Fire?
Baby.
Oh, gawd. Dolly’s out to it.
Rose sees Oriel coming up the stairs two at a time with her mottley forearms swinging, her boots a-creak, and she’s never been so grateful to see her. Already Rose is bearing down. She can’t help but push.
Hot water, towels, boiled scissors and a laundry bucket! Oriel barks, and some purpose comes into the gathering.
Oohhhghm!
Rose feels herself lifted like a child. The library light comes on. There’s the bed.
Take a rest, love, you’ll tear your insides out. Fish, go to your room.
No.
Uughnnmmaah!
Let’s get this nightie off. Good Lord who made us — there’s the head.
Outside the Harley blurts up, sending out a volley of backfires.
No shoutin, no shoutin, the old woman says. We’ll frighten the creature.
Quick comes in with patched towels as Rose draws herself up on her knees and strains with the sound of air through the neck of a balloon. There’s gooseflesh big as acne on him. His mother’s down there making a footstool of herself, her hairy bum showing shockingly in the gap in the back of her gown. Rose has fistfuls of fabric at Oriel’s shoulder; she hoists with each burst of power.
Rose sees the stars and moon in the walls, the weft and weave of timbers behind the two strange spiritous women pressed away from her. It’s like she’s looking into the room on herself and Oriel because one is old and the other a girl, but the girl is black, bruise-coloured and the both of them are straining and it doesn’t make any sense at all without oxygen in your head. Fish is at the piano, fisting it out all of a sudden and the women fade and for a moment Rose is frightened it means she’s dying. They’re fading, fading.
Here we come!
Ohmygawd, said Quick, about to howl.
The Harley revs impatiently.
Fish lets off a burst of wild singing. It sounds like a flock of galahs passing or a man strangled in a cement mixer.
Get the cord, Quick, take the cord.
Gawd, the baby’s got his fingers crossed.
Ahhhh! goes the mob in the doorway.
You mean it’s a boy?
Wait a sec, love, we don’t—
He’s all there, orright.
Don’t worry, Sam calls shaky from the doorway mob. We all are, too.
Haah! goes Rose.
Lookathat.
Fish, cut it out!
The room goes quiet. The spirits on the wall are fading, fading, finally being forced on their way to oblivion, free of the house, freeing the house, leaving a warm, clean sweet space among the living, among the good and hopeful.
He’s lookin at me, says Fish, shambling over. Oriel reaches out with one bloody hand to push Fish’s dick back into his pyjamas.
Rose knows it’s only her, it has to be only her, but the house is shaking.
Give him here, give him here.
Cover her up.
Oh to hell with it, Rose says, now you’ve all seen me bits.
They all circle around like a two-up school, peering down.
Thank God, says Lester, weeping fit to sweep away his specs. Thank God, thank God.
He’s perfect, says Rose, and he’s gonna have sisters.
Pass the bucket, Elaine.
You’re not puttin im in the bucket? Sam protests.
She’s got a placenta to come, you ignorant man, Oriel says with a grin.
She hasn’t got her teeth in, thinks Lester grimly, she could’ve slipped her teeth in.
Wish Dolly could’ve seen it.
Shut up, Dad, and gimme a kiss.
After me, says Quick.
Don’t get slushy, says Elaine.
Red shoulda been ere, she’s the nurse.
Nah, she hates people’s bits.
She’ll be dark on us for doin it without her. She hates to miss out.
I don’t reckon I can go through with it, says Pansy.
Shoulda thought that when you were goin through with somethin else, Chub sneers.
Oriel glares and Chub backs off.
Make a pot, love, she says to Lester. And get the girl a drink.
He’s hungry, says Rose.
He’s lookin at me, says Fish. He knows me. He loves me.
We’ll call him Harry, Quick announces.
Not on your life.
Lookit the little larrikin. He’s a homebuilt Harry if I ever saw one.
Oop! Hold im Quick. I’ve got—
What? I can’t do — I don’t know.
Take him, you useless drongo, says Oriel.
Oooer, what’s that? someone calls.
And to think we were blessed farmers, Oriel mutters, catching the placenta in the bucket and swabbing Rose a moment.
He’s waxy, says Quick.
Wax Harry, Lester grins.
Put the kettle on, I said.
Put your teeth in.
What? Have I, oh I, my—
Wax Harry, says Fish.
Don’t be ridiculous, Oriel says.
Is it alive? The ragged voice cuts the room silent. Dolly swings on her heels in the doorway, face yellow and streaky.
Yes, says Rose. It’s a boy.
Well, Dolly says, squeezing out a silent belch. You can all just go out and leave her alone. I’m a grandmother. Good night.
The room sighs, the house breathes its first painless breath in half a century and outside the pig is going at it balls to the wall, giving it his all, like an angel in a pig’s body, like a bacon choir, like the voice of God Himself pouring up through the fruit trees, rattling the tin fence, shaking the old smells from the walls and the worry from the paintwork, till it spills out on the street where they’re already celebrating something else, something they’ve been waiting for in their beds all year.
X. Long, Hot, Peaceful Days
SUMMER came again to Cloudstreet. Quick got his transfer to Traffic. During the long, hot, peaceful days, Rose took Wax Harry down to the river and lay in the creamy sand with him the way she’d promised herself she would. Harold Samson Lamb fisted sand and dead jellyfish into his mouth. He was dark haired and black eyed, outrageously uncircumcized and stubborn. He grew browner, healthier, gamer. When Quick came home from a shift he couldn’t wait to play with him so he took to waking him up at midnight, at six, whenever. Harry learnt to roll, to crawl. Jealous grandmothers sneaked him out to their own rooms to feast on him uninterrupted. The household spoiled him rotten.
The house was full of comings and goings. Repairs were planned, though nothing ever eventuated, and just the idea gave the place a fresh look. Out the front, the place looked like a dancehall parking lot. There was a Chev truck, the X-ray Rugby, an Oxford, an old Humber, a Harley and sidecar and Lon’s new FJ Holden that would never be paid for.
Dolly had a few bingo friends come round occasionally nowadays. She often dragged them up to the library to see her grandson where they left fag ash all over the rug and cooed with the most breathtaking sincerity. To Rose they were a worthless mob of old croakers — bar leaners and bus stop bores — but that they so clearly adored her mother was enough for her to put up with these incursions. Sometimes Quick sat out on the stoop with Dolly to feed the magpies their topside chunks. He’d come to the conclusion that she was a bit of a character. Whenever Dolly was around the baby Rose got nervous. She was frightened of Dolly dropping him, full as she was at least half of the time, and she imagined him blinded by her jutting cigarette embers, clawed clumsily by her yellowing nails. Rose drilled herself in the discipline of refraining from panic, and as if to reward her, Harry was safe always.
Lon and Pansy had a baby girl in the hospital. The corridor at Cloudstreet was full of their squalling and the baby slept through everything. They called her Merrileen-Gaye. Pansy was pregnant again before anyone was willing to believe it. She and Oriel did not speak, and very loud they were about it.