The Ghost by the Billabong

by Jackie French

  ‘What do you think?’ Matilda asked, partly as if she had given a child a present to unwrap, partly as if she knew, more deeply than anyone, what a house of your own could mean. ‘Is this a good place for tomorrows?’

  Jed looked around.

  The house had wide verandas on three sides, looking down to the river where it ran wide and brown between its sandy banks. Jed realised with a shock that the billabong was only a river bend or two away, even though it was much further by road. The weatherboards were freshly painted white, with blue trim, and there was a single front step that could be easily changed to a ramp for Nicholas’s wheelchair. No garden, not even a few shrubs, but an old orchard in the paddock next door looked freshly pruned, with young trees in neat rows next to the lichened ones.

  ‘The house and orchard and house paddock are out of flood reach,’ said Matilda. ‘You can see the line of debris from the flood of ’66. Even the 1856 one didn’t get up here. The fences are sound, and there’s enough feed for a cow, if you ever decide you want one, or a couple of horses. Or sheep, but you’ll get your meat and milk from Drinkwater of course.’ Matilda it seemed had never been into a butcher’s shop, or had a milkman leave bottles on the doorstep.

  A cow? Sheep? Jed shook her head. She couldn’t imagine herself milking a cow. She didn’t even like milk — no one who had grown up with the compulsory little-lunch bottle, sour from sitting in the sun, could ever enjoy drinking milk. But Nicholas had spoken about riding. Would he be able to ride again, when he had his new legs? Maybe they could keep a horse here while they were at uni?

  They stepped onto the veranda. Matilda opened the door. Unlocked, thought Jed, then remembered the doors at Drinkwater and Overflow were never locked either.

  She hadn’t expected furniture. If she had thought about them furnishing it for her, it would have been with pale wood chairs and sofas like Debbie’s, new wall-to-wall carpet, Laminex in the kitchen, the furniture advertised in magazines.

  But here the wooden floors were polished like Drinkwater’s and Overflow’s, as if the women who had created this for her — and she was sure it had been women, Matilda, Nancy, possibly even Mrs McAlpine and Matron Clancy — could not conceive of a house too drastically unlike their own. The sofas in the large living room were old fashioned, in chintz slipcovers. None of the armchairs matched. The kitchen table was an old wooden one, not even freshly varnished. A good kitchen, with the window above the sink looking down to the river, where three black swans floated, as if mid-winter water would never be too cold for swan feet. A kitchen door with a path that sloped up to it; not a ramp, but something a wheelchair could manage. A bathroom with a vast ancient bath, but new tiles, and a new shower too. The wardrobes in the three bedrooms shone with age and polish. Even the three beds — all single beds — looked like ones from Overflow. One even had a lifting bar above it already. Jed had a sudden vision — imagination, not a future ghost — of Scarlett here. For surely sisters visited each other?

  Each of these pieces links me to my family, Jed thought. If she lived here — when she lived here — she would be accepting roles and duties connected to them all.

  She had not thought of the duties when she had come here, only of what the family might do for her. Now, somehow, duties and bonds of love seemed both inevitable and indistinguishable from the gifts and support and friendship the community offered her. She didn’t need to see ghosts to hear children in callipers and wheelchairs outside, the shouts of others who might be Nancy’s or her own. To know that one day she would sit beside a bed while Matilda Thompson died, as she had sat with Tommy, as, one day, her family would sit with her.

  And Nicholas? Jed tried to hear his laughter from the kitchen, his typewriter tapping, his voice calling from the veranda as the river continued its great flow.

  She couldn’t hear him. Ghosts never came when you tried to see them. The future she so desperately wanted clouded the future that would happen.

  ‘Do you like your house?’

  ‘I love it,’ Jed said quietly. She walked into the kitchen again, opened a cupboard. Plates, bowls: remnants of three sets by the look of them. She knew the linen press would be full too: towels and mended soft old linen sheets and pillowcases, folded blankets.

  There was no dining room. Or rather, there had been one, generously sized. But now it was lined floor to ceiling with bookshelves, except where a wide window looked out to the river, with a desk below it, a chair, and a small sofa in the corner. Jed ran her fingers across the titles. Asimov, Heinlein, Huxley, HG Wells, Zelazny . . .

