The Ghost by the Billabong

by Jackie French

  What had the moon looked like, when the astronauts reached the moon’s day?

  It was as if the old man followed her thoughts. ‘Lovell said . . . the moon looked like a pile . . . of sand . . . his kid had been playing in. And now they’re coming . . . home. Funny word. Home. Home is . . . the world now. A dust mote in infinity, that’s what Anders called . . . it. Our blue dust mote of life, among the stars.’

  ‘Sshh.’ Matilda sat up. ‘Something’s happening!’ The voice on the radio was excited now. The re-entry vehicle had appeared, almost exactly on schedule.

  Jed listened as the spacecraft dipped into the atmosphere above Tokyo at 39,636 kilometres per hour. Matilda sat on the bed, holding Tommy’s hand, leaving the other side free for Jed to hold his other hand. A gift to her or to Tommy? Either way, she was almost unbearably touched.

  She listened, the papery hand in hers. Heard the Voice of America describe a fireball, eight kilometres wide and a hundred and sixty-one kilometres long, streaking from the sky, skipping briefly out of the atmosphere again, and then plunging down, down, towards the Pacific Ocean.

  Would the parachutes open? Or would the astronauts burn up, or die on impact?

  She held her breath — and hoped Tommy didn’t — then forced herself to breathe again.

  Seven thousand metres to go . . .

  The parachutes ejected. The announcer’s voice was triumphant as he described the slow drop, two hundred and twenty-five kilometres per hour, the orange-and-white parachutes above the grey ocean in the pre-dawn darkness . . .

  Splashdown.

  They had made it! Only four point eight kilometres from the recovery ship, the USS Yorktown.

  ‘Two point six kilometres off target,’ whispered Tommy.

  ‘Is that bad?’

  It was not a smile that lit his face now, but pure joy. ‘Good. So very, very good. Honeysuckle . . . Prime for this one. They’ll be cheering over there.’

  ‘What happens now?’

  ‘Helicopters take . . . astronauts back. Debrief. Splashdown dinner . . . at . . . Honeysuckle Creek.’

  That was what she had been waiting for. Again, she tried to keep her voice casual. ‘What’s a splashdown dinner?’

  ‘After every mission. Celebration dinner, in the canteen.’

  ‘They have a canteen at Honeysuckle Creek?’

  ‘I don’t suppose their wives pack them sandwiches every day.’ The Dragon was looking at Jed too keenly.

  ‘Who runs it?’

  The ancient eyes were closed. Was he asleep? But his lips moved. ‘Horrie and Betty Clissold. Tom Reid said . . . best sponge roll . . .’ His voice died away.

  For a horrible moment she wondered if tonight’s excitement had been more than his failing heart could cope with. But he still breathed, sucking in the oxygen from the mask, his chest rising and falling. She met Matilda’s eyes, nodded and slipped from the room, down the corridor to the bedroom Matilda had given her. Or lent her, at least, for the night.

  Chapter 32

  JED

  8 JANUARY 1969

  She waited.

  A few of the resident River View children came back, mostly those who needed more lifting and caring than their families could easily manage. Most would return only when school began. Others, who lived locally, came for longer and more intensive rehabilitation sessions. Laughter floated from the treatment rooms. The staff there, it seemed, could even make it fun.

  She didn’t speak privately with Nicholas again. But he came to the dining room each day for lunch now, taking over the job of feeding Scarlett while he ate his own meal. Most days she found him there again for afternoon tea, when she got off work.

  The kids had milk and fruit. Nicholas sat at the staff table, drinking coffee with her, while the women who ran the kitchen left them, slightly too tactfully, alone.

  Nicholas didn’t refer to Tommy again. They talked about books. She’d visited the bookshop again, with the glory of her new account; had bought so many books the assistant had tied them in brown paper for her, with a string handle so she could carry them. She’d already lent some to Nicholas.

  It was luxury beyond imagining to be able to discuss the books she loved with someone else — plotlines such as the ‘culling’ in Panshin’s Rite of Passage, where all the young on the vast spaceship had to survive for three months on an unknown planet. Those who survived became citizens. Those who died were deemed to be inferior stock; if three of your children died, you were not allowed to breed again.

