Somewhere around the Corner

by Jackie French

The bus driver stared at her as she got out. He had seemed wary about letting her on the bus with her bare feet and tangled dirty hair. There was blood on her hands where a cut had opened up again—she must have torn the skin scrabbling at the boulder and not noticed. He had accepted her money in the end, nodding her to a vacant seat down the back. She thought of the money in her pocket. Sixty cents left after the bus fare. Enough for a phone call, but not for another bus ride.

  Eastcliff Private Hospital. If it was close, she’d be able to walk there. She was so hungry. How long had it been since she’d eaten Ma’s thick stew? Sixty years ago…her stomach thought it had been sixty years at least…

  She had to ask someone or find a map. Would the clerk at the desk help her? They might just throw her out, looking like this. A police car pulled up beside her as the traffic lights turned red.

  For a moment she hesitated, remembering the faces at the demonstration. Then Sergeant Ryan’s face erased them. She stepped onto the road without further thought and spoke through the window.

  ‘Excuse me. Can you tell me how far it is to Eastcliff?’

  The policeman was young. He stared at her, taking in the mud and the blood on her hands.

  ‘Eastcliff? That’s over past Manly.’ His voice was deep, reminding her of Gully Jack. His hands were big too, but soft where Gully Jack’s had been hard, and pink where his had been brown, with trimmed nails instead of cracked and dirty ones.

  ‘Manly!’ That would take hours to walk, days even.

  The policeman was still staring at her. ‘You live out at Eastcliff? You look like you’ve been in the wars. You had an accident or something?’

  Barbara began to shake her head, then nodded. She had been in an accident.

  The policeman sighed. ‘Come on, hop in. I’ll give you a lift out there. I’m just going off duty. I’m headed that way myself. What’s your address?’

  Barbara hesitated. ‘Not to my home. I have to get to the hospital…Eastcliff Private Hospital. My friend’s a patient there.’

  ‘Well, hop in if you’re coming. Come on. Quick.’ The lights had changed; other drivers were impatient. The policeman reached over and opened the door. ‘I know where the hospital is, my granny had her veins done there. Come on, get that seat belt on, the light’ll be red again in a sec.’

  The seat was soft after the bus.

  ‘What happened to you?’

  Barbara repressed an urge to giggle hysterically. What would he say if she told him? Would he be angry, thinking she was having him on, or think she was a mental case?

  ‘It’s a long story. I…just got caught up in something, that’s all.’

  ‘Something muddy by the looks.’ The policeman changed gears, glanced at the blood on her arm, the dirty bare feet.

  ‘What’s your friend’s name?’ The voice was a shade too casual, as though checking that there really was a friend. Bare feet and ragged jumper couldn’t be accounted for by an accident.

  ‘Jim O’ Reilly.’

  ‘Jim O’Reilly?’ The policeman chuckled. ‘You don’t mean Young Jim O’Reilly by any chance? Do you really know him?’

  ‘You know Young Jim too?’

  ‘Never met the bloke, but I’ve read about him enough. There was an article in the paper the other day. He broke his hip or something, didn’t he, on that picket line? Silly old bastard, you’d think he’d be old enough to know better.’ The policeman grinned. ‘I wouldn’t say that in front of my dad, though. The old man’s his hero, always has been. Youngest-ever member of parliament back in the old days, that’s what the article said. That’s how he got his name, Young Jim, I reckon. He’s done some good things though, don’t get me wrong. Is he a friend of your parents or something?’

  ‘He’s a friend of mine,’ said Barbara. She clenched her hands. What if he didn’t remember her? It would be so long ago for him. What if…

  The police car ran smoothly through the suburbs.

  The streets smelt weird after the smells of the valley; metal and plastic. She’d forgotten the hard, biting, smell of plastic. Noisy streets, after the quiet of the gully; cars and brakes and traffic lights. How could you get so close to a place in a few weeks? How could you become so entwined with the people?

  But this world was real too. This was her world. Every minute made it clearer to her. As much as she longed for the O’Reillys and the gully, this time was hers, not then.

  Somewhere deep in her soul she had known that her own time would claim her once more. This was home. If only the others were here too. Her heart seemed too big to cope with suddenly. She had to find Young Jim—she had to.