  ‘Tommy chose the books,’ said Matilda quietly. And equally quietly, sat on the newly covered sofa and cried and cried. Jed sat next to her. For the first time in her life there was no calculation or hesitation as she put her arms around someone. She held the sobbing woman as they sat there, the river glinting through the doorway, and they cried together.

  Chapter 73

  JED

  Nicholas stared at her as they sat outside his cabin at River View, him in his wheelchair, Jed perched on the railing in a way forbidden to residents or staff, but not, she realised gleefully, to visitors, especially those with nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine dollars and ninety-nine cents, a house, and grazing for a couple of horses and a cow. ‘A million dollars?’

  ‘Minus one cent. It’s a joke, sort of. I told Tommy I didn’t want to be a millionaire. You’ll love the house. There’s a path up to the back door that’s wide enough for a wheelchair. There’s even a lifting bar in one of the bedrooms.’ She flushed, knowing the bar had not been put there for Nicholas; wondering, suddenly, if he would want Scarlett staying with them, either at the house here or in Sydney. A six-year-old enthusiast full of questions would disturb the peace he needed to write; might remind him too of this place of rehabilitation he would be leaving. Maybe Nicholas could stay in Sydney while Scarlett visited the house here? She hurried on, unwilling to let too many practicalities spoil today. ‘Michael’s going to teach me to drive too. That way we can drive back and forth from Sydney.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said tonelessly.

  ‘What’s wrong? I’m Tommy’s great-granddaughter. I really am! I thought you’d be happy for me.’

  ‘I am. Of course I am.’ Nicholas shook his head. ‘Jed, you don’t need me to get to uni any more. You’ve got money of your own now. A family.’

  ‘Three families, and all of them probably have their own ideas about what I should do next. Matilda’s and Nancy’s may be all right, but I’m not sure about Jim’s. Nicholas, I want to live with you. I love you.’

  ‘The Thompsons might object.’

  ‘They probably will. I don’t suppose any of them have ever lived in sin in their lives. But they’ll get used to it.’ She grinned. ‘Maybe Jim and Iris will cross me off their Christmas card list till we get married.’ She stopped, as the words hung in the air.

  His expression was at first shock, and then something impossible to read. ‘Jed, I didn’t ever say anything about marriage. I don’t even know if I ever want to get married.’

  She tried not to let the hurt show. ‘Doesn’t matter. We can just see what happens.’

  ‘Why didn’t you ask me to come with you when you had to identify that man’s body?’

  She blinked at the change of subject. ‘What? I . . . don’t know. It happened quickly. The Dragon was with me. I was fine.’ Except she hadn’t been. Why hadn’t she asked the Dragon to pick up Nicholas too?

  Because I didn’t want him to see a corpse, she thought. He has seen too many. Subconsciously, she had been protecting him.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me that Raincloud rescued you from that madman?’

  So that’s what was bugging him, she thought, silently damning the Gibber’s Creek gossip. Gossip was the other side, it seemed, of a community that cared.

  ‘He didn’t rescue me. He was just there, then gave me a lift to Drinkwater.’ Though if Raincloud hadn’t arrived, the man might hav
e caught her. But Nicholas didn’t need to know that. ‘He apologised for what he said to you, by the way. He said that more people should do what they believe in, like you did.’

  Nicholas looked at her strangely, then shrugged. ‘I wasn’t there for you when Tommy died either. Now you don’t even need my help going to uni.’

  ‘I’d never even have been doing my HSC this year if it wasn’t for you!’

  ‘It’s not enough. Jed —’

  ‘Stop it.’ She stood, unable to bear what he might say next. Man had walked on the moon and she had a family and she was going to live with Nicholas and he would love her forever, even if they never married. ‘I love you. I need you. And now we have a wonderful house to live in and you don’t have to play wheelchair cricket or wipe noses. There’s even a desk where you can write. You’ll love it.’

  She bent down and kissed him on the lips, hard, defying him to resist. For a moment he sat stiffly, then at last, he kissed her back.

