Someone — or three someone’s and a dog — had played cricket on this beach this morning while the family and servants were at church.
The sand had soaked in sunlight. Butter could feel its warmth as he sat and watched the waves shush back and forth and listened to the seagulls squawk. Why would kids from the susso camp come to this beach to play cricket? There was more room to play at the camp, and more kids to play with too, so they could have a proper match. Why would anyone come to this beach, so far from anywhere?
One thing was clear. Gil, Olive and Tish didn’t want to be found. He suspected the people at the susso camp didn’t want Gil, Olive and Tish to be found either. But why not?
But if Gil, Olive and Tish had to be hidden, why had they risked playing cricket on the beach this morning, when there might still be police up on the headland and on the beach?
Because it’s Sunday today, he thought. The susso camp people would know that everyone from the Very Small Castle went to church on Sunday mornings. The police wouldn’t work on a Sunday either, unless it was an emergency.
And on other days?
The Aunts never went swimming down there because of the rip. The sand dunes were too high to see the beach from the Very Small Castle. Even up on the battlements all you could see was ocean to the horizon. When Butter was at school there’d be no one to see this beach at all. Even during the holidays he’d hardly ever come down because he’d promised not to go swimming by himself and he was too old to build sandcastles. Olive, Gil and Tish must have assumed no one would see them there, till he’d turned up.
That left three mysteries, or four if you counted the two bodies. Why didn’t Olive, Gil and Tish want to be found? Why were the people at the susso camp pretending they’d never seen them — and making up a story about convict ghosts, which Butter was sure wasn’t true? Big Bob’s wife, Mrs Bob, knew every bit of gossip in the district, and as soon as she knew something she told everyone. And how had Olive, Gil and Tish vanished from the beach so quickly the other day?
He looked at the rocks of the headland. Maybe there was a hollow where they could have hidden . . .
He ran along the sand, jumped up on the first rock ledge and looked around. But none of the boulders that had fallen from the cliff were big enough for three people to hide behind. And even now, at near low tide, the surf surged white foam onto the black teeth of rock around the cliffs. Butter jumped back as a rogue wave rolled hungrily toward him, the water sucking at his knees, before sliding back. No one could get around there! He retreated to the safety of the sand again.
A mystery. Many mysteries. Their faces haunted him, so thin and so alone. And yet he envied them too because they had each other. There had been such joy in their faces as they played cricket together. He even seemed to hear the echo of ‘another six!’ as he climbed the sand dunes to go home.
CHAPTER 10
The week passed slowly. Aunt Peculiar finished a vast canvas with a hundred tiny purple beetles all dancing the Charleston. Two men knocked at the back door, offering to split wood. Aunt Elephant always agreed, even though the woodpile was high enough now for years of winter fires.
Aunt Elephant’s team won the Ladies’ Club Basketball Championship. Auntie Cake made a speech at The Women’s Club’s luncheon about the importance of university degrees for women — Grandpa had never let the Aunts go to school, much less university, though he had paid for tutors and governesses in any subject they wanted to learn — and she and Cookie made chocolate ice cream coconut ice cream and a pineapple ice cream that curdled. Esmé the kitchenmaid told Butter that even the cat wouldn’t eat it.
But Auntie Cake’s messes meant that Esmé had a job cleaning it up. Would Woofer have been hungry enough to eat curdled pineapple ice cream? Or Tish?
On Monday, the Aunts had put on their go-to-town hats and gloves — no lady would ever go to town without a hat, gloves, shoes with sensible half heels, stockings and either pearls at her throat or a brooch on the lapel of her dress — and took Butter into town to a matinée, Cowboys of the Rio Grande, a talkie where you could actually hear the actors speak and the bad guy tied the heroine to a railway track but the sheriff rescued her seconds before the train ran over her.
Butter briefly imagined rescuing Olive from the railway tracks, but he had a feeling whatever problem she faced was more mysterious than a villain in a black hat and mask. And anyway, Olive looked like she’d bite any villain who tried to attack her — or her family.
Butter and the Aunts walked to David Jones for afternoon tea after the talkie.
