The Ghost by the Billabong

by Jackie French

She stared at the mirror in the ladies, freshening up her eyeshadow, combing her hair, making sure there were no smudges on her face or arms. It was the best she could do. She wished she had something pretty to put on. She grabbed her shoulder bag and half ran back down the path. ‘Ready to go?’

  He met her smile with a blank nod, his face impassive. All at once she realised that this expedition was Nancy’s idea, and very definitely not his. She flushed.

  ‘I can buy the things for you if you don’t want to go into town yourself.’

  ‘I can cope with the stares.’

  So the problem was her, not the going in to town. ‘I . . . I’ve wanted to apologise. I’m sorry for what I said to you at Overflow. It was stupid. You’re anything but a coward.’

  ‘Mrs Thompson has been telling tales.’

  ‘About Long Tan? Yes. But I meant you just being here. Getting on with life despite . . .’

  ‘Being half a man?’

  ‘You’re not half a man.’

  ‘I can’t walk. Run. Ride a horse.’

  ‘So do different things. You’re a different man now. But having the guts to go through all this makes you more of a man, not less.’

  He began to wheel towards the town. ‘It’s not guts. There’s nothing else I want to do, so I’m here, doing what I’m told. It’s as simple as that.’

  Was going into town one of the things he had been told to do? Had he not cared sufficiently to refuse? She looked at him: saw what she hadn’t before. This man was a ghost too.

  At least she had been able to run, to push the memories away, hitchhike in ride after ride, letting the challenges of survival and new nights drive away the pain. Nicholas’s life was devastatingly constrained, compared to hers.

  ‘You’ll be able to walk again,’ she offered.

  ‘And then what?’ He steered his chair around a rough patch in the footpath. ‘It seems so easy to everyone here. Get the knees working, then get fitted with artificial legs, then hurrah! Swing back into life again.’ He didn’t look at her when he added, ‘It’s not all about walking. There is nothing in life that I want.’

  ‘What were you going to do when you finished your National Service?’

  ‘No idea. I’d enrolled in first-year medicine to please Dad. He’s a doctor, Grandpa’s a doctor, Uncle Tom’s an obstetrician. You could staff a hospital with our family. Anyway, I hated it and flunked. That’s when the nasho got me — you can defer for uni, and they don’t take doctors.’

  ‘Well, what do you like doing?’

  ‘Wouldn’t have minded going to ag college. Farming. Mostly because I prefer the bush to cities. Breeding horses, maybe.’ Was that a whisper of a smile at the word ‘horses’? ‘I grew up outside Yass. Dad only moved to Sydney when I was in high school. But you can’t farm in a wheelchair or on peg legs, or at least not without a lot of money to hire people to help. Or ride a horse either.’

  ‘Nothing else?’

  A short snort. ‘Reading. No career in that. I like to write a bit too. But no one is going to give a bloke with no legs a job as a journalist. Which leaves an office job of some sort, and I’d go quietly insane if I were stuck inside four walls and air-conditioning every day. What about you?’ He was clearly changing the subject. ‘Do you like working at River View?’

  Jed laughed. ‘Washing saucepans and scrubbing the kitchen floor? Actually, it’s the best place I’ve worked in. The kitchen’s clean, and the food is great. Well, you must know that. You eat it too. Miss McGruder says food needs to be good enough to tempt the kids to eat healthy stuff. I’d never come across zucchini slice before, or stir-fried veg. But the kids love all of it. And the fruit-salad ice blocks.’

  ‘So you’ll stay working here?’

  ‘Only till I can get to uni.’

  His hands paused on the chair’s wheels, and he looked up at her. ‘University?’

  ‘Yes, university. Why do you sound so surprised?’

  ‘I suppose I thought . . .’ He stopped.

  She tried to steady her voice, but the anger rippled through it. ‘That I’m a professional con woman, hoping to live on the Thompson millions? Or that I don’t have the brains for uni? A lowly dishwasher isn’t entitled to go to classes with the rich kids? I was top of my class in nearly every subject. And it was a selective school too. You have to pass an exam to get a place. I’m quite capable of getting a scholarship —’

  He held up his hand. ‘Okay! I’m sorry. I just didn’t think.’

