The Ghost of Howlers Beach

by Jackie French

  ‘Andrews!’ Dr O’Bryan stared. ‘You’re not Toby Andrews’ daughter?’

  Olive nodded.

  ‘But Toby was my best friend at school when I was about your age! He used to stay here sometimes in the holidays. We must have played cricket on that beach a thousand times. The cove was our secret hideout . . .’ He stopped suddenly and looked more closely at Olive and Tish. Olive met his eyes defiantly.

  ‘Where is he now?’ he asked quietly. ‘Why didn’t he come for help last night? Why weren’t your parents at the shack?’

  ‘Because they’re dead,’ said Olive dully. ‘Dad built our home and Tish and Gil and I have lived there all our lives.’

  Dr O’Bryan looked at her with shock, and something else that Butter couldn’t understand, just as Jenkins appeared at the living room door.

  Aunt Peculiar stood up. ‘Jenkins, could we have tea here, please? And milk for the young ones and more toast, crumpets, whatever Cookie can rustle up.’

  ‘Yes, Miss Petunia,’ said Jenkins.

  ‘Snerfle,’ said Woofer, intuiting Jenkins was heading for the kitchen and limping after him as if he was his new best friend.

  ‘I’ll go and change and tell the others.’ Aunt Peculiar kissed Tish’s head, then Olive’s and gave Butter a quick hug. ‘Where there’s life there’s hope, my dear.’ She vanished out the doorway.

  CHAPTER 22

  Dr O’Bryan laid his head back in the armchair. He seemed to be dozing. Butter realised he had probably sat with Gil all night, napping now and then, making sure that if there was a crisis he’d be there for the boy.

  Jenkins quietly brought in a tray, with Esmé following with another. Silver teapot, sugar basin, milk jug, three glasses of milk, a tower of buttered toast, dishes of plum jam, apricot jam, blackberry and apple jelly and some of yesterday’s date scones, warmed up, the butter melting into them.

  Olive handed Tish a scone, then took one herself. ‘Mum used to make these,’ she said.

  Dr O’Bryan blinked. ‘What? Sorry, I must have dozed off.’ He poured himself a cup of tea then drank it down thirstily. ‘Did Elephant explain about quarantine? Most children are exposed young. But if you’ve lived shut away in the cove most of the time you would have had less chance to catch it.’

  ‘Except for Gil,’ said Olive. ‘Since Mum died he’s been going out to sell fish most days. He gives the money to friends in the camp to buy bread and other things for us.’

  ‘That might explain it. Young children and . . .’ Dr O’Bryan’s voice cracked ‘. . . pregnant women . . . are most likely to catch polio. I’ve sent a nurse down to the camp to warn everyone there to look out for symptoms and to see if anyone else is sick.’ He studied Olive’s face again. Why was he looking at her like that? wondered Butter.

  Maybe . . . maybe he could convince Dad to find another place for Olive and Tish to hide, and Gil too if . . . when . . . he got better. Especially as Dad had been friends with their father . . .

  Olive met his father’s gaze. ‘Please, if you were my father’s friend — let us vanish after we’ve been through the quarantine time. Let Gil vanish too. Don’t tell the hospital what his surname is either.’

  ‘But if Gil can’t walk . . .’ began Butter, then stopped at seeing the expression on Olive’s face. She’d get her brother to safety even if she had to carry him, Butter realised. Or steal a wheelbarrow. But where could they go?

  And how could he help them? Especially as he didn’t even know why they had to stay a secret. Suddenly he realised his father hadn’t asked why Tish, Olive and Gil needed to vanish. He simply looked at them in shock and pain.

  He knows, thought Butter, just as Olive said, ‘If you used to be Dad’s friend you know what will happen to us when the authorities find us.’ She looked unflinchingly at Dr O’Bryan. ‘They’ll send me to be a slave all my life in someone’s house, to sleep in a shed, to eat bread and dripping on the doorstep, never to be allowed to leave or even visit family without permission. If Gil is strong enough they’ll send him to work for a farmer and never get his wages. They’ll send Tish to be whipped and starved in a special orphanage till she is old enough to slave too. We will probably never even see each other again.’

  Butter stared. ‘But . . . but why? Things like that don’t happen here! People can’t do that!’

