The House That Was Eureka (9 page)

Nobby couldn’t understand the tension in her voice. ‘What trouble?’ Wasn’t this enough for her? ‘We’ll just keep picketing, day after day, and after a while she’ll get fed up, and give in.’ God knows, there was enough reason for her to be fed up already. Every time she stepped out to do her shopping she had to walk through a double picket line of sour-faced, jeering people. And the kids had started throwing mud at night at her windows, and dead birds and things over her back fence.

‘D’you reckon?’

‘Why, what do you think’ll happen?’

‘I dunno. But something. I reckon the cops will get into the act soon. Maybe not here, maybe at one of the other houses the UWM’s picketing. Look, it stands to reason. We’ve won over two hundred cases in Sydney since February. Just by picketing, threatening the landlords, that sort of thing. So d’you reckon the State is going to let us get away with it?’

Nobby shrugged. He didn’t think like Lizzie, in political words, he didn’t look to the future. He hadn’t had much time for politics at all till six months back, when the boss had turfed him out of his job. But when that had happened, all the things the Cruises had been spouting for years suddenly seemed right.

‘I dunno. So what’re you going to do?’

Lizzie was quiet. She plaited a long strand of hair, then unplaited it. She liked it messy, around her face.

‘If you swear not to tell anyone,’ Lizzie said, ‘I’ll show you something. Something Mick doesn’t know about, even Ma doesn’t know about. Swear?’

Nobby nodded. Held his hand out. Lizzie spat in it. Held out her own hand and Nobby spat. Then they clasped hands. That was the way they’d always sworn.

Lizzie pulled free then and closed and bolted the scullery door, checked that the curtain was right over the window, then pulled a big, old tin trunk out from the bottom of a pile of other trunks and tea-chests and suitcases.

‘It’s Pa’s. He brought it when we came from Ireland.’ She fiddled with the lock, pressed it upwards a special way, then sideways, and it opened. ‘I worked that out years ago.’

Inside the trunk were books, old photos, a moth-eaten black coat, and something in an old, soft, brown bag that Lizzie now pulled out gently, as if it was a baby.

‘Here.’

It was in two parts, the rifle and the bolt. Sparkling like new though clearly as old as the hills.

‘Every six months or so when he gets drunk,’ Lizzie said, ‘he locks himself in here and sings to himself and greases it. I’ve watched him through the door-crack. It goes like this.’

She slipped the bolt in, fitted it together. Then pulled out an old tobacco tin of bullets, slipped one of them into the magazine.

Lizzie’s face was soft as she stroked the rifle. She was far away, caught in a lovely jumble of the Easter Rising and the Russian Revolution…

And at the forefront of the barricades is Lizzie Kollontai…or is it Lizzie Connolly…her long black hair streaming back from the face that glows like a flame beneath the fires of the burning buildings…at the forefront of the barricades stands Lizzie, the inspiration of the struggle, the fierce fighter for freedom who works tirelessly, day and night, even now reloading to fire upon the enemies of the workers’ revolution…

Lizzie took the bullet out, took the bolt out, packed the gun back in its bag.

‘So now you know too.’ It made Lizzie feel close to Nobby, sharing her secret.

But Nobby was shocked. Despite the years spent knocking around Mick and Lizzie, Nobby’s mind was still linked to lace doilies, camomile tea, Job the parrot, the sound of the piano, and Saturday mornings spent polishing the silver. He’d never seen a gun before; except of course for policemen’s guns, but they were always closed away in leather holsters, bouncing on the cops’ behinds.

‘Feel how heavy it is.’

But Nobby didn’t want to touch it, even when it was asleep inside its bag.

‘It won’t come to that,’ Nobby said, feeling cold in his stomach, feeling fear in his blood.
It won
’
t come to guns
.

‘No, of course it won’t,’ Lizzie agreed a bit sadly. Apart from Eureka, it never
had
come to guns in Australia. Or not as far as Lizzie knew. She dumped the rifle in the trunk, locked the trunk, rammed it right in at the bottom of the pile. ‘Still, it’s a good secret just to know.’

Lizzie burst out laughing. Nobby took everything so seriously. She’d only shown him as something mad, to cheer him up.

‘C’mon, let’s run down the railway track and nick some coal.’ Lizzie grabbed his hand and hauled him up. ‘I need to do something to warm meself up. Me bum’s all wet from the puddles.’ She surveyed the floor. ‘Jeez I’m a lousy mopper.’