  But he so obviously had thought, she saw, as he began wheeling again. Had assumed she was ‘just a dishwasher’, and happy to do menial work for the rest of her life, if she couldn’t con money from a rich family. Assumed that she was not in his social or intellectual league.

  It hurt, not just his opinion of her, but that she must appear that way to others, in her faded clothes, with her lack of any formal qualifications, as if she had flunked out of school at fourteen, instead of only months before final exams she’d been about to do extremely well in.

  They had reached the beginning of the houses. A sheep on a tether munched the footpath grass. A kid in a singlet and shorts yelled, ‘Mummy, there’s a wheelchair!’

  Jed winced. Nicholas seemed unconcerned. The boy ran to the gate. ‘Hey, mister, can I have a ride?’

  Nicholas shook his head. ‘Sorry, kid. Only room for one.’

  ‘Gee, mister, you’re lucky. How fast does it go? Does it have brakes?’ The boy leaned over the gate. ‘Can I see your scars?’

  Jed waited for Nicholas to refuse. To her surprise he wheeled around and said, ‘The chair only goes as fast as I can wheel it. And yes, there’s brakes,’ as he rolled up one of the legs of his jeans.

  She stared, as fascinated as the child, knowing that her examination might hurt Nicholas more than the boy’s, but unable to stop.

  She had expected a neat scar, everything tucked in and tidy. Instead the lower part of what remained of his leg was a mass of scar tissue, over his knee and above, the scars bright red and edged with the smaller scars of stitches. She was reminded, horribly, of Frankenstein’s poor monster.

  ‘Wow. Hey, cool. That’s the best scar I’ve ever seen.’

  Jed blinked. There was no mistaking the envy in the boy’s tone.

  Nicholas seemed unsurprised by the boy’s reaction. He rolled down his trouser leg again. He nodded at the boy and began to wheel along the road again. Jed made it around the next corner before she began to laugh. It felt strange. It sounded strange too, like a kookaburra with the hiccups. How long had it been since she had laughed? She couldn’t help it now.

  ‘That boy’s face! Those nightmare scars and all he could say was “Cool!”’

  He looked up at her. ‘No one has called them nightmare scars before.’

  ‘Oh, hell. I’m sorry.’ She was truly horrified now. ‘I didn’t mean . . . I shouldn’t have said —’

  ‘It’s okay. They are repulsive. You’re just the first person honest enough to say so.’

  ‘Not honest. Tactless. For some reason I forget to be tactful with you. But the scars aren’t repulsive.’ She tried to find the words. ‘They’re not even really ugly. “Nightmare” really is the right word. They show you’ve been through agony. But like the kid said, now they’re cool.’ She grinned suddenly. ‘He’s going to tell the whole school about this. Every boy in Gibber’s Creek is going to envy you.’

  ‘Till they grow up and get more sense.’

  ‘Admit it. It’s funny.’

  He smiled. ‘Having my scars envied by schoolboys? All right. It’s funny. But I’m used to it. The kids at River View asked to see my scars too.’

  ‘They all react the same?’

  ‘Yep. Scars are cool. The worse they are, the better. You know the best bit?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Kids don’t ask, “Did it hurt?” They know it did. You’d be surprised how many adults ask that,’ he added as they turned the corner towards Gibber’s Creek’s main street.


  She waited for him to tell her more, how his legs had been lost, what had happened after that, but he wheeled his chair in silence. At last he stopped at the first footpath, with its high gutter. ‘Sure you can manage hauling the chair up that?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘You go up first, then haul me backwards.’

  ‘Is that easier?’

  ‘No idea, but that way if you tip me over I won’t land on my face.’

  ‘Right.’ Jed grabbed the chair’s handles. It was easier pulling it up onto the footpath than she’d expected, the chair lighter and more stable. She looked down the main street of Gibber’s Creek.

  Three blocks of shops, all small, no supermarket or department store. Not a pair of jeans to be seen, or a mini skirt, or even a maxi. Floral dresses on the women; and blokes in moleskins in every stage of dilapidation and grime — the pale trousers Nancy said lasted twenty years longer than a pair of jeans would. Short-haired men, women with perms. More utes than cars and more dogs than either, lifting their legs on telegraph poles, watchful in the back of the utes, sitting outside shops, panting and hopeful when anybody passed.

