The House That Was Eureka (24 page)

And cop waggons and helicopter and cameras and journalists converged upon Liberty Street.

Afterwards, Sharnda reckoned that of all of her bungling of that night, the worst bungle was not to have warned all the locals about the film. (‘Though considering the outcome,’ she grinned, ‘it was worth it.’)

Up in her room the despot struggled with her persecutor. Hauling her heavy body from her bed, she swiped at the green tormenting shape, ducked as its screams circled her, then swiping and ducking she finally raised the power to chase it to the stair-landing; but though darkness at last engulfed it, a screaming carried on. She felt a small softness lap against her legs then disappear, like the memory of a child, and she called then for her son, for her grandson, ‘Noel!’ but they were gone outside her power.

Quite outside her call, in a circle of the past, Noel was still beneath the bed. Feeling as though hours had gone, but knowing from his watch that it was barely five minutes since it began.

Since it began, though, I have been here, inside the gun dream, that’s been inside my life since it began.

Crouching in darkness, underneath a bed. Looking up, he saw the criss-cross of the bed-wire. Not far away there were bullet-bangs. Out that way. This time, he knew where that way was. Like a magnet to a pin, the sounds drew him. He lifted up the counterpane, and peered out.

There were legs outside the bed, running back and forth. And outside too there were yelling sounds, louder than bullets.

‘Here! Pass me some more!’

‘Bullseye!’

‘I just got Billy!’

‘Pigs!’

The pickets were right into it now, hurling down their ammunition, ducking as the bungers flew, their yelling floating over the bangs. But it wasn’t them that Noel heard.

Outside the bed there were yelling sounds, close and loud, the voices of a dozen men, it was them that he heard
.

‘They’re trying to kill us!’

‘It’s flaming war!’

‘My arm!’ screamed Mick. ‘They’ve bloody got me in the arm!’ His voice pitched high with the pain, his words whistling higher than the bullets as he ran past the bed.

‘Get into the back room!’

‘
Help!
’ screamed the voice of Mick Cruise, now downstairs.

(
Mick
, Noel thought.)

(
Mick
, thought the man in the street. Hearing the same words Noel heard, frozen inside a surge of movement, he felt his blood as something thin, not a man anyway, a boy of seventeen.)

Under the bed Noel had a gun, and this time it was real, but Noel wasn’t. He was a dream.

Out in the street was a boy of seventeen hiding inside a mighty roar of voices like a tiny crab inside a conch shell. Then over the shell flew a shape screaming words, green words, etched itself like a splash of acid against a streetlight then flapped down, a beak against his ear. ‘Traitor!’ screached the feathers, alighting green upon his shoulder. ‘You’re right, there,’ said the boy, knowing the eyes of Mick he’d deserted.

All around Noel was real life but for Noel this night the thin membrane between real life and some other world had disappeared. So out he climbed, me here, balcony there, A to B, the shortest distance between two points. Walking like a part in a dream Noel climbed back through the years, out from the bed, out through the shapes that were running back and forth till I’m here.

Here.

I’ve been here before, Noel knew. The first time I saw this movie it was as if I’d done it all before, in real life.

Going out to go out the back way, Evie propped. Feet coming into the yard, down the side passage. Evie ran into the scullery, her private sanctuary. Sammy, Evie remembered, and then forgot. In here Evie’s Lizzie, Lizzie Cruise.

Walking down Liberty Street that Friday night, Lizzie was scared. It was nine days ago they left, and since they left, life had been La Perouse and loneliness.

Lying at night in her blankets on the sandy soil that smelled faintly of sea, faintly of damp; listening to the sleeping of Maudie and Fee huddled up close around her; listening too to the pounding of the Pacific over there across the sand; lying there, reliving that night.

Nobby, she thought.

I’m scared, she remembered.

Pa, Mick, Nobby, Nobby, come and get me, I’m stuck here, I’m scared. Not a wild flame, climbing the barricades, but a girl in a cupboard, Nobby I’m scared.

Walking down Liberty Street on Friday a week later, the street brought it back to her, the guns and crashing and fear.

Going past 203, an empty place that would in fact stand empty for over a year, for the inner suburbs of Sydney were full of houses that no one could afford to rent.

Going past 203, she saw the rubble still in the yard, she saw her sign swinging down, she hitched her skirt up and pulled her coat straight and made an attempt at tidying her hair, then stopped, too scared to go up and knock.