  ‘It makes sense, of a sort,’ said Nicholas.

  ‘But none of the kids here would have passed. Do you think they should be culled?’

  ‘Of course not. But they’re here because of diseases that didn’t exist on the spaceship. Even genetic problems were sorted. It was an entirely protected environment. Survival guaranteed.’

  ‘So our ancestors were the ones who survived,’ said Jed slowly. ‘Plagues. Ice ages. Wars.’

  ‘Yep. They were heroes or able to run very fast or to make friends with an enemy or just plain lucky.’

  She wondered which she was best at. Running, she supposed. She had managed that, at least. ‘How is the book going?’ It was a safe question. They mostly did talk about books, she realised. The barriers against questions about his legs, his past, her past, his plans, her plans, were so strong as to be almost visible.

  ‘I’ve torn the whole thing up again.’

  ‘Oh. I’m sorry.’

  He grinned. ‘No, it’s good. I know where I want to get it, and I know I’m not there yet. But each time it’s getting better. It’s a good thing Santa Claus gave me so much paper.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Better go. I’m due in the swimming pool.’

  ‘Half your luck.’ The kitchen air was sodden with heat and the smell of stir-fried cabbage. She hoped there’d be time for a swim in the river when Nancy drove her home, after their daily visit to Tommy at Drinkwater.

  Not home. To Overflow. She hadn’t earned the right to call it home — though she had enjoyed these days too much to easily leave them.

  Nicholas rolled his chair towards the door, then turned. ‘By the way, did you hear the news?’

  ‘What news?’

  ‘They’ve announced the crew who are going to land on the moon.’

  ‘Oh, wow. Who will be on it?’ she asked eagerly.

  He laughed. ‘Can’t remember. Tommy will know.’

  Yes, Tommy would know. But if NASA had announced the crew, the time was getting closer. She could no longer wait. Any day now that Christmas was over, registry and other offices would open again. The Thompsons’ investigators might find something that proved she could not be Tommy’s great-granddaughter; might even find out her own secrets. But surely there was no evidence to find of those. Please, she thought, let them have disappeared as if they never were.

  Tomorrow, she thought. No more time to linger. It has to be tomorrow.

  She gathered up her shoulder bag, waved goodbye to Miss McGruder, stirring custard at the kitchen sink, then set off to the office where she usually met Nancy for the lift to Drinkwater, then Overflow.

  ‘Jed?’ Jed turned, to see one of the nurse’s aides pushing Scarlett in her old chair.

  ‘Not using your rocket today?’

  Scarlett’s usually bright face was closed and shadowed. She shook her head.

  ‘Can’t quite manage it yet,’ said the aide brightly. ‘But we’ll get there, won’t we, love?’

  The small figure managed the hint of a shrug.

  ‘Come on, love. We’ll be late for the pool. You love the pool, don’t you?’

  Stop speaking for her. She can talk, thought Jed. She opened her mouth to say, ‘See you tomorrow.’

  But she wouldn’t see Scarlett tomorrow. Not for months, possibly ever.

  But she would write, as she had promised. And she would come back, even if they didn’t give her a job here again, after she’d bunked off with no notice. She did feel slightly guilty about that, but
there were plenty of school leavers wanting a job at this time of the year and pot scrubbing didn’t require much skill . . .

  She rounded the path, up to the rise next to the office, then stood back to let a small motorised wheelchair pass. A young woman sat in it: green spiky hair, white coat, a stethoscope, her face vaguely familiar. A doctor? Somehow Nancy, or Dr McAlpine, must have found one who wasn’t just female, but in a wheelchair who would understand her charges too. A young man walked beside her. The couple were so engrossed in conversation they didn’t see her as they passed.

  Green spiked hair! She’d seen women with grey hair who’d put a blue rinse through it. But short, green and spiked? Never! And under her white coat she seemed to be wearing things that looked more like floral stockings than proper clothes. Even the young man at her side looked odd, his hair too short . . .

  The couple vanished.

  Jed took a deep breath. Ghosts. Ghosts from the future, not the past. But that doctor with the green hair . . .

