The Ghost by the Billabong

by Jackie French

JED

  Nicholas didn’t appear at breakfast. Everyone except Scarlett O’Hara seemed to forage for himself — or herself — cereal, milk, bread, eggs, the toaster were all at a height that could be reached from a wheelchair.

  Jed fed Scarlett cornflakes then Vegemite toast. It felt good to be back in jeans, her hair loose. To have washed properly in a hot shower, the first she’d had in more months than she wanted to count, in a bathroom where there was shampoo by the shower and tampons in the cupboard. To not have to wonder where to find food for the rest of the day or to find a safe place for the night or even to nap during the day so she could stay alert in the dark.

  She looked at the kitchen door, hoping Nicholas might appear again. She wanted to apologise. She wanted him to see her clean, with her hair down. She wanted . . .

  Just to see him.

  ‘Jed?’ Scarlett frowned at her.

  ‘What? Oh, sorry.’ She held up the slice of toast within reach again.

  ‘I SAID, will you do the decorations with me after?’

  ‘What decorations?’

  ‘The Christmas decorations, of course.’ Scarlett O’Hara’s tone was as patient as if she were speaking to a slightly deaf slug. ‘Did you KNOW there has to be an angel at the top of a Christmas tree? I get to put it up there this year.’

  ‘But . . .’ Jed looked at the girl’s wizened body.

  ‘Dumb-dumb. You have to do it for me.’

  Jed had known vaguely what the date was. She checked every time she visited a library and read the paper, or found one. But last Christmas had passed without her even being aware of the day. The date had been as irrelevant as she had expected this next 25 December to be. ‘Okay.’

  ‘What are you agreeing to?’ asked Nancy, flitting by with an armload of towels. ‘If it’s swimming in the creek, there has to be two adults. That’s rule two. That means you, me or Michael or Mum — Mum lives about two minutes down the road — or Mrs McKinley, but she just comes on weekday mornings. Despite what Moira thinks, we do have rules here.’

  ‘What’s rule one?’

  ‘Obey all the other rules or the bunyip in the swimming hole will get you.’ Nancy grinned at Scarlett O’Hara. ‘And what does the bunyip do to naughty children?’

  Scarlett giggled. ‘He nibbles off our toes in the water. Or sometimes he swallows you whole till someone tickles his belly and makes him burp you up.’

  Jed stared at Nancy. The kids would have nightmares! Then she realised that Scarlett was grinning. Gordon and Janine looked delighted too. Of course, she thought. No one could believe in a burping bunyip. And these kids were learning to laugh at what might frighten them.

  Her respect for Nancy increased still more. This, possibly, was someone she could trust. Trust to do what she said she’d do, anyway, if not trust with her own story. Nancy’s first duty must be to her mother- and father-in-law, not her.

  ‘Did you KNOW that the best way to tickle a bunyip is with your toes?’ demanded Scarlett.

  ‘I’m good at tickling bunyips,’ said Jed. ‘Nancy, if you have a minute . . . you said there might be a job going at River View?’ There, she had said it. If she could cope with the kids at Overflow, she could cope at River View. And she owed it to Scarlett to make sure it really was okay. She also badly needed a job.

  ‘What can you do?’

  ‘I’m a good dishwasher.’

  ‘Excellent. You can clean up the kitchen this morning. I thought you’d rather spend your days with Tommy.’

  Nancy seemed to be taking it for granted that Jed would be staying here, at least for a while. She felt a small warmth seep through her. ‘Will Mrs Thompson let me in the house?’

  Scarlett, Janine and Gordon stared at her. ‘Have you been naughty?’ asked Scarlett.

  ‘Just a misunderstanding,’ said Nancy. ‘Tommy wants to see you. I thought I’d drive you over to Drinkwater today.’

  ‘AFTER we put the angel on the tree,’ said Scarlett O’Hara.

  ‘After decorating the tree, of course.’

  ‘I can still see . . .’ she hesitated over the name: Mr Thompson? Great-Grandpa? Tommy? ‘. . . him if I have a job. And I need one.’

