The Ghost by the Billabong

by Jackie French

  And now Nicholas asked it too. A small part of her that had felt so warm before began to freeze.

  ‘No one heard. Or admitted they heard.’

  ‘What happened after that?’

  ‘I was sent to a juvenile detention centre. Not because of the pregnancy. Because I was uncontrollable.’ She grimaced. ‘They got that right, anyway. I am not controllable. Not by them. Not by anyone. The home was — interesting. Half the girls had been prostitutes, either full time or just now and then to get by. One had been raped by a bloke at her church, another by her father.’

  ‘But why were the girls there? Not the men who had attacked them?’

  She smiled grimly. ‘You don’t know how it works, do you? Whatever happens behind lace curtains can be ignored. If blokes bash their wives, fathers rape their kids, they say the kids are lying, or the wives. Never look behind the curtains. Once you start looking behind the curtains, who knows what you’ll see?’

  She shrugged. ‘It was worse for the girls who’d been betrayed by their families. At least Merv was no relation to me. Sara, the girl who’d been raped by her father since she was four years old, said that every day she had to face that her mum preferred respectability to her daughter. Or maybe she just didn’t want to do without Dad’s pay coming in. But the girls weren’t all victims.’ She smiled. ‘Andrea helped her brother steal from motel rooms at Surfers Paradise. They used fishing lines from the window. Andrea said they’d done really well, even bought a flat together, but then one night she slipped and broke her ankle and got caught. She was going back to it after she got out.’

  ‘Didn’t the counsellors there believe you? The teachers?’

  ‘Counsellors? Teachers? You’re joking. We had to work in the laundry twelve hours a day and were locked in the dorm for the other twelve, except for an hour’s exercise in the yard and half an hour for meals, and other jobs if they needed doing. Kitchen duty, garden duty, scrubbing, polishing. I am very, very good at polishing floors. Also at picking locks with a bottle of nail polish. When you’ve turned the lock you can use nail-polish remover to dissolve the evidence. Veronica showed me that.’

  ‘I’m amazed they kept you in there.’

  ‘They didn’t. We broke out after I’d been there three weeks. Me, Veronica, Andrea.’

  ‘Jed, is this all true?’

  She tried to keep her anger under control. ‘Why should I lie to you? I could have told you nothing. But that would have been a lie. Would you have been happier if I’d said it was a boy in my German class? We did it after the GPS sports carnival in the girls’ toilets?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘The police would have. But I couldn’t lie to them and I’m not lying to you now. I don’t lie. I just sometimes let people believe what they’d rather believe. But not telling someone something isn’t lying.’

  ‘Where is the baby now?’ he asked quietly. ‘Adopted?’

  ‘There was no baby.’

  ‘You mean you weren’t really pregnant?’

  ‘I was pregnant. Maybe there was a baby. I don’t know.’

  ‘Jed —’

  ‘I’m telling the truth! What do you call a baby that dies three months before it should be born? We hitchhiked down to Surfers to Andrea’s brother. He said Ronnie could stay, but I was too obvious, being pregnant. As soon as I went to a doctor or a hospital the police would find me, and if they found me they’d find Andrea. He didn’t tell the others that — they’d have stuck up for me, I think. Just said he was getting us all fish and chips and would I help him carry them, then dropped me on the highway with a twenty-dollar note and told me to beat it, he didn’t want the cops getting his sister again.’

  ‘What did you do then?’ His voice was queer.

  ‘Hitchhiked down to New South Wales. I . . . managed.’ She tried to push the memories back. The first time she’d pinched a dress off a clothesline. And a blanket from a dog’s basket on a veranda. She’d felt worse about that. The dog had even wagged its tail as she took its blanket. But it was a loved dog, well brushed. Its family would have given it another blanket . . .

  ‘I felt funny one day, but didn’t realise it was the baby coming. It was way too early. I woke up in the night, feeling cold and wet, and waves of pain.’ It had been under a bridge, outside a country town she’d never heard of. She had thought she had diarrhoea until the sun rose, and she saw that it was blood.

  More pain. She knew she had to get help, but the pain was too bad to stand up, and when she finally forced herself up, she had begun to black out.

