Quick almost never spoke in class discussions. He could never get out what he wanted to say in time. Mostly he felt breathless and confused, sometimes furious with Mr Krasnostein who baited them all about the Anzacs and the Empire. Yet there was laughter allowed, even out-spokenness. After one class Krasnostein kept Quick behind. Itching with dread, Quick stood by the little man’s desk.
You have lovely handwriting, Mr Lamb, but I’m afraid your essay is anything but lovely.
Sorry, sir.
The teacher sucked his moustache and smiled. You must remember that the West Australian and the Western Mail are not final authorities on history. Nor is what you hear over the back fence. Do you know any Japanese people?
No, sir.
No, I thought not. They really are more than just combustible material, Lamb. Do you know any Jews?
No.
Well you do now.
Quick looked him up and about. He felt his chin fall.
Here, Lamb, take these and read them over the weekend. If you’d like to change your essay afterwards let me know.
Quick went out lightheaded and he didn’t even glance at the two bundles until he got home. In his room he opened the crumpled old magazine, a New Yorker from 1945. The whole thing seemed to be about Hiroshima, which he’d mentioned in his own essay. Between pages were loose photographs of what looked like burnt logs or furniture, but when he looked close he saw the features of people. He put it down and picked up the small pamphlet. It was called Belsen: a record. He picked it up without thought. Inside were long lists, and photographs of great piles of … of great piles. Quick went downstairs and out the back where the mulberry tree had stained the old girl’s tent the colour of a battalion field hospital. Fish was out there talking to the pig. Corn stood chest high down behind the chicken wire. Next door Mrs Pickles was laughing drunk again.
After dinner Quick went back upstairs. He looked at the brittle, faded pictures he’d stuck on his walls years ago. He’d forgotten about them. Years ago he’d thought them the saddest, most miserable things he’d ever seen in his life and he kept them there to remind him of Fish, how Fish had been broken and not him. But even that punishment had worn off. Now he sat with pictures in his lap that were beyond sadness and misery. This was evil, like Mr Bootluck the minister used to go on about at the Church of Christ. Here were all those words like sin and corruption and damnation.
That night Fish crawled into his bed and Quick felt him like a coal against his skin.
Mr Krasnostein was not at school on Monday. In his place they had a strapping blonde man called Miller who looked like a wheat farmer. His eyes were the colour of gas and he read to them from the Yearbook, 1942. Mr Krasnostein never returned. Quick kept the magazine and the little stapled book in his bag, tucking them inside the loose skirting board in his room when he got home. As he came out onto the landing he saw Rose Pickles by the window at the head of the stairs, and it struck him that her silhouette was just like something out of Belsen. He’d noticed she was getting thinner every week, and now, as she turned, her eyes stood out in her head enough to make him feel repulsed. Somehow it struck him as sickheaded for a pretty girl to starve herself like that.
Oh, it’s you, she said.
Quick said nothing at all. He was too choked up with disgust. He went down the stairs four at a time. He’d quit school — that’s what he’d do.
Bones
Rose watched him thump down the stairs, then she turned back to look out across the mulberry tree, but she couldn’t recall what it was that had caught her attention in the first place. Maybe it was just the yards, the fences containing other families, more secrets. She went back to her room and looked at herself once more in the mirror. AU her bones stood out. Her eyes crowded her face. She gave a grim smile and went down to cook the dinner.
Rose didn’t mind the sight of food these days, and she managed to cook for the family without trouble. But whenever she ate more than a few mouthfuls she vomited it straight back again, just like she knew she would. She cooked at six, regardless of who was there, and if no one came she left it on the table till morning, taking a carrot for herself and going upstairs to her homework or to lie on her bed planning ways of escape.
She didn’t go to collect the old woman from the pub any more. She’d stopped that a couple of years ago, when she was fourteen. No more sending messages through to the Ladies’ Lounge, never again the screaming and slapping out on the pavement, the leery beerwet grins of old men turning on their stools, the hands on her backside, the food thrown in her face. The night of her fourteenth birthday Rose went down to the Railway Hotel to collect her mother for the little party they’d arranged, and when she got to the nicotine sheened door, she just stopped and turned around and went home, knowing she didn’t care if the old girl came to her party or if she went to hell in a hurry.
Rose learnt to cook, wash the laundry and to clean the house. If the old man won at the races she didn’t have to mend her tights on the trolley bus to school — she’d wear perfect new ones — but in three years of high school there weren’t a dozen times she went with tights that didn’t need darning.
She poured every bottle of liquor she ever found in the house down the sink and she knew it was worth getting thumped for. She didn’t do it to curb the old girl’s drinking — she did it in glee, out of spite. It gave her the most marvellous, tingly feeling to see it going down the gurgler. If the boys and her father were home in time for dinner they’d often have Dolly lurching in the door for a scene, though more often than not the four of them would hear her coming, sweep up their plates and rush upstairs to eat in their rooms. If she still had the legs, Dolly might seek them out, bash at doors, and turn a meal over in someone’s lap, but mostly she’d get no further than the kitchen where she’d sit staring at whatever was available to be stared at until she fell asleep, mumbling.
Now and then Rose tried to see the whole business as hilarious; it was like being in the first chapter of a fairy tale about a sweet girl with a nasty but beautiful step-mother. But the pleasure wouldn’t stay with her more than a moment or two. There was too much shame, too much cowering under the neighbours’ eyes, too much agonizing embarrassment going to school with a black eye or a fat lip — no, it was too real.
Ted and Chub were lazy and careless like boys were, and they were no use at all. Ted was the old girl’s favourite. Rose often saw her patting and stroking him when she was half shickered. Ted didn’t seem to care what she did at all. And the old man — well the old man was the same as ever. He’d come home tired and quiet from the Mint and shrug his shoulders. On Saturdays he’d go out to Ascot and lose the week’s pay. Rose was clever enough to steal a bit of his pay each week, going through his shirts for the laundry, but it was never really enough. She bought groceries from next door and small household things in Subiaco, but the money never went far enough to buy the boys and her new things for school, or clothes, or small treats. If the old man had a win there’d be plenty for all, but mostly it was the bookies who had the wins.