In the library the shadows danced. Oh, how they danced. Can’t you still see the evil stink coming through the cracks, Fish, the swirling rottenness of their glee turning to gas across the rails, the rooftops, the tree crowns of the city? Take your hands off your ears, Fish, and listen to it.
Two Florins
Rose just wouldn’t be comforted about the baby, and in the end Quick knew there was nothing he could do. In bad moments he wondered what it was in him that brought these disasters on people. Even his posting to Claremont seemed to bring no relief. For two months after Ted died and the miscarriage, Rose worked on at the switch, getting thinner all the time, looking darkeyed and ghostly when she got home. He cooked for her and she didn’t eat. She had little to say as they washed up together, and when he put on the blue for the night’s shift she picked listlessly at it as he straightened up.
A whole night of pinchin pervs in the public toilets, he’d say. Maybe I’ll get a lost dog or a burgled brooch. It’s tough out on the streets, love. Don’t you worry about me?
I just worry about how many bikes you’ll go through before you make commissioner, she’d say with a weak effort at a grin.
Everythin’ll be orright in the end, love.
Yeah. That’s what they say.
When Rose quit work and stayed home, Quick knew it wasn’t because she’d had enough of Bairds or that the company’d had its fill of her. She was just too weak and spiritless to get through the day any more. He could hear her moving aimlessly all day in the next room as he tried to sleep. She picked up every cough and cold passing through. Clothes hung on her as though she was made of wire. Quick did his shifts glumly, filled in break and enter reports, and rode that mongrel beast of a cycle round and round Claremont until summer came.
When it came down to it, Quick knew he was missing Cloudstreet. There was so much quiet now between Rose and him, and Mrs Manners in the front never made a living sound. The house didn’t heave and sigh the way Cloudstreet did; it wasn’t restless in any way at all, and there weren’t the mobs brawling through, the clang of the shop bell, the rattle of crates and smokers’ coughs, the tidal sounds of people stirring up and settling down. This was orderly, calm suburbia. This was merely a list of things missing. And the new house, their dream? Well, it went up bit by bit and Quick sometimes went out just to look at it, the brick box with its red tile roof same as all the other half-finished houses in the street. It looked empty and he’d lost his way with it somewhere. He couldn’t imagine them living in it. And Rose just didn’t want to talk about it.
One night in December when Quick had the late shift, he was working on the occurrence book at the spanking new Claremont station with only the Sarge asleep in the cells to keep him company, when in walked the old man with a fifty pound mulloway on his shoulder. Quick snapped the big ledger shut and stepped back.
Strike a light!
The old man dumped the great fish on the counter. It was silver and gillheaving, fresh from the river.
I just couldn’t wait to show someone, boy. And I knew there wouldn’t be another livin breathin soul as’d appreciate it like you would.
Dad, it’s beautiful.
Kept me windin a good half hour. Took him at the Brewery wall.
Just then, the fish convulsed with dying, shook scales and mucus all over the joint and coughed up a plug of blood.
Well, that’s it for him.
Beautiful.
Think we better … get it out, Dad?
Oh, gawd, yeah. Sorry. Back in a sec.
Quick wiped things down with the urn cloth and poured a cuppa for the old man who came back in, excitable as a kid.
Quiet?
Deadly, said Quick. I just wish somethin’d happen.
Wish for somethin nice to happen. There’ll be crook things all along the way.
Yeah, maybe. How’s Cloudstreet?
Oh, quiet as the grave. Your mother’s … outside a lot. The girls are seein fellas. Lon — well who knows what he’s doin. Dolly next door’s got rid of the limp but she’s hittin the sauce. Sam’s losin again.
How’s Fish?
Quiet, quiet. Lies on his bed all day with that wireless goin. Gets a bit rowdy some nights, talkin and singin and things. Says the house is angry. Good old Fish.
Yeah, old Fish.
Miss you, Quick. All of us.
It’s hard at the moment, Dad. Rose is so crook still. She’s wastin away.
I wasn’t meanin to bother yer.
Want another cuppa?
Nah. Lester looked around the smoke stained office with its rows of binder files, notices, mug shots, the old Imperial on the desk, the government ashtrays.
Too quiet, isn’t it?
That’s what I mean, said Quick.
No, I mean everythin. Cloudstreet, the town, the lot.
Quick shrugged, not understanding.
I sound like Sam Pickles, but I got a feeling. Oh. I almost forgot. Look.
Lester put two coins down on the bench.
Florins, Quick said.
1933.
The year Fish was born.
Have you kept em?
No, I only found em tonight.
Down the river?
In the fish.
What?
He coughed em out with the hook. Out they came, mintfresh. Like a sign. I’ll give em to Fish.
He won’t know what they are.
Who does? I’ll drill holes in em and he can hang em round his neck.
Dad, there’s a law against that.
Aw, there’s laws against everything and no justice at all. Take it from an old walloper. Look after yer missus, Quick.
Quick was alarmed at the old man’s sudden kiss and he was wiping his face as Lester shuffled out.
Weathering It Out
Sam Pickles went to work to earn his pay packet and on the weekends he delivered it faithfully to the bookies and came home broke but not greatly troubled. A long time ago he’d decided that this was to be a straight up and down life of bad luck, and besides the odd shift in the shadow, there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it except go on losing. If anything, he figured there was some strength in knowing the way things were — it gave a bloke security, something to believe in. People knew who he was. At the Mint he was the sentimental favourite — old Sam the Stump who’d been around since the war and wasn’t much use at anything except being a familiar part of the place. On the racetrack he was old Sam the Slump, the bloke whose luck was running at a temporary low which began at birth and would probably stay with him to the coffin. Everybody loved a loser, especially a loser of such romantic proportions. He was a cheerful little bloke, always with a wheezy laugh and a fag to give. You knew he was probably right when he said he’d have made a brilliant jockey if he’d thought of it in time, if his father hadn’t died, if the luck hadn’t gone nasty on him. And at work or on the track, you put up with him saying things like that because he never said them often, and as some lark said, he was too stupid to feel sorry for himself. Dolly was always completely shickered when he got in these days. She drank with a will and an energy he hadn’t seen for years. Snoring beside him in bed at night, she gave off a formaldehyde stink that got so bad he moved into Rose’s old room. He knew he didn’t have a chance trying to figure women out. They were always set on killing themselves. Now Rose was starving herself again like when she was a teenager. He never saw her, and young Quick seemed to be at a loss. One was bloating up like a fat spiritous pile of moans and the other was trying the disappearing act again. He was buggered if he knew what to do. He’d lost a son; it seemed fit that he’d lose the rest of them. Well, there was Chub, but Chub was too lazy to get off his arse and make any trouble; nothing would get rid of Chub. He was apprenticed to a butcher who’d become a depressed man.