Somewhere around the Corner (5 page)

The creek glistened like silver paper, threaded with little streams of mud washed down by people panning further upstream. An old man crouched among the boulders, a hessian sack around his shoulders for warmth against the cold of the water, a tin plate tilted in his hand. He waved to the children, then bent down to his plate again.

‘That’s Old Man Lee,’ said Elaine. ‘He’s always at it.’

‘What’s he doing?’ asked Barbara.

‘Gold-panning, of course. That’s his spot. Johnny Parker and the Williams boys are up by the island. Johnny Parker was a carpenter till his shop went bust, and Joe Williams was a boilermaker. There are prospectors all up and down the creek round here. Not that there’s much to be found any more. Dad says they’re lucky to make half a quid a week.’

‘Where’s Dad panning now?’ asked Young Jim.

Elaine shrugged. ‘Nowhere much. The last spot fizzled out after a couple of weeks. He hasn’t found another good one. Don’t think he will, either. He’s making a few bob out of tomatoes. Says there’s more money in vegies than fooling around looking for gold, if only he could get the water to them.’ Elaine grimaced. ‘Boy, am I sick of tomatoes. We’ve had them fried just about every day this month. When I grow up I’m never going to eat a tomato ever again. Or wipe a kid’s grubby face, either.’

Barbara stared at the cold figure down by the creek, huddled over his pan as if it might keep him warm. ‘How do you gold-pan?’

‘It’s easy.’ Elaine pantomimed holding a flat dish. ‘You just scoop up some sand and some water and keep washing out the loose stuff. Gold’s heavier than sand, so what you’ve got left at the end’ll be gold.’

‘You hope,’ said Young Jim.

Elaine made a face. ‘You hope,’ she agreed. ‘Mostly you just get frozen fingers and empty pockets. Gold panning’s not bad in summer, but it can be cruel in winter. Susie Briar’s dad nearly lost his arm, he got so cold, and not much to show for it. Mostly all that’s in your pan is gravel and fool’s gold. Real gold glows even in the shade.’

‘Then you stick it in a jam jar and hope you find some more,’ said Young Jim. ‘But mostly you don’t. Hey, look over there! I said I’d show you dragons!’ Young Jim pointed at a hump of rock that sliced the flashing water of the creek.

‘What is it?’ Barbara had nearly forgotten his promise from the night before.

‘Water dragons. See? Look at that one—he must be as long as my arm!’

Barbara blinked. Suddenly she could see what had been camouflaged before—a lizard on the rock, with its face to the sun, too intent on soaking up the heat to notice them. Its body was dull olive, with dark and light mottles, its throat a flash of red and iridescent green. It only needed wings, and fiery breath to match its throat, to be a dragon from a fairy tale.

‘Come on,’ said Elaine. ‘Time to wash. I’ll keep a lookout to make sure no-one comes by. You can use this pool and Young Jim can go and bathe around the bend.’

‘Hey, no fair! This pool’s warmer,’ protested Young Jim.

‘So sucks boo to you. You can go back and wait till Bubba’s finished if you like.’

‘Nah.’ Young Jim bundled up his clean clothes. ‘Give me a hoy when you’re through, will you? And
don’t be long. There’s loads of things I want to show Bubba today.’

Barbara looked at the creek threading through smooth pink granite rocks, purple cold in the shade of the tall casuarinas, gold and silver where it caught the light. It seemed a long way from neat blue swimming pools or hot showers in the bathroom. She waded in ankle-deep and shivered, looking at the gooseflesh on her arms and legs.

‘It’s freezing!’

Elaine laughed from the bank. ‘Told you so. You get used to it. It’s awful in winter. You can feel the bits of ice nibbling at your toes.’

‘Don’t you have a bathroom at all that you can use?’ demanded Barbara.

‘’Course not. You saw our place. Where’d we put a bathroom? Behind a blinkin’ tree? Ma boils up water for a hot bath on Fridays before the dance, that’s all. We wash down here the rest of the time.’ Elaine sighed. ‘It’s my job to bath the littl’uns after breakfast. Takes half the blessed morning. Hey, be careful with that soap. Soap doesn’t grow on trees, you know.’

‘Sorry, I didn’t think.’ Barbara laid the soap carefully on a bit of bark on the bank. It was a funny-shaped ball, a bit grubby, as though it had been made
from soap scraps all stuck together. ‘Maybe Jim’ll help you wash the littl’uns now he’s back.’

