Barbara watched them go, then walked the other way, up to the hill at the back of Dulcie’s. The ground was stony here, the soil too thin for the fat grass the cows liked to munch. Small piles of rabbit dung clung to the tussocks, washed down by last week’s rain. Dead leaves curled beneath the trees. A small bird ran up a tree, pecking happily for insects in the bark, then bounced onto a branch and called again, as though boasting of its catch. Barbara climbed to the top of the hill and looked out over the valley.
You could see the police station now, with the police car out the front, and Nicholson’s store with its wooden verandah, and the orange twist of road between the dark green verges. You could see Dulcie’s house set in its garden of lavender and myrtle and rosemary, and the glint of the creek through the trees. Up the other end was the track that led up to the gully and the drooping fences around Gully Jack’s front paddocks.
The paddocks were filling with young wattles, as they returned to bush. Barbara wondered what the farm had been like in his father’s day. Had fat, slow cows grazed there, like Dulcie’s? Or had they been like Gully Jack himself, restless, dreaming?
It was hard to imagine that only a few weeks ago she’d never even seen the creek—or Gully Jack or Dulcie—or any of the O’Reillys. They’d been so good to her. They’d made this strange world home, the best home she’d ever known. She was one of them. They shared everything they had, but she had nothing at all to give them back, just her silly stories of life around the corner and even they had made Ma sad and Dad’s face close up with bitterness.
Ma and Dad were people who gave without thought for themselves. Ma with her scones and comfort, Dad with his restless effort for the school. All the O’Reillys were like that, in their own ways; Elaine, sharp and generous; Young Jim protective of her and all the world.
If only she could give them just some of the things they wanted. Give Thellie an ice-cream, or an aeroplane ride. Help Jim to find his way, find some books for Elaine. If only she could help make winter easier for them. If only she could somehow wave a magic wand and find a house for Ma. If only…
But she didn’t have a magic wand. The only magic she’d ever had was when she walked around the corner. She’d done it once, then she’d tried again and nothing had happened. Should she try it now? What if she woke up somewhere else?
She thought of the draughts threading through the
shanty, of Thellie sick and shivering, of Ma with her swollen fingers.
It was worth a try. It was worth trying anything for Ma.
Barbara shut her eyes. There was the corner, just as she’d seen it before. She tried to imagine a house, just around its edge, just out of sight. All she had to do was walk around that corner, and there would be a new house for Ma, with a bathroom and a kitchen stove and soft beds. She imagined herself walking around the corner, but there was no terror moving her, no hands pulling her towards the other side.
A kookaburra cackled. Barbara opened her eyes.
There was no new house.
Despair welled up sharp and sour in her throat. Everything was the same—the dark green paddocks and the wattle regrowth and the faint wisp of smoke coming from the chimney at Gully Jack’s house were still there.
Gully Jack’s house. An empty house with dusty rooms opening off a faded corridor, a kitchen in which no-one cooked food, except for big slabs of meat.
Could she do it? Did she have the courage? Barbara stood up resolutely. All he could do was say no.
chapter nineteen
Down at Gully Jack’s
Rock smelt different in the morning, thought Gully Jack, as he hefted another barrow-load to the channel and carefully began to throw them down on the soft soil so they wouldn’t chip.
Afternoon rocks smelt of sunlight, as though they were baby suns themselves, just waiting to hatch. Lunchtime rocks smelt of sweat. Morning rocks still smelt of the soil, cool and sweet, like chocolate from a cold larder. Morning rocks fitted smoothly into your hand and slid into place like they were meant to. It was only later when your hands were numb with tiredness that they began to slip and argue with your fingers and you had to force yourself to keep on going, keep dreaming of the gold hidden in the soil just a few yards—a few months’ work—away.
Gold had been a dream as long as he could remember. It had been his Dad’s dream first. He’d sit at the table while Mum cleared up the dishes after dinner and puff at his pipe, not even noticing that the flame had gone out, and tell him all the stories of the fortune underground; just waiting there for millions of years, his Dad had said. Just waiting for them to come and get it out.