  The police car moved smoothly up the hill towards the hospital. The policeman glanced at his watch. Of course, he’d been going off duty, he must have somewhere else he wanted to go. They pulled up outside the hospital gates.

  ‘You sure you’ll be all right? You want me to wait for you? There’s a parking lot around the back.’

  Barbara shook her head. It seemed too much of an effort to speak, to explain. Everything seemed concentrated on seeing Jim again. It felt like years had passed now, not just the few hours since she’d seen him last. More years than she had lived, but she could feel them all.

  The policeman looked relieved. He took out a notebook and scribbled something on it, then handed her the bit of paper. ‘Look, if you need me, you ring that number. Got it? I don’t like leaving you, but my friend’ll be waiting. She gets mad if she waits too long! You got some money on you? Here then. No, keep it, no arguing, you can send it back sometime if you want to. That’s my name written down there.’ She watched him drive off down the hill.

  The hospital smelt clean, the sort of clean that seeps into you and won’t let go. She thought for a moment that the nurse at the desk was going to order her out. But she didn’t. She turned her eyes away from Barbara’s dirty feet and gestured down the hall.

  The mud had dried now. It felt hard, as though it was cracking and sucking all the moisture out. Her arm hurt. Her heart beat like a hammer in her chest.

  Rooms with tidy beds and tidy people, too ill or too old to make a mess, under tightly stretched sheets and light, bright blankets; curtains at the windows that looked like they’d been starched; thick lino on the floor so her feet hardly made a noise. One room, two. It must be this one here.

  She paused at the door. There were four beds inside. Two were empty, an old man was sleeping in another. Was it Jim? It couldn’t be. Even after sixty years…

  A man was reading a magazine in the last bed. His face was bored, as though the magazine held no interest, just something for his hand to hold and his eyes to wander over. He wore striped pyjamas and bifocal glasses. His hair was brushed and faded, but not the pale colour that she’d known. This hair was grey.

  The man looked up. She knew him then. It was the man she’d met at the first demonstration, who’d told her to walk around the corner.

  The man stared. The magazine fell to his knees.

  ‘Bubba,’ he said.

  She felt like she’d come home.

  chapter twenty-four

  Back with Jim

  ‘Thellie rang,’ said Jim.

  ‘Thellie?’

  ‘That was her daughter, Julie, down by the creek, and her grandkid. You remember, Sara?’

  ‘She was Thellie’s grand-daughter?’

  ‘They were going to have lunch with her. Sara told Thellie all about you. This peculiar girl all muddy in the creek. Thellie guessed it was you as soon as she heard the name. She drove straight up to the bus depot, looking for you, but you’d just gone. Julie thought she was crazy! I’ve been waiting. Hoping,’ said Jim.

  ‘It’s funny, isn’t it?’ Jim leant back against the pillows as though the shock was too heavy for his shoulders to bear. One hand trailed awkwardly across the bed. ‘You reckon you’ve come to the end of your life, then something happens. I was just lying here thinking there was no more to my life than what they’ll bring me in for tea: sloppy custar
d and burnt chops, or sloppy fruit and half-cooked sausages. Then you walk in, calm as a kitten in a basket, as if you’d walked around the corner.’

  Barbara smiled. It seemed like years since she’d smiled, not hours.

  ‘I did,’ she said.

  ‘I always knew you’d come back,’ said Jim. His eyes were the same, still sky-blue, the colour of the sky above Poverty Gully, not the smudged city sky outside. His hands were old, swollen and wrinkled and big-knuckled, with brown splotches on the skin, but his grin was just the same.

  She was sitting beside his bed. He’d made the nurse bring her a cup of tea and a plate of sandwiches, the same bossy Jim as years ago, and he’d watched her sternly while she ate them, not letting her speak until she had.

  Barbara put the plate down. The world was coming into focus for the first time since she’d seen the bank crumble into the channel.

  ‘The others didn’t believe me.’ Jim tried to put the magazine back on the table by his bed. He fumbled, and it slipped. Barbara picked it up for him and slipped it onto the shelf.

