Matilda looked at them critically. ‘No good at all, especially with stockings. I’ll call Lee’s Emporium. They’ll have something appropriate in your size. I’ll leave the package under the white cane chair on the veranda. You can slip the shoes on when you arrive.’
‘I . . . thank you.’
‘I’ll do whatever it takes to make Tommy happy.’ The old woman’s tone was crisp. ‘Let’s call Nancy now. She can drop you here on her way to the church, so you can have some time with my husband before the wedding guests arrive. Moira — Matron Clancy — can bring Nicholas. I am sure you can amuse yourselves till we all get back.’
‘Yes, Mrs Thompson.’
‘Playing the obedient schoolgirl? I can see right through you, you know.’
‘I suspect you can,’ said Jed.
To her surprise the Dragon smiled. ‘The view isn’t all that bad,’ she said.
Chapter 46
JED
3 MAY 1969
Nicholas looked handsome, sitting across the white-clad table from her, dressed in a dark suit, his blond hair, dark eyes. Even his skin’s memory of pain gave his face depth and distinction. Far too handsome to be interested in Jed Kelly.
She had hoped his face would light up when he saw her in the dress, arms, neck, legs exposed, The Beasts looking, for the first time, as if they belonged to her small body, not Marilyn Monroe’s curvy one, in this glorious dress that shimmered in a thousand different colours under the swaying marquee lights. But all Nicholas said as she came through the garden towards him was, ‘You look very nice,’ then wheeled himself over to the drinks table to get champagne for him, orange juice for her.
She wished he wasn’t drinking champagne. She hated the smell of alcohol. Hated the way people’s lips grew loose when they’d had too much to drink, the hint of spittle, the too-liquid laughter, the spilling out of too many words.
But Nicholas hadn’t drunk more than a glassful. Nor had he spoken, once the crowd came back from the church. He had eaten silently, replying in monosyllables to the woman seated on the other side of him, till she had turned back to their other neighbours.
A familiar face nodded to her across the marquee. For a moment she wondered who it was, then recognised Raincloud from the shop, still in his ponytail, but now in a white Nehru jacket and dark trousers, looking not too different from the other young men around them.
She gave him the smallest nod possible back, hoping he wouldn’t ask her to dance later. She wished she hadn’t come. The gorgeous dress had seduced her into thinking she might enjoy this.
The laughter was too loud, all around her. Most of the men had switched back to beer, after the toasts, the women with shandies or Brandivino and lemonade, fruit punch with cold tea and Pimm’s or sweet Porphyry Pearl. The plates with the remnants of chicken Kiev or crown roast of lamb, the sticky bowls that had held pavlova with strawberries and passionfruit and the unfamiliar new kiwi fruit, had been removed.
Matron Clancy went over and said something quietly to Nicholas. He nodded. ‘See you in about ten minutes,’ he said, loud enough for Jed to hear. She looked at him enquiringly as the matron headed out the marquee door.
‘She’s going to say good night to Tommy and then head back to River View. She asked if I’d like a lift.’
‘I thought you were coming back to Overflow with me and Nancy.’
‘I’m tired. Give you a chance to study in peace tomorrow without me too.’
She wanted to say that she managed a lot of study in the nights after work, even in the car on the journey back and forth to the tracking station. That she longed to spend time with him, wanted desperately for him to long to spend time with her.
Which, so very obviously, he didn’t.
The members of the string quartet took their places again. It must be time for the bridal waltz, for the evening’s dancing to begin. She found Raincloud’s gaze on her again. He would ask her to dance, she knew, perhaps to taunt the man next to her who could not dance, or maybe, just because he wanted to, and did not realise — or care — how much that might hurt Nicholas.
Was that why Nicholas wanted to leave, so he didn’t have to watch a dance floor where he could no longer join in? Where she either kept refusing offers to dance or didn’t dance at all? But he did look exhausted, his eyes shadowed. Battered, perhaps, by so many people and so much noise, after the quiet of hospitals and River View of the past few years.
His arms were so strong it was easy to forget that he was still recovering from surgery.
‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked you to come.’
‘It’s all right.’ He didn’t try to hide the fact that the evening had been awkward, boring, even unpleasant. ‘See you next weekend.’
She felt part guilt, part desolation. ‘I’ll come to the car park with you and say goodbye.’
‘No need. It’s level all the way. I can manage.’
‘I’d like to come.’
She followed the wheelchair out of the marquee, then walked beside him through the shadowed garden, the fairy lights glinting steadfastly as no star or glowworm had ever managed. The driveway was lined with cars to the gates and spilling out beyond, but the van was near the front door.
She felt a sudden resolution. Nice girls waited for men to compliment them, kiss them. But she was not a nice girl. ‘I’m glad you liked my dress.’ She bent, slowly, in case he flinched away, and kissed him on the lips.
He didn’t flinch. Instead his lips joined hers, opened. His hand reached up to cup her hip. Warmth, and again the strange feeling of familiarity even though she had felt this only once before . . .
High heels clattered on the veranda. ‘Sorry.’ Matron Clancy sounded amused. ‘Tommy’s asleep, despite the noise.’
Jed straightened, glad the night hid her blushes. ‘I won’t go in to say good night to him then.’
She waited while Matron Clancy opened the bar out for Nicholas to swing himself up into the seat and then quickly and competently rolled the chair up into the back and chained it so it didn’t roll.
Jed stepped towards the window. ‘Good night.’
He didn’t lean out to kiss her. She didn’t take the initiative again, not with Matron looking on. ‘Enjoy the dancing,’ said Nicholas as Moira started the engine. The van swerved out into the drive.
She watched its light travel down the drive, along the road, her hand up, waving, though she doubted Nicholas could see her. Perhaps he hadn’t even looked back to see if he could. The last hope that he might lean out the window and wave back vanished as the van turned the corner.
She’d wanted to tell him she didn’t want to dance, not the waltz or the two-step or even the twist or the stomp. That walking in the garden with him, talking quietly, would have meant more to her than any party, that she didn’t even like parties, though she did like the excuse to wear a dress like this. But even it had been for him too, really.
She’d walk in the garden now, anyway. Better than going back to the marquee, where she knew hardly anyone, where there might be too many questions and speculative looks. Where Raincloud would almost certainly seek her out, either . . . just possibly . . . to apologise, or to tell her off for being with a man who’d fought in Vietnam.
Nancy would wait till the cutting of the cake, at least, before she’d want to go home, but she suspected that she’d want as early a night as she politely could.
She circled the marquee, around a clump of shrubs, to the swing — a chair-like swing, not like the dangling tyre at Overflow. She sat, feeling the night air settle cold on her shoulders.
Why hadn’t Nicholas kissed her? Suggested they leave the marquee earlier so he could? Men liked kissing, didn’t they?
He had accused her of keeping secrets. But he had told her so little about himself, not even how he had come to lose his legs. It had changed his life, and yet he kept it to himself.
Well, she hadn’t told him everything either. But what young man would accept that anyone sane c
ould see ghosts? Not even the sheets and ‘woooo!’ kind, but real people who shone through for a few minutes or seconds as time temporarily bent.
Something dark moved behind her, then plonked himself down on the swing’s seat next to her.
It was the ghost.
Chapter 47
JED
For a moment Jed thought he was one of the guests. But he wore the same clothes he had worn when she had last seen him at the billabong. His smell was the same too, fresh sweat and wood smoke. ‘Well, what do you know? It’s Ned Kelly’s daughter again.’
‘I’m not.’
‘Thought you might be practising to be her, but. What you doing here?’
‘What about you?’
He laughed softly in the darkness. ‘I’m a ghost, darlin’. Ghosts can be anywhere.’
‘You’re not a ghost.’
He grinned at her, showing the dark gaps in his teeth. ‘How d’you reckon that, then?’
‘Because I’ve seen ghosts,’ she said flatly.
He regarded her for a moment. ‘Well, now, maybe you have. One con artist doesn’t con another, eh?’