When Gully Jack had gone to bed, tucked into clean sheets that his Mum had dried on the lavender bushes down the back, tucked in by her hands that still smelt of soap, and mutton fat from tea, he’d dream of the gold too. He could feel it glowing deep under the earth, just waiting for the sun and his hands that would bring it into light. As he got older he could hear it calling, too, a murmur like the creek, but sweeter, a deep clear call from somewhere underground.
His father had talked about gold until his Mum had died, wheezing with the pneumonia. They’d had to harness up the horse early one morning to take her up to the hospital in town. She’d been too sick to see the wattle blossom crowding on the hill. His mum had loved the wattle blossom. He was saddened to think she’d been too sick to notice it when she died. He liked to think she had.
His Dad had gone on as usual for a while, milking the cows and sending the milk cans up to town, banking the milk cheque once a month and mending the fences in between the milkings. But his heart wasn’t in it. He’d cancelled the order for the new bull from down the coast. The fences were left sagging, while he panned for gold among the casuarina shadows in the creek, until one day he abandoned the milking too, and sold the cows to Dulcie’s Dad down the valley for a song, and took to panning for the gold full-time.
Gully Jack was still in school then, like Dulcie (she had plaits then, fat as carpet snakes and tied with bright blue ribbons). Dulcie and he boarded through the week in town. His Dad let him pan with him on weekends, swirling the muddy water back and forth until the silt and the sand washed away and the tiny sun-bright specks were left. One week he came back to find the pan rusting in the washhouse. He found his Dad starting his first channel up the creek.
There wasn’t much gold from that one, just a small patch of gold-rich dirt, but there was enough to pay the rates and keep young Jack at school until he was fourteen and he could come home for good.
They started the second channel together, his Dad carting the rocks and Jack fitting them in place so the edges wouldn’t collapse when they let the water in. Breaking down the last bit of bank between the channel and the creek had been exciting, watching the water eating at the last of the soil, then swirling in brown and hungry as it ate the final barrier, surging up the channel then sweeping back, and washing up again, until there was a calm sweet backwater and they could pan the new seam at the end.
Not that there’d been much gold from that one, or the next. But they’d learnt more about the gold as they went on. Its voice had got clearer in the night. He only had to follow the song of the gold and one day he’d find the seam and see the ancient sunlight flashing in his pan.
The boys he’d been at school with were married now, had farms of their own, or worked in town at the grocer’s or the butcher’s. The girls had married, too, or gone to teach or nurse or work in other people’s kitchens. He’d lost touch with most of them—what was the point of going up to town?
Now and again, late in the afternoon, as the dusk was settling across the gully and it was too dark to work, he’d look at his sagging fences, at the verandah post that was falling down. Or he’d see the wallpaper stains in the lamplight and remember the kitchen in his Mother’s time, the scents of cheese and stewed apples and baked potatoes and the rumble of the cows outside. He’d imagine for a while what it would be like to have a family of his own. He’d dream of Dulcie,
instead of gold, and see her picking chokoes from the vine that grew across the dunny.
Perhaps, when he found the gold. There wouldn’t be any need to pick the chokoes then. They could buy their vegies down at the store. They could go up to Sydney or holiday at the beach and Dulcie would be dressed in silk and ermine. The dream would fade a little there, at the thought of the holidays in Sydney, at the beach, the empty places in his life, with no more gold to dig, no more rocks to place along his channels, no more dreams of sunlight underground. He’d work just a little slower the next day, so as not to get the gold too fast, to keep his dream alive. By the next day the worry would be forgotten and the sweat would trickle down his neck again as he worked from kookaburra-dawning until the dark.
Gully Jack looked down at his pile of rocks, satisfied. It was a good pile now. Enough to keep him going all afternoon. He was about to jump down into the channel when he heard a kookaburra call a warning. He looked up.
‘Hello. Bubba, isn’t it? Where’re the others?’
‘Jim and Elaine are down at the creek. The others are up home, I suppose.’