  More pain and more pain, and no one came when she screamed for help. She had wondered sometimes what was worse: had there been no one nearby to hear her scream, or had someone heard, and decided that they didn’t want to ‘get involved’?

  More pain, and more pain, and at last there was a red wrinkled scrap of baby. She had cut the umbilical cord with her fruit knife and stared at the baby’s tiny, strangely old face — and knew deeply, certainly, that her gaze would never be returned. But she couldn’t accept it. Wouldn’t accept it.

  She made herself talk again. ‘I tried mouth-to-mouth resuscitation — they taught us that at school. I thought if I could get her to breathe, if I could get her to hospital . . .’ She stopped, remembering the small lips, warm from her body, getting colder, and colder still. Knowing it was hopeless, but still hoping.

  She’d spent an hour, maybe, on the road, trying to get a lift to town, to a hospital. Finally she’d realised she would have to wash her clothes clean of the blood before anyone would pick her up, but blood had kept coming down her legs. She could still feel it, woke in the night still feeling it, so cold and wet.

  ‘Jed?’

  And worse. Far worse. The thing she could never tell him. That mixed with anguish had been relief. She had not wanted to be pregnant; had hated the thought of Merv’s child inside her, at the same time as she loved her and wanted desperately to protect her, and all the more when she had seen her. A tiny person, not just ‘a baby’. Someone she could have hugged, and whose warmth she could have felt. Someone she would have loved, who would have loved her too.

  She managed a cracked whisper. ‘I wrapped the baby in one of my T-shirts and put her in my shoulder bag. I kept breathing into her, then walking, then breathing for her again. It took an hour maybe to get to the hospital, but it was too late. They took her from me. They wouldn’t even let me hold her. They said . . .’ She found the breath, gathered every shred of courage to repeat the words. ‘They said: “You’re not married, are you? Then good riddance.” There was one man who kept asking, “Did you try to get rid of it?” I told him it was her, not it, that I loved her, that I’d tried to make her live. It wasn’t my fault. But it was of course.’

  ‘Of course it wasn’t your fault!’

  ‘But it was! If I’d stayed in the home, they’d have got me to hospital as soon as I started bleeding. They might have been able to stop my going into labour, or kept her alive even though she was so premature. Maybe I’d never even have lost her if I had stayed there.’ At least at the home there’d been three meals a day. You didn’t have to scrounge for food, sleep on park benches, or in the bush. Some nights she’d been so hungry she’d chewed her fingernails just to feel she’d eaten. Could hunger make you lose a baby? She was pretty sure it could. And the cold from sleeping rough . . .

  ‘Jed? What happened then?’

  ‘They gave me antibiotics and some sort of operation, but nothing for the pain, then a policewoman came. She asked all these questions in case I’d, I dunno, hurt her on purpose. I gave a false name and address, and while she was checking the address I snuck out and ran.’

  ‘Then what?’ His voice was still strange.

  ‘I survived. Hitchhiked down to Melbourne to get as far away as possible, in case they were looking for me in Queensland. Andrea said the police don’t look beyond the state borders unless it’s for something really serious, and she probably knew.

  �
�I got jobs here and there, washing dishes. And then one day I saw the article about Tommy in the paper in a library. And I came here.’ She turned to him. ‘So that’s me. Jed Kelly, con artist. Small-time thief. Nothing anyone couldn’t afford. Only one thing per shop. Bag of rice under my shirt. Biscuits. Stock cubes or matches in my bra. You can make a good meal from rice and stock cubes and a cabbage.’

  ‘You shoplifted a cabbage?’

  ‘From back gardens,’ she said patiently. Even The Beasts weren’t big enough to hide a cabbage. ‘No one ever grows one cabbage. There’s always a row of them. They can spare the odd one.’

  She stood, unable to bear sitting next to him, unable even to look at his face. ‘If I bring the chair over here, do you think you can get in it? Or will we risk the bull ants by the swing?’

  ‘Are you going to tell Tommy and Matilda this?’

  ‘I’ll tell Tommy this afternoon. He knows some of it, anyway. Nancy said they’ve had investigators checking on me. At least now they’ll hear my side of it. Tommy can tell his wife if he wants to.’

