Somewhere around the Corner
Page 17
Barbara was silent. Of course they couldn’t be alive. She’d known it, really. How could you cry for someone dead so long ago? She felt a warm hand on hers. She looked up. Jim nodded, his face full of understanding. They sat quietly for a while.
‘How about Dulcie?’ Barbara asked. ‘She didn’t marry Gully Jack then?’
‘Dulcie? She’s up in town, in the hospital. The oldest resident.’
‘She’s still alive?’
‘Too right she is. Still got all her wits about her, too. They don’t make them like Dulcie any more. You should have seen her last birthday party. The whole valley must’ve been there and enough candles to start a bushfire.
‘She’s been widowed about thirty years now. She married Sergeant Ryan a few months after you left.’ Jim smiled to himself. ‘They had two kids. Mark, he married Thellie’s daughter, Julie. You met Julie by the creek. They had a daughter, too. Jean, that was her name. You should have seen her hair in those days—heaps of red curls on her head, like snakes arguing among themselves. Her dad said his mother had hair like that.’
‘It sounds like you liked her,’ said Barbara.
‘Yeah, I liked her,’ said Jim. ‘She was just like her mum, though. If there was an orphaned lamb or wombat she’d be looking after it.’ He grinned. ‘I married her after the war.’
Barbara stared. ‘But—wasn’t she much younger than you?’
‘Fifteen years. It seemed a lot when we were growing up. She was, oh, she must’ve been about seven when I went off to war in 1940, just a kid with grubby feet and teeth all crooked where her big ones were growing in. She wrote to me all through the war. She was a good kid.
‘I met Muriel, my first wife, in New Guinea. She was a nurse. Muriel died in ’49. It was one of those things that hit you out of the blue. We’d both survived the war and then a car swerved around a corner, up on the footpath and hit Muriel. A couple of years later I noticed that Jean had grown up. We had three kids. They’re grown up now, of course. Michael’s a computer engineer overseas, Angie’s still studying, and Helen, she’s the oldest, is a doctor now, down at the gully. Helen and her family live in Dulcie’s house at the old dairy farm, though it’s all beef cattle now.’
‘What about Elaine, and Joey and Harry, and Thellie?’
Jim’s face grew shadowed. ‘Joey died. Polio. It was bad that year. Kids don’t die from polio any more but they did then.’ Jim was silent for a moment
‘He said he wanted a thousand sausages!’
‘Well, he got those at least. Gully Jack got him all the sausages he could eat for his birthday, the one after you left. Maybe not quite a thousand…he was nine when he died. Harry’s an engineer, he’ll be retiring soon. Elaine? She’s still working. Elaine’s like Ma. She’ll work till she drops. She’s a paediatrician down in Melbourne.’
‘A children’s doctor? But she said she never wanted to see another lot of grubby brats in her life.’
‘Well, she changed her mind,’ said Jim drily. ‘She’s got two kids of her own and her husband’s a doctor as well. That’s probably where my Helen got the idea from, her Aunt Elaine. I remember when she was about ten she found Elaine’s plastic skeleton under the bed, the one she’d used for anatomy. She’d got half of it put together before we found her at it. She’s like Elaine and she’s like Dulcie, and I reckon there’s a bit of Ma in her as well.’
‘What about Thellie?’
‘She still lives at Gully Jack’s,’ said Jim. ‘Her boys mostly run the farm now. Mark and Julie live up in town with Sara. Funny, people still call it Gully Jack’s. I suppose they always will. It’s one of the biggest peach orchards in New South Wales now.
‘You know, Thellie was the only one, besides me, who wouldn’t accept that you were dead. All those stories you told her—she believed every one of them. She knew she’d see you again one day. Just like me. I can’t wait to see her face when she meets you. You know, she’s got eight grandkids now? I think Sara’s the most like her of all of them, and not one of them would be alive if you hadn’t saved Thellie from the flood.’
A trolley rattled somewhere down the corridor; morning tea and biscuits travelling from room to room. Jim stared out the window, as though there was something more to see than walls and gutters.
‘There were good bits in those days as well as bad,’ he said quietly. ‘I reckon you didn’t see the bad bits, not in those weeks you were with us. The hunger in the beginning, and the cold in winter, and Dad growing more and more despairing, and Ma just harder and wearier. You changed things, just by knowing it could be different.
‘I reckon you were a catalyst for all of us. You were so convinced there was a world around the corner, you convinced us too. That’s what we needed, someone to say another world was possible.’
‘You think that’s why I was able to go back?’
‘I dunno,’ said Jim slowly. ‘Maybe it was a lot of things. All of us so desperate for another way of living; you so scared and wanting somewhere else as well. Maybe it was just all of us reaching out, vulnerable—’
‘And yesterday by the creek—except it wasn’t yesterday for you—I stopped wanting to stay, the terror and wanting to survive brought me back.’
‘And I was desperately wishing you were somewhere else as well, somewhere safe.’
‘So here I am.’
