s not as if you can reach up and change the mechanical clouds.
‘So all’s well that ends well,’ Evie said, her voice adult, ironic, testing him with words Mum sometimes said.
Baiting me with my mother’s words. The questions bite, now’s not the time. At least the girl’s not flaming crying. ‘It ended fifty years ago,’ Nobby said. It’s just begun.
Evie looked at him, grasping still at understanding, but starting to get there. But there was the message still to say. ‘She wrote in my cupboard, to tell you she loves you for ever.’
Nobby nodded. ‘Thanks, girl.’
‘Tell me about her,’ Noel said. He felt excluded.
Nobby reached in his pocket for his handkerchief and silently wiped off Evie’s tears. ‘Ah, Lizzie…’ he said, letting his mind start, ‘Well, one thing you have to admit about Lizzie, she was a proudly lousy mopper…’
BOOK SEVEN
Acts
Bury me with fists clenched
And eyes open wide.
For in storm and struggle I lived,
And in struggle and storm I died.
ANON, THE TOCSIN, 1930S
1
They were still yarning at half-past one when Ted and Mum and Noel’s mum came in. Ted’s tie was undone and he had a carton under his arm and a grin from ear to ear. Mum and Noel’s mum were looking a bit anxious, but when they saw Noel and Evie they perked up.
‘You’re all right, then!’ Evie’s mum exclaimed. ‘And the girls?’
‘Fast asleep.’
‘How’s Nanna?’ Mrs Cavendish said quickly.
‘Fine.’ Noel felt guilty about the whole thing, the strain could’ve been enough to give her another stroke; but it hadn’t, and indeed had seemed to bring her out of the last one. She was talking. Don’t tell Mum that yet. ‘Better than she’s been for years,’ Noel added. ‘And this is Nobby! He’s my uncle. There’s so much to tell you!’
Nobby was quiet, looking at his half-sister, wondering how she’d take to the sudden irruption of a brother.
‘We saw yous on TV,’ Ted said. ‘Oh, not yous two, but that Sharn-what’s-it girl and the rest of your Dolebludger Club.’ But said it laughing, and helped himself to a chair and plunked the carton on the table. ‘Want a beer, mate,’ he said, handing one to Nobby, pulling back the ring-pull on his own. ‘We’ve a spot of news ourselves. Have you got any glasses there, Rita?’
‘Thanks, mate,’ Nobby said.
Mrs Cavendish seemed in a daze. She put four ordinary glasses on the table, went to take two back, and said, ‘Oh, dear, I should really get wine glasses for the wine.’
‘Not to worry, Rita.’ Ted opened a bottle of Summer Wine, then poured a glass for Noel’s mum, then for Mum, then for Noel and Evie.
‘Ah...I don’t think…’ Mrs Cavendish had meant the other two glasses to be for Ted and Nobby, but they were drinking from the can.
‘Once in a while,’ Ted said. ‘They’re not kids any more, y’know. An’ after all, it’s not every night a bloke wins two jackpots.’
‘What?’ This on top of everything else. Evie’s voice pitched up high, and she burst out laughing.
‘Call me a liar if y’ like, but at ten o’clock see – I was a bit ahead already – but anyway, ten o’clock comes, an I’ve been on the same machine all night, so I think I’ll just have a go at the next one, no one’s been playing it, so I put m’ twenty cents in, and bugger me if she isn’t a jackpot. Five hundred dollars! That puts a shine on things, I think. ’Cause to tell you the truth, well, I’ll tell you later. Anyway, it’s ’cause it’s m’ birthday, I reckon. So anyway, I stop a while, then just before midnight, I think to m’self, I’ll just have another go for m’ birthday, so back I go to the first machine an I put m’ money in an there she blows again. Six pineapples. Five hundred dollars. Six pineapples. Talk about knock me over. Talk about something coming when it’s needed. It’s ’cause it’s m’ birthday, I reckon.’ He passed Nobby another can.
‘Happy birthday, mate.’
‘Thanks, mate. Best birthday I’ve had in years. ’Cause to tell you the truth...’ He turned to Evie again, then went a bit awkward.
‘Because to tell you the truth, love, which even I didn’t know,’ Evie’s mum said, ‘because he didn’t tell me till he g
ot the money, well, Bankcard’s been going Ted because he already owed them a thousand he’d been paying the rent with, before I bought you your trampoline, so anyhow he couldn’t pay them, he couldn’t before, because he’s out of a job, which even I didn’t know…’
‘Since when?’ Evie couldn’t believe it.