  She changed course, running away from the office, into the forbidden therapy area, up the ramp into the swimming-pool block. One of the physiotherapists stared at her. ‘You can’t come in here!’

  ‘I have to see Scarlett . . .’

  ‘Jed?’

  It was Nicholas, Nicholas bare-chested, treading water, or whatever it was called when your hands and stumps of legs kept you upright. She tried to give him an I-am-quite-normal-just-have-to-tell-Scarlett-something smile and knew it hadn’t worked.

  She shrugged off the physio’s restraining hand and ran into the girls’ changing rooms.

  Scarlett looked up with sudden pleasure as the aide fastened her swimming costume. ‘Jed! Have you come to see me swim?’

  ‘No, I’m sorry. Not allowed in here, remember?’ Jed looked at the elfin face. Brown hair, not green. But the face was the same. Older, or younger, eyes didn’t change.

  Jed kneeled by the chair and grabbed the child’s hands. ‘I broke the rules because this is important. Scarlett, listen to me. I’m going to promise you something. One day you are going to be a doctor. And you will be happy.’ I only saw one moment of one day, she thought. That is all that I can promise her. But surely if there is one happy day, there will be others.

  Scarlett stared at her. ‘Doctors have to use their hands.’

  ‘Then you’re going to make yours work.’

  ‘But they won’t! I couldn’t even make the chair go forwards today!’

  ‘You will. I’ve promised you! It’s going to happen. Because you are going to work and work and one day wear a stethoscope and a handsome man is going to smile at you and maybe kiss you . . .’

  ‘Yuck,’ said Scarlett.

  ‘Only if you want him to. Scarlett, I don’t break my promises. Ever.’ Which is why I don’t make promises either, she thought. ‘But this is going to happen.’

  ‘How do you know?’ Scarlett demanded.

  ‘Miss Kelly, really,’ muttered the aide. ‘This is not a good idea.’

  Jed ignored her. ‘I . . . see things, in the future. Just sometimes. And just a little bit.’

  The girl seemed to accept this news with the same tolerance she applied to the idea of Santa Claus’s existence — improbable but useful.

  ‘I have to go now before they get an orderly to haul me out. I . . . I may not be here tomorrow.’ She hoped the aide thought that just meant she thought she would be fired. ‘Scarlett, will you work hard? Really work?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Scarlett O’Hara. And looking at that small face, Jed knew she would.

  Chapter 33

  JED

  Dear Nicholas,

  By the time you read this I’ll be gone. I can’t say where I’m going just now, in case it doesn’t work out, just that it’s something I need to do for Tommy, something important. It’s the only gift I can give him. I hope you’ll understand. I hope I can explain it to you soon too.

  Good luck with your therapy and the book. I’ll be thinking of you all the time. I’ll write to you too, as soon as I can.

  Please understand. This is my only chance to do something for Tommy. Even if he doesn’t turn out to be my great-grandfather, I want him to have this.

  Love,

  Jed

  She had hesitated at the word ‘love’. But people put ‘love’ at the end of letters even when it didn’t mean ‘I love you’. When Cheryl at school had sent them all postcards from Melbourne she’d used ‘love’. She’d put ‘love Jed’ at the bottom of her letter to Scarlett too.

  And if she never saw him again, if he left River View before she was able to return, she would have given him the truth, at least once. Love.

  An owl hooted outside as she left the note folded on her bed, with Nicholas printed in big letters on the outside. She left another marked Nancy, apologising for leaving both the job and Overflow so abruptly and thanking her for her kindness, as well as asking her to forward letters to Nicholas and Scarlett, and promising to send her a fuller explanation when she could. She also asked her to tell Tommy and Scarlett that she’d write to them soon.

  It would have been far easier if she could have told Nancy what she planned to do. But Nancy would have objected and not just to the idea of a girl hitchhiking, at the mercy of axe murderers and other weirdos. And Jed had to do this herself or it would be meaningless. And that meant hitching. Besides, she had been hitchhiking for a year now, with no trouble that she hadn’t been able to get herself out of.

