Somewhere around the Corner (12 page)

There were men crowding around Dad, offering their hands and backs if they had nothing else to give, and Dad was trying to make a list of what everyone was offering. A middle-aged farmer and his wife were talking in low tones to Marge Henderson. ‘Well, it’s just a shack really, I mean it’s nothing much, but I reckon if we had a bit of help we could do it up real nice for you.’

‘Guess what?’ said Elaine gloomily.

‘What?’

‘I’ve changed my mind about my education. You know what all this means? We’re going to have to go to school!’

‘Bubba’s tired.’

Barbara wiped the sweat from her forehead, leaving a trail of limey whitewash. ‘No, I’m not.’

‘Yes, you are,’ insisted Young Jim. He stood back and surveyed their work. The old washhouse gleamed under coats of whitewash. A fresh path of riverstones led to the two new dunnies out the back, carefully lettered ‘Girls’ and ‘Boys’, deep holes under rough wooden seats, and there were kero tins of ashes to throw down them to stop the stink and flies. There were faded curtains at the washhouse windows, carefully starched and ironed, and desks and chairs for every child—even though the ‘desks’ were old tea chests and the ‘chairs’ were kero tins padded with newspaper and hessian.

The shelves were kero tins as well, rolled on their sides and wired together, filled with books that had
been carefully wrapped in newspaper when the Hendersons had moved to the gully, and stored in the tea chest in their tent ever since. Mr. Henderson’s desk was the old table from Dulcie’s dairy, scrubbed to a pale yellow, but still smelling of slightly sour milk.

Out the front was a blackboard, broken on one side, a reject from the big school up in town. Mr Henderson had persuaded the school to give them their old cracked slates as well, and their worn-out readers with limp covers and mildewed insides. There were old school workbooks, already filled with laborious letters and pothooks and numbers. Marge hoped to erase the ink and pencil marks with lemon juice and stale bread.

She’d put up their poster of the British Empire next to the blackboard, one end discoloured from lying too long in the box in the tent, but the bright pink of the empire was still vivid. There were even dusters and chalk for the blackboard, and new pencils for the slates from the valley store. Gully Jack had gone down to the store and leant on the counter, ‘just friendly like’, until old man Nicholson had promised to donate them.

‘It looks good,’ declared Young Jim.

Mr Henderson smiled slightly. He seemed both younger and older than he had a few weeks before,
thought Barbara—happier and more approachable, but more like a teacher too.

‘It looks like a school,’ he said. Elaine made a face.

‘When will we start?’ asked Barbara.

‘How about next Monday?’ suggested Mr Henderson. ‘Start the week off properly. What do you think?’

‘Hip hooray,’ muttered Elaine.

Barbara gazed at the gleaming washhouse, at the blue hills behind, fuzzy with autumn light, and the dirt road glowing orange-gold. It seemed strange to think of starting school here, in a washhouse by the creek. But here there’d be no-one to point at her as a foster child, a stranger shuffled from school to school. For the first time she had a family. For the first time there was peace. She smiled suddenly. Paradise in a washhouse, in a susso camp? But it was true.

Jim caught her smile and returned it.

Mr Henderson was still calculating. ‘There’s the fireplace to finish. That’ll take until Friday. Yes, I think we can make it Monday.’ He looked at the childen, ‘It’d be awfully cold in here in winter if we didn’t get a fire going. Your fingers would be too blue to write.’

Winter. Barbara stared at Mr Henderson. That was the other side of paradise. Of course, winter was coming. Already the days were shorter than they’d
been a few weeks before and the shadows were longer in the valley in the afternoon. What would the shanty be like in winter? Thellie had had pneumonia last winter, she remembered, and Ma’s fingers got crippled with arthritis in the cold. Kids died when the winter winds came. All she’d known with the O’Reillys were the happy days of summer. What would this winter bring them?

The strangeness descended all over again. Dirt floors and hessian sack windows were tolerable in summer. What would it be like to huddle there when the winds blew through the cracks? Even the creek, that sparkling plaything, would be a bitterly cold water source in winter. The gully was a world where there were no antibiotics when you were sick, where people died of a sore tooth, with no electric light or heaters or stoves indoors when it was cold and dark.

She glanced at Elaine and Young Jim. They seemed unconcerned, laughing with Mr Henderson about the bunch of dahlias Mrs Reynolds had sent down to cheer them up while they were working. She’d promised a vase of her best flowers every week, to make the place look cheerful.

Mr Henderson looked at his watch. He’d nearly pawned it when things got bad, but he was glad now
that he hadn’t. Without a watch, how would they know when to ring the bell?

