The Ghost by the Billabong

by Jackie French

  She had seen a future Nicholas whom she loved. But she had never seen a future that showed that Nicholas loved her. It was all too likely that he never would. But he might write to her. And Scarlett, darling Scarlett . . . At least she had kept her promise to write to her, would write to her every few days till she could see her again.

  The truck turned off onto the Gibber’s Creek bypass, towards the highway. The carnival had ended, just like the song said, she thought. The last few weeks had been a circus, where she had been able to play the role of someone needed, wanted. The circus had ended, but she would love them till she died.

  Chapter 34

  FRED

  Fred stood in the shadows as the billabong flashed the dawn’s sunbeams back at it, and watched the truck stop and pick up the girl. He’d heard her tramp along the road the night before — he’d known armies that made less noise than Jed Kelly. Well, bits of armies. One bit, back in New Guinea, had been silent as the mist as they hid from the Japs.

  He’d watched her as she slept too. More meat on her bones than when he’d seen her last. She was still a ghost, her face lost as she muttered in her sleep. Not as much of a ghost as him, and not as much as she had been either. Ah, crook things happened to kids. He knew, because he’d been a kid, an orphan, and crook things had happened to him. He’d been a ghost too, till Madame had found him.

  Maybe that was why he was a ghost now. Maybe you never truly left the horrors of childhood behind.

  He considered that, as he turned back to his fire, a true swaggie’s fire, a few coals to boil his billy and no smoke. The trick was really dry wood with no bark.

  Nah. He’d been happy, alive, in the days with the circus. More alive than ever when his Belle was there. She was still his, even if she’d married another bloke. Not the woman she was now of course, but the one in his memory.

  He grinned at his gear: tarp, billy, tucker bag, matches. What else did he need, with the world for plucking and a head full of memories?

  And now there was billy tea, and more sausages too — he hadn’t cooked them earlier in case the girl smelled them, because he wanted her to think he might actually have been a ghost last time. Bless old Mrs M up on her hill. She was generous with tea and bread and cheese too, for a bloke who’d split her firewood for her, or clean the leaves out of the gutters. She was old enough to know that most swaggies didn’t like questions neither.

  There’d been lots of swaggies like him, before the war. Not many after. His war, that was, the second world war, not the two — Korea and Vietnam — that had come after. Tiddler wars, not like his big one. These days he met other swaggies only when he went north for the winter.

  He settled back against the tree. It was a long way to travel north. And Mah’s kids were grown up now, and Belle’s growing up too. Maybe he’d stay put this winter. Make himself a proper tent, see if he could scrounge a quilt.

  Where was the girl going in the truck, anyway? He sipped his tea. Ah well . . . If she came back, he would find out.

  Chapter 35

  JED

  She sang half of the latest Seekers album, the Beatles’ ‘Love Me Do’, and ‘The Ryebuck Shearer’, with the slightly rude verses, to make the truck driver laugh and listen to the words, watching the land change. Different trees; grey soil, not red. A couple of months earlier she’d never have noticed the trees change with the soil, never understood what a ‘rain shadow’ was, where the lie of the land meant that rain rarely fell.

  She missed Overflow already. Missed them all.

  ‘That was a good ’un,’ the driver said when she finished ‘Ryebuck’. ‘Hadn’t heard those verses before. Give us another?’

  She sang till they stopped for petrol, and shook her head when he suggested breakfast at the adjoining café. ‘I’m broke.’ Which was not a lie. Her nineteen dollars wouldn’t go far buying food in cafés.

  ‘I’ll pay,’ the driver said, as she hoped he would. Truckies almost always paid, and didn’t want anything in return except conversation and song to help keep them awake, as long as you didn’t go poking The Beasts towards them so they thought you might be available for something more.

