Sydney Bridge Upside Down

by David Ballantyne

  ‘Mum says he’s very obliging,’ Dibs said. ‘He lets us have big roasts.’

  ‘We do all right from him,’ I said.

  ‘Mr Wiggins makes good sausages,’ Cal said. ‘That’s what Dad says, doesn’t he, Harry?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, staying friendly with Cal so that he wouldn’t run off across the rocks. ‘We always have a lot of sausages when our mother’s away. What do you reckon about Mr Wiggins’ sausages, Dibs?’

  ‘They’re all right,’ Dibs said. ‘Let’s go to the wharf. The ship won’t take long now.’

  I checked to make sure Susan Prosser wasn’t coming along the line, then I ran across to the rocks. If we went along the rocks as far as the wharf piles, Sam Phelps wouldn’t see us until we got to the top of the funny steps, he wouldn’t have time to turn angry and order us back to the woolshed, where he reckoned the official waiting-area was.

  So we did that. We moved quickly across the rocks and were soon under the wharf. It got a bit riskier then because we had to work along the slippery wharf timbers towards the steps, and the water below us was very deep. Dibs and I were good swimmers, but Cal wasn’t much good.

  ‘You all right, Cal?’ I asked, leading the way across the timbers. ‘Cal?’ I said.

  There was a splashing sound.

  I looked back.

  ‘He fell in,’ Cal said. He nodded to where the water was disturbed. ‘He wasn’t watching where he was going. How did I know he was right behind me?’

  I waited till Dibs surfaced. ‘Better hurry,’ I told him.

  ‘I’ll get you!’ Dibs yelled to Cal.

  ‘I didn’t do anything to him,’ said Cal, beside me now. ‘How did I know he was going to jump?’

  Dibs swam to the steps. He was waiting for us when we reached them.

  ‘Lucky you weren’t caught in the current,’ I said. ‘You know how dangerous it is.’

  ‘That kid pushed me,’ Dibs said, taking off his shirt.

  ‘I didn’t,’ Cal said. He was already half-way up the steps, moving in his squirrel style because of how each step was placed—tipped up instead of flat.

  ‘You can dry out in the sun,’ I told Dibs. ‘See you at the top.’

  Cal was waiting for me at the top. So was Sam Phelps.

  ‘I know what you’re going to say, Mr Phelps,’ I said. ‘But you better not get angry and make us wait by the woolshed because we got a special reason for being here. We’re waiting for our cousin. Dad said to wait here on the wharf so she’d know she was welcome and not be frightened. Be a sport, Mr Phelps. We haven’t seen Caroline for years and years. We’re wondering what she looks like now. We’re going to show her everything in Calliope Bay. I bet you wouldn’t like to be shy and turn up in a strange place and find nobody waiting to welcome you, you’d think nobody cared what happened to you. Caroline will feel awful if we’re not right here to welcome her. It’s what Dad wants us to do. He’d get pretty angry if you made us go to the woolshed where Caroline wouldn’t notice us. He’d be after you to find out how come you wouldn’t let us stay. You know what Dad’s like when he’s angry. I wouldn’t want to make him angry. So how about it, Mr Phelps? Can we stay here and wait for Caroline and make her feel welcome?’

  Sam Phelps said nothing. After I had been talking a while, I was sure he did not see me. But I had gone on talking in case the faraway look in his eyes meant he was wondering what would be the best way to get us off the wharf.

  ‘It’s not his wharf, anyhow,’ Dibs said when it seemed certain Sam Phelps wouldn’t speak.

  ‘No cheek,’ I told Dibs. ‘Mr Phelps is in charge of this wharf. He’s the one we got to make sure doesn’t mind us being here. Isn’t that right, Mr Phelps?’

  Sam Phelps, who was wearing a black shirt and crummy blue overalls and dirty sandshoes, did not answer. He went slowly to Sydney Bridge Upside Down and began stroking the hollow.

  ‘Looks like he doesn’t care about us,’ Cal said.

  I thought of trying to yarn to Sam Phelps about his horse, but he might still be wondering what to do with us. Best to keep out of his way.

  ‘Not long to go now,’ I told Dibs.

  We strolled to the end of the wharf for a better view of the Emma Cranwell coming in.

  ‘Doesn’t seem as if Mr Wiggins brought Susan Prosser back,’ I told Dibs. I had been keeping an eye on the railway line; nobody had been along it since we got to the wharf.

