Orright. Last one.
I’m tired, said Elaine, shouldering her scoop net.
Red moved up alongside him with the lamp and Hat moved vigilantly with her elbows out, scoop ready. Lester was proud of the way he could bluff a crab one way and scoop him neatly in a back-handed gesture and send it flying into the tub.
The last crab of the night was a big gnarlclawed job, and Lester was caught off balance by all the competition. He scooped deep and tossed wide and Hat got the crab on the chest, its claw fixing firmly to her nipple beneath the old blouse. Lester could never have been prepared for the words she had to say. She jogged on the spot brushing at the squirming brooch of a thing until Lester swung the scoop to hit her fair in the chest. Hat went back in the water and the crab went back home.
When Red and Elaine and Lester got her upright, the four of them stood and listened to Oriel bellowing from the beach.
That crab was a rapist, said Red.
Red! Lester was shocked.
It’s disgustin, Red said. Even they’re the same. Ugh, males!
Hat rubbed herself and said a word that Lester would not repeat.
Oriel broke dead wood over her knee and threw it onto the flames. There was bread and butter, brown vinegar, chopped onions and tomatoes, and a drum steaming with boiled crabs. They ate, crushing glossy red claws, dragging long strands of meat from legs, and they laughed and watched the fire until Lester broke into song.
In Dublin’s fair city
Where the girls are so pretty
I first set my eyes on sweet Molly Malone—
Oh, here he goes.
She wheeled a wheelbarrow
Through streets broad and narrow
Crying ‘Cockles and mussels alive alive-oh’
Lester—
‘Alive, alive-oh
Alive, alive-oh-oh’
Fish called in his sleep. Quick? Quick?
Wherever the River Goes
With the cord of her dressing gown she ties you to the tree, Fish, even while you sleep because she knows what you’ll do. You don’t even see her, do you? But she sees you, boy, and she knows what you’ll be dreaming of here by the river, the beautiful, the beautiful the river. There’s always someone with their fingers in the belt loops of your pants. You’re aching with it while those dark angels laugh on the water without you. The river. Remember, wherever the river goes every living creature which swarms will live, and there will be many fish, for this water goes there, that the waters of the sea will become fresh; so everything will live where the river goes.
A dark man comes flying by your tree, you see the white of his eyes and tingle with rumours of glory. The city flickers and warbles along the banks of the Swan and in their homes, along their bars and fences the people go at it as if now is all there is, grabbing, holding, loading up for the short run, others before them, millions behind, not knowing that now is always and never, as from and to will be always and never.
I’m behind the water, Fish, I’m in the tree. I feel your pulse and see you dreaming of Quick out there in the wheat, and I see you coming. Your time will come, Fish, you’ll have a second of knowing, a man for a moment, and then it won’t matter because you’ll be me, free to come and go, free to puzzle and long and love, free of the net of time.
They’re eating, Fish. And Quick is shooting, and back home, tingling himself at the black man passing overhead like an owl, the pig is singing.
The Dark, the Dark
The pig lay in his grovel hole with the full darkness swimming over him. Up at the house on the lights out empty side there were flickers at the windows. The filthy porker stirred and caught the scent. His limbs quavered and his head went up. Curtains swished up there and that stink forced itself out through the cracks in the weatherboards. The hens shook and shat, shifting on the perch, and the rooster threw himself at the wire. A dog howled somewhere away off across wind that went slushy with the sounds of birds flying. The sound of choking and laughing up there in the empty Lamb side of Cloudstreet. The pig got to his feet and went quietly but unflaggingly: Keethro mutila gogma seak seak do, asra do, kum asra do …
The rooster crowed uncertainly and a Pickles slipper came lobbing out of the dark from across the fence, landing with a crash against the dunny door.
Girl on the Switch
Rose Pickles discovered that she really could talk. The moment the big rumplebosomed lady conducting the interview finished her question, Rose knew she had it in the bag. She was off like a shot. The talk that came out of her mouth was like a spiritual inspiration: she was snappy, polite, discreet, accurate and cheerful. Around her she could hear the emporium’s turbine hum. Even as she spoke she knew she’d be joining that sound, and she’d never felt so capable in all her life. After the interview she excused herself, fought her way through a battalion of naked mannequins and threw up in the toilet.
She started in the morning.
You should start as an office girl, said Mrs Tisborn, work your way up. But you can talk and you can think, and I’m prepared to try you out on the switchboard. Don’t be grateful and don’t be late. You may learn to be grateful in time, but you may never learn to be late.
Each morning, before the heat had hold of the day, Rose got up and lit the rocket heater in the bathroom, ate a piece of toast or a carrot, and took a shower. Next door was quiet that first week. Normally there’d be the drag of chairs and the little woman’s shouts, the whole crew thumping down the stairs to a dawn breakfast, but this week they were subdued. The shop was open again but things were calm. At the steamy mirror Rose nicked odd dabs of this and that from her mother’s makeup box and pulled on the only decent skirt and blouse she had. Her shoes were scuffed and daggy and she had no stockings to wear, but no one was going to make her wear those awful black tights again with the darning scars all over them like the swamp plague. The first morning she thought she looked fair, but the moment she walked into Bairds she knew she looked like a sick dog’s breakfast and she’d have to crack hardy till pay day.
She got the train into Perth station. In the cramped carriages men smelled of serge and peppermints; their hair was all at the top of their heads and their ears stood out like taxi doors. The women smelled of cologne and stale sweat even this early and they seemed tired and distracted. Rose saw the veins strangling in their calves, saw how their dresses dragged up, and the way the older women’s feet seemed gnarled and disturbed by shoes whose platform soles looked better suited to knocking in nails than walking on.
West Perth rolled by and then the dark verandahs of Roe Street. From up on the rails the city looked choked. Cars, trolley-buses, surging workers, the elbow to elbow clutter of commerce. It didn’t have the plain, windy spaciousness of Geraldton’s main street, but Geraldton was barely a town compared to this. Rose liked the idea of sending herself into this furious movement every morning, and besides Geraldton had just become a childhood memory.
She crossed into Forrest Place where all the men with pinned-back sleeves and crutches and RSL badges were gathering to bitch and sigh together. The GPO was sombre and imposing. Murray Street bristled with commencement of business. As Rose went into Bairds the overhead fans were turning already and floor staff were flurrying to beat the supervisor’s opening hour walk. It was a great womanly adventure, it seemed.