Somewhere around the Corner (13 page)

It was hot down at the creek. The still air was full of sweat and eucalyptus oil.

Elaine and Young Jim sprawled in the casuarina shade after their swim and let the hot air wash over their cooled bodies.

‘Do you think Bubba’s all right? She was awfully quiet this morning.’

‘Don’t tie yourself in knots,’ said Elaine lazily. She tossed a pebble into the creek, trying to make it skim across the water. It made a rude noise, and sank. ‘She must just find things a bit strange, that’s all. I mean wherever she came from, it’s got to be a heck of a lot different from this.’

‘I suppose,’ said Young Jim. He pulled his carving out of his pocket and began to scrape at it slowly with his knife. ‘I just wish I could’ve taken her somewhere halfway decent. I mean a place with a proper house
and everything. Struth, I wish I could give every kid in Australia a proper house, and decent tucker.’

‘Get off your soapbox, will you,’ ordered Elaine drowsily. ‘You can’t change the world yourself. Not all of it at once, at any rate.’ She yawned. ‘We’ll need another swim soon. I’ve never known it so sultry.’ Elaine rested her head on her arms. She shut her eyes, then opened them.

‘I should think things were changing round here fast enough even for you,’ she said.

‘What’s up with you?’ Young Jim looked up from his carving at the sudden seriousness of her voice.

Elaine shrugged, her face down in the casuarina needles again. ‘Just the thought of school, I suppose.’

‘I thought you wanted an education.’

‘’Course I want an education. I just don’t want to go to school. I wish someone would invent a sort of education medicine—you know, you take a teaspoon every morning and it teaches you everything you wanted to know. Then you could spend the rest of the day like this, swimming and…and just wandering round the world.’

Young Jim snorted. ‘If wishes were fishes we’d all be rich. You’ve got to work for what you want in this world, kiddo. You don’t get things handed to you on a plate.’

‘It’s all right for you.’ Elaine sat up and searched for another flat pebble among the flood debris on the bank. ‘You’ll be fourteen in a few weeks, old enough to leave school if you want to. You’ll be free of school forever.’

‘Maybe not.’ Jim turned the carving in his hand, trying to judge its shape.

He had carved a lizard this time, a miniature dragon like the ones in the creek, with a high inquisitive head and leathery folds around its throat.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’ve been thinking I might keep trying for my Intermediate. Maybe even get my Leaving.’

‘How’s that going to help you change the world?’ demanded Elaine unkindly.

‘Dunno. But I reckon you’ve got to know a bit about the world before you change it. Who knows, maybe I’ll even get to the university one day.’

‘Where’d you get the money?’

Young Jim grinned suddenly. ‘Let’s just say I can see it round the corner.’

Elaine snorted. ‘You’ve been listening to Bubba. Everyone’s been listening to Bubba. You’ve all gone crazy.’

‘Why not? What’s wrong with dreaming? If she can have a place round the corner why can’t I?’

‘Except her corner’s different. She didn’t want to come here. Did you Bubba?’

Young Jim started. He hadn’t seen Barbara walk up. She looked different somehow. Her face was glowing like starlight through the trees. She looked like she was hugging a secret and wouldn’t let it go. She poked him with her toe, then made herself comfortable on the casuarina needles. ‘Lazybones. You look like a mob of lizards soaking up the sun.’

Elaine scratched at a mosquito bite on her leg.

‘Just enjoying our freedom while we can,’ she said philosophically.

‘Too right,’ agreed Young Jim. He slipped his penknife into his pocket. ‘I’m going up the gully to look for bunyas. It’s probably the last chance we’ll get before Monday. Anyone else coming?’

‘Not me,’ said Elaine. ‘That’s a mug’s game.’

‘What’s a bunya?’ asked Barbara.

Young Jim laughed. ‘Come on then, I’ll show you.’

Elaine stood up and shook the bark and leaves off her skirt. ‘I wouldn’t if I were you,’ she informed her. ‘Even getting wood with the littl’uns is better than getting bunyas.’

‘You’ll be sorry when we bring them home,’ threatened Young Jim. ‘If you don’t hunt them you can’t eat them.’

Elaine snorted. ‘I didn’t say I wouldn’t eat them. You find them and I’ll cook them. Fair exchange. I’ll even bring the water up for Ma instead of you.’

‘Fair enough.’ Young Jim grinned. ‘Come on, Bubba, before she changes her mind. I’ll sneak home and get some sacks and then we’re off.’