  ‘Yes, they can,’ said Olive, her voice like stone. ‘They can if they’re the government. The government did all that to Mum and to my uncle too, till he enlisted. He died on his first day on the Somme. You know why the government can do those things to us, don’t you?’ she asked Dr O’Bryan. ‘Did you meet my mother?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Dr O’Bryan.

  ‘But I bet you weren’t at Dad and Mum’s wedding,’ said Olive bitterly.

  ‘No, I wasn’t.’

  ‘I don’t understand!’ cried Butter. ‘How can anyone take you away, make you slaves, stop you seeing each other? We don’t HAVE slaves in Australia.’

  ‘Yes, we do. You just don’t realise. My mum was Aboriginal,’ said Olive expressionlessly. ‘She had a white father and a black mother, so she and her twin brother were taken away and put in a home when they were only two years old.’

  She looked at the faces around the room. ‘If we were white, or people think we are, we’ll be safe when Gil turns sixteen. He could take us out of an orphanage, and I could leave any job where they treated me badly. We look white enough to pass as tanned, as long as no one knows who we really are.’

  Butter looked at her dark plaits, her tanned skin. He had never even thought she was Aboriginal. But he had never met any Aboriginal people either. He’d just assumed they’d be . . . different. And much darker and use boomerangs and play didgeridoos.

  ‘But even if we look white, we’re not,’ said Olive softly. ‘Not to the authorities. Once they find out we are Aboriginal they can make us do what they want our whole lives, tell us where we have to live and stop us leaving if things are bad. Even if we earn any money they will take it and “look after it” for us, so we can never use it. If Gil doesn’t live . . .’ She stopped, her face like stone, then stood up, holding Tish’s hand. ‘Excuse me. I’d like to get dressed now.’

  Tish gulped her glass of milk, then grabbed another two scones as Olive turned to go out of the room.

  They’re going to escape, Butter realised. Unless they were locked in their rooms they’d run away — and Olive would probably find a way to get out even if they were locked in. But where could they go, now their home was no longer a secret?

  He had never thought, had only vaguely realised, that kids who didn’t have family to look after them were taken to orphanages. Everyone knew those places could be bad. But if the kids were Aboriginal . . .

  He focused on the room and realised Aunt Elephant was standing like a vast wall in the doorway. Auntie Cake stood next to her, her arms folded, with Aunt Peculiar in front of them in her green and red caterpillar dress.

  ‘Sit down. No one is going anywhere till this is sorted,’ squeaked Aunt Peculiar. But her tone was more kindly than the words.

  ‘No one is going to any orphanage,’ cried Auntie Cake.

  Aunt Elephant glared at Dr O’Bryan. ‘Toby was a lovely boy. Did you really give up your best friend because he married an Aboriginal woman?’

  ‘No,’ said Dr O’Bryan, his face touched with weariness and anguish. ‘I didn’t even know they married. Delilah was a maid in your grandparents’ house,’ he added to Olive. ‘Just a kid, like we were, when she was sent there. I knew your dad liked her a lot. I even knew he wanted to marry her. I . . . I tried to persuade him not to. Not because I didn’t like her,’ he added quickly. ‘Your mother was a wonderful woman. But I knew how hard their lives would be — how hard it would be for their children.’ He shook his head. ‘I think your parents must have married quietly, not told anyone.’

  Butter stared at his father. ‘But he lived just down the headland in a shack made of driftwood! Why didn’t he ask you for help?’
/>
  ‘I . . . I don’t know. I’m ashamed he felt he couldn’t.’

  ‘But you would have helped him, wouldn’t you? You were his friend!’

  ‘Of course. I’m ashamed that Delilah didn’t know I’d help her too, and her children.’ Dr O’Bryan sat very still, gazing at the floor. ‘I failed Toby, didn’t I?’ he said quietly. ‘I failed all of you.’ He looked at Butter. ‘Just like I failed your mother when I let her die. A useless father who couldn’t even . . .’ His voice broke again. He stood suddenly and strode from the room.

  CHAPTER 23

  For a moment Butter thought his father was heading for the study. Instead, he stumbled up the stairs. To his bedroom? But he climbed one set of stairs after another, till he reached the small curved staircase leading to the battlements. Butter raced after him. ‘Dad!’ he yelled.

  His father didn’t even turn around.

