Cloudstreet (68 page)

Floater

Quick likes it on Traffic. There’s still some lair in him from younger days; the bikes and the speed still do things for him. He has the whole city as his beat either side of the river and all the way to the coast, and for the first time in months he relaxes a little. He knocks off drunks and speed merchants, faulty vehicles and sideswipers, and he turns up to prangs ahead of the ambulance, siren first, notebook later. It’s cut and dried, rules and regs, safe as houses. Until the day he pulls in by the river for his cheese and pickle sandwiches late one afternoon and sees what two kids paddling an upturned car roof have already found. Facedown, a floater on the incoming tide.

Boots, leggings, leather and all, Quick slams into the water with the spray glugging up in his helmet. The river tastes sweet and rotten. A mullet bounces off his thigh and one of those kids is crying. When he gets to the facedown child, he hoists him over, ready to scream, ready to take this river apart, and he finds he’s an hour late to save a life. Cold as welfare, a body light enough to lift one armed. With him over his shoulder and the other kids in tow, Quick wades out scowling before a crowd. On the bank he feels for a pulse, for any hope at all, but this boy is long gone. His skin is already doughy, his clouded eyes look up at the canopy of rising midges, his lips purse in a terrible, naked kiss which moves Quick to cover the face with his own hands. The sight sets off too many thoughts. In time, a siren comes keening, men come at the run, and Quick Lamb is forced to take his hands away and see it for what it is. That’s Harry’s face. That’s his own boyhood face, that miserable washed out set of features there on the ambulance stretcher. That’s the sight of the world ending, someone’s son dead. Then it hits him. That’s my brother. This is my life over again. This will always be happening.

You won’t believe this, says the sergeant from the local station.

Probably not, says Quick, putting his wet boots back on, still jittery.

The kid’s been missin since this mornin. He’s the whats-isname’s kid. The Nedlands Monster.

Quick sat there. It took a while to set on him. Him! Murderer, father of seven. The Nedlands Monster, the face of evil. That was his son he’d been holding and trying not to weep over in front of a crowd. He’d seen himself, Harry, Fish in that dead boy’s face. Quick felt something break in him as he stared at his boots.

The poor bastard, he thought, the poor, poor bastard, sitting down there in Freo gaol waiting for the hangman, thinking there’s no news worse than he’s just heard, with
this
heading his way in only a few minutes time.

The mother’s comin, said the sergeant. You better go.

Aw, gawd, why didn’t you say before! Quick charged the door, clipped the jamb and met her on the path. He wanted to tell her something, stop and give her something to go on, but he knew he didn’t have it in him and the local sergeant would come down on him like a ton of bricks.

The murderer’s wife. A man’s wife. A man. With evil in him. And tears, and children and old twisted hopes. A man.

He blundered out to the BSA and nearly kicked it off its stand.

Quick rode to Cloudstreet feeling useless as a twelve year old, reckless across the Narrows Bridge, ready to drive into the river at any second. He caned the BSA up Mounts Bay Road, leaning into curves with only wind holding him free, past the Crawley baths where he’d swum as a kid where jellyfish piled up like church camp food and the rotting stink of blowfish blew past.

Put Yer Dukes Up, Woman!

That very morning, Lon Lamb has taken a sickie off work. A cold feeling drifts up through the house from the shop where Oriel is making up the day’s deliveries, sorting them box by box, silent and ominous with it. She glances out now and then to see the dewstreaked paintwork of Lon’s FJ Holden. Elaine bustles beside her mother, gnawing her lip. Baking smells sweep back from the kitchen as Lester slips around doing the lunchtime pasties and singing some old wartime song. Lon and Pansy’s baby Merrileen-Gaye whimpers longwindedly on the landing outside her parents’ door.

Aw, that kid, murmurs Elaine.

Not her fault, says Oriel, pushing a case of fruit and vegetables to one side.

Maybe I should go up and get her, says Elaine.

No. I’ll do it.

Mum.

There won’t be any problem.

Oriel takes the stairs one at a time. Rose has opened her door to see what’s happening. Oriel waves her back. Merrileen-Gaye has a full nappy round her ankles and she looks broadeyed and uncertain at her grandmother, who strides past and throws open the door. Pansy and Lon are naked and conjoined somehow like a seesaw. They are plank and boulder, breast and bollock naked, and not altogether prepared for this.

We’re doin deliveries this morning, Lon Lamb, same as every mornin, and if yer not goin to yer own work this mornin I’ll thank you to be packin the Chev in ten minutes. Good mornin, Pansy. You’re lookin advanced. Ten minutes.

Come ten minutes later, Lon Lamb is slinging crates up onto the flatbed and spitting out the foulest curses a Lamb could ever imagine. The sound of it, the sheer vicious unhappiness of it draws the household to its windows. Customers coming early stop to watch, as if they can sense the beginning of a shenanigan. By the time the truck is packed—higgledy piggledy, boxes all over—a small crowd has gathered. A shiver goes through it when Oriel Lamb steps out onto the verandah wiping her hands, squinting in the morning light. Old men take off their hats. Throats are cleared. Oriel ignores the lot of them.

We do things a certain way in this family, Lon. It’s called the proper way. When we say we’ll do something we stand by it. Pull it down and pack it properly.

It’s fine as it is, Lon murmured.

You’ll lose it the first corner you take.

I’m not takin it anywhere. I’m off work.

Pull it down.

Go to hell.

It’s the word itself that sets her off. In a moment she’s charged out there, torn the side off a pine crate and got him by the ear. The onlookers are too sobered to roar with surprise or delight. Now his wife is watching, and then his daughter.

Pull it down.

Go to hell, you rotten bitch.

Oriel bends him like a saw over her knee and gives him the pine across the arse; once, twice, and another full swing before Lon breaks away, a feisty wildeyed man of twenty-two with his plumber’s fists up now, prancing back before her, calling:

Cam, then put yer dukes up, woman! Put yer bloody dukes up!

And she does. She gives him a left—quick as a snake—coming up under his nose to shake the crowd from its silence and Lon Lamb from his moorings. He goes down swinging, with blood shooting, and does not get back up.

His feet are still planted, but his body has gone down between them completely untrellised.

Oriel wipes a pink smear from the back of her hand, and picks him up.

It’s still my blood, too, you know. She looks round at the grinning faces, the elbows shoving, the hands across mouths.

These folk will help you repack it. That seems like a fair thing for a bit of entertainment, don’t you think?

Ongh, says Lon.

We’e cheap, but we’ve never been free.

The little woman stands there and faces them down while Lon teeters beside her. She doesn’t go away. In the end the crowd feels shame and discomfort there in her yard, and the truck is packed in no time.

Turning

Quick clumped up the stairs and went into the library. Harry was asleep in his cot in the corner and Rose sat at the dresser with a candle. The mirror threw light all about as he closed the door, the candle guttering a moment. He sat on the big bed to pull off his leggings and boots. Rose wore one of his old sweaters and not much else besides. When she leant over the table he saw her cotton knickers white against her tan. She spun a butterknife on the dresser top.

See if it’ll give me a holiday, he said.

You need one?

I need one. I need a holiday, Rose.

You brood too much.

Yes.

What? Why’re you looking like that, Quick?

We all turn into the same thing, don’t we? Memories, shadows, worries, dreams. We all join up somewhere in the end.

What are you talking about?