You look beautiful, now shut up.
The sergeant major’s at it again, thinks Rose.
Rose! Brekky’s ready.
Coming.
Rose snaps her makeup case back together and straightens herself. She catches a whiff of something terrible.
In Lester’s bedroom, Fish stops laughing and Lester thanks God or whoever for ending it before it killed the boy. Fish is all got up in a serge suit, dark as a bagman, and now his father can straighten him up and comb his hair, glad that he shaved him last night.
It’s Hat’s big day, Fishcake. She’s gonna be married.
Quick.
What?
Quick, Lestah.
No, it’s Geoffrey Birch, from Pemberton. He’s a timber man.
There’s the snort of airbrakes outside and a sweet gummy pong.
Whew.
Quick.
Oh, Gawd, there’s someone at the door. Stay here boy.
Lester goes through the shop and meets Oriel at the front door. Sam Pickles is halfway down the stairs.
Let’s hope it’s not the groom, Sam says with a chuckle. Oriel levels her martial look at him until he goes up again.
Open it, Lest.
Morning light pours in on them and for a while they can’t see who it is backlit in their doorway.
Lester. Oriel. We’ve brought him home. Hello? It’s Earl and May. From Margaret.
Oriel barges past like a half back and sends them whirling out onto the verandah. There is fierce morning light in the cab as she climbs up to the door of the pigstinking cattle truck with house windows and doors cracking open behind her. She hauls on the handle, swings the door out past her hip, sees Quick Lamb in there, wedged between the seats asleep and glowing.
Lawd, he’s glowin like a lamp, says Lester behind her. Hala-bloody-lujah!
Oriel turns on him: Get your mouth outta gear and help me get him inside. You’re a pimple of a man, sometimes, Lester Lamb.
Oh, but you love me.
She snarls and he gets helpful.
He’s thin.
He’s home.
He looks terrible, and don’t smarm up like this.
They carry him in, long and bony, before the gathered crowd. Up in the house the piano jangles but Fish is out on a second storey windowsill leaping and kicking like a squaredancer.
Rose Pickles snaps her handbag closed and passes on the verandah.
Good morning, she says brightly.
Damn right, Lester replies.
Hold him up, Lest, for pity’s sake!
Upstairs, Hat is bawling: That’s it, then, that stabs that in the guts.
Oriel rears: Leave off with that racket and make up your bed for him. Where’s Beryl?
Asleep still, like a Cathlick!
Get her up. Get dressed. Get ready and get married — we need the space.
Tell me you’re happy, Lester says halfway up the stairs. Tell me you’re happy to have him back.
He could have timed it better, don’t you think?
I couldn’t give a damn, you know.
I’m happy, I’m happy, just lift your end. We’ve got a weddin on.
The Do
At a quarter to ten that Saturday morning, with the sun streaming across in a dockside farewell that lit up every peeling, rusted surface, each brushed jacket and bleached blouse, the Lamb family climbed into the truck to follow father and bride who led billowing on the Harley and sidecar.
They proceeded at a stately pace to an Anglican church in Shenton Park, a venue of committee compromise, and were met by a fidgeting group of inlaws-to-be whose jaws dropped like eggs from tall chooks.
Oriel marshalled her children inside and left Lester and Hat scuffing their toes on the pavement outside. Black swans came low across the sky, searching out the lake. Children rattled by on larrikin billycarts. Earl and May pulled up and parked the seven tonner in front of the church, pigs squealing and stinking.
I’11 miss yer, love, Lester said, looking at his tall eldest daughter. You’re a fine girl an I never saw a better marbles player in me life.
Oh, Gawd, Dad, let’s go in and sign on the line.
You can always come home.
Think we shoulda done it in a real church? You know, without the stained glass and the chessmen?
Lester shrugged. Well. Your bloke’s from that kinda family.
Yer a dag, Dad.
Let’s go in. Looks like an overpainted gin palace.
Hat went in with the giggles, and, without the dignified snooting of the pipe organ, the whole business would have turned into a footy match.
Oriel sat up front with her rank and file, peering discreetly at the statues and the lantern slides the stained glass made, trying to muster up some silent thanksgiving for this day. Fish began to hum a beefy descant across the anthem as Hat came down the aisle sending everyone up out of their pews, reverent and neckcraning. I have a son at home who is glowing, thought Oriel, as Hat came past looking tall and proud. Oriel felt the centripetal pull of the old things and she felt lonely the way she never had in her life. The words rolled out, the prayers proceeded like rote school poems, she upped and downed with the rest of them and kept her eyes off the Christ pictures, the ones that really set her teeth. It was like fighting off a toothache — you had to concentrate and will, overcome, pretend, become another thing.
Before she was ready for it, Oriel saw Hat and Geoffery Birch from Pemberton going back up the aisle with the organ snuffling in their wake.
Mum, yer crying, Hat said out in the sunshine.
No, it’s just sweat.
Oriel hugged her daughter till the whole lampshade and gauze construction went askew.
I’m losin children.
And yerv gained a son, said Geoffery Birch from Pemberton.
Yairs, Oriel said, without feeling.
They drove off in a pale blue Humber festooned with toilet paper and lipstick and Oriel thought glumly of the feast ahead. Should have cooked for it myself, she mused; it’s a lot of money.
Lambs!
They gathered round her. Fish looked into the sun, his tie the shape of a pig’s tail already. Lon scratched at the bumfluff on his chin. Elaine squinted, a sulk coming on.
I want some behaviour at the do, alright?
Orright, said Lester.
Lester.
Yes. Yes.
I want an example set. There’ll be alcohol there. I want Lamb behaviour. Remember, we’re Lambs, not sheep.
There was a stenchy gust of airbrakes as Earl and May’s truck pulled out. Fish waved to the shitpaddling pigs who steamed in the sun and lurched into the turn.
They’re not a bad pair for relatives, said Lester.
They’ll see us in Heaven, dear, said Oriel. A smile slipped in under her nose and the whole mob went silent with happiness.
Country
Seven days they nurse Quick Lamb who says nothing but goes on glowing quietly, taking a little water but no food at all. The colour of his skin is strange; like mother of pearl it changes at every angle, pale but somehow riddled with rainbows that catch at the edge of vision. He’s cool to touch, and sweet smelling the way a man rarely is. Morning and afternoon they take shifts sitting with him, while Beryl Lee and Elaine run the shop. Fish stays all day, sitting on the bed, humming, watching. At night they let him climb in beside Quick. Fish holds onto his brother as if he expects him to float away at any moment, and the room is lit by Quick’s candlepower. The walls crawl with shadows.
On the fourth day, Lester and Oriel sit out on the back step alone the way they haven’t for years now. The night air is cool and heavy with dew. A train always seems to be coming down the tracks. A wireless murmurs from an upstairs window.
How sick is he, you think? Lester asks. It’s times like these he wishes he’d never given up smoking and drinking.