Elaine snorted. ‘In a pig’s eye. Ma gives him other jobs, like collecting wood and things like that. Fun things. She says looking after kids is a woman’s job. Says it’ll teach me to look after my own. Huh. Pigs’ll fly before I have a pack of grubby brats to wash.’

‘That’s silly,’ said Barbara. She caught the bit of hessian Elaine tossed her for a towel. It was soft and absorbent from lots of washing. ‘There’s no such thing as women’s work and men’s work. They should both look after the kids.’

‘Maybe where you come from.’ Elaine looked at her curiously. ‘You’re really serious with this around the corner lark, aren’t you?’

Barbara nodded. She began to dress. The clothes felt soft and thin and faded and they were much too big. Her skin tingled after the cold water, as though warmed by an inner sun.

‘Well,’ said Elaine, ‘all I can say is, if boys have to help look after the kids and things like that, I like the sound of it. I’ve had it up to here with looking after little kids. You decent yet? I’ll give Young Jim a hoy. He’ll be dressed. He only ever gives himself a lick and a promise anyway.’

They walked slowly back up the hill, Young Jim carrying the water up from the creek in two big tins that had once held kerosene. His neck bowed with the weight of them and the muscles strained in his arms.

‘Let me help,’ offered Barbara. ‘Maybe if Elaine and I carried one between us.’

Young Jim shook his head, too out of breath to talk.

‘You let him be a he-man if he wants to,’ advised Elaine, picking her way beside them. ‘I’ve had to carry those bally cans every day while he was gone. I could only manage one at a time, too.’ She kicked at a bare root in the eroded path with her toe. ‘When we lived in town we had running water and electric light and everything.’

‘Doesn’t anyone here have electricity?’

‘Nah, of course not. Where’d they get electricity from? The pub’s got a generator, but it goes off at closing time. That’s how Sergeant Ryan can tell if there’s any drinking after hours—he just listens for the generator. Not that I’d reckon he’d do much anyway. Sergeant Ryan never arrests anyone.’

‘Why not?’

‘He’d have to feed them if he locked them up, and he can’t cook! If there’s anyone he doesn’t like the look of he just gives them the word to leave the valley.
Mrs Cooper down at the pub takes him his meals, and I think he goes down to Dulcie’s sometimes, too. Dulcie’d feed a bandicoot if it was hungry.’

‘I bet Gully Jack’s not too keen on that,’ remarked Young Jim.

‘Huh,’ said Elaine. ‘I bet he doesn’t even notice. He’s too busy with his latest channel. He wouldn’t notice if a circus came to town.’

‘Who’s Gully Jack?’ Barbara remembered the name. What was it Jim had said? Something about channels and making his fortune.

‘Gully Jack’s beaut. Hey, Jim, how about we take Bubba down to Gully Jack’s? You haven’t seen his latest channel.’

Young Jim nodded as he lifted the tins again.

The shanty came into sight as they crested the hill. Barbara thought it looked even smaller than it had the night before, but homier somehow. The little ones were playing some game in the trees behind it, with Harry trying to join in. Dad was in the vegetable patch, chipping at the ground with an old hoe. Ma looked up from kneading dough on the makeshift table. She smiled wearily when she saw them.

‘Put the water over there, would you love? And throw a stick of kindling on the fire. I want to get a bit of damper cooked when the coals are right.’

‘Better get going before she finds something else for us to do,’ whispered Elaine. ‘Like look after the littl’uns.’

‘I wouldn’t mind looking after the kids,’ offered Barbara.

‘I would. Come on.’ Elaine ran off along the track.

The track wound between clearings, each carved out between the trees, with a shack or tent or sometimes both in every one; shacks of hammered kero tins or lean-tos of wattle poles with mud and hessian stretched between, of rough sawn poles or scavenged bits of timber or battered corrugated iron. Some were substantial and had two or even three rooms and a verandah, with hand-cut casuarina shingles carefully layered on the roof; some were simply lean-tos that looked like a breeze would blow them over.