It was dark underneath the tree. It smelt musty and felt prickly on her feet. Barbara craned upward, trying to see Young Jim through the branches.

‘Look out below!’

It sounded like a bomb was crashing through the tree, landing with a thud of broken branches and dusty leaves on the other side. Barbara ran to look at it.

‘It’s huge!’ she yelled up to Young Jim.

‘Told you so!’ Young Jim sounded hot and breathless. ‘Stand clear. There’s another one just here.’

‘You be careful!’ yelled Barbara.

‘Go teach your grandmother to suck eggs! I’ve done this dozens of times. You just make sure you keep out of the way. If you get one of these on your head you’ll be flatter than a pancake. Here it comes!’

‘I’ll just find one more.
Ouch
!’

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Cripes! It’s these blasted prickles. I got one in my bum. Hey, don’t you laugh, it hurts.’

‘Well I’m not going to kiss it better,
that’s
for sure.’ Barbara poked her toe at the giant balls by her feet. ‘How are we going to get these home anyway?’

‘That’s what I brought the sacks for. You carry one nut and I’ll put the other two in mine. Think you can manage it?’

‘If you can carry two I can carry one,’ said Barbara with determination.

‘Huh, listen to her. They’ll make you a strong man in the circus next.’

‘Nah, I’ll just stick you in a cage and call you a gorilla and charge five dollars admission.’

‘Five what?’ Young Jim’s head peered down through the branches.

‘Dollars. Oh! Like pounds—you know, money, cash.’

‘Sure I know what dollars are. Yanks have them. You have dollars too, where you come from?’

‘Sure. Since—I’m not sure—in the sixties sometime.’

Young Jim laughed high up in his tree. ‘Crazy, crazy, crazy. Think anyone’d really pay five quid to see my face?’

‘Nah. Tuppence ha’penny maybe and even then they’d want their money back. You’ve got a face like the back end of a budgie.’

‘Garn! Where’d you hear that one?’

‘Gully Jack. He said Mrs Reynolds has got a face like the back end of a budgie and she plays the piano like a cockatoo with chilblains. All because she said his fiddle was out of tune at last Friday’s dance.’

Young Jim laughed. ‘Maybe I should sing then. You think people might pay to hear me sing?’ He began yelling at the top of his voice:

‘Hallelujah I’m a bum,
Hallelujah bum again.’

‘Hey, that’s the song that kid was singing!’

‘Well, I can sing it too, can’t I? I bet my voice is better than his…

Oh, people say bum,
Save the money you earn,
Well if I didn’t eat I’d have money to burn,
Hallelujah I’m a bum—’

‘Well, it’s louder anyway,’ commented Barbara.

‘Spoilsport. Come on…

Hallelujah bum again,
Hallelujah show us your garters, to revive us
again.

Oh why don’t you work, like other men do?
Well how can I work when the sky is so blue

…Just like Gully Jack isn’t it? Can you imagine him all shut up in an office?

Hallelujah I’m a bum,
Hallelujah bum again,
Hallelujah show us your garters,

—Barbara joined in—

To revive us again.
I went to the door,
To ask for some bread,
But the lady said bum bum
the baker is dead,
Hallelujah I’m a bum

…Hey, what’s up?’

‘Just got a bit of leaf in my throat,’ complained Barbara. ‘You going to stay up there all day singing, or what?’

‘Nearly got it.’ Young Jim sawed carefully with his pocketknife. ‘All clear below?’

‘All clear!’ The final nut landed near the others.
There was a shower of dead leaves and bits of bark as Young Jim made his way carefully down the bunya tree, avoiding the sharp leaves as best he could, hunting out footholds in the rough bark.

‘Cripes, I’m glad I borrowed Dad’s old long pants. My legs’d be cut to ribbons.’

‘Just as long as you don’t tear his pants.’

‘He’d forgive me, as long as I brought the bunyas home.’

‘I wouldn’t bet on it’ Barbara gave one of the giant nuts a shove with her toe. ‘Sure you can eat these things?’

‘Sure I’m sure. I’ve brought them back dozens of times. You just throw them in the fire till they open and the nuts are cooked. You’ve never eaten anything till you’ve eaten bunya nuts.’

‘I’ve never heard of them,’ admitted Barbara.

‘Don’t they have bunya trees where you come from?’

‘Don’t think so.’

Young Jim began to stuff the giant nuts in the sacks. He seemed to be thinking. Finally he looked back up at Barbara.

‘Bubba, I was wondering. Would you go back now if you could?’

‘Go where?’