  ‘She might be hiding,’ Cal said. ‘Remember the time she was up the cabbage tree—’

  ‘He’s always hoping!’ shouted Dibs. He ducked when Cal aimed a slap at his bare chest.

  ‘I’m not!’ shouted Cal. He pushed Dibs, who didn’t hit back, then came across to me. ‘I was thinking she went into hiding after that time too,’ he said. ‘That’s all I was thinking, Harry. I wasn’t thinking about seeing her bum through the holes in her bloomers. Dibs thought I was going to talk about that, but I wasn’t, I was—’

  ‘You’ve got a good memory,’ I said. ‘That was years ago. You wouldn’t see Susan Prosser climbing a cabbage tree nowadays.’

  ‘He’s always hoping,’ Dibs said.

  ‘Want another swim?’ I asked Dibs.

  Dibs nipped behind a bollard as I moved towards him. ‘I’ll yell to old Phelps if you touch me,’ he said. ‘He’ll boot you off this wharf.’

  ‘Quit picking on my brother then,’ I said. ‘You’re only our guest, boy. It’s not your cousin who’s arriving. We got a right to be here. If we tell Sam Phelps we don’t want you hanging around when Caroline arrives, he’ll run you off the wharf.’

  Dibs waved his hand to show he understood. Then he half-turned and kept waving, this time at the Emma Cranwell, now about a hundred yards away.

  ‘Why is he waving?’ Cal asked me.

  ‘I know the skipper,’ Dibs told Cal.

  So did we know the skipper, Captain Foster, but we didn’t usually wave to him, he couldn’t fool us with his old tub. We knew the Emma Cranwell was not much of a ship, not compared with the liners and other ships we saw in books and heard about from Dad. Even so, it was all right to see her getting nearer, dipping now and then, rolling a bit. She came on through what were said to be tricky cross-currents that were apparently as important for Captain Foster to remember as the rocks jutting up here and there. Bigger ships had once called at Calliope Bay, but the ship I mostly remembered was the old Emma Cranwell, dipping and rolling among the currents and rocks. I never wanted to sail in her again, but I did not mind watching her come in, bringing our shy cousin.

  ‘I can see Captain Foster,’ Dibs said. ‘Ahoy there!’

  He ran to the edge to catch the rope the Emma Cranwell sailor threw across the gap between the ship and the wharf. Other times I had helped to put the rope around the bollard, though this was one of the things Sam Phelps did not seem to like about us being there. This time, anyway, I let Dibs do it on his own. I was looking for my cousin.

  I saw her five minutes after the Emma Cranwell tied up. This beautiful girl in a yellow dress appeared on the deck near the gangway and I couldn’t think why she had appeared so suddenly, then I realised it was because three sailors carrying suitcases had hidden her from me. They let her go first up the gangway. Looking down the gangway from the wharf was Captain Foster, who had been talking to Sam Phelps since stepping ashore. Everybody was looking at my cousin.

  After my first thought—that she was beautiful— I thought she was chubby, but quickly decided this was because I was comparing her with skinny Susan Prosser.

  Captain Foster went down the gangway and took my cousin’s hand. He guided her very carefully; by the time they were at the top of the gangway he had one arm around her. I saw why when she stepped on to the wharf; she was wearing high-heeled white shoes. She was a city girl; sure enough.

  What happened next, before Dibs and Cal and I had a chance to get near Caroline, was that she kissed the skipper. We heard her say: ‘Thank you very very much.’

  Then she kissed t
he three sailors who had carried her suitcases ashore. ‘Thank you,’ she said to each of them.

  Then, while Dibs and Cal and I were still waiting for a chance to get near her, she walked to Sam Phelps and kissed him too. We heard her say: ‘Hello, Uncle Frank.’

  My turn next, I thought. I beat Dibs and Cal in the race along the wharf.

