Cloudstreet (8 page)

It’s slowing down! Lon cries.

Now you can see the round ended old butterknife blade and the browning bone handle—hear it whirr.

Slowing.

It’s you, Hat.

Nah, it’s got plenty in it, yet.

Gaw.

Quick knows it’ll be him; he can almost feel the metal against his skin.

It’s you, Dad.

Nope. It’s gunna be Quick, Lester said. Lookit im. He’s gettin out the teatowel already, aren’t you, mate? Here it comes again.

Elaine!

Wait. Waaiit!

Oh, Gawd! Quick thumps the table.

Quick! Arrr, Quick gets the dishes!

The knife never tells a fib, but it can make a bib for a squib. Here’s one. Who’s got a pimple up their dimple?

Lester! Oriel turns to the stew.

They rollick and niggle and shriek and giggle and the knife goes round in the centre of the table. The fire has a hold on the room now and there is warm light between bodies and noise.

It’s … aaagh … it’s Eee-laine! Arr, pimple up ya dimple, Ee!

Is not.

Carn, Ee, fair cop, says Hat.

Yeah, says Quick, the knife doesn’t lie.

And the knife spins again and again, for Who is the Smartest, for The Ugliest Feet, for The Next Prime Minister, and when the knife predicts that little Lon will be the first to marry, they rock back in their chairs until the room is ready to burst with the racket.

Orright, Lester Lamb says. One more while Mum’s dishin up. Who’s gunna win the war for us?

Plates come steaming with stew, and cutlery chinks and chairs are all a-scrape, so no one but Fish sees the blade pointing at his chest in the moment before the old man snatches it away into his lap.

Say Grace, Lest, Oriel says as she finds her place.

The old man looks away from Fish and his face goes tough.

Good food good meat gettin late let’s eat.

Hat guffaws.

Lester. Oriel looks sideways at him.

I’m grateful. To you, love. It’s good food.

Oriel looks about to give him a lecture, but her heart isn’t in it.

I suppose the Lord understands, she says, picking up a fork.

Hope He does. Cause I don’t. I’m damned if I do. And neither do you, so let’s not be hypocrites and thank God.

No one is shocked. It’s been coming, this talk. Everyone just eats on until Lon regurgitates a long string of fat onto the tablecloth setting up a groan of disgust around the table.

Swallow a snake, mate? Lester says.

It’s the pimple from me dimple, Lon announces soberly.

When the kids were asleep, or at least bucketing around in their rooms, Lester and Oriel had only each other across the table and the quiet was unnerving. Here they were again, a little square box of a woman and her plank-lanky husband. They looked each other up and down.

Well, he said. We’re makin somethin here, I can feel it.

We need things, Oriel said.

Plenty.

Don’t smile me down, Lest.

There’s money left, love. We’re not hungry.

You need work.

I’ve been thinkin.

She sighed and folded her arms. I thought I smelt burnin rubber.

Thinkin about this place.

We need our own bathroom, we need a stove, the kids need clothes—they go to school like they haven’t got a mother. This place is temporary.

Yeah, I know.

Lester dropped a hunk of antgutted fencepost onto the fire. From above came the thumping of feet as the children got in and out of bed.

But I’ve cottoned onto somethin, he said. There’s no corner shop this side of the railway line.

I know, I’ve carried the groceries back from Subi—I should know. She held the needle to the light. It was a wonder how something sharp came down to nothing like that. She looked through the needle’s eye. So that’s the Kingdom of Heaven, she thought. So that’s all there was.

I’ve brained it out. We could do it.

What’re you talking about?

A shop. Our shop.

Oh, don’t be a fool, Lest. We can’t pay rent on a shop.

We already are. Right now.

Oriel put down her darning and raised herself in her chair. What’ve you done?

I’ve used me noggin.

She sighed and squinched her eyes shut. Explain.

The front room, we’ll use the front room out there for a shop. Gawd knows, there’s enough room. It won’t hurt us to use some of it for enterprise.

That’s a good word that sounds weak on your lips, Lester Lamb. Across the corridor, they’ll chuck all whatser—name about it.

They’re broke, darl. They’re poor as us. And lazy—look at em, waiting for the boat to come in. They need the money.

Oriel Lamb pursed her lips. It wasn’t such a bad idea, though she knew well enough who’d have to see it through.

We’ll pray about it, he said automatically. We’ll take it to the Lord. No, wait on … the knife never lies. Lester picked up the smeary butterknife and sent it spinning in the centre of the table.

If it points to me it’s a yes. To you and it’s a no.

