The Ghost by the Billabong

by Jackie French

  She had seen people from the future. She was sure she had just seen the future Nicholas too. Could she also feel emotions from the future? What she might feel about the man he would become?

  More likely what she felt was just a here-and-now crush, she thought. A here-and-now crush. A crush could be as consuming as love — she had seen friends at school and their crushes — but a crush didn’t last.

  Nor could she afford to give into a crush now. She had enough to cope with, trying to find a future for herself. Getting close to anyone, even Nicholas — especially Nicholas — would mean telling him who she really was. What she really was.

  Impossible.

  Meanwhile, books. You knew where you were with books. And where you might be, but all safely between the covers.

  She looked at the science-fiction books again, and then around the shop. No one would notice if she slid one down her jeans. The shop assistant probably wouldn’t even look in her shoulder bag, not if she actually bought two books as well, especially if she went out the door with a bloke in a wheelchair, and if they did she could say she’d forgotten she’d put it there. Safer to put a book in her shoulder bag, as a book down her jeans would have to be theft, even if less likely to be discovered.

  She wanted the Le Guin so badly she could smell the new pages, the world within it. That was the joy of sci-fi: new worlds you could reach without the vast Saturn 5 rockets Tommy had told her about.

  Surely a book — a new book — was as much a necessity as food? Just one book.

  No. The risk was too great. Even if the shop owner didn’t call the police, she had already discovered how gossip flew with the magpies around Gibber’s Creek. She couldn’t afford even a whisper that she might be a thief or a con artist.

  What would the ghost by the billabong have advised? She smiled. She could almost hear his voice. ‘Come back and read it in the shop, girlie. No one can nab you for reading in a shop.’ And next week she’d have more money. She’d buy one book a week.

  It truly was theft if you were not desperate, and she had money now — she would have more money next week, and the week after that. She hoped, with a stab of something deeper than pain, that this time she would not have to abandon her books as too heavy to carry in a shoulder bag if she was forced to leave.

  She carried her own purchases to the counter, too late to see what Nicholas had chosen, except that it made a large parcel.

  ‘Did you get everything you want?’ she asked.

  ‘Pretty much. Got a book on Middle Eastern food by Claudia Roden for Mum, and the new Daphne du Maurier for Grandma, and a book by this Russian chap for Dad. The writer’s been imprisoned and exiled, and had cancer, but he’s still churning out books. More lives than a cat.’

  Not Tolstoy or Dostoevsky then, she thought, as they were dead. ‘Alexander Solzhenitsyn?’

  Nicholas looked startled. ‘That’s it. The new one’s called Cancer Ward.’

  The young man at the cash register smiled at her, with only a brief glance at The Beasts. ‘You know a lot about books.’

  She felt a small glow of satisfaction. ‘I like Solzhenitsyn’s stuff. Dostoevsky too, though I’ve only read The Brothers Karamazov. And I loved War and Peace. Pierre especially.’

  She was showing off, just a little. It felt good. She took her change from the man at the cash register, smiled at him again, and joined Nicholas as he wheeled out of the shop. ‘Nice predictable selection you made for the women, by the way.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘A cookbook for your mum. Romance for Grandma. Serious stuff for your dad.’

  He almost crashed his chair into a black-and-white dog. It scrambled out of the way. ‘Are you calling me a male chauvinist pig?’

  ‘Not the pig bit.’ Jed wasn’t sure why she was taunting him. A small revenge, for thinking her ‘just a dishwasher’? Or, just possibly, enjoying saying exactly what she thought. Not watching her words as she had ever since Dad died, knowing instinctively she must placate a stepmother on whom she had no real claim; must not let the girls at school know her life or thoughts in case even that companionship was denied her.

  What was it about this man that tempted her to give him a glimpse of the real Jed Kelly?

  ‘Mum likes cooking,’ Nicholas said evenly. ‘Dad likes books with a medical background, and Gran’s favourite book is du Maurier’s Rebecca. Should I have got Mum a book on car maintenance or fly fishing to show I wasn’t sexist?’