‘Marge’ll be expecting me,’ he said. ‘I promised I’d shift the last of our things over to the MacIntyre’s place.’ The Hendersons were boarding with the MacIntyres now. Sal, Pat and Gweneth MacIntyre were boarding in town. They’d be able to live at home now there was a school in the valley, and in return the McIntyres had given the Hendersons their back verandah, newly divided into bedroom and living room, with whitewashed hessian walls, and an old slab kitchen out the back to cook their meals in. It was no palace, as Marge said, but a million times better than the tent, and already there was talk of everyone building a schoolmaster’s house down in the back corner of Dulcie’s bottom paddock.

Mr Henderson smiled at the children. ‘See you on Monday,’ he told them, ‘and thanks for your help. You’ve worked miracles.’

‘How about letting us off the first two weeks homework then?’ asked Elaine cheekily.

‘No,’ said Mr Henderson. He waved to them as he strode off down the track towards the MacIntyres.

Elaine threw the old tussock she’d been using as a whitewash brush into the blackberries. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘What now?’

‘A swim,’ decided Young Jim. He looked at his whitewash-stained shirt. ‘Cripes, if I’d had any sense I’d have taken this off before we started. Skin’s easier to clean than shirts.’

‘Doesn’t wear out either,’ added Elaine. ‘Come on. Last one in’s a dead dog. Hey Bubba, wake up. You look like you’re a hundred miles away.’

Jim looked at Barbara in concern. ‘What’s up Bubba? You feeling all right? You looked beat a little while ago.’

Barbara shook her head. ‘I’m fine. I—I just want to think about something. I’ll see you at the swimming hole later.’

‘You sure you’re all right?’

‘She’s just got too much sense to go swimming in a freezing creek,’ said Elaine. ‘Leave the girl alone if she wants peace and quiet for a while. Come on, slugfoot. You’re as slow as a wet week.’

Barbara thought of the bright green water, the thick shade of the casuarinas, the piercing wind from the tablelands—how much colder would it be swimming in the creek in winter? She tried to smile. ‘You go and freeze your toes off. I’ll meet you later.’

‘Bubba—’

‘Oh come on,’ interrupted Elaine. ‘If we wait any longer we’ll cool off and the water’ll be murder. Give
Bubba some time to herself if she wants it. See you later, Bubba.’ Young Jim gave Barbara one last look, then followed his sister up the track.

Barbara watched them go, then walked the other way, up to the hill at the back of Dulcie’s. The ground was stony here, the soil too thin for the fat grass the cows liked to munch. Small piles of rabbit dung clung to the tussocks, washed down by last week’s rain. Dead leaves curled beneath the trees. A small bird ran up a tree, pecking happily for insects in the bark, then bounced onto a branch and called again, as though boasting of its catch. Barbara climbed to the top of the hill and looked out over the valley.

You could see the police station now, with the police car out the front, and Nicholson’s store with its wooden verandah, and the orange twist of road between the dark green verges. You could see Dulcie’s house set in its garden of lavender and myrtle and rosemary, and the glint of the creek through the trees. Up the other end was the track that led up to the gully and the drooping fences around Gully Jack’s front paddocks.

The paddocks were filling with young wattles, as they returned to bush. Barbara wondered what the farm had been like in his father’s day. Had fat, slow cows grazed there, like Dulcie’s? Or had they been like Gully Jack himself, restless, dreaming?

It was hard to imagine that only a few weeks ago she’d never even seen the creek—or Gully Jack or Dulcie—or any of the O’Reillys. They’d been so good to her. They’d made this strange world home, the best home she’d ever known. She was one of them. They shared everything they had, but she had nothing at all to give them back, just her silly stories of life around the corner and even they had made Ma sad and Dad’s face close up with bitterness.

Ma and Dad were people who gave without thought for themselves. Ma with her scones and comfort, Dad with his restless effort for the school. All the O’Reillys were like that, in their own ways; Elaine, sharp and generous; Young Jim protective of her and all the world.

If only she could give them just some of the things they wanted. Give Thellie an ice-cream, or an aeroplane ride. Help Jim to find his way, find some books for Elaine. If only she could help make winter easier for them. If only she could somehow wave a magic wand and find a house for Ma. If only…

But she didn’t have a magic wand. The only magic she’d ever had was when she walked around the corner. She’d done it once, then she’d tried again and nothing had happened. Should she try it now? What if she woke up somewhere else?

She thought of the draughts threading through the

shanty, of Thellie sick and shivering, of Ma with her swollen fingers.

It was worth a try. It was worth trying anything for Ma.

Barbara shut her eyes. There was the corner, just as she’d seen it before. She tried to imagine a house, just around its edge, just out of sight. All she had to do was walk around that corner, and there would be a new house for Ma, with a bathroom and a kitchen stove and soft beds. She imagined herself walking around the corner, but there was no terror moving her, no hands pulling her towards the other side.

