Tim Winton - Cloudstreet

I am indebted to several people who kindly made working space available to me during the writing of this book: to Joe Sullivan and the late Peter Bartlett for Spencer’s Cottage; to Leonard Bernstein for the room at Vlihos; and to the Australia Council for the studio in Paris.

Thanks to Erica and Howard Willis for invaluable help, and to Denise Winton for years of hard work.

Some of this story was written with the aid of a fellowship from the Literary Arts Board of the Australia Council and a travelling scholarship from the Marten Bequest in 1987 and 1988.

Shall we gather at the river Where bright angel-feet have trod …

WILL you look at us by the river! The whole restless mob of us on spread blankets in the dreamy briny sunshine skylarking and chiacking about for one day, one clear, clean, sweet day in a good world in the midst of our living. Yachts run before an unfelt gust with bagnecked pelicans riding above them, the city their twitching backdrop, all blocks and points of mirror light down to the water’s edge.

Twenty years, they all say, sprawling and drinking. There’s ginger beer, staggerjuice and hot flasks of tea. There’s pasties, a ham, chickenlegs and a basket of oranges, potato salad and dried figs. There are things spilling from jars and bags.

The speech is silenced by a melodious belch which gets big applause. Someone blurts on a baby’s belly and a song strikes up. Unless you knew, you’d think they were a whole group, an earthly vision. Because, look, even the missing are there, the gone and taken are with them in the shade pools of the peppermints by the beautiful, the beautiful the river. And even now, one of the here is leaving.

He hears nothing but the water, and the sound of it has been in his ears all his life. Shirt buttons askew, his new black shoes filling with sand, he strides along the beach near the river’s edge nearly hyperventilating with excitement. His tongue can’t lie still; it rounds his mouth, kicks inside like a mullet. He tramps through the footprints of the city’s early morning rambles and nightly assignations toward the jetty he’s been watching the past halfhour. He breaks into a run. His shirt-tail works its way out.

It’s low tide so he reaches the steps to the jetty without even wetting his shoes, though he would have waded there if need be, waded without a qualm, because he’s hungry for the water, he wants it more than ever.

Three cheers go up back there in the trees on the bank. But he’s running; seeing slats of river between the planks, with his big overripe man’s body quivering with happiness. Near the end of the jetty he slows so he can negotiate the steel ladder down to the fishing platform. He’s so close to the water. A great, gobbling laugh pours out of him. No hand in his trouser belt. The water to himself. The silver-skinned river.

He sits. He leans out over it and sees his face with hair dangling, his filthy great smile, teeth, teeth, teeth, and then he leans out harder, peering to see all the wonders inside. It’s all there, all the great and glorious, the sweet and simple. All.

Within a minute he’ll have it, and it’ll have him, and for a few seconds he’ll truly be a man. A flicker, then a burst of consciousness on his shooting way, and he’ll savour that healing all the rest of his journey, having felt it, having known the story for just a moment.

From the broad vaults and spaces you can see it all again because it never ceases to be. You can see that figure teetering out over the water, looking into your face, and you can see the crowd up on the treethick bank behind him finishing this momentous day off and getting ready to wonder where he is. And you can’t help but worry for them, love them, want for them — those who go on down the close, foetid galleries of time and space without you.

ROSE Pickles knew something bad was going to happen. Something really bad, this time. She itched in her awful woollen bathing suit and watched her brothers and a whole mob of other kids chucking bombies off the end of the jetty in the bronze evening light. Fishing boats were coming in along the breakwater for the night, their diesels throbbing like blood. Back under the Norfolk pines gulls bickered on the grass and fought for the scraps of uneaten lunches that schoolkids had thrown there. The sun was in the sea. She stood up and called.

Ted! Chub! Carn, it’s late!

Ted, who was a year older than her, pretended not to hear, and he came up the ladder dripping, pigeontoed, and dived off again, holding one knee, hitting the water so that he made an artillery report — ker-thump — and a great gout of water rose up at her feet.

She got up and left them there. They can do what they like, she thought. Rose was a slender, brown girl, with dark straight hair, cut hard across her forehead. She was a pretty kid, but not as pretty as her mother. Well, that’s what everyone told her. She wasn’t vain, but it stuck in her guts, having someone telling you that every day of your life. Probably in a minute or two, when she got home, someone’d tell her again, someone in the public bar or the Ladies’ Lounge. They’d be all swilling for closing time and there’d be a great roar of talk, and she’d try to slip upstairs without getting caught up. She wasn’t in the mood for it this evening. Yeah, something terrible was up. Not the war, not school, but something to do with her. She didn’t know if she could bear any more bad luck. In one year they’d lost the house, the old man had been through two jobs and all the savings, and now they were living in Uncle Joel’s pub.

Rose had never felt a shadow like this before, but she’d heard the old boy go on about it often enough. Well, she wondered, I bet he’s squirmin out there now, out on the islands, feelin this dark luck comin on. She stopped under the trees and looked back out over Champion Bay. The boys were silhouettes now. She still heard their laughter. The sea was turning black. Yeah, he’d be squirmin. And if he wasn’t, he should be.

Sam Pickles was a fool to get out of bed that day, and he knew it ever after. In the sagging, hammocky cot he caught the scent of his father, the invalid port and tobacco, the closeness in the sheets of him, and he woke with a grunt. He jerked upright and looked about the dormitory hut. Other men were sleeping in the half-light before dawn with their salt-white boots paired beneath them, their photos and empty bottles awry on bedside benches, and another hard stupid day of labour hanging ahead of them in the twilight. Sam knew, as anybody will know, that when you wake up on a summer morning fifty miles out to sea on an island made entirely of birdshit and fag-ends, where only yesterday the rubbershod foot of a Japanese soldier was washed up, and you turn in your bed and smell your dead father right beside you, then you know the shifty shadow of God is lurking. And Sam knew damnwell that when the shifty shadow is about, you roll yourself a smoke and stay under the sheet and don’t move till you see what happens. When the foreman comes in to kick your arse, you pull the sheet up over your head and tell him you’re sick enough to die, to give up women, gambling, life itself. And if you’re smart you’ll let him blow and bellow, but you’ll hang onto that bed till you hear whose missus is dead, or who’s won the football raffle, or what poor bastard’s the proud father of twins, or whose mob it is that’s won the war. You stay right there till the shadow’s fallen across whoever’s lucky or unlucky enough, and then when it’s all over, you go out and get on with your business. Unless you’re just plain bloody stupid and think you can tell which way the shadow’s fallen. Then you’ll think: nah, this one hasn’t got me number on it. Today’s not me day. It’s someone elses. And you may or may not be right.