  Butter was out of breath when he reached the door to the battlements. He opened it and peered out, terrified that Dad might be standing on the edge, about to leap like all those businessmen did when they went broke, unable to face life once they were no longer rich. But instead, Dr O’Bryan was sitting on a stone bench that faced the sea, his head in his hands, sobbing.

  ‘Dad?’

  His father looked up, his eyes red with tiredness and tears. A year of tears, thought Butter. He had never seen Dad cry even when Mum died. But the tears must have been there.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ His father’s words were almost lost in the wind. ‘You must despise me. I should have saved her! Maybe if I’d diagnosed her illness as polio earlier . . .’

  ‘What could you have done even if you had?’ asked Butter. ‘She . . . she was in an iron lung to help her breathe. You said there was nothing else that could help. There’s no cure for polio.’

  ‘I should have been able to do something! All my years of training and I was helpless . . .’ Dr O’Bryan shook his head. ‘You don’t understand. I didn’t even get to the War in time. And then in Albany, when our ship turned back, there was nothing I could do for the soldiers who came home with influenza. Even my best friend didn’t trust me to help him or his family. They were in that little hut in the cove so near to us, yet he never even came to ask for help.’

  ‘Maybe he did trust you,’ said Butter quietly. ‘He built his home on your land. He trusted that you wouldn’t turn them away if you found out.’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘Olive said her dad couldn’t face seeing anyone. He was scarred and twisted from injuries he got in the War. Her mum was the one who took his paintings to be sold. Maybe she didn’t even know you lived here. She never came here, did she?’

  Dr O’Bryan shook his head. ‘Delilah only had one afternoon off a fortnight. And your grandfather was living here back then — he was a good man in many ways, Butter. But he wouldn’t have welcomed her.’

  ‘So Mr Andrews wouldn’t have known Grandpa had died, if he was away at the War. He probably didn’t even know you’d come back here either. Olive said her dad never left the cove, except to get the susso rations for a little while, and that was only with other men from the camp. But maybe if he had lived, he’d have come up here one day to find you.’

  Butter thought of the cricket match he’d longed to join, the first day he’d seen Olive, Tish and Gil. ‘Maybe he hoped you’d see them playing cricket down on the beach when you visited Grandpa, and walk down to meet them, as he couldn’t come to you.’

  Dad and I have never played cricket on the beach together, he thought. Dad had been so busy setting up his practice and writing articles. And when Mum died he seemed further away than ever.

  ‘I think Mr Andrews was happy, despite the nightmares,’ said Butter quietly. ‘I think all he wanted after the War was in that cove: his family and his paintings and the sea.’

  ‘I wouldn’t blame you for hating me,’ whispered Dr O’Bryan.

  ‘I don’t hate you! You’re my dad!’

  ‘Even though I let your mother die?’

  Butter looked at him in horror. ‘Dad! I never thought that! Never!’ And suddenly he was hugging Dad, and Dad was hugging him back . . .

  And that was where Aunt Elephant found them, up in the wind on the battlements. She stared at them, hands on her hips for a moment, then said, ‘So this is where you’ve got to, you men. Come on down. There are things we need to sort out. Men,’ she muttered, as she bent her head to go into the narrow staircase. ‘Always getting into a muddle. Good thing the world has women to sort them out.’

  CHAPTER 24

  Auntie Cake and Aunt Peculiar sat in two armchairs. Aunt Elephant joined them in the third, the extra big one built just for her. Olive and Tish sat on the sofa again. Jenkins must have brought in another tray because now there was a vast pile of crumpets and honey, more toast, some boiled eggs, and Tish had a sticky chin and fingers. Woofer sat at her feet, looking sticky about the mouth too.

  ‘Sit,’ squeaked Aunt Peculiar to Dr O’Bryan and Butter, as if they were dogs too.

  Butter sat on the sofa by the window. His father sat next to him. Dr O’Bryan hesitated, then placed his arm around his son.

  Auntie Cake looked at the pair of them. ‘Life goes on, Pongo. The best gift we can give those we’ve loved and lost is to be happy. It’s your job to help your son be happy, too.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Dr O’Bryan quietly.

  ‘Well, that takes care of one problem. As for the next,’ Auntie Cake turned to Olive. ‘No one is going to take you anywhere.’

  ‘But the authorities can take them away!’ cried Butter.

