The House That Was Eureka (19 page)

‘Shooting too inside the house,’ Noel said, his hiccoughs starting again. ‘Shooting up and down the staircase.’

‘How did you know?’ Sharnda said.

‘Know what?’ Noel was defensive. (Why have I had this in my knowledge since I was born?)

‘It’s just obvious,’ Evie said in a flat voice. (That first morning in this house. ‘By the way, love,’ Mum had said, ‘When we came home this morning, you’d left the kitchen door wide open.’ Oh really, Evie had thought. Evie who’d known she’d locked it. Evie who knew it could only have been opened from inside.)

Sharnda looked at them: a thin, sick-looking boy; a medium, ordinary girl; and took Evie’s statement on face-value. I guess it must be obvious. Sharnda silently handed them a statement that she’d found amongst the papers of the solicitor who defended the Newtown Eighteen.

I was in the front room upstairs when I heard someone yell ‘Here they are.’ I ran out onto the balcony and it was still dark but the streetlights were on and I saw a bus roar up and police jump out and then the street was full of police with revolvers firing up into the balcony at us and we started throwing bricks in defence of ourselves. I was on my knees to avoid the bullets and just then I stood up to see how things were, and a bullet got me in the arm. I bolted then with a couple of others into the back bedroom and when I looked through a gap in the window I saw police on the roof of the scullery, coming from the back bedroom next door. They opened fire through the window and then crashed through the boards and hunted us down the stairs, still shooting. As I was halfway down three police ran down over me and I heard them pulling back the sandbags at the kitchen door. I bailed up there a second, and the police came through the kitchen and started to shoot up the stairs. So I jumped over the bannister and into the diningroom and most of us were in there then, there was just a couple of candles and the lamp to see by, and then all the police came in, and started to batton us unmercifully whether we showed fight or not, calling out ‘I’ll give you Red Russia, you B’s’. I was hollering for help but I was knocked to my knees, and forced to stop down by a policeman who was belting his pistol-butt into my head again and again. I tried to stand up, but I couldn’t, and one of our side crawled past me then, and I had my hands up trying to get a grip on the wall to get up, but I couldn’t and fell. Blood everywhere I looked. The policeman put his foot on me and battoned me while I lay on the floor, and then put the handcuffs on me and punched me on the jaw. I was then taken outside and put in the patrol and taken to Newtown station. When we got there we had to walk from the patrol through a line of police to the charge room. They kicked and punched us all the way. We were then charged, some going to hospital, some to cells. I went to hospital where I was for three days. Signed:
Mick Cruise

P.S. I wish to state that never at any time did I see any 19th picket or any man with a gun (I mean any of us with a gun) I want to make that clear in my statement, and I’d swear to it. Signed Mick Cruise

Evie slowly read out the bit that had been scribbled onto the bottom, in handwriting.

‘Excuse me,’ Noel said, and Sharnda watched him open an old wooden cupboard in the corner and crawl fast through under an old copper, and then she heard the sound of him being sick next door.

Evie slammed the cupboard shut fast in case Sharnda saw the heart.

With Noel gone, Evie felt vulnerable. Felt the weight of the gun-secret pressing heavily, felt the weight of knowing too much, but not enough, felt Sharnda’s questions like the questions through her sleep.

(‘What did you see?’ ‘Where did he go?’ ‘Where’s the gun?’ Pa, Mick, Ma, all asking. And then the heavy asking of the police. Questions beating down like the Inspector’s ruler on the table ‘…I’ll tell you nothing,’ Lizzie defied them. ‘I don’t know…’)

‘What’s wrong with him?’ Sharnda asked, but Evie cut in with her own questions.

Their questions, her questions, everything used to be so dull and simple but these days it was like the world swung around in circles.

‘The girl in the cupboard,’ Evie said. ‘Do you know anything about her?’

‘No. I’ve often wondered who she was.’

‘Not was,’ Evie said. ‘Is.’ Twisting Sharnda’s words of Friday, seeing Sharnda looking at her oddly but unable to stop herself. ‘Nobby Weston,’ Evie added, ‘Do you know what ended up happening to him?’

‘Who’s he?’

‘Oh, just a guy I know.’ Wondering herself who he was, why she’d said the name. The name that she’d seen upon the fridge. That name had just come out of her voice, like when she’d said Alexandra Kollontai the other day.

Sharnda was looking at the
Sydney Morning News
report. ‘I’ve only just realized. Last Thursday was the battle’s fiftieth anniversary.’