  ‘Maybe you could give her a women’s lib badge too.’ She nodded towards a store on their right, its green, orange and pink psychedelic painted walls startlingly gaudy among the plain stone shopfronts. Its sign said Raincloud’s Place and its window display was of Mao’s Little Red Book, a women’s lib banner and long dangling crystals. Gibber’s Creek might be as totally square as a kid’s set of blocks, but the wave of change she’d seen in the cities had at least washed something up on the shore here.

  ‘Mum and Gran don’t need women’s lib.’

  ‘Says a man. Does your mum have a job?’

  ‘Yes. It’s looking —’ He stopped, so she finished his sentence.

  ‘Looking after your dad. Don’t you think she’d like her own life?’

  ‘She’s happy —’ He stopped again and met her eyes. ‘Okay. Point taken. If Mum had more of her own life, she mightn’t want to live my life for me too.’ He smiled. ‘Have you ever had someone offer you five cups of tea in an hour? I counted. That’s her best record yet.’

  Her reaction was envy, to be the object of such love, rather than any concern for the woman who offered it. But she couldn’t say that. She peered at the crystals in the shop window. ‘Would you mind if we went in here for a second?’

  He looked at the shop, bemused. ‘You’re not serious about me buying women’s lib badges?’

  ‘No. Just something that I’d like to buy. Not a women’s lib badge,’ she added.

  He looked at her, half annoyed, half amused. ‘I’ll wait.’

  She ducked into the shop. It smelled of incense and something earthier. A young man in a ponytail, headband and Che Guevara T-shirt sat behind the counter, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette. He held up two fingers in the ‘peace sign’. ‘Peace, man. Look around.’

  She looked. A Che Guevara poster (she grinned at the thought of giving that to Nicholas for Christmas); books by authors she’d never heard of; dangling ribbons festooned with badges ‘Make love not war’, ‘Power to the people’, ‘Give peace a chance’ or the blue dove symbol; startling ugly sandals made from old tyres; a rack of long dresses and another of orange, white, green or purple Indian-style men’s shirts, all brightly embroidered. She grinned again. If she gave Tommy one of those for Christmas, he might wear it, which would really infuriate the Dragon. But he’d prefer a book.

  ‘Haven’t seen you about before. I’m Raincloud.’ He held out his hand.

  She shook it, briefly. ‘I’m Jed.’ And if someone had really named this young man Raincloud, she’d eat the butterfly-covered apron she had to wear at the River View kitchen.

  ‘How much are the crystals on a string in the window?’

  The young man jerked his gaze up from The Beasts to her face. ‘Fifty cents each.’

  She calculated. ‘I’ll take four.’ The kids could hang them in their windows and watch them catch the light, and so could Nancy and Michael. And that would leave her with enough money to buy a book for Nicholas. Even if he didn’t give her a present, she wanted, no, needed to give him something.

  ‘Extra crystals twenty cents each.’ Raincloud nodded at a tray of irregularly shaped glass beads on the counter.

  ‘I’ll take twelve of them too.’ She began to pick them out, red, green, purple . . .

  ‘Got some nice dresses on the rack.’

  Jed glanced over. They were long cotton Indian dresses, mostly red and blue patterns with touches of gold, the colours glowing, though a few were white. ‘Maybe next week when I get my pay.’

 
; ‘Could give you a discount on one. There’s a changing room if you’d like to try on the purple one.’

  Yeah, and a skimpy curtain so he could peer through and see her in the mirror. No way.

  She paid for the crystals, then stopped at the dress rack on the way out, unable to resist them. The thin cotton dresses were far cheaper than any clothes she had seen before, almost as cheap as St Vinnies. A white cheesecloth dress was marked down to four dollars fifty. If Nancy had any embroidery cotton, Jed could add a border of flowers and butterflies . . .

  The doorway darkened. Nicholas wheeled into the store.

  The man blew out a smoke ring. ‘Well, look who the cat’s dragged in. Baby killer.’

  ‘What!’ Jed turned, her skin suddenly cold. But Raincloud was speaking to Nicholas, not her.

