Dolly saw the stars spangled across the sky. The moon hung sallow in their midst. Something was shifting, she knew it. Any moment now, one of them’d go ahead and say what it took.
Across the Rails
Right that moment, on the other side of the rails, in a sea of wild oats, Ted Pickles tears a girl’s brassiere aside and lays his hands on her breasts. He’s thinking she looks like Martha Vickers in that flick Alimony, and she’s looking at him with narrowed eyes, a fag on her lip and her sweater up under her chin.
You’re a bastard, she says.
You’ve got nice tits, he says back.
A train comes squealing into the station and he kisses her neck, feels her go soft under him. Her nails dig into his arms and the grass flattens over them both in the train’s rush of wind.
All Money Down
In October the basic wage went up a quid, but the union wasn’t satisfied, it being way below the claim, though Sam couldn’t get angry — a pound was a pound. He knew that bastard Menzies would keep the screws on them as long as he lasted, and he looked like lasting forever. Anyway, the big knobs of the union didn’t seem much different from the enemy these days. You’d never pick em for workers, not in a month of Sundays, and a man’d be a fool to trust em an inch. The hell with em. It was spring and he’d be taking home a quid he didn’t have last week. And he needed the money. These days at the races, everything he backed came home hanging its arse like its back legs’d been sawn off. He hadn’t taken a win or a place since Christmas, though he figured it was all money down against the pot coming his way.
Sam didn’t mind the Mint work so much. It cheered him up to be around the money and he wouldn’t pretend it was otherwise. The whole place filled with the stink of melting and burning, the thump of the presses and the whang of steel gates. He oiled machines and wiped them down with cotton waste. He stood on the belt line spotting for duds and took the trollies back and forth. He had no enemies there, and though they were a foulmouthed bunch of bastards, he thought they were decent sorts. Everyone had little perks but no one’d tolerate serious diddling. Any dinkum thief found himself ushered into the shadowy part of the courtyard where a few words of advice would be delivered.
It was clear enough to Sam that the other blokes were uneasy about his stumpy hand. It wasn’t just their good nature that kept them off his back, they were frightened of having his luck rub off on them.
Sam took to sucking big round peppermints at work, and he always had one stuffed in his cheek when it came to going out through the gates each afternoon. The security bloke frisked them all and the gates opened for them, two by two. There weren’t many coins bigger than a peppermint and it was easy to take something out now and then for the kids, though they were getting old for it now. One time he came out with a Snowy River Scheme Commencement Medallion. It was a hell of a peppermint to be sucking, but he turned it appreciatively in his cheek as the security man checked his pockets.
Now the days were getting longer and the light was lasting, he’d walk up Hay Street in the evenings and hear the clock on the town hall toll the hour. He liked the walk in the warm five o’clock breeze better than the closepressed tram to the station. People would be hurrying along the pavements, calling, whistling, dropping things, skylarking. Pretty women would be spilling out of Bairds and Foys and Alberts. In Forrest Place, in the rank shade of the GPO, old diggers sat bathing in the breeze and swapping news pages. European fruit sellers, Baits and Italians, would be haranguing from the footpath with their sad faces weary as unmade beds, and along Wellington Street trolley buses would haul full loads of arms and legs up the hill. The sky would be fading blue. The station was sootrimmed and roaring with crowds. When a train came Sam swung up and stood in the doorway with his gladstone bag and hat in hand and he waited the three stops knowing he was young enough to be walking it, lazy enough, though, to know better.
The day the basic wage was upped a quid, he got out at his stop and a tall, thin, long-jawed woman stopped him on the platform.
You Mr Pickles? Sam Pickles?
Yeah. Yes that’s me.
Passengers faded from the platform, the train heaved itself round the bend. Two date palms down on the street waved solemnly.
You don’t know me, and I really don’t know you, and I’ve got nothin against you or anythin, but I think you should try to control your wife. She said it in a gaspy, short winded way, and her mouth was all atremble by the time she finished, but Sam felt so black with fury that he wasn’t in the least bit sympathetic.
And I think you should mind your own bloody business, lady.
He stuffed his Akubra on his head and went on, his bag butting against his knee.
Well it’s my business, too! she called out, thickthroated with sobs. It’s my husband I’m talkin about. I’ve got young-ens to look after and she’s got no right. It’s a mortal sin!
Sam went down the stairs with the fury going out of him. He walked along Railway Parade where the dandelions moved in the jaded light and by the time he had reached Cloudstreet there was only a dull soreness in him, something inevitable, something he knew he’d been resigned to for years.
Now Black Now White
Rose loves that weird boy, she knows it. She leaves the spuds boiling on the stove and the snags spitting on low heat to go upstairs to listen to him tinkling on the piano. If everything was like the books she reads it’d be sweet, miraculous music coming down from that bookless, windowless library up there, but its just jangly noise though Fish doesn’t thump it any more. Nowadays she can hardly get up the stairs without breaks, but she gets up without stopping this time, for fear of missing a look at Fish.
Breathless and giddy she stands at the half-open library door to watch him with his back to her, pushing the keys gently as if marvelling at the difference in them still — now black now white, first a finger, then a full hand spread. It’s horror movie music and she thinks of some poor sad movie monster hearing bittersweet music.
He’s big now, Fish. Fourteen and growing like a man. His hair is fair and long, half obscuring his little ears. These days his feet are on the ground when he plays.
Rose can’t see the look on his face. She’d expect it to be a glowing, rapt expression, but it’s grim and hardset. She listens to the thang-dung-dim-tink of his music and wants only to touch him, to be friendly, and yes, if she’s honest, to get a kiss. It’s ridiculous — she’s too old for him and he’s a slow learner and a tenant and a Lamb, for gawdsake, but he’s just the grousest looking boy, and his hot blue eyes make you go racy inside. Rose steps into the room and Fish stops without looking around. Just inside the door the sickest, foulest feeling comes over her. She knows it from before, the taste of that horrible rotten smell that comes not into your nose, but straight into your mouth, onto your tongue, sliding round on you, curdling your spit till you’re ready to vomit.
She races out and stumps downstairs, sick and hurting.
The old man is in the kitchen, turning his hat over in his hands like a man at a wake.
I turned the snags off, he says. The spuds look ready.
Sorry. I haven’t got any greens ready.
Don’t bother. Where’s the boys?
Dunno.
He doesn’t even enquire after the old girl. She watches him put his hat on a chair and roll his sleeves up in a distracted sort of fashion. Then he settles on her, looks hard at her. She blushes, still a bit shaky from the upstairs feeling.