Tim Winton - Cloudstreet

Fish started coming out of his room late in the afternoons to watch Quick mend his nets over the frame he’d knocked up down the backyard. At first it was a surprise to see him. Fish poked his fingers into the mesh the first time, then left the net alone thereafter, but he continued to leave the wireless and come down to watch.

Can I come, Quick? he’d ask, sitting with his chin on his knees. He was big and rolylooking nowadays, and not handsome like he’d once been. Lips wet and turning; a squint of incomprehension that five-year-old boys learn to hide.

Not tonight, no.

When? How many sleeps?

Mum says no, Fish. She doesn’t want you on the river.

I like it.

Yeah, I know, cobber.

But I’m big!

Quick looked up from his work. Yeah, that’s true enough, I reckon.

Carn.

Carn what?

Carn, take me.

I just told you, Fish.

You did once. You took me one time. Remember? We goed in the stars.

Quick snapped an end off and put the net down. We were kids, Fish. We were asleep. It was a dream. And we were hungry, remember?

Strange, but he’d forgotten about that night. There were so many things he just didn’t think about.

We saw.

Nah.

And Quick knew he was lying. God Almighty, the things he’d decided not to remember, not to wonder about. Was it a family thing, this refusal to wonder? There were plenty of things to chew over if you let yourself, if you’re the type. Things happen — when you’re a kid, or sick or asleep or maybe a bit stupid — they happen, and maybe it’s best to leave it there.

Fish would head off towards the pig who slouched up against the fence in his smelly enclosure, and Quick would hear him talking. To a bloody pig.

Some nights the old man would come out with him. Lester was unusually quiet out there on the river. It was a relief to have him quiet these days. At home, in the shop, he was painful with talk. He’d rattle like an Owen gun, whipping off chronic old jokes from his standup days at the Anzac Club, tell stories that couldn’t possibly be true or even listened to, but even on the river he got quietly philosophical in the wee hours.

I remember my first ever memory, he’d say. I was on my father’s shoulders in the dark. It was raining, and we were crossin a creek that had burst its banks …

Oh, Dad!

What?

That’s bullshit.

It’s not, the old man murmured with emotion.

You tell such lies, said Quick, trying to sound gentle.

I know. Lester began to weep: But that’s true. It happened. Even if it’s only a dream, I know it happened.

Hey, its orright.

I’m gettin old and stupid. I’m an old showoff and me family’s ashamed of me.

Come on, Dad, I’m sorry, orright?

I just miss the playin and singin. I don’t tell lies about anythin important. You know, boy, I just like stories.

You shoulda been a poet.

Henry Lawson. No, too sad for me. Old C.J., that’s who I shoulda been.

Who?

The Sentimental Bloke .

Oh.

The river ran slow beneath them while Lester blew his nose and Quick thought about his father’s life.

No one’s ashamed, Dad. Aren’t you happy? You’ve done things.

Yeah, I’ve done things, boy. And I’m happy when I don’t think about it.

About what?

Not measurin up.

To what?

Your mother. Oh, she’s good about it and all, but a bloke can’t avoid it. You know, I was in the cavalry at Gallipoli, but as a cook . No wounds. And she lost that brother. You can’t compete with a dead hero. You can’t beat the dead.

You don’t have to, they’re dead.

But they stay, Quick. That’s one thing you’ll learn. The lost will stay with you.

Quick listened to the water under the boards. It was a strange sensation, having your father talking to you more or less like you were equal.

Dad, why’s she out in that tent, then?

Oh, she’s got ghosts of her own.

Tired of ordinary mortals, I thought.

Well, people disappoint her.

She’s a queer bird, the old girl.

She’s a fighter, said Lester. She wants all the answers.

What do you want, Dad?

I just want to be liked. She doesn’t care about all that — well she tries not to. I always wanted to be loved, that’s all. When I was a kid I wanted to be a hero. Hah! Your mother came along and I wanted to be loved by her. And I was. Still am I reckon. I wanted people to think well of me. And I wanted to be loved by God.

Were you? All those things?

I figured I was. That’s how I saw it.

You don’t believe in yourself, Dad, that’s the trouble.

Does anyone?

Mum, I spose.

No, not even her.

So what … what dyou live for?

The old man laughed: The family, Quick. Your mother’n me always had that in common. Take away the family and that’s it, there’s no point.

Our family? Us. Come on!

It’s why I don’t shoot meself quietly in the head with the old Webley. If I did nothin else in me weak old life, Quick, I know I had a family and I enjoyed every bit of it. Hell, I made youse laugh, didn’t I? We had fun, all of us, didn’t we?

Quick thought about it. They lived like some newspaper cartoon — yokels, bumpkins, fruitcakes in their passed down mended up clothes, ordered like an army floorshow. They worked their bums off and took life seriously: there was good and bad, punishment and reward and the isolation of queerness. But there was love too, and always there was music and dancing and jokes, even in the miserable times after Fish drowned.

Quick? Boy? Didn’t we?

My oath, Dad.

You’re wastin yer brains out here on the river, son. You should be usin yer brains.

I like it, Dad. The water makes me happy, lets me think.

You need some ambition.

What big ambition did you have, apart from wantin to be a hero?

Nothin. I just wanted to be a good man.

That’s all I want.

Well, there’s time. A whole river of time, Quick. Easy to be a good man out here — there’s no one else to think of. Lester pointed to the lights above Perth water where the city hung and the suburbs began their outward roll. But up there, that’s the test.

Quick rowed on the slackening tide while the old man crooned a hymn from times back.

That year Quick worked the river from the narrows, where the bridge was going up, down to Blackwall reach where stolen cars and hot pistols were thrown from the cliff into the impossible deep, and even as far as East Fremantle in the shadow of the soap factory and the foundries where the channels ran full of fish, where now and then on the incoming tide, a body might be found, some wharfie, sailor, drunk and king hit. He got plenty of time out there alone to think, and by the beginning of winter, he knew that he really was wasting his time. The fish were selling, the shop was doing well, but he was operating inside a routine. He liked to be on the water, he liked the business of nets and line and fish, but he knew it was a postponement of something.

One afternoon, he gave in to Fish, smuggled him into the Chev before dusk with the wireless still chirping up in the fuggy room, and enough closing hour business in the shop to confuse things.

They drove down along the cliff at Peppermint Grove where in the last light of day, the great, lazy broadness of the river was exposed to them, turning light in insect movements, pricked white with the slackbellied yachts setting out for a twilight run around the Mosman Spit and Claremont water beyond. Fish gasped.

Haaaah! The water!

That’s the stuff, orright.

You good, Quick.

Ah, dry up, Quick said, smiling.

Haah.

You know the rules?

I have to have string.

I’ll tie your belt to the seat so you don’t fall out, and you have to wear this.