  ‘Oh, they said they believed me,’ Jim went on. ‘They didn’t want to upset me, or Thellie either for that matter. Thellie refused to believe you were dead too. She must have cried for days after you left. Every time someone came through the door she expected it to be you. As for me—well, boys that age don’t think they can cry. It’d have been better for me if I had.’

  ‘Why did everyone think I was dead?’

  Barbara sipped the last of the tea. It was very strong and sweet.

  ‘Because the flood had swept you away, of course.’ Jim peered at her over his glasses. ‘There were search parties looking for your body for weeks. They must’ve poked around every square inch of the creek, and the hills too, in case you’d managed to crawl up looking for help. Then they all looked again when the flood went down, hoping to find your body.

  ‘I don’t think Ted Ryan slept for three days, he was so upset. He organised every able-bodied man in the district.’

  Jim looked out the window. ‘They couldn’t understand why I wasn’t out there helping them. Put it down to shock, I think. But I was looking down, remember. I saw you go. One minute you were there, with your eyes shut and the next you weren’t, wham bam, nothing. I hardly had time to blink, then the flood water was swirling round where you had been.

  ‘I knew you hadn’t drowned. None of the others had been watching, they hadn’t seen what I had. They thought I just didn’t want to face that you were dead.’ He looked at her for a moment. ‘That was, what—sixty years ago now. I don’t suppose there’s been a day since when I didn’t think of you and wonder what had happened, wonder when I’d see you again. I believed I would, you know. I knew you would be somewhere in the future, waiting for me. Somewhere around the corner.’ He glanced at the mud on her face, at the mud on her hands. ‘I reckon it wasn’t so long ago for you, was it? You’ve just got here.’

  Barbara nodded.

  ‘Struth, love, it must be hard for you, straight from there to here. How did you get here—to the hospital, I mean?’

  ‘A policeman drove me here. A young one, he was nice. Jim, what happened when I left? Is everyone still there, down in the gully? Did you all move to Gully Jack’s? What about the school?’

  Jim nodded vaguely, as though he hadn’t heard. He seemed to be thinking. His face looked tired, older than when she had come in, as though the strain of meeting her had exhausted him. Finally he reached into the drawer beside the bed. He drew out a set of keys and handed them to her.

  ‘What are these for?’

  ‘The keys to my place. Go on, take them.’

  ‘But I can’t.’

  ‘Where else are you going to stay then?’

  Barbara was silent.

  ‘You get a taxi there. They’ll call you one from the front desk. You ask the sister in charge. Look, I know it’s not the best staying there on your own, but it’s only for a few days. With luck they’ll let me out soon, and if not—well, we’ll work something out. But you go home and get yourself cleaned up. Struth, Ma would say you looked like something the cat dragged in. And here,’ he said, handing her some notes from his wallet, ‘you get yourself some clothes too. Hell’s bells, that’s still Dulcie’s skirt you’re wearing, isn’t it? I wouldn’t have thought I’d remember it, but the memory’s still as plain as day. Oh, and get some decent shoes. You buy some tucker, too, there won’t be much that’s any good in the house by now. No, don’t argue!’

  His eyes were the same bright blue eyes of comfort and determination. ‘You just keep the home fires burning till I get back,’ ordered Young Jim, ‘and if you feel up to it, you come and see me in the morning. We’ll tackle all your questions then.’

  chapter twenty-five

  Looking Backwards

  It was a lovely street—old-fashioned houses were just glimpsed through gardens, the scent of the sea beyond. The taxi pulled up by a white-painted fence.

  ‘This is it. Number 56.’

  Barbara opened the taxi door and held out the money. ‘Thank you.’

  The driver glanced at the house. It had an air of desertion; blank windows and shaggy grass. ‘You sure this is right?’

  ‘It’s right,’ said Barbara.

  She opened the gate. It was metal, painted white to match the fence, but cracking now in the sunlight.

  Lavender and rosemary shrubs brushed against her as she moved up the path. She remembered them from Dulcie’s garden. And, what was it again? crepe myrtle—even an apple tree like Dulcie’s there at the side of the house, laden with over-ripe fruit that should have been picked weeks before. Soft apples squashed into the grass all around it. The house looked like it was dozing, all alone.

  Barbara turned the key in the lock and opened the door.

