Castaway

by Joanne Van Os

  They hovered outside the bathroom door until they heard the sound of splashing water.

  ‘Sounds like he knows what to do with a bath, anyway,’ said George.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Sam. ‘You stay here and keep an eye on him, and I’ll go and watch out in case Old Jock comes over.’

  The child seemed to take forever, and Sam was getting very nervous. He went to the bathroom and knocked on the door a couple of times, but a torrent of words was all the response he got. Sam waited, his heart pounding in his chest. What if Jaz and Uncle Mungo were to come back now? In his mind’s eye he could see the ute driving up the track, Uncle Mungo banging his way into the house because he’d forgotten something, and deciding to nip into the bathroom before he went out again. Sam began to sweat a little as the splashing continued on and on.

  He knocked on the door again. ‘Hurry up!’ he whispered urgently.

  Finally the door opened and the child stepped out, a happier look on his gleaming face. The matted, spiky hair was clean and not so spiky now, and George’s clothes were a pretty good fit. He had the wet towel and his dirty clothes in a bundle, which he handed to Sam.

  George looked into the bathroom, and whistled. ‘Wow, he leaves the bathroom a lot cleaner than we do!’

  There was still no sign of Jock, so Sam thought they’d chance giving the child some food in the kitchen. He sat him down at the table and filled a bowl with cereal and milk, and sprinkled some sugar on top. The child looked at the bowl and then at Sam and George.

  ‘Doesn’t he know what cornflakes are?’ said George.

  ‘I guess not. They probably don’t have them where he comes from.’ Sam picked up a spoon, and mimed eating from the bowl.

  The child looked warily at the bowl again, but he picked up his spoon and tasted the cereal. He appeared completely mystified as he began to chew, and then smiled at the boys, and dug in.

  ‘Hah!’ said George with satisfaction. ‘No one doesn’t like cornflakes!’

  The child ate another bowl of cereal and some bread and jam, and then he drank a large glass of milk. Sam and George watched as he devoured it all, and he grinned at them as though he was sharing a joke.

  ‘For a little bloke he can sure put it away!’ said George appreciatively. ‘He must have been really hungry before we found him, hey?’

  ‘I guess so,’ said Sam. ‘I wish he could tell us something. I wonder what language he speaks?’

  Just then they heard a door slam, and Old Jock’s voice calling out to them.

  ‘Oh no!’ hissed Sam. ‘Quick, go and keep him busy while I get the kid out the back door!’

  George disappeared immediately, and seconds later Sam could hear him asking the old man a question, trying to delay him. He motioned to the child to follow, and hurriedly led him through the back door and out across the yard towards the hay shed. They scuttled up the ladder and the child buried himself amongst the boxes again. Enormous green eyes stared up at Sam as he arranged an old blanket across the top to make a better hiding place.

  ‘Just stay quiet here for a bit longer, okay? We’ll think of something …’ He stopped as he saw fat tears spill out of the child’s eyes and roll down his cheeks. Sam squatted down beside him, and patted him on the shoulder awkwardly. It occurred to him that this child had probably lost his whole family, that maybe there were lots of reasons why he might be crying.

  ‘I don’t know where you’re from, or who you are, or what’s happened to you. You seem pretty small to have such big problems. But you’re safe – for now, anyway. If my dad was here …’ But at that, Sam’s own eyes blurred, and he stood up blinking furiously. Stepping over to the ladder, he turned to the child, placing his finger against his lips. ‘Just stay there, okay?’

  ‘Whew, that was close,’ George whispered to Sam when he came back inside the house. ‘I had to pretend to Old Jock that I was having a second breakfast. Now he reckons I’ve got worms!’

  Sam felt completely hopeless. What was he doing? How did he think he could keep a child hidden like this? All he knew was, there was no way he could let this child be taken away to a prison, like those other kids. He looked up at his brother. ‘C’mon, we’re supposed to be cleaning out the guinea pig cage, and I said we’d go round the horse paddock fence again, so we better hurry up.’

  Before they left, they brought some more food up to the loft, with a fresh bottle of water and some fruit, and tried to indicate to the child that they would come back later. The child smiled and nodded, pretending to hide under the blankets as if to show them he knew what to do.