  ‘I . . . see.’ Jed wondered what Nancy did see. ‘There’s the Bluebell Café in Gibber’s Creek. It’s the Wild Moon Café now, but everyone still calls it the Bluebell. They often need a kitchen hand, but the food there would choke a brown dog and they might expect you to eat it. The biscuit factory might have a vacancy, or the radio works. But yes, we usually need help at River View. If Moira agrees to take you on, I can give you a lift there and back every day, and we can stop and see Tommy too.’

  ‘What would I be doing?’ began Jed as Scarlett said, ‘Please, please, PLEASE, Jed.’

  How long had it been since anyone had really wanted her company? And if River View was cruel to the kids despite what Nicholas said, she’d . . . do something, though she didn’t know what. Burn it down, if she had to, while the kids were at school. And then run, again, hiding, hitching. Surviving.

  But if it were as good as Nicholas said, she wouldn’t have to. And he would be there too. She would see him every day . . .

  ‘I’d like to work at River View. Thank you. What would I be doing?’

  ‘Anything no one else wants to do. Still want it?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  ‘Excellent. Twenty-five dollars a week minus ten for your board and lodging here and you still get to do the washing-up.’

  No, Nancy was not a pushover. ‘What about board and lodging here if I didn’t have a job?’

  Nancy grinned. ‘Then you’d be a poor penniless waif and we’d keep you out of the goodness of our hearts. And make you do the washing-up. Better get to it if you want to help decorate the tree.’

  Jed began to gather the dishes.

  Chapter 14

  MATILDA

  Matilda watched the girl walk up the stairs to Tommy’s room, her ever-present shoulder bag over her arm. The day before she had sensed pretence in the neat plaits, the face free of make-up, the knee-length dress.

  Today she wore jeans and a T-shirt, her hair loose, and enough eye make-up for a Kings Cross brothel — though that was the fashion these days: big eyes and pale lips, like vampires after a bad night.

  The girl badly needed a few hairpins, a good brassiere, her fingernails trimmed and those stupid butterflies removed from her jeans, not to mention the make-up scrubbed off. But she also looked truly herself. Even her manner was different. No too-innocent smile, but watchfulness. She was making no effort to hide her reserve today.

  Matilda glanced at Nancy and found her daughter-in-law observing her, just as she watched Jed. ‘I suppose I should apologise to her.’

  ‘Might be a good idea.’

  Matilda followed as Nancy automatically made her way into the sitting room. Normally she headed for the kitchen. But this conversation was not to be shared with Anita, who was a good girl — at Matilda’s age anyone under fifty was a girl — but inclined to spread gossip as thickly as she spread lemon curd on her sponge cakes.

  How long had it been since Matilda had had to apologise for anything? Apologies were what others made to her. She sat on the sofa as Anita brought in the tea tray. She tried out the words on the housekeeper. ‘Sorry to give you the trouble of bringing it in here.’

  Anita looked startled. ‘It’s no trouble.’

  Matilda found Nancy grinning at her. Matilda was of course delighted her son had found a wife so capable, lovable, spirited and intelligent. But she was also aware that at times Nancy found her mother-in-law disconcertingly amusing. Disconcertingly for Matilda, that was. Better amused, however, than resentful and intimidated. On the whole she had been lucky.

  She took a slice of carrot cake. Strange, this modern obsession with health food, as if adding carrots to a cake made it less of an indulgence. But she admitted it was delicious. ‘What do you make of her?’

  ‘Jed? Bruised. I don’t just mean her eye. Doesn’t
know how to be touched. Haven’t heard her laugh either, even when the tinsel fell on Michael. He did look sweet,’ she added.

  Matilda nodded. Children came to River View from other institutions where they’d been starved, beaten, whipped, made to lie in their soiled sheets as a punishment for wetting the bed, even when they were unable to get out of bed by themselves. Others had nightmares about even worse brutality, some of which she hoped — desperately hoped — was a child’s imagination, and not true.

  She had made official complaints. At least when Matilda Thompson made complaints, officials listened, as they never did to children. A few people had been sacked, because of her complaints, but none had been prosecuted, not when the only evidence was a child’s bruises, or broken limbs, or screams in the night, all of which might have other causes.