‘Like a pair of ruddy six-year-olds,’ Paddy Cruise said, hearing them yelling down the dunny-can lane.

‘Need their sit-upons smacked, the both of them,’ Lizzie’s ma agreed.

Next door, at a back window, Nobby’s mother watched them run, hand in hand.

The next day was the occasion of the first big eviction battle, at Redfern.

Noel stands on the balcony.

Bang-bang-bang-bang, down into the street.

I’ve been doing this for years, here on my balcony.

Line up that truck there, along the barrel.

One clean line.

The shortest distance between two points.

A to B.

Blast it down.

The last scene in
If
. When I saw that movie the first time, and saw those kids up on top of the building, blasting down…

Why have I had that in my knowledge since I was born?

Noel lines up the mouth-organ. Is crouching down behind the balcony railing, for cover.

Four men jump out of the truck, two from the front, two from the back. One of them goes up to the door of Evie’s place and knocks. The others are at the back, hauling out a monster in brown paper. And with my mouth-organ that I poke through balcony railing I shoot them down.

They are men out there in uniforms that I shoot down.

‘Jump,’ Evie yells.

‘Jump/jump.’

Out in the backyard in May afternoon sun, life hasn’t been too bad this Monday since she came home after lodging her fortnightly dole form and found the Grace Bros men arriving with the trampoline.

It’s a good, big, solid one and it takes up nearly all the backyard.

‘One/two/three/
Jump!
/One/two/three/
Jump!
/Bounce/two/three/
Jump! Jump
, Jodie,
jump!
’

Evie’s teaching Maria and Jodie. Jodie’s surprisingly neat in her movements for such a round kid. Maria’s all over the place, arms flying out in spikes, but she’s gamer than Jodie, a higher jumper. Neither of them can quite get the rhythm of it.

‘One/two/three...When I yell
jump
, Ree, you have to go right up in a big star jump. Three little bounces then a big jump with your legs and arms out in a star. Sing it like a song.’

‘One/two/three/
Jump!
/One/two/three...’

Sammy’s here now, so Evie makes Maria get off and takes Sammy by the hand and walks her up and down till she gets the balance of it, then jumps with her.

‘One/two/three/Jump!/One/two/three/
Jump!
/One/two/three/JUMP! What a good girl!’

‘...One/two/three/
Jump!
/One/two/three/
four
/

Mrs Scab come out your door...’

Next door, the despot hears from behind her blind. It’s been going on for days now.

Next door, Noel crouches down on his balcony. I’ve been doing this for years.

It’s Friday afternoon and the Kingswood parks and out gets Ted whose beer gut Noel lines up along the barrel of his mouth-organ, A to B. A distance between two points growing shorter by the second as B comes right up through Noel’s gate intending to knock on Noel’s door. Rent Day, Noel thinks. Noel crouches down and aims.

There’s something about Ted, his bigness, his red-blondness, that reminds Noel of Matt Dunkley who used to bash Noel up.

‘Sookablubber. Mumma’s bubba. Cowardy-powdery-custard.’

As if it was
his
fault that he didn’t have a father or brothers or even uncles or anything to back him up, as if it was his choice that he lived with Mum and Nanna who wouldn’t let him play on the street, wouldn’t let him have a bike, kept him home on wet days…

Bang
.

But no sound comes out.

But B down below stops anyway, still upon the step, arm in mid-air towards the door, arm freezing now then dropping to B’s side, and B turns and goes.

‘All power, said Chairman Mao,’ Noel laughs, ‘comes out of the barrel of a gun!’

‘Bang’, says Noel.

But no sound comes out.

Nobby walked into the pub near Newtown railway station. It was Saturday afternoon. He ordered a lemon squash. He didn’t drink. Then he changed his mind and asked for a beer. He’d mown someone’s lawn that morning so for once he had a bit of cash on him. He shouldn’t spend it, should give it to mother, or put it in the picket fund, but bugger it. Whichever one he gave it to he’d feel he should have given it to the other. Nobby sipped at his beer. He didn’t like the taste of the stuff, it was sour. I’m sick of feeling guilty.

Mother sour, Lizzie sour, once upon a time I was happy.

Nobby drank a bigger mouthful, looked around. He shouldn’t be in here by rights, but he’d shot up so much this last year he doubted if anyone would question him. Five-foot-four one year, five-foot-nine the next, it was exhausting being a beanstalk…

Nobby felt his gut growl. There hadn’t been any dinner.

