I’ve plucked three pullets this morning, said Oriel. There’s lunch at our place.
Lester winked behind the old girl and Rose pressed out a smile.
The big day, she murmured.
To think they knocked him back three times over a rash on his feet, said Oriel. He’s got my sensitive skin, poor soul. Well, he’s showed em.
They drove down by the river, winding along the cliffs past the houses of the rich and Anglophile. Sun forced back banks of cloud, and the mottled waters of the Swan glittered across its wide, languid course through the city and its hungry suburbs. Rose felt the sun across her knees and believed that there was everything to look forward to.
Yes, Rose thought, watching Quick step up to the dais to have his hand shaken by the Commissioner and the Minister, he looks bigger in uniform, filled out, solid. Quick stood his height, his cap set perfect on his head and the buttons on his tunic winking regimental, and up there beside the other flapeared youths, it was obvious that he was older, more a man. There he was, swearing allegiance to the Queen, the very mention of whom sent his mother into a fit of weeping beside Rose. Rose saw Lester’s quivery chin in the corner of her eye, and she wished she could be brave enough to reach across Oriel and hold the old softy’s hand.
Did you give him clean underpants? Oriel snivelled.
I even ironed them! Rose hissed.
That’s my boy.
No, Rose uttered silently, against her will, that’s my boy now.
Well, said Quick on the back step where the smell of roasting chickens and spuds and pumpkin and parsnips wafted, I’m a cop.
Rose leaned against the wall where the gully trap protruded and felt her breakfast rising relentlessly.
Yeah. And a father, too.
What?
Which makes me a mother.
Rose. You’re kiddin!
No lie. Oh. Here comes the proof of the pudd—
Toast and tea gouted up against the back wall, as Rose leant out, heaving.
Whacko, said Quick, that’s fantastic!
Thank you, said Rose, taking a breath and wiping her mouth with her hanky. Just something I learnt along the way.
Flatfoot
After a month of being a copper Quick Lamb discovered that in a shift he’d walk further than a whore, streetsweeper, salesman or vagrant and look more out of place in the windripped heart of the city than any of them. Up and down he walked. People went to work, got off and on trams and trolleys, they parked cars, ate lunch, filled pubs and went home. Evil seemed to evaporate wherever he went. He was left to tidy up brothel queues in Roe Street, clear drunks from shop doorways and help old people to crosswalks. He felt like he’d joined the Boy Scouts. There was no swagger, no truncheon swinging, no Allo, Allo. He just stumped along, marked out for invisibility by his uniform, hoping guiltily for a spot of sin to come his way. On the city beat his only pinch was a drunken football coach flashing browneyes in the Ladies’ Lounge of the Savoy.
When he was transferred to Nedlands he thought it was a dinkum shift of his fortunes, but he soon wised up. Nedlands was a political station. The MPs and business barons and the old school boys lived there and the station was open to keep watch on those bludgers’ property. The sergeant in charge was a depressed and hopeless man. He sent Quick out in the afternoons down Broadway and the Avenue to show the colours and hear the complaints of the toffs. Those days he just had his thoughts to keep him going. He’d plan the evening: get home before Rose, fix some grub, tell a few silly stories and gloat over her swollen belly. They let her work on at Bairds because on the switch she was invisible and couldn’t offend the customers. He’d think of fishing, of all his children and the life they would have.
The Shifty Shadow
Sam Pickles woke up before the winter dawn with his stump tingling and the smell of his dead father there under the blankets, and he lay awake, cold and sweaty, knowing that the Shifty Shadow had moved across him, and that today was no day to get out of bed. He turned on the bedlamp. This time he’d be no fool, bloody oath, he wouldn’t; not till what was going to come had come. Dolly slept beside him with her hair splashed grey and brown across the pillow, her face crushed and old in the lamp. The house was quiet but for the wind creaking it back on its haunches.
Yer losin yer nerve, Sam, he thought, but yer must be smartenin up a bit all the same.
He hadn’t felt it as strong and mean on him since the last day at the Abrolhos, and he knew you didn’t need to be a gambling man to know that this kind of luck wasn’t about to be wagered on.
Morning arrived, the house came alive with business. Dolly slept on, Sam felt the weight of his head on the pillow. The tingling was gone, but there was still a trace of pipe tobacco and port breath in the room. He lit a cigarette and waited. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be good. In the end he slept.
Dolly scrapes along the creaky morning balustrade, wild with sobriety. Out in the street those jackhammers have started again. She hasn’t touched a drop in four days and you’d swear they had one of those jackhammers up her like a suppository. No, they wouldn’t believe you, no fear, no fear, no bloody fear they wouldn’t. You can’t get a jackhammer up there, but for God’s sake, you know someone’s smuggled one in. A drinkless sleep is murder — any friggin thing could happen, you could dream anythin! Forgot bein sober was so dangerous. A night’s sleep crawling with dreams like a girl couldn’t imagine, truly like you couldn’t begin to imagine. Oh, the years she’s slept peaceful as the dead with just the sweet purr of static in her ears. Now look at that. What I mean is now look straight at that — the crappy threadbare old rug is slippin in and out of the old library door, like a tongue from a slut’s mouth. Lessee, let’s!
Dolly throws open the library door to see the rug rolled up and shivering epileptic in the corner by the piano where the room is fugged up with the smell of hot bodies.
She staggers out, needing a drink, and knowing it’s no use going on with this stupid sobering up, passes the grey old lady with the firepoker at the landing and turns wondering too late. She goes down the stairs arse over, slopping more than she thumps, like a bag of yesterday’s fish, and as she goes, she knows for sure she’d have done it better drunk.
Oriel pulls the tent flap to, and in daylight, with a morning’s work ahead still, slips the old King James from the bottom of the drawer. Its brittle gilding comes off in her hands, settles in the hairs on her forearms. She opens it. There they are, all their names:
Lester Horace William, born 10/10/94, Eden Valley, SA.
Oriel Esther (nee Barnes) born 31/12/01, Pingelly, WA.
Each one of them, right on down to Lon, and in pencil, the names of a stillborn and two miscarriages: John, Edward, Mary. There they all are, the Lambs in Lester’s lovely old Gothic and it seems right and just. We’re here, Oriel thinks, calm again; we’re here orright.
She stiffens. There’s screaming from in the house. She goes out armed and empty handed. And not quite running.
Waiting in the hallway at casualty, Lester and Sam shuffled, folded arms, watched the pretty nurses go past. Sam lit a fag, coughing his bubbly little smoker’s hack, and offered it to Lester who surprised himself by taking a drag on it.
Thanks for bringin us, said Sam.
Ah, we’re relatives these days, said Lester.
I shoulda learned to drive a car. Never had one or drove one in me life. There’s simple things I just don’t know about.