  A gust of old air toppled through the doorway, bringing scents of floor polish, old carpets and shut-up rooms.

  The house felt like a house she knew, almost, but also a stranger’s house. The floors creaked as though talking to a friend. She turned the TV on to have a voice in the echoing rooms, as she wandered from room to room, looking for things that might tell her about Jim.

  Photos by his bed…two women who looked vaguely familiar; children somewhere at the beach, years ago, by the look of their swimming costumes; a kid’s birthday party with a house behind. The house looked familiar, too, and then she recognised it. It was Gully Jack’s house, but freshly painted, with flowers on all sides and a black and white dog—surely not the same one—up on the verandah.

  Books in nearly every room. Novels in one of the spare rooms, where she’d made up the bed for herself. Books on economics, politics, philosophy, thick and dusty, in the room that must be his study, with a desk looking out into the garden. A pile of magazines and newspapers, all more than three weeks old, on the coffee table in the living room. A cup and saucer, and a plate with two stale crusts on it, unwashed by the sink. She washed them slowly, and dried them, then found where to put them away.

  She found the phone in the hall. There were menus from take-away food shops that home-delivered up on the wall. She chose a pizza from the list, then rang and ordered it. She ate it sitting on the floor watching TV. It was great to eat a pizza again. She hadn’t realised she’d missed them, there in the past. She hadn’t realised she’d missed so many things. She took out the wooden lizard and put it on the table by the bed, so she could see it when she woke.

  Jim’s house was almost like a home. Almost. When Jim came back, perhaps it would be.

  She went to the hospital the next day, dressed in new jeans and T-shirt and white sandals that clicked on the shiny floor. Jim was waiting for her, his face bright and expectant as she came in the door. He looked at her with approval.

  ‘That’s better. You looked like you were going to drop if you took another step yesterday. Sleep well?’

  Barbara nodded. ‘Sort of,’ she said. ‘My dreams were too bright.’ She sat down on the chair by the bed. ‘J
im, what happened when I left? I’ve got to know everything.’

  Jim settled the pillows behind him more comfortably with his hand. ‘I don’t know where to start,’ he told her. ‘You have to remember it’s sixty years for me, even if it’s just yesterday for you.’

  ‘Did you move down to Gully Jack’s?’

  Jim’s grin flashed. ‘Yeah, we all moved down to Gully Jack’s. He told us it was your idea. Ma cried when she heard that. We didn’t go for a few weeks, though. We were all out looking for you.’

  Jim’s face grew lively with memory. ‘You should have seen Ma down at Gully Jack’s. She was like a dog with two tails, couldn’t work out which one to wag first. I think she spent the next month at the stove—sponge cake, apple cake, orange cake, mutton pies—if you could bake it she made it. Gully Jack even took to stopping work early just to get more time to eat.’

  ‘Did he find the gold? The nugget?’

  Jim stared at her. ‘So there really was a nugget! Thellie kept saying there was, but you know what little kids are like. We thought she imagined it, or it might just have been the light shining on a bit of quartz.’

  ‘I think it was a nugget,’ said Barbara slowly. ‘It was down in the mud. We were looking at it when Thellie slipped.’

  Jim shook his head. ‘Well, if it was there, no-one ever found it. The walls collapsed in the flood and Gully Jack didn’t have the heart to repair them, not after what happened to you. He built another channel a little way down, but he didn’t find much in it—a few ounces, when all was said and done. He dug another channel a few years later, and then more after that. He finally found a decent seam the year before he died, but he was so stiff with the arthritis that he couldn’t do much with it.’

  ‘When did he die?’

  Jim rubbed his chin. ‘Must be twenty years ago now, bit less maybe. Ma and Dad were still living in the house when he died. He left the house to them in his will, and the rest of the farm, though Dad had bought most of it from him by then. Dad started growing peaches after the war. You ever heard of gully peaches? Sweetest in Australia. They became real close, those three. Did you know Ma was the first woman on the local council? She ran against old Nicholson and beat him. You should have seen Dad and Gully Jack campaigning for her. Dad’s grin was as wide as the creek when she won.’ Jim smiled at the memory. ‘They’re all in the cemetery down in the gully. I reckon on good days Gully Jack can still hear the creek.’