‘Yeah.’ It seemed obvious. On Thursday morning at dawn we found the gun. I love 4 ever, 18/6/1981.

Then Sharnda said it was funny, the dates ran parallel. It didn’t seem funny to Evie. She wanted Sharnda to go so she could think. So told her that she’d talked to her parents and it was all okay about the video – she’d work out a good night for it.

‘She must’ve been a shit, that landlady,’ Sharnda concluded. ‘Not just evicting people, but actually helping the cops.’

‘Sure,’ Evie agreed, sick of Sharnda. (I
told
you the despot was dreadful! I’ll tell you nothing.) ‘Sure,’ Evie said again, making up that she had to cook tea, letting Sharnda find her own way out, not telling her that Noel’s grandmother must be the landlady, so that Sharnda left knowing nothing about Noel except that he was that boy who lived next door.

After he thought he’d finished being sick, Noel came back in through the hidey-hole. Evie was still sitting on the bed with the photocopies.

‘Where’s the gun?’ she said.

‘Safe.’

‘Good.’

She didn’t ask any more. Why I like Evie, Noel thought, is because she doesn’t torment me with questions.

Evie went out, and Noel read through some of the photocopies, then Evie came back in with two mugs of tea. ‘I don’t know if you take sugar, but I put three spoons in because you need it for energy if you’ve been sick.’ Evie was bossy sometimes, it came from being a big sister, but that evening Noel liked it: it’s nice if you’re feeling alone and sick.

Noel was reading through the stuff again, but Evie didn’t want to. When Sharnda was here, she sort of made it far away like history, but it wasn’t history to Evie, it was too close to the bone.

It was somehow dangerous, Evie thought, what she knew. (Sharnda had said something: what was it? About danger). This feeling of knowing too much, but not enough. Like when you’re a kid, and you half-know a secret, and you’re scared you’ll let it out accidentally because you’re not sure what’s
in
the secret, and what’s out of it. These nights questions came into Evie’s sleep like hooks. Evie didn’t ask Noel where the gun was, because she didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to know. If you think about a question mark, Evie thought, it’s shaped like a scythe. And you’re in its path, and you have to jump over it.

Nobby Weston, Evie thought. Who’s he?

She looked at Noel, who was quiet and reading. It was strange, how he made her peaceful; and other times, this wild laugh that was in him made her happy; but most of the time, she couldn’t just let him make her feel peaceful and happy because all these people and questions seemed to be searching them out, forcing them together, pulling them apart, never letting them just be Evie and Noel.

In his own way, Noel was thinking the same thing. Why me?

The other day upon the stair

I met a man who wasn’t there

He wasn’t there again today

Oh dear I wish he’d go away…

(Go away, Mick, Noel thought.)

Only he wasn’t Mick, this man Noel had met on the stair. Mick was later. This man on the stair: that was Noel.

He’d met himself there, but not a man but a boy…

‘
I was hollering for help and one of our side crawled past me then…
’

…Not a man but a boy, not a boy but a beast, not so much a beast but more a cockroach. Why me, Mick Cruise whoever you are, why me?

‘The Cruise bloke,’ Noel said. ‘He must be related to this Padraic or however-you-say-it bloke who was the tenant of the place.’

‘Yeah,’ was all Evie said. She’d hated history at school. The police found a girl who was cowering in a cupboard. Leave it at that.

But Noel wouldn’t. ‘Who
was
she?’

‘Who?’

‘You know.’

Evie did and she didn’t. She knew the face, for she’d seen the ghost, and she knew she was the girl and that the girl was she, or sometimes anyway. But didn’t know her name, her own name, no,
her
name, oh god, things like this made Evie go in circles and she didn’t want to.

‘
You know
,’ Noel said again, for
he
didn’t, but Evie must. He fought his will against hers, like Sammy when she thought Evie had a secret; for a difference between Noel and Evie was that while Evie knew both people, the face of the girl, the face with the gun, Noel knew only himself, himself that was gutless. He knew the night, the gun, the running, knew it off by heart, but when he’d gone into the scullery maybe his mind had come back too fast to 1981: for he didn’t know Lizzie; he only knew Evie.

Only Evie, and himself who-wasn’t-there. Whoever I am, this guy that I was, I’m gutless. Frozen like ice, I wish I could act.

Acting/act. Despite himself, Noel laughed. Sometimes you used the word to mean pretending, and sometimes you used it to mean doing.