  It was a good breakfast. Not a Drinkwater type of breakfast with fine china, nor the happy chaos of Overflow. But the truck driver (‘Call me Stan’) showed her photos of his kids and granddaughter and dog while they ate fried eggs and sausages and a great mound of baked beans on slabs of toast soaked with margarine, and four cups of tea with as much sugar as each cup could take. Sugar was free, sitting on each table. Some days she’d lived on sugar, choosing a busy café where she could sit for at least twenty minutes before someone came to take her order, reading her book while surreptitiously nibbling the sugar cubes, or secreting them in her pockets along with any scraps left by the previous customer. ‘Have to go to the loo. I’ll be back in a minute,’ she’d say if a waitress approached, then ducked out before the waitress could come back.

  This is real life, she told herself. Jed Kelly’s life. Managing. Surviving. Perhaps this venture was as much for herself as it was for Tommy, to remind her that whatever the Thompsons decided, she could cope — had coped, would cope — by herself. And this way Scarlett, dear fairy Scarlett, couldn’t wriggle into her heart even more and make her feel things that could not be borne. Love for Nicholas could not rope her more tightly to him . . .

  ‘Ready to go, love? I’ll just hop to the gents and we’ll be off.’

  Some of the truckies wolf-whistled at her as she went out, now that Stan was no longer with her. The Jed of a few months back would have made a rude gesture at them. But now she did what all respectable young women did, every time men whistled, called out, invited, jeered, even touched an arm or leg or breast. Ignored them. She wished she could shout back, make that gesture, shame the men. Wished the shame were theirs and not hers.

  The food had woken Stan up, or maybe he’d taken some No-Doz when he went to the toilet. But she sang again for an hour until he said, ‘Queanbeyan’s just over the hill. Where’d you want me to drop you?’

  ‘Anywhere. Thank you. Do you know how to get to the main street?’ There’d be a telephone box there.

  ‘Over the hill and turn right. All downhill.’

  ‘Is there a bridge in Queanbeyan?’

  He looked at her curiously. ‘At the end of the main street, over the river. Can’t miss it.’

  Good. A river meant water, for washing even if it wasn’t safe to drink, in case the public toilets were locked at night. And she could sleep under the bridge, hidden from passers-by, if she couldn’t find a bus or train station there or in Canberra, where she could pretend she was waiting for an early train.

  She hopped out, thanking Stan again, and headed down the road he indicated. She veered away into a side street as soon as she could, one that was parallel to the main street, hoping to find a fruit tree hanging over a fence, so she could pick some without anyone in a passing car noticing her, keeping the sandwiches still in her bag to eat that night.

  Yes, there was a plum tree, overripe fruit squashed on the ground, but some still hanging on the branches. The stuff on the ground would be wormy, but she picked all she could reach, quickly, in case anyone objected. As far as she knew, fruit hanging over the fence belonged to anyone, but that wouldn’t stop certain kinds of people making a fuss if they saw her.

  A good haul: her bag was filled to the brim now. She was just about to turn back to the main street again when she stopped.

  A house opposite stared at her from cracked windows. Or rather, two-thirds of a house, for one side had been demolished, though there were no signs of workmen now. But it had once been solid, stone walled, double fronted with bay windows, the kind of house she had dreamed of back in Debbie’s hot wooden box in its row of other hot wooden boxes in Brisbane.

  She hesitated, checking that no one was looking, then slipped through the gate, between two giant bushes. She pushed at the front door. It opened.

  Half the roof was gone
from the first room, perhaps a parlour or lounge originally. Rotting timber, birds’ nests and debris lay on rotting underfelt. The roof was gone from the dining room as well, and its leadlight windows were stacked neatly against one wall. But the hallway still had its ceiling . . . She pushed open the first door.

  A study, its roof and walls miraculously sound. Even more miraculously, a fireplace, with what looked like fairly recent ashes and a billy, as if the workmen had boiled their lunchtime cuppa there. A sofa, giant, in brown leather. She heaved it over quickly, to check for rats. But it seemed clear and there was no rat-like smell.

  This would be far safer than the bridge, where other vagrants might lurk, or drunks. She could light a fire too, for cooking and heating water. Luxury, to wash in warm water. She headed down the hallway. Kitchen, also with most of its roof — too much to hope that the water was still connected. She tried a tap. Nothing happened. Laundry out the back, and then what must have been a bathroom, added as an afterthought, though the bath and basin and lavatory had already been removed. But a water tank stood on a stand by the falling-down garage. Water, only slightly rusty looking, gushed out when she turned on the tap.