  No long hair, no peace badges, no bare feet or hippydom. She bet there wasn’t a bag of brown rice in the whole town. Nor would anyone here join an anti-war demonstration.

  Nicholas glanced at his watch. ‘The shops should all be open by now.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Shops in Gibber’s Creek close for lunch: an hour, sometimes two.’

  ‘Wow. Do they still burn witches too?’

  ‘Wrong country. Don’t think we ever did that here. Might start a bushfire.’

  She looked at the shops as they passed. A grocery shop, with an old-fashioned counter and vegetable racks holding potatoes, onions, cabbage, pumpkin, some elderly oranges, and nothing more. She vaguely remembered when shops in Brisbane were all like this, before supermarkets, when it took hours for the shop assistant to take everything on your list from the shelves behind and put them on the counter for you.

  A butcher, a baker, just like in the nursery rhyme, with a saddler instead of a candlestick maker, and then another butcher’s shop. Meat obviously mattered here. Maybe they burned vegetarians instead of witches. A distinct lack of health-food stores. An office with Gibber’s Creek Gazette written in gold on the front window and, in smaller letters, Mrs Matilda Thompson, Proprietor, Mr Samuel Elder, Editor. Why was she not surprised? A draper’s, a chemist, a pub, another road to cross.

  But there was something else, she realised. No one had wolf-whistled at her. The casual lechery city women took for granted they had to suffer seemed to have missed Gibber’s Creek, or perhaps it showed itself in different ways. But there was visible old-fashioned politeness here too, the kind you saw in movies: men opening doors for women, standing back to let them go first, and those walking with women were keeping to the kerb side of the footpath. Most of the men wore hats; and most of those hats were raised politely when the owners passed a woman they knew, which seemed to be every two seconds.

  But good manners didn’t seem to extend to not staring at strangers, especially one in a wheelchair. She and Nicholas had been stared at by at least fifty people and a hundred dogs. And Nicholas had to put up with the stares every day, except at River View or Overflow.

  An intersection, where shops extended down the side streets. She peered down them.

  He asked, ‘Do you know where we’re going?’

  ‘Nope. Never been here before.’

  ‘Some escort you are.’

  ‘I’m here to haul you up and down the kerbs, not to be a seeing-eye dog.’ She stopped. ‘Foot-in-mouth time again.’

  The smile was more genuine this time. ‘I should think so. Lee’s Emporium is about two blocks to the left, and we wouldn’t have to go up and down any guttering to get there. They say you can buy anything at Lee’s.’

  ‘A genuine department store? In Gibber’s Creek?’

  ‘More like five smaller shops joined together. I suppose that’s how department stores began. Have you bought your Christmas presents yet?’

  ‘Me? No.’ It hadn’t occurred to her she’d need to. But of course she should give presents to Nancy and Michael, and Tommy, even maybe to the Dragon, to be polite. And Scarlett, or whatever name she was using by Christmas time, and Janine and Gordon if they were spending Christmas at Overflow. She even had money now: her first week’s wages, three five-dollar notes in her shoulder bag.

  ‘Actually, if you wouldn’t mind giving me a hand to cross the road again, I’d rather go to the bookshop than Lee’s. It’s down that way. We passed it in the van once. The shelves look too close together for me to get around.’

  ‘A bookshop! I’d love to.’ With luck she could get her own gifts there, and see what had been recently published. Gibber’s Creek’s library ran mostly to 1930s detective stories, donated after their owners had died, and Mills and Boon romances. They turned and began to head uphill. Jed looked at Nicholas pushing at the wheels. ‘Why don’t you have a motor?’

  ‘Weighs too much. Better exercise too. I need to keep my arms strong to lift myself from surface to surface. I’d rather manage by myself, anyway.’

  And he is managing, Jed thought; he’s hardly out of breath.

  She hauled the chair down the gutter, and across the road. She was about to pull it up the other side when a man who might have had a Hereford bull for a brother said, ‘Like a hand?’ Before she could answer he had Nicholas and the chair up on the footpath. He raised his hat to her, and was gone.