  But she believed the children. So did Moira, and Nancy: they had seen too many children who didn’t know how to laugh, who shrank away if an adult tried to touch them. Had Jed been one of those? Horrors happened. Here at River View at least they could do good.

  ‘Do you think she’s an orphan who’s created a fantasy?’ That happened too; sometimes harmless fantasies, like that sweet child choosing names of famous people. Other fantasies could be dangerous. If the child chose their imaginary world instead of the real one, they might stop trying to reach what might be possible, with hard work and help.

  ‘On the contrary, I think she is unusually aware of the difference between reality and the world she’d like. The ghosts she told you about — I found myself believing her. She says she sees them from the future too, as if time had worn thin.’

  ‘Ask her the winner of the next Melbourne Cup. That’ll test her.’

  ‘I don’t think it works like that,’ said Nancy gently.

  Matilda was silent, thinking of Flinty — dear dependable Flinty — and the people from both past and future who appeared to her on the rock below her house. If time could wear thin in some places, why not in others? If for some witnesses, why not a homeless, friendless child? Why should a girl who had made so much effort to seem innocent and unremarkable, spoil it with what she must know was a wild tale of ghosts?

  Because I spoke of mine, she thought. Ghosts she intellectually did not believe in. But ghosts who, emotionally, she had accepted in the very core of her being for much of her life.

  ‘So she wants a job at River View? Eat some cake,’ she added automatically. Michael had years before enlisted her help in reminding Nancy to eat.

  Nancy picked up a slice of cake obediently, ate a corner, then abandoned it on her plate. ‘Seems to be the best way to keep an eye on her. I’m pretty sure she’s not delusional, but if she is, Moira or Joseph will pick it up pretty quickly and get her away from the kids. She’s very taken with Nicholas, by the way.’

  ‘What? But that’s impossible. He’s of good family. I’ve met his mother . . .’

  ‘Matilda, darling, if Jed is who she says she is, she is of our family. And Nicholas is old enough to look after himself. She might even be good for him. But I don’t think he noticed her particularly. Until she accused him of being a coward, anyway.’

  ‘What? Ridiculous. The boy fought for his country.’

  ‘He fought, anyway.’

  Matilda said nothing. Nancy’s politics were not quite her own. Neither were her son’s, for that matter.

  ‘Matilda.’ Nancy’s voice was again gentle. ‘Are you all right?’

  Matilda didn’t pretend not to understand. ‘No. But thank you for asking.’

  ‘Would you like Michael to come over and stay with you?’

  She meant till Tommy died. Dear Nancy. She loved both her sons immensely and having Michael so close was a comfort. Yet she did not want to share these remaining precious days with Tommy even with their son. ‘Death doesn’t frighten me. Not even his.’

  Nancy nodded — this daughter-in-law who had seen more death in the war than Matilda had in all her eighty-seven years.

  Eighty-seven. And Tommy — ninety. Impossible ages. Silly ages. For she was still twelve, brushing the flies from her eyelashes as she saw the sunlit plains for the first time; twenty and in love with a man she was not sure she liked, but who still fascinated her, like a snake luring a frog; forty and watching a small boy run through the apple trees, the small boy she still missed, even as she loved Michael as the adult he had become.

  But Tommy? She had loved him since she was ten years old and all the Tommys she loved were present in the man upstairs. And soon, when the girl was gone, when even darling Nancy had driven off, she would be alone with him again.

  Chapter 15

  JED

  ‘You look . . . better.’ Tommy Thompson’s voice was soft as a paintbrush. The bruises under his eyes were deeper today, his nose sharper.

  She sat on the chair by the bed, strangely comfortable. ‘I like Nancy. I like her place too.’

  ‘Will you . . . stay?’

  He didn’t mean at Nancy’s, or not just that.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Glad.’

  ‘You shouldn’t try to talk.’ He hardly seemed to have enough breath to live.

  ‘You . . . talk then.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Your mother?’

  ‘I hardly remember her.’ She hesitated. ‘What I do remember isn’t nice.’

  ‘Tell me.’ That voice demanding truth again.