Noel was scared. Shadows around him running, but he was alone. Out on the balcony here, looking down, it all goes whirley.

‘Ya,’ yelled the blue shape of Fat Tasso. ‘Noley-Poley!’ Hurling up at him a bunger.

‘Yer little worm!’ yelled the open mouth of Matt Dunkley (pushing me into the gutter, knocking me down, him and Tasso, Billy too, time and again when Nanna would send me to the shop and they’d be there, Matt’s gang, knock me flying.)

‘Where’s your girlfriend?’ yelled Billy Greenhouse.

Laughing, pushing me too far, this has been going on for years, going too far.

‘Tell her I’ll see her later tonight!’ That was Matt.

Anger then seized Noel, wild anger; frozen, he struggled, freed himself from this ice that stopped him moving, and he was crouched, pointing the gun down into the street.

A simple act.

A to B.

The shortest distance between two points.

Noel is crouched down and aims.

Out of his dream now, back in real life, Noel sees fear upon the face of Matt Dunkley as Matt recognizes this for what it is, a real gun.

Noel laughs, the flame of his laughter gripping now, playing games, playing games, who’s a coward? The joke’s on them. Noel surges with free delight. Fancy them thinking this is loaded. Noel laughs in his game.

Acting/act, he remembered. Sometimes it means doing, and sometimes pretending.

Evie’s room was no sanctuary, for Evie was Lizzie, standing in darkness, walking down Liberty Street alone.

Walking down Liberty Street feeling like a stranger, like a tourist from out of town. It was only nine days but it seemed longer than the ten years she’d lived here. Nine days since Nobby disappeared; she had to find out, had to know. So was forcing Lizzie to go now and see his mother, though she didn’t want ever again to see that cruel rotten face. She felt it like a knife cutting her sometimes, Nobby’s mother’s hatred. What’ve I ever done to her. Feared her like the crashing out there like the darkness like the night. Walking down Liberty Street it was only a few yards from 203 to 201 but she felt stuck, felt she couldn’t, too scared to go and knock.

In the house next door the despot ducked through the years, swiping at their green tormenting shapes. Here, along the darkness, in the corridor, down the stairs. In the background all the time was a scream like a child, like terror or police through the night.

Through the sirens in the night the boy heard the scream screaming
Help
that dragged his ear from the roar of the sea inside the shell.
Mick
, he remembered, but it came instead from the wide open mouth of a lad dressed in blue there before him.

Remembering ‘
the worm’ll turn
’ the thought rushed through Matt’s brain: He’s mad enough to do it. Seeing death so near him then, Matt saw the years ahead filled not with playing for Newtown, being a mate with his mates, winning with women, but with a black void like screaming in his throat.

Caught by the scream, the boy in the shell followed the gaze of Matt’s eyes and saw himself upon the balcony, the thin white face, the dark believer’s look, and the gun that had waited fifty years for him to come. Feeling himself up there, fingering the safety catch, he saw in Noel’s eyes the fervent look of make-believe, his laugh as he played games.

Playing games, playing nothing! Some things are too real to play with.

Nobby felt his blood running thin in his veins, felt the time frozen round him that he was powerless to break, but had to, this time, had to act, couldn’t cockroach-scuttle off, for the sake of them both, for this blue boy here with the stupid frightened look and that boy up there that was him.

Nobby ran then, pushing through the shapes that screamed around beneath the siren wail, in through the barbed wire like a soldier at Gallipoli, shoving open the door against the pile of the bags, using every bit of strength, he was in now, through the loungeroom, through blue shapes and picket shapes that wrestled and shoved in a mine of a battle for the benefit of a whirring camera that Evie had discarded, a camera that caught a fleeting glimpse of Nobby’s shape as he hurtled up the stairs, through the front room, to the balcony.

‘No!’ yelled Nobby, grasping the gun-barrel, wrenching it upwards, making it aim into air, into no one, as Noel playing his game had just slipped back the safety catch and now pressed the trigger of the gun that had in it still the bullet Nobby had loaded into it fifty years ago in real battle.

A gun went off. That was real.
Sammy
, Evie remembered, Sammy whose scream she could hear inside next door. Breaking back from the past through the skin into real life Evie now was simply Evie, who’d had for years the reflex action of running and grabbing when her sisters screamed. So hauled open the cupboard, through the hole, the quickest way.