She wondered if it wasn’t really the way things were, everything just happening by chance in this sorry world. That knife spinning. She thought about her poor dead brother and the ashes and bones of her mother and sister, of Fish, the farm and every other bad turn that led to this night in a strange street and a makeshift kitchen. The knife turned over slower, flashing like her thoughts and it was no surprise to see the bone handle toward her and the blade aiming at him.

How do you know it never lies? she asked, taking up the darning again. But he was off in the next room rummaging. The needlepoint broke her skin but she didn’t flinch. He’ll be off the idea by bedtime, she thought. He’ll be back onto the old vaudeville idea again, launching the Lamb Lyric Co., and the Lamb Family Octet onto the stages of the world. And out came Lester with a cap on the side of his head and the maw of the squeezebox hanging at his belly. She felt a great jam of confusion in her as he stood there smiling like an oaf.

What’ll it be?

Something I don’t know. Play me something I don’t know.

Enterprise

Dolly Pickles left it till the last seconds of closing hour before she scratched on a bit of lipstick and went downstairs to see for herself. People had been sidling past all day. They’d worn a track across the weeds since dawn, and the cratchety tinkle of that little bell had driven her spare, but she wasn’t going to go down there early and give her tenants the satisfaction of gloating. She didn’t know why she should loathe the Lambs so much; they’d been polite and friendly, but they were pushy and beelike, the lot of them, and that little woman spoke to you with her blunt fingers nearly pecking at your tits. She couldn’t help telling you how you should be doing things, what was a better way, a quicker way, the right this, the proper that. Not that she ever got personal, she was always talking general things, but Dolly felt it all get specific somewhere between the lines, as though that little magpie was letting you know what you could do to fix your life up. Oriel Lamb mouthed off a lot about work and stickability until you felt like sticking a bloody bility right up her drawers. That woman didn’t believe in bad luck the way Dolly did.

The house was dark as she went down the stairs and along the corridor to the front. The door was open. Kids were pushing billycarts in the street. Dolly Pickles strode out onto the verandah and looked back at the Lamb side of the house and laughed. The huge livingroom window was gone and a shutter stood propped open in its place opening up on a view of that grand old room full of pineboard shelves bowing with jars and jugs, the fireplace bristling with humbugs and bullroarers and toothbusters. Crates stood on the stained floral carpet loaded with second grade fruit and vegetables and the air was thick with midges and fruit fleas. A big Avery scale stood like a lighthouse in the middle of this fog and behind it Oriel and Lester Lamb. The sign along the counter said:

L
AMB
S
MALLGOODS

quality nice - best price

They watched her laugh. She straightened her hair and lit a smoke to calm herself, leaned against the verandah post.

Well, how’s it doing, ducks?

Lester Lamb began covering the fruit with damp hessian bags and doing other closing down kind of things while the little box woman lit on her with that steely stare.

A shillin and ha’p’nny, Oriel Lamb said.

You’ll get rich if you keep it up. Dolly had meant it to be more friendly, more comradely, but she heard ridicule in her tone and watched Mrs Lamb brace up. Geez, I’m makin a friend here, she thought.

And
you’ll
have an income, Mrs Pickles.

Lester Lamb smiled weakly as though he was neutral in this, and he put the shutter down apologetically in her face.

W
E’RE
L
OCAL
.
it said:
W
E’RE
H
ONEST
,
it went on,
W
E’RE
H
ERE
.

And there wasn’t a damned thing she could do about it, that was for sure.

Stickability

It wasn’t long before everyone on Cloud Street and anyone who lived near it knew about the Lambs’ new shop, and not long before they started to spend as much as they gawked. At dawn you’d see the little woman out there sending Lester and Quick off to the markets across the rails, and the whole still street would be full of the coughing of the truck and the reverberation of Oriel’s instructions. Nobody was ever left in doubt as to how many stones of spuds she thought necessary for a day’s trading, or how to feel the ripest watermelon or what to tell that man Boswell when he started trying to fence bad tomatoes onto them again. Even if you couldn’t see those meaty little arms and the sexless ashen bob and the sensible boots on her through your bedroom window and your morning blear, there wasn’t a chance you’d escape the sound of her sending the family about its business. People started to call her the sergeant-major and they observed the way the shop came to life at the sound of her drill yell.

Soon the place was a regular feature of the street, a pedestrian intersection, a map point. It was where you came to buy a
West Australian
and talk about the progress of the war with your neighbours. It was where you could smell that daft beanpole husband of hers baking his cakes, though, fair dinkum, you had to hand it to the coot, he could bake his way to Parliament if he set his mind to it. Though
he
thought gettin a rise was only what happened inside an oven. Kids mobbed in on Saturday mornings before the footy to buy up the pasties he made. All the Lamb girls would be there, rattling the till, climbing on ladders, shaking out tuppenny measures of jubes. They’d blush and scowl when their father came to the counter singing a loopy tune.