‘I’m not conning anyone these days.’
‘You sure? I’ve heard the gossip, you know. Ghosts hear all the gossip. They say you turned up claiming to be old Thompson’s great-granddaughter, ready to inherit half of all he owns.’
‘I might be his great-granddaughter. But he can’t leave me anything. He’s made the factories over to his sons.’
‘Ah, is that so? Rich fellas like him know all the lurks. He can avoid death duties that way.’
She hadn’t thought there might be a pragmatic, selfish reason for Tommy’s gift to his sons. ‘Anyway, you haven’t said what you’re doing here.’
He grinned again. ‘Haunting.’
And suddenly she saw the folds of his eyes, their colour, among the sun-starched wrinkles. ‘Mrs McAlpine is your sister!’
The grin vanished. ‘Used to be. When I was alive. No, I’m not kidding you, girlie. I’m dead. Have been since 1942. It’s all official. You ask the army. Even got my name on the war memorial in Canberra.’ He looked at Jed seriously. ‘Best let me stay dead too.’
‘Why?’ she asked softly.
‘Two men died because of me. Not in the war. Much earlier. I was fourteen, a bank robbery gone wrong. I didn’t kill them, but if I’d refused to go, it wouldn’t’ve happened. Told meself it wasn’t my fault for years, then one day I woke up and knew that I’d been fooling myself. Worst thing a con man can do is con himself.
‘But I was in a bind, see? Mah had set herself up here, real nice. Got a husband, kiddies, respectable friends. What would happen to her if I got me piccie in the paper, bank robber found after all them years? So I stayed on the lam, using another name. Joined the army when things looked really crook for Australia. And when I killed the enemy I didn’t feel guilty because I saved more than I killed and, in the long run, it meant I helped save Mah and Blue and every damn person in this country from invasion. And I’ve been dead ever since,’ he added simply.
‘Surely it wouldn’t matter now.’
He shrugged. ‘Can’t very well ask the coppers if they still want me. And anyhow, I got used to being dead. Roam like the wind, that’s me. And now and then I blow in here, to check up on them all. And then I blow away.’
Had he peered through the flaps at the wedding guests and the bride’s family in the marquee? She supposed he had.
‘She looked bonzer, didn’t she?’ His voice was dreamy.
‘The bride? Mrs McAlpine?’
‘Them too. I meant Belle.’
‘Your mermaid?’ Jed was sure there had been no mermaid in the marquee.
The ghost looked at her, his eyes serious again. ‘Saw you too, with that bloke in the wheelchair. Take it from an old ghost who knows. There’s something wrong there.’
‘What do you mean?’
He shrugged. ‘Got good at watching, as a ghost. I was pretty good afore that too. Con man’s stock in trade, watching people. Know what should’ve happened with a girl who looks like you?’
She shook her head.
‘He should’ve kissed you. And not just once neither,’ said the ghost simply. ‘Why didn’t he do that, eh?’
She had thought the same, she realised numbly.
‘You think you know who he is, don’t you? What you need to be asking yourself is what hasn’t he told you. The things people don’t tell you can be more important than what they do.’
Like what happened to his legs, she thought. Like why he doesn’t go home. Has no old friends, and his only new ones were her and Nancy, and he’d told neither of them about the event that must have marked him most.
‘You just think about that.’ The ghost stood. ‘I better go before one of them waiter chaps sees me. Don’t know what Mah is doing, hiring a posh mob of penguins and fancy grub. What’s wrong with a good old “ladies bring a plate”, and help yourselves?’
‘Are you camping back at the billabong?’
‘I might be. Might have a couple of fat bunnies wrapped up in wet newspaper under the coals too, all warm and waiting for me.’
There was no self-pity in his tone. But suddenly she couldn’t bear it. This man had been younger than she was now when he’d done wrong. But she was here in a dress that must have cost a fortune, even back in 1922; she had been eating chicken Kiev while he sat in the darkness, peering in at the laughter he could never join.