‘Ah, since about the week after we moved here. Y’know I come down here cause the boss reckons he’s got a big contract in the city, an’ when we move here he lays me off.’
Evie was quiet, because you should be serious to show sympathy, it was like hearing of a death or something, but Mum was smiling, and Ted was grinning, and Noel’s mum and Nobby were heating up the fry-up, and Noel was pouring wine into the two mums’ glasses, and then into Evie’s and his, and then Ted burst out laughing, and so did Evie.
‘You secret dolebludger!’ Evie said, trying to make her voice pretend to be someone on talk-back radio, but it just wouldn’t, she was laughing so much.
‘I reckon, pal,’ Ted said. ‘Will you give me an in, down the club?’
‘Talking of which,’ Evie’s mum said, looking more like a mum and worried again now, ‘As Ted said, we saw it all on TV.’
(Not quite all, thought Noel, thought Nobby, thinking of the gun.)
‘The twelve-thirty news,’ Noel’s mum said, ‘And they said it’d been on the ten o’clock too. Were you here with them?’ she asked Nobby, feeling quite strange, there were lots of things to talk about, but she thought it best to let Ted and his family get their talking done first. Noel had said this man was family, and she presumed he must be, no one, lord knows, would come waltzing in wanting to be part of this family unless they were, it was hardly the kind of thing you’d be an imposter to. But if he was family, there’d be years and years for him to explain, and besides, Noel’s mum wasn’t the sort to really question things.
‘Here?’ Nobby said, ‘That’s for sure.’ He glanced over at Noel and Evie who were looking a bit green around the gills, remembering suddenly the dreadful mess in at 203.
‘Ah, Mum...’ Evie started.
‘Long as the girls are all right…’
‘And Nanna...’
‘God, long as you’re all here okay, what’s a bit of mess?’ Ted stretched happily. ‘You spend half your time cleaning up after the girls, reckon you’re entitled to make some of your own once every blue moon.’ (Everything’s so much easier now I’ve my troubles off my chest. And Evie suddenly doesn’t seem to buck against me any more.)
‘We’ll start on it now,’ Noel said quickly.
‘It’s not going to run away. Your uncle here and I’ll give yous a hand with it in the morning. After all, as it’s Saturday it’s not as if I’ve got to pretend to get to work, or anything.’ Ted laughed.
2
The next morning, they’d just started when Sharnda and Roger and Di rolled up in the truck.
‘Hey, we won!’
‘Won what?’
‘Whadda you think!’
Sharnda had a big bundle of the morning papers that she handed around in a rush.
UNEMPLOYED IN BATTLE FOR RIGHTS
UNRULY MOB AT NEWTOWN
WILD SCENES
Sydney police were taken by surprise last night when a thousand young unemployed workers went on a rampage in a Newtown street in protest against the threatened closure of the Newtown CYSS (Community Youth Support Scheme) Centre.
Under a banner declaring Unemployed Unite & Fight the thousand youths from Newtown CYSS yelled slogans and threats and jostled against police, who only managed to quell the disturbance with difficulty.
A spokesman for Newtown CYSS, Alexandra Byrne (32), stated during a television interview at the height of the battle that if the government were to carry out its threat to close down the Newtown and other centres, protest of this kind could be expected state-wide.
‘CYSS centres don’t offer much,’ she stated, ‘but cutting them out is yet another blatant attack on the facilities offered to the unemployed, and the unemployed are going to start attacking back.’
In recent weeks, Newtown CYSS officers were informed that the centre would probably be closed due to a rationalization of government welfare funding.
Dr Byrne, who has a PhD in the history of unemployed organizations in the 1930s and is a Project Officer at Newtown CYSS claims however that the move to close down the Newtown Centre is political and a response to the fact that Newtown CYSS staff and unemployed have been active in organizing rallies against the alleged inadequacy of the dole. The reason for holding the demonstration at that time was that the main funding committee that controls CYSS was meeting last night to decide the future of the Newtown centre.
CENTRE GAINS REPRIEVE
The Chairman of last night’s Committee when contacted late last night at his home stated that after much deliberation the Newtown Centre had been allocated funds to continue its activities subject to review after 12 months, but asserted that this decision was taken independently of any pressure exerted by the Newtown youths.
However Miss Diana Vassey (24) the representative of Newtown CYSS at the committee meeting, stated ‘We were losing hands down till we went out for the supper break and they saw the news on TV, and then when they came back in they voted the funds.’ When asked the reason for the change she said: ‘They seemed scared.’