  He pulled away too soon. But now, at least, his hand rested on hers on the arm of the wheelchair. ‘How will you get back to Drinkwater now?’

  ‘Matilda said to phone the house and one of the men will come and pick me up. I promised no more hitchhiking. Trust me, that was a really easy promise. Michael says once he’s shown me the basics I can practise driving the ute in the paddocks, where I can’t hit anything, as long as I go slow enough for the sheep to get out of my way.’

  ‘They have you all sorted, haven’t they?’

  ‘Nicholas . . .’

  He tugged her hand. ‘Kiss me again.’

  She did, wondering who was looking. Hoping the whole of River View and Gibber’s Creek was watching, because this kiss was as public a claiming as sitting with her at the wedding had been.

  ‘See you at the funeral,’ he said at last. ‘Matron Clancy is taking us in the van.’

  ‘I’m glad you’ll be there. I do love you, Nicholas.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  She felt him watch her as she walked down the ramp and over to the office, between the cottages with their bright butterflies, to call for her lift back home.

  Chapter 74

  JED

  She travelled with Nancy and Michael to the funeral, Matilda in the next car with Jim and Iris and their boys.

  She felt . . . strange. She had even decided she liked the black linen dress, the shoes with their small heels, the black jacket to keep off the wind. She felt herself, but it was a new self.

  Or, perhaps, the one she had always been, but was never able to show.

  She stood at the church steps and looked out. For a moment the land seemed to be swarming with black ants: it took her a moment to realise that the specks travelling towards her were mourners unable to park close to the church. Space had been carefully left for the close family, but the whole district was coming to mourn this man and offer support to his family.

  Her family now too.

  ‘Time to go in,’ said Nancy softly.

  Jed sat in the front row, the church wall on one side and Nancy on the other, the Dragon sitting, tearless, between her two sons. Michael read the pages his mother had written about Tommy’s early life and then he spoke of the father he had known. Jim talked about the businessman. Jim’s eldest son spoke about Tommy, the grandfather.

  Jed would have liked to speak too, about the old man whose world had become bounded by a bed, yet whose mind continued to soar to the moon and far beyond, envisaging a future that no one else could even dream of.

  You made the future happen, old man, she thought to the body in the coffin. How we live now, what we take for granted, the whole modern world is partly due to you.

  And tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow? Would that be what Tommy had imagined and dreamed of too?

  She didn’t know. None of her glimpses of the future had shown her the things that Tommy had talked to her about — the rockets carrying holiday-makers to the asteroids; the colonists voyaging past Alpha Centauri. But then she saw people, not things, unless the things were with the people. Only people could be ghosts, it seemed. And if humans were going to Alpha Centauri, then she would not be able to glimpse them there on Earth.

  A hymn. Another hymn. A reading. And then the last song she would have expected, ‘Waltzing Matilda’, sung by the choir of the Gibber’s Creek Central School, as Thomas Thompson’s sons and eldest grandson, with Andy McAlpine, carried his coffin out and his widow walked still dry-eyed behind it, her daughter-in-law Nancy holding her arm, stiffening only as the choir sung the final words. ‘And his ghost may be heard as you pass by that billabong, You’ll come a-waltzing Matilda with me.’

  Jed walked with Iris, aware of Nicholas nodding at her, eyes sombre, in his wheelchair next to the children’s at the back. Scarlett gave her a small smile, then lifted her hand slowly and carefully in a slight wave, unable to resist a look of triumph. Jed bent and kissed the girl’s soft cheek. ‘Brilliant,’ she whispered and saw Scarlett’s smile widen.

  ‘I made you a new headband,’ she whispered. ‘Nancy said someone stole the other one. You can wear it this afternoon!’

  ‘Thank you, little sister.’ She kissed Scarlett again, then moved to catch up to Iris.

  The crowd shifted towards the graveside.

  Matron Clancy hugged Nancy protectively. Nancy clung to her as the coffin was lowered into the waiting grave. Matilda watched it go, her face unreadable, as her sons held her on either side.