  Nancy couldn’t have stopped her, of course, but this way there’d be no arguments, no refusing to obey someone who had been so good to her.

  It was tempting to spend one last night in a bed with clean sheets and a soft mattress. But Nancy got up too early. Even if Jed managed to get up before her, the older woman might follow her.

  Nancy might also have offered her money to help her do this. So might Nicholas. For some reason she couldn’t bear the thought of that. She didn’t want charity. Not from them. She had nineteen dollars and seventy-seven cents after her Christmas purchases and paying board. She’d managed on far less.

  Her bag was heavier now, looking more like luggage. But she’d need the dresses, if her plan worked. She hesitated about taking food. It wasn’t as if they’d miss it. But she couldn’t steal from these people. And yet leaving with no food almost seemed a slap in the face to Nancy’s hospitality.

  In the end she made herself mutton-and-chutney sandwiches and wrapped them in greaseproof paper, adding another paragraph to the note:

  PS I have taken mutton-and-chutney sandwiches. I hope you don’t mind. Thank you so very, very much again. Jed.

  Sir Cedric bobbed above her, a round yellow face tonight, so bright she didn’t need the torch. The road shone pale through the trees.

  She walked for two hours, till she was past the turn-off to Overflow, where there should be more traffic passing in the morning. The breeze was cool, smelling of mountains, despite the heat lingering on in the soil from the day. She rolled up her shoulder bag for a pillow and tried to sleep.

  The kookaburras woke her. She made her way through the trees to the river, her feet crunching on bark as dry as cornflakes, ate half the sandwiches, and headed back to the road.

  Nancy and Michael would probably be up by now. But Nancy wouldn’t come looking for her till six-thirty, at the earliest, to see why she wasn’t ready to go to River View.

  A car approached. She stuck out her thumb, saw the driver, a woman, inspect her and reject her. Should she keep walking? She must be about six miles from Drinkwater now, almost at the billabong where she had met the ghost. She didn’t want to get too near to Drinkwater. Too much danger that someone who knew her might see her.

  Another engine in the distance. A truck, she thought, then there it was, a big one, the front cabin mostly glass. She stuck out her thumb again. The truck passed without slowing, but then it braked, stopping about fifty metres down the road. She ran after it and hauled herself up as the passenger’s door was flung open.


  ‘Where are you headed, girlie?’ The driver was middle-aged, grey hair, the usual truckies’ black shadows under his eyes.

  ‘Canberra.’

  He grinned. ‘You’re in luck. I’m headed for Queanbeyan.’

  Queanbeyan, right next to Canberra! She’d been prepared to spend another day and night on the road, trying to find the right lifts. She’d be there by lunchtime. She fastened her seatbelt as the driver shoved the truck into gear. It lurched off, winding slightly across the road.

  ‘You know any good songs?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The grin again. ‘If you can keep singing, I can keep driving. Need to keep awake.’

  It was far from the first time a truckie had asked her for help with that. Some wanted songs; others just talking. Jed wondered how much sleep this one’d had. Some of the truckies managed to drive a twenty-four-hour stretch, or three or four days with only a few hours’ sleep each night, surviving on No-Doz pills and coffee.

  She smiled, a careful I-am-friendly-but-don’t-want-any-funny-business smile. ‘Do you like The Seekers?’

  ‘How about “The Carnival is Over”?’

  She’d learned that at school, in choir. She sang as they passed the Drinkwater paddocks, the sheep like rocks, the rocks like sheep. But she knew that each rock and each sheep was different now; how rocks turned green with lichen after rain and sheep turned their backs to the wind. Tommy would be there, in that big house among the trees, expecting her to visit that afternoon. But this would be better than visiting! And if Nancy forgave her for vanishing and if lifts to Canberra and back were going to be as easy as this, she could visit him each week. For it couldn’t be very long now before humanity reached the moon . . .

  Just like it could not be long before Tommy’s life ended.

  And Nicholas . . . It was better that she was leaving now. Nicholas would be leaving River View any week, surely, now his knees were working. He could never love her, not if he knew who she truly was. He had never even tried to kiss her, had probably only spent time with her because she was the only person near his age and because she liked sci-fi.