  ‘He’s pretty smart, really, considering he doesn’t speak English. He seems to know what we mean most of the time,’ said George as they climbed down again.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Sam, ‘but I bet he’s pretty scared. C’mon, hurry up or Uncle Mungo’ll beat us home.’

  Uncle Mungo did beat them back to the house. Sam and George arrived home on the quad runner from checking the horse paddock to find the old work ute parked beside the hay shed. Sam looked at George and bit his lip. ‘Maybe he’s gone straight into the house?’ said George hopefully. They drove the bike into the shed and stopped at the bottom of the ladder.

  ‘Well, well, what have we here?’ Uncle Mungo’s loud voice echoed off the tin roof high above them. Sam and George looked at each other in horror, and scrambled up the ladder as fast as they could.

  ‘Uncle Mungo –’ Sam started to say when he reached the loft platform. Uncle Mungo was standing looking about him, but as far as Sam could tell, the child was out of sight.

  ‘So this is where you guys get to when you want to avoid some work, huh?’ He chuckled a bit, and poked at the plate with orange peel and an apple core on a hay bale. ‘You blokes are a bit old for picnics and cubby-houses, aren’t ya?’

  Sam was thinking fast. ‘Yeah, well, it’s our – our shed, you know?’

  ‘That’s right,’ chimed in his brother. ‘We often come up here with some food and hang out. We brought some lunch up here before we went out to the horse paddock. It’s fun.’

  Sam’s heart almost stopped. Right behind his uncle’s big booted foot was a small bare one poking out of the hay. The child must have been caught off guard when Uncle Mungo climbed up the ladder. George noticed it too, and he pointed up at the roof, saying, ‘See the nests up the top? Some swallows nested there last season,’ and while his uncle craned his neck up to see, Sam nudged some hay over the exposed foot.

  Uncle Mungo looked around again and grinned. ‘Yeah, well, all Australian boys need a shed, they say. Heh heh, good on ya.’ And he climbed down the ladder, the platform shaking precariously with his weight.

  ‘I don’t think I can take much more of this!’ said George once Uncle Mungo was out of earshot. ‘We’re gunna have to think of something soon, or he’s gunna find out about the kid for sure.’

  Sam sat down and tapped the foot with his fingers. ‘It’s safe now, c’mon.’ A hay-flecked head and two frightened eyes peered out, and then the child scrambled from beneath the blanket. He sat on the floor looking terrified and exhausted. The three of them stared at each other, not knowing what to say.

  Tess and Darcy arrived just before lunch the next day. Sam and George heard the beep of a horn, and raced out to the verandah to see Aunty Lou’s car pulling up outside the gate. Jock appeared next to them, a grin on his leathery old face.

  ‘Blimey, I better go find them hobble straps. Too many young’uns at Brumby Plains now – us old folks’re outnumbered! G’day, Lou-Lou, nice ter see ya again.’

  Tess ran up the steps and gave the old man a hug. He shook hands with Darcy and received several hugs and kisses from Aunty Lou, who was resplendent in bright green cotton trousers and an equally bright pink and red shirt which clashed violently with the purple-red hair. Uncle Mungo cautiously poked his nose out of the door, spotted Aunty Lou too late and was given a bear hug and an enthusiastic hello. He looked a bit stunned and blinked a few times as Aunty Lou chattered away at him
about the trip out to the station.

  ‘Hey, guys … have you heard from your dad?’ Tess asked carefully.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Sam. ‘He’s a bit better, but Mum said we won’t know anything for a while yet.’

  They unloaded the car while Aunty Lou chatted to Old Jock on the verandah. ‘Careful of the esky, boys!’ she called as George and Darcy manhandled it out of the back. ‘It’s got some special treats from the markets inside. We’ll have them for lunch.’

  As soon as Tess and Darcy’s bags – and a suspiciously bulgy pillowcase – were stowed away, Sam jerked his head at the others and said, ‘C’mon, let’s go down to the horses.’

  They trooped over to the horse paddock, which was far enough from the house for Sam to feel safe from being overheard, and climbed through the fence.

  ‘What’s up?’ said Darcy. ‘Aren’t we going to have lunch now? I’m starving. We brought tom yum soup and a heap of satays and stuff,’ he said with relish, and George’s face lit up.