They were both silent for a minute. Another trolley wheeled past, click, click, click.
‘You know, I reckon I got as good an education in that washhouse as I’d have got anywhere in Australia,’ mused Jim. ‘I learnt more from you, and Ma and Dad, and Dulcie and Sergeant Ryan, than I’d have learnt anywhere else. Ma showed me how to keep on going, no matter how hard things get. Dad showed me how to confront people to fight for what you think is right. I learnt how dreaming of a better world is the first step in making it happen. Learnt how much you can do if you all work together.’ He shook his head. ‘Maybe Gully Jack taught me how not to let your dreams take over. It was a good life we had in the valley, for all that things seemed crook at the time.’
‘You sound like you miss it,’ said Barbara.
‘Yeah, I miss it,’ said Jim. ‘Not the hardship. Not the things like polio, not the ’30s so much. It’s the valley itself. That’s what I miss.’
‘Didn’t you ever want to go back…’
Jim looked out the window. ‘Yeah,’ he admitted slowly. ‘Sometimes I feel as if the valley’s a knot in my heart that won’t unravel. It’s tied up and won’t let go. But somehow, something always kept me in the city, some cause or other that needed to be fought, and I kept thinking, maybe next year, or the one after that…’
Jim’s voice trailed away. ‘Perhaps I needed you to take me back,’ he said. His head slipped back against the pillow.
‘I’d better go,’ said Barbara. ‘You’re tired. I’ll come back tomorrow if I may.’
Jim shook his head. ‘I’ll just have a nap. Didn’t sleep much last night. I was so excited, that’s all. You come back this afternoon,’ he ordered her, the old Jim resurfacing. He met her eyes. ‘You know, I used to try to go around the corner, just like you. At first I thought I could follow you, bring you back. Then I tried again, when Muriel died, and a couple of times in New Guinea, when things were tough. It never worked for me. Finally I realised I go around my corners by working for them, not by shutting my eyes.
‘Then yesterday, just lying here thinking my life was over, things were as bad as they’d ever been. I reckon it was me who went around the corner yesterday, as well as you.
‘It’s funny—when I saw you in that demonstration I didn’t recognise you. It was only when Thellie rang that I put two and two together.
‘Now I’ve got a new life, something to live for. I reckon the two of us have got other corners to go around.’ He touched his plastered hip. ‘Give me a while and I’ll even have this working again.’ Jim grinned at her gently. ‘You come this afternoon,’ he said. ‘I’ll have a nap and be right as rain. There�
�s something I want to show you then. All right?’
‘All right.’ Barbara bent over and kissed his cheek. His whiskers felt like prickly paper. ‘Sleep well,’ she said.
chapter twenty-six
Coming Home
The house was too empty to go to. Barbara bought a sandwich at a take-away cafe and sat by the harbour until it was time to go back to the hospital. The waves washed in and out, white hats and fat green bellies, slopping and slapping at the shore. The sun sucked up the morning’s shadows, then spat them out the other side; tiny shadows that lengthened with the afternoon.
It was comfortable to be in her own time again. The loss of the O’Reillys, of Ma and Dad, was fading. She had pushed the grief back to years ago, where it belonged.
There was one other thing to do. She had been putting it off, trying to pretend it needn’t be done. She had to ring her mother. There was a phone box up the hill. She took some change out of her pocket and dialled the numbers slowly…8, 6, 4…
She heard the ringing at the other end, over and over. If there was no-one home, she’d have to screw up her courage to ring again, and then the ringing stopped. She heard the money clang down.
‘Hello, hello.’ It was her mother’s voice.
‘Mum, it’s me.’
‘Who is it, who?’
The voice was vague, annoyed. She’d interrupted something. Another voice called in the distance. ‘Who is it?’
‘Will you shut up, I’m trying to find out. Hello. Hello!’
‘It’s me, Barbara.’
‘Barbara.’ She could almost see her mother trying to concentrate. ‘Where are you ringing from? Is it a good foster home they’ve found you now?’ Steve’s voice said something in the background again. Her mother spoke louder to drown him out. ‘We’re just fine here, everthing’s just fine. Another few weeks and I’ll be right again. Everything’s just fine.’ Another interruption. ‘Barbara love, I have to go. You’ll ring again won’t you?’
‘I’ll ring again,’ said Barbara. She put the phone down.
It should have hurt. It always had before. It didn’t now, just a faint ache like an old scar that will gradually heal. All she could feel was pity for her mother, and hope that one day she’d find her way around the corner too. Home was somewhere else now. The thought floated up and circled with the gulls. Just one more corner to turn and she’d be there.
She watched the waves and sat and thought. Back and forth, back and forth—like the waves she too had returned. Sixty years of the O’Reillys’ time, but her true journey was just starting. This was the world that Ma and Dad and Elaine and Jim had helped create. A world with schools for everyone, and vaccination against polio. There were hundreds of small and large battles they’d been part of. This time she could face the corners to come without fear. They were there, Ma and Dad and Gully Jack, solid in the past behind her.