A kookaburra cackled. Barbara opened her eyes.

There was no new house.

Despair welled up sharp and sour in her throat. Everything was the same—the dark green paddocks and the wattle regrowth and the faint wisp of smoke coming from the chimney at Gully Jack’s house were still there.

Gully Jack’s house. An empty house with dusty rooms opening off a faded corridor, a kitchen in which no-one cooked food, except for big slabs of meat.

Could she do it? Did she have the courage? Barbara stood up resolutely. All he could do was say no.

Rock smelt different in the morning, thought Gully Jack, as he hefted another barrow-load to the channel and carefully began to throw them down on the soft soil so they wouldn’t chip.

Afternoon rocks smelt of sunlight, as though they were baby suns themselves, just waiting to hatch. Lunchtime rocks smelt of sweat. Morning rocks still smelt of the soil, cool and sweet, like chocolate from a cold larder. Morning rocks fitted smoothly into your hand and slid into place like they were meant to. It was only later when your hands were numb with tiredness that they began to slip and argue with your fingers and you had to force yourself to keep on going, keep dreaming of the gold hidden in the soil just a few yards—a few months’ work—away.

Gold had been a dream as long as he could remember. It had been his Dad’s dream first. He’d sit
at the table while Mum cleared up the dishes after dinner and puff at his pipe, not even noticing that the flame had gone out, and tell him all the stories of the fortune underground; just waiting there for millions of years, his Dad had said. Just waiting for them to come and get it out.

When Gully Jack had gone to bed, tucked into clean sheets that his Mum had dried on the lavender bushes down the back, tucked in by her hands that still smelt of soap, and mutton fat from tea, he’d dream of the gold too. He could feel it glowing deep under the earth, just waiting for the sun and his hands that would bring it into light. As he got older he could hear it calling, too, a murmur like the creek, but sweeter, a deep clear call from somewhere underground.

His father had talked about gold until his Mum had died, wheezing with the pneumonia. They’d had to harness up the horse early one morning to take her up to the hospital in town. She’d been too sick to see the wattle blossom crowding on the hill. His mum had loved the wattle blossom. He was saddened to think she’d been too sick to notice it when she died. He liked to think she had.

His Dad had gone on as usual for a while, milking the cows and sending the milk cans up to town,
banking the milk cheque once a month and mending the fences in between the milkings. But his heart wasn’t in it. He’d cancelled the order for the new bull from down the coast. The fences were left sagging, while he panned for gold among the casuarina shadows in the creek, until one day he abandoned the milking too, and sold the cows to Dulcie’s Dad down the valley for a song, and took to panning for the gold full-time.

Gully Jack was still in school then, like Dulcie (she had plaits then, fat as carpet snakes and tied with bright blue ribbons). Dulcie and he boarded through the week in town. His Dad let him pan with him on weekends, swirling the muddy water back and forth until the silt and the sand washed away and the tiny sun-bright specks were left. One week he came back to find the pan rusting in the washhouse. He found his Dad starting his first channel up the creek.

There wasn’t much gold from that one, just a small patch of gold-rich dirt, but there was enough to pay the rates and keep young Jack at school until he was fourteen and he could come home for good.

They started the second channel together, his Dad carting the rocks and Jack fitting them in place so the edges wouldn’t collapse when they let the water in. Breaking down the last bit of bank between the
channel and the creek had been exciting, watching the water eating at the last of the soil, then swirling in brown and hungry as it ate the final barrier, surging up the channel then sweeping back, and washing up again, until there was a calm sweet backwater and they could pan the new seam at the end.

Not that there’d been much gold from that one, or the next. But they’d learnt more about the gold as they went on. Its voice had got clearer in the night. He only had to follow the song of the gold and one day he’d find the seam and see the ancient sunlight flashing in his pan.

The boys he’d been at school with were married now, had farms of their own, or worked in town at the grocer’s or the butcher’s. The girls had married, too, or gone to teach or nurse or work in other people’s kitchens. He’d lost touch with most of them—what was the point of going up to town?

Now and again, late in the afternoon, as the dusk was settling across the gully and it was too dark to work, he’d look at his sagging fences, at the verandah post that was falling down. Or he’d see the wallpaper stains in the lamplight and remember the kitchen in his Mother’s time, the scents of cheese and stewed apples and baked potatoes and the rumble of the cows outside. He’d imagine for a while what it would
be like to have a family of his own. He’d dream of Dulcie, instead of gold, and see her picking chokoes from the vine that grew across the dunny.