Then he saw Evie watching him laugh. She must think I’m a creep, laughing at nothing. Noel stopped short.

I wish he’d keep laughing, Evie thought.

So Noel and Evie sat, uncomfortable with each other. It was a long time since the night over the suburbs, sitting together swinging their legs, away from the tension of their homes.

‘Do you want to come up with me and see her?’ Noel finally said.

‘No,’ Evie said. She didn’t want ever again to see that fat rotten face.

‘How do you think
I
feel?’ Noel demanded. ‘What if
your
grandmother had done what mine did?’ Noel felt as if there was poison in his blood.

‘C’mon then.’ For on the other hand Evie had to know: who Nobby was, this mystery gunman. And who she was, the girl inside her.

Ted was sitting in the kitchen with the door open, waiting for them, a funny look on his face, as they opened Evie’s door and walked out.

(
Lover Boy
, Evie thought, and wished Noel to the end of hell.)

‘What’s this I hear about you and all your Dolebludger Club wanting to play cops and robbers and make a film in my house!’

Sharnda must’ve gone and opened her big mouth.

Ted and Evie had a dingdong row then, Noel trying to stand invisible beside Evie. Evie felt Ted’s eyes shifting over the bed that was all messed up from them sitting on it and Noel doing headstands. She felt cold inside and hateful.

Evie and Noel had both of course seen enough TV to know how to run an interrogation. There’s the hard method, and the soft method. In the hard method, people on TV use torture, or they yell, like the Inspector in Evie’s dreams, pounding a ruler on a table like surf crashing in a storm against a coast. In the soft method, they talk quietly, drawing the secret out of you like the Irish voices that tugged at Evie’s mind in her dreams, pulling at her knowledge like the undertow of waves circling back. (No, Pa, no, Mick, no, Ma, I’ll tell you nothing.) But never on TV (or even in dreams) had Evie or Noel seen the right method for interrogating a sick, eighty-seven-year-old woman.

As they climbed up the last steps, Noel’s mother popped out of the bathroom and said, ‘Oh you’re feeling better, dear.’ She added ‘Hello, dear,’ and a nervous smile at Evie.

‘Could you go downstairs please, Mum.’ Noel said gently, ‘and make me some soup, please.’

‘I don’t think…’ Mrs Cavendish began quietly to object, but Noel and Evie stepped past her.

The despot was in her night-gown, writing by the light of her bedside lamp. (If I write it differently, it happened differently.) Writing furiously, filling a page, then making it disappear, writing furiously again, her head bent down, ignoring them.

Mrs Cavendish popped in, worried, behind them. ‘I just settled Nanna down for the night,’ she whispered. Trying to edge them out of the room.

Evie and Noel stood there, hating. The despot still didn’t appear to know there was anyone in the room.

‘Tomato or chicken, dear?’ Noel’s mum whispered.

‘I don’t mind, Mum. Anything. Nothing.’

Nothing. Evie and Noel followed Noel’s mum down to the kitchen.

‘If you would, dear, you might remind Ted,’ Mrs Cavendish murmured as she took a jar of jellied broth from the fridge, ‘that he didn’t pop in on Friday, if you don’t mind dear.’

‘Tell me, Mum,’ Noel said, ‘all you know about Nanna.’

Noel’s mum was a little woman, light on her feet, but though her movements were swift she took a long time to do anything, she was so finicketty. Just for a bowl of soup she put down a spanking-clean tablecloth, and then a place-mat, pepper and salt in cut-glass shakers, and then poured milk into a jug, got out a glass, then another glass for Evie.

‘Or would you prefer warm milo, dear?’ she apologized to Evie. ‘I’m afraid we have no cordial.’

Then she laid a bread-and-butter plate, a bread-and-butter knife, a soup spoon, then a dinner plate to put the soup bowl on. She stirred the soup, letting it come to the boil gently, and sliced bread, and made toast, and cut it in triangles, and then took butter from the fridge and cut a slice and put it on a clean flowery butter dish, then got a little silver butter knife, then a clean white serviette in a shining old silver serviette ring that said
N
in twirley engraving.

Evie’s mum just would have boiled up water in the jug and made a cup-a-soup from a packet. Would have slapped the mug down on the laminex then sat and had a cigarette and talked to you while you drank it. Evie felt uncomfortable in Noel’s mum’s kitchen. The clock up there looked as if its hands were frozen, the time ticked so slowly. Evie longed to reach up and shift them.