  ‘Thank you,’ called Nicholas. He looked flushed, embarrassed. But by the time he had manoeuvred the chair easily into the bookshop he managed to grin at her. ‘No need for three-point turns. Look.’ He nodded at the shelf of new releases at the front of the store. ‘Everything I need is probably here. I can even reach this one.’ He picked up a thin book from the bottom shelf.

  Jed tipped her head to read the title. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K Dick. ‘You like sci-fi?’

  ‘It’s not all cowboys and Indians in space, you know.’

  ‘I know.’ She took The Day of the Triffids out of her shoulder bag. ‘Have you read it?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Wouldn’t have thought it’d be your cup of tea though.’

  ‘Why not?’ Had he also assumed that a dishwasher was too dumb to like reading?

  ‘Don’t get your hair in a twist again. Girls mostly don’t like that kind of thing, that’s all.’

  ‘What? Science fiction? Imagined worlds, entertaining stories? Looking at the world as it is and could be? Heinlein is the only male writer I’ve ever read where women aren’t just secretaries!’

  He held up his hand in mock surrender. ‘Okay! Women’s lib rules!’ They were attracting an audience. ‘I’m okay by myself here,’ he added. ‘The new releases are the only ones I want to see.’

  It was clearly a dismissal. She nodded, and headed off down to the sci-fi section. So many books I haven’t read, she thought wistfully, glancing along the shelves, but there was no time to read one here, with Nicholas waiting. Nor could she afford to fall in love with something she didn’t have the money to buy. A brief look at the prices had shown her that it was going to be difficult to buy all the presents she needed to get, even if she used next week’s wages too.

  She picked up a book. Oh, wow! A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K Le Guin. She loved that so much that she’d stayed another two days washing up in a café with more cockroaches than customers, just to be able to read the library copy again and again in between deliveries, before she’d had to give it back. Stealing packets of biscuits was one thing. She could never steal a library book. A few times she had snuck one out when they wouldn’t give her a borrower’s card, but before she moved on she always put it back in the Returns slot.

  She longed to own a copy, but books she hadn’t read were more tempting even than an old friend like this. She picked up Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey. Heinlein’s fem
ale characters were an improvement, for sure, but she preferred sci-fi by women. Women wrote books that had girls doing things, instead of looking on admiringly while boys did them. At last she chose Arthur C Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey for Tommy. She’d give it as a joint present to the Dragon too. No point spending good money trying to please the Dragon.

  The kids’ book section was tempting, not just the books of Asterix and Tintin but Midnite: The Story of a Wild Colonial Boy by Randolph Stow, Mathinna’s People by Nan Chauncy, Sharpur the Carpet Snake, Blue Above the Trees, Moggie and her Circus Pony. She totted up the prices and shook her head. She’d buy Midnite for Scarlett, which meant she could read it too. But she’d have to find something cheaper than books to give the other kids, and for Nancy and Michael too.

  Should she get a book for Nicholas? No. It would embarrass him to receive a present from her, because he wouldn’t have got her anything. And it would make it all too obvious she had a crush on him.

  She stopped, the books in her hands. A crush? That’s what her school friends had said about boys. But this was not school, and Nicholas was not a boy. She glanced over at him. He had already selected his books, a large pile of them, and had wheeled himself over to the counter.

  You couldn’t love someone you had just met. Well, maybe you could, if you had shared large parts of the same kind of life. But she and Nicholas were totally dissimilar. Nor had there even been the instant familiarity that she’d felt with Tommy (she found it hard to think of him by any other name) — a bond of dreams and common interests.

  She didn’t know who the young man in the wheelchair was. Perhaps he himself did not know either. Maybe it was just physical attraction. She wanted to touch him. Wanted him to touch her. And she hadn’t wanted anyone to touch her for years. But that wasn’t love.

  I love the man he is going to be. The thought seemed to come from nowhere. She glanced back at Nicholas, still at the cash register. Suddenly he was the older man she had seen when she first met him. Beard, longer hair. She almost dropped the book in shock.

  Then he was himself again, young, beardless, not even looking her way.