Most of the clearings had gardens, neat rows of long green leaves and ferny tops, or long straight rows of corn, the ground spread thick with old cow droppings or freshly dug. Chooks clucked from a makeshift run of bark and wattle branches. An elderly man was carefully watering seedlings from a tin like the ones Young Jim had carried; a faded
woman nursing a small baby waved from a lean-to further on.

‘That’s Mrs Hester’s latest,’ explained Elaine. ‘Dulcie made her stay at the dairy farm to have it last week. She had her in the best spare room. The doctor came and everything.’

‘Who paid the doctor then?’ demanded Young Jim. ‘Not Dulcie.’

‘Of course not. Dulcie doesn’t have money like that. I bet it’d cost you five pounds to have a doctor for a baby. I don’t suppose Dr Green charged her anything. He’s a good bloke. He didn’t charge anything when Thellie got sick last winter, either.’

‘What was wrong with her?’ asked Barbara, remembering Thellie’s dark eyes and too thin wrists and ankles.

‘Dr Green said pneumonia. She was awfully sick for a while. Ma sat up with her every night for weeks. Dr Green said it was the cold and damp that did it. The wind just whistles through our place in winter. Couple of kids down the valley died of it. It’s a killer, that wind.’

‘Is she all right now?’

‘A bit thin, that’s all. Dr Green brought her up a tonic when he stitched up Dad’s hand after he sliced it open eucy cutting.’

‘What’s eucy cutting?’ Barbara ducked under a low hanging branch.

‘Don’t you know anything? It’s cutting down the young saplings and branches to make eucalyptus oil. They boil up all the leaves and skim the oil off. Hey, see that tree? There’s a wild bees’ nest around the back. Gully Jack got some honey out of it last week. He gave us a chunk of honeycomb. My word it was good. Morning Mr Henderson,’ she yelled brightly.

A tall square man with a face like a sad cow nodded from the woodpile in front of a tent, then turned back without meeeting their eyes. His clothes looked like they had once been good, though the trousers now bagged at the knees. His collar was frayed along the seams and one shoe gaped at the toe. Even the tent looked like it had been good once, with proper poles and guy ropes. It was patched now and weathered. It looked too thin to survive another storm. A rough shelter of four poles roofed with interwoven leaves and branches stood beside it. A woman sat in its shade, pulling wool out of an old jumper and rolling it into a ball. She looked as though she was about to say something, then glanced at her husband. She smiled at the children instead of speaking.

The man looked up suddenly, as though really seeing the children for the first time. He straightened
unconsciously. It was as though he almost became someone else. ‘It’s Young Jim O’Reilly, isn’t it?’ he demanded. ‘I thought you were up in Sydney getting yourself an education.’

‘I was,’ explained Young Jim. ‘But Uncle Bill decided to go up north, so I had to come back here.’ He shrugged. ‘Don’t suppose an education would have done me much good anyway.’

The man opened his mouth, as though he was going to say something, then changed his mind. His body slumped. He nodded again abruptly and turned back to the woodpile, stacking it inexpertly into a neater heap.

‘That is the first time I’ve heard Mr Henderson say anything to anyone for weeks,’ declared Elaine, as they turned the corner, out of hearing. The creek bubbled beside the path now, cold and silver between its stones. ‘Usually he just keeps his mouth shut and looks the other way, like he hopes you’ll think he’s not there or something. He used to be headmaster up at Hastings River.’

‘What happened?’ Barbara stepped over a pile of flood debris, sticks and leaves jammed up against an eroded root and crowned with wombat droppings.

‘They closed down the school there. They’re laying off teachers all over the place so he couldn’t get another job and the house went with the school.’

‘What about his wife? Didn’t she have a job?’

‘She used to be a teacher too, but of course she had to give it up when she got married.’

Barbara stared. ‘Why?’

‘Well, you can’t have women taking men’s jobs, can you?’ explained Young Jim reasonably.

‘It shouldn’t matter
who
has the job, the man or the woman,’ said Barbara.

Elaine giggled. ‘You tell him, Bubba. Hey, there’s Gully Jack. Cooee! Jack!’

Barbara squinted in the dappled light. At first there seemed to be no-one in sight. Then something bobbed up from behind a fallen log. It was the top of a hat, battered and stained the same colour as the tussocks.

‘He can’t hear you down there,’ said Young Jim.

‘He’s always down that channel. Ma says he’ll turn into a wombat one day! Cooee, Jack! Young Jim’s home!’