  3

  I WAS thinking, soon after the storm broke, about the scar on the old man’s left cheek. I was also thinking about his horse. In fact, when the first of the thunder and lightning stopped and the rain began, I was thinking about everybody in Calliope Bay, one after the other. This was because of what Caroline said about Sam Phelps. She made me think about him in a different way, then I wondered if I could see the other people in Calliope Bay as a stranger like Caroline would see them. Where we lived, there were five houses—five left out of all the houses from the old days, the days when the works had plenty of jobs and there were plenty of men to take them. I thought of these five houses and of the people in them. First in the row, at the end nearest the works, was the house where Mr and Mrs Knowles lived. I did not spend much time thinking about Mr and Mrs Knowles because even if they were different from how I had always thought of them, I could not believe it really mattered, since they were so old; I mean, their sons and daughters had grown up and gone away, and all Mr and Mrs Knowles did was sit in the sun, or walk round their backyard a few times, or call to their cat, nothing much at all. The next house along the row was ours, and I knew about us, so I didn’t look for anything different in this house either. But I did think about the Prossers, our neighbours on the other side. I thought about lonely Mrs Prosser and about skinny Susan, and I wondered if Mrs Prosser was actually a happy woman who maybe sang to her budgie all day long, and if Susan actually didn’t mind me and might only be teasing when she seemed to run from me. I even imagined that Mr Prosser, missing for years, would unexpectedly return with a fortune and make Susan and her mother show their true feelings. The next house along was where Dibs Kelly and his family lived, but it must have been a mistake for me to start thinking of how Dibs actually was, because I just couldn’t think of him differently and it seemed to put me off thinking of the rest of his family as any different from what I had always thought of them as, except that I couldn’t be sure about Mrs Kelly, I could probably imagine all sorts of things about her if I tried. I did not try; I moved on to the last house in the row and thought about Mr Dalloway. Well, I didn’t get far with Mr Dalloway either. Because it seemed wrong to be thinking about a teacher during the holidays. So soon I was back to thinking about the person I had started with, the one Caroline made me think of first, saying what she did. Hadn’t she noticed his scar? Hadn’t she noticed how he stared without seeming to see? What about his spiky grey hair, never combed, and his cheeks that always seemed to need shaving? If these things didn’t matter, then maybe it didn’t matter about Sydney Bridge Upside Down; maybe he was a different horse from the one I thought he was. Maybe Mr and Mrs Knowles—no, I would not go through the others again. The best thing, I thought while the rain pounded on our roof, would be to ask Caroline what she had meant.

  Dad smiled. He told Caroline: ‘You brought it with you.’

  Caroline looked surprised. ‘Did I, Uncle Frank?’

  ‘First storm of the summer,’ he said.

  ‘It’s been sunny all the holidays,’ Cal told Caroline. ‘We’ve had good fun.’

  ‘This will soon pass on,’ Dad said. ‘Tomorrow will be sunny.’

  ‘Do you really and truly think so?’ asked Caroline. ‘It seems so wild out there now.’

  Dad laughed. ‘Not like city storms?’

  ‘This one seems louder,’ Caroline said ‘But I must be imagining it. Storms are all the same.’

  ‘Did Harry tell you about his famous storm?’ Dad asked her. ‘The one when he sailed in the Emma Cranwell.’

  Caroline, who was certainly the most beautiful girl I had ever seen, smiled at me. ‘He told me so many other things on the way from the wharf,’ she said. ‘But not about his voyage in the Emma Cranwell. What happened that time, Harry?’

  ‘Dad will tell you,’ I said. ‘He likes telling it.’

  ‘You tell me, Harry,’ she said.

  ‘No,’ I said, very sulky. I had been sulky for several minutes. I didn’t know why.

  ‘You tell me then, Uncle Frank,’ she said, not seeming to mind my sulkiness.

  Dad told her. And while he told her I remembered what a damned chatterbox I had been in the wagon with her and Cal and Dibs and the suitcases, and I thought it was strange how I was such a chatterbox then and yet now I did not want to talk, I did not want to stop looking at her but I did not want to talk to her, or to anybody. I had been like this since dinner, since Dad had started talking. He was certainly talking, you would think Caroline had been sent especially for him to talk to, all she had to do was listen to him. And Cal. Cal talked too. Not me, though. Not since dinner. In fact, not since the trip from the wharf. I had talked all the time then. I couldn’t stop.

