Tim Winton - Cloudstreet

Strike a light!

The old man dumped the great fish on the counter. It was silver and gillheaving, fresh from the river.

I just couldn’t wait to show someone, boy. And I knew there wouldn’t be another livin breathin soul as’d appreciate it like you would.

Dad, it’s beautiful.

Kept me windin a good half hour. Took him at the Brewery wall.

Just then, the fish convulsed with dying, shook scales and mucus all over the joint and coughed up a plug of blood.

Well, that’s it for him.

Beautiful.

Think we better … get it out, Dad?

Oh, gawd, yeah. Sorry. Back in a sec.

Quick wiped things down with the urn cloth and poured a cuppa for the old man who came back in, excitable as a kid.

Quiet?

Deadly, said Quick. I just wish somethin’d happen.

Wish for somethin nice to happen. There’ll be crook things all along the way.

Yeah, maybe. How’s Cloudstreet?

Oh, quiet as the grave. Your mother’s … outside a lot. The girls are seein fellas. Lon — well who knows what he’s doin. Dolly next door’s got rid of the limp but she’s hittin the sauce. Sam’s losin again.

How’s Fish?

Quiet, quiet. Lies on his bed all day with that wireless goin. Gets a bit rowdy some nights, talkin and singin and things. Says the house is angry. Good old Fish.

Yeah, old Fish.

Miss you, Quick. All of us.

It’s hard at the moment, Dad. Rose is so crook still. She’s wastin away.

I wasn’t meanin to bother yer.

Want another cuppa?

Nah. Lester looked around the smoke stained office with its rows of binder files, notices, mug shots, the old Imperial on the desk, the government ashtrays.

Too quiet, isn’t it?

That’s what I mean, said Quick.

No, I mean everythin. Cloudstreet, the town, the lot.

Quick shrugged, not understanding.

I sound like Sam Pickles, but I got a feeling. Oh. I almost forgot. Look.

Lester put two coins down on the bench.

Florins, Quick said.

1933.

The year Fish was born.

Have you kept em?

No, I only found em tonight.

Down the river?

In the fish.

What?

He coughed em out with the hook. Out they came, mintfresh. Like a sign. I’ll give em to Fish.

He won’t know what they are.

Who does? I’ll drill holes in em and he can hang em round his neck.

Dad, there’s a law against that.

Aw, there’s laws against everything and no justice at all. Take it from an old walloper. Look after yer missus, Quick.

Quick was alarmed at the old man’s sudden kiss and he was wiping his face as Lester shuffled out.

Weathering It Out

Sam Pickles went to work to earn his pay packet and on the weekends he delivered it faithfully to the bookies and came home broke but not greatly troubled. A long time ago he’d decided that this was to be a straight up and down life of bad luck, and besides the odd shift in the shadow, there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it except go on losing. If anything, he figured there was some strength in knowing the way things were — it gave a bloke security, something to believe in. People knew who he was. At the Mint he was the sentimental favourite — old Sam the Stump who’d been around since the war and wasn’t much use at anything except being a familiar part of the place. On the racetrack he was old Sam the Slump, the bloke whose luck was running at a temporary low which began at birth and would probably stay with him to the coffin. Everybody loved a loser, especially a loser of such romantic proportions. He was a cheerful little bloke, always with a wheezy laugh and a fag to give. You knew he was probably right when he said he’d have made a brilliant jockey if he’d thought of it in time, if his father hadn’t died, if the luck hadn’t gone nasty on him. And at work or on the track, you put up with him saying things like that because he never said them often, and as some lark said, he was too stupid to feel sorry for himself. Dolly was always completely shickered when he got in these days. She drank with a will and an energy he hadn’t seen for years. Snoring beside him in bed at night, she gave off a formaldehyde stink that got so bad he moved into Rose’s old room. He knew he didn’t have a chance trying to figure women out. They were always set on killing themselves. Now Rose was starving herself again like when she was a teenager. He never saw her, and young Quick seemed to be at a loss. One was bloating up like a fat spiritous pile of moans and the other was trying the disappearing act again. He was buggered if he knew what to do. He’d lost a son; it seemed fit that he’d lose the rest of them. Well, there was Chub, but Chub was too lazy to get off his arse and make any trouble; nothing would get rid of Chub. He was apprenticed to a butcher who’d become a depressed man.

By December, Dolly wasn’t even home when he got off the train. Some mornings she wasn’t even in bed. Things went missing from the house: rugs, silver, even the brass spittoon with the star of David on it that they’d brought down with them from Joel’s pub. The times he did see her she was sick and mean and Sam couldn’t find the will in him to go at her about all the things she was flogging, the way she looked, what was happening to her. He sat by the wireless, listened to the house cracking its knuckles and decided to weather it out.

One morning, with the hot hayfever easterly blowing in from the desert and whipping the dry grasses against the walls of the house, Sam got the fright of his life. It was light already and he’d finished his breakfast, and had only his hat to find before going off for work. He went through his bedroom, the kitchen, loungeroom, the ground floor hall without a sign of the damned thing, so he went upstairs and looked in Rose’s old room, remembering now that he’d left it on her dresser, old fool that he was. But it wasn’t in the room at all. There was a thumping in the walls like an erratic heartbeat, the kind he felt with a headache coming on, though when he went out into the corridor he knew it was actually someone pounding and it came from that no man’s land room at the end, the one he never much liked. He was getting late for work, but he was curious about that beating in the walls, and besides, he thought, it might be the old girl — there was no sign of her about.

The library door was open a crack and a dim glow showed. Sam went on down, and when he pushed the door open he saw the retarded Lamb boy with Sam’s own Akubra on his head, wearing nothing at all else except two silver coins on a chain round his neck. The boy stood against the wall staring back into the corner behind the door, and he was thumping the walls furiously. His nuts swung beneath his belly; his buck teeth were bared and there were tears on his cheeks.

Sam felt a bolt of panic. The boy didn’t even seem to see him. He stepped into the room whose atmosphere made his stomach twist, and when he turned he saw the most vicious-looking old bitch he’d ever seen in his life. She was white and dressed in some outfit from another time. There were lacy gloves in her hand that were beautiful, delicate as he’d ever seen. She seemed to be smiling; a sweet, frightening smile. Sure that he might shit himself at any moment, Sam Pickles took the boy by the shoulder. Fish went limp and weepy against him.

She won’t let me play! the boy sobbed in his man’s voice.

I know how it feels, son, Sam replied, certain at that moment that he’d finally laid eyes on Lady Luck herself. But when he looked back, the old lady was gone, and the only light in the room came from the hallway.