He laughed kindly and patted her knee. ‘It ain’t bad, darlin’. I could walk into any pub in the land, except around here, and find company if I wanted it. Never have wanted it much, since the war. Got jack of people, after that, if you want the truth, seeing what people could do to each other then.’
And yet he watched his sister, her children, the woman he had loved, whoever she was.
‘Would you like me to bring you some wedding cake?’
He met her eyes. ‘Tell you what I would like. There’ll be photos of this bash in the paper. Old Mrs Thompson owns the Gazette and you can bet she’ll have this on pages two and three. Any chance you could get me a copy?’
She could ask Nancy to save the paper for her, ask her to detour to the billabong. No, that wouldn’t work. Nancy would want to know why she was leaving a newspaper in the middle of the bush, and her box of wedding cake too, because this man deserved at least that.
She’d ask Nancy to stop because she needed to go to the toilet. That would do. And it wouldn’t be a lie because she wouldn’t go before she left so she really would need to go, could even pretend she wanted a few pages of newspaper to use as lavatory paper.
It would work.
She found him smiling at her. ‘You’ve got a plan,’ he said.
She flushed. Did one con artist really recognise another? Had all she’d done to survive turned her into a con artist too? ‘I’ll leave you the paper among the trees next Friday night, somewhere close to the billabong turn-off. You’ll have to keep an eye out, as I won’t be able to carry it far.’
‘Good-oh,’ he said.
‘I’ll bring you some of the wedding cake too.’
‘I’ll put it under me pillow and dream of who I’m going to marry, will I?’
She glanced up at the moon, dear predictable Sir Cedric, suddenly unable to look at this man, who life had robbed of any chance of a home or family, who must skulk in the shadows just for a glimpse of the people he loved.
Her grasp on family was fragile too. Nancy and Tommy accepted her because of the chance she was related to him, but that investigator must still be looking. One day, almost certainly, he would find proof either way. And Tommy would die, and Nancy would have her own baby and less interest in waifs and strays. She would go from being just possibly family to being nobody. A ghost on the edges of real life.
And Nicholas? He’d still need her for a while if he wanted to stay out of nursing homes and his own family home, whether she was related to Tommy or not. Could he ever really lo
ve her though? Could he love anybody? Or was he so bruised by what life had dealt him that he was incapable of reaching out beyond his shell of tragedy?
Was Nicholas a ghost too?
But miracles could happen. If bad things sliced up lives, then good things could happen just as unexpectedly, like Nancy’s baby, like humanity planning to place its ambassadors up on the moon. If man could go to the moon, then Nicholas could really love her.
She glanced up, and Sir Cedric was there, as if he smiled down at her. And suddenly she felt that fate had made a bargain with her: if man did walk on the moon, then Nicholas would love her, as if the two events were intertwined in their myriad possible futures.
The music stopped in the marquee. They were getting ready to cut the cake, perhaps.
She looked to the man next to her, but, ghost-like, he had gone.
Chapter 48
NANCY
12 MAY 1969
Some people needed their dreams interpreted. Nancy envied them. Her dreams had always been as real and sharp as her life. In the prison camp, during the war, dreams had been a refuge, as if Overflow stretched its arms to her in sleep, protecting her, reminding her each night that all she had to do was live, and she would find it once again.
When the war was over the dreams changed. Now it was the prison camp she couldn’t leave behind. Dreams of hunger, terror, guards’ faces and barbed wire. And the dream, the one that came nightly for almost a year and at least once each month even now.
A doorway. A bare red yard. Japanese soldiers holding glasses up towards the sun. A small boy, laughing, running from the starving watching women towards the men, sure that he was loved by all of them. Of all the people in the camp, that child alone could run towards the guards and fear no reprimand.
A loved child. And the world exploded. Men who could not face the dishonour of a lost war. Hand grenades. Blood. Bone. She hadn’t seen them then, only the dark remnants when she awoke, for the explosion had knocked her unconscious in the same moment it had killed her nephew, the child she loved as much as if he were her own, more, perhaps, for in all those years Gavin was their small, fine flame of joy.
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