  A pair of apple trees, laden, though the fruit was still too green to eat. A massive pear tree, with fruit just turning ripe. Fabbo. A persimmon tree. One of the girls she’d known at school had had a persimmon tree in her front garden. Jed didn’t like the fruit — you had to wait till it was squishy in winter before you ate it, and even then your mouth puckered at the sourness — but if she was still there when they all ripened, then the trees would mean she’d have fruit to eat every day, as well as whatever she could scrounge. Not bad at all.

  She headed back to the kitchen before a neighbour could see her. Nothing in the cupboards except an old baking tin, but she could scrub that and boil water in it. And an enamel bucket with a chipped edge, which would do as a chamberpot. She could empty it out the back at night.

  Wonderful! She could hide her belongings in behind the sofa — even if the workmen came back tomorrow, she doubted they’d move the sofa, and they must still have days of work left before they got to the study. Anyway, she had a feeling that no one had been here for weeks: the demolition had clearly halted, at least temporarily, maybe just over the Christmas holidays, but hopefully for longer.

  Now to change into her most respectable dress and find a Canberra telephone book. She needed an address, and every telephone box was supposed to have a local directory. After that she’d hitchhike over the border into Canberra, to a supermarket, to check its rubbish bins.

  She grinned. Jed Kelly, back at work.

  Chapter 36

  JED

  By four pm, her bag held a half-rotten pineapple — easy to cut the bad bit off with the fruit knife that still lurked in the bottom of her shoulder bag. She also had four withered carrots and a squashed lamington cake, which looked delicious. She was amazed that one of the staff hadn’t grabbed it. A good haul, she thought, as she wandered along the neat Canberra streets, looking for the address she’d found in the phone book. Heat rose from the bitumen, but the street was shaded by its trees. Each garden was treed too; there was an abundance of flowers and greenery compared to Brisbane, where a row of paw-paws was as much as most homes boasted, and Lord Mayor Clem Jones derided trees as blocking the view of his new highways.

  No front fences, which was weird, but most houses had hedges or gardens delineating where their property began. She was glad she’d chosen Queanbeyan to stay in. Canberra seemed too new, too tidy, for people like her to stay under the radar easily. But the pickings from the supermarket had been good. The older town’s rubbish bins hadn’t looked promising at all.

  She looked at the numbers below the letterboxes. This must be it. She knocked at the front door. No answer, as she had expected.

  She sat on the steps to wait.

  She hadn’t expected anyone till half past six, at the earliest, but the new alarm clock in her bag (paid for, after a brief consultation with her conscience) said ten past five when a station wagon turned into the driveway. A man got out: tall, portly, middle-aged, balding, with a good-looking face. A woman slid out of the passenger’s seat, shorter, dumpy, dark haired and with comfortable wrinkles.

  Jed stood up and bobbed her head politely. ‘Mr and Mrs Clissold? I hope you don’t mind. My name’s Jed Kelly. Mr Thompson of Drinkwater said you might be able to give me a job.’ It wasn’t quite a lie, she assured herself. ‘I’m good in the kitchen, a hard worker.’

  ‘No one needed just now,’ said Mr Clissold. Mrs Clissold shook her head. But she lingered, as the man vanished around the back. Jed heard the click of the back door being opened.

  Jed gave a practised look of blended hopefulness and helplessness. ‘Please, I . . . I want the job badly.’

  ‘Try The Woodstock in Civic. They can usually do with a hand.’ Mrs Clissold turned to follow her husband.

  ‘No, you don’t understand. It’s for my great-grandfather.’

  Mrs Clissold stopped at that.