‘Paypee! Paypo!’ yelled the barefoot boys selling newspapers in the streets, ducking whenever a car halted at a corner to tempt the driver into buying the afternoon edition. Sparrows scratched for seed in droppings left by the carthorses that pulled delivery vans.
Butter always felt embarrassed as they passed beggars sitting on the footpath, the one-armed men in rags with their medals on their chests and signs saying Unemployed veteran: family to support or the legless man who played the accordion, his cap on the footpath next to him for pennies.
Butter gave a penny to every beggar they passed, which meant he didn’t have enough of his allowance left to buy a Phantom comic. The Aunts gave a shilling to each beggar too.
‘Poor men,’ sighed Auntie Cake as they entered the scented air of David Jones.
‘So sad,’ squeaked Aunt Peculiar. ‘But there are so many. What can one do?’
They made their way to the lifts that went up to the dining room. Butter envied the one-legged lift man who sat on his stool in the ornate metal cage, controlling the massive machinery on the left, leaning over to pull the gates open and shut and announcing each floor. ‘First Floor Ladies Clothes, Perfumery. Second floor Millinery, Dining Room . . .’
The tables in the David Jones dining room were covered in white damask tablecloths and the cutlery was silver. A pianist played Gershwin and Noël Coward favourites and waltzes as women in fashionable hats and silk stockings drank tea and ate scones that weren’t as good as Auntie Cake’s or Cookie’s and Butter had a strawberry milkshake that was bright pink and didn’t taste of anything but milk and sugar.
The week dragged on. A postcard came from Taggert Minor, but Butter didn’t write back — school would begin again in three weeks and Taggert Minor must already be on the boat coming back to Australia.
He read six books: The Voyages of Dr Dolittle and Just William that he’d got for Christmas, which were a bit childish, and four others from Dad’s bookcase in the hall and probably Not Suitable at all, so he made sure the Aunts didn’t see what he was reading.
And every day he peered down at the beach, hoping to see the figures playing cricket.
Every day the beach was empty.
Thursday was Harry Painter’s funeral. Butter dressed in long trousers, a shirt and the black tie the Aunts had bought him for Mum’s funeral. It hurt to put it on. No one talked about Mum, not Dad or the Aunts. Sometimes it was as if she had never existed, except for him.
The Aunts wore black too: black lace for Auntie Cake, which made her look like a round bunch of black flowers; a long black tunic for Aunt Elephant, so she looked like a skyscraper at midnight; and hundreds of tiny patchwork squares of black silk, black velvet and beaded jet sewn together for Aunt Peculiar, because she said even black could come in many colours if you looked hard enough.
Butter stared around the funeral home, with its tasteful vases of white silk flowers. He’d hoped that Olive and Gil and Tish might be there to see their uncle buried. But there was no one there except themselves.
It was a quick funeral. There was nothing the priest could say about the dead man, except the prayers. There were no flowers either, only the bouquet of white carnations and daisies Big Bob had picked from the garden. Butter watched as the men from the funeral home carried the coffin out of the chapel. The hearse was about to drive to the gravesite when a fat woman in a headscarf puffed toward them. ‘Hold up!’ she yelled.
The funeral director peered out of the window of his hearse. ‘What is it, missus?’
The woman wore a dress that had clearly been made from two other dresses. The tops of her shoes were held to the soles by string. She thrust forward a bunch of flowers. She smelled of old sweat and musty clothes. ‘For the bloke in the coffin,’ she muttered.
‘You a relative? You’ve missed the funeral.’
‘Don’t know him from Adam’s cat,’ said the fat woman, still panting. ‘Some girl asked me to bring these flowers here, that’s all I know. Never seen her before, but you don’t go refusing when someone asks you for something like that, not for the dead.’
‘What did the girl look like?’ asked Butter.
The woman cast him a look. ‘Like someone who knows how to mind her own business. Now I got lunch to make for me own young’uns, and me old man too, or it’ll be bread and duck under the table for all of us.’ She stumped off down the road again, the soles of her shoes flapping.