  He didn’t move. ‘Jed, sit down again.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘So I can hug you.’

  ‘I don’t like being hugged.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. I want to hug you, anyway.’

  You couldn’t refuse a man who had no legs. Not a man who couldn’t follow you, grab you. A man who had less than she did, for at least she could put the past behind her, except perhaps for nightmares and a few daymares too, but he was stuck with his.

  She sat. He pulled her closer to him. She hiccupped, then found it was a sob, a hundred sobs, and he held her through those too, not awkward at all, or romantic. Finally the sobs became hiccups again. ‘I need a hanky.’

  ‘Here. I’ve got one.’ He pulled it out. ‘It’s crumpled, but not used.’

  ‘I don’t mind.’ She blew her nose. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘For crying?’

  ‘For . . . for not being . . .’ She tried to find the words. ‘New. Clean.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid.’ The insult was, for some reason, immensely reassuring. ‘None of that was your fault. You were brave, and you survived. You’re you, and that’s all that matters.’

  I am the girl who let her baby die, she thought, who failed the most important thing in my whole life, to keep my child living. Who didn’t know how desperately I wanted her to live, until it was too late. A baby, warm in my arms. Someone to hold, at last.

  She couldn’t tell him this. Nor would he understand that she was guilty, and always would be. But his words were a comfort nonetheless.

  ‘Do you want me to come with you while you visit Tommy?’ His tone was gentle. ‘The whole town knows the Thompsons’ solicitor has been down from Sydney,’ he added.

  ‘Does the whole town know what they found out?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘They think my mum’s name was Violet, not Rose. If it was Violet, then I’m not related to Tommy. But he still wants to see me. I’d love you to come too. You could keep his wife at bay.’

  ‘And if you scream, I can cry, “Unhand her, you dastardly ninety-year-old woman!”’

  ‘She’s not quite that old. Or maybe she is. She’s probably a hundred and fifty-four. A secret vampire, sucking the blood of the entire district and they don’t realise.’

  He hugged her again. ‘I’ll bring garlic. Except I doubt they have any in the kitchen. Do you think Nancy would stop to buy garlic?’

  ‘How about a sharpened stake?’ She reached for a twig and handed it to him.

  ‘Perfect,’ he said solemnly. ‘I can now protect you from geriatric vampires. Jed, will you come and live with me? When you’ve landed men on the moon?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘Good.’ He put the twig into his pocket. ‘Now we’d better face the vampire.’

  Jed stood, and brushed the debris from her dress. ‘Actually, she’s really a dragon. And come to think of it, she’s going to be in a good mood today.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  She managed a smile that hardly hurt at all. ‘I’ll let Nancy tell you that.’

  Chapter 44

  JED

  The Drinkwater garden smelled of fresh leaves after the rain, each one shining as if someone had painted it with nail vanish. Jed sat on the swing under the giant tree, idly swinging back and forth, Nicholas beside her, while Nancy and Michael went to tell his parents the news. They’d brought Matron Clancy with them too. Michael looked almost as stunned as Nancy, terror visibly warring with delight.

  A child meant so much to them, she thought, feeling the rain-free air against her face. No, not just a child, for they had children, nor did she think their love for Scarlett, Gordon and Janine and all the others would be diminished by the arrival of this baby. It was the joy of creating a new life that filled them now. She knew, because she had shared it.

  The first months of her pregnancy had been denial, then anger mixed with anguish. It had seemed impossible that five terrifying minutes could destroy her life, wrenching her from school, a home, friends . . . Except, she thought, it had not really been a home, nor had they truly been her friends. They had known the conventional part of herself that she allowed others to see.

  Only once had she shown her friends a small part of her reality, when Merv had hit her, leaving a bruise and cut on her cheekbone. He and Debbie had both been drunk, and Jed’s distaste had shown; he cursed her for being an uppity little madam, and Debbie had said, ‘Give it to her, Merv,’ and nodded her approval when he did.

