The House That Was Eureka (23 page)

Not ward off this night, though, for nothing could do that. Except something simple like a phone call, that he couldn’t do. Evie would think him weak.

Maria liked secrets for their own sake. Was preparing one now, with Jodie.

‘We’ll do it tonight,’ she whispered.

‘What?’ Sammy demanded.

‘It’s a secret.’

Morning secrets and afternoon secrets and dark night secrets.

Maria knew that anything you did was vastly improved by being a secret. On dark nights sometimes she’d creep down to the kitchen and drink a glass of milk by moonlight. It made the milk taste better. One night when she’d done that – it was the night Roseanne had come around, only it was later, hours after Roseanne had gone home – Maria had seen a burglar. She’d been standing there in the half-darkness. The only light was that thrown by the open fridge door, for there was no moon that night, and she’d seen the burglar half-running, half-crawling down the stairs – really fast, but quiet as a bicycle. Then he wasn’t there. Maria hadn’t been scared, for how could you be scared of someone who looked so scared? And how could you be scared of someone who looked like a sort of young-faced Mr Man?

Mr Man was part of the afternoon secret. Sammy called him that, the old man who lived at Mrs Maria’s and sometimes sang songs from the olden days while Mrs Maria fed them cake. When Maria had asked him his name, he’d just smiled at her.

‘Ask no questions and you’ll be told no lies.’

But Maria had found his pension card and knew his real name. She wrote it on the fridge when he disappeared.

Tonight’s secret, though, wasn’t part of that secret. It was a witch secret. Ever since Mrs Maria had turned out to be nice, Maria had been looking for a witch to replace her.

‘I’ll tell on you,’ said Sammy.

‘Who’ll you tell? Mum’s not here.’

‘I’ll tell Mr Man. And Noel. And Evie.’

‘We’d better let her come,’ Jodie said.

Maria saw her point.

‘What’re we gonna do, but, when we get there?’ Jodie whispered.

‘You’ll see.’ Ree was mysterious. Secretly, she hadn’t the faintest idea. But she’d think of something.

In her room, the despot was hungry. Hadn’t eaten breakfast this morning, she never seemed to feel like eating in the mornings these days, but had looked forward to her lunch, which never came. Noel had asked Evie to get it, he wanted to go up the music shop, and Evie had said yes, though she hadn’t done despot-duty since the dawn of the gun. Evie had said yes, and then the thought of that rotten face, she couldn’t face it, so had left a note on Noel’s door which the wind had blown away.

The despot was hungry, waiting for her supper that never came because Noel had quite forgotten. I must tell my son, she thought, calling; ‘
Noh!
’

But Noel lay elsewhere, hearing nothing but the memory of Matt’s laughter. It’d been going on for years, for years too long.

The phone rang. Sharnda answered. It was Roger. Time was flying fast. All around was the fidgetiness of a crowd. Matt and Tasso and Billy and a couple of their mates were drinking beer. They were dressed in blue, policemen; in their belts, old cowboy guns from their childhood; in their words, old bullying cries from their childhood.

‘We’ll get Noel, eh Matt, Matt?’ Tasso urged. ‘Knock him down, like we used to.’ He was excited, the beer going to his head.

‘
You
can,’ Matt said. ‘I might get that girl of his. Knock
her
down.’ They all laughed with him.

‘Who is he, this Noel?’ asked a bloke who was new to the gang. ‘What’s wrong with him?’

‘He’s just mad,’ Matt explained.

Sharnda, overhearing, was jolted into a vague memory of some experiment she’d read about when she’d done Psychology. They’d got ordinary people, these Psych experimenters, and told some of them they were prisoners, and told some that they were gaolers, and within a short time the gaolers were bashing the prisoners, and the prisoners obeying.

What have I started? Sharnda worried.

Bang, thought Noel.

Bang, Evie hammered.

Out on the trampoline Maria and Jodie and Sammy chanted and jumped, killing time till Evie and Noel’s friends came and they could go and do their secret.

Over the rope

And under again

She lives in that house

And she gives me a pain...

In her room the despot heard them. Cruel it was then.

