Some girl was blubbering in the house again. There was no one here anymore as young as that voice. Sorry sport, she thought; I’ve got my own problems.
At noon, the old girl came up in her dressing gown with a letter.
It’s from Ted, she murmured. He’s in South Australia. He married that girl who was pregnant. He’s a jockey. Can you believe it — he doesn’t weigh nine stone. You orright?
Rose nodded. Geez. I’m an auntie.
And I’m a grandmother. Never even knew about the weddin. I love a weddin.
Right there on the bed, the old girl got a weep on, and Rose found herself with an arm around her, patting the back of her head, smoothing the crumpled, smokestained bangs.
I’m old, Dolly bawled. I’m old.
She stayed there until she seemed exhausted by it all, and Rose laid her down on the bed.
What’s wrong with you, anyway, love? Why you off work? Dolly murmured beside her on the pillow.
Oh, the painters are in, that’s all.
God was laughin when he made women.
Rose lay there and listened to her mother fall asleep. She smelt of Guinness and lemonade. Rose put her hand on the old girl’s big arm and then she took it away again.
When Rose woke, it was evening and she was alone. Someone came hammering on her door. The old man.
Rose. Rose! There’s a bloke here!
Oh my God.
Says his name’s Tony.
Oh, please, she thought.
And then in came Toby himself, wildeyed and lurching.
What the hell are you doing here?
A poem! Someone’s taken one of my poems.
Don’t spose you’re insured? said Sam in the corridor.
Rose Pickles pulled the blanket over her head and laughed.
I’ll bung the kettle on, said Sam.
We’re invited to the editor’s house, said Toby.
Now? said Sam.
Tonight.
Then I will put the kettle on.
Put the bloody kettle on, Dad.
Sam gave an awful wink and went on his way.
How did you find … us? she said, trying to neutralize her tone.
Oh, the girls on the switch. They remembered the street, though none of them knew the number of the house. Once I found the street it was easy. Seems everybody knows this place. They were all talking about some woman with a tent? Anyway I found it.
Rose pulled the blankets around her.
You’ve been dark on me, Rose.
Congratulations on the poem. Who took it, that poonce from the university?
Oh, Rose, show some taste, some decorum.
I said congratulations, didn’t I?
You’re not the same girl I heard on the switch last year.
Well, I know about Earl Grey tea now and I’ve read Rimbaud. And his … imitators.
Nasty, nasty.
Don’t bloody patronize me.
Jesus, Rose, it’s my big day. I’m asking you out to a do. I’ve cracked it at last. They’re welcoming us in.
That mob? I thought you were avante garde or whatever.
Cmon, Rose. Be nice.
Nice is an ugly word.
You’re a sharp girl, Rose.
And I type like a demon.
Oh, don’t sulk. Cmon love. We’ll drink champagne and lose ourselves. I’m sorry for barging in on your … hide-away. Look pretty for me, alright? I’ll be by at eight.
There was a photographer from the Daily waiting on the steps of the Dalkeith mansion when Toby and Rose arrived starched to the gills, and the coincidence was not lost on Rose.
Who are these people, anyway?
Oh, uni people, old money, the usual literary establishment.
What’s the editor’s name again?
George Headley. He’s edited Riverside since the ivy started growing.
This must be important to you.
Ah, she loves me.
The door opened. Rose felt her shoulders sag in fear.
Toby Raven, said Toby to the big silver man.
And friend, said Rose.
Welcome to our little nest. Come in my boy.
Rose crept in behind Toby. A jazz combo played in the hallway. A buffet table filled the dining room and forced its trestled way into the huge, dark, heavy panelled livingroom. Leather furniture, jarrah bookcases, elephant’s feet, hatstands, squirish paintings on the wall squeezed Rose into her dress. From the huge windows she saw the slick lawns, the gleaming backs of cars, and below it all the lightmoving river.
Out in the sunroom men had gone into a huddle, and spotting them, Toby bolted their way. Rose did her best to seem unhurried and unflustered. She found the wives and girlfriends in the kitchen and was immediately loaded up with a tray of beer and Porphyry Pearl.
Run that past them, would you dear? An old pinkhaired woman said.
Rose stood among the men and heard Toby giggling nervously. She wanted to go. She was thinking of ways already.
Ah yairs, someone was saying, Katherine and Henrietta are alright in their way, but what we need is more Tobys, don’t you think?
Harumph!
Yairs.
My oath.
I mean I particularly like that bit where you liken the fallen beast to the Korean soldier.
Toby looked ashen: Um?
Ah yairs, and the stuff about the old barbed wire bridle.
Rose looked at Toby and sensed him knowing it. His lips gone almost brown in contrast to his face. He began to giggle. He’s never written a poem about barbed wire or war in his life, thought Rose. He’s a gossip columnist who writes sex poems.
Thought of a funny, Raven?
Toby tittered in some air: Did you like the bit where he whispers Homer in her ear?
General silence, then a slow rumble of amusement.
That’s it, thought Rose, knowing Toby knew it too. It’s a balls-up. They’ve got the wrong man, wrong poem. She wanted to go now. She couldn’t bear to see him humiliated like this, but neither could she be seen with him. She felt it so clearly here of all places; she despised him as much as pitied him.
You should let us have some comic work, Raven, said George Headley.
Toby’s giggle mounted another sentence: Well, well, well, actually I’ve been thinking of some very comic, funny, funny material inspired only today. Rose, tell them about where you live. Tell them about the lady in the backyard who lives in a tent. Tell them about the slow boy you used to love.
Rose shook in sick surprise. Toby went on in desperation.
You see, fellows, I’m working up this grotesquerie about … well there’s this shopgirl and a famous writer and …
Short story?
Oh, oh, oh longer.
Sounds promising.
Tell them Rose. Tell them!
Rose dropped the tray, felt the shower of bubble and glass fizz as she went. She went past elephant’s feet and dinky triangle sandwiches, through the deep darkness of the house while poor desperate Toby called, Tell them about my poems! Men roared and whaled with laughter and Rose heard Toby’s terrible miserable giggle outside the front door, across the glittering lawns and down the street as she went coatless and blank into the cold. The river was down there, black and moving. The river.
Silhouettes
Quick couldn’t get going again. After he got back with his family, he found that Cloudstreet had a hold on him, and though he couldn’t think why he should stay in the place, half falling down as it was now, empty of children and rarely the scene of much fun at all, with the old girl muttering to herself out in the tent half the night, the old man inside telling lies and glooming everyone up by trying to sound cheerful, Lon growing pimples and a snarl, Red with her beak always in a book confirming the frailties of Homo Sapiens, Elaine pinching her temples with a migraine and continuing a five year engagement with some bloke he’d never actually met, he kept his old room and helped out in the shop, drove the Chev which sounded these days like a chaffcutter, and watched the summer come, then autumn, winter, spring.