Butter looked at the flowers. They were the tiny white and yellow paper daisies that grew on the headland, dried crisp by the sun now, but the yellow still unfaded. Mum had called them everlastings. Everlastings seemed a good flower to put on a coffin, better than the white carnations, already wilting in the heat.
There was no note, but Butter could almost hear the words: To Uncle Harry, with our love.
CHAPTER 11
The knock came softly, waking Butter from a shallow sleep where he dreamed of cricket matches that went on forever, just like the Depression. He waited for Jenkins to open the door, but then the knock came again. The servants slept on the floor above him. They mustn’t have heard it. Or perhaps he’d dreamed it and no one had knocked at all.
Another knock, and this time he was awake and knew it was real. He sat up and peered out the window. The moonlight shone on a small figure standing on the porch, something white and wriggling in her arms. Tish, thought Butter, with Woofer. He waited for her to knock again, but she just stood there in the shadows, almost as if she was about to flee.
He grabbed his dressing-gown, slipped down the long stone stairs and opened the door as quietly as he could. He could see the relief on the little girl’s face when she saw it was him, not Jenkins. ‘Tish?’
She nodded.
He wanted to ask, Where have you all been? Why did you vanish? What was that poor man’s real name? Instead, he just asked gently, ‘What’s wrong?’
‘It’s Woofer,’ she whispered. She hesitated. ‘He’s hungry.’
Not just Woofer, thought Butter, looking at Tish’s face. It was even thinner than it had been a week back, her eyes pleading. ‘Come in,’ he said softly.
Tish looked quickly behind her. ‘Gil and Olive don’t know I’ve come. You won’t tell?’
‘I won’t tell,’ Butter promised.
‘Not anyone?’
‘Not anyone.’
Tish bit her lip, nodded, then followed him, with another quick look behind her.
Butter led the way to the kitchen, then opened the larder door. He was about to tell Tish not to let Woofer make a noise when she put the dog down. Woofer crept under the table and crouched there motionless, as if he too understood the need to be quiet.
Butter put out bread, butter and cold lamb, as well as lettuce, tomato pickle, and apricot, cherry and strawberry jams. He watched as Tish sliced bread and meat quickly, slipping lamb to Woofer under the table, then, with a glance at him, ravenously eating sandwich after sandwich. She hesitated after her third. ‘I should leave you some bread for tomorrow.’
Butter shook his head. ‘The baker brings fresh bread every morning. This will just go to the chooks. I’ll say I took the stale bread out to them early.’
‘Oh,’ said Tish, almost as a sigh. ‘Fresh bread every day!’ She quickly cut herself another slice. He passed her apricot jam. She slathered it on thickly.
‘Tish, why are you hiding?’
She looked up quickly from her bread and jam. ‘I can’t say.’
So they WERE hiding. But he didn’t want to make her wary by asking more. If she trusted him then she might come back again. And she might need to come back, if they were in bad trouble or even just because they needed food. He imagined Tish starving, like Uncle Harry had starved, and Olive’s face, even thinner than it had been before.
‘I’ll pack you some food to take back,’ he said quickly.
‘No!’
‘But . . . but you’re hungry. Woofer is hungry. And Gil and Olive must be hungry too.’
‘I can’t! If I take food back they’ll know I’ve been here. But Woofer was so hungry.’
And so were you, thought Butter. ‘Is someone keeping you prisoner?’ he asked quietly.
She looked genuinely surprised. ‘No.’
‘Then why can’t anyone know you’ve been here? Aren’t Gil and Olive hungry too?’
She nodded, near tears. ‘But I can’t let them know I came here. I shouldn’t have come. It’s not safe!’
‘Why isn’t it safe?’ demanded Butter.
Tish gave a small sob and wiped her nose on her sleeve. ‘I can’t say. It would be terrible if I said. Mum said I was never, ever to tell, and Gil and Olive tell me all the time. I can’t let them know I was here.’ She picked up Woofer, now with a bulging stomach, and hugged him fiercely. ‘He was lying by his bowl and whining. And I didn’t have any food to put in it. Not even oysters today! Gil said the sea was too rough to go out on the rocks. And so I waited and I crept out. But I can’t tell! I can’t!’