  What had started me off was the kiss. I had never been kissed like that before. I was still excited when we were in the wagon, waving good-bye to the Emma Cranwell while Sydney Bridge Upside Down plodded ahead along the wharf, then past the woolshed and on to the line round the cliffs. I told Caroline how we had watched from the cliff-top for the ship to come in, how we had secret caves up there, how there was a dangerous tree on the cliff-edge (‘He pushed me off the cliff!’ said Dibs, but got no chance to say more), how we could come down that path there and go to the beach or the wharf, how we liked playing on the beach and the wharf and the rocks, how we fished from the wharf and Dibs was once bitten by a barracouta he’d caught, and how there were plenty of other places where we could play, especially the ruins of the works that we would soon be passing, and of course the swamp, where we caught frogs, and the river, and across the river there was a store and other things, like a mysterious house without chimneys, and paths that went off into the bush and took you to rather amazing places, like a cliff-ledge where you could stand and watch a great waterfall, or a burialground, or a redoubt, or a broken-down windmill, and I told her we would show her all these things while she was on holiday, she would have a lot of fun, we liked having fun. And it must have sounded all right to her because she gave me another kiss, then kissed Dibs and Cal—to keep it fair, I supposed. Her way of kissing sort of took you by surprise. You could see what she meant to do and you had time to turn your head if you wanted to, but you couldn’t move, and suddenly she was kissing you. This, I decided, must be a city habit we would just have to get used to, unless there was a rule saying how often you needed to kiss before you moved to some other way of showing you were pleased, like shaking hands maybe. I noticed the second time how very close she came when she kissed, her body was right up against you; it was as if she had to be sure that now she’d found your mouth she did not lose it. Anyway, I also told her, while we were in the wagon, how our teacher reckoned we lived on the edge of the world, and how you could believe this was so if you went out to the heads and looked at the horizon, and how there were people in Calliope Bay who felt lonely and faraway, especially Mrs Prosser (‘Harry chases Susan Prosser,’ said Cal, but didn’t get another word in), and how there were others, like Mr Dalloway, who sped off as soon as the holidays came and were not seen in Calliope Bay for many weeks, and how the rest of us did not mind staying because there was plenty of fun if you knew where to look. And I probably would have told her of the pistol and a few other secrets if Sydney Bridge Upside Down had gone any slower or the trip had been longer. And all this was only a few hours ago. Yet now I did not want to speak. Now, while the rain pounded away, I just wanted to look at her.

  Why did she seem beautiful? Because, for instance, her skin was smooth and sort of creamy, and she had no rashes or pimples or scars, and her hair was also smooth and sort of creamy or buttery-looking, and her nose was straight and small and without any bumps or
veins, and when she smiled her teeth looked very white, not crooked and not green, and her eyes were good because they were very clear and blue, they were eyes you could stare at and see right through. Next time I was close enough, I thought, I would look hard at her eyes and see right through them. Of course she was not as chubby as I’d first imagined; she simply wasn’t skinny, that was all. Or nearly all. Like, when I thought of Susan Prosser’s I thought of tits; when I thought of Caroline’s I thought of breasts. I felt sort of polite when I thought of anything to do with Caroline. I did not feel polite when I thought of Susan or of the girls who came to our school from back-country places. Caroline was nice. My mother had said she was shy, almost as if this was peculiar, but I could see there was nothing peculiar about Caroline, my mother must have mistaken Caroline’s niceness for shyness, and this didn’t surprise me because my mother often got the wrong idea about people at first and had to change her mind later, like with Mr Dalloway, saying at first he would be a better teacher if he didn’t have such a high opinion of his own good looks, then not seeming to mind him at all after he’d called on her a few times to talk about our progress at school. Dad was better at seeing what people were like. You could tell he had seen right away that Caroline was nice. He would have seen this, I was sure, even if she hadn’t kissed him. Now, very nicely, she said to me: ‘You look dreamy, Harry. Are you tired?’

  I found my tongue at last. I said: ‘I’m not tired. Would you like to try our ginger beer?’ I left the sofa, meaning to get a bottle for her.

  ‘Caroline would rather have a cup of tea,’ Dad said. He hopped to the stove and picked up the kettle before I could get to it. ‘You can try the ginger beer tomorrow, Caroline,’ he said, hopping to the sink. ‘You’ll appreciate the ginger beer after you’ve been in the sun,’ he said, filling the kettle. He put the kettle back on the stove, shoved in some sticks and asked me: ‘What will you show Caroline tomorrow?’

  ‘Maybe the waterfall,’ I said.

  ‘Too far away,’ he said. ‘Something nearer for the first day would be better.’ He smiled at Caroline. ‘Do you walk much in the city?’