Sydney Bridge Upside Down (3 page)

‘Eighteen,’ I said.

‘Seventeen and a half,’ Cal said from the doorway.

‘I counted them last night,’ I said.

‘I opened one a while ago,’ he said.

‘You’ll catch it,’ I said. ‘You heard Dad say we were drinking it too fast. Have you been out to the wash-house lately? Seen what’s hanging above the copper?’

‘I was thirsty,’ Cal said. ‘What’s the use of ginger beer if I’m not allowed to drink it on hot days?’

‘It’s your funeral, boy,’ I said.

‘Would anybody here fancy a piecey?’ asked Mrs Kelly.

‘If it’s not too much trouble,’ I said. I followed her to the pantry, hoped she would put some of her great plum jam on the pieces of bread. ‘I was interested in what you were saying about loneliness,’ I told her. ‘It reminded me of something Mr Dalloway said last term. He said we live on the edge of the world. Us here in Calliope Bay. Like, it’s a wonder we don’t fall off, we live so close to the edge. Do you agree with that?’

‘Up to a point,’ she said, putting plum jam on the pieces. ‘What prompted him to say that? What time of the day was it when he said that?’

‘The afternoon,’ I said. ‘During geography.’

‘He said it as a joke, did he?’ she asked, handing me a piece then walking to the door to give Cal his piece.

‘He seemed serious,’ I said. I bit into the bread.

‘Mr Dalloway, I notice, hurries away from the edge the moment the holidays come,’ she said. ‘Takes no risks, it seems.’

‘I think he’s gone to the city,’ I said. ‘I like this plum jam, Mrs Kelly.’

‘So do I,’ Cal said.

‘I prefer plum to raspberry,’ I said. ‘Or maybe it depends on how it’s made. My mother’s raspberry jam is runny.’

‘That occasionally happens, no matter who the cook is,’ said Mrs Kelly. ‘Care for another piecey, boys?’

‘No more, thanks,’ I said. ‘I’ll be giving this kid his lunch soon. By the way, would you like some passion-fruit? We picked a lot this morning. Plenty to spare.’

She shook her head. ‘We have so many of our own. I must tell Dibs to pick them before the shed collapses.’

‘Do you reckon he’ll be long?’ I asked. ‘We thought we’d have a game before we do the weeding.’

‘He usually dawdles when he goes to the store,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell him you boys were asking about him.’

‘Tell him we’ll be near the works,’ I said. ‘
Near
the works, not
in
the works. We got something we want to show him.’

‘Very well, boys,’ said Mrs Kelly. ‘Now I must change my dress before Mr Wiggins arrives.’

I go on to my time at the works in the late afternoon of that day. This, of course, was after Dibs Kelly had fallen over the cliff. And that part on the cliff-top was, of course, after I had shown him what Cal and I had found in a killing-room at the works. I was up on the top floor of the works, looking through one of the holes where chutes had once started from. I was trying to see Cal.

‘Cal!’ I called, and ‘Cal-Cal-Cal’ went the echo through the works. ‘Are you ready?’

I saw him then, down through the holes on the other floors, waiting down there near the end of the one chute the men had not destroyed.

He waved.

‘Keep clear!’ I called.

I sent down eight of the bricks I had taken from the only wall left up there. I didn’t know why the men had let that wall stay, after pulling down the other three walls and the roof, but I was glad they had because the bricks in it were useful for things like creek dams and cave fireplaces.
Earlier that summer we had found a new cave in the hill up from the wharf, and we were using a good few bricks in it.

Sometimes I followed the bricks down the chute. Not this time, though. It was best to wear sandshoes to help with the braking, and I wasn’t wearing sandshoes this time. Actually, I was only up there just now because I met Cal on my way back from the cliff-top and he looked sad about missing the fun Dibs and I had been having, so I agreed when he said it would be a good idea to get some more bricks for the cave, I said we could leave the bricks beside the furnace-house and take them to the cave tomorrow.

The risky part in getting down was between the top floor and the one below. The stairs between these floors had gone, you had to use footholds in the wall. This was easy enough, but it was exciting to pretend it was very dangerous, and I used to walk around the top floor several times, sort of preparing myself for the trip, breathing in deeply, frowning.

Doing this now, I happened to see the butcher’s white van parked in the river. When the river was low there were two main streams at the crossing, a strip of shingle separating the streams. Cars and trucks simply sped through the streams and across the shingle when the river was like this, but it obviously hadn’t worked out right for Mr Wiggins today, because his van had stopped in the near-side stream, and there were signs he was in trouble.

