The House That Was Eureka by Nadia Wheatley Page A

1929.
    ‘No!’ said Nobby. The old girl had done this secretly, without a word to him. ‘I’ll stop her,’ Nobby said.
    He was the light of the old girl’s life, her darling treasure. She was tough as they come, but she’d never denied Nobby anything. ‘She’ll only be threatening, just to get at your pa.’
    ‘To get at me, you mean.’ Everyone in Liberty Street knew that Mrs Weston couldn’t stand a bar of Lizzie. Mrs Weston, who played piano, the widow of a bank teller . . .
    Sucks to you, Ma Weston, Lizzie thought. I don’t want your sweet Sunshine anyway. Not in that way.
    ‘The stuck-up cow,’ Lizzie said.
    ‘You’re not wrong there,’ Nobby agreed. Then felt dirty inside because he’d said it. There were still things about his mother he couldn’t help liking.
    One day when he was little, Nobby had seen her on the roof, fighting a southerly buster to pull a tarp over while the slates flew off around her head. She was shouting down into the street to stop the neighbourhood men from coming up to help her.
    ‘I don’t take charity!’ She didn’t give it either.
    And she could be funny too sometimes. Like when she played the piano and made up songs about all the neighbours. But she only ever showed her wit to Nobby.
    ‘I’ll get round her, no risk,’ Nobby said.
    ‘And if you can’t?’
    ‘I will.’
    ‘But just if you can’t?’
    ‘Then I’ll stick with your side. Our side.’
    Nobby looked down over the houses. One day he and Lizzie would live out there in a house, he said.
    ‘You know I hate it when you go like this,’ Lizzie cut him short.
    I’m a pure red flame, burning only for the struggle
.
    The thought of a husband, and love, and kids, and doing the mopping to keep it all clean, made Lizzie feel as if someone had locked her up inside somewhere tiny and airless.
7
    Evie flunked the job interview she went to that next Monday. It was for a sandwich hand, in a place in the city, and they had other girls with letters saying they’d worked in other sandwich places, so they didn’t even try Evie out. Evie didn’t mind, except for the money. Slap-slop, putting curried egg onto buttered squares, it wasn’t thrilling. Not that anything was.
    As she was all dressed up it was a pity to waste it, so she walked around Centrepoint a bit, then dropped into the local CYSS place on the way to pick up Sammy.
    ‘G’day, I’m Roger,’ said the friendly guy who was good-looking. He still had a video portapak on his shoulder, and the solid girl with glasses was still trailing after him on the end of the sound-lead. There was macrame in one room, and tap-dancing in another, and in the kitchen a whole lot of guys were eating rice and cooking more rice and talking a foreign language and laughing.
    ‘Haven’t seen you here before,’ Roger said.
    (
He doesn’t remember me
.)
    Evie couldn’t think of anything to say. He looked exactly like someone she’d love to go out with. Really clean hair, thick and the right length and the right colour; a suntan (despite winter!) and blue eyes and clean faded jeans that fitted well and a yellow sweatshirt that said ‘Make The Ruling Class Crumble’. Evie read it and couldn’t understand it. It sounded like apple crumble, that they used to make in Home Science. The girl was obviously his girlfriend. She had on a black T-shirt with the same sort of writing. It said ‘Eat The Rich’. Cannibalism made Evie feel sick.
    ‘Were you looking for something in particular?’ Roger had a really warm voice.
    ‘No.’ Evie felt silly in her best respectable dress and tights and Mum’s shoes.
    ‘There’s things on the noticeboards,’ Roger said. ‘Or come again. Or Di’s probably in the kitchen, go in and meet her. We’ve got to get down and film the demo.’ He smiled again on his way out the door.
    ‘Or come along,’ the girl said, hurrying to keep up with him or the cord might break. ‘We need numbers.’
    ‘What?’ Evie trailed out after