Jesus, Rose, you look like a corpse these days. It’s a crime you know, he says quietly, a bloody crime.
I get fat.
You haven’t been fat since you were hangin off a tit. He smiles. Now you’ve grown yer own.
Rose turns to the stove and shakes the dark sausages round in the pan, seething with shame.
You have to start eatin again. It’s not a joke anymore, love.
I can’t, Dad.
Christ, you must be starvin hungry!
I am. But I can’t any more. I just toss it up again.
Bullshit, you’ve just talked yourself off yer tucker. Siddown an eat some with me. Cam, it’ll help. Some warmth comes back into his voice, as if he’s trying hard to hold himself back. Come on, love. You’ll bloody die if you don’t eat.
Dad, I can’t.
Rose gives him his snags and spuds and goes back to the stove.
Give yerself some.
Dad.
Put some on your plate. Go on.
Really, Dad, I—
Do it.
You don’t—
Do it, bugger you!
Rose comes to the table, puts her plate down shaky and frightened. It’s not like him, it’s just not him. She can’t smell grog on his breath, just the peppermints.
Eat it, he says. I’m not havin you starve to death in my own house. I didn’t go through a fuckin depression and a war to see my children turn their nose up at food—
Chub and Ted eat enough, those fat bastards—
Eat, Rose.
His fist is set on the table now, his fingerless chunk. Rose sees the pulse in his neck.
She spears a snag and bites it in half, chews recklessly and feels it slip down greasy and fine tasting.
All of it.
She can’t see him for waterblur now, but she eats and lets her cheeks run.
All of it.
But she’s up and running for the door with it all ramming upwards in her before she can even think about it. On the back step she feels her whole guts jerk and crank. White burns in her eyes and blood roars in her ears.
The house claps with the slamming of doors. Rose wonders if it was the food or the feeling of the library, or maybe both. She just wants to disappear.
You orright, love?
It’s Mrs Lamb coming up from the tent with a basket of beans.
Lord, you look like a shadow, Rosemary. Let me take you to a doctor. Mr Lamb’s got the truck out the front.
No, Rose gasps. No, it’s orright. Just the curse, I get like this when me time comes.
You look like your time’ll be here sooner than you think. Wait here and I’ll organize the truck.
Mrs Lamb.
Don’t move.
Rose waits till the little woman is gone right through the house and out the front before she bolts. She runs like a scarecrow, and it feels as pathetic as it looks.
Dusk
The library is empty. The walls flicker with a black, gleeful flinching of shade. A smell of shit and corruption rises out of the wood, causing the air to go fluid with sickness as the last notes of the departed boy ring in the room. And then the air stiffens. The shadows press in against themselves all of a sudden and dust motes freeze immobile in the air.
Down on the street, looking up with bloodshot eyes, a dark, woolly man stands with a stick, beating it slowly against his knee, humming under his breath until the dusk claims him and the library goes back to being vile and dark and fluid.
Night After Night
Sam Pickles walked the neighbourhood as if defying them all, daring someone to come up and try it on him. He’d kill them, he’d kill anything the way he was. Rose kept clear of him, dying before his bloody eyes. The boys had that arrogant chemical sense about them, as if they smelled a loser. And Dolly. Good old Dolly. Well the shadow was on him, the Hairy Hand of God, and he knew that being a man was the saddest, most useless thing that could happen to someone. To be alive, to be feeling, to be conscious. It was the cruellest bloody joke. In the dark, night after night, he raised his mangled fist to the sky and said things that frightened him.
Not a Brass Razoo
The warm weather came with November and Rose was glad of it. No more shameful holey tights, no more sleeping under old greatcoats for want of a decent blanket. The sun levering in through the kitchen window cheered her up so much she could hardly hear what the old girl was saying. It was noon. Dolly was up early. She had the look about her of a person who’d just been making grave decisions. It made Rose want to giggle, the way the old girl’s breasts slapped together like applause under her cotton nightie.
You know you’ll have to leave school, don’t you? Dolly was saying.
Rose felt the dreaminess evaporating.
What?
We haven’t got a brass razoo.
I wonder why. What you don’t drink, the old man gives to the bookies.
Don’t backchat me, girl, or I’ll give you one.
Rose sighed and looked out the window. She loved school. When she could avoid the humiliations of being poor, when she could sink back into the anonymous mass of the class, she did love it. She wanted to be a clever woman, to know poetry and mathematics, to go to Africa and discover something. She didn’t do too badly, either. Her marks were good, though they’d been slipping all year as she missed more and more days as the weakness came over her. It would have been easier if she had friends but she frightened kids off with her intensity, the hardness of her that no one would understand. A friend had to be true to death. Rose didn’t care for chums, she wanted sisters in blood and loyalty. She never went to the socials they organized with the boys’ school. Boys thought she didn’t laugh enough and her prettiness was turning to caricature the more she lost weight. Sometimes she thought she was dying and the thought strengthened her, cheered her up. It gave shape to things.
You’ll have to get a job. It’ll help us all out.
Oh, anything to help out, Mum. Should I still do the cooking and the cleaning, or will you be getting someone else in?
Dolly rose and came at her with a swinging fist and Rose felt a giggle coming up in her.
Leave off! the old man yelled from the doorway.
The old girl stopped.
Don’t you touch her, Dolly. Don’t you put a finger on her, or—
Or what, you weak mongrel?
The old man had his doublebreaster on, and the hat with the feather in it. The room smelled of shaving soap all of a sudden. He was dressed for the races.
Or you’ll be out on the street where you fuckin belong.
Rose got ready for a full tilt brawl. In a way it was a relief. There’d been a silence in the place for the last year or two, an aching, torniqueted quiet, and now it felt like coming to something. But Dolly just went past him and out the door. In the room next door the bedsprings groaned.
The old man smiled. Thought I was gunna get snotted, for a sec there. Get some clobber on and come to the races with me, eh? You can have a bet. I’ll buy ya bag a chips.
Rose shook her head. The old man shrugged.
Bag a lettuce leaves?
Carn Fish
Carn Fish, says Lester. Hop up and come out. It’s a nice day. You can take your shirt off and get some sun. Can’t lie on that bed all day. Carn, yev got legs and arms. And ears Fish, are you listening?
It’s a worry to see Fish like this, hardfaced, flat on his back, looking at the ceiling in a way you can never be sure about. He’s getting big now, and Lester can’t help but wonder what it’ll be like in a couple of years when the boy’s as big as him and brimming with all that aimless strength he’s storing.