  ‘Not if they have guardians,’ sang Auntie Cake.

  ‘Such as us,’ squeaked Aunt Peculiar.

  Auntie Cake smiled. ‘Elephant and Peculiar and I will be guardians for the three of you. You two girls and your brother,’ she said firmly, ‘because he is going to recover. We’ve had too many losses on this headland. It has to stop.’ She looked so ferocious that Butter thought even polio would be intimidated.

  ‘And you will all live here,’ boomed Aunt Elephant. ‘There’s plenty of room.’ Her face softened. ‘I always wanted nieces. And now we’ll have two of them.’

  ‘And another nephew,’ trilled Auntie Cake happily. ‘A growing boy who’ll need lots of good feeding to get better.’

  ‘We let the War overcome us,’ squeaked Aunt Peculiar. ‘We looked at all the big and terrible things we could do nothing about. Somehow we lost sight of the small things we can do. Like getting a school bus to take the children at the susso camp to school.’ She shook her head. ‘My paintings were talking to me all the time. Look at the little things, Peculiar, they were saying. Lots of little things add up to big things. If enough people sort out the little things then slowly they solve the big problems too.’

  ‘You can open a free medical clinic down at the camp an afternoon a week,’ Aunt Elephant informed Dr O’Bryan.

  ‘Can I?’ replied Dr O’Bryan. He blinked. ‘Of course I can. With a nurse at the clinic the rest of the week.’

  ‘And we will make stew,’ crooned Auntie Cake happily. ‘Twice a week in the big copper, enough for everyone in the camp who wants it. It will be very good stew. Beef one day and mutton the next, and roast chickens at Christmas and for birthdays. Big Bob can build a bigger chook pen. And we’ll make pies and cakes. Fifty families? Cookie and I can easily make enough pies and stew for fifty families.’

  Dr O’Bryan looked stunned. Olive and Tish looked dazed too as he turned to them.

  ‘Is this what you’d like?’ he asked them quietly. ‘You don’t have to live here. You don’t even have to have my sisters as your guardians.’ He glanced over at Auntie Cake, Aunt Elephant and Aunt Peculiar. ‘Though they are actually very nice, even if they are bossy. No matter what, I’ll make sure you’re not taken into care.’

  Olive said nothing. It seemed too big for her to take in. She’s only ever known the cove, the susso camp and the beach, thought Butter. How can she make a decision abou
t this?

  Olive met his eyes. He nodded, then smiled at her tentatively. Suddenly she relaxed. ‘All right,’ she said.

  ‘Can we keep our home?’ asked Tish. She seemed to have grasped the essentials even before Olive, perhaps because she didn’t realise how much change this might mean. ‘Not to sleep in.’ She looked around the living room. ‘It’s warm and soft in here and the wind can’t get in. But to visit whenever we want to?’

  ‘Every day, if you like,’ said Dr O’Bryan, his voice suddenly stronger.

  ‘And I can go to school?’ asked Olive, her voice filled with sudden incredulous joy.

  ‘That is something you won’t have any choice about,’ rumbled Aunt Elephant. ‘All of you will go to school.’

  ‘And we can have fruitcake every day and bones for Woofer and cheese and salad sandwiches and bananas?’ asked Tish.

  Auntie Cake laughed. ‘If you like. But you might like bread and butter pudding and meringues and jam tarts and roly-poly puddings too. Not to mention steak and kidney pie and stuffed roast shoulder of mutton with my special gravy and roast potatoes . . .’

  ‘The things we can do . . .’ said Dr O’Bryan softly. ‘Instead of focusing on what we can’t. There is so much we can do . . .’

  ‘Snerfle,’ agreed Woofer, scratching his ear with his hind leg and falling over again. He considered, then remembered to scratch with his front paw instead.

  ‘Beginning with giving that dog another bath,’ squeaked Aunt Peculiar. ‘And flea powder.’

  ‘Then a proper breakfast,’ began Auntie Cake, just as the telephone rang.

  ‘Gil,’ whispered Olive, her face losing its colour again. They waited as Dr O’Bryan went to the hall to answer it, sitting quietly so they could hear what he said.

  ‘Hello, Dr O’Bryan speaking. Ah, right, I see.’

  But what does he see? thought Butter anxiously. But his dad was still speaking.