Quick pulled with her to the beach, and helped empty the net of its cargo of jellyfish and gobbleguts and other useless small fish. He had a boyish impulse to kick her in the shins and run, just to have her after him, awful and reliable with it.
The strong are here to look after the weak, son, and the weak are here to teach the strong.
What are we here to teach you, Mum?
Too early to say.
They set off again, down toward the deep end and the baths. Quick was real tired now, and cold. Oriel strode out in her hard little granny shoes, feeling quivery inside. She wondered how far things had gone between Beryl and Lester. She wondered what instruction there was in it for her. Sometimes she couldn’t think what jerrybuilt frame was holding her together. It wasn’t willpower anymore. She’d gone past that lately. She only had will enough to make everything else work, these days. There was never enough left for her. She was like that blessed truck of Lester’s, running on an empty sump.
I’ll take you to a dance, Mum. The best. I’ll shout you to the Embassy.
Hmm. Their sandwiches are dry.
How do you know? Quick said, miffed.
I sell em day-old bread. There’s an arrangement.
Quick guffawed. You are bent, then.
No. I’m astute. You ever heard anyone complain about supper at the Embassy ballroom?
No. Never.
Well, there you are.
Quick pulled for a while, and a strange sort of question came to him. The strong can get rich, Mum. You know. What would you do if you got rich?
Get poor again, I expect. I’m surrounded by fools, you know.
Seriously, though.
It’s a silly schoolboy question.
It isn’t. You just don’t want to say.
She surged ahead and forced the pace a little. The water was hard and cold now. He was right; she didn’t want to say.
That was when they came upon the wild wheeling mob of prawns that came brawling out of the deep unlit gutter near the baths, and swerved in panic, beating against Oriel and Quick’s legs, skipping and bouncing into the net, ricocheting like crossfire, breaking the surface of the water in an unearthly frenzy. When they got to the beach, gasping and whooping, with the net near splitting with its freight, they had to lie on the sand a while before taking off their clothes, shorts, trousers, singlet, spencer, shirt, pullovers, hats, and tie knots in them to make bags because the five gallon drum just wasn’t enough. They rode home nearly barebummed through the back streets with the sidecar awash with prawns, and they sprinkled a mist of river as they ploughed through the sleeping streets.
The Whole Damn Cake and Candles
From above, the two-up circle looks like a sea creature, some simple hungry organism in the water of night. A sea anemone whose edges rise and fall as bodies press and spread with two glittering morsels turning and dangling in its maw. Two coins spinning above the pulsating mouth, catching light and shining to tantalize. But they’re men down there and the coins’ light shines on them the way the sun and moon have never done. A swearing, moneyflicking, beery mob of blokes dancing to the music of the toss, the dance of chance. They call in intercession, they pray and whine and moan as if those two big crosspainted pennies can hear them. See among them the little fella with the stump and the mad light in his eyes, crazy as a crusader, mad as a cut snake, driven as a dog. It’s the look men have in their eyes when they go green to war — one eye on duty and the other on the spoils — when they can’t wait to step beneath the spinning pieces to see whether they’ll be torn in half by them or feel them lob safely and full of promise at their heels. He’s not a young man anymore, the little fair fella. Beneath the noise of the crowd he’s wheezy and his veins are swollen. His back aches, he’s thirsty, hollowgutted, in need of a smoke, but he stays planted to the spot awaiting the certainty of his blessing. And down it comes again like manna. Men hush at the sight of it, though he doesn’t even nod. He puts another fistful of notes down and hears the grumbling. He must be the only sober man here tonight, and he tries to decide what this feeling is like, being the lone man, the onehanded man, the man pushing on into the darkness of the rest of them. Like Christopher-bloody-Columbus, that’s how it feels, he thinks; sailin out, knowing you’re not gonna get to the edge and fall off the bleedin map, at least not before you bump into a whole continent of treasure with the angels on your side. Pennies go up and stay there a heartbeat or two, as men wring their hats and wait. Sam’s heart almost explodes with devotion.
From the outside, if you don’t share the love of the game, if you don’t know these men, it’s still cause for wonder. How they love it, how they dance and sing in the dragon’s jaws. And Sam Pickles. If you hated his guts you couldn’t help but be affected by the sight of him, the prince of losers, winning the bank. The whole damn cake and candles.
Feast
Dolly grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him close before he’d even got in the kitchen door. She was shaky and sober and ready to scream out of fright and worry and she could barely believe she was clinging to him like this. Drawing back and drawing breath, she saw there wasn’t a mark on him. His trousers were stuffed like a mattress. Before anything could happen, Rose came in the door, fresh from the dance.
Well, look at you two.
They peeled off each other selfconsciously. The three of them had the flesh of new people. For a moment.
Laughter echoed from across the corridor.
We could sell them! Elaine said, putting out a huge china bowl of brown vinegar. The table was spread with newspapers, and the first steaming, red pile of prawns was upon it.
No fear, said Oriel, unable to stop a smile.
Be a good few quid, Mum, said Lon, who was the first to shell. The meat was longer than his hand.
No fear, Oriel said again.
Why not, Mum? Red slid a prawn around the vinegar bowl. There’s so many.
They’re gunna keep jumpin outta me pockets fer years yet, said Quick.
You’ll always be comin the raw prawn, said Lester to a uniform groan.
We can’t eat em all, said Red through a disgusting mouthful.
Watch me, said the old man.
They’re a gift, Oriel murmured. And you don’t go floggin off a gift.
Quick and Lester raised eyebrows at one another.
You don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, said Red, quoting from somewhere or other.
Yeah, said the old man, laughing, you send it to the knackers before it can take off with your vegies.
Where’s Fish?
He’ll be asleep.
Go up and check, said the old man to Quick. He might want a feed himself. Hey, an you might’s well knock at the Pickles hatch and ask em if they want to join us. I think they’re still up.
That raised a few brows and stopped a few jaws, but Oriel nodded. Yeah, fair enough. Share n share alike.
And after midnight the Lamb kitchen was full to the boards with the lot of them. It wasn’t till Lester got the broadest, leeringest wink from Sam Pickles that he remembered disaster and discovered that he’d been saved. And then some.
Up in the library, Fish asked the shadow girl why she wouldn’t come out, but she said nothing. She was always either crying or angry and nothing else. He played her a tune and she stood beside him, but he couldn’t tell if it made any difference.
Quick came calling. The dark girl shrank away.
VIII. Voices
ROSE crossed the night wet lawn and sat at the edge of the verandah to take off her heels. Cloudstreet was still, the house limping with shadows, and the sky over it all was the colour of an army surplus blanket. She was still damp under the overcoat — taffeta and tulle clung to her, cooling. It was getting pretty late in spring for an overcoat, but she couldn’t stand having every bloody dag and drongo on the bus knowing she was coming home unescorted yet again from a dance. A faint smile of sympathy was just as bad as a leer when you were all clobbered up and coming home alone.