One of the signs was that Mr Wiggins was squatting on a mud-guard, looking at the engine. The water was half-way up the van’s wheels; he couldn’t have
stopped there on purpose.

‘Hey, Harry!’ cried Cal, popping up through the chute hole. ‘I climbed it again!’

‘Mr Wiggins is in trouble,’ I said.

Cal came across to look.

‘It’s the shallow part where he is,’ I said. ‘The other part’s where trucks usually get stuck, eh? Remember when Mr Kelly got stuck and the water was in the cab by the time they hauled the Reo out? It’s lucky for Mr Wiggins he didn’t get stuck in that part—’

‘Somebody’s with him,’ Cal said.

‘That’s Mrs Kelly,’ I said. I could see her on the runningboard; she was staring at the river.

‘Mr Wiggins is taking off his boots,’ Cal said. ‘Must be going to swim for it.’

‘He can walk to the shingle from there,’ I said.

We watched him jump into the water, then back towards Mrs Kelly.

‘She’s too heavy for him to carry,’ Cal said. ‘He’ll sink, she’ll fall in.’

But Mr Wiggins, for all his staggering, got to the shingle with Mrs Kelly on his back. He must be very strong, I thought. Then I remembered that he had been here at the works in the old days, one of the powerful fellows who killed animals with sledgehammers.

‘Now he’s going to push the van,’ I said.

‘What happened to Dibs?’ asked Cal.

‘See?’ I said. ‘That’s why he unloaded Mrs Kelly. He knew he couldn’t push it with her aboard.’

‘Where’s Dibs?’ asked Cal.

‘Search me,’ I said. ‘Doesn’t look as if Mr Wiggins can move the van.’

‘Wonder where Dibs got to,’ Cal said. He was looking the other way, out across the paddocks and dunes and beach to the wharf and the sea.

‘Mr Wiggins needs help,’ I said. ‘He can’t move the van on his own. Let’s go down and help him.’

‘I can see Mr Phelps and his horse,’ Cal said. ‘I can see them near the woolshed. I bet Sydney Bridge Upside Down could tow Mr Wiggins out.’

‘Sam Phelps wouldn’t let his horse do that,’ I said.

‘I’m going down,’ Cal said.

‘I’ll go first and catch you if you fall,’ I said.

I went quickly. I knew the footholds so well I just skimmed down the wall to the next floor. The only time this trip was risky was when there was a high wind; the wall wobbled a bit then and I understood what my father meant when he said a good gale would flatten the ruins one of these days.

‘Get going!’ I called to Cal.

He came down very shakily for a kid who was like a squirrel when using the chute. Of course he was short, it was harder for him to find the footholds. I always held up my arms, ready to catch him. I blinked as cement chips fell.

He made it, and we ran down the stairs.

‘What about the bricks?’ asked Cal when we were in the yard. ‘We going to stack them?’

‘They’ll be safe,’ I said. ‘We’re in a hurry. Mr Wiggins needs our help.’

When we reached the road, he said, ‘Dibs might sneak our bricks.’

‘He’d better not,’ I said.

‘It’s funny Dibs isn’t here,’ he said.

‘Must be playing somewhere,’ I said, running faster.

‘Wait for me!’ Cal called.

I stopped. ‘Don’t you care about Mr Wiggins? How would
you
like to be stuck in the river?’

‘I don’t care,’ he said. ‘I’m going to find Dibs.’ He turned and ran towards the railway line.

‘Cal!’ I called. ‘I’ll fix you, boy! Come here!’

But he kept running, that mad kid, so I went on alone. I didn’t go very fast because I really wasn’t so eager to help Mr Wiggins. Also, I was busy thinking how I would pay Cal back. I got damned angry about him, turning traitor after all the fun I found for him.

He didn’t miss anything at the river. Mr Wiggins’ van had gone. So had Mr Wiggins and Mrs Kelly. It was as if I had only imagined seeing them.