‘Back home.’

Barbara’s face shut cold and tight. ‘I don’t have a home.’

‘Of course you do, silly. Your home is here. You know what I mean—back to your own time.’

Barbara hesitated. ‘I don’t know. No. No, I wouldn’t. I tried when I first came here. I didn’t tell you, because you’d all been so kind. I sat down by the creek and tried to think myself around the corner.’

‘What happened?’

‘It didn’t work. Maybe I just didn’t try hard enough. I didn’t really want to get back.’

‘What about now?’

‘Now I want to stay here. This is home, like you said.’

Young Jim didn’t say anything. He just grinned, slowly and happily, and nodded. He went back to stuffing the nuts into the sacks.

‘Here,’ he said. ‘Think you can lift it?’

‘Sure.’ Barbara heaved it over her shoulder. It was heavier than she’d expected and awkward, bobbing around and hitting the back of her legs with every step. ‘I think I can manage it.’

‘Good girl.’ Young Jim hoisted his own. His knees bent under the strain, bulging like grapefruits. ‘We’d better get a move on then. I don’t like the look of the sky.’ He pointed towards the end of the valley. The
clouds were massed like bright purple marshmallows, tinged with green.

‘Think there’ll be a storm?’

‘I reckon. Should have guessed there’d be one after the heat this morning. Looks like it’s moving up this way. I haven’t seen clouds like that since the first week we were in the valley. Dad’d only just got the vegie bed dug and the rain washed all the soil away. Came down in sheets.’ He peered at the sky again. ‘It’s getting darker. Come on, shift your tail.’

It was hard walking with a sack of bunya nut. The sun poured through the trees, ignoring the fat clouds at the end of the valley. The sweat made little gullies down Barbara’s face and neck. She should have worn a hat, she thought, except she didn’t have one. None of the O’Reillys seemed to wear hats, except when they were dressed up. Dad had worn a felt hat to the meeting, and Ma had worn a hat too, a funny one that only covered half her head with a bit of netting on the side, nothing that would keep the sun off. No-one here had ever heard of the greenhouse effect and the thinning ozone layer. Maybe they’d never even heard of skin cancer. Perhaps she should make a hat. If you could make your own house and school and furniture surely you could make a hat. She could make everyone hats for Christmas presents.

The air felt wet already, too thick with humidity to push through. Barbara let her sack fall and tried to catch her breath. Young Jim shook his head.

‘Come on. We’ve got to get going. Look!’

The world was darker, almost shadowless. The sky was a dull, smooth grey above their heads and blackish-purple above the ridges. The air smelt like burnt electrical cord. A pair of currawongs darted towards shelter, their wings flapping heavily in the thick air. Thunder grumbled somewhere beyond the horizon.

They’d reached the creek when the rain began. Suddenly the air turned liquid, each drop so hard it stung their faces.

‘Drop the sack!’ yelled Young Jim.

‘What about the nuts?’

‘They won’t melt. We’ll pick them up later. We’ll drown if we stay out in this!’

They battled through the heavy air. Barbara tried to push her hair out of her eyes, but the rain thrust it back again. Her skirt clung to her legs as though it was trying to tie them together.

Ma was looking for them, standing outside the shack, a newspaper held above her head to shield her from the spray as the rain danced on the tin. She began to scold as soon as they were near.

‘No more sense than a pair of chickens! You’d think you were both old enough now to know when to come in out of the rain. And look at your Dad’s good trousers. Bubba, you get out of those wet things, there’s dry clothes out for you on the bed. You get that hair dry too. Young Jim, I don’t want to hear another word out of you till you’re dry. What were you thinking of, keeping Bubba out in the rain like that. There’s stew still hot in the camp oven, not that you deserve a drop of it.’

It was warm inside the shack, a smelly friendly warmth from lots of bodies. The little ones were on Ma’s bed, lifting up the canvas window so they could see the rain. Elaine handed Barbara the dry clothes—a skirt that looked as if it had been one of Dulcie’s, long and faded, and a jumper that might have come from Dulcie’s father, mended at the elbows, slightly frayed around the neck. It smelt of lavender and cloves, prickly, warm and dry.

Elaine watched her dress. ‘It’s all right, she’s decent,’ she yelled to Young Jim. ‘You can come in now. Here, Joey, you stick some newspaper in her shoes will you? They’re absolutely sodden.’ She shook her head. ‘You should’ve heard Ma when you weren’t back. She was afraid the creek’d flood and you’d be trapped on the other side.’