Bang, Evie hammered. A sign up over the door. There was anger in her, though not for Ted this time, not even for the despot really, perhaps for herself. This feeling that she’d had something, and let it go, only herself to blame. She wondered where Noel was. He couldn’t really have meant it, that he wouldn’t come. Evie wished she could leave all this, run off through the lanes with Noel to the peace of the secret landscape. Evie slammed nails in, unused to a hammer. Ted always did any hammering around the place, one thing you could say for Ted was that he was good about fixing things. Of course, he should be, he worked for a builder. Evie slammed nails in: if this night had to happen, they might as well try to make it look proper.

Traitor, traitor, we all hate her,

Put her in a pot with choko and pertater...

Evie found herself chanting the words of some stupid song that Maria had come home with recently.

In his room down the street the man surveyed his feet. Had no idea why he’d gone and put his shoes on tonight, the first time in a couple of months, slippers had done him till now. It was hardly as if he was going somewhere: where was there for him to go?

Stuck inside four walls like his mate there. Thinking of that, pity took him and he pulled back the curtains, opened his window, opened the cage, and let his mate out free into winter night.

It was on.

The Newtown CYSS truck came, Sharnda driving, and the pickets jumped out with lights on stands and two rolls of barbed wire and lots of bags stuffed with paper to look like sandbags, and lumps of coolite hacked into the size of bricks and rocks.

‘The Eureka Stockade,’ Sharnda read Evie’s sign. She’d forgotten that. ‘Good one, Evie.’

Evie suddenly remembered that old man down the street that first morning. ‘The house that was Eureka,’ she murmured.

A couple of pickets started unrolling the barbed wire all over the front fence and yard. The rest raced inside and piled sandbags up at the doors and windows. The bags looked funny, in mum’s loungeroom, with the white-tiled coffee table that Ted had made, with the modern vinyl armchairs. Evie had moved the vases and things, but on the mantelpiece still were the wedding photo of Mum and Ted, the baby photos of the girls, and the family photo they’d had taken last Christmas.

‘
They
shouldn’t be there.’ Evie went to move them.

‘Leave it. We’ll have the light out, just set up one of these lights down here, no one will see them.’

‘But it wasn’t
us
that was the tenants.’ But Evie left them.

‘Um, Evie...’ Deep down Sharnda was nervous herself. ‘Here, we’ve got two portapaks, but you’ll have to do inside the house, and I’ll do outside, get Noel or someone to hold the mike for you. Roger can’t get here, his wife’s suddenly been taken to hospital, the baby’s coming two weeks early.’

‘Wife?’ said Evie ‘Baby?’

Sharnda looked at Evie. I’d forgotten she’s in love with him. Oh well, better she knows. ‘Didn’t you know?’

Evie said nothing. Evie felt nothing. She paused, and examined her feelings, but no, there was no pain, at least no new pain, no pain beyond the loneliness that had been growing all this week. That thin white face, the feeling made her feel. That face certainly wasn’t Roger’s.

‘I can’t,’ Evie said. Roger had shown her, sure, and she’d used the camera a few times, but she was positive she’d get all the buttons wrong. ‘I’ll mess it all up.’

‘You’ll be right.’

Round about them ran people dressed in old black and brown trousers, in long white underpants, up and down the stairs, sticks in their hands. Evie looked for Noel to get him to hold the sound-thing but couldn’t find him. He might be in next door, she thought, but it was too late to go and see, you couldn’t get out the front without dislodging the pile of bags. She watched Sharnda race out the back door with the other camera to get to the street via the lane, heard the pickets upstairs in Mum’s room, and ran up to join them. They were laughing and arguing as a couple of guys tied onto the balcony rail a sheet with huge painted words saying:

UNEMPLOYED – UNITE AND FIGHT

Evie wished Noel was here. She’d grown used to him. Evie decided not to bother with the mike-thing, to just pick up the sound on the camera mike. She slung the portapak onto her shoulder (God it’s heavy) and clicked the camera on, just as everything started.

Evie and most of the pickets were in the front upstairs room when someone yelled: ‘Here they are.’ They ran out and saw a bus roar up and then the street was full of police firing up at them.

Under the bed, Noel froze, hearing the bangs outside that sounded like real bullets here, not firecrackers.