The kid looked nervous, as though there was a mad dog about to bite. Gully Jack smiled, to try and make her feel better. ‘What’s on your mind?’
Barbara sat cautiously on a large rock, spreading her skirts around her knees. She looked like she was trying to work out what to say. ‘It’s about your house.’
‘My house? What’s wrong with my house?’
‘Nothing. Nothing at all. It’s just it’s so big, and there’s just you in it, and you were saying the other day that you wished you had someone to cook for you and all.’
Gully Jack thought of Dulcie, holding his cup of tea for him at the hall, remembered her smiling at Sergeant Ryan. He forced his mind back.
‘I suppose I might have. So what?’
‘Well, I was wondering if maybe the O’Reillys could live with you. I mean Ma could do your cooking and Dad could repair the house. The verandah looks like it’s going to fall down any day and one of the stumps under the kitchen looked rotten, I couldn’t help seeing…’ Barbara’s words came out in a rush. ‘And Dad could grow his vegies in one of the paddocks. I mean, it’d give you more time to work here if you didn’t have to cook or weed your vegies, and he’s really good at growing vegies. Maybe he could sell them and then he could pay you rent.’
Gully Jack sat stunned. What an idea—sharing his house with another family, seeing Ma O’Reilly in his Mum’s kitchen, with those kids running through all the rooms. But they were good kids. It was a pleasure to hear them laugh and it wouldn’t be as though they’d bother him much, as he was never in. And Bubba was right—O’Reilly could fix up the place. It wasn’t right to let it go, but what else could he do, the channel took up all his time.
Barbara had taken his silence for anger. She stood. ‘Look, I’m sorry to have bothered you. It was just an idea.’
Gully Jack held up a hand. ‘No. Stop. It’s not a bad idea. It just needs thinking about. I mean it’s not something you can jump up and yell “Yes” to, is it? I mean a bloke’s got to think about something as serious as this.’
Barbara sat down again. Gully Jack looked at her. ‘Dulcie was telling me you think you’re from the future. She says you just walked around a corner and you were here.’ Barbara nodded. Gully Jack shook his head. ‘Struth girl, couldn’t you have chosen a better corner to walk around than this? Smack bang into a susso camp and living in a shack.’
‘It’s not so bad.’ She lifted her chin. ‘The O’Reillys have been good to me. They’re wonderful people.’
‘So you want to do something for them in return,’ said Gully Jack shrewdly. ‘If they can’t walk around the corner for themselves you’ll fix it for them like they have.’ Gully Jack gazed down at the smooth rocks in his gully. For a moment they blurred and he almost saw around the corner too. There was a gully and another seam of gold at the end of it, but this time there was a good dinner at the close of the day, and company around the table, the kids laughing in the raspberries at the bottom of the garden.
‘You’re on,’ he said suddenly.
The girl blinked. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I said you’re on. You tell the O’Reillys they can move down any time they like. I’ll sharefarm with O’Reilly if he wants to. You know what sharefarming is?’
Barbara shook her head.
‘Well, he does the work, but it’s my farm. If he can make any money out of those vegies of his we share it, so much for him and so much for me. Struth, if he does any good at it I’ll sell him a paddock or two, but we’ll think about that later. All right?’
Barbara’s face glowed like gold. ‘All right!’ She thought for a minute. ‘Will you tell them, or will I?’
Gully Jack grinned. ‘It was your idea. You should have the glory.’
‘No,’ she decided. ‘You tell them. Let them think it was your idea. Is that okay with you?’
‘It’s all right with me,’ said Gully Jack slowly. ‘I just think you should have the credit too. But if that’s the way you want it, okay.’
‘It’s the best way.’ Barbara stood up to go, then came to him quickly and kissed his prickly cheek. ‘You’ll never be sorry,’ she promised. ‘Never.’
Gully Jack watched her running up the track, her skirt flashing through the trees. The world felt different suddenly, as if he’d gone around a corner, just like she had. It felt different. That was all.
chapter twenty
Bunyas
It was hot down at the creek. The still air was full of sweat and eucalyptus oil.