Perhaps, when he found the gold. There wouldn’t be any need to pick the chokoes then. They could buy their vegies down at the store. They could go up to Sydney or holiday at the beach and Dulcie would be dressed in silk and ermine. The dream would fade a little there, at the thought of the holidays in Sydney, at the beach, the empty places in his life, with no more gold to dig, no more rocks to place along his channels, no more dreams of sunlight underground. He’d work just a little slower the next day, so as not to get the gold too fast, to keep his dream alive. By the next day the worry would be forgotten and the sweat would trickle down his neck again as he worked from kookaburra-dawning until the dark.

Gully Jack looked down at his pile of rocks, satisfied. It was a good pile now. Enough to keep him going all afternoon. He was about to jump down into the channel when he heard a kookaburra call a warning. He looked up.

‘Hello. Bubba, isn’t it? Where’re the others?’

‘Jim and Elaine are down at the creek. The others are up home, I suppose.’

The kid looked nervous, as though there was a mad dog about to bite. Gully Jack smiled, to try and make her feel better. ‘What’s on your mind?’

Barbara sat cautiously on a large rock, spreading her skirts around her knees. She looked like she was trying to work out what to say. ‘It’s about your house.’

‘My house? What’s wrong with my house?’

‘Nothing. Nothing at all. It’s just it’s so big, and there’s just you in it, and you were saying the other day that you wished you had someone to cook for you and all.’

Gully Jack thought of Dulcie, holding his cup of tea for him at the hall, remembered her smiling at Sergeant Ryan. He forced his mind back.

‘I suppose I might have. So what?’

‘Well, I was wondering if maybe the O’Reillys could live with you. I mean Ma could do your cooking and Dad could repair the house. The verandah looks like it’s going to fall down any day and one of the stumps under the kitchen looked rotten, I couldn’t help seeing…’ Barbara’s words came out in a rush. ‘And Dad could grow his vegies in one of the paddocks. I mean, it’d give you more time to work here if you didn’t have to cook or weed your vegies, and he’s really good at growing vegies. Maybe he could sell them and then he could pay you rent.’

Gully Jack sat stunned. What an idea—sharing his house with another family, seeing Ma O’Reilly in his Mum’s kitchen, with those kids running through all the rooms. But they were good kids. It was a pleasure to hear them laugh and it wouldn’t be as though they’d bother him much, as he was never in. And Bubba was right—O’Reilly could fix up the place. It wasn’t right to let it go, but what else could he do, the channel took up all his time.

Barbara had taken his silence for anger. She stood. ‘Look, I’m sorry to have bothered you. It was just an idea.’

Gully Jack held up a hand. ‘No. Stop. It’s not a bad idea. It just needs thinking about. I mean it’s not something you can jump up and yell “Yes” to, is it? I mean a bloke’s got to think about something as serious as this.’

Barbara sat down again. Gully Jack looked at her. ‘Dulcie was telling me you think you’re from the future. She says you just walked around a corner and you were here.’ Barbara nodded. Gully Jack shook his head. ‘Struth girl, couldn’t you have chosen a better corner to walk around than this? Smack bang into a susso camp and living in a shack.’

‘It’s not so bad.’ She lifted her chin. ‘The O’Reillys have been good to me. They’re wonderful people.’

‘So you want to do something for them in return,’ said Gully Jack shrewdly. ‘If they can’t walk around the corner for themselves you’ll fix it for them like they have.’ Gully Jack gazed down at the smooth rocks in his gully. For a moment they blurred and he almost saw around the corner too. There was a gully and another seam of gold at the end of it, but this time there was a good dinner at the close of the day, and company around the table, the kids laughing in the raspberries at the bottom of the garden.

‘You’re on,’ he said suddenly.

The girl blinked. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I said you’re on. You tell the O’Reillys they can move down any time they like. I’ll sharefarm with O’Reilly if he wants to. You know what sharefarming is?’

Barbara shook her head.

‘Well, he does the work, but it’s my farm. If he can make any money out of those vegies of his we share it, so much for him and so much for me. Struth, if he does any good at it I’ll sell him a paddock or two, but we’ll think about that later. All right?’

Barbara’s face glowed like gold. ‘All right!’ She thought for a minute. ‘Will you tell them, or will I?’

Gully Jack grinned. ‘It was your idea. You should have the glory.’

‘No,’ she decided. ‘You tell them. Let them think it was your idea. Is that okay with you?’

‘It’s all right with me,’ said Gully Jack slowly. ‘I just think you should have the credit too. But if that’s the way you want it, okay.’

‘It’s the best way.’ Barbara stood up to go, then came to him quickly and kissed his prickly cheek. ‘You’ll never be sorry,’ she promised. ‘Never.’

Gully Jack watched her running up the track, her skirt flashing through the trees. The world felt different suddenly, as if he’d gone around a corner, just like she had. It felt different. That was all.