...Whereas it looked like Lizzie would always be little.
Thin-as-a-pin/and-sharp-as-tin/I’m-Lizzie…
Lizzie used to skip to that when she was a kid. Lizzie was always a great skipper. One New Year’s Day she’d done a thousand without faltering up on top of the Kennets’ chook-shed roof. Whereas Nobby’s feet couldn’t do more than half a dozen jumps before they’d tangled in the rope.

Scab scab dirty scab

Scratch her eyes

And give her a stab. . .

That was one of the new rhymes the Liberty Street kids were skipping to. Not just the kids. Lizzie with her flying hair that her mother was always rousing about.

‘Holy Mother of God, child, tie your hair back, plait it, something!’

‘And don’t you go telling her it’s nice, because it’s not, son!’

Son. Son.

‘Sonny Boy,’ Mick sometimes called him. ‘Ma’s Little Sunshine.’ Though which ma he meant wasn’t always clear.

Nobby was sick of being a son.

‘You old enough to be in here, Sonny?’ the barmaid asked.

Nobby nodded. Sonny. He ordered another beer. She could hardly be of legal age herself, that barmaid.

This beer was even sourer.

Lizzie. Her black hair flying out from her face like a witch-broom. He thought she thought he was weak. To be like Lenin, Nobby thought, to know things, and lead things, and do things, then Lizzie would love him.

Whereas now she thought he was weak. Nobby sometimes thought he could feel his father’s bank-teller blood creeping in his veins. Blood made from melted pianos, and water left over from washing lace doilies, and silver polish and bank ink and stamp glue.

(Silver polish. He’d fled that morning without doing his chores. The first Saturday morning he could remember that hadn’t been spent cleaning silver. Silver wasn’t man’s work.)

‘Got the price of one spare, Comrade?’ An oldish bloke Nobby recognized from the International Unemployed Day march sat down beside him. It was nice not to be called Sonny. Nobby pushed over a coin.

‘A turn-up for the books in Redfern today,’ the bloke said.

‘What?’

‘Redfern. That house we been picketing in Douglas Street. I was there.’

‘Yeah?’ said Nobby. Not real eager for knowledge today. He wanted a holiday from even the thought of picketing.

‘Yeah, about half-past nine this morning it is, see? Only the poor cove and his missus there and about ten of us from the UWM. Not enough of us, see? We’ve got some tables and that pushed against the door but nothing much, see? and we’re not expecting nothing, just having a cuppa and a bit of a chinwag when out of the blue there’s this belting at the door – bang bang bang, see?’

The bloke rapped hard on the bar counter.

‘And it’s the cops there and the agent, just a few of the blighters at this stage.’

‘
Cops!
’ Nobby said. That was new.

‘Yeah...Well the poor cove’s missus yells out, see? “Yous can’t come in. This house is in the hands of the UWM.” But that’s just red flag to a bull, see?

‘Before you’ve time to say boo there’s more of the beggars there, and more belting at the door – bang, bang, bang, see?’

More rapping on the bar.

‘Only this time it’s a dirty great sledgehammer they’re knocking with and so before you’ve time to say boo they’re in here, see? Knock back the table and stuff and we try to shove the door shut, see? but they’re into the house and into us too, batons coming down like hail they are, they get me on the side of the head, crack me a whopper on the back, red and blue all over I am, like a ruddy Union Jack. Well then, see, we fight and that too, don’t get me wrong, and I grab the leg off a chair they smashed getting in – I’m in the kitchen now, see? We’re split up, with the other blokes in the lounge, but to cut a long story short, we’re not strong enough, see? So they herd us out the back way, and out the front there’s a dirty great crowd of people that have come running when they heard the blue was on, and they’re cheering us and booing at the cops and there’s all manner of carry-on, but to cut a long story short they’ve won and we’ve lost and the agent’s men go in and get the poor cove’s furniture and load it in the agent’s van – reckon they’ll take it to where the poor cove’s going to live, but as he hasn’t got nowhere to live, what’s the point of that, you tell me! – and the crowd sort of drifts off, see? and only two larrupers stop to keep guard over the van, and the poor cove’s cheese-and-kisses is there crying in the empty rooms – I go back in, see? cause I’ve left me hat and coat there, and she tells me something – I’ll tell you in a minute…’