  ‘She was pretty, I think. Dad didn’t keep any photos. Or maybe they got lost when we came to Australia. Blonde hair, not dark like me. Short and curly. Maybe she had it permed. Pretty clothes: I remember that. The other mothers wore these V-necked things with belts, like a uniform, in drab colours. Mum had a dress with red seagulls on it. Red high-heeled shoes.’ She stopped.

  ‘Go on,’ he breathed.

  ‘Mostly I remember the smell of her,’ said Jed flatly. ‘I’ve never worked in a pub because of that smell. Grog and vomit. You don’t forget smells, no matter how young you are. Or I don’t. Red nails. Very red. Sharp. I remember her laughter too. I used to be scared when Mum laughed. It meant she was out of control. I . . . I don’t think she liked me much.’ She shrugged. ‘Fair enough. I’m not very likeable.’

  ‘Did she . . .’ a breath ‘. . . teach you . . . that?’

  ‘Not just her. Dad was okay, but it was obvious he found looking after me a bit much. The girls at school thought I was weird sometimes. But that was okay because I thought they were boring. Our group spent one whole lunchtime talking about the best age to get engaged. They decided you should get engaged on your twenty-first birthday and married a year later.’

  ‘Not . . .’ breath ‘. . . you?’

  ‘Might get married one day, if someone I like asks me.’ She shoved away the image of Nicholas. ‘But marriage won’t be the end of my life. I want to do things. Don’t know what yet. But something. Not travel or clothes or babies.’

  The word had emerged before she knew it. How could she ever think that she might have babies? She shut her eyes in guilt and agony, felt her chair tilt, or was it her —?

  ‘Jed. Jed!’ She opened her eyes, saw the old man struggle to sit up, made herself think about the present, the scent of furniture polish, toast, the man trying to reach out to her from the bed.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, stricken. ‘I’m fine. Lie down. It’s all right.’

  He panted like a dog.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said again. ‘Bad memories. Would . . . would you like me to read to you?’ She pulled the book out of her shoulder bag. Blessed, wonderful books, that made this world vanish as soon as the words on the page came into focus. ‘It’s called The Day of the Triffids. If there’s a library in town, I’ll try to borrow the sci-fi one I told you about, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.’

  Tommy nodded, his eyes alert. She opened the book and began to read.

  Chapter 16

  JED

  9 DECEMBER 1968

  River View was a shock. She had expected the usual grim
institutional mansion, walls painted a green no one would ever have in their home, but which seemed the only colour for charitable ‘homes’ and hospitals; a marble foyer for visitors and bare wood beyond, and definitely no actual ‘river view’. In her experience whatever places called themselves was what they weren’t, like an asylum that offered anything but, or Ferny Brook Estates with neither ferns nor brook.

  She certainly had not expected beauty, but it was there. Rows of roughly hewn cottages, each with a veranda and ramps; longer but equally informal offices, therapy centre and dining hall; tamped-smooth paths everywhere, with wide curves for wheelchairs, even down to the river that was indeed on view; shrubs planted in no formal plan at all, but bedecked with flowers, and more flowers, and butterflies.

  Butterflies everywhere. Each cottage had its own butterfly painted on its front door, each a different colour or pattern of colours. A mural of a boy’s face, gazing up at butterflies, decorated the therapy centre. There was a frieze of butterflies around the dining-room ceiling. Someone here, she reckoned, was very keen on butterflies.

  And kids smiled. She reckoned you could tell a lot from the first three people you saw in any new place. And here, the first three kids had smiled, and the fourth had yelled, ‘Watch out!’ as his cricket ball nearly hit her head.

  Someone here had worked out how kids in wheelchairs could play cricket, and made a pitch for them to do it on.

  And being here didn’t hurt. These kids were not her responsibility, and so she could not fail them. She might even, in some small way, do good.

  She realised something else too. The place was run by women. Not that women couldn’t be as cruel as men, or even crueller. But here there were no men to wolf-whistle at any young woman who passed, to feel free to stare at The Beasts just because they existed, to expect women to make the tea and answer the phone just because they were women. This place was owned by kind and powerful women, and run by those women, except for Dr McAlpine. It was the first place she had ever known that women controlled, with no man in charge above them. Interesting . . .