T
HERE WAS
a bit of a mystery about old Sam Phelps, and I don’t mean because of how he stuck to Sydney Bridge Upside Down instead of buying a younger and quicker horse to haul the freight wagon along the railway line from the wharf to just outside the works. That was mysterious enough, though not so hard to understand when you remembered how few ships called at Calliope Bay nowadays, how few trips Sam Phelps had to make along the line. No, what I mean about a bit of a mystery was how people said he had once lived in a good house with his pretty daughter. The pretty daughter, they said, had run away, then Sam Phelps had moved from the good house, then the house had been pulled down. After that, they said, he had gone to the pack. Nobody seemed to know where his daughter had gone to, and if
he
knew, they said, he certainly wasn’t telling. Actually, as I said to Dibs Kelly in the cave one afternoon during those summer holidays, you would have a tough job getting Sam Phelps
to tell you anything. It would be useless asking him when exactly the
Emma Cranwell
was due to berth. Like as not he would turn from you without speaking and begin stroking Sydney Bridge Upside Down’s hollow, maybe hoping in this way to fill it in, though I reckoned it was more likely he was helping to make it deeper.

‘So you can drop that idea, boy,’ I told Dibs, taking another of his cigarettes. ‘We’ll wait here for Cal. He’ll tell us when the ship’s in sight.’

‘Hope he hurries,’ Dibs said. ‘It’s getting a heck of a smoky in here.’

‘Are you dizzy yet?’ I asked.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ve only had two.’

‘This is my third,’ I said, waving the cigarette. ‘Better than my mother’s cigarettes, but not as strong as your last lot. You using the same leaves?’

‘They’re off the same bush,’ he said. ‘The others might have dried out better. These are strong enough for me. I’ll be dizzy if I have another one.’

‘Have another one then,’ I said. ‘You need to be dizzy to see fantastic things.’

‘I’ve been dizzy before, but I’ve never seen anything fantastic,’ Dibs said. ‘I get dizzy, then I feel sick.’

‘Hey!’ I shouted. ‘Just then you seemed to have a big moustache and a helmet. It’s beginning!’

‘Now what do you see?’ he asked.

I coughed. I began to choke.

‘What do you see?’ asked Dibs. ‘What do you see?’

I got my breath back, staggered across the cave and bopped him. ‘Couldn’t you see I was choking? You’re
dippy sometimes, boy. Now I’ve changed my mind about letting you use the pistol.’

He wriggled past me to the cave mouth. ‘I’ll tell Buster you’ve got it,’ he said, ready to run.

I didn’t move. ‘So what?’ I said. ‘It was in the killingroom and I found it, so it’s mine. What’s it got to do with Buster?’

‘Kids aren’t supposed to have pistols,’ he said. ‘You ask Buster.’

I didn’t mind his threats, I was a bop up on him. ‘I’ll tell him myself if he gives me a ride on the Indian,’ I said. ‘I’ll let him use the pistol. Maybe he can get some ammo.’

‘A good idea,’ he said. ‘We could shoot pigs, eh?’

‘Yes, and sizzle them in here,’ I said. ‘Buster might have some ammo hidden in his room. You have a look tonight, Dibs. We can have fun with that pistol.’

‘It’s an old-fashioned pistol,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what ammo would fit that sort of pistol.’

Cal showed up behind Dibs and asked: ‘Why can’t I have a smoke?’

‘Because you’d tell Dad,’ I said. ‘What about the ship? Have you seen her yet?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you or Dibs have a turn? Why do I have to keep looking?’

‘Because that’s your job today,’ I said. ‘We got other jobs. What about Sam Phelps? Is he on the wharf?’

‘Yes,’ said Cal.

‘And the horse and wagon?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘See!’ I said. ‘He knows the ship won’t be long.’

‘Takes an hour for her to get in after she’s passed the heads,’ Cal said. ‘I’d have plenty of time for a smoke. Be a sport, Harry. I won’t tell Dad.’

‘It’s not only the ship,’ I said. ‘You’re supposed to watch out for the Kelly kids.’ (Dibs had two younger brothers and two younger sisters, but I won’t mention them often, you can take it for granted they were always around. I ignored them mostly then and that’s what I’ll do now.)

‘I haven’t seen them,’ Cal said. He looked at the butt I had dropped when I was choking. ‘What say I do tell Dad you were smoking? He’ll chase you, I bet.’

‘Another blackmailer!’ I cried. ‘All right, you can have a fag. I’ll keep look-out.’

‘I’ll come with you,’ Dibs said.

‘No, you stay here with this kid,’ I said.