One puzzling aspect of the demonstration is that it was held in Liberty Street Newtown, an ordinary residential street with no connection with the CYSS committee’s meeting place. When asked why it was not held at the CYSS headquarters and the press informed before the rally in the usual way, Miss Byrne replied that the unemployed would fight where they liked, and that ‘the press had all come anyway’.
Nobby reading it could hardly stop laughing. ‘Good work, girl.’ He shook Sharnda’s hand.
‘But it wasn’t a real demo,’ Noel objected.
‘Don’t be a pedant, Noel,’ Sharnda said. ‘If they believe it, then it was. Besides, when the cops got here it was real enough. I’ve got bruises all over. Where the hell were you two?’
‘Um,’ Evie said, suddenly remembering the film too and how she’d just dumped the camera.
But any immediate inquiry was stopped by a man who rode up on a bicycle. He was big, not tall like Nobby but built solid as a tank, and despite the June nip in the air was wearing an old blue work singlet and work shorts and thongs. His chest hair was curly and grey, sticking out above his singlet, and the hair on his head was wild and thick. You couldn’t help noticing his green eyes.
‘G’day,’ he said, nodding to Nobby as if he’d seen him only yesterday. ‘Had a feeling you might be here. When I seen it on the box last night I think to m’self, couldn’t just be a what-summy, coincidence. So I decide to ride over. Have to keep m’ weight down,’ he explained the bike, ‘ever since I retired.’
Nobby searched around for what to say. Noel too, recognizing. Evie knew: those eyes like mirrors of Lizzie’s.
Ted shifted a bit, uncomfortable. They were all being a bit backward about coming forward. ‘Ted’s the name, mate.’ He stuck his hand out.
‘Mick Cruise.’
‘The Mick Cruise!’ Sharnda said. It was as if a ghost had walked out of history.
Mick’s hand went the rounds.
‘It’s been pesterin’ me for years, y’know,’ Mick said to Nobby, ‘where the dickens you ever got to.’
Afterwards, after the cleaning up and then the barbecue that Ted slapped on for his birthday, they all sat in the backyard on the trampoline.
‘Strewth it’s funny,’ Mick’s eyes were roving over the yard, ‘being back in the old place.’
‘You’re not kidding.’ Nobby still felt a bit uneasy with him.
Evie suddenly remembered. There were things she wanted to ask.
‘But for all that effort it failed, but,’ she said. ‘You didn’t stop the eviction.’
‘Struggle never fails,’ Mick said. ‘It’s always better than nothing.’
&nbs
p; Better to be alive and flying, Evie remembered, than so given-up you’re dead.
‘Besides,’ Sharnda added, ‘a week after Newtown, the government was so worried by the publicity, it changed the laws. Made it harder for the landlords to evict people.’
‘Really? Unreal!’ Noel had another sausage. Victory made him hungry.
There was something else to ask that didn’t matter, but just to be polite. ‘What was the baby?’ Evie said to Roger.
‘False alarm. Come back in two weeks, they reckon.’
‘Tell us when it’s born,’ Evie said, a bit patronizing, ‘and we’ll all bring flowers and stuff.’ Imagine being so old you were nearly a father.
Then Evie asked something she really did want to ask. But it was Sharnda she asked this time. Not quite sure how to phrase what she meant, she said, ‘What did you mean, that first day, when you said something about Newtown being left out of history because it’s dangerous?’
‘Dangerous? Oh yeah!’ Sharnda laughed. ‘Not to us. To the other side. You’ve just seen the proof of it. If the unemployed of now know that others fought before, it makes it easier to resist.’
‘Like, history on your side?’ Noel said.
‘Something like that. Shit.’ Sharnda spilled tomato sauce down her front.
Mick passed Nobby a beer. ‘Here’s lookin’ at you, Sunshine.’
‘Here’s lookin’ at you, mate,’ Nobby agreed.
3
It was a blue day, a bright Newtown winter Wednesday, when they made the final act. Evie, Nobby, Noel. Walking, the three of them, slowly, with Nobby in the centre, a tall thin man in a coat and pants that didn’t quite match, a shirt without a tie, in his unaccustomed city shoes, but in his stained felt hat. Walking slow, not because of age, not because of sickness now, but walking slow in that rolling, steady mooch of the man on the track who has no need to hurry for destination is not his aim: there is no aim, but to fulfil the endless destiny of the track.
House That Was Eureka (9781922148254) Page 20