‘Shhh. It’s all right,’ said Butter. Someone would hear her soon. He handed her the clean handkerchief Auntie Cake always made sure he had in the pocket of every garment he might put on, then poured her a big glass of milk. He tried to think as she drank it. Woofer sat at her feet and looked hopeful.
‘You know the rocks below the headland?’ he said casually, slipping Woofer another slice of lamb. ‘Near where I saw you all playing cricket?’
Tish nodded cautiously.
‘If I was to have a picnic lunch there I might accidentally leave some of my lunch behind.’
‘Oh,’ said Tish. She considered. ‘Tomorrow?’ she added hopefully.
Butter nodded.
‘Could you maybe leave sandwiches and . . . and . . . bananas?’
‘Do you like bananas?’
‘I only had them once,’ said Tish solemnly. ‘Bananas are wonderful.’
Butter wondered if he could risk going to the fruit bowl in the breakfast room to get a banana. But the noise might wake someone up.
‘I’ll try to leave a banana there tomorrow, as well as sandwiches.’ As long as Auntie Cake doesn’t make banana custard (erk!) again, or banana ice cream, he thought. ‘I could leave something by the rock every day till I go back to school.’
The Aunts would be suspicious if he had a picnic lunch every day. But Auntie Cake would happily pack him a picnic morning or afternoon tea — with bananas — that he could leave behind the rock.
I could even pretend to go down for a run after school during summer, he thought, and take a snack to leave on the beach. But in winter it was almost dark by the time he got home from school, especially after football training. The Aunts would never let him out after dark. And they’d be especially suspicious if he took food.
But there will be no need to leave food by winter time, he thought. Because suddenly he had a plan. And if his plan worked, he’d know where they were and there’d be no need to leave food by the rock again.
‘Thank you,’ said Tish, so gratefully he felt guilty. But I HAVE to know why they’re hiding, he told himself. He had to know she was safe. And she wasn’t safe because she was hungry.
But he felt even guiltier as he watched her slip out into the shadows, Woofer in her arms, again. He waited till she had almost vanished, then slid out into the darkness to follow her.
CHAPTER 12
The moon hung like a vast cheese above the beach. The waves sang a song s
o old no one remembered the words. The tough tussock grass on the headland was cold on his bare feet. Butter hadn’t dared risk going upstairs to put on shoes or slippers. The sand dunes still stored some of the sun’s heat but even so he shivered in the wind from the sea. Tish must be even colder than him in her thin dress.
Butter lay on his stomach on the dune as she crossed the beach. He watched her in the moonlight, a black shadow against the faint silver of the sand. He didn’t dare follow her further, in case she looked back. Maybe the others — or whoever she had temporarily escaped from — might see him too.
Woofer limped beside her, making Tish even easier to see as she ran across to the cliffs. Butter bit his lip. The cliffs were too shadowed to see her clearly. If she just vanished there he’d be no better off than before.
But she couldn’t just disappear! Maybe a boat was waiting for her . . . but a boat would be crushed against the cliffs. Why bring a boat near sharp rocks and surging waves and an undertow that could pull a small craft under when there was a shallow beach by the susso camp where a boat could be pulled up safely?
But there was no boat. And he could still just make out Tish, a faintly lighter shape against the cliffs. Woofer was even easier to see, white against the black, scampering from rock to rock about two yards up the cliff.
And then Woofer vanished. And seconds later, Tish did too, her small figure getting smaller and smaller till it was gone as well.
Butter sat back. That solved one mystery, he thought grimly. And tomorrow he’d solve more.
‘Is it all right if I take a picnic lunch with me down to the beach?’ he asked the Aunts casually at breakfast. Dad had left early.
‘Of course,’ sang Auntie Cake. ‘Some nice lamb sandwiches . . .’
‘Er . . . not lamb please,’ said Butter quickly, thinking of how little meat had been left on the saddle of lamb last night. ‘Cheese and salad?’
‘Of course,’ said Auntie Cake.
‘Vegemite and lettuce,’ squeaked Aunt Peculiar. ‘Full of vitamins.’ She wore a brown dress painted with minute white sugar crystals today.
The Ghost of Howlers Beach Page 5