So I left them there and climbed to the cliff-top and looked across the bay. There was no sign of the
Emma Cranwell.
I didn’t mind. Actually, the ship was not why I’d left the cave, it would have taken more than a couple of blackmailers to make me go on look-out if I hadn’t wanted to. What I had remembered, back in the cave, was that Susan Prosser liked being at the wharf to see the
Emma Cranwell
berth. If Susan turned up early today, I thought, I would go down to the wharf and talk to her about her mother’s crazy budgie. Even though Mrs Prosser lived right next door, the only time we saw her was when she peeped through her bathroom window; this was not often, but it was more often than we saw her budgie. I only knew about the budgie because of what Susan told me. She told me if you said ‘Joey is a naughty boy’ to this budgie, it
would sometimes reply ‘Jesus is a naughty boy’; other times it brooded and said nothing. I had not seen Susan for a week or so, she seemed to have picked up her mother’s habit of keeping out of sight. I was hoping she would think the
Emma Cranwell
was a good reason to leave the house. Going by what I could see from the cliff-top, she had not done so yet. Sam Phelps and Sydney Bridge Upside Down were the only ones on the wharf.

I decided I would keep looking for about twenty minutes. This would give Cal plenty of time to have a cigarette and get sick.

Whoops whoosh groan groan, I thought, remembering what Dad had said at breakfast about the time I got sick while aboard the
Emma Cranwell
with him. We were on our way back from a holiday (my mother, who liked the city better than Dad did, was following later with little Cal), and Dad must have thought it would be fun to go the last part of the trip in the
Emma Cranwell
instead of in a bus. As he said at breakfast, he hadn’t allowed for rough seas. ‘My word, Harry, we struck it rough as soon as we left Wakefield,’ he said. ‘I thought the tub was going to turn turtle, she was tossing and turning so much. I wasn’t surprised when you threw up, I remember thinking it was as well you had the bottom bunk. And you had to stay in it because there was little I could do for you, not me with my one leg and that ship trying to turn turtle, it was all I could do to stay in my own bunk. The seas didn’t calm till well after midnight, then I was able to inspect the damage. I mean the damage where you were, my boy. What a mess! “It’s you for the deck,” I said, and up we went. Not a soul
in sight when we got there. Only the night, black as pitch, and the sea, just as black. “Take off that jacket,” I said. Then the other smell hit me and I knew what had happened. You had pooped yourself! There was still a wind, and it was blowing the smell straight at me. I turned my head, it did no good. Anyway, I couldn’t leave you in those pyjamas. “Take them off,” I said. And of course you know what happened after that—’ I knew, sure enough; I had heard all this before, I was used to the shame of it. In fact, I no longer felt any shame; it was something horrible that had happened to some other kid, one black night on the high seas in years gone by. ‘You threw them away,’ I said. ‘I threw them as far away as I could, out into the ocean,’ my father said, ‘and left you standing there without a stitch on.’ ‘I remember,’ I said. ‘It was the only thing to do at the time,’ my father said, ‘but you wouldn’t have thought so when your mother heard about it. Those new city pyjamas, where were they? Thrown away! Oh, I heard all about that night’s mistake, your mother didn’t see the funny side of it. Nor you either, I dare say.’ ‘Yes, I did,’ I told him. ‘It was pretty funny,’ I said, ‘how you held your nose when you threw them away.’ ‘You remember that?’ he asked. ‘Yes,’ I said, aware of Cal watching me, knowing he wished he had that sort of memory to share with Dad. ‘More likely you
think
you remember because I’ve told you about it so often,’ Dad said. ‘I only mention it now,’ he said, ‘because I hope your cousin doesn’t have the same sort of voyage, it was thinking of her in the
Emma Cranwell
that reminded me of our own adventure. Well, I rely on you boys to make her welcome, let her see that country people know how to
treat visitors. Meet her at the wharf, bring her home, tell her I’m looking forward to seeing her when I get in from work. You can leave the dinner to me. But it would help if you peeled some spuds.’ ‘Yes, Dad,’ I said. ‘Yes, Dad,’ Cal said.

When the twenty minutes were up I gave myself ten more because I was certain I would see Susan Prosser walking along the track beside the railway line at any second. If I headed back to the cave she was bound to appear, I had often just missed her and I would make sure I didn’t this time. What I mean by just missing her is this: I would be waiting for her, sitting by the road or leaning against a tree or lying in the shade of a hedge, and as long as I kept watching she would not appear; but if I got busy with something, like trapping an insect, sure enough she would be past me and too far down the road towards home for me to pretend, once I caught up, that I hadn’t been waiting for her. It was mad of me to bother, of course. I mean, Susan Prosser did not like me, not nowadays. She used to like me, in the days when she seemed to enjoy telling me about the budgie, but ever since I accidentally killed our wonderful Muscovy drake she had changed towards me, as if, unlike everybody else, she did not believe I hadn’t really meant to kill Kingsley. Couldn’t she realise, I asked her plenty of times, that I had been as fond of Kingsley as anybody else in Calliope Bay? Was it my fault I landed on him after jumping from the shed roof? But it was no use, Susan Prosser did not like me any more; no matter how often I tried to be friendly, she sniffed and turned away.

