The kitchen floor kept him busy. One morning, the whole mob came down for breakfast and the floor had a list on it that caused the lighter chairs to slide down the hill into the stovefront and the sink. Quick got under the house with a couple of truck jacks to crank and pack it, but next day the slope was back. He jacked and packed three times, but each time the floor came back to an ideal walking surface for people with short left legs. In the end Red had the idea of nailing blocks on the floor and gluing chair and table legs to them on the down side, no slope, no sliding. In a week the old girl herself had taken on a new gait. She now walked more like a bosun than a sarmajor. The Lambs were a crook bunch to look at once they got their sealegs.
Fish lay on his bed with the crystal set, day and night. He said little. Sometimes he didn’t even come down to tea, and not even Lester could get him down. Oriel had lost power over him long ago, a defeat that you could read in her face every time Fish came shambling by.
Late in summer, Quick found the boat the old man had bought years ago, the one Fish and he had rowed from Freo when they were kids. It was still beached and upside down at Crawley, so he scraped it, patched it, caulked and painted it so that in the evenings he could row down to the narrows and put out lines for mulloway, flathead and bream. He was comfortable out there on the water, alone with the city lights and the quiet pressure of the outgoing tide. The river was a broad, muttering, living thing always suggesting things that kept his mind busy. Every important thing that happened to him, it seemed, had to do with a river. It was insistent, quietly forceful like the force of his own blood. Sometimes he thought of it as the land’s blood: it roiled with life and living. But at other moments, when a dead sheep floated past, when the water was pink with storm mud, when jellyfish blew up against the beaches in great stinking piles, Quick wondered if it wasn’t the land’s sewer. The city had begun to pile up over it as the old buildings went and the ugly towers grew. But it resisted, all the same, having life, giving life, reflecting it. On clear nights you could see lights in the hills and the scarp beyond the city. He remembered the wheatbelt, that great riverless domain, and recalled himself charging madly through the wheat. I was looking for this he thought. The river. Quick watched the few old battlers who still netted the river for a living, and it was from observing their silhouettes with pity and admiration that he came upon a job for himself. He’d supply the shop with fish! It was a good mile from Cloudstreet to the nearest fishmongers, and he’d seen all the Baits and Greeks moving in, these past few years, and the lengths those coves would go to just to buy a decent piece of fish. He went home and put the idea to Oriel who claimed it as one of her best, and the next day Quick was buying nets and setlines, looking out for a cheap seagull motor, and feeling pleased with himself. Actually everybody was happy. Quick felt like his own boss again, Oriel felt like everybody’s boss again, and everybody bossed. The fish sold. The shop prospered. Late of an evening, you’d see Sam Pickles down there, hat back on his head, gladstone bag in hand, weighing up a couple of pounds of crabs for himself. Geez, I forgot how much I miss the smell of fish every day, he’d say. I been in the city too long. I’m gunna up an orf one day, he’d say to nobody special. I’ll be orf like a shot.
Fish started coming out of his room late in the afternoons to watch Quick mend his nets over the frame he’d knocked up down the backyard. At first it was a surprise to see him. Fish poked his fingers into the mesh the first time, then left the net alone thereafter, but he continued to leave the wireless and come down to watch.
Can I come, Quick? he’d ask, sitting with his chin on his knees. He was big and rolylooking nowadays, and not handsome like he’d once been. Lips wet and turning; a squint of incomprehension that five-year-old boys learn to hide.
Not tonight, no.
When? How many sleeps?
Mum says no, Fish. She doesn’t want you on the river.
I like it.
Yeah, I know, cobber.
But I’m big!
Quick looked up from his work. Yeah, that’s true enough, I reckon.
Carn.
Carn what?
Carn, take me.
I just told you, Fish.
You did once. You took me one time. Remember? We goed in the stars.
Quick snapped an end off and put the net down. We were kids, Fish. We were asleep. It was a dream. And we were hungry, remember?
Strange, but he’d forgotten about that night. There were so many things he just didn’t think about.
We saw.
Nah.
And Quick knew he was lying. God Almighty, the things he’d decided not to remember, not to wonder about. Was it a family thing, this refusal to wonder? There were plenty of things to chew over if you let yourself, if you’re the type. Things happen — when you’re a kid, or sick or asleep or maybe a bit stupid — they happen, and maybe it’s best to leave it there.
Fish would head off towards the pig who slouched up against the fence in his smelly enclosure, and Quick would hear him talking. To a bloody pig.
Some nights the old man would come out with him. Lester was unusually quiet out there on the river. It was a relief to have him quiet these days. At home, in the shop, he was painful with talk. He’d rattle like an Owen gun, whipping off chronic old jokes from his standup days at the Anzac Club, tell stories that couldn’t possibly be true or even listened to, but even on the river he got quietly philosophical in the wee hours.
I remember my first ever memory, he’d say. I was on my father’s shoulders in the dark. It was raining, and we were crossin a creek that had burst its banks …
Oh, Dad!
What?
That’s bullshit.
It’s not, the old man murmured with emotion.
You tell such lies, said Quick, trying to sound gentle.
I know. Lester began to weep: But that’s true. It happened. Even if it’s only a dream, I know it happened.
Hey, its orright.
I’m gettin old and stupid. I’m an old showoff and me family’s ashamed of me.
Come on, Dad, I’m sorry, orright?
I just miss the playin and singin. I don’t tell lies about anythin important. You know, boy, I just like stories.
You shoulda been a poet.
Henry Lawson. No, too sad for me. Old C.J., that’s who I shoulda been.
Who?
The Sentimental Bloke.
Oh.
The river ran slow beneath them while Lester blew his nose and Quick thought about his father’s life.
No one’s ashamed, Dad. Aren’t you happy? You’ve done things.
Yeah, I’ve done things, boy. And I’m happy when I don’t think about it.
About what?
Not measurin up.
To what?
Your mother. Oh, she’s good about it and all, but a bloke can’t avoid it. You know, I was in the cavalry at Gallipoli, but as a cook. No wounds. And she lost that brother. You can’t compete with a dead hero. You can’t beat the dead.
You don’t have to, they’re dead.
But they stay, Quick. That’s one thing you’ll learn. The lost will stay with you.
Quick listened to the water under the boards. It was a strange sensation, having your father talking to you more or less like you were equal.
Dad, why’s she out in that tent, then?
Oh, she’s got ghosts of her own.
Tired of ordinary mortals, I thought.