Wanna fag? Quick asks.
Thanks, I don’t smoke.
Fair enough.
Have I been asleep long?
Oh, an hour, I reckon.
Jesus.
You must be pretty upset.
How many cobblers have you got?
Three dozen, maybe.
Do you catch them on a line?
Nah, we spear em with a gidgie in the shallows. Easy work when a bloke can get it. We’re just settin nets now.
City lights drift by, but only the boat and the river move. Rose can hardly recall feeling as awful as this, though it’s a surprise that it’s not worse.
I’ve got some Chateau Tanunda in that coat, if you want a swig, he says.
No, it’s alright.
No smokin and no drinkin — do your parents know about this?
Spose it is a bit of a laugh, really.
Think I’ll take a snort meself. Couldja find it?
Rose gropes around inside the pockets with their crusty dried flecks of bait, pencil stubs, pieces of string and chips of Buttermenthol.
Think I’ll have a splash myself, after all that, she says.
He takes the bottle from her while she’s trying not to cough it all into the cobbler trough.
Well, that’s cheered you up, he says with a laugh.
It’s beautiful out here, she says, turning round to sit facing him. He stands, punting along with effort.
It’s cold.
Where are we going?
I was about to consult you on that. Actually, I’m beginning to wonder meself. This hasn’t turned out a regular night, you see.
Your brother.
Yeah.
What’s the story with him?
He sighs. The dark water moves by like the black glass of a dream’s beginning. After a while she knows she’s upset him. God, what a clumsy bitch I am, she thinks.
Sorry. I didn’t mean to be so blunt. It’s just that, well, your mob and mine never really talked much, did they. I’m sorry.
Doesn’t matter.
Is he out with you for any special reason?
Oh, he’s been after me forever about coming. Mum an Dad worry. I smuggled him out. He’s knackered. Snores like a bugger.
Rose reaches for the brandy again to take another pull, and the Lamb boy lets the oars drag a few moments passing it to her, watching her drink. The lamp is strapped in against the gunwale beside her; she puts a hand to it for warmth.
What are you like, Quick Lamb?
What sorta question’s that?
Can’t you answer it?
Rose watches his features straighten in offence, a moment, before easing back into the soft, boyish lines from a few seconds before.
What’m I like? He takes up the oars again. Even in a coat and beanie he looks thin. A bit lost, I spose.
The lost Lamb.
Yeah, I feel sheepish about that.
Neither of us is likely to get a show on the wireless, you know.
Oh, I thought my joke was a bottler. It was yours that was on the nose. Gawd, yer smilin.
Nah, it’s only a rumour.
Why’d you ask the question?
I don’t know. Actually, I was just wondering. We live in the same house, what is it, fifteen years now, and I suppose I don’t even know who you are. Hey, I remember that time years ago you clobbered me on the stairs with a bag — knocked me down, you rotten sod, you remember that?
He just rows. No. Don’t think so.
Well, you were in a hurry.
You grew up pretty good lookin, Rose.
Ta.
Funny, the way he says it; it’s like there’s no intention behind the observation, as though he doesn’t mean it to be an embarrassing personal sort of thing, but just a general comment. Rose flushes, not because he’s said it, but for it’s plainness.
How come you do this?
Fishin? Reckon I’d do it after work anyway, if I had a routine job, and seein as I can’t figure out what the hell to do with meself, it’s pleasant enough and pays me way. I just haven’t got any ideas, you know, about what to do. Me old man was sort of restless, goin from thing to thing, the sorta bloke who needed the army but wouldna thought of it till the war came along. Spose that means we’re weak.
No, I reckon it’s just normal.
You look the ambitious type to me.
You come from a big mob, remember. You’ve been sheltered a bit.
He nods. Maybe you’re right. I never thought about it like that.
Rose can’t help but laugh.
What do you think about all day?
I reckon I’m tryin to figure out what I lost. I keep figurin I’ve lost somethin somewhere.
Something to do with him? She points back over her shoulder where Fish sleeps in the bow.
I reckon my whole life is to do with him. It’s a sorta mess.
You really love him, don’t you.
Everyone loved him. He was the funniest, stupidest kid in the whole bloody world, an everybody loved him.
Jesus, Rose thinks, there’s fire in that hole.
He’s my brother.
Geez, I’ve got two of them, and I couldn’t say I even liked them.
You woulda loved him, Quick murmurs.
I probably did, Rose thinks: I reckon that’s probably the way it was.
What’re we doin out here in the cold, anyway? he says.
Talking.
You wanna go home?
She shakes her head.
Well, how’d you like to work while you talk?
Fair enough.
They set nets with numbing fingers as the city grows silent around them, all the streetlights out along the foreshore, houses darkened beyond. Pelicans flap and stir invisible. Now and then a mullet will jump, a prawn come skipping like a stone. Quick lets them drift along gutters with a handline out in case of a passing mulloway and Rose tucks herself down in the bottom of the boat beneath the greatcoat with small slugs of brandy to keep herself awake. She feels unaccountably happy and she knows it’s not just the Chateau Tanunda. For a long time, an hour maybe, they don’t speak at all. When she closes her eyes it feels like she could be anywhere. What happened earlier tonight is becoming hard to believe; the whole time with Toby, it’s receding so quickly as to be a little alarming. Listen to yourself now, she thinks. You even speak differently. He talks like someone out of Dad ‘n’ Dave and you try not to smile. Oh, you learnt well, Rose. Strange, but she can’t feel any anger. All her life she’s been angry, and now she can’t feel it, when she should feel it strong and hard like metal under her skin. For a while she debates the idea of telling Quick Lamb where she’s been, what she’s just come through, but one look will tell a girl he doesn’t need to know. Actually, he’s so damn incurious as to be a bit startling. She watches him with the line in his fingers, the low light of the lamp easy on his jaw, and sees how far back in him his mind is, how he has a strange tranquillity riding across the heat she saw a while ago with that brother business. It doesn’t seem like resignation, just some time-biding patience that’s new to her, not fierce like her determination to make something for herself, but firm all the same. Like an old, old man waiting for something he’s been promised.