A Small Free Kiss in the Dark (9 page)

‘Anything.’

But Billy shushed us with a finger to his lips.

Max and me were tired of walking and not getting anywhere, and I couldn’t even be bothered looking at the graffiti on the walls. I wished we were back in the library with Cecily and that last night had never happened. When you concentrate on wishing for things you can’t have, you miss out on clues that something good might be just around the corner. I didn’t notice the concrete walls sloping away and I didn’t see the gulls swirling like scraps of paper in the sky, so I was gobsmacked when we walked out of the cutting and saw Dreamland.

It looked even better than on Max’s postcard. Behind the fun park, a boardwalk edged the yellow sand beside a shallow, sheltered bay.

‘Wait here,’ Billy said, so Max and me sat on my case on the little platform, staring at Dreamland. It was one-thirty when I looked at the clock on the other side of the train tracks. It took Billy five minutes to reach the entrance to the fun park. He limped down a steep triangle of grass between the road and the station, crossed the main street and walked along the footpath toward the yawning mouth. We watched him disappear inside and waited, hardly daring to blink in case we missed him. Another five minutes went by and then it was ten and at last Billy was there, waving to us.

I grabbed Max’s hand and the handle of my case. We ran like crazy down the green hill, looked both ways although there wasn’t a car in sight, darted across the wide black stretch of tar and sprinted along the footpath. When we walked under the big teeth we laughed out loud, we just couldn’t help it. This time Billy didn’t tell us to stop.

There were plenty of feathers at Dreamland. They were carved on a golden eagle on the carousel. The eagle was on the front of a chariot, with its giant wings spread out. It was bigger than Max.

‘It’s a Roman war chariot,’ said Billy, ‘and there’s one on the other side that’s called the peace chariot.’

Max and me ran around to see. Instead of an eagle on the front, it had a lady with a peaceful look carved on her wooden face. As well as the two chariots, the carousel had sixty-eight horses.

‘The theme of the carousel is war and peace,’ Billy said. ‘Look at the cherubs.’ He pointed to a carving of a fat baby angel. ‘Thirty-six cherubs,’ he said, and then he showed us the painted flowers and butterflies. I never heard Billy talk so much before. He knew everything about the Carousel of War and Peace. ‘It’s very old,’ he said. ‘Been here since the year nineteen hundred and twenty-three.’

Max had already got on one of the horses, but I didn’t. I was waiting to see if Billy would tell us more. I’d got used to not asking questions, and waiting for signs that Billy had something he wanted to say. He was stroking his beard. That was usually a sign. I was right. ‘Wars come and wars go,’ he said. ‘Things change, but the carousel is always here. It reminds people of the good times.’

‘Come on, Skip! Get on!’ Max yelled.

Billy smiled as Max pulled himself up on the platform, so I got on too. I picked a light grey horse with black blotches.

‘That’s called a pinto,’ Billy said. It had a red harness and silver horseshoes.

Max was on a black horse in front of the chariot of war. ‘Let’s be Indians!’ he said and he grabbed the reins and clicked his tongue against his teeth. ‘Giddy up, Midnight!’ he yelled.

That’s when Billy started acting strange. He put his hands up to his mouth like a loudspeaker and started calling out into the empty fun park like it was crammed full of people. ‘Step right up, boys and girls, and ride the merry-go-round. Two nights only. Don’t miss out. Tell all your friends. Come on now, don’t be shy. The merry’s perfectly safe, mothers and fathers, let your little ones enjoy the ride of a lifetime. Step right up. Get your tickets here! You won’t get better value anywhere. Step this way!’ It was like Billy had been doing this job all his life.

After he’d finished telling Max and me to hang on tight, Billy sat down in the chariot of peace and took his harmonica out of his pocket. It was small and silver and its name was Hohner. I’d seen that written on the top, among all the looping, swirling patterns. Once, Billy played his Hohner outside St Mary’s. It was Anzac Day. He sat down on the steps and shut his eyes and played. Billy didn’t play for money. If he’d wanted money he would have gone to the mall, where buskers go. I don’t know why he played his music at St Mary’s that day but I wondered if he was like me, and never knew what to say to God, so he played his music instead. Some of the people who went to church that day didn’t go inside. They stayed and listened to Billy instead. It was like a magic spell was on them and they couldn’t leave. Sometimes, when I look at Monet’s paintings, it’s like a spell is on me and I can’t walk away.