  ‘How many babies did you kill in Vietnam, man? How many innocent women and kids?’ He began to chant, softly. ‘Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh. Dare to struggle, dare to win! Ho, Ho —’

  Jed surged back towards the counter. ‘Don’t you dare sing that to him!’

  The young man looked at her pityingly. ‘You think he’s a hero because he lost his legs?’

  ‘Even if you don’t think what he fought for was right, he still has more guts than you’ll ever have.’

  ‘Don’t you lay that on me.’ He waved his hands around his shop. ‘I stand up for what I believe in! You think that’s easy in this town, man?’

  ‘And I am not a man! People come in two sexes, in case you haven’t noticed.’

  ‘And you’re one hassled chick.’

  ‘I am not a chick either! The word you are looking for is “woman”. You can apologise to me, and to this man here. Who is a hundred times more of a man than you’ll ever be.’

  ‘You can take your apology and stick it up . . .’ The young man came out from behind the counter. The action was not a threat, yet suddenly Nicholas was there between her and the shop owner.

  ‘Jed.’ Nicholas touched her hand. Even through her anger she thought, that’s the first time Nicholas has touched me. ‘It’s not worth it. Come on.’

  He wheeled out into the sunlight.

  Jed followed him, the crystals in her shoulder bag. She’d have liked to throw them back, but she doubted the young man would return her money.

  Nicholas wheeled in silence for a few minutes. ‘How come you can insult me and he can’t?’ he asked at last.

  Because I am going to love you, she thought, then stopped. She did not know this man, was not sure she loved the man he was now. But, at some time in the future, the love would be there. She knew it as surely as she knew that night would come tonight as the sun sank behind the gum trees.

  And if she told him that, he’d think she was crazy.

  She began to walk again. ‘I . . . I don’t know.’

  ‘Thank you for standing up for me.’

  ‘Thank you for protecting me.’ She didn’t think Raincloud would have hurt her. But his closeness — and anger — had been intimidating. ‘I suppose most people know who you are around here.’

  ‘I’m pretty conspicuous. And it’s a small town: I know about Raincloud too.’

  ‘Is that really his name?’

  ‘Nope. It’s George Alberts. His father owns a property the other side of Gibber’s Creek, which is probably how “Raincloud” can afford to run a shop like that. Bet you were his only customer today.’ He added, ‘You know what? He might even be right. I don’t know if I do believe in what we were fighting for. Are still fighting for. I didn’t really think about why we were fighting in Vietnam before I went. “Fighting for your country” is a nice brave-sounding phrase. But was I really?’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Maybe it was for nothing. Maybe my friends died for nothing. I lost my legs for nothing.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean you weren’t a hero,’ she said softly. ‘If you’d dived into a flood to save a kid, and the kid still drowned, you’d still be a hero.’

  He glanced up at her. ‘That’s . . . an interesting way to put it. I’ll have to think about that.’

  She said impulsively, ‘Nicholas, what happened when you lost your legs?’

  ‘It all went bang.’

  ‘No, I meant —’

  ‘I know what you meant. I’ve never told anyone about that day.’ His face twisted in a half-smile. ‘No one has ever asked. Much too tactful.’

  ‘And I’m not.’

  ‘Well, no.’

  ‘Sorry about that.’

  He turned the chair to face her. ‘I can’t tell you. One day, maybe, I can. But not yet.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said gently. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘It does, you know. It matters to me more than anything. But I can’t talk about it. Do you understand?’

  ‘There are things I can’t talk about either. I do understand.’

  He looked up at her face. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I think maybe you do.’ He paused, then added, ‘I’ve got a lot of sci-fi books in my cabin. More than the library here. If you’d like to borrow any of them . . .’

  ‘I would. Very much.’ She wondered how to say that she wasn’t allowed in the living areas, even to read Scarlett a story. No, what was her name this week? Princess Anne, she thought, unless she had changed it again. She supposed the rule was sensible, as few doors were locked, and Matron Clancy had no way of knowing she wasn’t a thief, especially when she had no references.

  Especially when, by most standards, she was one.

  ‘I’ll bring you a pile next weekend.’

  ‘You’re going to come to Overflow for the weekend?’

  He nodded.

  She felt the smile fill her face.