  But the girls at school hadn’t believed her. She’d known it from their blank expressions; been sure of it when Sandra had taken her aside and said, ‘We’ve talked it over and we don’t believe you. Merv’s on the radio. They wouldn’t let someone who got drunk every night on the radio.’

  Merv dressed well. Looked good. Owned a car yard, which was what he advertised on the radio. He made money, which was why Debbie liked him. Why the police and magistrate believed in him. Smiling, smiling, smiling Merv, till the door was shut.

  What was Merv doing now? Still with Debbie? Had he raped someone else? More guilt if he had, because she had been unable to convince the police to stop him, but she didn’t think he’d rape strangers. He’d paid for her food, paid the rates on the house Debbie had inherited from Dad, and so she was his to do what he wanted with. He even told her she’d really wanted it, parading herself around the house. She thought he even made himself believe it. Merv probably never thought of himself as a rapist. But she hadn’t tried to lead him on, that time he’d seen her in just a towel was an accident . . .

  ‘Jed? You’re miles away.’

  ‘What?’ She stopped swinging and forced herself to smile at Nicholas. ‘Yes, I was. Sorry, I’m a bad companion. I’m back now.’

  ‘They’ve probably stopped dancing the Highland fling in there now. You could go in.’ As he spoke, the Dragon appeared from the veranda.

  ‘Please, do come in.’ Her voice was no more than polite, but Jed was surprised to see a glint of tears on her cheeks. The baby matters to her too, she thought. Someone to inherit her farm. Her own blood, not a foster child in a wheelchair or callipers.

  ‘Mr Brewster, I can ask a couple of the men to bring your chair up the steps.’

  ‘No, thank you, Mrs Thompson.’ He drew a book out of the bag that hung on the side of his chair. ‘I’ll stay here, if it’s all right with you.’

  ‘Of course.’ She smiled at him.

  ‘Never smile at a crocodile,’ whispered Jed, ‘or a dragon.’

  ‘If she bites, bite back,’ said Nicholas softly.

  ‘I intend to.’ She marched up the stairs, smiled sweetly at the Dragon, then climbed the staircase. Below she could hear the old woman asking Anita to take a morning-tea tray out to Mr Brewster in the garden and one up to Tommy’s room.

  Matron Clancy stood as Jed knocked and entered. She too looked like she had been crying. She bent and kis
sed Tommy’s cheek above the oxygen mask. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow. Behave yourself, you old reprobate.’ She left in a swish of starched skirts.

  ‘The joys of . . . dying,’ whispered Tommy, above the oxygen’s hiss. ‘She’d never . . . have spoken . . . to me like that . . . when I was . . . upright.’

  ‘Would you like me to tell her off?’

  He smiled up at her. ‘Not . . . today. She’s had . . . a shock. A . . . good shock, but she’s . . . wobbly . . . even if . . . she tried . . . not to show it.’

  ‘Nancy’s baby?’

  ‘Yes. She and Nancy . . . were in camp . . . together. Her own son . . . died . . . there . . . Her husband died on . . . a forced march . . . from one prison camp . . . to another. Perhaps . . . felt the loss too much . . . to marry again . . . or have another child.’

  So that was what lay behind Matron’s starch and kindness. ‘You’re a wise old man.’

  ‘Now it’s you . . . being impertinent.’ The smile robbed the words of anger. ‘Aren’t you going . . . to give . . . a kiss?’

  ‘Is that what I’m supposed to do? Sorry, I’ve never had a great-grandfather before.’ Would he object to the last word? She added warily, ‘I know the investigators have given you a report.’

  ‘I know . . . Yes, a kiss . . . please.’

  She bent hurriedly and kissed his cheek then straightened, glad she hadn’t made a mess of it. She sat in the chair Matron Clancy had vacated. ‘Will you tell me what the investigators found out?’

  ‘Of course.’ He looked at her with amusement, but there was concern in his smiling eyes as well. ‘That you . . . lived . . . in Brisbane. You haven’t . . . had . . . easy time of it.’

  The air seemed to freeze around her. So they had found out that already. How could she have been so stupid, boasting about her selective school? That must have led them to Brisbane State High, and Brisbane State High to Janet Skellowski, who was a long way from the person Jed Kelly was now.