  She would give Mrs Clissold the truth, because only the truth would work. ‘He’s Thomas Thompson. Have you heard of him? He’s dying. It’s true: you can ring Drinkwater and ask. I think it would mean a lot to him if I could work at the tracking station. I don’t need any pay.’ Not if you feed me, she thought. And if I can squat rent-free in the Queanbeyan house. But let Mrs Clissold think that she didn’t need money because she had a nice normal family to support her. ‘I just want to work there, to be at the tracking station. I want to be able to tell him what it’s like to track men going to the moon. It means the world to him. More than the world . . .’ She ran out of words.

  Mrs Clissold’s face had relaxed into kindness at the torrent of hope and grief. Now she looked slightly amused at Jed’s obvious enthusiasm. ‘We might give you a go then. Can always use another pair of hands. Most people don’t like the long trip there and back each day. You’ll be clearing the tables, washing up. You don’t mind that?’

  ‘Love it,’ said Jed.

  ‘It takes all sorts. I’ll have to run it by the admin manager. He has to approve all the non-technical staff. It’ll be a proper job though, with proper wages, if he agrees. How old are you?’

  ‘I’m not twenty-one yet.’ Still not really a lie. But you got much better pay over eighteen. Even more over twenty-one, but Mrs Clissold probably wouldn’t go for that. Not that the pay would be enough to rent a flat — women didn’t get paid that sort of money, not for washing dishes, which would only get them less than half the wage a man would get for doing the same thing.

  ‘Do you have any references? What did you say your name was again?’

  ‘Jed Kelly. Janet really,’ she offered, thinking that the name she’d been given at birth would be easier to accept — and remember. ‘I don’t have any references, but I could get one. I’ve been working at River View, that’s a home for crippled kids at Gibber’s Creek. You could ring them. Miss McGruder’s in charge of the kitchen there.’

  She crossed her fingers, hoping Miss McGruder wouldn’t mention that she’d just walked out on them, and had broken the rule about not going into the therapy area. But she had worked hard there. She decided to give some more truth. ‘They may be angry because I left without handing in my notice. But when I heard NASA had picked the astronauts who are going to actually land on the moon I . . . I just had to be part of it now. Even if it’s just washing dishes.’

  Mrs Clissold smiled again. ‘Let me make a call or two. You on the phone?’

  Jed shook her head. ‘I know your phone number though. I looked it up to find out where you lived.’

  ‘Give us a ring tomorrow night. If he says yes, then you’ll have to be ready at six-thirty Monday morning. We’ll pick you up. What’s your address?’

  Jed gave the Queanbeyan address. Hopefully none of the neighbours would notice a station wagon stopping there briefly at six-thirty Monday morning. Mrs Clissold followed her husband around the house, an
d Jed heard the back door slam.

  She felt like dancing through the flowerbeds and climbing the sunbeams to the sky. With a bit of luck, she had her job.

  Chapter 37

  NANCY

  9 JANUARY 1969

  Nancy sat in the single chair in Nicholas’s cabin. Had Jed Kelly any idea how hard it would be to tell those who cared for her she had vanished in the night?

  Probably not, thought Nancy, as Nicholas took the note from her and began to read it. If she had guessed correctly, Jed had too little experience of being loved — or even of the ties of close friendship — to know how much she could hurt those who cared for her.

  Nicholas looked up at her. ‘Where’s she gone? Why?’

  Unlike the children, he had a cottage to himself. The hospital-style bed that could be lowered to wheelchair height, the bar dangling above it, the wheelchair-modified bathroom, were all River View designs. The bookshelves around the walls, the typewriter on the low table, were his.

  ‘She didn’t tell you in her letter?’

  Nicholas looked at the note again. ‘No.’

  ‘Well, she didn’t tell me either.’ Nancy’s voice held both anger and concern.

  ‘Maybe she’s worried that with Christmas over, the Thompsons’ investigators will get to work again.’ Nicholas met her eyes. ‘What do you plan to do if you find out she isn’t your great-niece?’

  ‘Do? Nothing, of course. She clearly thinks she is, but —’ Nancy stopped. ‘Do you know something? What’s she told you?’

  He chose his words carefully. ‘Nothing to say that she isn’t who she says she is. Who she hopes she is.’

  Nancy nodded. ‘Has she said anything about her family? Where she was born? Where she’s been living in Australia?’