Elaine and Young Jim sprawled in the casuarina shade after their swim and let the hot air wash over their cooled bodies.
‘Do you think Bubba’s all right? She was awfully quiet this morning.’
‘Don’t tie yourself in knots,’ said Elaine lazily. She tossed a pebble into the creek, trying to make it skim across the water. It made a rude noise, and sank. ‘She must just find things a bit strange, that’s all. I mean wherever she came from, it’s got to be a heck of a lot different from this.’
‘I suppose,’ said Young Jim. He pulled his carving out of his pocket and began to scrape at it slowly with his knife. ‘I just wish I could’ve taken her somewhere halfway decent. I mean a place with a proper house and everything. Struth, I wish I could give every kid in Australia a proper house, and decent tucker.’
‘Get off your soapbox, will you,’ ordered Elaine drowsily. ‘You can’t change the world yourself. Not all of it at once, at any rate.’ She yawned. ‘We’ll need another swim soon. I’ve never known it so sultry.’ Elaine rested her head on her arms. She shut her eyes, then opened them.
‘I should think things were changing round here fast enough even for you,’ she said.
‘What’s up with you?’ Young Jim looked up from his carving at the sudden seriousness of her voice.
Elaine shrugged, her face down in the casuarina needles again. ‘Just the thought of school, I suppose.’
‘I thought you wanted an education.’
‘’Course I want an education. I just don’t want to go to school. I wish someone would invent a sort of education medicine—you know, you take a teaspoon every morning and it teaches you everything you wanted to know. Then you could spend the rest of the day like this, swimming and…and just wandering round the world.’
Young Jim snorted. ‘If wishes were fishes we’d all be rich. You’ve got to work for what you want in this world, kiddo. You don’t get things handed to you on a plate.’
‘It’s all right for you.’ Elaine sat up and searched for another flat pebble among the flood debris on the bank. ‘You’ll be fourteen in a few weeks, old enough to leave school if you want to. You’ll be free of school forever.’
‘Maybe not.’ Jim turned the carving in his hand, trying to judge its shape.
He had carved a lizard this time, a miniature dragon like the ones in the creek, with a high inquisitive head and leather
y folds around its throat.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’ve been thinking I might keep trying for my Intermediate. Maybe even get my Leaving.’
‘How’s that going to help you change the world?’ demanded Elaine unkindly.
‘Dunno. But I reckon you’ve got to know a bit about the world before you change it. Who knows, maybe I’ll even get to the university one day.’
‘Where’d you get the money?’
Young Jim grinned suddenly. ‘Let’s just say I can see it round the corner.’
Elaine snorted. ‘You’ve been listening to Bubba. Everyone’s been listening to Bubba. You’ve all gone crazy.’
‘Why not? What’s wrong with dreaming? If she can have a place round the corner why can’t I?’
‘Except her corner’s different. She didn’t want to come here. Did you Bubba?’
Young Jim started. He hadn’t seen Barbara walk up. She looked different somehow. Her face was glowing like starlight through the trees. She looked like she was hugging a secret and wouldn’t let it go. She poked him with her toe, then made herself comfortable on the casuarina needles. ‘Lazybones. You look like a mob of lizards soaking up the sun.’
Elaine scratched at a mosquito bite on her leg.
‘Just enjoying our freedom while we can,’ she said philosophically.
‘Too right,’ agreed Young Jim. He slipped his penknife into his pocket. ‘I’m going up the gully to look for bunyas. It’s probably the last chance we’ll get before Monday. Anyone else coming?’
‘Not me,’ said Elaine. ‘That’s a mug’s game.’
‘What’s a bunya?’ asked Barbara.
Young Jim laughed. ‘Come on then, I’ll show you.’
Elaine stood up and shook the bark and leaves off her skirt. ‘I wouldn’t if I were you,’ she informed her. ‘Even getting wood with the littl’uns is better than getting bunyas.’
Somewhere around the Corner Page 13