Heck, I thought, I’m not chasing her just because I don’t
want her to go on thinking I’m a fibber. What do I care?

So I turned, meaning to go back to the cave. I had a last look over my shoulder, and that was when I saw the
Emma Cranwell.
She was coming round the heads, dipping and rolling.

Soon I would meet my cousin for the first time in years. I could not remember her from when we had met long ago in the city, I had been too young to take much notice. According to Dad, who went by what my mother said in her letters, this Caroline was a shy girl who sat in corners and seldom spoke. Her mother, my mother’s sister, reckoned it would do Caroline good to be away from the city for a while, the country air would work wonders. Not that we should take her to be a wet blanket, warned my mother. Once Caroline got to know people she apparently had rather interesting things to say; being a city girl, her interests were different from those of country girls, but what she said should entertain us, since we met so few city girls. Anyway, said my mother, make her feel welcome. ‘So I rely on you boys to do that,’ Dad said. ‘Show Caroline that country people know how to treat visitors.’ ‘Yes, Dad,’ I said, ‘I heard you before.’ ‘Well, don’t forget,’ he said. ‘I won’t forget,’ I said.

But I knew there was no sense in being at the wharf an hour before the
Emma Cranwell
berthed, so I headed for the cave.

When I got to the cave mouth and looked in I saw that Dibs had tied up Cal and was pointing a lighted cigarette at him. When Cal saw me he yelled. He must have yelled a good bit while I was on look-out, I knew he wouldn’t let
himself be tied up like that without making a fuss. It was a wonder I hadn’t heard him yelling, I thought.

‘Don’t make so much noise,’ I told him. ‘I want to ask Dibs something. Hey, Dibs, remember when Mr Dalloway asked us about the holidays and said for all the kids who were going away to stick up their hands? Were you there that day?’

‘I stuck up my hand,’ Dibs said. ‘I thought Buster would give me a ride out to where he’s working. That would count as going away, I reckoned.’

‘Did you notice if Susan Prosser stuck up her hand?’

He closed one eye and twisted his face, trying to remember. He put the cigarette in his mouth and sucked it, but he was too late, it was out.

‘She must have gone away,’ I said. ‘I haven’t seen her for a few days.’

‘I haven’t seen her,’ Dibs said.

‘I saw her,’ Cal said.

‘When?’ I asked.

‘Yesterday,’ he said.

‘Untie my brother,’ I told Dibs. I looked down at Cal. ‘Where did you see her yesterday?’

Cal was rubbing his wrists, where the rope had been. ‘Not out the front,’ he said, frowning at Dibs. ‘It wasn’t out the front of her place behind that bush.’

‘He’s always hoping he’ll see her there,’ Dibs said.

‘I’m not!’ Cal shouted. ‘I don’t care!’

‘Never mind that,’ I said. I knew Cal did hope to see what Dad said he had once seen—Susan Prosser piddling behind that bush—but I wasn’t going to blame him for
it now, I’d rather know if Susan was still around. ‘If you didn’t see her there,’ I said, ‘where did you see her?’

‘In Mr Wiggins’ van,’ Cal said.

I was surprised.

So was Dibs. He said: ‘I bet you didn’t, boy!’

‘I did!’ Cal shouted.

‘Doing what?’ I asked, feeling strange.

‘She was just sitting in the van,’ Cal said.

‘Waiting for Mr Wiggins?’ I asked.

‘He was driving,’ Cal said. ‘The van was moving. Going towards the river.’

‘What do you know?’ I asked Dibs.

‘What do you know?’ he asked back.

We sure were surprised.

‘Dibs is not allowed to tie me up,’ Cal said, moving to the cave mouth. ‘I didn’t do anything to him. This is not his cave, anyway.’

‘When he brings cigarettes it makes him a special guest,’ I told Cal. ‘You had one of his cigarettes. You shouldn’t complain, boy. And don’t tell Dad, either. We don’t like tell-tales.’