The channel was more obvious as they drew closer—a sudden plunge down a bank, a bit wider than a man could stretch his arms, and carefully lined with granite rocks from the creek. A face peered out from under the hat, blue-eyed and streaked with dirt, on top of bare brown shoulders shiny with sweat and dappled with dirt. Gully Jack’s teeth flashed white in his dirty face. ‘With you in a sec, kids.’

He put his hands up on the bank of the channel. His body followed his hands. Barbara stared. She’d never seen anyone haul themselves up with their hands, except in a circus.

Gully Jack was taller even than Dad. He had black hair and eyes that seemed to smile and dream. His arms were thick as wattle trunks, thought Barbara. His hands looked big enough to juggle granite boulders.

Gully Jack dusted his hands on his muddy trousers and lifted his shirt off a thornbush. ‘When did you get back, Young Jim?’ he inquired, thrusting his arms into his shirt and doing up the three buttons that were left on it.

‘Last night. Gully Jack, this is Bubba. She’s living with us now. Hey, is that your new channel?’

Gully Jack nodded, his eyes gleaming. Barbara peered down. The channel cut across a bend in the creek, almost making an island of the bank. It was deeper than she was tall. Stones were fitted together like a jigsaw puzzle halfway up the sides. Each end was stopped with thin walls of untouched dirt to stop the creek water running in.

‘A beaut, isn’t it?’ demanded Gully Jack proudly. ‘I think this’ll be the one that does it. We’ll be piling gold dust down on the bank counter yet, you wait and see.’

Barbara looked from one to the other. ‘I really don’t understand,’ she said slowly. ‘How does a channel help you find gold?’

Gully Jack laughed. ‘It’s like this,’ he told her eagerly. ‘You see that bank over there? That’s where I reckon the gold is.’ He waved his hands enthusiastically. ‘I reckon a thousand years ago the creek flowed over here, where I’m digging, and was diverted by a flood. That bank was left by the flood. The creek’d have had gold in it then too. Reckon it dumped the gold in that bank all those years and years ago and it’s still waiting for us now.’

‘But why the channel? Wouldn’t it be easier just to dig down there?’ Barbara gazed down at the careful stonework, the deep walls that must have taken months of work to build.

‘Nah.’ Gully Jack was scornful. ‘If there was a seam of gold down there, that’s where I’d be digging. I’d be plucking out the nuggets before you could say Jack Robinson. But that gold’s alluvial. It’s all in little flecks. To get it out I need water, lots of water, a whole blasted creek of it. When I get this stonework built right up to the top of the bank, I’ll dig that last bit out by the creek and the whole lot’ll come flooding in. That way I’ll have all the water I need.’

‘If we don’t have a flood and it all washes away first,’ pointed out Elaine.

Gully Jack grinned. ‘That’s what happened to me last time,’ he admitted. ‘I’ve left a bigger bank by the creek this time. I reckon she’ll hold except in a real bank-to-banker.’

Barbara gazed at him, wondering what sort of person could imagine the gold under the ground and change a whole creek to get to it, with nothing but a mattock and a barrow and his calloused hands. ‘Do you think you’ll get a flood like that?’ she asked.

‘Who knows?’ Gully Jack wiped his hands again, adding to the burden of mud on his trousers. ‘Only God and the cockatoos, and neither of them’s telling.’ He glanced at the sky. ‘Time to put the billy on,’ he announced. ‘I could eat the leg off an elephant. You three kids want to join me?’

‘Too right,’ agreed Young Jim.

Elaine and Barbara nodded.

Gully Jack led the way along the track to the next clearing. It was large, two cleared paddocks, and behind them were others starting to regrow wattle trees and thornbush, properly fenced with slabs of wood, though many had sagged or were broken. A mob of sheep grazed half-heartedly, casting covetous looks at the straggly vegetable garden on the other
side of the fence. A fat horse snickered at them from under the shade of a wattle.

The house itself was in the same condition as the fences. Once solid and substantial, the verandah now leant on one side under the weight of a jasmine vine, and a couple of the stairs were missing. A black and white dog lay across the front door. It opened one eye at them, then went back to sleep.

Gully Jack stepped over him. ‘Watch out for Joe Blakes,’ he told them. ‘There was a big fat bloke sunning himself by the front door this morning. This lazy coot didn’t even raise an eyelid to scare him off.’