  ‘I can take any back if you’ve already read them.’

  ‘Won’t matter. I’d like to read them again.’ One of the hardest parts of the past year had not been having old-friend books to turn to.

  They had reached the River View gates. His voice held more than politeness as he said, ‘Thank you for this afternoon. I enjoyed it.’

  ‘Even my foot in mouth?’

  ‘Especially your foot in mouth.’ He hesitated, then said, ‘See you tomorrow, Jed.’ She watched him as he wheeled away.

  Chapter 20

  JED

  21 DECEMBER 1968

  Nancy drove her to Drinkwater on the evening of the Apollo 8 launch. The sun sat like a fat orange on the horizon, staring at them through the trees, then collapsed below the horizon.

  ‘They’re going to attempt everything except the actual landing on the moon this time,’ Jed said as they swept along the road to Drinkwater. She felt excited, scared — not just that the launch could fail, even explode into a fireball like Apollo 1, but that if it did Tommy might die from the shock, or lose the vital passion for the coming moon landing that he believed — and she did too — kept him alive.

  Sheep stared at them, then bent to their eating again. ‘Humans will be leaving Earth’s orbit for the first time and go around the moon. They’ll actually see the other side of the moon!’

  Nancy looked at her, amused. ‘You’re really interested in this?’

  ‘Of course.’ Jed saw the expression on Nancy’s face. So Nancy too had assumed that she pretended an interest in space exploration to create a bond with Tommy. It hurt. She thought Nancy had accepted her. Liked her. But of course her main loyalty must be to her family . . .

  Nancy skidded the car around a corner, narrowly missing a straying sheep. ‘Get out of the way, you woolly moron! What’s the point of trying to get to the moon? There are more than enough problems to solve here on Earth.’

  ‘We don’t know what the point will be. That’s exactly why we have to go! We don’t know what’s out there, what we’ll find on other planets. The secret of how life began; new minerals. Space for humanity to grow. But it’s more than that.’ She tried to find the words to explain how important tonight — the whole space program — was. ‘Humans spread across the world. Our ancestors kept walking to the new
horizon. Now the only new horizon is up there.’

  Nancy looked amused again. ‘I don’t need any more horizons. This place is who I am.’

  ‘I don’t mean everyone needs to go into space. Or would even want to go. But out there, beyond the black, we’re all just human. One planet. No racial hatred or separate nations.’

  ‘Peace on Earth by going beyond it?’

  ‘Sort of. Dreaming of going beyond Earth is keeping Tommy, I mean Mr Thompson, alive. Something has to be powerful to do that.’

  ‘Jed.’ Nancy hesitated, then went on. ‘You know that Matilda and Tommy’s solicitors are investigating your claim.’

  ‘They didn’t tell me. I assumed they would.’ Jed tried to read Nancy’s expression. ‘What have they found?’

  Nancy kept her eyes — for once — on the road. ‘Nothing.’

  Jed forced herself to sound relaxed. ‘Nothing nothing, or a nothing that makes them think I’m not related to Tommy?’

  ‘Nothing about a Jed Kelly.’

  ‘They just need to find out about Rose. My mum. And that she had a daughter, in America.’

  ‘They’d still need to prove that daughter is you. Unless you have a convenient birthmark, there needs to be a link from a child in America to you now.’ The words ‘If Rose really had a child’ lingered unsaid.

  ‘No birthmark. Let them hunt in America first. If they start looking through the birth records, they’ll find out if Rose had a daughter.’ She looked out the window, not at Nancy. She hoped that Nancy had not noticed she had said ‘if’, not ‘when’. ‘Once they find the records there, it should be easy to link that baby to the child who came to Australia with Dad. Once they’ve found that,’ Jed chose her words carefully, ‘there are people who’ll testify I’m Dad’s daughter. The investigators know the name Mum was using when she died,’ Jed added. ‘That should be the place to start.’

  ‘I suspect Matilda and Tommy have investigators working in the USA too. But they do want to find out more about you.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter!’ said Jed fiercely. ‘No matter what I’ve done — I mean whatever happened, it doesn’t change who my great-grandfather is.’