  ‘Soon, but first George and I have got something to tell you,’ answered Sam.

  ‘It’s not your dad …?’ ventured Tess, with a worried look.

  ‘No, it’s something else altogether. You know how we told you we found a wrecked boat at Deception Point the other day?’ The twins nodded. ‘Well, when George and I went back there the day before yesterday to fix the fence, we found a kid.’

  Tess and Darcy looked completely puzzled, until Tess said, ‘A kid? You mean you found someone? What, from the wreck?’

  ‘Yeah, at least we guess so,’ said George. ‘I mean, he looks a bit foreign, and he can’t speak any English. And he eats a lot!’

  ‘Well if eating a lot makes him foreign, you must be from the moon, George,’ said Sam. ‘We found him lying on the beach, right beside the water –’

  ‘And just in time,’ broke in George, ‘because that humungous old croc, the one we told you about from the rookery? He was just about to snatch the kid from the beach but we frightened him away. Sam sconed him with a big rock and he took off!’

  Tess shook her head in disbelief. ‘Wow. What did Uncle Mungo say?’ she said, remembering the comments he had made a few nights earlier about illegal immigrants. ‘He must have been really cross!’

  ‘Uncle Mungo doesn’t know about it. We’re not telling him.’ Sam frowned and looked away. His mare Holly had come up to them, and she pushed her nose into his back and demanded a pat. He turned towards her and rubbed her neck absently.

  Tess looked at him curiously. ‘So where’s this kid now then?’

  ‘We hid him up in the hay loft – you know, where we used to have our old cubbyhouse. We brought him inside to have a bath yesterday while everyone was out of the house,’ George said in his usual rush of words, ‘and then we gave him cornflakes. He didn’t know what they were!’

  Tess and Darcy pondered all this for a moment, then Darcy said, ‘Well, what are you going to do with him? You have to tell someone, don’t you?’

  ‘Yeah, we know. But not Uncle Mungo,’ said Sam vehemently. ‘He’ll either shoot him –’

  ‘Sam! He would not!’ Tess was shocked.

  ‘– or he’ll call in the Immigration people and they’ll lock him up in a detention centre somewhere, like those kids we saw on tv at your place. He’s just a little kid. We can’t let that happen to him.’

  ‘Hey, what about Charles?’ said Darcy. ‘He’s a good bloke!’

  ‘Yeah, I thought of that, but he works for Customs now. He was here looking for illegal boats the day …’ Sam’s voice faltered, but they knew he meant the day that Mac was hurt so badly. He was suddenly a lot more interested in Holly, and scratched her ears thoroughly.

  ‘Yes,’ said Tess hurriedly filling in the silence. ‘He couldn’t do anything, not when he’s working for them. He would have to report it. We need to think of something else.’ She frowned. ‘Mum’s got this friend who belongs to Amnesty International. You know, that mob who try and get people out of prison when they’re locked up because of politics, not because they’re criminals or anything? Maybe we could ask her about it.’

  Darcy disagreed. ‘Wanda’s a total fruit-loop. She’d want to hold a cake stall to raise money and then picket Parliament House and hug everyone in sight.’

  George laughed out loud, but Tess nodded. ‘Yeah, you’re right. She’s a bit nutty. But they won’t all be like Wanda. It was on the news again last night, about the refugees who landed last week. There’s some lawyer in town who’s representing them. Maybe we could talk to him?’

  Just then they heard Jaz calling them to come in and eat while the food was still hot.

  ‘Can we go and meet this kid after lunch?’ asked Tess.

  ‘Yeah – no one goes to the hay shed much at the moment. We’re not feeding any buffaloes in the yards or anything,’ said Sam.

  He gave Holly a final pat, and they turned to go back up to the house.

  Lunch was delicious. Aunty Lou and Jaz had reheated the food from the market stalls, and the spicy aromas of tom yum soup, green chicken curry, juicy beef satays and fragrant jasmine rice filled the dining room. Even Old Jock, who usually didn’t go in for that ‘fancy foreign muck’, as he called it, tried some, and decided the beef satays were almost civilised food.