‘Who’s Joe Blakes?’ whispered Barbara.

‘Snakes, cabbage brain,’ Elaine whispered back. ‘It rhymes—snake, Joe Blake—you get it?’

Barbara nodded as Gully Jack led them down a narrow hallway. The walls were covered with brown and cream wallpaper, though it was hard to make out which was the pattern and which were stains. Doors opened to dusty rooms. Barbara peered into them. There were beds with bare mattresses, a dog-haired sofa with bulging springs, the dining room with brown and purple paintings hung on the walls, a giant antique table, candles on the sideboard and torn and faded curtains at the windows.

‘How many people live here?’ she whispered.

‘Me and I and no-one else. In here, kids.’ Gully Jack took his hat off and hung it on a hook beside the door, where it clung like a soggy mushroom against the faded paint. ‘I’m as hungry as a mob of cockies in a walnut tree. Reckon I was so busy out there I forgot to come in for me dinner.’

The kitchen was at the back of the house, stretching all the way across it. Long windows ended at bench level, with wooden shutters clanging gently. Unlike the rest of the house it looked lived in—mud was ground into the torn lino floor, a dresser held a few chipped plates and a stack of saucers, all intact and evidently never used. A frying pan half-full of congealed fat sat on a black, iron, wood-fired stove, and a long wooden table, scarred with age, bore a chipped brown teapot and a pile of dirty cups that matched the saucers.

In the middle of the table, under a fly-proof cage, were the remains of a loaf of black-crusted white bread, and a leg of mutton, its side well gashed, oozed yellow dripping onto its plate. An open pot of chutney stood next to it. Barbara peered dubiously into the chutney.

‘Sit yourselves down,’ said Gully Jack. ‘There’s nothing like work to give a man an appetite.’ He began to carve the bread with an old handleless breadknife.

‘Have to get this fixed one of these days,’ he said. ‘Never seem to have the time.’ He shrugged. ‘When my boat comes in I’ll buy a hundred breadknives if I want to.’

He sniffed the mutton. ‘Still good,’ he decided. ‘That’s the great thing about mutton—it’ll last you for days. I cook a couple of legs and some chops once a week or so, and it lasts till Sunday, as long as the flies don’t get it first.’ He began to carve the mutton, great fat slabs almost as thick as the bread. He slapped them together, fished a fly out of the chutney and flicked it out the window, then liberally spread the mutton with the shiny brown paste.

‘Get stuck into it,’ he said. ‘One word’s as good as ten, bog in, Amen.’

Elaine giggled. Young Jim raised an eyebrow at her. ‘If Ma hears you saying that instead of proper grace she’ll have your hide,’ he told her.

Elaine sniffed. ‘You think I’d repeat that at home? I’ve got more sense than some people I could name. Who was it told Ma that—’

‘No squabbling at the table, kiddies,’ ordered Gully Jack. ‘You’d give a bloke indigestion.’

‘Who’s a kiddie?’ demanded Young Jim.

‘Well, don’t blasted act like one,’ Gully Jack advised him. He bit into his bread, getting half of it in
his mouth with one bite. Barbara watched amazed as he finished it in two gulps more and began to hack the loaf again. Gully Jack saw her stare.

‘Hey, what’s the matter? Get your teeth into it. That’s good tucker. The flies’ll finish it before you do.’

Barbara took a cautious bite. It was good, much better than she expected. The bread was tasty, even if a bit stale, and the meat was tender. Even the chutney tasted okay.

‘Go on, line your belly,’ Gully Jack told her. ‘Plenty more where that came from.’ He reached for the teapot and poured himself a cup, deep black, with tea leaves floating on top.

‘Anyone else for a cuppa?’ he asked.

‘Isn’t it cold?’ asked Barbara.

Gully Jack shrugged. ‘Who’s got time to boil the billy every time you want a cup of tea? If I did that I’d spend my life watching the stove. Not to mention chopping wood. Nah, this’ll do me fine. Made it last night and drank it for breakfast and it’s just as good now. Long as it’s sweet and wet.’

‘You going to be playing the fiddle at the dance this Friday?’ asked Elaine.

‘’Course I’ll be fiddling,’ said Gully Jack through another mouthful of bread and meat. ‘How’d you lot dance if I didn’t?’