Tim Winton - Cloudstreet

In the afternoon the old man buys a boat. He walks up to a bloke in the fishermen’s harbour and offers him money. The old girl is still as a post. They’ve just been strolling — the lot of them — now that the fish have gone off the bite with the new tide, and he just comes out with it. The whole mob stops dead and watches. No one moves the entire time it’s going on, and when the old man goes off to get the truck they still don’t move.

The boat is a good sixteen foot, clinkerbuilt and heavy as hell. A big skiff sort of boat, and it takes about a second and a half for it to be obvious that it’ll never fit across the tray of the truck. The man who’s just sold the boat laughs and slaps his legs. He’s fat and red and his scalp is flaky. He’s not mean about it, he’s just a good humoured sort of bloke. Everyone stands around and looks at everybody else — except Fish who’s looking at the water, and the old girl who’s looking at absolutely nothing and no one, and in a moment the old man turns to Quick and says:

What about you row it home, boy?

Dead quiet.

On me own?

You can take someone.

Up the river, you mean?

The old girl goes and gets in the truck. The door slams so hard bits of rust fall off it.

Yeah, you could put in at Crawley. That’s not far from home.

Hat spits. It’s miles, Dad. Don’t be daft. She’s looking at him like he’s the most dickheaded human she’s ever encountered and it hurts Quick to see.

I can do it, he says.

Right. Good bloke, Quick. Who’s goin with him as first mate?

Fish, says Quick. I want Fish.

Quick sees the panic in the old man’s face and he knows he’s pushing it here, but he knows he’ll win. It’s man on man.

Orright. If he wants to. If yer careful.

And Quick smiles up a storm.

It was hard to believe how big the ships in the harbour were when you were creeping by at water level. Quick could see that it wasn’t lost on Fish who sat in the stern with his jaw halfway to his chest, the shadows of cranes and winches falling across his brow. The boat felt good to Quick. It sat well in the water, was dry inside and he felt it cut along just fine. In the rowlocks, the oars chafed quietly in a reassuring way. The truck and everybody was out of sight now and it was just him and Fish. He felt the blood running crazy in him. He was scared. Packin em, pooping himself nearly, with all that fat, green, dredged water and the walls the wharf and tankers made high above. He rowed and kept his eye on Fish and it was a surprise how soon the bridge came over them with its restless, chunky channel water bumping underneath. It was cold under there. Fish giggled as a train roared across and it took Quick’s mind off the confusion of tide and flow and how hard the water felt against the oars, how it was like rowing in gravel all of a moment. Then they were through into the afternoon sun again, with the river wider, gentler, with boats moored at the shallow edges of the channel where grass came down the banks to sandy beaches littered with wrecked bikes and prams amid up-washed mussel shells and tidal hedges of weed.

Orright? Quick asked Fish.

The river’s big.

My oath.

Quick watched the whorling wake behind him and felt good at how straight it was. He wasn’t too worried now; his bum felt good on the seat, the handles of the oars weren’t too big for him and he liked how they stretched out so far and kept balance right there in his palms.

Cracker boat, eh?

Yeah.

It’s ours Fish.

Whacko! yelled Fish. A gull dived across the stern, slapped the water and was gone.

Oriel Lamb shoved her hands into the dishwater and didn’t utter a sound. It was hot enough to cook in but she went ahead scouring and scrubbing, letting herself absorb its heat into her own until she felt fire behind her eyes. It was even making him sweat, she knew, him standing there dumb against the kitchenette, waiting for her to say something. She slapped dishes onto the draining board. Her hands were the colour of crayfish. He can wait, she thought; he can jolly-well, flaminwell, he can damn well wait. But now that he was wiping sweat from his face with the teatowel there was a stubbornness coming on him. He was getting ready to wait and that twisted the heat up in her still more. She thought: people murder each other. Yes, it’s possible that you could just take up that meatskewer there and ram it into his lungs. Lord, she never thought it likely that he’d hold out like this, defy her, defy the whole burning rightness of her. And then he began to sing:

There’s a track winding back to an old-fashioned shack along the road to Gundagai—

She hefted the big china gravyboat and swung it with a backhand sweep that caught him square in the belly hard enough to beat the wind out of him, hard enough to knock him back against the kitchenette and slip and hit the floor bum first. Oriel put the gravyboat down on the draining board and the handle came away, still round her fingers.

Has my life been a waste? she said in a flat, still tone. Has it been that useless?.

But Lester said nothing. He sat there. It looked like he was making plans to get some air into him somehow and it gave her no satisfaction at all.

It didn’t feel so bad to have sore hands when you knew that you’d left East Fremantle behind and passed Rocky Bay, with all its puking foundries and limestone cliffs, for the long stretch through Melville and the sugar factory whose pipes came down to the water to send rainbows out into the channel. Quick saw yachts moored in flocks over on the Mosman shore and the great, long scar of the sandspit. Shags sat high on channel markers to watch them pass.

It’s a long way, Fish said. Is it a long way, Quick?

Yeah, mate. It’s a fair whack, orright.

Quick was starting to wonder if the old man was the full quid. He wasn’t sure if even a fullgrown man could do this. It was late. The sun was sitting low now, right back where they’d come from.

Can I do?

Do what? Quick asked.

Do the sticks. The rowers.

Quick rested a moment and felt the boat glide along upstream.

Orright. We’ll share. Then we’ll go faster, eh.

Fish damn near rolled them out of the boat in his excitement to get up there and it took all Quick’s will not to yell at him.

It was lucky they were headed in the long bellied arc around the Mosman spit because that was the only direction they were ever likely to go in, the way Fish was rowing. Quick pulled hard, but Fish seemed bent on digging all the water out of the river, hauling and grunting so they heeled around to port. Quick hoped Fish’d get bored by the time they needed a straight run, though he figured it’d be dark by then anyway.

Lester sparked up the truck in the dusk and pulled out into the street. Down on the tracks, an engine was hammering up from West Perth with the city lights behind. No one saw him go, he was sure. He felt prickly with nerves; his mouth tasted like sand.

Passing through Subiaco he dodged the late tram and heard the town hall clock ringing the hour, and then he steered the old rattler down along the sombre wall of bush that was Kings Park towards the University and the river.

Down at Crawley there were lights out on the river and fires on the beach. Lester parked the truck and went down through the boozing parties of prawners with their whingeing kids and boiling drums of water to where the grass ended and the peppermints gripped the bank above the sand and the thick stewy smell of the river was strong and plain in his face. He walked up and down, staring out into the darkness. Now and then he could see men in the water wading with nets, or kids with Tilley lamps and spears in the shallows hunting cobbler, but no sign of Quick and Fish. They had no light, no real idea. They could be anywhere, and it was his stupid fault. Panic was acid in his throat. Lord, what a fool he was; he wasn’t fit to have children, she was right.