  Jaz talked animatedly about what she’d seen down at the Point, and Uncle Mungo boomed his opinions just as loudly as ever about illegal immigrants until he and Aunty Lou almost had a heated argument across the table. George and Darcy competed for who could eat the most the fastest until Darcy had a choking fit and Aunty Lou had to stop arguing with Uncle Mungo and administer a life-saving thump to her son’s back.

  When lunch was over, Uncle Mungo and Old Jock went off to check some watering points and troughs in the floodplain paddock in preparation for moving the buffaloes down there. It hadn’t rained since Mac’s accident, so Uncle Mungo had decided they should go ahead with his plans for moving the stock. After giving many instructions to Tess and Darcy, and many breath-squeezing hugs to Sam and George, Aunty Lou finally waved goodbye and drove off back to town.

  As they watched the car disappear around a bend in the road, Jaz said, ‘What are you guys going to do now? Lou brought the mail bag out and your next term’s assignments are in it, so I’m going to go through your new work. And I’ve got a few letters to read, so I might disappear over to my room for a couple of hours. Mungo and Jock won’t be back till dinner time. Sing out if you need me, okay?’

  They went back inside the house. ‘Let’s take some of the rice and curry up to him,’ said Sam. ‘He might like that.’

  The child was well hidden as usual, and it wasn’t until Sam called out softly that a little face showed around the corner of a box. He looked alarmed when two extra heads appeared over the platform, but relaxed when it was obvious that Tess and Darcy were children too. They all sat down on the hay bales and stared at each other. The child studied Darcy and Tess cautiously, then suddenly rushed over to Tess and grabbed her hand, talking excitedly.

  ‘Hey, Tess, I think he likes you!’ said George with great amusement.

  The child touched Tess’s hair, which was pinned back with a decorative clip and hung in a plait down her back. He pointed at Tess, then pointed at himself several times, and at Tess’s hair.

  Tess stared into the child’s face, and then suddenly laughed out loud. ‘You dorks, this kid’s not a boy, he’s a girl!’

  Sam, George and Darcy stared. ‘Are you sure?’ said Sam, turning red. ‘No wonder he nearly decked me when I tried to help him take his clothes off!’

  ‘What’s your name?’ asked Tess, looking intently at the child. She pointed to herself and said, ‘Tess,’ and then named each of the others in turn.

  The child’s face lit up in understanding, and she touched herself on the chest and said clearly, ‘Kalila’. She smiled at them, and sat close to Tess as she repeated each of their names until she had it right. ‘Sem, Chorch, Duh-ssy, Tess.’ Pointing to herself ag
ain she said very clearly, ‘Kah-lee-lah,’ and then, to everyone’s absolute amazement, Kalila said, ‘I – I speak small English.’

  Sam’s mouth fell open, and George’s eyes nearly popped out of his head. ‘Why didn’t you say so before?’ said George. ‘It would have been a bit easier!’

  ‘I sorry. I frighten everything. Forget words.’ She paused for a moment, looking wistful, and then went on haltingly: ‘My father say not speak English if not safe. I not know is safe. But safe now.’ And she smiled at them, particularly at Tess. They all started to ask questions at once, but Sam held his hands up. ‘Whoa, whoa, one at a time, and slowly. You heard her say her English isn’t that great.’ He went first.

  ‘Okay, where do you come from?’

  ‘I belong Afghanistan. But come from Pakistan, refugee camp. Stay Pakistan little while, then run away.’

  ‘How did you get here?’ asked George. ‘Were you in that boat that got wrecked on the reef?’

  ‘Boat, yes. Come in boat, from Indo – Indoneesi … Four boat. Bad men chase us, shoot my boat, all people in water. People save me. I not see father.’ And then the tears fell unchecked.

  Tess put her arms around her and hugged her till she stopped sobbing. The child took a deep breath and went on. ‘Very great storm, break boat, people all die. Only me.’ She sniffed.

  Tess frowned. ‘That news we saw the other night said that two boats came ashore near Darwin. Maybe her parents are on those boats?’

  ‘Wow, I wonder what happened. What does she mean, “bad men come after us”?’ said Darcy.

  ‘Dunno, but it sounds pretty terrible,’ said Sam.

  Kalila was listening intently, trying to understand the conversation. ‘Bad men want kill father. Chase us. Shoot boat. Break boat. People all fall in water, and bad men go away. I not know my father alive.’