In her room, the despot stopped writing.
No, it couldn’t be, not again, that was last week, that was years ago.
Not again, please, pray. Pray to no one.

Her hand flew fast across the page again, writing madly to erase the years, to change history. No. If I write it differently, it happened differently. ‘
Noh!
’

In a room down the street, drawn to the window by the bangs, the man saw the mob come running yelling, some with banners and placards, into Liberty Street. Down the other end of the street, at 203, there were shapes picked out by streetlights, blue shapes that made loud bangs. The man ran out too to join the mob.

Mrs Maria caught his coat-sleeve at the door. ‘
Ti einai?
What is it?’ Fright in her eyes.

‘God knows!’ (
History repeating itself!?
)

‘Where you go?’

‘Home.’

And off down the street ran the man to join his past.

Up the stairs crept the girls. Giggling, nudging each other, hanging onto each other in the dark.

It couldn’t be. But there they were. The cream of the Irish bog standing in her room as bold as you like. Giggling behind hands across their mouths, stepping into
my
territory, they get bolder by the year. Once upon a time, in the old days, at least they’d keep themselves to the street. The sounds they made to mock her.

Up to the window the parrot screeched, frightened by freedom, hurling his green body against this invisible thing that stopped him entering four walls and light.

‘Scab, scab!’ screeched the old man’s mate, scratching at the glass with his beak.

‘
Noh!
’ screamed the despot. ‘
NOH!
’

Down the stairs terrified ran Jodie and Ree. Out the front door to the street and the noise, where kids dressed in blue were pushing back lots of other kids, and that girl who’d come to see Evie had a big camera.

‘One two three four,’ chanted the mob, using the chants they used at demos down the CES.

‘
One two three four

The unemployed will wait no more…
’

‘Pigs, pigs,’ yelled the shapes in raggedy clothes at the shapes in blue clothes, laughing, jeering at their mates.

‘Scum!’ yelled the blue ones back. ‘Dolebludgers!’ Making police faces with their faces for the benefit of Sharnda’s whirring camera.

Up on the balcony of Evie’s house, pickets yelled down, hurling lumps of coolite. Up at them flew the bungers.

A group of blue split off into the lane to get in the back way.

‘
Five six seven eight
,’ chanted the crowd,

‘
Get on the streets and demonstrate!
’

‘Hang on!’ Sharnda tried to organize things. It was getting out of hand. There must be five or six hundred here now, they must’ve come from other CYSS schemes. She knew Roger had passed the word on, but she hadn’t expected any to come. Sharnda saw Jodie run past bawling and reached out to get her, but Jodie was swallowed into the crowd.

Filming down from the balcony, Evie saw too.
Sammy!
she thought.
Where
’
s Sammy?
Evie ran then, down the stairs, dumped the camera in the diningroom – let it film what it likes. Went to run out the front door but that way was blocked. So she ran to the back door to get to the street via the lane.

Up at the window next door, the parrot hurled its greenness at the pane.

‘Scratch her eyes!’

‘Persecutor!’ screamed the despot, yelling a real word as she opened the window to…she didn’t know what, maybe strangle, perhaps just push it away. In it flew.

At Newtown police station calls started to jam the switchboard.

‘...some sort of wild part...’

‘...a kind of demo, with banners and chanting...’

‘...something to do with unemployment...’

‘...a thousand kids on the rampage...’

The station sergeant put out a call to all local cars and paddy wagons; then, just to be on the safe side, made a call to central headquarters.

‘We’ll check it out and let you know,’ he concluded.

But Mrs Maria dialled 000, terrified for the safety of her lodger out on the street. Her voice rose, hysterical, ‘Boom-boom,’ she screamed, ‘Liberty Street, guns, bang, big fighting,’ she screamed, her English deserting her as the noise in the street reminded her of the war.

As the call from central headquarters to all available patrols came through the police band of their radios, the Channel 2 Mobile News Unit was just leaving a crash at Redfern, the Channel 7 helicopter was on its way to a fire at Ashfield, the Channel 10 Newscruiser was cruising along Parramatta Road, and down at the
Herald
and
Australian
buildings journalists were just coming back from their tea-breaks.

‘Sounds like a repeat of those kids who rioted at Broadmeadows!’