The murderer’s wife. A man’s wife. A man. With evil in him. And tears, and children and old twisted hopes. A man.
He blundered out to the BSA and nearly kicked it off its stand.
Quick rode to Cloudstreet feeling useless as a twelve year old, reckless across the Narrows Bridge, ready to drive into the river at any second. He caned the BSA up Mounts Bay Road, leaning into curves with only wind holding him free, past the Crawley baths where he’d swum as a kid where jellyfish piled up like church camp food and the rotting stink of blowfish blew past.
Put Yer Dukes Up, Woman!
That very morning, Lon Lamb has taken a sickie off work. A cold feeling drifts up through the house from the shop where Oriel is making up the day’s deliveries, sorting them box by box, silent and ominous with it. She glances out now and then to see the dewstreaked paintwork of Lon’s FJ Holden. Elaine bustles beside her mother, gnawing her lip. Baking smells sweep back from the kitchen as Lester slips around doing the lunchtime pasties and singing some old wartime song. Lon and Pansy’s baby Merrileen-Gaye whimpers longwindedly on the landing outside her parents’ door.
Aw, that kid, murmurs Elaine.
Not her fault, says Oriel, pushing a case of fruit and vegetables to one side.
Maybe I should go up and get her, says Elaine.
No. I’ll do it.
Mum.
There won’t be any problem.
Oriel takes the stairs one at a time. Rose has opened her door to see what’s happening. Oriel waves her back. Merrileen-Gaye has a full nappy round her ankles and she looks broadeyed and uncertain at her grandmother, who strides past and throws open the door. Pansy and Lon are naked and conjoined somehow like a seesaw. They are plank and boulder, breast and bollock naked, and not altogether prepared for this.
We’re doin deliveries this morning, Lon Lamb, same as every mornin, and if yer not goin to yer own work this mornin I’ll thank you to be packin the Chev in ten minutes. Good mornin, Pansy. You’re lookin advanced. Ten minutes.
Come ten minutes later, Lon Lamb is slinging crates up onto the flatbed and spitting out the foulest curses a Lamb could ever imagine. The sound of it, the sheer vicious unhappiness of it draws the household to its windows. Customers coming early stop to watch, as if they can sense the beginning of a shenanigan. By the time the truck is packed — higgledy piggledy, boxes all over — a small crowd has gathered. A shiver goes through it when Oriel Lamb steps out onto the verandah wiping her hands, squinting in the morning light. Old men take off their hats. Throats are cleared. Oriel ignores the lot of them.
We do things a certain way in this family, Lon. It’s called the proper way. When we say we’ll do something we stand by it. Pull it down and pack it properly.
It’s fine as it is, Lon murmured.
You’ll lose it the first corner you take.
I’m not takin it anywhere. I’m off work.
Pull it down.
Go to hell.
It’s the word itself that sets her off. In a moment she’s charged out there, torn the side off a pine crate and got him by the ear. The onlookers are too sobered to roar with surprise or delight. Now his wife is watching, and then his daughter.
Pull it down.
Go to hell, you rotten bitch.
Oriel bends him like a saw over her knee and gives him the pine across the arse; once, twice, and another full swing before Lon breaks away, a feisty wildeyed man of twenty-two with his plumber’s fists up now, prancing back before her, calling:
Cam, then put yer dukes up, woman! Put yer bloody dukes up!
And she does. She gives him a left — quick as a snake — coming up under his nose to shake the crowd from its silence and Lon Lamb from his moorings. He goes down swinging, with blood shooting, and does not get back up.
His feet are still planted, but his body has gone down between them completely untrellised.
Oriel wipes a pink smear from the back of her hand, and picks him up.
It’s still my blood, too, you know. She looks round at the grinning faces, the elbows shoving, the hands across mouths.
These folk will help you repack it. That seems like a fair thing for a bit of entertainment, don’t you think?
Ongh, says Lon.
We’e cheap, but we’ve never been free.
The little woman stands there and faces them down while Lon teeters beside her. She doesn’t go away. In the end the crowd feels shame and discomfort there in her yard, and the truck is packed in no time.
Turning
Quick clumped up the stairs and went into the library. Harry was asleep in his cot in the corner and Rose sat at the dresser with a candle. The mirror threw light all about as he closed the door, the candle guttering a moment. He sat on the big bed to pull off his leggings and boots. Rose wore one of his old sweaters and not much else besides. When she leant over the table he saw her cotton knickers white against her tan. She spun a butterknife on the dresser top.
See if it’ll give me a holiday, he said.
You need one?
I need one. I need a holiday, Rose.
You brood too much.
Yes.
What? Why’re you looking like that, Quick?
We all turn into the same thing, don’t we? Memories, shadows, worries, dreams. We all join up somewhere in the end.
What are you talking about?
The gaols are full of blokes we’d swear are different to us. Only difference is, they did things you and me just thought about.
That’s still a big difference, said Rose.
Maybe. A second’s difference.
What’s happened?
I pulled a drowned kid out of the river today. You wouldn’t believe this, but it just happened to be his kid.
Whose?
The Monster.
Geez.
I’ve pulled a kid out of the river before, Rose. When I was eleven years old. My own brother. I know how it feels. I know how that poor bastard feels. And I got thinkin about my childhood, my life. I did a lot of feelin sorry for myself, those years. I used to see the saddest things, think about the saddest, saddest things. And those things put dents in me, you know. I could’ve turned out angry and cold like him. I can see how that evil little bugger might’ve just … turned, like a pot of milk.
So you’ve given away the old good and evil? asked Rose, amazed at all this rare talk from Quick.
No. No. I’ll stay a cop. But it’s not us and them anymore. It’s us and us and us. It’s always us. That’s what they never tell you. Geez, Rose, I just want to do right. But there’s no monsters, only people like us. Funny, but it hurts.
Quick shook and coughed up a great tearless sob.
You can’t do the impossible, she said.
No, he murmured, unconvinced.
You do need a break. Let’s go somewhere.
Quick Lamb wept. He cried like something had fallen on him from afar.
Quick. Quick.
Rose put the knife down and came to him on the bed. She pulled the sweater up and over her head and let her breasts settle hot on his chest. She wrapped her legs around him and lifted her breast, silvery with workmarks, and put it to his mouth. Her nipple like a hot coal on his tongue.
You need me, Quick Lamb, she said. That’s why I have you. Just be happy. Be happy, Quick. It’s us. You said it yourself.
Coming
Autumn comes and the long, cool twilights before winter hang over the rooftops of the city full of the sounds of roosting birds and quiet leaving. Down in the yard at Cloud-street, down there in the halls and channels of time Fish and the pig exchange glances and dumbly feel the weather turning inward. The pig is battleworn, leathery beyond the threat of butchery and scarred like the trunk of an old tree. Fish handles him sweetly and without talk, just touches him on the moist plug of his snout and stands. What are you thinking, Fish? Do you feel that you’re going, that you’re close? Strange that you should be so hard to read these last stretching days. It should be rushing, like the whole planet is rushing down its narrow, fixed course. But I can’t read your face. I stare back at you in the puddles on the chilly ground, I’m waiting in your long monastic breath, I travel back to these moments to wonder at what you’re feeling and come away with nothing but the knowledge of how it will be in the end. You’re coming to me, Fish, and all you might have been, all you could have hoped for is turning for you like the great river, gathering debris and nutrient and colour from every twist and trough of your story without you even knowing. The house is clear, the people are coming to things day by day and it’s all that’s left. No shadows, no ugly, no hurtings, no falling down angry. Your turn is coming.