Billy curled his hands around his Hohner. I got ready for the magic. He closed his eyes and started to play. My feet slid into the stirrups, I took the reins in my hands and a shout burst out of me like fireworks. ‘Come away, Captain Moonlight, come away!’ My shout went up and over the Ferris wheel and down the other side. I felt the horse’s powerful muscles move and I thought of the leopard on Archimedes’s chest.

Max and me didn’t see the grey clouds rolling in because we were having the ride of our lives, galloping over the grassy plains, chasing buffalo and elk and caribou and listening to the wolves howling in the mountains. But Billy did. After a while he wrapped his Hohner in a piece of rag and put it in his pocket. Then everything went back to the way it was. We got off the carousel to look at the other things in Dreamland before the rain came.

We passed the House of Horrors and Sideshow Alley, where the tin ducks were, and then we looked at the Ferris wheel and the dodgem cars, but I didn’t feel like pretending any more; I wanted to do something real.

Then Max said, ‘Have you got something we can eat, Billy?’

Billy looked in his backpack but all we had left was a tin of sardines and some jelly snakes. ‘There are shops up there on the Boulevard,’ he said, pointing. Three flights of concrete steps with metal handrails ran from behind the station to the top of the hill, where we could see a row of houses and shops and more palm trees. ‘We’d better see what we can find before it gets dark.’

I read the signs outside Dreamland. ‘Steep Gradient. 15 mins to Shopping Centre’, said the one pointing towards the steps. I knew Billy would have trouble. ‘You wait here, Billy, I’ll go,’ I said.

It didn’t take him long to get back to being grumpy. ‘Since when did you start telling me what to do?’

‘I just thought, all those stairs . . . and there’s no one around. I’d be okay.’

‘You mean you haven’t seen anyone,’ he said.

We ended up all walking beside the road that corkscrewed up the steep slope from Dreamland to the Boulevard. By the time we got there the rain clouds had moved on. I looked at the peacock sea and the violet sky. The tunnel where we’d sheltered from the rain with Albert Park was flyspeck-small and the rails were snail-silver. Further away still were the hazy outlines of the city, and warships in the docks. It had taken us roughly four hours to get to Dreamland, but I couldn’t help thinking it wouldn’t take very long in a tank or a plane, or even if you were a soldier who didn’t have arthritis in his leg, or a small boy on a suitcase to pull.

‘I’m hungry,’ Max reminded us as we walked under the palm trees to where the road was blocked with lumps of concrete and barriers of red-and-white mesh. I didn’t like this place. It was too quiet. But the others went under the barrier and I had to follow them past the houses with neat white fences, striped blinds and shiny doorknockers, and past a big hotel where you couldn’t see in the windows because of the reflections of sea and sky and us. I wanted to ask Billy where everyone had gone. Where were the people who owned the nice houses? Were they watching us, wondering which side we were on or if we had come to steal from them, or worse?

Max walked in front of me with his hand in Billy’s. I didn’t want to be last, but the wheels of my suitcase made a noise if I walked fast. I almost wished for the sounds of war machines and bullets and bombs and shouting and matching black boots on the footpath. At least I could have breathed properly without worrying that someone would hear me. Instead, I walked slowly and breathed quietly and said nothing.

There was no 7-Eleven store on the Boulevard, but further back we found a narrow street full of cafes and other shops. And there were people, soft-talking, soft-walking people, fluttering down the darkening street, in and out of doorways like velvet-winged moths. Some waited outside the shops while others went inside, or darted into the bakery or the shop with rows and rows of cakes in the window. We went into the fruit shop first. Most things were rotten, but we got apples and carrots, a few bananas and some bottled water. In the newsagency Billy found a whole box of batteries, a cigarette lighter and a packet of lollies, but all the cigarettes were gone. We packed everything in my suitcase, on top of the art books.

Then Billy said, ‘We’ll have to get a move on. I’ll go to the cake shop and you boys see if you can find some paper for drawing on.’

It was dark inside the butcher’s shop and I made Max wait outside while I ran back to get a loan of Billy’s torch. One of the shadow people was talking to him. He stopped when he saw me coming, but not before I heard him say something about a place Albert Park had mentioned, ‘No-Man’s-Land’. I made up my mind to ask Billy about it when he was in a good mood.

