Tim Winton - Cloudstreet

Nights were long out in the tent with no wood and glass to sleep behind. Oriel knew there was only fabric between her and death, fabric and strength of character. She took to leaving a lit candle by her bed. It stood in a saucer on the old family Bible, its flame curtseying before the draughts. Thundery showers peppered the tentfly and above it, the mulberry shook itself like a wet dog. Canvas. She knew how thin canvas was, but she refused to be afraid. True, she could move inside until the killer was caught, as Lester and Quick said, but that would be a surrender to things that hadn’t even declared themselves and she knew that going inside would break her will.

Sometimes in clear patches of sleeplessness she stood at the flap and looked up at the old house and wondered why it still fought them so. Nineteen years, wasn’t it long enough to belong? But it had got worse lately, this illfeeling coming from the place, unless she was imagining it and any fool could tell you she wasn’t much for imagination.

All down the street and down every street men and women were sliding new bolts on their doors, locking windows, drawing curtains, dragging out dusty.22s and twelve gauges, opening bottles and whispering Hail Marys under the sheets while that candle burnt on the Bible in the tent behind Cloudstreet and that boxy little woman sat arms akimbo, waiting for something to show itself.

Only Streets Away

Only streets away a man with sinus trouble slips from yard to yard. Across a back verandah he creeps and a restless sleeping body catches his eye through a cool screen window. A sultry, sultry night. He slips a hand through the wire of the screen door, slides the bolt. The smell of lamb chops lingers still in the close air of the house. He’s inside. He’s decided something. This isn’t madness. He’s thought about it. He knows what rape and murder mean. He’s just come to like them.

Fish Wakes

Fish wakes. Rose hears him sobbing. And then muttering, the crazy foreign talk from the wedding, on and on, until she hears Lester stirring.

He Knows What Rape and Murder Mean

Yes, it’s a woman. Young. A short nightie rucked up in the heat. He steadies, drawing on all his skill. After all, he’s the Nedlands Monster, no less. Finds the cord from the bedlight. It’s so easy. And her breasts part as he slips it under her neck. She hardly makes a sound going off, throttling, writhing and choking and her legs spread in surrender so he goes to it on a spurt of triumph. He knows what rape and murder mean. He knows what he’s doing. They’re frightened of him. The whole city is quaking at the thought of him. This girl, even her dead body is afraid of what he’s doing, repulsed at the look of triumph on his face, recoiling at the face itself.

Oriel Hears

Oriel hears the boy blabbering and wailing up there. All the houselights are on. She’d go in there herself and claim order, but Fish doesn’t know her, doesn’t see her, can’t hear her and she isn’t that much of a glutton for punishment.

Businesslike

With his seed in her the dead girl’s gone all heavy. They’re gonna come looking for him. The police, the screaming, hurting family, the whole defeated city. You have to be a winner. Even the short and ugly and deformed, they have to win sometimes. He’s winning, beating them all. A little truckdriving bloke with no schooling, he’s killing them in their beds and they’re losing at last.

He drags the girl’s strangled and defiled body out into the lane. Finds a hole in a neighbour’s fence and stuffs her through, throws the nightie after her. Then back to the car, across the deadnight river to the missus and kids. Businesslike, that’s what he admires about himself.

Quiet

Oriel wakes from a doze and the candle is out. The house is quiet and there’s light coming from the rim of the sky. Quick will be home soon from the shift. With news, she can feel it.

Loaded House

Lester steps out of Cloudstreet, crosses the road and looks back at it. There’s something horrible about it lately. Something hateful, something loaded with darkness and misery. He doesn’t know how much more of it he can stand.

Morning

Quick stands exhausted by the river. The old town isn’t the same anymore, it’ll never be the same. The sun is streaming out over the hills and onto the terracotta roofs of the suburbs where they’ll all be waking up to the news. It’s happening out there, he thinks, and we can’t stop it, we can only clean up after him.

Quick moves along the bluffs above the river. He won’t let himself think it, but he knows he’s looking for that blackfella. He has to talk.

The City is Howling

The city is howling with outrage. They’re talking of bringing in the army, bringing across the Sydney homicide squad, Scotland Yard. The whole city goes mad with fear and outrage.

Dolly and Rose

Out on the backstep Dolly feeds the birds their raw meat. They eye her sideways and snatch it from her to back off to a distance and hack away.

Garn, she says, you’d tear me bloody eyes out if I didn’t come with a feed, wouldn’t you?

A diesel rumbles past heading somewhere on the tracks. The birds flinch, baulk and Dolly laughs.

Well, you gutless wonders! You’d eat ya children!

She sees them now pecking at her bloated body out in the desert by the tracks that lead nowhere and bring nothing. Rose comes down smiling. Good old Rose, good old Rosie.

Bastard of a Place