  There were flowers. So many flowers. The flowers would die, which might, Jed thought, be the point of flowers at a funeral. Tommy had lived in beauty and wonder and then he died. These cut blooms would leave no seeds, but Tommy had.

  And I am one of those seeds, she thought, seeing it that way for the first time. What I am is because of Tommy. Whatever I do, whoever I am, it will be part of him too, not just because his blood is in my veins, but because of the world he helped me see.

  The wind blew, tugging at her skirt, the hats of the family on either side of her, the family Tommy had given her, that strange generous man, the family who had taken her in and made her theirs.

  Looking down the row of gravestones, she saw a fresh monument. Somehow, focused on Tommy’s death, she had forgotten the other.

  Her ghost.

  Matilda must have organised it. There was no stone, not yet, but a wooden cross and a small plaque had been erected. She bent to read it.

  Fred Smith. Died 1969.

  He gave his life that others might live. We will not forget.

  Jed looked automatically around the mourners. Mrs McAlpine was over by the church steps with her son and husband, grey headed and much older than her, with Raincloud looking almost normal in a dark suit, slightly too small, his hair tied back in a ponytail so it looked as short as the balding hair of the man next to him, who must be his father. Mrs McAlpine’s daughter must still be away on her honeymoon.

  Jed would have to tell her. But not now, not among the crowd . . .

  Yes. Now. Because there were mourners here in this churchyard now, and possibly, just possibly, if she were told now, Mrs McAlpine could feel this farewell was for her brother too. Or maybe she would laugh and say she’d never had a brother, either because she hadn’t, and the ghost had lied, or because she didn’t want to acknowledge him, which was why he had never appeared to her, never sat in her kitchen, had to eat only the crumbs of wedding cake given him by a stranger.

  She beckoned the older woman away from her group. ‘Mrs McAlpine?’

  ‘Miss Kelly? Or do you like to be called Ms?’ The words were said with kindness and a hint of amusement. This woman saw no threat in another woman calling herself Ms. ‘I’m so sorry for your loss. Your great-grandfather was a wonderful man. I loved him dearly. We all did.’

  Could there be a better epitaph? Perhaps just add: He helped to change the world. ‘Mrs McAlpine, I know this will sound strange, but did you have a brother?’

  The smile faded. ‘Yes.’ And then with growing eagernes
s. ‘Fred? You’ve met him? You know him? He might be using another name. Murgatroyd. His real name is Ben, but he didn’t —’ She stopped.

  Didn’t use it after the bank robbery, thought Jed. ‘I think I met him, Mrs McAlpine.’

  ‘Mah, are you all right?’ Her husband, the doctor’s brother, but looking more like a wary Hereford bull than anything else, appeared at her side, solid and protective.

  ‘I’m fine, darling. Women’s business.’

  ‘Ah. I see.’ He clearly didn’t. But he left them.

  Mrs McAlpine moved further away from the crowd. ‘Fred’s still alive! I knew he was alive.’

  ‘No, you misunderstand.’ There was no way to say this that wouldn’t hurt her. For whatever had kept brother and sister apart, it was not by this woman’s choice. ‘I think that Fred . . . that was the name he gave me . . . died fighting the man who tried to attack me.’

  The black-gloved hand tightened on her handbag. ‘The madman in the paper?’

  ‘Yes. I identified his body. But the sergeant said that whoever had killed him had been wounded in the fight — there was another man’s blood on the corpse. Too much blood for anyone to have survived. I . . . I met a man who called himself Fred the night I first came here. I saw him again at your daughter’s wedding reception. He said he was your brother, and that he came here in secret to make sure that you and your family were all right.’

  ‘But why didn’t he let me know?’ whispered Mrs McAlpine. Her eyes flickered: she was forcing back tears. ‘Oh, I know why. So he wouldn’t embarrass me. So the kids would have a hero uncle who died in the war, not a swaggie who was wanted by the police.’

  ‘That’s what he told me. I told Matilda how I thought I saw your brother the day I was attacked, up on the hill. I think he was the sort of man who’d take the law into his own hands. Literally, I mean. Matilda told me to tell you, when I felt the time was right. I saw the memorial just now and . . . well, it felt right. I hope I haven’t hurt you.’