‘You’d better come in with me,’ I said to Max, ‘I’ll need someone to hold the torch.’ There was plenty of paper on the counter in the butcher’s shop. I rolled it up and was putting it in a plastic bag when Max wandered off. I heard him calling from the back of the shop. He shone the torch so I could see where he was. ‘Let’s see what’s in there.’ He was standing in front of a white door.

‘It’s probably just a kitchen,’ I said. ‘Come on, Billy will be waiting.’

‘Just a peek,’ said Max with his hand on the latch. ‘It won’t take long.’

I should have stopped Max right then, but I watched his fingers undo the metal catch. The door was heavy and Max couldn’t open it by himself. I wish I’d walked away, but I didn’t. I stuck my fingers underneath the rubber seal and pulled. The door came open with a rush and Max screamed. I grabbed the torch and turned it off, but not before we’d seen all the dead bodies hanging from a rail on huge metal hooks, and not before we’d seen what the maggots had done to them. The smell was disgusting. I tried not to breathe, and Max was throwing up all over the place. I grabbed his hand and we ran for the street.

‘They’re animals, Max,’ I said in case he thought they were people’s bodies.

‘I know,’ he sobbed, ‘the poor things.’

Billy came back with bread and cake and biscuits and he held out a jam tart each for Max and me. ‘Thought you were starving,’ he said when we didn’t take them. I told him what we’d seen and he got a bottle of water out and cleaned Max up as good as he could. I got a bottle for myself, but no matter how hard I scrubbed or how much water I used I felt like the smell of the rotten animals had got into my skin and onto my clothes.

We walked back the way we came, and even though it was dark there were no lights burning inside the houses. They were like people without hearts; raspberry tarts without the jam. The further we got away from the butcher’s shop, the better I felt. I saw Dreamland, milky as the moon, maybe only fifteen minutes away if we walked fast. Carelessly, I let my suitcase wheels hum along the pavement in time with my heart.

We had got to the S-bend in front of the hotel when suddenly Billy put his arms out and grabbed me and Max and we all went tumbling down the grassy embankment. I saw streamers of starlight, smelt dirt up close and felt my back smack against something hard. I caught my breath and rolled over, looking for the others and for my case. A low stone wall had stopped us from rolling onto the winding road, two metres below. Max was lying face-down on the grass above me. He was sobbing. I don’t think I could hear him, but I knew, somehow. I crawled up and lay next to him.

‘What’s the matter?’ I whispered.

‘I’ve lost my glasses.’

‘We’ll find them. I’ll get Billy’s torch.’

Then I heard a motor running, the gears changing at the bottom of the hill.

‘Keep your head down!’ Billy hissed. I saw the lights of a truck and ducked.

We lay flat beside the wall, while the truck wound its way slowly towards the top of the hill. Once it passed us, Billy put his head up and so did Max and me. We watched the hotel gates slide open to let the truck go through and saw lights flood the building. We waited for a long time before we dared use the torch to look for Max’s glasses and my case.

That night we slept in the House of Horrors. We’d checked it out while it was light. From outside it looked like a huge, lumpy cave. Inside was a miniature railway. It had everything: tracks, a platform, signals, tunnels and a tiny train. We walked along the tracks with Billy’s torch and looked at the fake skeletons, bats, witches, ghosts, giant spiders and monsters. Bits of cloth, hanging from the ceiling, brushed against our faces, and if you shut your eyes they felt exactly like spider webs. It must have been fantastic when everything worked. Billy said there were ghostly noises, special lighting effects and coloured smoke. We planned to sleep in the carriages. They all had names painted on them. Max and me had picked the Devil’s Lair and Billy said he’d have the Vampire’s Nest.

Before we got in our carriages that night, Billy hung his torch up and fixed Max’s glasses with a bandaid. He always had useful things in his pockets, like his pocketknife and bandaids and bits of string and dead Christmas beetles, which aren’t exactly useful but they’re nice to look at. After Billy fixed the glasses, Max and me got our appetites back. The bananas were a bit squashed, so we ate them first, then we had rainbow cake with chocolate icing and hundreds and thousands.

Billy didn’t want any cake. ‘Save me some for breakfast,’ he said. ‘And don’t forget to switch the torch off before you go to sleep.’

I thought of asking Billy about No-Man’s-Land, but decided to wait until Max wasn’t around. I hung Dad’s coat up on a nail in the wall and Max and me got in our carriage and shared a blanket. The ghosts didn’t worry us; we knew they were only make-believe.