In the dark next door the despot moved, searching for the background shape that screamed like a memory. ‘Here, boy, come here.’

But not a boy but a girl, smaller too than she’d expected, her fingers at last found the screaming fugitive that drowned the sirens.

‘It’s just a dream,’ the despot soothed her. ‘Silly men with their silly guns,’ comforting the soft thing she held that let its scream drop now and let the sound come in of the knocking on the kitchen door.

No, the despot thought, knowing this to be the Friday night when Lizzie would come. ‘I can’t face her.’ Seeking comfort in the feel of the child.

A gun went off. That was real, Noel gasped as the sirens closed in, as the real cops arrived, as a helicopter puttered in sky close by, as the news vans were down there with cameras and lights, as the yells became real as the real cops pushed as the kids shoved back and Nobby grabbed the gun and grabbed Noel too.

‘Quick, boy!’

Down the stairs they ran fast in real life pushing through the shadows, Noel and Nobby, as if they were just one body or perhaps a perfectly matched pair in a three-legged race, as they raced into the scullery, hid the gun back in its place, and then
one two through
, and joined up with Evie at the door.

The door was over there. A wooden door, painted green many years back and weathered now, a door with a handle, and a bolt, there was nothing so really alarming about it. Except the way it thumped at her, wanting to come in, accusing with its handle-eye, scaring her into the corner, coming for vengeance. Ah Lizzie, Lizzie. I’ve been wanting you to come so I could tell you, but now you’re here I’m too scared to say it. Not a witch upon a roof flying defiant as I once was, but cowering here like a fugitive, fleeing from a door.

A door’s wild thumping. No, that’s a heart.

Then Sammy cried. ‘I’m scared,’ she cried.

‘There’s nothing to be scared of. It’s just a silly old door.’

Taking Sammy by the hand then, she took her there to show her. Pulled back the bolt, made her fingers give a twist to the handle-eye, flung open its weathered green-ness.

‘I knew it would be you.’ She spoke to Evie, not to Evie, spoke to Lizzie alone, her mind not taking in the others. ‘I owe you an apology.’ The words were hard to say, but now were said.

If I had the wings of a turtledove,
Far over the plains I would fly
I’d fly to the arms of my one true love
And there I would lay down and die.

ANON, ‘THE DYING STOCKMAN’, TRADITIONAL SONG, 1890s

Saturday, 20 June 1931

Dear Girl, I’m on the road. I’m writing to you, but don’t know if I’m game enough to send this. Sitting under a tree like the bloke in
Waltzing Matilda
only I don’t know if it’s a koolibar or what. It’s funny here after Newtown. I haven’t got far, only near Lithgow, walking all the way nearly, with a couple of lifts. I see rabbits sometimes and run to catch them, and I think of your ma and how she’d cook them, and I want a stew. But it seems as I don’t run fast enough. If you was here we could both run, two ways, and corner ’em. We’d beat ’em and eat ’em! Or if Mick was here, we’d be sure.

Say hooray to Mick for me, if he’ll accept a hooray from me (and that’s if you’ll even read this far to know). He’s probably told you how I let him down. I let you all down I know which is why I run, more why I run than being scared about the gun and the cops searching for me, though you probably don’t believe that. You probably just think, Nobby Weston, his blood made of piano-piss, the son of a scab. Like my mother, you must think me.

Though she was funny, the old mother, the last day I saw her. All love and hide me, my dear boy. I told her I’d write to you care of her, and she swore on the Bible she’d give you my letters and tell you how to get in touch with me, and not tell the police.

An ant’s just stung me on the bum. It’s a big’un, green, with a big green head, and I can feel a lump swelling up. I’d rather sit outside at Liberty Street where you can be sure you see trouble coming.

Well Girl, I’m on my way. Where to, I don’t know. I’ll go West I think. I’ve met a couple of blokes who reckon there might be railway work at Wilcannia. I don’t know where that is, but I’m going. I won’t say how I feel because you think that’s soft. I just wish (if you’ve read this far) that Mick and your pa might not think too bad of me, and you too but you always thought bad of me anyway lately. I couldn’t fight that morning, I froze, and seeing Mick there being beat I didn’t help him, I run between the legs to the cupboard where you were. Of course I didn’t know you’d be there and seeing you there you could’ve knocked me over with a feather. You seeing me scared, so I run.