The breeze was sweet and salty off the sea as she climbed the hill to the hospital. The nurse at the desk smiled at her now that the mud was washed off her, in a clean skirt and sandals. Barbara nodded to the old man in the first bed as she came into Jim’s room.
He wasn’t alone. A woman sat with him. She wore a denim skirt and a pale blue blouse. Her hair was brown and short. It should be in a ponytail—Dulcie always wore a ponytail—and the dress was wrong. It wasn’t Dulcie’s dress, the one with bright red roses that she’d worn to the Friday dance. It wasn’t Dulcie. The face was similar, but there were differences. There was a hint of Jim, a sudden flash of Thellie…
The woman stood up. She looked at Barbara carefully, as though there was a decision to be made.
The woman smiled—just like Ma, thought Barbara—and held out her arms.
Jim’s face was calm. It was the face of a man who knows where he’s been and where he’s come to, although the journey has been long and not what he’d expected.
‘This is Helen,’ he told Barbara gently. ‘She came up from the valley this morning. She’s come to take us home.’
Author’s Note
Somewhere Around The Corner was inspired by stories of a ‘susso camp’ that was situated near my home. I’ve used the names of some of the people that lived there, such as Gully Jack and Dulcie, and some of their circumstances, like those of Mr Henderson, the headmaster who was retrenched when his school closed down. Apart from these, the characters in this book are not based in any way on any person, alive or dead.
Gully Jack’s method of extracting gold is based on fact, but even though vast channels were made in the hopes of finding a fortune, very little gold was recovered. Many of the channels are still there, and so perhaps is the gold that Gully Jack dreamed of, if there was ever any to be found.
Poverty Gully, was deserted at the beginning of World War II. Blackberries and thornbush now grow where the shanties stood and lyrebirds scratch where once there were hundreds of people. Most dole camps are remembered with horror. Poverty Gully was a place where people helped each other, and it is still spoken of with affection by those who knew it, or those who can recall the stories of their parents.
Araluen Valley
1994
About the Author
JACKIE FRENCH’s writing career spans 10 years. During this time she has written over 100 books for kids and adults, some of which have been translated into other languages, and won various awards for her writing. Jackie has also been a regular on ‘Burke’s Backyard’ in many disguises, and writes columns on gardening and the environment in newspapers and magazines.
Jackie’s love of history began as a child and has been the inspiration for the series of books that began with Somewhere Around the Corner, followed by Daughter of the Regiment, Soldier on the Hill, Lady Dance, The White Ship, How the Finnegans Saved the Ship and Valley of Gold. Jackie feels that the past was not only a fascinating adventure, but also holds the clues to understanding our own time.
Hitler’s Daughter has received wide critical acclaim and in 2000 won the Children’s Book Council Book of the Year for Younger Readers.
‘It is a mark of French’s genius that she can weave deep moral issues into an engrossing, fast-moving story.’
Stephen Matthews, Canberra Times
To find out more about Jackie French and her books register for her monthly newsletter at www.harpercollins.com.au/jackiefrench.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
Books by Jackie French
Fiction
The Roo that Won the Melbourne Cup • Rain Stones
Walking the Boundaries • The Boy Who Had Wings
Somewhere Around the Corner
Annie’s Pouch • Alien Games • The Secret Beach
Mermaids • Mind’s Eye • A Wombat Named Bosco
Summerland • Beyond the Boundaries
The Warrior—The Story of a Wombat
The Book of Unicorns • Dancing with Ben Hall
Soldier on the Hill • Daughter of the Regiment
Stories to Eat with a Banana • Tajore Arkle
Hitler’s Daughter • In the Blood • Missing You, Love Sara
Stories to Eat with a Watermelon • Lady Dance
Stories to Eat with a Blood Plum
How the Finnegans Saved the Ship
Dark Wind Blowing • A Story to Eat with a Mandarin
Ride the Wild Wind • Blood Moon • The White Ship
Phredde and the Leopard-skin Librarian • Valley of Gold
Non-fiction
How the Aliens from Alpha Centauri Invaded My
Maths Class and Turned Me Into a Writer…
How to Guzzle Your Garden • Book of Challenges
Stamp, Stomp, Whomp
(and other interesting ways to get rid of pests)
Seasons of Content • The Best of Jackie French
Earthly Delights
The Fascinating History of Your Lunch
The Secret Life of Santa Claus
Big Burps, Bare Bums
and Other Bad-Mannered Blunders
Visit Jackie’s website
www.jackiefrench.com
Copyright
Angus&Robertson
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, Australia
First published in Australia in 1994
This edition published in 2010
by HarperCollins Publishers Pty Limited
ABN 36 009 913 517
A member of the HarperCollinsPublishers (Australia) Pty Limited Group
www.harpercollins.com.au
Copyright © Jackie French 1994
The right of Jackie French to be identified as the moral rights author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000 (Cth).
This book is copyright.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be addressed to the publishers.
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